platypusinplaid's reviews
928 reviews

The Wonderful World of James Herriot by James Herriot

funny relaxing

4.0

Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury

adventurous emotional mysterious

5.0

AUDREY'S ONE-SENTENCE BOOK REVIEWS

Baffled to learn that almost nobody else considers this a gay coming-of-age story... what ELSE do you call a weird, poetic novel about two boys on the cusp of adolescence who are obsessed with each other to the exclusion of all else

All In: An Autobiography by Maryanne Vollers, Johnette Howard, Billie Jean King

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hopeful informative inspiring

4.5

AUDREY'S ONE-SENTENCE BOOK REVIEWS

Every policy Billie Jean fought for (Title IX, equal pay, trans rights, abortion/birth control access, racial equality, gay liberation, among others) is young enough to be conceived within living memory, old enough to be taken for granted, and radical enough to be threatened again today. Will be thinking about this book for a long time.

Edward II by Christopher Marlowe

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dark emotional sad

5.0

AUDREY'S ONE-SENTENCE BOOK REVIEWS

not the bury your gays trope smh🙄

***

from Clifford Leech's lecture "Power and Suffering" at Bryn Mawr College, 1958:

"And for Edward, Marlowe does not ask our liking: he is foolish, he is at his best pathetic [...], he is cruel to his wife [...], he knows himself so little that he thinks he erred only in too much clemency. There is barely a redeeming moment in the long presentation of his conduct. Yet what Marlowe has done is to make us deeply conscious of a humanity that we share with this man who happened to be also a king."

Noodle & Bao by Shaina Lu

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hopeful inspiring lighthearted

4.5

File Under: 13 Suspicious Incidents by Lemony Snicket

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funny lighthearted mysterious

4.5

AUDREY'S ONE-SENTENCE BOOK REVIEWS

Each "mini-mystery" is actually a literary portrait of another corner of a failing coastal mill town. Sorry if you were expecting otherwise

"Sure enough, as the figure led me through Stain’d-by-the-Sea, I asked myself more and more questions about suspicious incidents I had recently encountered [...] I wondered about all of the closed-up businesses, and where all the shopkeepers had gone when their stores had vanished [...] I wondered how to keep something as fragile and valuable as a rare newt safe in such a ragged and desperate place [...] I wondered about a person who had once loved a man enough to get married and despised him enough to frame him for theft [...] I wondered about a grandfather who liked to joyride, and a grandchild who liked to repair automobiles, and how long they could continue to live in a town that was going nowhere [...] I wondered how desperate you would have to be to live on the outskirts of a town that was almost gone."

The End of Summer by Tillie Walden

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challenging dark mysterious

4.5

Content Warnings