callanisreading's reviews
196 reviews

At Night All Blood is Black by David Diop

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challenging dark informative tense fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

Alfa, a Senegalese man from a small village, fights for France in World War I alongside his childhood friend. When his friend suffers a slow, agonizing death on the battlefield, Alfa grapples with impulses toward revenge, apology, and sadism. Diop centers an oft-overlooked band of soldiers in this disturbing novella that digs into the trauma of war. 
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A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara

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challenging dark emotional hopeful reflective sad medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

After they meet in college, Jude and his three closest friends prove inseparable; in the decades that follow, the quartet navigates relationships that shift in the wake of fame, pride, and trauma. Jude weathers years of quiet strife, his happiness at odds with a past that haunts and, he feels, defines him. In compelling prose, Yanagihara chronicles a lifetime of love and unspeakable cruelty in this punishingly sad tome. 
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Can't Even: How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation by Anne Helen Petersen

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informative fast-paced

4.0

In this culture study of Millennials, Petersen chronicles the conditions that conspired to burn out an entire generation. She reviews shifts in social mores, public policy, and economic prosperity, and in so doing demystifies the sense of precarity that plagues Millennials. Peterson’s analysis resonates deeply — and hopefully inspires long-overdue change. 
Homeland Elegies by Ayad Akhtar

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challenging hopeful informative medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Akhtar blends memoir, autofiction, and playwriting in this reflection on America between the eighties and the Trump era. He unravels the conflict inherent to his identity as the American son of Pakistani immigrants, and in the process refines his understanding of the ways America fails us. A challenging work in many ways, Akhtar's novel speaks to core concerns for many Americans: about identity, safety, and the dreams America can(not) hold. 
Luster by Raven Leilani

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challenging dark emotional funny reflective fast-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

4.0

As any semblance of stability in her life evaporates, Edie strikes up a relationship with a comfortably wealthy white man in an open marriage. She orbits his family, searching their possessions and faces to better understand them and, hopefully, herself. With incisive, seductive prose, Lelani evokes the ache of want and ponders the path to feeling whole again.
Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro

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emotional hopeful reflective sad 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

Klara studies passers-by on her busy street with a keen eye, and when a special young girl named Josie crosses her path, Klara immediately recognizes her as such. As she observes Josie, Klara strives to discern and honor the rules that move the world around her. Following Klara's gaze, readers are guided through a careful meditation on love, loneliness, and humanity in this elegant, newest novel from Ishiguro. 
Somebody's Daughter by Ashley C. Ford

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challenging emotional hopeful inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

5.0

A fraught relationship with her mother and a mostly-imagined relationship with her incarcerated father shape Ashley Ford’s childhood. As she endures poverty, puberty, and assault, Ashley strives to define herself on her own terms. In her elegant, unflinching debut memoir, Ford grapples with trauma, forgiveness, and love at its most complicated. 
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Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi

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challenging dark emotional hopeful informative reflective sad slow-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

5.0

Gifty — a neuroscience PhD candidate studying reward-seeking behavior — searches for keys to happiness for her brother, who struggled with addiction, and her mother, who is bedridden with depression in the wake of her son’s death. As she reflects on the losses that have wracked her family, Gifty strives to reconcile the deep roots of her faith with the comforting surety of science. In this stunning, subtle meditation on faith, love, and loss, Gyasi pushes readers to question the world around us, searching for meaning.
Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid

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challenging funny reflective tense fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

While babysitting for a wealthy, white family on short notice, Emira is harassed by a grocery-store security guard. A bystander films the altercation, connecting the young, Black babysitter to her employers in ways she never envisioned. Taut with suspense, this fast-paced drama contemplates race and class with biting wit. 
The Five Wounds by Kirstin Valdez Quade

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challenging emotional funny reflective slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

The birth of a new baby draws together five generations of family, each privately wrestling with her own trauma. In their proximity, the family members awaken to the pain they share and inflict. In prose that is at once insightful, authentic, and funny, Valdez Quade offers a stunning debut that exceeds the sum of its parts.  
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