oz617's reviews
473 reviews

The Sad Ghost Club by Lize Meddings

3.0

Well drawn and charming, but I felt by the end that the message of the story was “depression exists”, which… true! If I were a school counsellor, I might hand a copy of this to a sad teenager. It just hits a sad indie millennial girl vibe – nothing inherently wrong with that, but to me it feels lacking of substance.

Star Trek 9 by James Blish

4.0

Loved reading the author’s foreword. The quality of writing has definitely improved over the series, even as Blish slowly runs out of episodes to cover.

Secret Seven Win Through by Enid Blyton

3.0

Sweet story – though I feel like the Secret Seven books are all the same, this town is rolling in thieves. I always preferred the Famous Five

Guantanamo Diary by Mohamedou Ould Slahi

5.0

One of the first books I would recommend to anyone interested in learning about the crimes of the US government. Slahi’s experiences were horrific, and the informal, colloquial way in which he writes only highlights the inhumanity with which he was treated. There’s now an uncensored version released, which I’m very eager to read, as the censoring of the original text seemed clumsy and nonsensical. I wish I could call the torture he suffered surprising, but the only surprising thing is how well Slahi held onto a positive state of mind.

Half Gods by Akil Kumarasamy

3.0

I’m unfamiliar with the politics discussed here, so Half Gods was more educational than I usually expect a short story collection to be. This is the second book of interconnected short stories I’ve read, and I’m growing to love the form. I found it a little difficult to follow, and there were moments where I wished we could spend more time with one location or character than another, which made it a frustrating read at times. Maybe things would be clearer if I’d been able to read it all in one sitting, but there’s so many natural break points with short stories, that becomes hard. Altogether this made the collection rather uneven, but I’m glad to have read it.

Jack Slater, Monster Investigator by John Dougherty

5.0

Hilarious. Completely hilarious, occasionally emotional, full of references that parents will definitely understand, and which aren’t so dependent on context that children would be confused.

Kisses for Jet by Joris Bas Backer

4.0

If I’d read this a few years earlier I think it would have been very important to me. Reading it as a trans adult who’s been passing for many years, it was a lovely reminder of how things used to be. I hope it’s found by a less confident trans kid, and that they find some community in it. I only wish certain parts of the story were more outright stated – it’s probably not helped by my not having read many graphic novels, but I was a bit confused at what was happening on the page at some points.

Life In Cold Blood by David Attenborough

5.0

Informative and beautiful to look at. I like flipping through it for inspiration when writing cold blooded aliens.

Lord of the Butterflies by Andrea Gibson

2.0

Feels like this collection is trying to hit what Rupi Kaur did, but without understanding the nuances of why Kaur’s poems work. Some of these poems tried so hard to be deep they overshot into hilarious, others just felt empty, most felt like a first draft you write in your journal and never show anyone. I rarely understood the *point* of a poem, including the longer ones which were more like short essays with random line breaks. Perhaps they’re better in spoken word form.

Lost at Sea: The Jon Ronson Mysteries by Jon Ronson
Did not finish book.

I wish I had abandoned this collection before the 75% point I eventually reached. I found the interviewer obnoxious, shallow, and occasionally disconcerting. The subjects could be properly interesting if asked the right questions, but Ronson didn’t seem to know what those questions were. He came off like a discount Louis Theroux, with none of the heart present in Theroux’s works.