incrediblefran's reviews
198 reviews

In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado

challenging emotional reflective

5.0

Come as You Are: the bestselling guide to the new science that will transform your sex life by Emily Nagoski

hopeful informative reflective

4.0

The same parts, organised differently.

A book I wish I had read in my 20s, and that I wish had existed when I was a teenager. 

Emily Nagoski’s writing style is lively, thoughtful and compassionate, and she blends biology, social science, history and psychology in a very readable manner. Some of her metaphors get away from her - the “One Ring” concept didn’t help my understanding much, despite being a Lord of the Rings fan, and while the garden metaphor is one I found very useful I know it’s not worked for other readers - but people can take away what works for them.

I had considered myself a sex-positive person, and I wasn’t brought up in a particularly restrictive or conservative household, but it was still eye-opening to realise how many myths (and, let’s face it, lies) about women’s sexuality I still believed, deep down. Nagoski really digs into these myths about sexuality, desire, orgasm, all of it, and unpacks the truth. 

The ongoing mantra of you are normal, this is normal, you are okay, you are not broken are powerful. “Normal” shouldn’t feel powerful, but in a world where women’s sexuality is so often seen as wrong, it is. 

A Pocket Guide to Pigeon Watching: Getting to Know the World's Most Misunderstood Bird by Rosemary Mosco

funny informative lighthearted fast-paced

3.0

A charming, fun read that did a great deal for my opinion on pigeons! I already suspected that the “rats with wings” description was probably unfair to them, and it is. This book is filled with enthusiasm for them.

I wish the book had been a little more informative, really. There’s information given about the impact of pigeons through history, why they live everywhere, how they’ve interbred, etc. but all of it is a little too thin, and while I appreciate a quick, easy writing style I would have liked it to be less cute and to have gone a bit deeper in places. Perhaps the intended readership is younger?

That said, I think the book did its job: I came away from it with a new appreciation for pigeons, and I have already started spotting the different feather patterns in the ones that visit my garden.

In Memoriam by Alice Winn

adventurous challenging dark emotional reflective sad

4.5

Alice Winn manages to capture both the aching, repressed longing of the central romance and the visceral horrors of trench warfare. The early scenes set at Gaunt and Ellwood’s boarding school are golden and sunlit, full of promise and naivety, even as the shadow of the war lingers at the edge of things. And then the shadow takes over. 

The trenches are dreadful, and the men are broken down by their experiences there. Winn is interested in what the experience of war does to people’s sense of self, and to their views on home and beauty (Ellwood, early on, rhapsodises about the mythical England, but on a return home later he can find no peace, and can only be utterly furious at that which he used to love). In the trenches Gaunt can only bark at people in monosyllables, and Ellwood - lover of poetry, who quotes Tennyson as easily as breathing - soon realises that his “useless, incomprehensible eloquence” is completely pointless when faced with the butchery of Loos and the Somme. Poetry and the First World War are inseparable in British history (many of us learned most about the war not in our history lessons but in English lessons, with Siegfried Sassoon, Wilfred Owen, etc.). But here, poetry is lost, or becomes an outlet for a terrible, bitter, utterly justified anger.

The mid-section set in a prisoner of war camp sometimes felt like it came from another book, one that was more about a gallant adventure (and I would absolutely read a whole series on the adventures of Gideon Devi, who was by far my favourite secondary character - he practically leaps off the page), but it was a moment of fresh air from the crushing despair of the trenches. I enjoyed it hugely, and I hope that if (when) this book gets an adaptation that the daring escape will be given the visuals it deserves.

I found myself oddly moved by the obituaries column in the school newspaper, interspersed through the book. Not just the obituaries themselves – though there is a bitter hollowness to them, always describing a gallant, quick and painless death in action, which the reader knows to be a lie – but the processional list of names, ranks, and ages. Hardly any of the dead are over the age of 21. Most of them are boys. Children. Lists and lists of lives cut senselessly, tragically short.

Gaunt and Ellwood are vivid main characters, and the texture and history of their relationship is beautifully drawn. They’ll stay with me for a while.

Fallow by Jordan L. Hawk

adventurous mysterious fast-paced

4.25

Back in Widdershins with Whyborne and Griffin!

Returning to Griffin's hometown of Fallow as a great choice and it opened up a lot of interesting avenues. It's a pretty bleak book - Fallow is an insular, dying town, one that drove Griffin away and another man to his death. Griffin has to face his mother again after her rejection of him, and Hawk doesn't make that easy.

The Rust is a great villain, one of the best so far. Though the Rust itself isn't really the villain, but the people are - Creigh and Marian are terrible people, but it's Griffin's mother who delivers the worst blows. Which is to be expected - in Hawk's world, the Other is something to be understood, maybe allied with, maybe even loved. It's humans who are to be feared.

Whyborne reverted back to his neurotic self for a lot of this book which was a little annoying, but the ending also had the high point of his and Griffin's relationship so I came around on it. And while last book I felt like Griffin's voice wasn't distinct enough from Whyborne's, this book hugely improved on it.

Other plus points: fun action scenes, and some excellent Christine (and Iskander) moments. I like Whyborne and Griffin, but Christine remains the MVP of these books. Love her. The whole series is so fun, and I'm looking forward to going straight into Draakenwood. Hopefully Whyborne will fret about his relationship with Griffin a bit less now.

Goodbye Paradise by Sarina Bowen

hopeful fast-paced

3.0

This is a sweet little romance. I actually could have done with it being less sweet! Josh and Caleb were raised in a cult and escape together, and build a life and a relationship in the outside world. It's a great setup, and Josh and Caleb are very likeable characters, but their adaptation to the outside world feels much too easy. There's some teething problems, but I feel like their love story would be more satisfying if it had been a more complicated process. 

A fun read, but the interesting premise felt a little wasted.

The Family Vault by Charlotte MacLeod

lighthearted mysterious fast-paced

3.5

Charlotte MacLeod is apparently known as America's Agatha Christie, and it's pretty easy to see why. I didn't find this as fun as Christie at her best, but it's a promising start and definitely has the feel of a golden age murder mystery. Sarah Kelling is a pragmatic, steadfast protagonist, and the family she's married into is full of bizarre rich people with multiple skeletons in the closet. 

The prose itself is workmanlike, even staid at times, and MacLeod spends a lot of time describing the step-by-step of preparing food, cleaning the house, making tea… it sometimes veers from setting-building detail to being tedious. The mystery works pretty well, with fun red herrings and some unexpected twists, and the ending is satisfying. 

I'm Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy

challenging emotional funny informative fast-paced

4.5

It's pretty incredible how Jennette McCurdy can write with such deft lightness about such difficult topics. She's clear-sighted and thoughtful about her mother's abuse through her life, while always maintaining such grace and compassion for her child self. This book is so aware, funny, tender, and often brutal - I've never seen iCarly, but if I had I think this would have ruined any nostalgia I may have possessed. 

The Adventures of China Iron by Gabriela Cabezón Cámara

adventurous emotional hopeful reflective fast-paced

4.25

This book is like a painting. It’s fixated on light and colour and space, and reading it is a sensory experience. A response to “Martin Fierro”, the epic Argentine poem, “China Iron” brings life and interiority and love to Fierro’s young abandoned wife. She strikes out on a journey across the Argentine pampas in the late-1800s, when Argentina is at a turning point: the growing expansionist horror of colonialism meets the remaining natural world and indigenous peoples. It’s full of love and beauty, but also brutality and violence. 

“I wish you could see us; but no one will. We know how to leave as if vanishing into thin air: imagine a people that disappears, a people whose colours, houses, dogs, clothes, cows and horses all gradually dissolve like a spectre: their outline turns blurry and insubstantial, the colours fade, and everything melts into the white cloud. And so we go.”

Iron Widow by Xiran Jay Zhao

adventurous tense fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No

2.0

I really wanted to like this book. The premise is really fun, and in theory it has a lot of things I love (mechas! Angry women raging against the machine! Queer love! Alternate Imperial China!), so I went into it with pretty high hopes.

Unfortunately I found everything past the initial set-up deeply disappointing. It’s superficial and clumsy in its handling of its themes, lacks necessary character development and worldbuilding, and relies heavily on exposition in place of deeper storytelling. 

Zetian is a deeply unlikable protagonist (not in itself a problem – I’ve enjoyed a lot of difficult, unlikable protagonists, especially female ones) who lacks all nuance. The book’s feminist credentials have to be in question with a protagonist who despises or dismisses every other woman she meets (and is proven right – if this is meant to be an unreliable narrator detail it doesn’t work, as we don’t meet a single sympathetic or complex woman). Zetian rails against the misogyny of her world, but never seems to consider that other women, like her mother who Zetian hates and sneers at, are in fact victims of this world. The only woman she has a positive relationship with is her big sister, who is dead at the start of the book and whose death propels Zetian into action. But we learn nothing about this woman, nothing about her relationship with Zetian, beyond the fact that she once existed. 

The laudable effort to include a polyamorous romance also falls flat; the two male characters both exist to prop up Zetian (one has an interesting backstory, but nothing is done with this), and don’t really have their own motivations. The relationship between Shimin and Yizhi is almost entirely off-page, with only vague suggestions that they might be attracted to one another. There is no attention given to this side of the relationship, and after the two boys kiss (following getting Zetian’s approval) the entire relationship falls by the wayside, never to be mentioned again. A deeply disappointing romance.

The worldbuilding is shallow, everything is told to us rather than shown. A story about mecha fights that involves psychically linking with a fellow pilot should have some really interesting worldbuilding, but I found myself filling a lot of gaps with knowledge from mecha anime. The book is allegedly inspired by the historical Empress Wu, but I would much rather read a book about her life.