torismazarine's reviews
128 reviews

It Came from the Closet: Queer Reflections on Horror by Joe Vallese

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dark emotional funny informative reflective medium-paced

3.5

Content Warnings

A Spindle Splintered by Alix E. Harrow

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adventurous emotional funny hopeful inspiring reflective fast-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

4.5

I found this book to be an incredible story about female friendship, feminism, and bravery.

Our main character (whom I didn't quite catch her name, but Google tells me is Zinnia) is a young woman, who since childhood has been diagnosed and struggled with an illness caused by an industrial accident. No one that had it has lived past 21; so her best friend, Charm, wants to make her 21st birthday special, sleeping beauty themed.

But when she pricks her finger with a spindle as a joke she finds herself travelling between realities, and ends up not in her own, but rather in another, with a tower and a young woman so beautiful it should be impossible, who tells her she was cursed by an evil fairy to prick her finger with a spindle and fall asleep for a hundred years. Sounds familiar yet?

So we follow them as they try to understand what is happening, how to deal with it, break their respective... curses, and then get back to life as normally as possible. But dear reader, we know it won't be so simple, the fairytale has already been thrown off it's tracks.

For such a short story I was surprised with the amount of world building it managed to fit in without making it confusing (especially since I would consider it, yes, fantasy, but also a bit sci-fi); I thought the main characters were well built, their motivations and growth steady, I did think the secondary characters were a bit stereotypical, but I don't care much because it's a short fairytale retelling. I absolutely loved the relationship within, specially the friendship between Zinnia and Charm, I think it's beautiful.

About the (audiobook) narrator, at the very start (say, the first half chapter), I wasn't convinced and honestly a bit confused, but I think this was entirely my fault, because I was listening to the audiobook while focusing my hands on packing up. But that quickly went away and I really enjoyed the narration as well, so, if you're a bit confused at the start too, just give it one or two chapters.

This is an amazing story, short, and funny, but also a bit dark (as fairytales often are), that serves as good entertainment and also, a remainder that life is short, that it often isn't fair, but there's things worth keep on going for (like this series, I'm really excited to continue it).

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Before We Were Trans: A New History of Gender by Kit Heyam

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emotional informative inspiring medium-paced

4.25

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The Haunting of Velkwood by Gwendolyn Kiste

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dark hopeful mysterious reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.75

Content Warnings

Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men by Caroline Criado Pérez

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challenging funny informative inspiring reflective medium-paced

4.5

Let me just start by saying, I think everyone could benefit from reading this book (I definitely did).

That said, what is it even about? In Invisible Women, Criado Pérez exposes how our modern world was created by, for, and around white middle class men, how this creates a gender data gap, and how it is being perpetuated.

This gender data gap is not only not paying active attention to women, not only thinking of them as the other sex or ‘niche’, but it is actively making daily life more difficult, excluding them by design, and, in many cases, ending their lives.

Good news is, it doesn’t have to be that way, as the author says (specifically about the unpaid work women do, but I think we could apply it to many other issues), ‘[i]t is built into the system we have created - and it could just as easily be built out of it. We just need the will to start collecting the data, and then designing our economy around reality rather than a male-biased confection.’

In short, I think this book is an amazing resource and work of research, it is packed to the brim with data and lots of new information. That definitely makes it a bit of a heavy read, but I didn’t find the language to be overly complicated, nor was there a lot of technical terms (and the ones that couldn’t help but be there, were explained).

Briefly, A Delicious Life by Nell Stevens

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adventurous dark funny hopeful reflective medium-paced