peeled_grape's reviews
143 reviews

Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin

dark sad tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No

Very slow paced. The internalized homophobia is overwhelmingly present. I swear to god, I don't give a shit about French and I am not looking up the meaning of random phrases every other line. Jesus.

Also: Giovanni sucks lollll. I mean so does David--I think Hella is maybe the one person who doesn't suck--but Giovanni's "I'll kill myself if you leave me" thing made me dislike him quite a bit.

The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion

reflective sad

It’s so fucking wild to me that Quintana died immediately before the book was published. Right after the events described.

The book was good and fine but it’s wild to read about a medical crisis from a rich person’s perspective. She could live in a hotel in LA to be with her daughter in the UCLA ICU while having a permanent residence in New York. Worry over money was not mentioned once. Like damn. It was also a bit pretentious at times (like one paragraph that went something like “Quintana was in the ICU / it reminded me of a trip to Thailand I took once” like bro what the fuck do you mean). The audiobook also has piano music in the background at the end of certain chapters and I fucking hated that fancy-Christmas-dinner ass music. I found the repetition moving, but otherwise found the book somewhat unremarkable. I was so annoyed by how rich they were and how many times expensive vacations come up.

The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Ableism and Suicide attempt

Moderate: Rape and Suicide

Minor: Racism

First reference of an unironic lobotomy I’ve seen in literature. Casual racism, casual fatphobia. Weirdly charming?

The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin

Part memoir, part essay, and extremely meditative. Between the World and Me is in conversation with this one (and not just because it gets its title from a quote in TFNT). 

The Color Purple by Alice Walker

They’re all definitely dead in that last chapter, right?? Or Celie is dreaming it? Cause the ship sinking was a THING, right???

Walker is transphobic and antisemitic and this book does depict all Black men as violent. Is it bad that I find the book compelling all the same?? I need to think about it more.

Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates

Some of these lines are going to stick with me for a while: “I was meant for the library, not the classroom”; the idea that race is the child of racism, not the other way around, etc. 

Reference for: police brutality, racism

Out of Darkness by Ashley Hope Pérez

Framed around the school explosion, but it could've been written out and the book would've been fine. It feels like trauma porn. Author is a white woman who writes exclusively about Latinx/Latine people, which is icky. 

Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood

It’s unclear whether Oryx is real or if she’s one single person. Seems in some way a humanities vs. STEM commentary. Eugenicist sci-fi. Reminds me of that Jurassic Park quote: you always asked whether you could but not whether you should, or something. Atwood’s obsession with birds really comes through here. 

Cemetery Boys by Aiden Thomas

This would’ve blown my little non-binary mind as a kid. 

Reference for: trans fantasy, Latinx fantasy, MLM romance

They Both Die at the End by Adam Silvera

Could not get over Rufus' dialogue. So bad.

Extremely meh but the ending will stick with me for a while. Took too long to get there, I think. 

Hated that Rufus only died because he got the Death-Cast call. (Same with the serial killers--their victims only die because they got the call??) The love story was actually believable. Mateo's death scene was so terrible. Also why the hell do they survive a bombing AND a shooting before dying?? What??

Reference for: queer lit, literary timers, one-day novel, contemporary romance, speculative fiction