Richard Siken seriously needs to be compensated for the amount of times people rip words, lines, stanzas out of his poems and post them somewhere. I have read so much of Siken's work but this is my first time reading anything of his in FULL. What a goddamn shame, to have seen and read and felt so many of lines, some of which I know are his, others that I don't know are his, and not know their full context.

So many of the bits of his poems that are presented separated from the work in his full take on entirely different meanings in their full context. Lines that sound hopeful become distressed and panicked. Anything that sounds panicked becomes resigned and futile.

If you like anything about his works that you've seen on tumblr, just buy the collection. Support a living, breathing artist. Read his work the way he wants it to be read. Stop taking it for granted. Stop taking it to apply to your favorite ships. Man.

Anyway I liked it a lot. I don't rate poetry collections on a star basis anymore but this is really up there for me.

Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn

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dark medium-paced

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

4.0

Everything I liked about Gone Girl but dialed up. Ultimately I think I prefer Gone Girl just because this book is so much sometimes. This book is very dark, very bleak, will make your stomach turn. Please heed any content warnings and consider them strongly. It’s a lot sometimes. Gillian Flynn is unapologetic with gruesome matter or writing from the pov of a character with a lot of problems. Bear in mind the main character really seems to have OCD, so if this is something you struggle with, maybe consider that too before diving in.

Difficult to swallow sometimes, but very good.

Severance by Ling Ma

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emotional reflective relaxing sad tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? N/A
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

Very good writing, a bit difficult due to the reality of COVID. Frustrated by the ending; it felt a little bleak? Like she wanted to be done with the book and just decided to end it there rather than explore it further. Overall very good, but can’t rate it any higher because of that tbh

If We Were Villains by M.L. Rio

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adventurous dark fast-paced

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

3.0

I feel like IWWV would have been better serviced as a dark academia romantic drama than the thriller it tries to be. I much preferred the first half to the second one.

My critiques (spoilers)!

Richard is an unfailingly one note villain, so much to the point that I felt flabbergasted by the decision to just let him die. He has an ego and he's mean? Have you MET a theatre kid who got main roles one after another? They're literally all like that. I dunno. It felt like a little of a jump to go from "he's our egotistical bestie" to "yeah let's let him die in the lake."
Frankly I think the second half of the story would be much more interesting from Wren's POV. She was Richard's COUSIN. And yet she barely features at all after Richard dies. I wish the book had been about her.
I don't care what Oliver and the author have to say about Meredith, it is painfully obvious that she is just a halfway point for Oliver and James's more realized affections, and her character is diluted down to just the bare essence of "sex appeal" to get in the way of Oliver and James's more "magnetic" attraction. Disappointing.
This book really begins to feel like it wants so badly to be a dark academia Brokeback Mountain towards the end, but it can't quite center itself around the drama of, oh I don't know, Richard being dead, and it's more about Oliver trying to fulfill a niche in James's life he wants to fulfill but isn't aware he wants to. Hence my "I think this would have been a better romantic drama than the mystery thriller it is" comment.
Honestly? I hated Oliver by the end. We aren't given enough meat of his family to really understand why he despises them so much and his callous attitude towards his sister's EATING DISORDER really turned me off from him. Meredith calls him "good" but then he makes comments to his sister about throwing up her dinner and he throws a fit over his sister getting treatment. It made it extremely hard to want to root for him, at least for me. Sure, he doesn't feel like he fits in, but it doesn't seem like there's enough motivation there for it to feel like his family is just needlessly cruel to him, and he comes off as spoiled to me.

All critiques aside I had a lot of fun reading the book and I finished it in a handful of days. As an ex-theatre kid who loves Shakespeare and the dark academia aesthetic, it was fun to read a book that leaned so much into that. But it's certainly not the best thing ever written, and I wish it knew what it wanted to be: a tragic romance or a mystery. It gives up somewhere in the middle, and that's why the first half is superior to me.

Moby-Dick: Or, the Whale by Herman Melville

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adventurous challenging funny informative mysterious reflective tense slow-paced

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

5.0

Gilgamesh: A New English Version by Stephen Mitchell, Anonymous

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tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

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lightsaber's reviews 78 reviews

lightsaber's reviews
78 reviews