Emil

Yi Chang is an investigator trying to track down the leader of a cult while also trying to solve a murder with confusing evidence.

I have mixed feelings about this book.

First of all, I did find the concept compelling and didn't ever feel bored reading. Even when I saw what was coming, it didn't feel like it was because the plot was overly predictable or tropey, it felt like it was because the book itself gave me enough information to figure it out myself. I found the characters interesting and relatively consistent, with their motivations being clear and understandable.

The writing can be a bit abrupt and stilted which I think is probably because this was translated. I'm not sure about Korean but I'm sure localising it to English is a pain. Sometimes the writing feels a but redundant, repeating the same noun over again when it's already clear what's being talked about.

Characters are mostly consistent but I did feel like they sometimes acted bizarrely for the sake of the plot, Yi Chang being the character I saw do this the most. Lan, the other main character, acted a lot more in character for the duration of the book.

Towards the end especially it started feeling more and more like a TV show in book form which I rather enjoyed. It can get quite dramatic and in those moments the writing was definitely better paced.

I would recommend this if you can get over the sometimes clumsy writing, the characters depite some hiccups do seem very human and the plot is quite engaging.

Beautifully written. I feel like I've been and known multiple Alice's in my life. This is very short, only 20 pages, but I feel like it captured the sometimes complicated relationships between mother and daughter pretty well.

"Handsome" is about a moment in time with Evvie, a woman suffering from Alzheimer's.

The stream of consciousness writing style is difficult to get into at first and can feel exhausting to read, which for this book I personally love. Things get repeated a fair amount, and there are no full stops. The chapters are of a reasonable length however which does help give you places to mentally catch your breath.

It really did feel like I was sitting in the room with Evvie listening to her talk about her life and experiences, her opinions and feelings. Her story is told nonlineary and sometimes suddenly, but it always made some sort of sense through the chaos.

I feel like some media surrounding Alzheimer's can really infantilise the person suffering. I didn't get that feeling from Evvie; she has personality, wit, extremely strong emotions on both sides of the spectrum. Even through her illness you can see who she is. I will be thinking about her long after I finished this book.

I do think the book went on slightly too long, maybe by a chapter, as the reptitiveness of her thoughts do start to become very tiring to read by the end. You could argue that's part of the point though.

I think some people could struggle with the writing style, but if you can adapt to it I would recommend it.

If you're even slightly interested in coding languages, I would definitely consider reading this. The different entries are short and sweet (with a cute note about whether they're endangered or not) while going more in depth into the more used or notable languages. Even for the languages that don't get a lot of time, it gives just enough information that if you wanted to look into it more by yourself you'd have the information to do.

You definitely need at least some coding knowledge to understand the terms, as they're not really explained, but I managed it just fine with a rudimentary understanding.