en-US Sat, 08 Feb 2025 03:56:30 -0800 60 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg 59414094 Grady Hendrix takes on the haunted house in a thrilling new novel that explores the way your past—and your family—can haunt you like nothing else.

When Louise finds out her parents have died, she dreads going home. She doesn’t want to leave her daughter with her ex and fly to Charleston. She doesn’t want to deal with her family home, stuffed to the rafters with the remnants of her father’s academic career and her mother’s lifelong obsession with puppets and dolls. She doesn’t want to learn how to live without the two people who knew and loved her best in the world.

Most of all, she doesn’t want to deal with her brother, Mark, who never left their hometown, gets fired from one job after another, and resents her success. Unfortunately, she’ll need his help to get the house ready for sale because it’ll take more than some new paint on the walls and clearing out a lifetime of memories to get this place on the market.

But some houses don’t want to be sold, and their home has other plans for both of them…]]> 419 Grady Hendrix 0593201264 Claire 5
It’s about how things can twist and fester, and become painful and traumatic if you can’t or won’t face them or let them go. It’s about inter-generational trauma, sibling dynamics and the terror of a house that needs de-cluttering. Removing someone’s lifetime of stuff while so shattered you can hardly breathe.

I’ve written creepy doll stories myself (see ‘After I Found Her�� in This Fresh Hell if interested) but this one goes over the top with lurid detail. Are puppets worse than dolls? I think so. But there are some touching scenes involving them - such as a beautiful use of ‘The Rainbow Connection��. Plenty of scenes are also completely hilarious too. If you can’t laugh while everything hurts, when can you?]]> 3.65 2023
author: Grady Hendrix
name: Claire
average rating: 3.65
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2025/02/08
shelves:
review:
This book is about the violence of grief - it’s a big thing bursting out of the chest, like that one scene in Alien. It’s devastating in its incisive observations sometimes: the heroine, a mother, holds and soothes her child and though she herself is in need of comfort, ‘no one holds mothers.��

It’s about how things can twist and fester, and become painful and traumatic if you can’t or won’t face them or let them go. It’s about inter-generational trauma, sibling dynamics and the terror of a house that needs de-cluttering. Removing someone’s lifetime of stuff while so shattered you can hardly breathe.

I’ve written creepy doll stories myself (see ‘After I Found Her�� in This Fresh Hell if interested) but this one goes over the top with lurid detail. Are puppets worse than dolls? I think so. But there are some touching scenes involving them - such as a beautiful use of ‘The Rainbow Connection��. Plenty of scenes are also completely hilarious too. If you can’t laugh while everything hurts, when can you?
]]> 207611566 There’s power in a book��

They call them wayward girls. Loose girls. Girls who grew up too fast. And they’re sent to the Wellwood Home in St. Augustine, Florida, where unwed mothers are hidden by their families to have their babies in secret, give them up for adoption, and most important of all, to forget any of it ever happened.

Fifteen-year-old Fern arrives at the home in the sweltering summer of 1970, pregnant, terrified and alone. Under the watchful eye of the stern Miss Wellwood, she meets a dozen other girls in the same predicament. There’s Rose, a hippie who insists she’s going to find a way to keep her baby and escape to a commune. And Zinnia, a budding musician who knows she’s going to go home and marry her baby’s father. And Holly, a wisp of a girl, barely fourteen, mute and pregnant by no-one-knows-who.

Everything the girls eat, every moment of their waking day, and everything they’re allowed to talk about is strictly controlled by adults who claim they know what’s best for them. Then Fern meets a librarian who gives her an occult book about witchcraft, and power is in the hands of the girls for the first time in their lives. But power can destroy as easily as it creates, and it’s never given freely. There’s always a price to be paid…and it’s usually paid in blood.

In Witchcraft for Wayward Girls, the author of How to Sell a Haunted House and The Final Girl Support Group delivers another searing, completely original novel and further cements his status as a “horror master�� (NPR).]]> 482 Grady Hendrix 0593548981 Claire 5
This book hurts, it hurts pretty badly in a time where reproductive rights are in peril and all of the scenarios in the book are not consigned to dark history. It’s fresh and prescient, it stings and it cuts. I read it with psychological safety but many can’t. If you have not yet read it, pick it up, read the blurb and think of trigger warnings (sexual abuse in particular but even medical horrors).

One thing about Grady �� he writes about women and girls so well that I sometimes wonder �� how does he know we do that? Or think that? Some male writers portray us or try to embody us in a way that barely disguises their contempt; Grady writes about us truthfully.

Every Chekhov’s gun in this book is fired which is very satisfying.

I found this book light on horror, except body horror and the bone-deep coldness of being handled by an uncaring medical system. That said, there are a few scenes in this book that will stay with me for the rest of my life. ]]> 4.01 2025
author: Grady Hendrix
name: Claire
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2025
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2025/01/22
shelves:
review:
I read a line on Reddit calling Grady Hendrix’s books ‘Goosebumps for grown ups��. Like they’re a bunch of funny japes about people in day-glo clothing, mildly scary the way taco night sauces are mildly spicy. Like they can’t hurt you. But this one can, even though parts of it are funny.

This book hurts, it hurts pretty badly in a time where reproductive rights are in peril and all of the scenarios in the book are not consigned to dark history. It’s fresh and prescient, it stings and it cuts. I read it with psychological safety but many can’t. If you have not yet read it, pick it up, read the blurb and think of trigger warnings (sexual abuse in particular but even medical horrors).

One thing about Grady �� he writes about women and girls so well that I sometimes wonder �� how does he know we do that? Or think that? Some male writers portray us or try to embody us in a way that barely disguises their contempt; Grady writes about us truthfully.

Every Chekhov’s gun in this book is fired which is very satisfying.

I found this book light on horror, except body horror and the bone-deep coldness of being handled by an uncaring medical system. That said, there are a few scenes in this book that will stay with me for the rest of my life.
]]> 190840472 The cult Japanese bestseller about a female gourmet cook and serial killer and the journalist intent on cracking her case, inspired by a true story.

There are two things that I can simply not tolerate: feminists and margarine.

Gourmet cook Manako Kajii sits in Tokyo Detention Centre convicted of the serial murders of lonely businessmen, who she is said to have seduced with her delicious home cooking. The case has captured the nation’s imagination but Kajii refuses to speak with the press, entertaining no visitors. That is, until journalist Rika Machida writes a letter asking for her recipe for beef stew and Kajii can’t resist writing back.

Rika, the only woman in her news office, works late each night, rarely cooking more than ramen. As the visits unfold between her and the steely Kajii, they are closer to a masterclass in food than journalistic research. Rika hopes this gastronomic exchange will help her soften Kajii but it seems that she might be the one changing. With each meal she eats, something is awakening in her body, might she and Kaji have more in common than she once thought?

Inspired by the real case of the convicted con woman and serial killer, "The Konkatsu Killer", Asako Yuzuki’s Butter is a vivid, unsettling exploration of misogyny, obsession, romance and the transgressive pleasures of food in Japan.]]> 448 Asako Yuzuki 0008511691 Claire 5
The killer, Kajii �� the apparent killer, anyway �� lives deliciously. She’s defiantly outside of social norms, she’s proudly living as an id, no superego. She’s all about bodily pleasure and so when our uptight journalist heroine who is all in her head, as someone who is poised to break new ground at work, begins to try on the killer’s life for size, we see something shifting. Will it make Rika the journalist better, or much worse?

Rika begins to undertaking various culinary challenges, set by Kajii, that involve indulgence. Rika is hoping to win her trust and her favour so when the betrayal comes, it is breathtaking.

The story is twisty and in ways that surprised me. Given the focus on the body, eating, serial killers and sex, I assumed at some point cannibalism would enter the picture and it didn’t. Given the portrayal of Rika’s friend Reiko as a flimsy sort of person, in physicality, it was a surprise to show her as an extremely strong, capable housewife and who is unbelievably intrepid. The abrupt switch to her point of view, then back to Rika, with us never going back to Reiko’s POV again, was a bit odd and I would have liked to have seen Melanie the collie in the end.

Butter looks at the ‘right�� ways to be feminine or masculine in one’s milieu, and what happens if you begin to live authentically in defiance of the norms of femininity or masculinity.

There’s a good amount of horror in it. The creeping awfulness of being in an unfamiliar, unsanitary and isolated home. The anguished realities of dairy farming.

It’s also highly sensory. While it connects us with pleasure, it also has plenty of disgust in it. In short, don’t read it and dine at the same time.]]> 3.62 2017
author: Asako Yuzuki
name: Claire
average rating: 3.62
book published: 2017
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2024/09/02
shelves:
review:
Butter feels very of the zeitgeist, being Japanese, about a serial killer and covering parasocial relationships. It’s thick and luscious, a rich text in every sense of the word. I see how its giant yellow physicality works in its favour; this book just wouldn’t do as a light novel.

The killer, Kajii �� the apparent killer, anyway �� lives deliciously. She’s defiantly outside of social norms, she’s proudly living as an id, no superego. She’s all about bodily pleasure and so when our uptight journalist heroine who is all in her head, as someone who is poised to break new ground at work, begins to try on the killer’s life for size, we see something shifting. Will it make Rika the journalist better, or much worse?

Rika begins to undertaking various culinary challenges, set by Kajii, that involve indulgence. Rika is hoping to win her trust and her favour so when the betrayal comes, it is breathtaking.

The story is twisty and in ways that surprised me. Given the focus on the body, eating, serial killers and sex, I assumed at some point cannibalism would enter the picture and it didn’t. Given the portrayal of Rika’s friend Reiko as a flimsy sort of person, in physicality, it was a surprise to show her as an extremely strong, capable housewife and who is unbelievably intrepid. The abrupt switch to her point of view, then back to Rika, with us never going back to Reiko’s POV again, was a bit odd and I would have liked to have seen Melanie the collie in the end.

Butter looks at the ‘right�� ways to be feminine or masculine in one’s milieu, and what happens if you begin to live authentically in defiance of the norms of femininity or masculinity.

There’s a good amount of horror in it. The creeping awfulness of being in an unfamiliar, unsanitary and isolated home. The anguished realities of dairy farming.

It’s also highly sensory. While it connects us with pleasure, it also has plenty of disgust in it. In short, don’t read it and dine at the same time.
]]> 35297272
Sam’s stuck. Literally, figuratively, emotionally, financially. He works at a café and sleeps there too, on a mattress on the floor of an empty storage room upstairs. He knows that this is the god-awful chapter of his life that will serve as inspiration for when he’s a famous movie director but right this second the seventeen bucks in his checking account and his dying laptop are really testing him.

When Sam and Penny cross paths it’s less meet-cute and more a collision of unbearable awkwardness. Still, they swap numbers and stay in touch—via text—and soon become digitally inseparable, sharing their deepest anxieties and secret dreams without the humiliating weirdness of having to see each other.]]> 394 Mary H.K. Choi 1534408967 Claire 4
Emergency Contact felt true in a way that was painful even though some portrayals of characters were overly mannered. The hot girl ex of Sam’s was grating (sorry, but Lorraine is not a hot girl name, in this era.). But Choi’s way of demonstrating the excruciating awkwardness of being a young adult who has to figure out how to relate to people around her was dead on.

A lot of the book is cosy and charming �� we have a handsome baker for a love interest and an impossibly girlish MILF-y mother. Being so cosy, the (spoiler alert, trigger warning) SA depiction was jarring. I had to read it twice to be sure I was reading it correctly. It was shocking, not for its violence (“He didn’t beat me up��) but for how commonplace Choi made it seem. How depressingly often this type of thing happens. The heroine just disconnects her mind from her body in the moment. The perpetrator has so far been a lovable dork, someone with too-small clothes who comes bearing comic books. Penny, our heroine �� up until then �� enjoys his company and wanted to kiss him. And then...

I had to sit with this scene and think about how it accorded with the rest of the book, the way it may go someway to explain the heroine’s revulsion at touch and her lack of trust and difficulties building friendships and relationships (see also: Mary HK Choi’s autism diagnosis and the clarity in her essay around how being neurodivergent has made her feel, at times, marooned on planet Earth, unable to understand the mores and customs of being a person in relation to other people, even her own husband.).

One thing I liked �� that the supporting cast of characters each had a chance to confront Penny to express their dismay at being held at arm’s length and to try to build or repair their bond with her. May the people in our lives who we’ve done this to because of deeply buried hurt give us the same opportunities.
]]> 3.62 2018
author: Mary H.K. Choi
name: Claire
average rating: 3.62
book published: 2018
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2024/07/29
shelves:
review:
I knew I’d enjoy living in the world of Mary HK Choi’s writing as I’d read her recent essay on being an adult with an autism diagnosis. Choi is a competent craftsperson and you can live comfortably in her sentences. Her writing was much funnier than expected.

Emergency Contact felt true in a way that was painful even though some portrayals of characters were overly mannered. The hot girl ex of Sam’s was grating (sorry, but Lorraine is not a hot girl name, in this era.). But Choi’s way of demonstrating the excruciating awkwardness of being a young adult who has to figure out how to relate to people around her was dead on.

A lot of the book is cosy and charming �� we have a handsome baker for a love interest and an impossibly girlish MILF-y mother. Being so cosy, the (spoiler alert, trigger warning) SA depiction was jarring. I had to read it twice to be sure I was reading it correctly. It was shocking, not for its violence (“He didn’t beat me up��) but for how commonplace Choi made it seem. How depressingly often this type of thing happens. The heroine just disconnects her mind from her body in the moment. The perpetrator has so far been a lovable dork, someone with too-small clothes who comes bearing comic books. Penny, our heroine �� up until then �� enjoys his company and wanted to kiss him. And then...

I had to sit with this scene and think about how it accorded with the rest of the book, the way it may go someway to explain the heroine’s revulsion at touch and her lack of trust and difficulties building friendships and relationships (see also: Mary HK Choi’s autism diagnosis and the clarity in her essay around how being neurodivergent has made her feel, at times, marooned on planet Earth, unable to understand the mores and customs of being a person in relation to other people, even her own husband.).

One thing I liked �� that the supporting cast of characters each had a chance to confront Penny to express their dismay at being held at arm’s length and to try to build or repair their bond with her. May the people in our lives who we’ve done this to because of deeply buried hurt give us the same opportunities.

]]> 59364173
Jennette McCurdy was six years old when she had her first acting audition. Her mother’s dream was for her only daughter to become a star, and Jennette would do anything to make her mother happy. So she went along with what Mom called “calorie restriction,�� eating little and weighing herself five times a day. She endured extensive at-home makeovers while Mom chided, “Your eyelashes are invisible, okay? You think Dakota Fanning doesn’t tint hers?�� She was even showered by Mom until age sixteen while sharing her diaries, email, and all her income.

In I’m Glad My Mom Died, Jennette recounts all this in unflinching detail—just as she chronicles what happens when the dream finally comes true. Cast in a new Nickelodeon series called iCarly , she is thrust into fame. Though Mom is ecstatic, emailing fan club moderators and getting on a first-name basis with the paparazzi (“Hi Gale!��), Jennette is riddled with anxiety, shame, and self-loathing, which manifest into eating disorders, addiction, and a series of unhealthy relationships. These issues only get worse when, soon after taking the lead in the iCarly spinoff Sam & Cat alongside Ariana Grande, her mother dies of cancer. Finally, after discovering therapy and quitting acting, Jennette embarks on recovery and decides for the first time in her life what she really wants.

Told with refreshing candor and dark humor, I’m Glad My Mom Died is an inspiring story of resilience, independence, and the joy of shampooing your own hair.]]> 320 Jennette McCurdy Claire 5
Despite McCurdy’s wry humour, it’s clear how much this all hurts �� physically, emotionally. Since the young McCurdy’s ability to cry on cue is apparently impressive enough to make it onto her burgeoning resume, I looked up a scene with her crying. The explanation of how she had to visualise scenarios that brought out grief-wracked sobs made the scene a hard watch; that kid was beside herself.

Scenes of Debra, the mom, mercilessly altering young Jennette’s appearance makes me wonder if Jojo Siwa might have a similar memoir in her, since her own mother bleached Jojo’s hair from age 2. Beauty school dropout Debra trying to essentially clone herself, to treat her daughter as a do-over for her own unfulfilled dreams, is eerie, controlling and incredibly sinister when she showers her daughter and inspects her naked body until her late teens.

I had to laugh how “mom’s little actress�� with her “actress’s peach butt�� and not a “writer’s watermelon butt�� has now sat atop the bestseller lists for 80 weeks. I hope she doesn’t give a fuck these days about the size of her butt, and what fruit it may be comparable to, but worry that she does since her book makes clear that a horribly ingrained habit, taught to her by her mother from the age of 11, sometimes still pops up, like a boogey man in a children’s book. The scratching of her throat as she purges, the physical horrors of being gripped by an eating disorder, are not shied away from. The worst part �� they’re so, so repetitive.

Children’s television has often seemed too loud, too bright, the colours overly vivid, everyone’s porcelain teeth entirely too large, the smiles forced. Now, with Quiet On Set out with its devastating allegations, and McCurdy explaining having rebuffed $300,000 in what she called hush money, it seems awful, horrible that the life she had was not of her own choosing, the tension of it, the bigness of what was demanded of her and how small she felt she had to become. ]]> 4.45 2022
author: Jennette McCurdy
name: Claire
average rating: 4.45
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2024/07/07
shelves:
review:
This book is a magic trick �� it feels like it might be frothy and gossipy but it’s pitch black. It manages to be genuinely funny, as well as devastating. The pressure, the tight, stressful core that runs through Jennette’s childhood through to adulthood, it twists like a rubber band around a finger, tighter, ever tighter. The same girl who is unable to advocate for a preference as simple as purple over pink �� for this would mean defying a cut and dried image her mother has picked out for her �� is, quite reasonably, unable to resist being forced into a career as a child actor that can only be described as a hostage situation, an act of emotional terrorism. I once dreamed of being in television commercials. But if you don’t want to perform, if you find it embarrassing, if you’re acting out someone else’s dream - the same person who has tethered yourself to your side and is eating the same child-sized ice cream cone, as in, she’s eating it with you, she does not have her own cone - it would be excruciating. The titular Mom is volatile, so violent and fickle that Jennette’s fawn response �� the newly understood ‘f�� to take its place among fight, flight and freeze �� means she must please this Mom, she must perform, she has to succeed.

Despite McCurdy’s wry humour, it’s clear how much this all hurts �� physically, emotionally. Since the young McCurdy’s ability to cry on cue is apparently impressive enough to make it onto her burgeoning resume, I looked up a scene with her crying. The explanation of how she had to visualise scenarios that brought out grief-wracked sobs made the scene a hard watch; that kid was beside herself.

Scenes of Debra, the mom, mercilessly altering young Jennette’s appearance makes me wonder if Jojo Siwa might have a similar memoir in her, since her own mother bleached Jojo’s hair from age 2. Beauty school dropout Debra trying to essentially clone herself, to treat her daughter as a do-over for her own unfulfilled dreams, is eerie, controlling and incredibly sinister when she showers her daughter and inspects her naked body until her late teens.

I had to laugh how “mom’s little actress�� with her “actress’s peach butt�� and not a “writer’s watermelon butt�� has now sat atop the bestseller lists for 80 weeks. I hope she doesn’t give a fuck these days about the size of her butt, and what fruit it may be comparable to, but worry that she does since her book makes clear that a horribly ingrained habit, taught to her by her mother from the age of 11, sometimes still pops up, like a boogey man in a children’s book. The scratching of her throat as she purges, the physical horrors of being gripped by an eating disorder, are not shied away from. The worst part �� they’re so, so repetitive.

Children’s television has often seemed too loud, too bright, the colours overly vivid, everyone’s porcelain teeth entirely too large, the smiles forced. Now, with Quiet On Set out with its devastating allegations, and McCurdy explaining having rebuffed $300,000 in what she called hush money, it seems awful, horrible that the life she had was not of her own choosing, the tension of it, the bigness of what was demanded of her and how small she felt she had to become.
]]> 183469959 A delicious mix of daily life, science, philosophy, pop culture, daydreams and irreverent humour, Eventually Everything Connects is a work of graphic non-fiction that is comforting, confronting and mind-expanding in equal measure.

WTF is going on? How can I find joy in these precarious times? Is my smartphone hijacking me? Why am I so horny? What do I do with this grief? What's it like being the slug that lives in my bathroom sink?

Eventually Everything Connects is Sarah Firth's debut graphic novel, a collection of interconnected visual essays created over eight years. Sarah invites you into her wild mind as she explores ways to see with fresh eyes, to face the inevitability of change, and to find freedom in sensuality.

With raw honesty and vulnerability, Firth reminds us that the profane and the sacred, the tender and the cruel, the rigorous and the silly, all coexist in dynamic tension. This book is a delicious mix of daily life, science, philosophy and irreverent humour that is comforting, confronting and mind-expanding in equal measure.]]> 288 Sarah Firth 1761187694 Claire 5 4.39 2023
author: Sarah Firth
name: Claire
average rating: 4.39
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2024/06/30
shelves:
review:
This book comforts with its bigness and its smallness. There’s excellent science communication about microscopic things, there’s illustrated scenes to provoke wonder and awe and there’s plenty of just a regular tabby shitting in a litter box. Sarah Firth is startlingly candid in her storytelling - we see glimpses of addiction, a complicated upbringing and being slut shamed in high school. But despite often portraying herself naked, she never seems vulnerable. Instead, she’s highly attuned to life, the universe and everything. What an extraordinary book from a highly unusual brain. I am sure I’ll consult it from time to time, like an atlas. It’s hard to explain precisely what this book even is. But I’m glad I finally have a copy just as I’m glad I went to college with Sarah many years ago.
]]> 35961720
Curtis Sittenfeld has established a reputation as a sharp chronicler of the modern age who humanizes her subjects even as she skewers them. Now, with this first collection of short fiction, her “astonishing gift for creating characters that take up residence in readers�� heads�� (The Washington Post) is showcased like never before. Throughout the ten stories in You Think It, I’ll Say It, Sittenfeld upends assumptions about class, relationships, and gender roles in a nation that feels both adrift and viscerally divided.

With moving insight and uncanny precision, Curtis Sittenfeld pinpoints the questionable decisions, missed connections, and sometimes extraordinary coincidences that make up a life. Indeed, she writes what we’re all thinking—if only we could express it with the wit of a master satirist, the storytelling gifts of an old-fashioned raconteur, and the vision of an American original.]]> 256 Curtis Sittenfeld 1473552621 Claire 4 3.63 2017
author: Curtis Sittenfeld
name: Claire
average rating: 3.63
book published: 2017
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2024/04/23
shelves:
review:
Sittenfeld really has a gift for capturing mortification. For capturing foibles in general. Many of the stories feel startlingly intimate, like suddenly becoming a voyeur. Being so competent in her craftsmanship, this is an easy read. You’ll get through it like a can of Pringles and then a few of the images in the stories will haunt you. I read the first story that features a Hillary Clintonesque character right after seeing the actual Clinton present at a summit I attended. Sittenfeld’s Clinton was uncannily real.
]]> 61085005 Haunting of Hill House meets found-footage horror in this edge-of-your-seat thriller that explores the power of family ties and the trauma that lurks there.

When Sophia Galich was twelve, she starred in her older sister Layla's amateur horror movie Vermillion, which recorded raw footage of her very real reactions to scenes her sister concocted in their old Californian house on the coast--Cashore House.

In the years after the film's release, Sophia's relationship with her sister became more strained, while her memories of the now-infamous house fueled her nightmares. Vermillion amassed an army of fanatical fans who speculated about the film's hidden messages, and it was rumored that Layla made a pact with the devil--her soul in exchange for fame and arcane knowledge. Sophia dismissed this as gossip...until Layla disappeared.

Now, Sophia must study the trail of clues Layla has left behind, returning to the very place where it all began. As she gets closer and closer to Cashore House's haunted heart, she must once again confront the ghosts of her childhood. But the house won't reveal its secrets without a fight.]]> Katya de Becerra Claire 5
It’s sometimes quite intense, but, as a dedicated horror fan, it didn’t frighten me that much. I will admit that one evening when I was reading it, an object fell of my shelf for no apparent reason, spookily enough for me to close the book for the night.

It’s very pretty writing with lots of delicious details that are satisfying and fleshed out. I thought the use of ballet as a source of body horror and eeriness was clever.

The deeper themes about sibling relationships, trust and exploitation make this well worth a read. ]]> 4.24 2023
author: Katya de Becerra
name: Claire
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2024/01/18
shelves:
review:
Full disclosure: Katya is one of my editors and she gifted me a copy of this book.

It’s sometimes quite intense, but, as a dedicated horror fan, it didn’t frighten me that much. I will admit that one evening when I was reading it, an object fell of my shelf for no apparent reason, spookily enough for me to close the book for the night.

It’s very pretty writing with lots of delicious details that are satisfying and fleshed out. I thought the use of ballet as a source of body horror and eeriness was clever.

The deeper themes about sibling relationships, trust and exploitation make this well worth a read.
]]> 202896356
Temperance doesn’t know why her village has suddenly turned against her, only that it has something to do with the malevolent new pastor. Though they have nothing in common, these two must band together on a magical quest to defeat the evil that threatens Jenny’s lake and Temperance’s family �� as well as the very soul of Britain.]]> 336 Molly O'Neill 0356522628 Claire 0 to-read 4.10 2025
author: Molly O'Neill
name: Claire
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/01/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 128183600 Need a rental person who does nothing?

Shoji Morimoto provides a fascinating service to the lonely and socially anxious. After an old boss told him that he contributed nothing and that it made no difference whether he showed up to work or not, he wondered if a person who ‘does nothing�� could still have a place in the world. With a tweet, his Rental Person service was born.
- Have a deep secret you desperately need to reveal, so deep that you can’t tell a friend or family member?
- Have you spent a long time home alone, and want to know what it’s like to have somebody with you at your apartment?
- Or for someone to simply think of you on a stressful day? Or wave to you as you leave the train station on a long journey?

Morimoto is dependable, non-judgmental and committed to remaining a stranger throughout each request, and his encounters are revelatory about both Japanese society and human psychology.

In Rental Person Who Does Nothing, Morimoto chronicles his extraordinary experiences in his unique line of work and reflects on how we consider relationships, jobs, and family in our search for meaningful connection and purpose in life.]]> 160 Shoji Morimoto 1035012839 Claire 5
I bought this book for a high price at an art gallery store. Now that I think of it, I absolutely curate my actions depending on whether I’m alone or not. On this day, I was by myself. So I felt free to dip in and out of the gallery store, pondering its merchandise, while this luridly coloured book slowly gripped onto me. I could tell it would be a delicious read, that it would be all fun, no work. If I had been in the company of another person at the gallery, I wouldn’t have spent so much time at the store. Wouldn’t have wanted to seem like a frivolous person who loves products so much. Unless, perhaps, if I were accompanied by Rental Person. Then maybe I’d feel free to do whatever, because he would do nothing. What a wonderful thing: to do nothing.

]]> 3.32 2023
author: Shoji Morimoto
name: Claire
average rating: 3.32
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2023/12/26
shelves:
review:
This book is brief and naturally comedic but while it seems to be doing very little, perhaps even nothing, it does in fact do quite a lot. It’s philosophical at its heart. What does it mean to be a person? How do actions - and inactions - define us? How and why do we act differently in the company of another human, if there is a relationship there and if there isn’t?

I bought this book for a high price at an art gallery store. Now that I think of it, I absolutely curate my actions depending on whether I’m alone or not. On this day, I was by myself. So I felt free to dip in and out of the gallery store, pondering its merchandise, while this luridly coloured book slowly gripped onto me. I could tell it would be a delicious read, that it would be all fun, no work. If I had been in the company of another person at the gallery, I wouldn’t have spent so much time at the store. Wouldn’t have wanted to seem like a frivolous person who loves products so much. Unless, perhaps, if I were accompanied by Rental Person. Then maybe I’d feel free to do whatever, because he would do nothing. What a wonderful thing: to do nothing.


]]> 183430233
We all know how these stories end - or do we?

In This Fresh Hell, every story begins with a well-known horror trope but ends with a twist, bringing new life and unexpected resolutions to old ideas. Fears are interrogated, ghosts re-examined, and monsters reconfigured.

From chilling to quirky, these stories will appeal to dedicated horror fans and those dipping into the genre for the first time.

A Slender Man offers help to a boy in trouble; a haunted house is reluctant to terrify its new residents; a heartbroken influencer is challenged on a luxury cruise from hell.

Curated by Katya de Becerra and Narrelle M. Harris, This Fresh Hell reignites and subverts horror tropes in stories by A.J. Vrana, Annie McCann, C. Vonzale Lewis, Candace Robinson, Chuck McKenzie, Claire L. Smith, Claire Low, Clare E. Rhoden, Elle Beaumont, Eugen Bacon, Gillian Polack, Greg Herren, Jason Franks, Katya de Becerra, L.J.M. Owen, Narrelle M. Harris, Raymond Gates, Sarah Glenn Marsh, Sarah Robinson-Hatch, Tansy Rayner Roberts.]]> 362 Katya de Becerra 1922904333 Claire 5 4.42
author: Katya de Becerra
name: Claire
average rating: 4.42
book published:
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2023/10/24
shelves:
review:
Full disclosure: I’m one of the writers. Highly recommend this to any horror fan. It’s like a big delicious spooky buffet that will surprise, delight - and creep you out. A buffet in the underworld, perhaps. Special mention to Chuck McKenzie's The Dark Man, By Referral which has strong Stephen King energy. Also Claire L Smith's The Last Runt which is cinematic and took a piece out of me. Tansy Rayner Roberts' The Haunting of Lift Three is hilarious - why would anyone keep entering an extremely haunted lift?! Put up an ‘out of order�� sign! It’s such a fun collection. Publishing debutante Annie McCann is one to watch, expect big things from her!
]]> 198251130
These and other conundrums are addressed in this collection of discussions between one man and his cat, wherein are tackled many of the greatest issues of our politics, human rights, religion, culture, history, and poop. You'll laugh, you'll cry, it'll change your life. Or not. Frankly, we'll say anything to get you to buy this book, which is - fair warning - NOT FOR KIDS, as the cat featured herein is a real pottymouth.]]> 150 Chuck McKenzie 0645894508 Claire 5
* Seriously I once wrote a page of funny content or so I thought. I got to watch through glass as my editors had a hushed closed-door meeting and emerged to gravely inform me that my piece wasn’t funny. ]]> 4.41 2023
author: Chuck McKenzie
name: Claire
average rating: 4.41
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2023/10/17
shelves:
review:
Am I a little biased because Chuck and I were on the same panel at the launch of an anthology we both worked on? Maybe. But I know for a fact* that humour is hard to write and Conversations With My Cat had me grinning from the acknowledgments page onwards. If you are a cat person, this will prove everything you ever imagined about cats. If you are a dog person, it will prove everything you ever imagined about cats.

* Seriously I once wrote a page of funny content or so I thought. I got to watch through glass as my editors had a hushed closed-door meeting and emerged to gravely inform me that my piece wasn’t funny.
]]> 123360887
But when she accidentally kills and eats a man in front of the most popular girl in school, she discovers she might not be the scariest thing in the shadows.

sydney khoo is a recipient of Penguin Random House Australia’s Write It fellowship program, which aspires to find, nurture and develop unpublished writers across all genres, with a focus on underrepresented sections of our community.]]> 364 sydney khoo 1760148725 Claire 4
Points in its favour: it’s bizarre and immersive in a way that helped me pass the time in hospital. It’s diverse in a natural way - it’s just populated with diverse characters, much like the city of Sydney which is its setting. I loved the sly winks to Spider-Man (there’s an Aunt Mei). Also, the horror can be quite visceral. khoo doesn’t shy away from the bodily reality of being spider-like: that petite teen Zhi has a throat that stretches when she swallows her prey was really quite something to read and think about.

Four stars because I got a little confused in the end. Also, to me, Dior is so strongly associated with a brand that I had trouble thinking of Dior as a character’s name.

Thank you to Cabramatta Community for the free copy of the book.]]> 4.24 2023
author: sydney khoo
name: Claire
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2023/09/29
shelves:
review:
I was excited to read this book - how many Malaysian-Australian YA paranormal novels are there, really?

Points in its favour: it’s bizarre and immersive in a way that helped me pass the time in hospital. It’s diverse in a natural way - it’s just populated with diverse characters, much like the city of Sydney which is its setting. I loved the sly winks to Spider-Man (there’s an Aunt Mei). Also, the horror can be quite visceral. khoo doesn’t shy away from the bodily reality of being spider-like: that petite teen Zhi has a throat that stretches when she swallows her prey was really quite something to read and think about.

Four stars because I got a little confused in the end. Also, to me, Dior is so strongly associated with a brand that I had trouble thinking of Dior as a character’s name.

Thank you to Cabramatta Community for the free copy of the book.
]]> 58885776 Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780593336489.

Florence Day is the ghostwriter for one of the most prolific romance authors in the industry, and she has a problem—after a terrible breakup, she no longer believes in love. It’s as good as dead.

When her new editor, a too-handsome mountain of a man, won’t give her an extension on her book deadline, Florence prepares to kiss her career goodbye. But then she gets a phone call she never wanted to receive, and she must return home for the first time in a decade to help her family bury her beloved father.

For ten years, she’s run from the town that never understood her, and even though she misses the sound of a warm Southern night and her eccentric, loving family and their funeral parlor, she can’t bring herself to stay. Even with her father gone, it feels like nothing in this town has changed. And she hates it.

Until she finds a ghost standing at the funeral parlor’s front door, just as broad and infuriatingly handsome as ever, and he’s just as confused about why he’s there as she is.

Romance is most certainly dead... but so is her new editor, and his unfinished business will have her second-guessing everything she’s ever known about love stories.

A disillusioned millennial ghostwriter who, quite literally, has some ghosts of her own, has to find her way back home in this sparkling adult debut from national bestselling author Ashley Poston.]]> 368 Ashley Poston Claire 5 The romance was very signposted but in an enjoyable way - there are several sly winks to the tropes of the genre. Great fun and likely to be reread a few times. ]]> 3.90 2022
author: Ashley Poston
name: Claire
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2023/09/01
shelves:
review:
This book was gifted to me by a friend who packaged it up as a ‘blind date��. I must say, her taste is exquisite. It fit me perfectly with its fun southern gothic charm and eccentric sensibilities. It also has deeply emotional parts that will speak to anyone who has grieved or grieves still. There’s a couple of parts that made me teary. Someone my age probably shouldn’t have encountered as much death as I have. The book’s treatment of death is a warm embrace.
The romance was very signposted but in an enjoyable way - there are several sly winks to the tropes of the genre. Great fun and likely to be reread a few times.
]]> 62230164
So when Jing overhears the courtiers plotting to steal a priceless dragon pearl from the King, she seizes her chance to expose them, once and for all.

With the help of a gentle mortal tasked with setting up the Central Bank of Hell, Jing embarks on a wild chase for intel, first through Hell and then mortal Shanghai. But when her hijinks put the mortal in danger, she must decide which is more important: avenging her loss of face, or letting go of her half-empty approach to life for a chance to experience tenderness �� and maybe even love.

This richly told adult fantasy debut teems with Chinese deities and demons cavorting in jazz age Shanghai.]]> 352 A.Y. Chao 1399717413 Claire 5 the world. But it’s equally a romp and a love story and full of glittering jewels.]]> 3.38 2023
author: A.Y. Chao
name: Claire
average rating: 3.38
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2023/08/11
shelves:
review:
Five stars easily. I was thoroughly entertained and had a wonderful time in the world of this book. It’s a sensory experience and lavish in its prose. If you understand Chinese culture - eg haw candies and Pixiu mythical beasts - it adds something to the text. I have a feeling the heroine, who has strong ‘not like other girls�� energy may grate on some readers. She uses specific slang and insults that are quite repetitive. Nonetheless it was fun and rewarding to read. I have a feeling it includes deeper themes about, for example, being mixed race, being adopted, growing up and finding one’s place in
the world. But it’s equally a romp and a love story and full of glittering jewels.
]]> 33844793 The first collection of short fiction from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jeffrey Eugenides

Jeffrey Eugenides’s bestselling novels have shown him to be an astute observer of the crises of adolescence, self-discovery, family love, and what it means to be American in our times. The stories in Fresh Complaint explore equally rich­­—and intriguing—territory. Ranging from the bitingly reproductive antics of “Baster�� to the dreamy, moving account of a young traveler’s search for enlightenment in “Air Mail�� (selected by Annie Proulx for Best American Short Stories), this collection presents characters in the midst of personal and national emergencies. We meet a failed poet who, envious of other people’s wealth during the real-estate bubble, becomes an embezzler; a clavichordist whose dreams of art founder under the obligations of marriage and fatherhood; and, in “Fresh Complaint,�� a high school student whose wish to escape the strictures of her immigrant family lead her to a drastic decision that upends the life of a middle-aged British physicist.

Narratively compelling, beautifully written, and packed with a density of ideas despite their fluid grace, these stories chart the development and maturation of a major American writer.

Complainers --
Air mail --
Baster --
Early music --
Timeshare --
Find the bad guy --
The oracular vulva --
Capricious gardens --
Great experiment --
Fresh complaint]]> 285 Jeffrey Eugenides 0374203067 Claire 3
Despite loving Middlesex, the short story with the Peter Luce character (The Oracular Vulva) was distasteful.

I got along much better with Capricious Gardens which was prettily written as well as hilarious, a kind of Frasier-style scenario.

The white collar crime-related story was dry. It’s overall an uneven collection but enough in it is well worth your time. ]]> 3.59 2017
author: Jeffrey Eugenides
name: Claire
average rating: 3.59
book published: 2017
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2023/07/18
shelves:
review:
I liked how many of the characters - probably most - weren’t likable. Why be likable when one can be funny, flawed, weird, grasping, desperate? Some of the character flaws are rather extreme, though - one plainly beats his puppy.

Despite loving Middlesex, the short story with the Peter Luce character (The Oracular Vulva) was distasteful.

I got along much better with Capricious Gardens which was prettily written as well as hilarious, a kind of Frasier-style scenario.

The white collar crime-related story was dry. It’s overall an uneven collection but enough in it is well worth your time.
]]> 17156140
Don Tillman, professor of genetics, has never been on a second date. He is a man who can count all his friends on the fingers of one hand, whose lifelong difficulty with social rituals has convinced him that he is simply not wired for romance. So when an acquaintance informs him that he would make a “wonderful�� husband, his first reaction is shock. Yet he must concede to the statistical probability that there is someone for everyone, and he embarks upon The Wife Project. In the orderly, evidence-based manner with which he approaches all things, Don sets out to find the perfect partner. She will be punctual and logical—most definitely not a barmaid, a smoker, a drinker, or a late-arriver.

Yet Rosie Jarman is all these things. She is also beguiling, fiery, intelligent—and on a quest of her own. She is looking for her biological father, a search that a certain DNA expert might be able to help her with. Don's Wife Project takes a back burner to the Father Project and an unlikely relationship blooms, forcing the scientifically minded geneticist to confront the spontaneous whirlwind that is Rosie—and the realization that love is not always what looks good on paper.

The Rosie Project is a moving and hilarious novel for anyone who has ever tenaciously gone after life or love in the face of overwhelming challenges.]]> 329 Graeme Simsion 1922079774 Claire 5 Is this book considered a romance? I’m not sure. It was recommended to me by a stranger at the book sale and I’m recommending it to you now. ]]> 4.00 2013
author: Graeme Simsion
name: Claire
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2013
rating: 5
read at: 2023/05/28
date added: 2023/05/29
shelves:
review:
This was so fun and charming. It was such a pleasure to read, so naturally and genuinely funny, that I finished it in a day. The distinctive voice of Don reminds me of the speaking and thinking style of people I have known and loved. In fact, I’ve been Don at times: excruciatingly pedantic and literal, disliking hugs and clinging to routine. I’d like to think I’m more like Rosie, but no, I’m Don.
Is this book considered a romance? I’m not sure. It was recommended to me by a stranger at the book sale and I’m recommending it to you now.
]]> 62919399 A collection of nineteen dark, wildly imaginative short stories from the author of the award-winning TikTok sensation Tender Is the Flesh.

From celebrated author Agustina Bazterrica, this collection of nineteen brutal, darkly funny short stories takes into our deepest fears and through our most disturbing fantasies. Through stories about violence, alienation, and dystopia, Bazterrica’s vision of the human experience emerges in complex, unexpected ways—often unsettling, sometimes thrilling, and always profound. In “Roberto,�� a girl claims to have a rabbit between her legs. A woman’s neighbor jumps to his death in “A Light, Swift, and Monstrous Sound,�� and in “Candy Pink,�� a woman fails to contend with a difficult breakup in five easy steps.

Written in Bazterrica’s signature clever, vivid style, these stories question love, friendship, family relationships, and unspeakable desires.]]> 154 Agustina Bazterrica 1668012669 Claire 0 to-read 3.11 2020
author: Agustina Bazterrica
name: Claire
average rating: 3.11
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/04/30
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 9844 Prep, is an insightful, achingly funny coming-of-age story as well as a brilliant dissection of class, race, and gender in a hothouse of adolescent angst and ambition.

Lee Fiora is an intelligent, observant fourteen-year-old when her father drops her off in front of her dorm at the prestigious Ault School in Massachusetts. She leaves her animated, affectionate family in South Bend, Indiana, at least in part because of the boarding school’s glossy brochure, in which boys in sweaters chat in front of old brick buildings, girls in kilts hold lacrosse sticks on pristinely mown athletic fields, and everyone sings hymns in chapel.

As Lee soon learns, Ault is a cloistered world of jaded, attractive teenagers who spend summers on Nantucket and speak in their own clever shorthand. Both intimidated and fascinated by her classmates, Lee becomes a shrewd observer of–and, ultimately, a participant in–their rituals and mores. As a scholarship student, she constantly feels like an outsider and is both drawn to and repelled by other loners. By the time she’s a senior, Lee has created a hard-won place for herself at Ault. But when her behavior takes a self-destructive and highly public turn, her carefully crafted identity within the community is shattered.

Ultimately, Lee’s experiences–complicated relationships with teachers; intense friendships with other girls; an all-consuming preoccupation with a classmate who is less than a boyfriend and more than a crush; conflicts with her parents, from whom Lee feels increasingly distant, coalesce into a singular portrait of the painful and thrilling adolescence universal to us all.


From the Hardcover edition.]]> 420 Curtis Sittenfeld 081297235X Claire 3 3.44 2005
author: Curtis Sittenfeld
name: Claire
average rating: 3.44
book published: 2005
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2023/04/22
shelves:
review:
I re-read this recently because I got to ask two questions of Curtis Sittenfeld on BBC World Book Club and didn’t want to embarrass myself. My own copy is out there somewhere - I lent it to a former colleague, someone and she didn’t give it back. So I paged through a library copy. Parts of it felt so familiar it was like accessing my own memories. Parts of it didn’t resonate at all. Parts of it have this deep secondhand cringe attached to them. It’s intentional of course, but the cringe is so deep it makes you want to tear off your own skin. Some of it felt good to read, some of it bothered me, like a splinter. Sittenfeld, in answering my question, did say she might have approached some of the racial issues in the book differently if she were writing today. Overall, this book is worth your time if you love deep introspection and incredible amounts of teenage awkwardness.
]]> 58248430
Laila and her husband arrive for a week's holiday in Greece in desperate need of a reset.

As Laila sits by the pool she finds herself inexplicably drawn to the other family staying in their resort.

Em has no idea who Laila is, or that she has been watching her and her teenage sons and husband so intently.

Five days later their worlds will be blown apart by a horrifying event.

Laila thinks she knows the truth of what happened. But in telling Em what she's seen, she stands to lose everything she holds dear.

And what if she's got it wrong?]]> 416 Heidi Perks 1529135605 Claire 2
I thought a plush resort might be a fun setting but characters really do almost nothing as they are on holiday. I suppose it might suddenly spring to life and become the fascinating thriller it’s described as but life’s too short to put myself through this.]]> 3.35 2023
author: Heidi Perks
name: Claire
average rating: 3.35
book published: 2023
rating: 2
read at:
date added: 2023/03/18
shelves:
review:
This is a DNF. I found it too dull and repetitive to complete. About 100 pages in and extremely little has happened other than the central mystery. There’s no sense of building tension. I’m sure the heroine’s people-watching is meant to be intriguing but I can’t bring myself to care about her observations, which are so unvarying: that a family of four’s matriarch dotes on one son, leaving the other son starving for attention. That a newlywed couple seem to dislike each other. That her husband seems increasingly unlike the man she married. And repeat.

I thought a plush resort might be a fun setting but characters really do almost nothing as they are on holiday. I suppose it might suddenly spring to life and become the fascinating thriller it’s described as but life’s too short to put myself through this.
]]> 53472817 351 T. Kingfisher 1789093309 Claire 3 3.79 2020
author: T. Kingfisher
name: Claire
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2020
rating: 3
read at: 2023/03/11
date added: 2023/03/11
shelves:
review:
I really wanted to like it. It was charming and fun in the bookstore where it stood out to me in the horror section. But I found it quite clunky - sort of young, like a debut novel. It was made up of vibes mostly. Very little happened for quite some time. And even when the beast is awakened and is on a rampage, I wasn’t scared, and I scare easily. I had to stop reading Rosemary’s Baby because I was freaking out. This never felt scary - and never felt immersive. I never got lost in the world of the book. It never resonated with me, except the first chapter or so which were endearing like an old Monster of the Week X-Files episode.
]]> 53952531
City of Girls is about daring to break conventions and follow your desires: a celebration of glamour, resilience, growing up and the joys of female friendship - and about the freedom that comes from finding a place you truly belong.]]> 491 Elizabeth Gilbert 1526624907 Claire 5
It’s essentially a character study - a study of many characters, in fact - done on a grand scale. Not much plot but it’s bursting with love and life and is all masterfully stitched together like a beautiful quilt.

Everything is superlative: the most handsome or beautiful, the most chaotic or promiscuous or dilapidated. Things pay off instantly: put on a show and it’s an overnight hit. See a handsome man; love him immediately.

It tangles with the joys of an unconventional life, of living outside the boxes other people have set out for you. What if instead of a conservative and rich wife and mother, you were a gleefully promiscuous seamstress piecing together gowns from scrap fabrics? What if your home was a ruined theatre and the people who loved you best were your eccentric aunt and a loud rag trader? What if love was best expressed through a devoted lifetime of service? Through lengthy nighttime walks together? Through helping raise a child not your own? Through understanding yourself deeply enough to fulfil your own needs?

It’s easy to read. For all she goes through, there just isn’t much sorrow for our heroine nor anyone else. This book is a big box of chocolates and once you like the taste, you’ll gobble it up at all hours of the day and night, furtively and joyfully, and savour the taste.
]]> 4.16 2019
author: Elizabeth Gilbert
name: Claire
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2019
rating: 5
read at: 2023/02/14
date added: 2023/02/13
shelves:
review:
Having finished the book and being so satisfied by it, I’m a little melancholy as I’ll miss the characters.

It’s essentially a character study - a study of many characters, in fact - done on a grand scale. Not much plot but it’s bursting with love and life and is all masterfully stitched together like a beautiful quilt.

Everything is superlative: the most handsome or beautiful, the most chaotic or promiscuous or dilapidated. Things pay off instantly: put on a show and it’s an overnight hit. See a handsome man; love him immediately.

It tangles with the joys of an unconventional life, of living outside the boxes other people have set out for you. What if instead of a conservative and rich wife and mother, you were a gleefully promiscuous seamstress piecing together gowns from scrap fabrics? What if your home was a ruined theatre and the people who loved you best were your eccentric aunt and a loud rag trader? What if love was best expressed through a devoted lifetime of service? Through lengthy nighttime walks together? Through helping raise a child not your own? Through understanding yourself deeply enough to fulfil your own needs?

It’s easy to read. For all she goes through, there just isn’t much sorrow for our heroine nor anyone else. This book is a big box of chocolates and once you like the taste, you’ll gobble it up at all hours of the day and night, furtively and joyfully, and savour the taste.

]]> 26868495 Coming September 22nd
��
From the worldwide bestselling author of Eat Pray Love: the path to the vibrant, fulfilling life you’ve dreamed of.
��
Readers of all ages and walks of life have drawn inspiration and empowerment from Elizabeth Gilbert’s books for years. Now this beloved author digs deep into her own generative process to share her wisdom and unique perspective about creativity. With profound empathy and radiant generosity, she offers potent insights into the mysterious nature of inspiration. She asks us to embrace our curiosity and let go of needless suffering. She shows us how to tackle what we most love, and how to face down what we most fear. She discusses the attitudes, approaches, and habits we need in order to live our most creative lives. Balancing between soulful spirituality and cheerful pragmatism, Gilbert encourages us to uncover the “strange jewels�� that are hidden within each of us. Whether we are looking to write a book, make art, find new ways to address challenges in our work, ��embark on a dream long deferred, or simply infuse our everyday lives with more mindfulness and passion, Big Magic cracks open a world of wonder and joy.


From the Hardcover edition.]]> 276 Elizabeth Gilbert 1408866749 Claire 4 3.88 2015
author: Elizabeth Gilbert
name: Claire
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2015
rating: 4
read at: 2023/01/31
date added: 2023/01/31
shelves:
review:
It’s extremely readable. Gilbert has such a natural, easy voice. It’s lovely, like Julia Roberts�� smile or Julie Andrews spinning on a mountaintop. It’s like listening to a beloved friend hold forth over hot chocolate. It’s also kind of TED-talky. But I think it works. In less deft hands it might be a bit cringe, but it did inspire me, it did calm a few of my fears, it did recast creativity in a new light. Gilbert’s enthusiasm for creativity with a kind of stoic good cheer instead of artistic torment is both handy and healthy. You can read this book very quickly. I did (granted, it was preceded by a book about abandoned Japanese geriatrics battling a murderous bear in a bitter winter, which was tough going). I do now feel better equipped to put out work into the world, creative work that speaks in my own voice.
]]> 21412050 Dendera is riveting, hilarious, dark, gory, and absolutely brilliant...it's as if Elena Ferrante and Stephen King collided on a Japanese mountaintop." Jami Attenberg, New York Times best-selling author of The Middlesteins

When Kayu Saitoh wakes up, she is in an unfamiliar place. Taken to a snowy mountainside, she was left there by her family and her village according to the tradition of sacrificing the lives of the elderly for the benefit of the young. Kayu was supposed to have passed quickly into the afterlife. Instead, she finds herself in Dendera, a utopian community built over decades by old women who, like her, were abandoned. Together, they must now face a new threat: a hungry mother bear.]]> 360 Yūya Satō 1421571730 Claire 4
Some books struggle for a lack of wants and desires driving the characters forward. This book has wants and desires that are so desperate that characters strain for them perhaps beyond reason.

I found it a little kooky when our point of view switched to that of the bear. But it was useful to understand it’s not an exceptional or magical or monstrous bear. It’s a bear. Just an animal. A formidable and frightening and strong opponent but essentially driven by the same instincts that drive the humans. Also, it meant the book could use a trick I associate with Korean movie director Bong Joon-Ho. The bear is made into a sympathetic character. It changes the emotions behind the plot to kill it.

The book was also quite deeply philosophical. What will happen to us after we die? Why die? Why live? What is life for, what does it mean? Why are some patriarchal communities in love with violence? What makes us humans any different from animals?]]> 3.50 2009
author: Yūya Satō
name: Claire
average rating: 3.50
book published: 2009
rating: 4
read at: 2023/01/28
date added: 2023/01/28
shelves: translated, horror, japanese, women, gory, 2023
review:
It’s brilliant. It’s also extremely dark and violent. You need a strong stomach and the ability to go through a bleak time with the characters. I’ve seen another reviewer call it funny and yes. That too.

Some books struggle for a lack of wants and desires driving the characters forward. This book has wants and desires that are so desperate that characters strain for them perhaps beyond reason.

I found it a little kooky when our point of view switched to that of the bear. But it was useful to understand it’s not an exceptional or magical or monstrous bear. It’s a bear. Just an animal. A formidable and frightening and strong opponent but essentially driven by the same instincts that drive the humans. Also, it meant the book could use a trick I associate with Korean movie director Bong Joon-Ho. The bear is made into a sympathetic character. It changes the emotions behind the plot to kill it.

The book was also quite deeply philosophical. What will happen to us after we die? Why die? Why live? What is life for, what does it mean? Why are some patriarchal communities in love with violence? What makes us humans any different from animals?
]]> 53310061 What happens when you mix 1 (accidental) murder with 2 thousand wedding guests, and then toss in a possible curse on 3 generations of an immigrant Chinese-Indonesian family?

You get 4 meddling Asian aunties coming to the rescue!

When Meddelin Chan ends up accidentally killing her blind date, her meddlesome mother calls for her even more meddlesome aunties to help get rid of the body. Unfortunately, a dead body proves to be a lot more challenging to dispose of than one might anticipate, especially when it is inadvertently shipped in a cake cooler to the over-the-top billionaire wedding Meddy, her Ma, and aunties are working at an island resort on the California coastline. It's the biggest job yet for the family wedding business��"Don't leave your big day to chance, leave it to the Chans!"—and nothing, not even an unsavory corpse, will get in the way of her auntie's perfect buttercream flowers.

But things go from inconvenient to downright torturous when Meddy's great college love—and biggest heartbreak—makes a surprise appearance amid the wedding chaos. Is it possible to escape murder charges, charm her ex back into her life, and pull off a stunning wedding all in one weekend?]]> 299 Jesse Q. Sutanto 0593336739 Claire 0 to-read 3.67 2021
author: Jesse Q. Sutanto
name: Claire
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/01/23
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 60505945 148 Christy Anne Jones Claire 0 to-read 4.53 2022
author: Christy Anne Jones
name: Claire
average rating: 4.53
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/01/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 4621593 148 Martha Sherman Bacon Claire 0 to-read 3.71 1978
author: Martha Sherman Bacon
name: Claire
average rating: 3.71
book published: 1978
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/01/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 33670466
Demonic possession! Haunted condominiums! Murderous babies! Man-eating moths! No plot was too ludicrous, no cover art too appalling, no evil too despicable for the Paperbacks From Hell.

Where did they come from? Where did they go? Horror author Grady Hendrix risks his soul and sanity (not to mention yours) to relate the true, untold story of the Paperbacks From Hell.

Shocking story summaries! Incredible cover art! And true tales of writers, artists, and publishers who violated every literary law but one: never be boring. All this awaits, if you dare experience the Paperbacks From Hell.]]> 254 Grady Hendrix 1594749817 Claire 0 to-read 4.28 2017
author: Grady Hendrix
name: Claire
average rating: 4.28
book published: 2017
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/01/22
shelves: to-read
review:

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This volume collects four of their best-known "The Hairy Ghost," "The Corpse Army of Khartoum," "The Yellow Peril," and a brand new adventure, "The Christmas Spirits." Ranging from Gilded Age New York to British-controlled Sudan with its ruined desert city of Khartoum, these stories will inform, illuminate, and alarm. The Tales of the White Street Society were originally published by Pseudopod, the audio fiction site. They are collected here as short stories due to popular demand, along with a new story entitled “The Christmas Spirits�� that has never before been seen anywhere else and is sure to curl your mustache. You will come away from this slim volume with an understanding of the supernatural wonders that these bold men of the 19th century were compelled to shoot, poison, burn, and beat to death with shovels.]]> 135 Grady Hendrix 0983448752 Claire 0 to-read 3.66 2012
author: Grady Hendrix
name: Claire
average rating: 3.66
book published: 2012
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/01/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 11261906 302 Grady Hendrix 0983448701 Claire 0 to-read 3.85 2011
author: Grady Hendrix
name: Claire
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2011
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/01/22
shelves: to-read
review:

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Violating numerous laws, common sense, logic, and reason, Walter Reddie becomes a lightning rod for people who aren’t ready to lay down and die just yet. His "redneck NASA" becomes the promised land for losers, drifters, rocket junkies, pyromaniacs, misfits, dreamers, science nerds, and astro-hippies who still believe that the future of America is in space. But chances are they’ll blow themselves up, get arrested, or kill each other before they ever get into low earth orbit.]]> 117 Grady Hendrix 0983448728 Claire 0 to-read 3.92 2012
author: Grady Hendrix
name: Claire
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2012
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/01/22
shelves: to-read
review:

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Now Natsuki is grown. She lives a quiet life with her asexual husband, surviving as best she can by pretending to be normal. But the demands of Natsuki's family are increasing, her friends wonder why she's still not pregnant, and dark shadows from Natsuki's childhood are pursuing her. Fleeing the suburbs for the mountains of her childhood, Natsuki prepares herself with a reunion with Yuu. Will he still remember their promise? And will he help her keep it?]]> 247 Sayaka Murata 1783785675 Claire 2 3.59 2018
author: Sayaka Murata
name: Claire
average rating: 3.59
book published: 2018
rating: 2
read at:
date added: 2021/02/18
shelves:
review:
I loved Convenience Store Woman. I assumed this book would be, as the jacket copy promises, hilarious. I can’t finish it. It makes me feel ill. The graphic depiction of child sexual abuse at the hands of a teacher is really hard to read. For a book with a cute cover, it comes as a shock. I’ve known survivors of childhood sexual abuse and I’ve had unsavory things happen to me. If I knew the book would be like this, I would never have bought it.
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