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bethniamh's reviews
230 reviews
Notes on 'Camp' by Susan Sontag
I picked up this short, small book after reading the last essay in It Came from the Closet, which used this book’s titular essay as its basis. While short, this is a dense read, with passages requiring focus to parse and fully appreciate the ideas presented therein; I’d like to go through it again with a pencil and annotate lines I find particularly striking. The book also features a second essay dissecting the divide between the literary-artistic and the scientific, which was an interesting read following the first essay. This book was also a good example of why I find a page goal much more representative of my reading habits than a book goal; this counted as a whole book read, despite only being 64 smaller-than-average pages.
Homesick by Silvia Saunders
4.5
This was so much more than I expected. This only came out last month and I bought it based solely on the fact that the main character was a librarian, and it ended up being a very happy surprise. When Mara suddenly finds herself in a position where she has the money to buy her first home, she tries to get her boyfriend Tom to commit to move in with her, but he’s going through his own struggles which make maintaining their life together hard. The story was beautifully written; the author could have so easily fallen into the trap of making Mara a total mess of a character, but her resilience made her easy to root for. My heart broke a little bit for her (and Tom) at several points in the book. I forgot I was reading whenever I picked this up; a hundred pages could easily go by without me noticing, partly helped by the very short chapters. This was my favourite read in quite some time, and I wholeheartedly recommend it.
I Hope This Finds You Well by Natalie Sue
4.0
After a slow couple of months, this book was exactly what I needed to get me back into reading regularly. It begins with the misanthropic Jolene being caught out at work for unloading her frustrations with her colleagues in an ingenious yet clearly fallible way; when HR install software to monitor her activity on her computer, she is accidentally given access to all of her colleagues emails and messages. Jolene is likeable despite her abrasiveness, and it was interesting to gain insights into Persian-Canadian culture through Jolene and Armin. I wasn’t totally convinced by the romance plotline and I would have enjoyed reading some more examples of the hidden messages Jolene was hiding in her emails, but it was fun to watch Jolene’s personal growth and her development of friendships and relationships with her co-workers and her mum. This book had me looking forward to any opportunities I had to read more, so it was a perfect choice after my previous read.
It Came from the Closet: Queer Reflections on Horror by Joe Vallese
3.0
This book is a collection of essays on LGBTQ+ themes in horror films, with each essay from a different writer on a different film. I actually started this book way back at the end of October 2024, but I never really found myself falling into a good groove with it. Essay collections from a range of writers are always going to be a bit hit-and-miss, but some of these really missed for me (I find myself quite concerned about the sheer detail provided about one contributor’s adopted teenage son). However, some of these essays really hit the mark, and are worth reading whether you’re into horror or not; particular favourites were The Wolf Man’s Daughter, The Trail of His Flames, Black Body Snatchers, and Notes on Sleepaway Camp. This collection was originally published in 2022, so I would be interested to see a follow-up collection at some point in the future containing essays on films such as I Saw the TV Glow (far and away my favourite film from last year and one that I’ve found difficult to shake).