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misosoupcup's reviews
470 reviews
The Death I Gave Him by Em X. Liu
challenging
dark
emotional
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
okay this book altered my brain chemistry!!
a great near-future modern day interpretation of Hamlet, with a sci-fi'ish setting, told through one of the most smartest framing devices ever. Not a single page is wasted. Great character study since everyone knows "who-dun-it" or if you haven't read it in middle school/high school like I have, you can just look up the original play on wikipedia.
original themes in the play dialed up to 100, and expertly placed in a modern context. Hayden is my blorbo now. maybe if i read the play i would feel more attached to felicia (equivalent of ophelia mixed with laertes).
I think the advertising as a "queer retelling" is interesting. I do have to agree with some people that The Death I Gave Him is not a strict queer retelling in the way that it was marketed, or how other contemporary retellings of famous pieces of lit are "queer retellings". In addition, Horatio doesn't have a body, he is an AI, and doesn't really have a body to assign a gender to even though he thinks of himself as a "he". i think the ethics of treating AI as a conscious being is an interesting problem to chew on, especially how it is presented in this book.
people were weirded out by the two sex scenes, but honestly i wanted the book to lean more into the strangeness. it was compelling and hot to ME! it was interesting, strange, and unfamiliar! and still i felt the passion! i saw some reviews questioning whether Horatio and Hayden actually loved each other and i just have to shake my head. yes, horatio is kind of a caretaker of hayden in a sense, but is that not a part of what love is? and its not like horatio is always letting hayden's bad habits slide. And hayden reciprocates, he is trying to salvage what is left. i would argue that this is a queer retelling in the sense that the queerness is not found in gender, but rather in the queering of the relationship to the body. is it possible to love someone non-corporeal? someone who may or may not have consciousness but can mimic it? is there intimacy and sexual fervor in the artificiality of it all?
I could totally see this being adapted by HBO or Netflix potentially. each episode would start off with bursts of clips from the trial, surveillance footage, digital scans of transcripts, with interludes from Felicia and Paul's pagers, or interviews, logs from Horatio, documentary footage History Channel style.
in conclusion: this book ate and i was a starving man searching for bread.
a great near-future modern day interpretation of Hamlet, with a sci-fi'ish setting, told through one of the most smartest framing devices ever. Not a single page is wasted. Great character study since everyone knows "who-dun-it" or if you haven't read it in middle school/high school like I have, you can just look up the original play on wikipedia.
original themes in the play dialed up to 100, and expertly placed in a modern context. Hayden is my blorbo now. maybe if i read the play i would feel more attached to felicia (equivalent of ophelia mixed with laertes).
I think the advertising as a "queer retelling" is interesting. I do have to agree with some people that The Death I Gave Him is not a strict queer retelling in the way that it was marketed, or how other contemporary retellings of famous pieces of lit are "queer retellings". In addition, Horatio doesn't have a body, he is an AI, and doesn't really have a body to assign a gender to even though he thinks of himself as a "he". i think the ethics of treating AI as a conscious being is an interesting problem to chew on, especially how it is presented in this book.
people were weirded out by the two sex scenes, but honestly i wanted the book to lean more into the strangeness. it was compelling and hot to ME! it was interesting, strange, and unfamiliar! and still i felt the passion! i saw some reviews questioning whether Horatio and Hayden actually loved each other and i just have to shake my head. yes, horatio is kind of a caretaker of hayden in a sense, but is that not a part of what love is? and its not like horatio is always letting hayden's bad habits slide. And hayden reciprocates, he is trying to salvage what is left. i would argue that this is a queer retelling in the sense that the queerness is not found in gender, but rather in the queering of the relationship to the body. is it possible to love someone non-corporeal? someone who may or may not have consciousness but can mimic it? is there intimacy and sexual fervor in the artificiality of it all?
I could totally see this being adapted by HBO or Netflix potentially. each episode would start off with bursts of clips from the trial, surveillance footage, digital scans of transcripts, with interludes from Felicia and Paul's pagers, or interviews, logs from Horatio, documentary footage History Channel style.
in conclusion: this book ate and i was a starving man searching for bread.
What My Bones Know: A Memoir of Healing from Complex Trauma by Stephanie Foo
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
informative
reflective
medium-paced
5.0
This fucking ate. I so heavily related to some of the passages on how hard it is to let people love you and how mortifying and scary it feels to attempt to let people see the good and the bad. I have never felt that I can be my one hundred true authentic self with anyone or tell them the entirety of my history with mental illness as I fear I will end up alone. This is one of the bravest memoirs I have read equally and powerfully informed by Foo's own experiences, research into C-PTSD, and plenty of interviews and transcripts of her therapy sessions. This was deeply cathartic to read as an Asian American as well.
Ouran High School Host Club, Vol. 11 by Bisco Hatori
4.0
Hit after hit.
no offense to haruhi AT ALL. i love haruhi so much, but its unreal how she has FOUR guys who are interested in her, when she's so boring (when compared to the eccentricities of the host club members)
no offense to haruhi AT ALL. i love haruhi so much, but its unreal how she has FOUR guys who are interested in her, when she's so boring (when compared to the eccentricities of the host club members)
Ouran High School Host Club, Vol. 9 by Bisco Hatori
Not to go on a tangent about the anime, but tamaki is so fucking ridiculous in the anime, and he definetly is in the manga too, but a lot of his more emotional beats are truncated in the show (which to be fair only has one season), and he reads more as comic relief (to me) than a viable love interest for haruhi who is frankly a down-to-earth and realistic person. I just personally feel like tamaki's more serious moments are introduced too late, and his persona is not equal to haruhi in the anime.
That being said I am so curious to see how their characters and their relationship develops in future volumes because I now find tamaki so compelling.
3.0
not one of the strongest volumes in my opinion but i think this a critical volume in terms of crafting the characters. i noticed a distinct change in tone in this one (though it could be made up in my head). not only do we get more backstory into the twins and how they were recruited, we also get backstory into tamaki's character and his tragic story about him and his forced estrangement from his mother which really tugs at the heartstrings. in addition, we get maybe two pages of a deeper motivation for haruhi and why she's here.
In the future I want to be a lawyer. The reason I chose Ouran is because if I keep up my grades, I can receive a scholarship to enter the university's department. I'm also chasing memories of my mother. So I won't laugh at you. I can't laugh at you. There's nothing funny about it at all.
Not to go on a tangent about the anime, but tamaki is so fucking ridiculous in the anime, and he definetly is in the manga too, but a lot of his more emotional beats are truncated in the show (which to be fair only has one season), and he reads more as comic relief (to me) than a viable love interest for haruhi who is frankly a down-to-earth and realistic person. I just personally feel like tamaki's more serious moments are introduced too late, and his persona is not equal to haruhi in the anime.
That being said I am so curious to see how their characters and their relationship develops in future volumes because I now find tamaki so compelling.
The Book of Dog Poems by Ana Sampson, Sarah Maycock
4.0
great little book. a very nice little collection of poems about dogs. it kind of covers the entire lifespan of dog ownership from picking them from the store or shelter, watching them grow up, walking them, observing their little quirks, the companionship they offer, watching them grow old, and eventually the death of your pet. there are also poems from a variety of speakers, whether they be the owners, the dogs themselves, an omniscient voice narrating, or an observer. all sorts of tones ranging from the happy, hilarious, the somber, and tranquil.
the book itself is very beautiful too. a nice hardcover book with textured cardboard, a black ribbon bookmark attached to it, lovely watercolor renditions accompanying most of the poems, and vibrant orange end pages.
my favorite poems
the book itself is very beautiful too. a nice hardcover book with textured cardboard, a black ribbon bookmark attached to it, lovely watercolor renditions accompanying most of the poems, and vibrant orange end pages.
my favorite poems
- Flush or Faunus-Elizabeth Barrett Browning
- I Started Early-Emily Dickinson
- Golden Retrievals-Mark Doty
- They (May Forget (Their Names (If Let Out)))-Vahni Capildeo
- The New Dog-Linda Pastan
- The Dog-Ogden Nash
- Walking the Dog-Howard Nemerov
- The Hairy Dog-Herbert Asquith
- Not My Dog-Matt Harvey
- Verse for a Certain Dog-Dorothy Parker
- Mongrel Heart-David Baker
- Fidelity of the Dog-William Wordsworth