callanisreading's reviews
196 reviews

On a Sunbeam by Tillie Walden

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adventurous emotional hopeful reflective medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Mia accepts a position with a small crew that restores structures in the outer reaches of space, and the quiet work creates time to reflect on her high school days and her first love. As they traverse the universe, Mia grows to better understand her new friends and herself -- emboldening them to explore dangerous space in search of closure. With stunning colors, striking vistas, and boundless creativity, Walden welcomes us into Mia's beautiful world and asks us to reflect on loneliness, love, and finding ourselves. 
Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi

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challenging dark emotional hopeful informative reflective sad medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

Beginning with two half-sisters in the Gold Coast of Ghana, each unaware of the other's existence, Homegoing follows eight generations of descendants who forge parallel paths in Ghana and America. Each child bears an inheritance of trauma, with the echoes of their shared history made tangible in their dreams, their inexplicable intuitions, or their destinies to repeat family history. In her sweeping debut novel, Gyasi chronicles the terrible legacy of enslavement and the damage it continues to inflict. 
The Lost Daughter by Elena Ferrante

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challenging emotional reflective sad tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Leda, an English literature professor with two grown daughters, vacations alone on the Italian coast. On the beach she spies a mother-daughter pair amidst a large, noisy Neapolitan family who capture her imagination. As she draws closer to the young mother, Leda reflects on her own painful motherhood and how to know herself after becoming a mother. 
Beautiful World, Where Are You by Sally Rooney

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emotional hopeful reflective sad fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Alice, a writer, moves to a costal town not far from her best friend Eileen, who works at a magazine in Dublin. The two women -- each navigating friendship, heartbreak, and torrid love affairs -- discuss their lives, the state of the world, and when next they will meet through lengthy letters. Amidst the tangled ties that connect four young people, Rooney contemplates the world today and the beauty that makes life worth living. 
A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf

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funny hopeful informative inspiring reflective fast-paced

4.0

As a fictional narrator, Woolf takes stock of women as writers in this fundamental feminist essay. As she navigates the life of a writer, the narrator contemplates the conditions and space that must be afforded women to write. In clear, compelling prose, Woolf advocates for feminist ideals that remain relevant today.
Dune by Frank Herbert

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

4.0

At the age of fifteen, the son of Duke Leto Atriedes leaves his home world of Caladan to make the desert planet of Arrakis, Dune, his home. Harsh climate and political treachery mark the beginning of Paul's new life on Dune, where he will face his terrible purpose and the prophecy that surrounds him. Herbert renders Dune with stunning detail in this science-fiction classic that questions the way civilizations rise and fall. 
Must I Go by Yiyun Li

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challenging emotional funny hopeful inspiring reflective medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Lilia - widow of three husbands, mother to five children, and grandmother of seventeen grandchildren - waits for death in a California nursing home, where she spends her days provoking the other residents. Though she insists she is unsentimental, Lilia ponders her past while re-reading her erstwhile lover's diary, which she annotates with comments and memories. In this languorous reflection on meaning, mourning, and mortality, Li asks what it means to have a life well lived. 
Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata

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emotional funny hopeful lighthearted reflective medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Thirty-six-year-old Keiko finds direction and meaning from her work in a convenience store, where the store manual and her fellow employees clearly model exactly how she should act. But her peers question the propriety of a single woman of her age working a part-time job, and her attempts to become more "normal" upend her routine at the convenience store. In this affecting novel about honesty, belonging, and desire, Murata offers a love song for the humble convenience store that inspires an appreciation for many ways of being. 
Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens

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adventurous lighthearted mysterious medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.0

Kya lives in a marsh on the North Carolina coast, lonely but for the company of seagulls. When the local football star turns up dead, Kya draws attention as a suspect in his murder. Woven with mystery and romance, Owens offers a love song to the boundless beauty of nature in her debut novel. 
The Renunciations: Poems by Donika Kelly

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challenging dark emotional hopeful sad medium-paced

4.0

Through vignettes of a traumatic childhood and deteriorating marriage, Kelly unravels the story of a woman for whom past and present blur and connect. With her story so akin to myth, she appeals to an oracle for the wisdom to navigate her memories. In this anthology of landscapes and scars, Kelly offers a heartrending meditation on love, hurt, and how we might heal. 

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