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ririkolyana's reviews
358 reviews
Love Kinection by Jennifer James
5.0
I don’t think I’ve ever had the occasion to bring this up, but I really really really really really like romance novels. Like, I walked into Half-Price Books one day and came out with a giant box of fifty books that cost me five dollars. Naturally, some of them were disappointments and the vast majority of them were regency, medieval, or otherwise historical novels, which, like any genre, gets a bit old when it’s all you read. The tropes aren’t fun anymore, the language gets tired, it’s just boring. I felt that way about the romance novel for about five months now and then there was this book, Love Kinection, and yes, the alternative spelling is on purpose.
Jennifer James taps into one of America’s most underutilized romantic resources: nerds. The two main characters, Abby and Tom, are nerds who meet at work, after Abby spends her morning tearing down cardboard cutouts of Cupid and dropping her phone because her sister is marrying her ex-fiance in Vegas exactly a year after he left her at the altar. Abby’s cubicle is covered in Nerdy Stuff, from her TARDIS mug to a plush towel with 42 printed on it. She likes Star Wars and Monty Python and Princess Bride, hates working out sometimes, drinks a lot of wine, and loves to cook. Although I love Tom, and trust me when I say that I really love Tom, Abby is the person who puts this book on her back and carries. She is a stark contrast to what you would normally find in romance novels, the helpless and innocent virgin who needs a big alpha male to save her. Abby needs Tom, but isn’t him that can save her from her past and the pain it causes her. She, ultimately, is in charge of her own destiny, and that makes all the difference.
Love Kinection is a lovely little book that doesn’t try to be anything more than what it obviously is. It isn’t high literature, it isn’t trying to send its reader some high handed message from the mouth of God. It’s fun and light-hearted and meant to be gobbled down like a bag of half-price post-Valentine’s chocolates. There’s nerdiness and video games and leftover Chinese and bitchy sisters and more than one awesome sexy scene, and all of the pieces lead to a very satisfying whole. Love Kinection may not be trying to change the world, but it does get across the message its male lead tells Abby: all women deserve to be princesses. Whether your princess model of choice is Leia, Peach, or Zelda, whether you are a damsel in distress or a woman ready to grab a battle axe and save a prince, we deserve to be treated with respect and we deserve to heard and to be in control of our own lives.
That’s a message I can get behind.
Long may we reign.
Jennifer James taps into one of America’s most underutilized romantic resources: nerds. The two main characters, Abby and Tom, are nerds who meet at work, after Abby spends her morning tearing down cardboard cutouts of Cupid and dropping her phone because her sister is marrying her ex-fiance in Vegas exactly a year after he left her at the altar. Abby’s cubicle is covered in Nerdy Stuff, from her TARDIS mug to a plush towel with 42 printed on it. She likes Star Wars and Monty Python and Princess Bride, hates working out sometimes, drinks a lot of wine, and loves to cook. Although I love Tom, and trust me when I say that I really love Tom, Abby is the person who puts this book on her back and carries. She is a stark contrast to what you would normally find in romance novels, the helpless and innocent virgin who needs a big alpha male to save her. Abby needs Tom, but isn’t him that can save her from her past and the pain it causes her. She, ultimately, is in charge of her own destiny, and that makes all the difference.
Love Kinection is a lovely little book that doesn’t try to be anything more than what it obviously is. It isn’t high literature, it isn’t trying to send its reader some high handed message from the mouth of God. It’s fun and light-hearted and meant to be gobbled down like a bag of half-price post-Valentine’s chocolates. There’s nerdiness and video games and leftover Chinese and bitchy sisters and more than one awesome sexy scene, and all of the pieces lead to a very satisfying whole. Love Kinection may not be trying to change the world, but it does get across the message its male lead tells Abby: all women deserve to be princesses. Whether your princess model of choice is Leia, Peach, or Zelda, whether you are a damsel in distress or a woman ready to grab a battle axe and save a prince, we deserve to be treated with respect and we deserve to heard and to be in control of our own lives.
That’s a message I can get behind.
Long may we reign.
A nagy Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
5.0
Out of all the books in the American canon of literature, two are most considered “The Great American Novel.”: Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huck Finn and this slender beast, The Great Gatsby. Now, I haven’t read Huck Finn since eighth grade, but I have to side with those that favor Fitzgerald’s most popular novel, perhaps not for it’s greatness or novel-ness, but because at its heart it is completely and wholly American.
The novel tells the story of a young man from the Midwest named Nick Carraway who comes to Long Island to live in the less fashionable West Egg, across the bay from Tom and Daisy Buchanan and right next door to the titular Jay Gatsby. We’re never told much about Nick except for a smidge of backstory, but the horror of his misadventures at Tom and Daisy’s house is very clear. They’re horrifically boring, dull, and listening to either of them talk is like pulling teeth. But when Nick goes across the bay to Gatsby’s, the world of the American Dream comes alive. The parties are spectacular, the liquor flows free, and, most importantly, Gatsby’s parties have Gatsby.
Gatsby serves as the main character that is what makes this book, as the title suggests, Great. He stares off at the green light at the end of the bay because it symbolizes not only his dream, but the American Dream. We think that if we just push a little hard, go a little longer, that we can reach our own green light, but we never realize that that dream isn’t in front of us. We left it behind in the dust a long time ago and creating a perfect picture of the past does nothing to create the perfect vision Gatsby has for the future. He cannot have Daisy or the life and love that he so longs for, even though he has enough money to buy gold cars and enough whisky to crash them. But he refuses to believe that, and that, ultimately is what makes this novel so wholly American.
It is hard not to walk away from Gatsby without a sense of hopelessness, after having seen a man with, as Carraway says, “such a talent for hope” get cast down, but it is also hard not to hang on to Gatsby’s hope, to believe that we, too, will be allright in the end, and that makes all the difference.
The novel tells the story of a young man from the Midwest named Nick Carraway who comes to Long Island to live in the less fashionable West Egg, across the bay from Tom and Daisy Buchanan and right next door to the titular Jay Gatsby. We’re never told much about Nick except for a smidge of backstory, but the horror of his misadventures at Tom and Daisy’s house is very clear. They’re horrifically boring, dull, and listening to either of them talk is like pulling teeth. But when Nick goes across the bay to Gatsby’s, the world of the American Dream comes alive. The parties are spectacular, the liquor flows free, and, most importantly, Gatsby’s parties have Gatsby.
Gatsby serves as the main character that is what makes this book, as the title suggests, Great. He stares off at the green light at the end of the bay because it symbolizes not only his dream, but the American Dream. We think that if we just push a little hard, go a little longer, that we can reach our own green light, but we never realize that that dream isn’t in front of us. We left it behind in the dust a long time ago and creating a perfect picture of the past does nothing to create the perfect vision Gatsby has for the future. He cannot have Daisy or the life and love that he so longs for, even though he has enough money to buy gold cars and enough whisky to crash them. But he refuses to believe that, and that, ultimately is what makes this novel so wholly American.
It is hard not to walk away from Gatsby without a sense of hopelessness, after having seen a man with, as Carraway says, “such a talent for hope” get cast down, but it is also hard not to hang on to Gatsby’s hope, to believe that we, too, will be allright in the end, and that makes all the difference.