neuroqueer's reviews
271 reviews

Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic by Alison Bechdel

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emotional reflective sad slow-paced

4.25

Quick takeaways:

Protagonist(s): Complex

Antagonist(s): Society and time periods

Plot: Heavy

Writing: Deep

Overall: B+

Thoughts:

I went into this book thinking it was going to be similar to another comic-form memoir, Genderqueer (one of my favorite books ever). I figured it was going to touch on themes of sexual identity discovery similar to Genderqueer but didn’t realize how deep it was going to go.

The memoir is about Allison and her father’s sexuality and who they were/are as people. We watch Allison discover her sexuality while she tries to understand her father, a closeted gay man. I don’t want to get into spoilers but you learn so much about this man and it leaves you feeling so many ways about him: anger, empathy, pity, confusion.

I usually plough through comics and graphic novels and I admit I was expecting this to be a quick read but this is a slow and challenging book. Allison’s writing is very heavy in terms of subject and word usage. The artwork is simple since the focus is Allison’s story telling and I feel it makes it an easier reading than if she wrote a text only memoir (bias here as I’m not the biggest memoir person).

It felt inaccessible at times language wise but I think that’s because I have been living in the YA sphere for a bit (And it feeling inaccessible is not a bad thing! You should be challenged when reading sometimes}. Going back to my earlier comparison to Genderqueer, I think that book is more for high school age and above while Fun Home is more for college age and above (in general). Either way, I think both books should be required queer reading.

High Times in the Low Parliament by Kelly Robson

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funny lighthearted medium-paced

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

3.25

Note: I’m still figuring out how I want to format my sporadic reviews

Quick takeaways:

Protagonist(s): Happy-go-lucky lothario (lotharia?)

Side Characters: Uninteresting

Antagonist(s): Exist

Plot: Confusing

Writing: Good

Overall: C+

Thoughts:

I randomly added this book to my holds list on Libby, forgot about it, dove in when it showed up and was confused with what was going on. So in this female only world, fairies and humans made a pact. They have a parliament which votes on various things (humans are the legislators and the fairies are more like enforcers). If votes keep coming up as hung, all the humans in the building will drown and war will break out as a result. It’s weird how everyone says the parliament is not important but isn’t it important if their votes can change the course of history? I didn’t get it or I’m too sleep deprived to.

I liked Lana, our lead character. She is an unabashed womanizer. It wasn’t taken to the extreme where you get annoyed with her constant flirtations. She is just a character that operates on emotions but not to the point of screwing up constantly. It was fun following her around. I liked her and Bugbite’s friendship which went from tenuous to busom-buddy after a few hits off of yeast (this world’s equivalent to weed). I didn’t really feel the romance for Eloquentia. Felt generic. The other scribes and fairies were forgettable.

As stated before, the plot is kind of confusing in the beginning (if you didn’t read the blurb like I didn’t). The bad guy’s endgame did not make sense at first but then I got the allusion to Brexit and figured it out. The novella was silly so makes sense the ending is silly too. This is supposed to be a stoner comedy but I didn’t really guffaw at anything. I wasn’t rushing to see what happens next but it also wasn’t bad enough to drop.

Moby Dick by Herman Melville

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Did not finish book. Stopped at 30%.

It is a too long product of its time.

Vengeful by V.E. Schwab

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adventurous dark tense medium-paced