Georgette
If you're aware of Pearls Before Swine, it's hard to go wrong with a collection. I don't really follow the dailies, so this is a great way of catching up with what Stephan Pastis is up to lately (I feel like I can say that since he is one of the characters in the strips). There were many that made me grin or groan, and a few that made me laugh out loud. Also pleased to see the crocs and their long-suffering zeeba neighba make several appearances!
(ARC courtesy of NetGalley)
After reading so much garbage poetry books that seem to be the one making all the money, Melizarani is refreshing to the fellow spoken poet's soul. This book peels back the layers around the world of a Malaysian Indian woman with both keen word-fu and an unapologetic candidness. Her pieces about issues faced by the country and our people strike a chord.
And yes, it really did take me this long to finish this book. I started and stopped because I was in one of my reading ruts. Things only started taking off a week ago when I realised that I've been holding on to my friend's copy for a ridiculously long time and should really see about returning it. I gave it another shot.
Right away ‘blank' struck a chord. A commentary on the Allah controversy, Melizarani talks about having to substitute the A-word with a blank. Being from Sarawak, I am fortunate to live some place where everybody agreed how ridiculousness of this controversy is, even if they don't personally believe in either deities popularly associated with that name. Or even if, like me, their Blank really is blank.
‘my country is a man' puts a whole different, sexy spin on how to talk about Malaysia; while ‘to the macha who got away' made me put the book down halfway through the piece because one stanza made me laugh so hard I was unable to immediately continue. ‘hero' was a beautiful use of Superman as a metaphor; I wish I wrote that.
There were little pieces in between the longer ones that will make connoisseurs of instapoetry happy, but I barely remember any of them. I look at them again when I get my own copy.
Okay, I've had enough of this.
i've
had
enough
of
this.
enough
is
enough
is
enough
I'm not going to live long enough to read everything on my TBR list. Ergo, I neither have to soldier through this one and work myself into a frothing rage over what qualifies as (Goodreads) award-winning poetry these days. In fact, I'm gonna do myself a favour and avoid anything that Goodreads members pick as “award winning”.
did
not
finish
- i got other books waiting
Reading copy courtesy of NetGalley.
Bree is a chemist who comes back from a company trip to find her boss dead from poison and herself as the main suspect. It's always made sense that a character would have a stake in solving the mystery quickly if they are a suspect, so this is the most obvious setup (plot-wise) ever.
It's interesting to have a protagonist who is a scientist (yay for women in STEM!) and perfectly capable of solving chemistry problems as long as it's not the romantic type. Nothing actually happened except maybe setting the path for a future love triangle.
However, it will have to proceed without me since this book didn't really do anything for me. It was nice to read but not in a “cancel all my appointments and sleep” way. The recipes at the end were a nice touch.
Ebook courtesy of NetGalley.
I wanted to like this book because the premise sounds interesting and I'm a thriller/horror fan. But the dialogue was cheesy, the POV jumped from one character to the next like an airborne virus, the characters all seemed like dramatic caricatures who can only end sentences in exclamation marks, and the demon would have made a lot more kills if he stopped talking so much. I think I kept on reading to see if it was consistently bad throughout the book. This should have just stayed in the era it was originally published.
This was an ARC from NetGalley.
I never thought that I'd be into a lesbian porno graphic novel but Small Favors is terribly charming and sex positive that you can't help falling in love. There are several stories, some just a couple of pages long, but it always ends up with everybody having sex. There's not much in terms of plot and the one main arc is that Nibbil is Annie's conscience in humanoid form, supposedly to keep Annie from masturbating all the damn time but she turned out to be a companion and enabler. This was unexpected!
This was an utterly delightful and very fun romp of a book. A lady with a crumbling estate, a film star with a mysterious past, ulterior motives and entertaining sidekicks. In a way it's almost two romance novel subgenres in one - the outwardly-restrained historical romance and the sweep-me-off-my-feet “Hollywood”. It sounds bad when I put it like that, but this book was a nice break from my usual genres.
It's Sarah's Scribbles! And there's no way this won't be somehow hysterically #relateable. While I've always enjoyed whatever scribble that pops up on my Facebook newsfeed, I've never gone looking for the motherload. This compilation is a nice place to start and damnit, I missed #1.
With thanks to Netgalley for this opportunity to give an easy 5-star.
Dec 22:
It went to New Zealand and back again with me. First person narrative kicking off in broken English but gradually improving. She charts her experience in England and with her lover there, comparing the difference between cultures. Quite an enjoyable read.
Dec 2:
And I find it while gathering all the scattered books around the house! Turned out it was in my bookshelf all along with the spine facing in.
Dec 1:
Filing it under ‘abandoned' for the time being until I discover where exactly did I accidentally abandoned the book. I was enjoying it too!
This book will always be special to me because it's the first book from NetGalley that I requested for and was approved, after many rejections. Having said that, this book was twisted and hard to put down. I loved it.
From the messed up scene of an escape, the FBI found themselves questioning a victim, the unflappable Maya, about where she and a disturbingly large number of tattooed girls escaped from. She told them about the Butterfly Garden and their role as “butterfies” for a man they only knew as The Gardener.
As Maya slowly unfolds the story, we learned about the Gardener's perfect fantasy world, where he “collected” beautiful young women in the prime of their beauty (16-21), tattooed different types of butterfly wings on their back, gave them a new name, and raped them whenever he wanted. On their 21st birthday, he kills them. What he does with their bodies after is deliciously fucked up. While the Gardener is portrayed as fatherly, he has no qualms about moving their deaths up if they disappoint him in any way.
The writing is an easy read and drags you along. The characters are compelling and well-developed. I enjoy the almost-cold and unflinching Maya, and the handful of Butterflies whom she interacted with in the garden, but I'm still rather staggered by the number of captives there. Her relationship with the Gardener is also fascinating.
Enjoyed this tremendously. One of my rare 5-stars.
I'm more than halfway through but I feel that it's futile to cling on for any longer because I've long lost the plot. Something happens in the town of Mammoth View, causing an exodus. Those who were left behind react differently. There was a couple of bank robbers, two police officers, a teen girl, probably another handful of characters. I don't know. I lost track. There's far too much going on yet not enough to move action along. It felt like there were as many characters and elaborate back stories as Game of Thrones, cept less interesting.
At first I wanted to push through and see how it ended, but I'm starting to recognise how I'm putting it off more and more, while not starting a new book because of ‘incomplete book' guilt. Enough of that. Life is too short.
This copy was courtesy of NetGalley.
I didn't know there was a Jem and the Holograms comic book, so obviously I missed Volume 1 and 2.
This is not your mum's Jem and the Holograms!
As a huge fan of the cartoon, I had a small meltdown reading this modern incarnation, and I mean it in a good way. For one, I barely recognised anyone. I could only tell them apart from their hair colour (and by Kimber's rebellious response to everything!) but the girls have been given very different body types and I love it! This makes you think about how the 80's cartoon versions were boxy-shouldered carbon copies of each other cept for the different hair and skin colour. Synergy is sleek and sexy, yet still quite sci-fi.
So Synergy somehow acquired a virus called Silica who takes over and creates evil personalities for everyone. Aim? To take over the world. What else right? Not too surprisingly the cure was for Jem and the Holograms to combine forces with the Misfits, leading to several gorgeous musical montage spreads which tragically is silent on an ebook page.
Other stuff that I found different, new or outstanding compared to the cartoon include a couple of gay/lesbian relationships, one transgender woman, and some very lovely examples of female friendships. Truly outrageous and utterly timely!
Honestly speaking, the sexual orientation and dating life of anyone who is not Jem/Jerrica falls in the background when you're 10 years old. The only thing I remember is the insipid Jem-Jerrica-Rio love triangle.
Recommended for both past fans and new ones!
This copy digital was courtesy of NetGalley.
Utterly delightful! I like the nod to classic children books, and the message is obvious and narrowly escapes being preachy. Mostly because after the roam through the very squishy and greasy Ovenland makes my stomach curl a little as well. It's also lovely to see a young POC as the main character.
This copy was courtesy of NetGalley.
I feel a little bad rating this book although I can't finish it but there you have it. I couldn't get through the book. It sounds like it had potential and there's a few interesting anecdotes about the origins of some acronyms like SNAFU. But it's pretty dry, like a grammar book trying to be hip but not quite hitting the mark. The illustration of the parrot is also kinda “eh”. Maybe fine in its original run in 1991, but in need of updating.
Copy courtesy of NetGalley
This was pretty damn hard to put down.
Detective Jude Fontaine escaped a 3-year captivity after overpowering her captor and making a run for it. But she was not the same person anymore. Everything about her and her life before she was kidnapped has changed - she was replaced at work, her boyfriend was seeing another woman, she was a cold shell of the happy normal person she used to be. And she gained a new ability, a bit of a super-heightened sense in smell and the ability to read body language.
Despite being plucked out of a situation and dumped into another, Jude coped and bounced back. She returned to the force and was given a new partner Detective Uriah Ashby, who had reservations on whether or not she should return to work at all. They immediately get thrown into a new case, which of course has some kind of connection to both Jude's secret personal history and recent kidnapping. All this and how it eventually wrapped up is a little too convenient, but the writing is good and pulls you along to the next page. You really want to find out what happens to Jude and whether or not she is truly safe.
The great part about The Body Reader is that you have characters who have been through hell and are stronger for it, despite moments of human weakness. Both Jude and Uriah are compelling characters. Their partnership had a rocky start, but Uriah started to care and Jude started allowing someone to care. This didn't lead to any romance, thankfully, because that would have been way too cliche.
I'm interested in read more from this author if The Body Reader isn't just one sample of a formulaic plot.
I don't feel like this review did the book justice, but if you're a fan of thrillers, this is a pretty good bet.
This digital copy was courtesy of NetGalley.
I must say the preface raised my expectations a bit too much. The artwork reminds me of the older comics I inherited from my dad (circa 50-70s) which is kinda cool. But it was a bit hard to get into. I liked that the author plucked from mythologies all over the world. It's just that ultimately I can't tell most of them apart. Towards the end, the roles became a bit clearer but I've already forgotten or missed details from the beginning. I might give this another read if I can get hold of a hard copy. The page breaks was a pain in the ass when you get the full spreads.
Copy courtesy of NetGalley.
I think the thing I'm most confused about is the target audience versus the actual protagonist age and theme in this book. Isn't Middle Grade supposed to be the pre-teen era where pimples, cracking voices and training bras are suppose to be the main problems?
On her 16th birthday, Princess Madeline is rudely surprised when her father informs her that she will pick a husband from a selection of royal suitors coming to her ball that night, not unlike how Cinderella's Prince Charming held a ball to meet all the eligible young ladies in the kingdom. This immediately tells you why she had to be 16; another day closer to Middle Grade and this book won't have seen the light of day.
Like all fairy tale princesses, Madeline is headstrong and wants to make her own decisions but the King was not hearing any of it because she is clearly a pawn piece to be married off for better kingdom perks. So she runs away, a plan she cobbled together in maybe an hour, and made up the rest of it as she went along. She gets kidnapped by bandits, who menaces her as menacingly as possible with readers whose average ages are just rolling over into the double digits. Which is to say they barely did anything except save her from the trouble of where to run next.
Meanwhile, her love interest is a young knight who fell in love with her at first sight. She wasn't aware he existed until he won the role as her champion. And naturally they ended up together because he was the least repulsive choice in the end.. Sigh.
I think this novella is fine if you're young and don't have very sophisticated expectations in story plots or character development. Here's a spunky princess with a problem. Here is a princess getting into deeper trouble outside her safe zone. Here comes her knight in shining armour.
I like the spunk and wanting to break out of roles assigned to you by the patriarchy. It's just that we don't really get to know the characters enough to sympathise or relate. Perhaps the constrains of the MG category is to blame here, because the writing was actually quite pleasant to read.
This reading copy was courtesy of NetGalley.
I'm not sure if another other book made me simultaneously cry with laughter and despair. Or if any other book can be hilarious and depressing at the same time. If you've been to enough meetings, you'll recognise These People. If you don't, you're probably it.
A great use for this book is to bring it to every meeting with your and write down the name of the colleague or manager who exhibits the behavior. Or check it off when you pull that line on everyone else. Just try not to get fired.
There's even illustrations for each trick, and a handy guide to useful facial expressions and what to do with your hands during a meeting. The line art is delightful.
In all seriousness, these people exist and sometimes your best weapon is a subtle sarcasm. Buy it as a lifeline for a friend or family member who is drowning in meetings. Buy it for the manager whose life revolves around meetings or that turd-polishing colleague who not-so-casually name-drops the boss's first name like they'll be doing their nails together later.
‘100 Tricks to Appear Smart in Meetings: How to Get By Without Even Trying' will be available Oct 4. All I can say is, “Ship it!” (Trick #71)
This ARC is courtesy of NetGalley.