librarymouse's reviews
282 reviews

Parable of the Sower: A Graphic Novel Adaptation by Octavia E. Butler, Damian Duffy

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

3.75

There were some parts of this book I really liked and others I really didn't. The 39 year age gap between Lauren and her love interest who she first recognizes through associating him with her father is one of the major dislikes. I like both characters, but the situation is uncomfortable, especially when he is made out as a sympathetic, likable character. I'd had this book and the novel it was adapted from on my to read list for a while, and I'm glad I got around to reading this for school. It's really neat to see the roots of the literary solarpunk movement as it's rooted in afro futurism and the questioning of the continuing hegemony of colonial structures that are still being offered as solutions to the climate crisis today. It is weird to be reading this in 2024, though.
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The Monster of Florence by Douglas Preston

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dark informative mysterious medium-paced

4.5

This was a wild story, start to finish. I love Florence. Getting an intimate look at the Italian and Florentine judiciary systems makes me not want to go to back. However, as Preston points out, the US is just as bad - just in different ways. This is a wild glimpse into the case of the Monster of Florence and life in Florence in the 2000s. Overall, really engaging read, though I did have to put it down for a moment when Spezi's wife nearly incriminated him to the police over the phone and in French. The lack of oversight and excess of power afforded to law enforcement are just fundamentally busted in such an astounding and entertaining way.
The author handles the description of the deaths with tact, making sure to acknowledge their humanity, rather than just discussing them and their deaths as spectacle.
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The Woman in the Library by Sulari Gentill

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

4.5

A book within a book within a book made for a wild and very engaging read. I finished it in a day.
the novel ending with Leo, whose storyline seemed to be constantly unfinished, waiting for Winifred and Marigold made the whole thing more meta. For Freddie to be seemingly stalked by the Leo that Leo the murderer praises Hannah the author for creating was such an interesting way to fold the layered universes in on themselves! Leo the murderer stalking the author who then wrote a Leo the character stalking Winifred the author character who was friends with Marigold, the stalker of Whit, who had done an unsettlingly large volume of research on Cain to try to exploit his mom's shoddy lawyering into a pullitzer makes for a very interesting web of morally gray people. I did want Leo the character's story to be tied up more. He's still characterized as helpful, which I think ads an interesting tilt to the story being told about Leo the murderer and Hannah the author and the impact of what he gave her on her writing. But I want to know more about the reasoning behind the cupcakes and the groceries. Is it flirting, stalking, or friendship? I wasn't expecting for Leo the murderer to be a racist, but using that racism and vitriol to show his descent into delusion was interesting, especially in how that morphed from what could be perceived as advice on US perceptions of race and how it impacts jnteracrjoms with the police.
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The Sun Down Motel by Simone St. James

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dark funny mysterious 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? It's complicated

5.0

Overall, I really enjoyed this book! The setting, in particular, was really strong and the transitions between 1982 and 2017 were really tangible. Some of the characters were so pleasantly strange in a very human way. The juxtaposing of Nick, the former delinquent Carly meets as an under the table resident of a run down motel with Callum, the library volunteer who's way too invested in her search for what happened to her aunt is really well done.

Overall, this book was really fucking weird in a highly consumable way.

there was some things that felt like compulsory heterosexuality on my first read through, but to be honest, I think I've just been reading a lot of queer stuff recently, and all this book did was clearly characterize Carly as straight. Vic's cancer coming back at the end of the book, so close to her saying she's cancer free and learning her sister also died of cancer felt a bit out of place to me, but it's also real life and real life issues that do happen being presented within the frame of a thriller. I'm not a fan of the pro-cop rhetoric, but at the same time, I did like Alma as a character.
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Catch and Kill: Lies, Spies, and a Conspiracy to Protect Predators by Ronan Farrow

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dark emotional informative mysterious reflective medium-paced

5.0

The pacing of this book made it engaging despite the gravity of the information being discussed. Farrow is straightforward with his explanation of his own history with the issue of sexual assault, growing up in the shadow of what Woody Allen, their father, did to his sister Dylan, and the media shit storm that ensued. Intwining his own story, growing as a person and apologizing to his sister for the role he played in the covering up of her own trauma, kept this story grounded and away from the sensationalized scandalous text it could have become. In 2024, it is especially interesting and upsetting to see the intentional disruption of American news news to destroy information and skew political outcomes as done by Israel's government-backed Black Cube.
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The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable by Amitav Ghosh

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challenging funny informative medium-paced

5.0

I read and annotated The Great Derangement for a grad school class, and therefore, I have more to say about it than would reasonably fit in an easy-to-read review. In short, Gosh brings up interesting and in some ways obvious perspectives on the issue of climate change and the affiliation between the establishment, art movements, and the struggle that comes about in depicting real life, exceptional or catastrophic experiences in realistic fiction. The collection of all of this information and its application to systemic inequalities contributing to/underwriting the global climate crisis, for all its understandability offers a profound understanding. I highly recommend reading this. As someone who is generally highly anxious, especially so around climate issues, this was informative in a way that avoided the nihilism of much of the other texts I've read on the subject.
Reading this in 2023, Gosh's prediction that the west will allow the global south and other former colonies to bear the brunt of climate change and/or direct violence in order for Western countries/elite to maintain their way of life is becoming further and further unsettlingly true.
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At the Mountains of Madness by H.P. Lovecraft

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adventurous dark slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

2.0

I definitely finished the book, but that's about all I can say about it. There's an excess of description about navigation, geology, and scientific exploration, surrounding Lovecraft's depiction of setting. Partially due to this, I found it hard to remain engaged in the text. He somehow made running for one's life an experience that wasn't engaging to read about. The oblique ways in which Lovecraft goes about describing the monsters/old ones/mountains does not add a sense of mystery or unknowingness. More than anything, it's just mildly frustrating.
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The Last House on Needless Street by Catriona Ward

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

4.0

I really enjoyed The Last House on Needless Street! There were a few false starts before I finally made it past the halfway point, and was hooked. I adore the gay and religious cat, Olivia!
this is one of the most sincere representations of disassociative identity disorder that I've ever seen! I'm really glad Ted didn't end up being a villain. It was interesting to have gotten Ted's point of view of events only to have those events later rewritten as explained by the consciousness that actually experienced them. I want more information about Ted's mom, tbh. Making Ted both a suspect and one of his mother's victims filled in the hanging questions in the story wonderfully. I also wanted more of an explanation on why the bug man is the way he is and what exactly he did to warrant the temporary loss of his license.
Rob feels like a good addition to the story, and I like the hints of possibility that Ted is gay.
The ending of this book was unexpectedly tender and comforting.
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King Solomon's Mines by H. Rider Haggard

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adventurous medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.0

This is every bit what I'd expect of an adventure novel from the 1880s. Surprisingly, the novel had far less overt hate for Africans and far less overt racism, as compared to a book like Doctor Doolittle, published in the 1920s. I'm not sure that I necessarily enjoyed it, but the form and mode of storytelling were interesting, and the travel sections were engaging. There is quite a lot of murder, excessive game hunting, killing for ivory, and consumption of meat in this book, as well as detailed description and discussion of corpses.
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Loveless by Alice Oseman

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emotional funny reflective 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

5.0

I kept having to put down this book and take a moment because every one of Georgia's milestones in discovering her aro-ace identity were nearly beat for beat my own. I feel so lovingly, astoundingly, kind of uncomfortably seen by this book, and by Alice Oseman.
Her wonderful additions of mentor characters at different stages of their self acceptance journeys was everything I wished for (and still wish for, tbh)
I love this book. I knew, going into it, that I was not alone - not the only ace or aro-ace person in the world, but after reading this book, I feel less alone in a far more profound way.
I want to try going dancing now, again, with friends and without the weight of sexual or romantic expectations like Georgia. I think I'd like it too.
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