blueberryhotel's reviews
59 reviews

Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic by Alison Bechdel

dark emotional funny reflective tense fast-paced

4.5

probably should have read this first before watching the musical bootleg on youtube but both still stand as excellent works, with or without the context of the other. bechdel’s widely-read nature shines through in the quality of her writing, and i’m encouraged by the analogies she draws between her life and famous works of literature to go investigate said literature deeper. (the greek myths, for example.) she also very deftly weaves together her conflicting views of her father and i appreciated the complexity with which she depicted him. really beautiful illustrations, too, which help immerse the reader in the world of this small pennsylvania town. the chronological shifts throughout the narrative are cohesive and coherent, building upon bechdel’s underlying thesis. just overall super well done, super readable and compelling. 

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

adventurous slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

glad i finally read this!! somewhat challenging to read a classic with such dense language and especially the many inscrutable rules of etiquette and conduct of the period that the author presumes the reader to be familiar with. also referring to every character almost exclusively by last name (when many of them share a surname) was confusing and took some getting used to. but ultimately worth the read; i found the story engaging and surprising,  with unexpected turns of events and clever characterization through dialogue. also made me chuckle out loud at points, which is hard to do! read with a book club but we didn’t discuss it as much as we just watched the movie adaptation (with macfadyen and knightley), which i thought did a great job of cutting the repetitive and tedious scenes that bogged down the pace of the book somewhat. 

The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka

dark emotional reflective sad tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Rising Strong by Brené Brown

emotional hopeful informative inspiring reflective slow-paced

3.5

Sea Change by Gina Chung

reflective sad medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.5

i didn’t expect to dislike this book as much as i did, but i think it lost me right away by dumping so much exposition at the very beginning…. and then continuing to consist of mostly exposition for the entire book. this is a great example of what “show, not tell” is warning against. rather than letting the characters’ actions speak for themselves the narrator is constantly explaining everyone’s motives and backgrounds which makes the writing feel so dumbed down almost to a YA level. the main character wasn’t compelling to me at all despite her struggling with the universal difficulties of adulthood. the author seemed to be attempting to straddle the fine line between sympathetic narrator in a tough situation vs a completely dislikable/impossible to understand narrator, in the vein of my year of rest and relaxation or the first bad man. those books work better imo because you at least have some interesting exploration of the extremes of human characteristics and behavior, while the main character in sea change is painfully average. you want to write another novel about a twenty/thirty-something who, like, Can’t Even Adulting? give me something INSANE! 
also, i think alternating between present/past throughout the narrative is difficult to pull off with dexterity, and this book definitely doesn’t do so. it almost drags more because we keep returning to the narrator’s past and she’s hardly doing anything in the present aside from saying things like “I think about that one time when I was younger and my mom hurt my feelings. That was hurtful. I’m messed up because of it now.” 
then there’s a bunch of lamely under-explored details that seem thrown in for textural effect but just look lazy, like the author hinting at the main character having ocd within the last 50 pages when nothing else has suggested as such thus far. or the narrator’s cousin’s toxic relationship, which verges on abusive but again seems to be written to straddle a delicate line in order to avoid having to write a more complex narrative about abuse. i think overall this book lacks a distinct point of view. 

Birds of America by Lorrie Moore

adventurous challenging dark emotional funny reflective medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? N/A
• Strong character development? N/A
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

The First Bad Man by Miranda July

5.0

Big Swiss by Jen Beagin

dark funny reflective tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

i feel like the only person who wasn’t head over heels obsessed with this book but idk something about the writing style didn’t always work for me. sometimes it read as cheeky/fun, other times it verged on YA. i thought it presented some really interesting perspectives on trauma and “healing” in a very non-traditional sense; for the most part the characters were rejecting psychiatric/therapeutic models that have become ubiquitous through watered-down mental health awareness graphics on instagram or whatever. that said i did find it somewhat hard to connect with the characters. i appreciate an unlikeable/super flawed narrator, but the characters almost felt like caricatures beyond the point of enjoyment and understanding. and the plot was also very out there, almost absurdist. idk, it was still pretty solid and there were a few chunks that struck me better than others re: prose, but it just wasn’t totally for me

How to Write an Autobiographical Novel: Essays by Alexander Chee

emotional hopeful inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

4.5

another fantastic essay collection; i love reading writers writing about writing (lol). yeah maybe it’s self-congratulatory or even masturbatory IDC. it’s very instructive to me! and i think chee makes a great point in i believe the final essay of the book about “the point” of writing through perilous and dark times. creating something  that morphs and transforms as it leaves your mind and encounters an audience through which it is changed and altered into something entirely new. even if it only reaches one person: that’s magic, and that’s the point. you can really hear dillard’s influence as one of chee’s teachers. i admire the optimistic practicality that underscores much of their work. must read more chee (and read this one again soon)

The Abundance: Narrative Essays Old and New by Annie Dillard

adventurous challenging emotional funny hopeful inspiring mysterious reflective medium-paced

5.0

i’ve been meaning to read annie dillard for so long and i’m so glad i finally did. this feels like the perfect place to start too. everyone was sharing her essay about a (different) total eclipse earlier this year around the eclipse, and now that i’ve read it i definitely see why. dillard’s hard to categorize — she’s so much more than a “nature writer”. she accomplishes that elusive, deceptively difficult task of connecting seemingly innocuous and transient moments with the grander human experience, the things we all share, and manages to do so without veering into preachy (even in an essay explicitly referencing catholicism!) i love when i read a book’s forward by a different author lauding the author i’m about to read and it gets me excited to start; the forward here definitely did that for me and describes dillard’s writing more comprehensively and illustratively than i can.