curlymango's reviews
46 reviews

The Quiet Tenant by Clémence Michallon

3.75

Simple but compelling, a cool twist on a classic premise. The only thing that kept taking me out was the writing style, which felt overly melodramatic at many points. It’s a very quick read and fun read, though.

Uglies by Scott Westerfeld

2.0

Unsurprisingly not my jam. I don’t think the author could world-build to save his life and the plot has more holes than Swiss cheese. All the names and nicknames for things are painful to read. Like, there’s a character named SUSSY ffs. How is even a middle schooler expected to take anything seriously here? He should’ve just written a hoverboard pirates adventure short story and not tried to make another unnecessary, half-baked “not like other girls” snooze fest.

All About Love: New Visions by bell hooks

4.0

In a world where we’re constantly confronted with cynicism, it’s such a breath of fresh air to read something that’s truly all about love. Everyone should read this.

Jesus Land: A Memoir by Julia Scheeres

3.75

So many times while reading I could physically feel my heart sink. You have to take all the dialogue and fine details with a grain of salt, but Julia’s memories of her feelings in each moment are as clear as day. She writes so well that it’s often difficult to read because it’s so visceral. She manages to infuse joy and humor into her story, channeling her brother’s undying optimism and the bond they had with each other. There’s a revelation at the end that left me thinking about where Julia’s story meets David’s story and how we tell the stories of loved ones who are no longer with us (to me it’s still hard to see as anything other than Julia’s story). A thought provoking and challenging read. 

Yellowface by R.F. Kuang

3.25

It’s a page turner, but (for me) not until the last third or so. It felt a little repetitive getting there. The writing is fine. I can’t tell if the writing is dumbed down in a way to channel or satirize the narrator’s voice, but it gets annoying sometimes. Don’t go into this book expecting a super nuanced, revealing analysis of racism or discrimination in the publishing world. It’s definitely more about the “creative icon falls from grace” process which Kuang does well. It feels like a sort of clap-back shower argument in book form until it gets to the fun part. And I’m afraid this is going to age a little with all the 2020s pop culture references.

Dirty Laundry by Disha Bose

3.25

Not a super exciting twist, but the characters were decently hateable. I was hoping for a huge nasty blowup or downward spiral that didn’t really happen. The writing was pretty good, though I was surprised how annoyed I got with the diary date format. Every other chapter followed the same format: character recounts the past, then the present day unfolds. The story felt more appropriate for the standard format of each chapter following a different character, because the dates meant nothing to me, especially when half of each chapter is flashbacks.

Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

3.5

A solid spooky icky story! I’m a bad, slow reader so this is probably a me problem: it felt like there was a lot of scene-setting but much less character-setting, as in they just kind of popped up out of nowhere in a chapter (e.g. Noemí looked up and ___ was standing in the doorway). In general, I think there could have been less “telling” more “showing.” To the extent that written media allows, that is.

I really enjoyed the concept of people as a fungal super organism. That was definitely very spooky icky. Also the aphrodisiac potion was straight up terrifying.

Going to Meet the Man by James Baldwin

5.0

Every story clawed back another layer of emotional turmoil, and by the time I’d read Sonny’s Blues I was speechless and remained so up through the final story. Baldwin paints rage and fear so exquisitely. The titular story is one of the most disturbing things I’ve ever read and it will haunt me forever.

Dim Sum of All Fears by Vivien Chien

2.5

There’s a very disappointing lack of dim sum. It’s literally like 2 pages even related to dim sum. I don’t care if it made no sense to have more dim sum in the plot, it needed more dim sum.

Also, what on earth kind of parents go on vacation to the other side of the world after their daughter is embroiled in a murder, then stays there after learning she just found the body of her murdered friend, still makes her manage their business without giving her a bonus at least, then extends their fucking vacation after learning that said daughter just got held at gunpoint by the murderer of her friend??!?!! Vivien who hurt you???

Hazards of Time Travel by Joyce Carol Oates

1.5

Admittedly I don’t read much, but I’ve never read a novel so unbearable in my life. I feel deceived by a somewhat interesting premise only to be faced with 300 bleak, agonizing pages of self pity and faux philosophizing for no discernible purpose. Our two main characters each had about as much depth as a Petri dish.

He’s a “star hacker” and she’s a blank sheet of printer paper.

So Mary Ellen is Joyce Carol and Adriane is Joyce’s subversive alter ego who is so so smart for a questioning authority a single time. Gold star, Adriane/Mary Anne, for having such progressive thoughts like “colonization bad” and “maybe racial segregation is not good.” The logic for sending her to COLLEGE IN 1959 is so obviously just to relive her sorry first year in college. I know she went through a lot of trauma in her life, but Joyce, there’s literally no reason a fascist regime would want a young American to go to AN AMERICAN COLLEGE IN 1959 if they wanted to brainwash her! If you want to write another memoir, just write another memoir! The Sci-fi parts of the book are derivative and only made me think of better things I could be spending my time reading. I think I rolled my eyes after every single chapter. And don’t get me started on the mother loving punctuation in this. After about the TEN THOUSANDTH parenthesis and the TEN THOUSANDTH em dash I wanted to bash my head into a wall. Each one was like a mini hurdle for my eyeballs except the race just kept going on and on and on. I finally got to the finish line aka the acknowledgements page and surprise surprise, there’s one line thanking one editor. And guess what? It still reads like a manuscript with that absolute jungle gym of parentheses. I at least want the 3 minutes back that I spent rereading to check for what seems to be a continuity error. 

The only reason this doesn’t get 1 star from me is the chapter Lonely Girl II, when Adriane/Mary Ellen watches Rear Window and remarks:

And this time too, though it was billed as a suspense film, the film moved with excruciating slowness. The actors were so obviously acting. The film was so obviously a film […] it was impossible to take them seriously as anything other than glamorous movie stars going through the paces of an improbable story, again to heavy-handed background music that made me so restless, I had to press my fingers against my ears.

I mean, it so perfectly sums up how I felt reading Hazards of Time Travel. So perfectly meta whether intentional or not. But it doesn’t justify all the other trash I had to sit through.

Anyways, I don’t feel bad being so mean because JCO has gotten her accolades and my review isn’t gonna do anything to her success. Now I’m finally free to enjoy a good book and hopefully ease the hypertension that this one has left me with.