Review Shorts: April 2024

Sweeping Beauty: Contemporary Women Poets Do Housework, edited by Pamela Gemin

See it on The StoryGraph here

Status: Completed

I have not read much poetry, and it’s not usually what I gravitate towards. But I was drawn to the topic of this book because I actually appreciate housework. (It’s a great combination of physicality and solitude – nobody’s bothering me while I’m scrubbing splattered spaghetti sauce off the stove.) So I was excited to see both the good (aforementioned physicality and solitude; the pleasure of a well-cared-for home and of having a home at all) and the bad (it never ends; the persistent gender dynamics of who does it) of housework explored in poetry. And like any collection of anything, there were some I liked more than others. “Perhaps the World Ends Here” snagged my brain and pulled me up hard. “A Man in My Bed Like Cracker Crumbs” used housekeeping as a metaphor and I didn’t love it. “Upper Peninsula Landscape with Aunts” didn’t do it for me from a poetry angle, but I found the subject itself engaging and true-to-life. But I did devour this book in a single evening, found a lot to appreciate it, and spent the rest of the night imagining how my own housework experiences (getting meat out to thaw for tomorrow’s dinner, putting away clean dishes, putting away the miscellaneous things that didn’t end up where they belonged throughout the day) could be made into a poem. I even considered writing this review as a poem, but I am not good at poetry and it didn’t work. So I’d say on the whole it’s a solid collection and a good read.

Trigger Warnings: Poetic mentions of: Misogyny, sexism, cancer, terminal illness, medical content, sex, parent death, child death, grief, abusive relationships, miscarriage

---

Childhood’s End by Arthur C. Clarke

See it on The StoryGraph here

Status: Completed

This book definitely had an old-timey feel, what with all the flowery language, characters as drivers of plot as opposed to a person you’re supposed to connect with, and the whole optimism about the future thing. The way everything shook out was extremely unsettling with strong cosmic horror vibes, made all the more horrifying by the fact that pretty much everyone in the book viewed it as an inevitability at worst, and at best the extremely positive ultimate achievement of the human race. It also left me with a nagging feeling that it didn’t quite finish wrapping up. Sure, that’s the end of the story, but I still have many questions. And it also feels like there’s some sort of message or theme or moral or reflection on the nature or purpose of humanity that I haven’t fully grasped but I’m not sure I particularly like. Perhaps the point is to make you think about the ideas rather than provide answers or express opinions about them, and admittedly some of the questions it raises are interesting. Mixed feelings overall towards this weird little book.

Trigger Warnings: Death, animal death, cosmic horror, is mental body horror a thing?, child loss (not death, just taken away in a sense), apocalypse, suicide, alcohol use, drug use (mentions)

Review Shorts: March 2024

Saving Time: Discovering a Life Beyond the Clock by Jenny Odell

See it on The StoryGraph here

Status: Completed

I keep forgetting that Jenny Odell writes works of philosophy, not how-to books – although to be fair, her titles are incredibly misleading on that point. I read and enjoyed her book How to Do Nothing, but was mildly disappointed to find that it wasn’t actually about “how to” anything. I don’t know why I expected anything different from her second book, but I did in fact have the ridiculous expectation that this book might tell me something about discovering a life beyond the clock. Instead, just like with How to Do Nothing, I got only philosophy, in this case philosophy of time. Admittedly, quite a bit of it was interesting. The section discussing how our modern concept of time came to be what it is was quite fascinating. But much of it is about how other cultures conceptualize time differently, how nature’s time scales are different than the ones we humans created during the Industrial Revolution, and mostly about how much climate change is destroying everything. It was something I noticed in How to Do Nothing too, but it’s much stronger here. I hesitate to call it “climate despair,” but Jenny’s writing is clearly and overwhelmingly influenced by fear and grief over the climate crisis. This in itself isn’t necessarily bad. What I struggled with most was actually connecting anything this book said to, well, anything. It could very well be nothing to do with the book and just be about me, but so much of this felt difficult to grasp, and whatever I did grasp felt abstract. There was a lot of information here, but it didn’t feel like a coherent narrative so much as an acquaintance handing me a box full of papers, each one containing a variety of facts and opinions about time. My reaction to that scenario would probably be the same as my reaction to this book: “Great, thanks! But what am I supposed to do with this?” And that’s a question that Saving Time never really answers.

Tags: Biracial/Multiracial Author

Trigger Warnings: Death (mentions), grief (mentions), pandemic (mentions), animal death (mentions), colonization, ableism, racism, classism, panic attack (one mention)

---

Neferura: The Pharaoh’s Daughter by Malayna Evans

See it on The StoryGraph here

Status: DNF at page 86

My first DNF book of 2024, and it has nothing to do with the book’s subject. I’m a huge Ancient Egypt fan and I loved the idea of a story focused on women’s power and featuring the daughter of one of the very few female pharaohs. But it really failed in execution. Malayna has clearly done her research and knows a lot about the history and the time period. But it feels anachronistic in a way that’s really hard to place. I think it has something to do with the characters, who feel like a variety of modern people who just happen to live in a world that looks like Ancient Egypt. Modern values and opinions seem plastered over the trappings of the time period. Though it’s definitely not a YA book, stylistically it seems closer to something written for the younger teens. It also feels unpolished, like either the writer is either fairly young or this is one of their earliest forays into fiction. The characters are unremarkable and don’t seem to have any real goals or desires. Supposedly they have relationships to each other, but there’s never a sense that our titular protagonist actually cares about any of them. I think Neferura’s emotions were the most confusing thing about her, because they never seemed to fit what a normal person would feel. Simple, inane things leave her struggling not to cry from sheer frustration; her mother’s casual cruelty doesn’t seem to even register. I feel like a real pharaoh’s daughter would not make it to adulthood being as naïve and gullible as she is – she’d either get wise or be chewed up by the allegedly-ruthless court. And don’t even get me started on the body-shaming and fat-shaming in this book. The very first line is Neferura getting body-shamed by her mother. In the first twenty-four pages, she is fat-shamed by her mother twice, by her own narration three or four times, and she fat-shames her mother once. It’s excessive and entirely unnecessary to anything in the story. So on the whole, while I think the concept is interesting and I would definitely be open to a book exploring Ancient Egypt with Nefertiti’s daughter, this book does not do that idea justice.

Tags: Protagonist of Color, Nonwestern Setting

Trigger Warnings: Fat-shaming/body shaming (so much), incest (mentions), parent death (mentions), emotional abuse from parent (although not noticed by the protagonist)

---

Sun of Blood and Ruin (Sun of Blood and Ruin #1) by Mariely Lares

See it on The StoryGraph here

Status: DNF on page 31

Second book in a row with a fantastic historical setting but the writing just didn’t do it justice. (I keep wanting to give historical books a chance, but they’re sure not making it easy.) I’m not against a good in media res, but this story throws our protagonist into “hero of the people” scenarios without ever establishing that the people care about her, or even know about her. The writing was simplistic, the characters were bland and felt more like cutouts wafting through an admittedly interesting plot than real people with emotions and desires and flaws. For a supposedly anti-colonialism story, the protagonist has a lot of positive words for her colonial-ruler father and so far nothing but criticism for the Indigenous resistance movement. She seems to be doing Zorro-style, Mesoamerican-superhero kind of things without any real motivation to do so – it’s cool, to be sure, but I never get the sense that she has any reason beyond “plot says so”. And it seems an awful lot of harm to put oneself in the way of without having some very clear reason, either emotional or moral, to go to all the trouble. Which is disappointing because the world is interesting and South/Central America is woefully underutilized as a fantasy setting, especially when history provides so many rich opportunities for mythologies and/or historical events to integrate into the narrative. Unfortunately, it ends up being very much like Neferura – a great idea with mediocre execution.

Tags: Nonwestern Setting, Protagonist of Color, Author of Color, #ownvoices Hispanic/Latino

Trigger Warnings: Colonization, blood, guns, injury, death, execution, parent death (mentions), arranged marriage

Review Shorts: February 2024

Mapping the Interior by Stephen Graham Jones

See it on The StoryGraph here

Status: Completed

Very weird, very short, very disturbing. It had some strong magical realism elements, but since the narrator was the only person to experience anything out of the ordinary, it didn’t feel like magical realism so much as one of those books where you’re not sure if there’s actually something supernatural going on or if it’s all in the protagonist’s head. But the back cover also calls it “deeply rooted in the contemporary Native American experience,” so maybe it’s actually including a particular tribe’s understanding of or mythology around ghosts and I’m just missing the context to understand. This whole novella gives me a feeling that I’m missing something. By itself, it’s a disturbing, incredibly dark horror story that never quite answers the question of whether or not any of this actually happened. But I also get the sense that there’s deeper ideas that I just don’t have the context or the analysis skills to really grasp.

Tags: #ownvoices Native American

Trigger Warnings: Death of parent (major), bullying (major), animal death (graphic), gun violence, ableism, body horror, gore (mild)

How High We Go In the Dark by Sequoia Nagamatsu

See it on The StoryGraph here

Status: Completed

A very strange book. It’s basically a series of short stories combined into one volume, but the characters are all connected in some ways and taken together they tell the story of how life on Earth was decimated by a plague and climate change and what people did afterwards. The final connections and the overarching narrative of the story doesn’t become clear until the last chapter/story, which pulls everything together. It’s also an exercise in memory, because the whole thing fits together like an intricate puzzle and if you aren’t able to remember details you’re going to miss a lot of the connections. It’s an emotionally heavy story of an uncomfortably possible apocalypse and it made me tear up quite a few times, but also didn’t quite have the emotional impact I think it could have had because I was so busy trying to keep track of how all the different stories fit together and place them in the timeline and the overarching narrative. However, I have a notably terrible memory, so that may be less of a problem for other people. It’s unusual and clever, an interesting story told in a unique way, and worth the read if you like apocalypses with a sci-fi edge or if you just want a book unlike anything you’ve read before.

Tags: Recommended by Someone, Japanese Protagonist, Japanese-American Author, #ownvoices Japanese

Trigger Warnings: Death (graphic), child death (graphic), parent death, pandemic (major), terminal illness, suicide

Liftoff: Couch to Barbell by Casey Johnston (Unread Shelf 2024)

See it on The StoryGraph here

Status: Completed

This is a rare book that does exactly what it says on the tin – it will take you from couch (don’t know what you’re doing with weights) to barbell (can lift a barbell, have enough knowledge to do so without hurting yourself). It’s straightforward, no frills and no fancy layouts and not even any pictures (though it does come with a spreadsheet full of video links) and has the general vibe of a self-published book in the most positive way possible – it doesn’t have a publisher insisting on a certain page count or a specific narrative voice, so it skips all that and goes straight to providing practical, useful information. It also spends a lot of time on the stuff you do outside of the gym to support your weightlifting journey – mainly eating and resting. I understand the logic with that, though, because for those of us who are aware of modern exercise culture (read: all of us), the idea of resting, not working out all the time, and eating more to fuel growing muscles are the parts we’re probably going to struggle with more than the actual “go to the gym and lift heavy stuff” part. And as someone with a history of disordered eating, I found the whole idea suspiciously easy. You’re telling me I can lift some weights for around half an hour three times a week, eat half again as much as I have been eating, and still see health and strength (if not necessarily weight or size) results? Sounds fake. But also I’m five weeks into this program as of writing this review and it seems to be working so far. Turns out for me, lifting heavy stuff is infinitely more enjoyable than anything cardio-related. And though I’ve been in recovery from my eating disorder since 2017, doing this program has made it feel possible to be recovered. Take that with a grain of salt because it’s just one person’s perspective, but I’ve found it incredible.

Tags: Unread Shelf 2024

Trigger Warnings: Discussions of weight changes, discussion of calories (in a generally healthy/positive way)

Review Shorts: December 2023

How to Set a Table: Inspiration, Ideas, and Etiquette for Hosting Friends and Family

See it on The StoryGraph here

Status: Completed

This is a thin little book with no credited author and is obviously a gift book more than anything else. But it is full of gorgeous photos of tablescapes. And even though I doubt I will ever be hosting a meal fancy enough to require multiple clearings of the table, I feel slightly more cultured knowing what a charger is and the proper order for wineglasses. (And considering the wide variety of places my work tends to take me, it’s concievable that someday I might attend a dinner where I need to know the right order to use my forks.) There were definitely some good ideas in here – although largely leaning towards the formal and fancy, there’s no reason most of it can’t be toned down to fit a more casual modern lifestyle. Although perhaps adding a little more fanciness and polish to regular meals can be a good thing, too. And there are some interesting ideas about nontraditional meal settings, like how to set the table for a buffet or pack for a picnic. If nothing else, the photos are gorgeous and it inspired me to update my table linens. I’m going to keep it around and go through it again once I have a house and more space to collect linens and nice dishes.

Tags: Unread Shelf 2023

Review Shorts: November 2023

The One Day Box: A Life-Changing Love of Home by Flora Soames

See it on The StoryGraph here

Status: Completed

I had no context for this book going in – I didn’t recognize the author’s name, and the book itself has no dust jacket, where the author information and back cover copy usually reside on a hardcover. The only context I had was some of the pictures I saw flipping through it at the library, which were nice. I am interested in interior design and maximalist style as a way to balance my husband’s collecting tendencies with my desire for a beautiful home. So I checked it out. And I think I would have liked it so much better if I hadn’t actually read it and just looked at the pictures. The pictures were very pretty. But the text just smacked of wealth and upper class Britishness. Flora talks so casually about genuine antiques that probably cost more than I make in a month. Out of all the homes featured in the book, only one of them couldn’t have fit my entire last apartment in the foyer. When I found out Winston Churchill was Flora’s great-grandfather, my only thought was “this explains why this lady seems so out of touch with ordinary people’s reality.” There’s a whole chapter that’s just kinda promoting her own product line. And to top it all off, the book never actually explains what a “one day box” is (unless it just means the collection of pretty wallpaper and fabric Flora used as inspiration for her wallpaper and textile designs?). The photos are very pretty and I won’t deny that she has a good sense of interior design. But I also kinda dislike her as a person.

Trigger Warnings: Partner death, depression

Review Shorts: October 2023

The City Beautiful by Aden Polydoros

See it on The StoryGraph here

Status: Completed

I’m generally not interested in historical fiction or murder mysteries. However, I am interested in Jewish protagonists and characters getting possessed by ghosts, so I decided to give it a shot. And it was good. I read it in a single evening, which is impressive for a 500-page book, but in this case that says more about my mood that day than the book itself. Not that there was anything wrong with it – in fact, there was a lot that was good. The historical Chicago setting felt vivid, the characters were solid, the emotions were done well, the plot was strong, the romance developed well with a lovely touch of angst, and I loved the Jewish community and tradition that infused every page. But the possession element was much smaller than I expected (more a catalyst and driver for the plot than an element that actually does anything) and the primary plot was the murder mystery of tracking down Yakov’s killer. Which, unfortunately, I wasn’t all that into. Again, not a failing of the book, just a personal opinion, but mysteries in general aren’t and have never been my thing. If you enjoy mysteries (and/or historical fiction), you’ll probably like this a lot more than I did. Again, it’s not bad, and there’s a lot about it that’s really good – it just didn’t really appeal to my personal reading tastes.

Tags: It’s Queer!, Jewish Protagonist, Transgender Author

Trigger Warnings: Antisemitism (severe), violence, murder, racial slurs, death, blood, injury, parent death (mentions), drowning, sexual assault (discussion of), pedophilia (discussion of), fire/fire injury (mentions), genocide/pogroms/massacres (mentions), starvation/hunger

Review Shorts: September 2023

Shards of Earth (The Final Architecture #1) by Adrian Tchaikovsky

See it on The StoryGraph here

Status: Completed

I generally prefer fantasy over scifi, especially scifi as hard as Adrian Tchaikovksy tends to write. But I picked this up because I enjoyed his novella Elder Race and was willing to try something else. This is fairly hard scifi, but it had solid and likeable characters, a strong plot that manages to have our protagonists hopping from planet to planet without ever feeling contrived or like a fetch quest, and some absolutely amazing worldbuilding concepts. So many of the ideas were unique and tied into a great story. The amazing worldbuilding manages to make the whole story feel intricate and vivid, even though the plot isn’t particularly complex. Adrian Tchaikovsky is a great writer and I enjoyed the read. I’m on the fence about reading book two – not becuase I think it will be bad or that there isn’t room for a sequel, but becuase sequels are usually not quite as good as book one and while I liked this book, I wouldn’t say I love it or call it a favorite. But again, this book was good, so I’m not ruling it out.

Trigger Warnings: War (severe), violence (severe), death (severe), injury (severe), blood, gore, genocide, body horror, unreality, ableism, racism, slavery, kidnapping, confinement (brief), xenophobia (mentions)

The Last Sun (The Tarot Sequence #1) by K.D. Edwards

See it on The StoryGraph here

Status: DNF on page 47

The ideas behind this book seemed interesting, and there’s a lot going on in this world. But I can’t tell if there was too much going on or it just wasn’t explained well, because I spent most of the time incredibly confused. There’s guns, but there’s also magic. There are humans, but also fey and werewolves (and Atlanteans, who I can’t figure out if they’re human or something different). There is “human society” and a second magical society and I have no idea how the two relate. The houses of Atlantean society are either named after or physical manifestations of the major arcana tarot cards. And Rune, the protagonist, is not exactly a bad character, but he kind of feels like one of those urban fantasy characters who’s trying way too hard to be a badass to actually be a badass. In fact, not of the characters are particularly interesting or emotionally engaging. It’s possible that if I gave it a little longer it might sort itself out, but nothing in the first 47 pages was compelling enough for me to want to. This whole book seems like it’s not quite sure what it really wants to be, and so ends up being a bit confusing and not all that interesting.

Tags: It’s Queer!

Trigger Warnings: Sexual assault (mentions), parent death, guns, violence, death

Thornhedge by T. Kingfisher

See it on The StoryGraph here

Status: Completed

A fascinating, slightly weird, and overall wildly creative retelling of the Sleeping Beauty myth where the princess was put to sleep for a very good reason and the wicked fairy who did it was barely more than a child herself (and arguably not even a fairy). Despite being several hundred years old at the opening of the story, Toadling was a curious mix of child-like and ancient. She may be able to turn into a toad at will, but I found the most fey thing about her was her nebulous place between young and old. She was engaging and I loved her. The story is told in a straightforward, bare-bones fairy tale style. Details are enough to sketch the world and the plot vividly enough to keep me hooked, but there is no flowery language or dwelling on feelings or reflecting on whether the happenings are right or wrong. Things just are what they are. Despite being a dark and somewhat twisted version of the story we know, it never felt excessively dark and retained a magical fairy-tale feel. I’m having a really hard time putting the mood of this story into words, but it’s very good. And if you really want to understand what I’m trying to say, it’s very short – just go read it for yourself.

Trigger Warnings: Kidnapping, death (graphic in cases), child death, blood (mentions), body horror

Review Shorts: August 2023

How to Have Style by Isaac Mizrahi

See it on The StoryGraph here

Status: Completed

Solid in idea and reasonable in execution, but outdated and lacking in generalizability. In this book, the fashion designer author and his team upgrade the looks of several different women, each of which have a unique fashion problem they want solved. I appreciated that there was a plus-size woman invovled in this and that there’s a stated message of body acceptance (although it’s undercut by Isaac’s frequent mentions of how much better these women would look if they lost a few pounds). But most of the advice is specific to the subjects’ situations and concerns and difficult to generalize. And even though several of the subjects are younger, the final looks scream “outfits a middle-aged woman would save on Pinterest in the early-to-mid-2000s” – generic, unexciting, mildly if not unwearably outdated, “nice” without being interesting or memorable. In fact, the only final outfits I actually remember are from the twentysomething who Isaac inexplicably put in what would have been conservative officewear if every shirt wasn’t halfway unbuttoned to expose her bra. (And the one woman in her mid-fifties who he dressed like a cartoon sailor man, red bandana around the neck and all.) Isaac may have “style,” but this book has not convinced me he has taste. The pictures were great and I liked reading about Isaac’s thought process, but if you’re looking for something actually useful or actionable (or even inspirational for a younger person in 2023), it’s not this.

Tags: Jewish author

Trigger Warnings: Fatphobia, discussions of diet and weight loss

The Dire Days of Willowweep Manor by Shaenon K. Garrity and Christopher Baldwin

See it on The StoryGraph here

Status: Completed

This book is quite silly in concept but also very fun. The idea is that Haley, a protagonist obsessed with Gothic romances, ends up in the pocket dimension that protects our universe from a universe of evil – and this pocket dimension is inexplicably Gothic romance-themed. It makes fun of Gothic romance tropes a lot, and though I got the major ideas, I’m not huge into Gothic romances so I’m sure I missed a lot of the less-obvious trope-based jokes. The art was fun (although the extreme lack of detail on the faces compared to everything else felt a bit off to me), and I even laughed out loud a few times. Despite the purported seriousness of the plot (pocket dimension being attacked by an evil force that will consume our universe if it succeeds), none of it feels all that dangerous or impactful. Perhaps it’s because Haley’s obsession with Gothic literature makes this story feel fictional even within itself. Everything feels very fake and relentlessly silly. Not necessarily in a bad way – it was fun and I enjoyed it. But it was really hard to get actually emotionally invested because I just couldn’t manage to forget it’s just a silly little story.

Tags: Protagonist of Color

Trigger Warnings: Animal cruelty, violence, blood, injury, mind control, body horror (mild), bullying (mild)

Review Shorts: July 2023

Silver Under Nightfall by Rin Chupeco

See it on The StoryGraph here

Status: Completed

I’m not really sure why I picked this up, but I’m so glad I did. It’s heavily Castlevania-inspired (obvious even to me, who knows next to nothing about Castlevania). The world-building is a bit confusing in places, but probably less so if you’re familiar with Castlevania, and it’s great all the same. The societies and the country itself and how everything works is a fantastic blend of 1800s Europe, dawn-of-science a la Frankenstein, and a world where vampires are normal. I’m normally not much for romance, but this one is deliciously angsty, slightly forbidden, frequently steamy, and polyamorous. And of course the whole book features Remy, who is so good at what he does and also so broken and full of pain and angst and self-sacrifice. He gets an amazing healing arc and he so much deserves it. He’s achingly relatable and so easy to root for and the angst is on point. I love him and I love the vampire couple and this entire book is fantastic. There’s going to be a sequel, and you’d better believe I’m reading it as soon as possible.

Tags: It’s Queer!, Bi/Pan Protagonist, Polyamory, Nonbinary author, they/them author, Series: Silver Under Nightfall

Trigger Warnings: Parent death, child abuse (in past, moderately described), trauma/trauma reactions, child death, emotional abuse, blood (so much), violence, gore, death, murder, medical content, body horror, sexual content (dubious consent), sexual content (enthusiastic consent), mind control

---

Invisible Kingdom, Vol.3: In Other Worlds by G. Willow Wilson and Christian Ward

See it on The StoryGraph here

Status: Completed

This is the final volume in the series, and it was just too short for everything it was trying to do. What it was trying to do – a burgeoning revolution, a big arc for Vess, a romance between Vess and Grix, a creepy religious order bent on destruction piloting a planet as a weapon – was admittedly really cool. But the whole thing felt rushed and missed a lot of moments that could have been really emotionally impactful because it just didn’t have enough time to do anything. Our protagonists did achieve their ultimate goal, but by sheer luck – they floundered around doing small things, and the main thing was actually accomplished by a secondary character who, up until the climax, had been doing everything he could to stop Grix and company. It was realistic, but it also felt a bit cheap. I really am unsure why I finished this series, as I’ve never been a fan of the art style and the story has just kinda been “meh.” But I finished it, and it was just solidly okay.

See my review of Volume 1 here
See my review of Volume 2 here

Tags: Muslim author, Hijabi author

Trigger Warnings: Injury, confinement (minor), bullying, violence

---

The Ugly History of Beautiful Things: Essays on Desire and Consumption by Katy Kelleher

See it on The StoryGraph here

Status: Completed

For an introduction that had such promise, the actual essays were less fantastic than expected. I was thrilled by an introduction that discussed the tension between desiring beauty and the cruelty and destruction that often goes into producing beautiful things. I copied down several of the quotes to save: “There are no pure things in this world: everything that lives does harm; everything that exists degrades” and “desire and repulsion exist in tandem and … the most poignant beauties are interthreaded with ugliness. There is no life without suffering. There is no way to live without causing harm.” But the essays themselves and the conclusion didn’t quite fulfil the promise. I learned a lot about Katy’s personal thoughts on various beautiful things (porcelain, shells, flowers, diamonds, silk …) and a lot about the history of how those things are created and the suffering, pain, and damage behind them, and the writing was engaging and poetic, despite the combination of the personal and general feeling a bit discordant at times. But the whole book felt like it was missing a final point, just meandering to an end without actually saying anything. I think perhaps I just wanted Katy to explain how I can desire beauty while not supporting the cruelty behind it, or to give me permission to desire beautiful things despite the pain and destruction it takes to produce them. In which case, the “missing point” is not the fault of the book but rather the fault of me expecting more than one slim volume of essays would ever be able to give.

Trigger Warnings: Mental illness, suicidal ideation, panic attacks/anxiety disorders (mentions), animal cruelty, vomit (mentions)

---

Arclight by Marian Churchland and Brandon Graham

See it on The StoryGraph here

Status: Completed

The art in this is GORGEOUS. I love the character design and the world and just the whole style. It’s graceful and beautiful and has a dreamlike quality that I adore, and I appreciated how the sparse dialogue let the visual storytelling shine. However, the story itself ranges from vaguely confusing to utterly incomprehensible. I was never fully sure what was going on at any given point. I have no idea what the purpose of the goose even was. And it felt incomplete, like there was a fifth issue that concluded the series that for some reason wasn’t included in the full collection. I finished it mainly because I wanted to look at the artwork, but I still don’t really know what was going on here.

Tags: It’s Queer!, they/them author

Trigger Warnings: Blood, injury, body horror, animal death

---

Stuff: Compulsive Hoarding and the Meaning of Things by Randy O. Frost and Gail Stekeete

See it on The StoryGraph here

Status: Completed

I picked this up mainly because the second half of the subtitle (“the Meaning of Things” bit) sounded interesting to me. I wasn’t all that interested in hoarding itself. At least I wasn’t before I read this book. Because this was actually fascinating. Hoarding is one of those things that people think is a moral failure of some kind, but this book really highlighted the mental health aspect of it and the different psychological aspects involved (although whether they’re symptoms or causes or both is arguable). What I didn’t expect was some insights into myself. I’m not a hoarder, but I do have a complicated relationship with stuff and the act of owning it. I expected to learn about hoarders. I did not expect lines like “Physical objects provide clear and tangible verification of mastery over the world” and “Violations of ownership lead to extreme feelings of vulnerability” to explain some things about my fraught relationship with stuff. So in addition to being quite interesting, I learned a lot about the psychology of hoarding, and also myself.

Trigger Warnings: Mental illness, sexual assault (discussions)

Review Shorts: June 2023

Invisible Kingdom Vol.2: Edge of Everything by G. Willow Wilson and Christian Ward

See it on The StoryGraph here

Status: Completed

I’m still not loving this art style – the characters are so hyper-stylized that it feels like their features are constantly changing, and sometimes things are deliberately drawn with very little detail, which I just find annoying. The plot is fairly unremarkable, there’s too many characters going on to get too invested in any of them and the character dynamics they’re building are happening to fast for me to get invested, and the cool space nun thing that I was really excited about is basically backstory at this point. But for some reason I want to keep reading. I don’t know what it is about this book – maybe the vivid colors and cool space settings, maybe learning about the weirdness of alien biology, maybe I am somewhat getting invested in whatever’s going on between Grix and Vess. But either way, it was a fast and enjoyable read and I’m definitely going to read the third volume.

See my review of Volume 1 here
See my review of Volume 3 here

Tags: Muslim author, Hijabi author

Trigger Warnings: Violence, body horror, confinement, sexual harassment (minor), injury

Folklorn by Angela Mi Young Hur

See it on The StoryGraph here

Status: Completed

I have been in a reading slump for a while, but this book was so much that I devoured it in two days. I say “so much” because despite it not being unreasonably long, it is unreasonably packed with everything. The narrative slips easily between past and present, real and myth, winding together concrete reality, fantasy, and folklore in a way that somehow makes myths, ghosts, and generational curses feel exactly as real and plausible as the experimental physics the protagonist studies. It’s a narrator going mad and holding conversations with the hallucinations only she can see, and it’s a narrator weaving stories with reality to unravel her family’s past and present. It’s about the immigrant experience – leaving and loss and regretting, starting over, pain and isolation and hopes and dreams and racism and being visibly Other how each individual deals with it. It’s about complicated and painful family dynamics and confronting them as an adult when everyone who formed or was formed by those dynamics has changed or gone. It’s about the power of story and the power of language and what translation does and doesn’t do. It’s about identity and origin and family and past and the threads that can and can’t be cut between our present and our history. This book is so much, it feels expansive and raw and real and amazingly grounded and true, despite all the fantastical elements. It is definitely a unique reading experience but so, so worth it.

Tags: Korean American protagonist, Protagonist of Color, Korean American author, Author of Color, #ownvoices Korean American

Trigger Warnings: Unreality (severe), child abuse, domestic abuse (severe), emotional abuse (severe), racism (severe), racial slurs, child death, parent death (severe), grief, schizophrenia/psychosis, war (mentions), miscarriage/stillbirth (mentions), mental illness

You Are Your Own: A Reckoning with the Religious Trauma of Evangelical Christianity by Jamie Lee Finch

See it on The StoryGraph here

Status: Completed

My fundamental problem with this book is that I completely misunderstood what it was. From the title and the personal bent to the whole idea, I thought it was going to be a memoir, or mostly memoir combined with some self-help-style content. It is neither of those things. The conclusion section refers to it as a “thesis,” and that’s really what it reads like. Even the slightly odd formatting makes more sense in that context. It combines autoethnography (a variety of academic sociological study using the self as subject) with a historical analysis of Evangelical Christianity, trauma and PTSD, the development of Religious Trauma Syndrome as an idea, and pathways to healing. (I’m also slightly uncomfortable with her assertions that healing from religious trauma could heal chronic illness, cancer, infertility, and other physical ailments – I’ve read The Body Keeps the Score and don’t disbelieve in the premise, but it needs some disclaimers that she doesn’t provide.) It is a decent length for a thesis paper but very short for a book, especially a book with such a broad scope. It’s also written like a thesis paper – dense, packed with citations, emphasizing information and facts over storytelling or emotional engagement. It is a good, if academic, overview of the idea of religious trauma and how growing up in Evangelical Christianity can cause it. However, I’m not sure how or why this got published as a general readership book.

Trigger Warnings: Religious bigotry, religious trauma, emotional abuse (mentions), psychological abuse (mentions), anxiety/panic attacks (mentions), eating disorders (mentions), self-harm (mentions), mental illness (mentions), child abuse (mentions)