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sr_marshrat's reviews
54 reviews
Platypus: The Extraordinary Story of How a Curious Creature Baffled the World by Ann Moyal
informative
lighthearted
slow-paced
2.0
A drier read than I was hoping for. This book is mostly about white men arguing if the platypus lays eggs or lactates. I was hoping for more ecological anecdotes and Aboriginal knowledge.
Bunny by Mona Awad
dark
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
If you read this book literally, it's an acid trip of horrors. Godspeed to you. If you read it as a metaphor... well, hopefully you've sat through a few creative writing workshops. That's my biggest criticism of this book: the intended audience feels very narrow. It's also a bit on the nose, mean spirited, and too long. I still gave it 4 stars, though, because it's such an accurate depiction of being an angsty, teenage writer.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Animal death, Blood, and Toxic friendship
Moderate: Gore, Self harm, and Drug use
Minor: Death of parent
As She Climbed Across the Table by Jonathan Lethem
emotional
mysterious
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
1.0
I almost wonder if my utter outrage reading this book about an insufferable male narrator pining over his girlfriend means I should give it a higher rating. The book absolutely made me feel a certain way. I don't think the author was trying for a commentary on unhealthy relationships and attachments, though, and his portrayal of women in STEM was downright offensive. A male researcher asking the boyfriend of a female colleague to, essentially, babysit her because she's too attached to her work? Absolutely GROSS. Maybe this book just hit too close to home, so I missed some kind of ironic social commentary. Honestly, though, if you've ever run into a glass ceiling in your life, you're more likely to find this book triggering than clever.
Barsk: The Elephants' Graveyard by Lawrence M. Schoen
adventurous
emotional
mysterious
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.0
For a book about anthropomorphic (bipedal, five-fingered) animals, The Elephants' Graveyard takes itself a bit too seriously. There are examples of heart-wrenching sentient-animal books out there, for sure, but Barsk somehow doesn't manage to capture the gravity of its own story. A holier-than-thou, painfully lawful good hero and some hiccups its own lore about how precognition and memory work make this novel perfectly average.
Dazzling by Chịkọdịlị Emelụmadụ
adventurous
challenging
emotional
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? It's complicated
4.0
The Future by Naomi Alderman
adventurous
hopeful
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
2.0
One part convoluted eat-the-rich story, one part naively simplistic utopia story, The Future unites its two halves with a love story and a lot of hand waving about human nature. Oh, and the most retconning I've read in a single book.
Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson
challenging
informative
reflective
slow-paced
3.5
Disclaimer: I am a white woman pursuing an ecology PhD who grew up in a dual income household with computer engineer parents.
Origins is incredibly informative. It exposed me to history I was previously unaware of, and forced me to contemplate my own behavior, both in the past and going forward. For that alone, it's worth reading.
But I don't know that I could hand Origins to a resistant relative to any effect. While certain sections - the pillars of caste, for example - are well organized and supported, others feel stream-of-consciousness and circular. I also felt the use of metaphors distracted from instead of supported the author's points. I almost stopped reading after the wolf pack dynamics chapter. Truly, I'm glad I finished Origins, but our grossly inaccurate understanding wolf pack social structure should be cut from future editions of this book.
Origins is incredibly informative. It exposed me to history I was previously unaware of, and forced me to contemplate my own behavior, both in the past and going forward. For that alone, it's worth reading.
But I don't know that I could hand Origins to a resistant relative to any effect. While certain sections - the pillars of caste, for example - are well organized and supported, others feel stream-of-consciousness and circular. I also felt the use of metaphors distracted from instead of supported the author's points. I almost stopped reading after the wolf pack dynamics chapter. Truly, I'm glad I finished Origins, but our grossly inaccurate understanding wolf pack social structure should be cut from future editions of this book.
Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
adventurous
challenging
dark
mysterious
reflective
tense
fast-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? It's complicated
4.0
It's Mitchell, so, of course Cloud Atlas is beautifully written, each of his six worlds rendered such that they engulf the reader completely. It takes more than beautiful writing, though, to make a story engaging, and not all of Mitchell's six souls had stories that stood well on their own. I found myself racing through those chapters, less interested in the characters and their adventures, focussed instead on searching for the details that wove Mitchell's six, seemingly disparate, stories into one narrative. While some connections are clever, others are... thin. When the connective story elements are tenuous at best, they detract from the themes that would otherwise elegantly unify each chapter of this soul-journey into one novel.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Colonisation, Forced institutionalization, Racial slurs, Racism, Car accident, Slavery, Suicidal thoughts, and Suicide
Moderate: Gun violence, Medical trauma, Rape, Sexual content, Sexual violence, and Violence
Shark Heart: A Love Story by Emily Habeck
emotional
hopeful
reflective
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.0
Shark Heart reads like Habeck wrote a generic, flowery-prose love-and-loss story, but was told it was generic, so added sharks and giant lizards. Didn't add them well, though. Instead of adding curious life history facts, Habeck leans into animal stereotypes. And forgets to italicize Latin species names.
Additionally, the writing is all over the place. A single word, sentence, paragraph alone on a blank page does not profoundness make. Especially if you do it over and over again. That, combined with the hodgepodge of play writing, poetry, lists, and footnotes, makes Shark Heart read like a series of unfinished ideas, all strung together. This -truly, wildly, uniquely fabulous- premise would have been better served if the 350 single paragraph ideas had been pared down to a few dozen fully fleshed out scenes.
Additionally, the writing is all over the place. A single word, sentence, paragraph alone on a blank page does not profoundness make. Especially if you do it over and over again. That, combined with the hodgepodge of play writing, poetry, lists, and footnotes, makes Shark Heart read like a series of unfinished ideas, all strung together. This -truly, wildly, uniquely fabulous- premise would have been better served if the 350 single paragraph ideas had been pared down to a few dozen fully fleshed out scenes.
Flight Behavior by Barbara Kingsolver
challenging
emotional
informative
reflective
slow-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
4.0