saoreads's reviews
143 reviews

Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones by James Clear

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challenging funny hopeful informative inspiring reflective medium-paced

5.0

The book is extremely beneficial, as well as a means for readers to progress toward a better life. One's habits comprise a significant portion of our lives, and this precisely provided essential topics discussed as well as realistic examples of the application and delving within oneself of our purpose. I'm relieved that I was able to finish this after several months.
I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman

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adventurous challenging dark funny informative reflective sad tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

It was a story filled with questions and the unfamiliarity of someone within what's usually normal to men and women in general. The desolation and deafening silence of living in a world with no one around, and the dying hope that there ever will be? What of the facts and knowledge the heroine had learned yet it was of no use as there was nothing to work for? No one to share that learned knowledge with? It's like screaming at a four-cornered wall, yet an echo never comes back. It is to the point that the things she never had use of, of what made her woman, were the cause of her death, or forced her rather. It leaves an afterthought that her life was eventually justified, but by what means? 
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The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein

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adventurous dark emotional funny hopeful inspiring reflective sad medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

The writing was very casual and goofy-like. It somehow emitted the persona of a dog itself, something easy to process and simply defined. In the proceeding chapters, it was so infuriating and grief-inducing that it wanted you to lash out and scream at the world
how difficult it was for the love of your life to be taken away from him due to death, and in the process, even how close his child was due to custody.
It definitely is a book that taught me plenty. At first, I was unused to it and found it unfamiliar and surely unrelatable due to car and racing terminologies, yet how the narrator wishes to speak to its audience using those as metaphors made it indeed soothing to read and, I ugly cried.
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The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides

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adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

Its gruesome details are described as prosaic and poetic, with the metaphorical lines humming along the monstrosity of taking one's own life. It gave statistical inputs and the relating aspects of typical boys' adolescence, making it literally impossible to forget their first loves. The voyeurism was in one point of view, yet with the other it was the same too, though the latter didn't get to live long. After years and decades of searching for the "why", it somehow led to a point of redundancy, evidence, bias, and notions agreeing with the deed itself. That growing up sucks and daydreaming is better. Life wasn't in their control, so they took matters into their own hands, though it spoke of unrelenting grief hanging to a thread and plenty of factors no one might've noted. The fact that the parent's way of putting up their children suffocated them, or it might have stemmed from a faulty gene (or so they say, and to the extremes of five of them all?), or they took religion in their own different interpretations, there are plenty of what ifs that arise. However, the decision made brought agony and awful influence to their surroundings. It's one to assess yet not to act upon.
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Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein

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adventurous challenging dark emotional funny informative mysterious sad tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

The book title itself was intriguing and how the heroine began the story was full of wit and humor as she takes readers on a journey with her being captured. She makes light of her situation. Maybe she seemed way too calm as a person. The personality was honed to the point where it doesn't scream for something to be feared for and it eases readers even when the situation the character is, in fact, dire. In the second part of the book, another point of view was taken to narrate the recent happenings and not just pure storytelling. It was a heartbreaking story of a precious friendship that occurred during a fictional event in the Second World War. There was overloaded information regarding the life of a spy and working about intel that at the same time didn't make you stop reading but, through its witty way of expressing it, made you love it.
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Orbiting Jupiter by Gary D. Schmidt

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emotional funny inspiring reflective sad medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

It was a wholesome read. I adored the narrator of the story, Jack, so much. His mannerisms, habits, and personality really reflected the concept of being childlike as a twelve-year-old yet honest to the core, which made it agreeable as if the reader was the one taking on the journey, listening to Joseph's life story. It's the type of book that's good for kids but shouldn't be taken literally. It needs to be looked at in an in-depth manner of what the message it wishes to convey is a stroke of responsibility and living beyond the norms, as we cannot control changes that may happen at anytime in our lives.
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The Sailor who Fell from Grace with the Sea by Yukio Mishima

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adventurous funny mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

It's bizarre yet the world building and descriptions used to convey the story are inclined metaphorically to have its realistic aspects, though too much can be a bit distracting and makes readers lose focus even though it's a short novel. The chief seemed like some kind of a cult master, though it was small-scaled in a sense, as the factor was—he was an avid reader, even at the age of thirteen. It was the kind of character honed that could attract and entice people with its persuasiveness or it may have been in career-orientation like a lawyer because you knew too much at some point, you played around with the law, but once again, small-scaled. It was horrifying to read. It took advantage of how adults see children—purely innocent and in this I don't know if it had a bit of that.
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A Gentle Reminder by Bianca Sparacino

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emotional hopeful inspiring lighthearted reflective relaxing medium-paced

4.5

It was a thought catalog book I just had to read. There were plenty of points that struck a cord with me and helped me calm down during stressful moments. It didn't ask you to do anything or teach you how to deal with life; it was freeing to know it just wanted to let you be—to change that angle how you view things in a way that doesn't place you rigidly.
We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson

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dark funny mysterious tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

It was definitely disturbing how the story evolved, yet it has the sense of welcoming from an angle of being shunned and living a different kind of life. It was an isolation that ended up being a comfort. Somehow it flowed into a metaphor of denying reality and conversing about staying in moons to the point of protecting that lifestyle involved death. The two sisters were strange enough, but it has shown the values they uphold towards a life they consider that makes them happy. Though there was this manipulation, as if the younger sister brought out these circumstances to prove to her older sister why their space shouldn't be messed with. It was a fine read, but nevertheless bewildering.
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Ruin and Rising by Leigh Bardugo

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adventurous challenging dark emotional funny reflective sad tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

I have to take note, especially with the beginning and last parts, where an introductory and ending phase speak of a story about a girl and a boy, like "Once upon a time." It was lovely and memorable. I'm quite satisfied throughout the reading progress as the way it emits and affects emotions really makes you stirred up inside. It amassed plenty of plot twists that continually thickened until that kind of hunger was depleted and finally contentment snuck in gradually.
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