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bluejayreads's reviews
849 reviews
The Consorts by Melissa Addey
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
3.75
I'm not normally much of a historical fiction person, but this was short (a novella, not a full novel), a historical period (1700s China) that I find interesting but know very little about, features women whose stories are not often told from this period of history, and hinted that it might be a little queer. And I'm glad I gave it a chance. Being a novella, it skips over huge chunks of time, and that makes the pacing seem kind of weird. And though it does contain quite a bit of angst, most of that is because of the protagonist's overthinking (although, honestly, I probably would have done exactly the same thing in her situation, and because of the book's short length, it didn't have enough time to get annoying). The setting is interesting, and though details are fairly sparse - again, only so much space in a novella - it still creates a rich enough world for these women of the Emperor to have their dramas and power games. It's interesting, it's engaging, it has a happy ending, and though I don't have any plans to read the rest of the series, this was a good read.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Sexual content
Minor: Child death, Death, Homophobia, Terminal illness
Forced sex (these women are in the emperor's harem and have to go to his bedroom if he calls for them), lesbian fetishization
Raising Hell, Living Well: Freedom from Influence in a World Where Everyone Wants Something from You by Jessica Elefante
Did not finish book. Stopped at 41%.
Did not finish book. Stopped at 41%.
This is yet another book where the title really called to me conceptually. I would like to raise hell and live well. I would just as much like to get out from under the influence of all the various things trying to manipulate me for commercial and other purposes. I also found the author's Folk Rebellion blog and thought it was really cool, but unfortunately I found it after she stopped writing it so reading this was as much a way to make up for not being able to subscribe to the blog than anything.
I did have a few reservations going in. Mainly because, in trying to find out what was going on with the Folk Rebellion blog, I ended up on Jessica's Twitter account, and she’d posted a couple things that sounded a little eco-fascist to me (”what if we are the invasive species” is the one I wrote down, and I refuse to make a Twitter account just to look at the tweets again). So I picked it up with some reservations, but I was still willing to give it a chance.
As you already know, I did not finish this book. But that had nothing to do with eco-fascist leanings. In fact, I could tell fairly early that I wasn't liking it, but I kept reading for a bit because I just couldn't figure out why. I still don't think I've quite identified all the reasons this book made me a little uneasy, but I at least have enough to write a review around.
First, this book is allegedly about how to break free from the influence of all the various forces in the modern world trying to manipulate you, but Jessica spends the vast majority of this book talking in vivid detail about all the ways we're being influenced and very little about what you can actually do about it. Each chapter ends with a little “folktale, folklore, folk rebellion” section that lists the manipulative message, what society says about it, and what you should think instead, respectively. There's also a short paragraph labeled “Raise Hell” that contains the entirety of the actual advice in this book. But the raise hell part is almost exclusively advice along the lines of, “actually you can think about this differently” or “have you considered not wanting the thing you've been conditioned since birth to want.” None of it's actionable, very little of it is helpful, and if you're the kind of person who would be interested in a book like this, it's largely stuff you've read or thought of on your own previously. And I can't stress enough that for the first 154 pages, that's all there is about actually raising hell or living well.
The second thing that really annoyed me about this book was how much of it came off as a humble-brag on Jessica's part. She's coming at this topic as a converted expert - she spent most of her career expertly welding the ability to influence people in various ways until she saw the light about how bad it was and now she's the guru who left a promising career of wealth and success behind to teach you how to break free of influence and manipulation. Which can be a really compelling approach. And it probably would have been a really compelling approach if Jessica could stop making her past sound so damn cool. From her time traveling the country to her stint as a sexy bartender to how excessively successful she was at her career, Jessica made her whole life sound really cool and awesome, and didn't quite succeed at convincing me …. actually, I'm not entirely sure what all these anecdotes from her past were trying to convince me of, actually. Maybe that influence is everywhere? The main ideas that I got were 1) influence is being applied all over the place for various purposes, and 2) Jessica herself is (or at least used to be) unbelievably cool.
I think the book is supposed to be about resisting influence, but that idea got lost in long, rambling anecdotes with too many irrelevant details. It did a reasonable job making the point that influence is everywhere, but it didn’t do a great job convincing me that this is a bad thing or that I need to learn to resist all influence. I’m not actually sure what the point of this book is. (At least, not beyond convincing me how cool Jessica used to be.) I didn’t pick up this book certain that influence was always a bad thing that I should strive to be free of in all circumstances, and this book definitely did not convince me of that, either. The idea I mostly got is that Jessica gave up a great career and a life of doing awesome stuff to be a mother and whatever it is she actually does now and this book is largely an attempt to prove that she did cool stuff in the past and she’s not nearly as lame as she feels now. Of course, I could very well be reading way too much into this, too. But either way, the title over-promised and the book delivered less information than I’d hoped.
Profit First: Transform Your Business from a Cash-Eating Monster to a Money-Making Machine by Mike Michalowicz
Did not finish book. Stopped at 17%.
Did not finish book. Stopped at 17%.
I don't think Mike Michalowicz realizes how much he's revealing about himself in this book. The general idea behind this system seemed to be, "I am physically incapable of not spending money if I have even a single penny available, so I had to find some sort of way to hide money from myself so I wouldn't run my businesses and my life into the ground with my spending habits." Just because he's in such an unbelievable hurry to get rid of as much money as possible doesn't mean that's every entrepreneur's financial struggle. As someone who often swings too far in the other direction (I have on multiple occasions spent several hours repairing or DIY-ing something because I didn't want to spend $20 to replace it), this has never been my problem, and my business has posted profit every single year of its existence, even if I use his weird profit calculation. And as someone who has read quite a bit about money, both business and personal, the Profit First system is just Dave Ramsey's "Pay Yourself First" maxim but for businesses. Mike just seems to believe that he's invented the concept of "spending less than you earn" and "having a separate savings account" and this makes him some sort of business finance genius. In reality, if you can grasp the idea that you can have money without spending it, you're probably not going to get much of value out of this book.
Content Warnings
Financial distress
Making Money by Terry Pratchett
3.75
I don’t actually have a ton to say about this one. As much as the Industrial Revolution sub-series doesn’t tend to be my favorite Discworld sub-series, I do enjoy Moist as a character. He’s entertaining, interest, fun, over-the-top, and pretty much exactly who you’d want to guide you through another zany adventure in the Discworld.
However, plot-wise, Making Money is remarkably similar to Going Postal. Moist gets himself put in charge of a government institution (although this time it isn’t directly Lord Vetinari’s fault - though you can’t say he didn’t have a hand in it, either). He applies his con man skills towards making the institution more functional. There is a group of wealthy, powerful people who really don’t want him to do this, so he also has to apply his con man skills to keeping himself safe from their schemes. It had unique elements, like Moist not actually being in charge of the mint so much as the caretaker for the dog who technically is in charge. (It’s the Discworld, these kinds of things happen.) And it has elements repeating from Going Postal as well, like the continued presence of Adora Belle Dearheart and her golem obsession.
The story was still interesting and entertaining, as most of the Discworld books tend to be. But I didn’t like it nearly as much as I enjoyed Going Postal, and I think some of that is because the two books are so similar. But some of it was also that Going Postal was about Moist both figuring out how to be himself in an honest profession and getting himself established in the city, while by the time we get to Making Money, Moist has already established himself as himself. It lacks that “underdog thrust into a new situation” element - while being in charge of the mint was definitely different from being in charge of the post office, the scenarios are similar enough that it didn’t feel all that challenging. I never doubted that Moist would figure it out, and neither did Moist.
There were some interesting elements to this story. Like most Discworld books, it includes commentary on real-world things - in this case, explicit commentary on how and why money works (not wrong, as entertaining as you would expect a discussion on how monetary value only works because everyone agrees it works would be), some statements on the gold standard, a wild subplot with a guy who wants to be Lord Vetinari and another one with buried golems that didn’t quite feel like they fit.
On the whole, like most Discworld books, this one was good. It had plenty of wittiness and that signature combination of serious-but-in-a-very-silly-way that I love, and it was an enjoyable read. But reading it so close after reading Going Postal meant I couldn’t help but compare the two, and in a direct comparison, this one is unfortunately the lesser of the two.
The Discworld Series:
Content Warnings
Moderate: Fatphobia, Mental illness, Forced institutionalization, Injury/Injury detail
Minor: Animal death, Death
The Saint of Bright Doors by Vajra Chandrasekera
Did not finish book. Stopped at 0%.
Did not finish book. Stopped at 0%.
The story is good so far, but I'm not loving the audiobook - will come back to this in a different format.
The Hollow Places by T. Kingfisher
Did not finish book. Stopped at 33%.
Did not finish book. Stopped at 33%.
I’ve really enjoyed most of T. Kingfisher’s works so far, and I’ve been slowly exploring horror as a genre, so I was excited to give this one a try. I actually started reading at one point and then stopped for a while, not because I didn’t want to keep reading, but because I have three jobs and I’m going to grad school and I just haven’t had time for anything lately. I did come back to it, but eventually decided that I really wasn’t that into it. The horror part really fell flat - everything going on was definitely weird and supernatural, but it wasn’t all that scary or horrifying. And, honestly, it wasn’t all that interesting, either. I think it would be scary to actually be in that situation, but to read about it, it’s mostly just a little bit slow. I kept waiting for the actual horror bit to kick in, but though there were moments, it was lacking that sense of all-consuming dread that I was hoping for. It had potential, it just didn’t manage to keep up the atmosphere between the more intense moments.
A Choir of Lies by Alexandra Rowland
Did not finish book. Stopped at 12%.
Did not finish book. Stopped at 12%.
I had strong feelings about A Conspiracy of Truths - it's one of those books that I'm not really sure if I liked it but it stuck in my head. Though this one follows a different character, I expected something similarly remarkable. What I got was what appeared to be a manuscript written by Ylfing with commentary by someone else, which was amusing at first but got old really fast. My biggest problem, though, was that even in his own record, Ylfing was obnoxious. I tend to overall have a low tolerance for characters being stupid, and Ylfing is just so, so stupid. He was entertaining as a side character in the first book, but as the main character I just wanted to wring his neck. The only problems in this book are problems of his own creation, and they wouldn't even be problems if Ylfing could just stop whining and be normal about anything for even a single minute. The commentator on his manuscript was pretty much immediately fed up with him, and so was I.
The Frugal Wizard's Handbook for Surviving Medieval England by Brandon Sanderson
Did not finish book. Stopped at 17%.
Did not finish book. Stopped at 17%.
The more Brandon Sanderson I read, the more I realize that he is a spectacular worldbuilder and a really strong plotter, but only mediocre in actual writing. This book was instrumental in me realizing that, because The Frugal Wizard’s Guide for Surviving Medieval England is mostly gimmick, and without a powerful plot and world behind it, it feels like a gimmick. The writing isn't bad, but it's not spectacular, and it wasn't doing anything to connect me to the story or the protagonist. And the story kept being interrupted by pages from the in-world guidebook, which seemed to be operating as both a repetitive gimmick and as a substitute for world-building. In plot, concept, and commitment to the gimmick, it really felt like something a high schooler might write. Which is not at all what I expected from Brandon Sanderson.
This Gilded Abyss by Rebecca Thorne
3.0
This book is a really strange reading experience. It's heavy and intense and dark and emotional and violent and full of death and gore and body horror, all wrapped around an ex-lovers-that-hate-each-other-but-maybe-still-love-each-other romance that very often takes a back seat to the violence and gore and etc. But it also managed to be very weird in a way that didn't exactly work. The first part of the plot is based around trying to figure out exactly what's going on - although it turns out that most of that aspect is based on one character already knowing the answer and just not sharing it with our protagonist. (I don't like intentional-non-communication-as-a-conflict-driver as a trope in general, but the fact that there's no established reason for this character to not say anything - and in fact the protagonist is involved in this whole thing because they need her to do something specific relevant to this information - is irritating and feels contrived.) Once this character finally tells the protagonist what's going on, the plot quickly becomes more about surviving to the end of the book. And I really struggled to suspend my disbelief with it. Characters acted in ways that were close to but not quite ways I'd expect real people to act. Events were just a notch or two beyond what felt reasonable. Nothing was ridiculous or excessive, and I can't even put my finger on why, but most of the last half of the book felt just slightly over-the-top. All things considered, it's not a bad book - I enjoyed the protagonist as a character, it had a lot of interesting moments and some unexpected twists, and was engaging enough to keep my attention through the end. However, I'm probably not going to read the rest of the series. From the way this one ended, I imagine book two is going to be more of the same. And even though I liked it, I didn't love it enough to continue.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Body horror, Death, Gore, Violence, Blood, Injury/Injury detail
Moderate: Gun violence, Sexual content, Murder
Possession, unreality, PTSD, trauma flashbacks, mind control, thalasophobia