alexander's reviews
403 reviews

Space Struck: Poems by Paige Lewis

emotional funny reflective

2.0

It’s a poetry collection so of course that means there’s gonna be ~5 bangers and a bunch of snoozers

Catalina by Karla Cornejo Villavicencio

adventurous emotional informative reflective

3.5

Sometimes you need your fiction to be some fantastical, revolutionary, mind-bending saga and sometimes you just want something very basic but done very well and I'm perfectly content that this is more of the latter

Slouching Towards Bethlehem by Joan Didion

adventurous challenging emotional informative reflective

4.5

Joan, I owe you an apology for waiting so long to try reading any of your books. I wasn’t really familiar with your game

Green Frog: And Other Stories by Gina Chung

challenging dark emotional reflective sad

3.5

As much as I loved some of these stories I think the redundant and reductive stinkers and how many times they almost made me put the book down will be what I remember most from this collection

Open Throat by Henry Hoke

adventurous emotional funny reflective sad

4.5

A fantastic short story of surveillance, sentience, and scarcity

The Sirens' Call: How Attention Became the World's Most Endangered Resource by Chris Hayes

challenging informative reflective

4.0

I’m brain broken and have already read many articles on the modern attention economy but this still managed to impress me with its anecdotes and perspective

How to End a Love Story by Yulin Kuang

adventurous dark emotional funny hopeful lighthearted reflective

3.0

If you really think about it this could be qualified as Scarlett Johansson/Colin Jost fanfiction

Beautyland by Marie-Helene Bertino

adventurous challenging dark emotional funny informative inspiring mysterious reflective sad

5.0

Amazed to see such a tired structure flipped it into something fascinating through perspective and sheer talent. Looking out from the inside at a hall of mirrors

Girl, Interrupted by Susanna Kaysen

challenging emotional funny informative reflective sad

3.5

The way Kaysen wrote this made that year and a half away feel like a lifetime and in a way I’m sure it still was

First Love: Essays on Friendship by Lilly Dancyger

challenging dark emotional reflective sad

4.0

While it never again reached the high of its astounding first essay, the collection was still incredibly solid