en-US Mon, 31 Mar 2025 15:26:58 -0700 60 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg 337023 Stardate 44010.2: the twenty-fourth century. Humanity’s greatest dreams have become reality. Along with dozens of other sentient races, the people of Earth have formed the United Federation of Planets—a galactic civilization that governs much of the known universe for the good of all. Over the past two centuries, mankind has tamed its basest instincts, and reached the stars�

But suppose it hadn’t happened that way at all? Suppose instead humanity’s darkest impulses, its most savage, animalistic desires had triumphed? Suppose that the empire mankind made out in the stars was one ruled by terror, where only those willing to brutalize their own kind and their neighbors could survive?

One hundred years ago, four crewmembers of the U.S.S. Enterprise crossed the dimensional barrier and found just such an empire. A mirror image of their own universe, populated by nightmare duplicates of their shipmates. Barely able to escape with their lives, they returned thankful that the accident that brought them there could not be duplicated. Or so they thought.

But now the scientists of that empire have found a doorway into our universe. Thier plan: to destroy from within, to replace one of our starships with one of theirs. Their victims: the crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise NCC 1701-D.]]> 337 Diane Duane 0671793772 Juushika 3
Novel length also allows for subplots, and they're well-intended (especially the non-humanoid alien) but rarely complement the larger narrative. The best minor addition is the downtime, the anxious waiting, the technical difficulties which would kill the pacing of an episode but here make the setting feel enjoyably realistic. It helps that I didn't have high expectations and that the sheer novelty is a selling point, because the quality here is just so-so--but the experience is engaging and gratifying; I'm surprised by how much I liked this.]]> 3.85 1993
author: Diane Duane
name: Juushika
average rating: 3.85
book published: 1993
rating: 3
read at: 2018/02/09
date added: 2025/03/31
shelves: genre-science-fiction, status-owned
review:
At the edge of the galaxy, the Enterprise is pulled into the mirror universe by its predatory counterpart. This is my first time reading a spin-off novel for any franchise, which can't help but color my experience; seeing a franchise adapted to text is as interesting as the story itself. A novel allows for significantly more interiority and infodumping. Of the latter there's plenty, not delivered with exceptional grace but building a more thorough view of the mirror universe, particularly its history; it feels somewhat reductionist, but given context perhaps it has to be, and it does satisfy the itch for more information. The interiority is welcome, and is most robust in Picard but especially Troi, whose double is the best developed and most compelling; this is where the concept graduates from the broad fear of one's own worst tendencies and develops into a conflicted admiration/jealousy/fear of the selves one might have been--especially interesting in a character so association with emotions as is Troi. I wish this pushed further, but it's a strong attempt.

Novel length also allows for subplots, and they're well-intended (especially the non-humanoid alien) but rarely complement the larger narrative. The best minor addition is the downtime, the anxious waiting, the technical difficulties which would kill the pacing of an episode but here make the setting feel enjoyably realistic. It helps that I didn't have high expectations and that the sheer novelty is a selling point, because the quality here is just so-so--but the experience is engaging and gratifying; I'm surprised by how much I liked this.
]]> 54180893 The celebrated series Critical Role: Vox Machina Origins returns in this stunning hardcover edition! Fans of the series won't want to miss this beautiful collection.

What do a flirtatious bard, a clueless barbarian, a naĂŻve druid, and a pair of stealthy twins all have in common? They're not sure either, but one day they'll become the heroes known as Vox Machina! Follow the main characters from the smash-hit series Critical Role as they team up for the first time, facing cults and curses in the revelation of their origins and the path that will lead them to glory...eventually.

Collects Vox Machina Origins I and II in a gorgeous new Hardcover with never before seen artwork!]]> 320 Matthew Mercer 1506721737 Juushika 3 ]]> 4.59
author: Matthew Mercer
name: Juushika
average rating: 4.59
book published:
rating: 3
read at: 2025/03/27
date added: 2025/03/27
shelves: genre-comic, genre-fantasy, status-borrowed
review:
Rolling this far back means everyone is less likeable, less capable, less interconnected, which... There are stories to be told, but they lack almost everything I might like about/want from Vox Machina. The exceptions are usually preexisting-to-present-narrative connections (Vex & Vax, Pike & Grog, and honestly I just like seeing Percy because he has such a chunky backstory); but everyone meeting doesn't do a ton for me. And I love C1! I'll pick up the next volume eventually; art is fine, the bind-up itself is gorgeous.

]]> 150739 not supposed to be: headstrong, tomboyish, smart - and bored. So bored that she runs away to live with a dragon - and finds the family and excitement she's been looking for.

Cover illustrator: Peter de Sève]]> 240 Patricia C. Wrede 015204566X Juushika 4 Ella Enchanted. I'll look into the sequels, and if I'd read this as a kid the desire to live with Kazul would have been fierce.

]]> 4.16 1990
author: Patricia C. Wrede
name: Juushika
average rating: 4.16
book published: 1990
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/27
date added: 2025/03/27
shelves: genre-fantasy, genre-mg-and-ya, status-borrowed
review:
A princess quite sick of princessing runs off to be kidnapped by dragons instead. This is the magnum opus of "not like other girls," and I'm not mad about it. The protagonist retains a fair bit of her own character, it turns out that many others aren't like other girls either, and the occasional other-girls skill proves useful; for the purposes of wish fulfillment & projection, as MG/YA does so well, this is delightful, with satisfying, speedy plotting and the sort of ultra-fairytale setting and lively voice that reminds me of Levine's Ella Enchanted. I'll look into the sequels, and if I'd read this as a kid the desire to live with Kazul would have been fierce.


]]> 48503 The Worst Journey in the World recounts Robert Falcon Scott's ill-fated expedition to the South Pole. Apsley Cherry-Garrard, the youngest member of Scott's team and one of three men to make and survive the notorious Winter Journey, draws on his firsthand experiences as well as the diaries of his compatriots to create a stirring and detailed account of Scott's legendary expedition. Cherry himself would be among the search party that discovered the corpses of Scott and his men, who had long since perished from starvation and brutal cold. It is through Cherry's insightful narrative and keen descriptions that Scott and the other members of the expedition are fully memorialized.

First published in 1922.]]> 693 Apsley Cherry-Garrard 0143039385 Juushika 5
Cherry-Garrard is unexpectedly adroit, moving through tone and time, the long slow trudge of sledging and setting up depots to living among fellow explorers to the overwinter journey to obtain emperor penguin eggs which, frankly, is the titular worst. He's funny, morbidly so, both intentionally and in the horror of hindsight; I took multiple pauses to independently research topics like historical British artic exploration gear (particularly clothing and sleeping bags), and, sincerely, this expedition was a hell of their own devising. The following summer's attempt at the pole reiterates some of the slow build of pacing and is a quiet, well-considered horror, a detailed account that avoids pure hero worship but also bitterness, that becomes something like a study of the stiff upper lip: persisting through suffering is not an accomplishment but a good way to elicit more of the same.

This isn't five stars in the sense of perfect; Cherry-Garrard, for all his care, still gives Scott too much credit and is absolutely a product of the echo chamber of his time; and, yes, the text occasionally drags. But in the sense of laughed, cried, would not stop talking about this with anybody in hearing range for a month--I'm obsessed. Exceeds expectation, surprisingly quotable, full of crunchy details but also honest in its character sketches and psychological focus, and, I agree: the worst journey in the world, remarkably evoked.

CW for animal abuse because, while the humans could by and large consent to suffer, the same was not true of the ill-husbanded dogs and horses of the expedition. Absolutely bonkers decision-making and self-justifications where the animals were concerned.]]> 4.17 1922
author: Apsley Cherry-Garrard
name: Juushika
average rating: 4.17
book published: 1922
rating: 5
read at: 2025/03/15
date added: 2025/03/16
shelves: format-free-ebook, genre-historical, genre-memoir-and-biography, genre-non-fiction, genre-non-fiction-morbid, status-borrowed, seasonal-winter, favorite-and-formative
review:
A (rather complete) telling of the tragic 1910-1913 Terra Nova expedition, compiled from the author's memories and journals as well as the journals of other men present. Rather complete, I say, because this begins with departure; the packing and sea voyage sections could probably be skimmed, but I've been itching to read about the close quarters & logistics of historical sailing so I appreciated them. The slow cascade from petty errors to great tragedy is more profound, more linear, in retrospect and/or knowing the hero worship/criticisms of Scott to which Cherry-Garrard is responding. But as that narrative builds:

Cherry-Garrard is unexpectedly adroit, moving through tone and time, the long slow trudge of sledging and setting up depots to living among fellow explorers to the overwinter journey to obtain emperor penguin eggs which, frankly, is the titular worst. He's funny, morbidly so, both intentionally and in the horror of hindsight; I took multiple pauses to independently research topics like historical British artic exploration gear (particularly clothing and sleeping bags), and, sincerely, this expedition was a hell of their own devising. The following summer's attempt at the pole reiterates some of the slow build of pacing and is a quiet, well-considered horror, a detailed account that avoids pure hero worship but also bitterness, that becomes something like a study of the stiff upper lip: persisting through suffering is not an accomplishment but a good way to elicit more of the same.

This isn't five stars in the sense of perfect; Cherry-Garrard, for all his care, still gives Scott too much credit and is absolutely a product of the echo chamber of his time; and, yes, the text occasionally drags. But in the sense of laughed, cried, would not stop talking about this with anybody in hearing range for a month--I'm obsessed. Exceeds expectation, surprisingly quotable, full of crunchy details but also honest in its character sketches and psychological focus, and, I agree: the worst journey in the world, remarkably evoked.

CW for animal abuse because, while the humans could by and large consent to suffer, the same was not true of the ill-husbanded dogs and horses of the expedition. Absolutely bonkers decision-making and self-justifications where the animals were concerned.
]]> 35486441
An historian of fascism offers a guide for surviving and resisting America’s turn towards authoritarianism.

On November 9th, millions of Americans woke up to the impossible: the election of Donald Trump as president. Against all predictions, one of the most-disliked presidential candidates in history had swept the electoral college, elevating a man with open contempt for democratic norms and institutions to the height of power.

Timothy Snyder is one of the most celebrated historians of the Holocaust. In his books Bloodlands and Black Earth, he has carefully dissected the events and values that enabled the rise of Hitler and Stalin and the execution of their catastrophic policies. With Twenty Lessons, Snyder draws from the darkest hours of the twentieth century to provide hope for the twenty-first. As he writes, “Americans are no wiser than the Europeans who saw democracy yield to fascism, Nazism and communism. Our one advantage is that we might learn from their experience.�

Twenty Lessons is a call to arms and a guide to resistance, with invaluable ideas for how we can preserve our freedoms in the uncertain years to come.]]> 2 Timothy Snyder 052550091X Juushika 4 4.17 2017
author: Timothy Snyder
name: Juushika
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2017
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/26
date added: 2025/02/26
shelves: genre-non-fiction, status-borrowed, format-audiobook
review:
3.5 stars. On one hand, I appreciate how direct and uncompromising this is; it's common sense that feels less common, more challenging, when confrontational and supported by challenging antecedents. On the other hand, it saddens me that these bootlicking, moderate tendencies are relatively revolutionary. This is just a starting place, remarkable mostly for its brevity and accessibility.
]]> 156345 368 Jemiah Jefferson 0843957247 Juushika 3
Interesting enough; but, in practice, the ensemble approach makes for wider and less developed/intense interpersonal dynamics, and drug use overshadows everything, a lot of jonesing for & and use of drugs that doesn't do much to develop the characters except establish vampires are a) hurting and b) capable of great hurt, which other books and Daniel in particular had already established. I'm glad this series exists, so indulgent, so willing to be weird. But, having finished it, the first book remains the only one that really got me; the rest are an opportunity to hang out with the cast, and the repetitive, nihilistic tone is often intentional, sometimes effective, but still, well, just that.]]> 3.71 2007
author: Jemiah Jefferson
name: Juushika
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2007
rating: 3
read at: 2025/02/18
date added: 2025/02/18
shelves: genre-fantasy, genre-horror, status-borrowed, trope-unusuallyintimaterelationship, trope-vampire
review:
Adrianne invents a psychoactive drug that can treat John; it also draws other vampires to congregate in search of the first drug that can work directly on their biology. This is an ensemble capstone to the series, rotating between various characters who were passing mentions or supporting characters in other books. It's concerned primarily with the future of the protagonist & of vampire kind, living within an increasingly monitored world--vampires can control human minds, but not security cameras. What are they capable of at their worst, especially when under the influence, and what are they obligated and able to control for everyone's safety?

Interesting enough; but, in practice, the ensemble approach makes for wider and less developed/intense interpersonal dynamics, and drug use overshadows everything, a lot of jonesing for & and use of drugs that doesn't do much to develop the characters except establish vampires are a) hurting and b) capable of great hurt, which other books and Daniel in particular had already established. I'm glad this series exists, so indulgent, so willing to be weird. But, having finished it, the first book remains the only one that really got me; the rest are an opportunity to hang out with the cast, and the repetitive, nihilistic tone is often intentional, sometimes effective, but still, well, just that.
]]> 55107612
S-Town meets I'll Be Gone in the Dark in this stranger-than-fiction cold case from rural Oklahoma that has stumped authorities for two decades, concerning the disappearance of two teenage girls and the much larger mystery of murder, possible police cover-up, and an unimaginable truth....

On December 30, 1999, in rural Oklahoma, 16-year-old Ashley Freeman and her best friend, Lauria Bible, were having a sleepover. The next morning, the Freeman family trailer was in flames and both girls were missing.

While rumors of drug debts, revenge, and police corruption abounded in the years that followed, the case remained unsolved, and the girls were never found.

In 2015, crime writer Jax Miller - who had been haunted by the case - decided to travel to Oklahoma to find out what really happened on that winter night in 1999 and why the story was still simmering more than 15 years later. What she found was more than she could have ever bargained for: Evidence of jaw-dropping levels of police negligence, entire communities ravaged by methamphetamine addiction, and a series of interconnected murders with an ominously familiar pattern.

These forgotten towns were wild, lawless, and home to some very dark secrets.]]> Jax Miller Juushika 3 3.08 2020
author: Jax Miller
name: Juushika
average rating: 3.08
book published: 2020
rating: 3
read at: 2025/02/16
date added: 2025/02/16
shelves: format-audiobook, status-borrowed, genre-non-fiction, genre-non-fiction-morbid
review:
A cold-case investigation into the disappearance of two teen girls after the murder and arson that killed one girl's parents. This ticks two distinctive true crime boxes: extremely overwritten, largely to build a sense of place and to center the victims; author inserted into the text, exploring the personal cost of the investigation. Neither of these are objective flaws, but they also demand a strong voice and a certain restraint, and Miller manages that ... okay-ish. It's a thorough, compassionate approach to the many complications (police incompetence and corruption; drug use and cultural values in rural Oklahoma) of the case; it also runs overlong and turns purple. Not my favorite example of the style, but I appreciate true crime that places a case within its cultural context, and this does a lot in that effort.
]]> 203956639 A student will find that the hardest lessons sometimes come outside the classroom in this stunning dark academia novel from the acclaimed author of The Year of the Witching and House of Hunger.

Lennon Carter’s life is falling apart.

Then she gets a mysterious phone call inviting her to take the entrance exam for Drayton College, a school of magic hidden in a secret pocket of Savannah. Lennon has been chosen because—like everyone else at the school—she has the innate gift of persuasion, the ability to wield her will like a weapon, using it to control others and, in rare cases, matter itself.

After passing the test, Lennon begins to learn how to master her devastating and unsettling power. But despite persuasion’s heavy toll on her body and mind, she is wholly captivated by her studies, by Drayton’s lush, moss-draped campus, and by her brilliant classmates. But even more captivating is her charismatic adviser, Dante, who both intimidates and enthralls her.

As Lennon continues in her studies her control grows, and she starts to uncover more about the secret world she has entered into, including the disquieting history of Drayton College, and the way her mentor’s tragic and violent past intertwines with it. She is increasingly disturbed by what she learns. For it seems that the ultimate test is to embrace absolute power without succumbing to corruption . . . and it's a test she's terrified she is going to fail.]]> 464 Alexis Henderson 0593638301 Juushika 2 The Magicians (TV), feat. OFC/young Dean Fogg: similar premise and tone, the wonder of magic against the grime of new adults and power differentials, with some bonus moth imagery thrown in. The magic system is unique, and I like it; the pacing and character arcs increasingly strained, a racially-aware dark academia premise undermined by the narrative's endless patience for the protagonist, who is simultaneously the most flawed and the most powerful person on campus, an exaggerated combo that can't but feel tropey. None of this is bad, per se (except for the predictable, tonally-discordant climax); it's just kind of silly, wallowy and indulgent and weaker than most of its potential comparisons (Vita Nostra is thornier, Scholomance does tropey better, hell, The Magicians (TV) has better character arcs; it is, though, better than Magicians-the-book.)]]> 3.45 2024
author: Alexis Henderson
name: Juushika
average rating: 3.45
book published: 2024
rating: 2
read at: 2025/02/14
date added: 2025/02/14
shelves: genre-fantasy, status-borrowed
review:
2.5 stars. Our protagonist is recruited by a magical school whose students have the ability to persuade people, and perhaps the world itself, to change. I mean this as a neutral statement: this feels like serial numbers filed off fic for The Magicians (TV), feat. OFC/young Dean Fogg: similar premise and tone, the wonder of magic against the grime of new adults and power differentials, with some bonus moth imagery thrown in. The magic system is unique, and I like it; the pacing and character arcs increasingly strained, a racially-aware dark academia premise undermined by the narrative's endless patience for the protagonist, who is simultaneously the most flawed and the most powerful person on campus, an exaggerated combo that can't but feel tropey. None of this is bad, per se (except for the predictable, tonally-discordant climax); it's just kind of silly, wallowy and indulgent and weaker than most of its potential comparisons (Vita Nostra is thornier, Scholomance does tropey better, hell, The Magicians (TV) has better character arcs; it is, though, better than Magicians-the-book.)
]]> 64623481 A woman is determined to stay in her dream home even after it becomes a haunted nightmare in this compulsively readable, twisty, and layered debut novel.

When Margaret and her husband Hal bought the large Victorian house on Hawthorn Street—for sale at a surprisingly reasonable price—they couldn’t believe they finally had a home of their own. Then they discovered the hauntings. Every September, the walls drip blood. The ghosts of former inhabitants appear, and all of them are terrified of something that lurks in the basement. Most people would flee.

Margaret is not most people.

Margaret is staying. It’s her house. But after four years Hal can’t take it anymore, and he leaves abruptly. Now, he’s not returning calls, and their daughter Katherine—who knows nothing about the hauntings—arrives, intent on looking for her missing father. To make things worse, September has just begun, and with every attempt Margaret and Katherine make at finding Hal, the hauntings grow more harrowing, because there are some secrets the house needs to keep.]]> 352 Carissa Orlando 0593548612 Juushika 2 genre-horror, status-borrowed
I'm a sucker for the realistic consequences of a speculative concept, and the practical approach to a haunting scratches that itch. But the fun dies as the plot progresses and later sections are frustrating and, for me, triggering. Does the text pay back the pain? Not really; the tone's too mishmash, and for all the trope-awareness in the horror premise, all the later reveals are tropey and flat, down to the silly climax.]]> 3.87 2023
author: Carissa Orlando
name: Juushika
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2023
rating: 2
read at: 2025/02/12
date added: 2025/02/12
shelves: genre-horror, status-borrowed
review:
Our protagonist's house is haunted, and every September ramps up to a total horror show; and she stays, and copes, because it's her home. What a premise, right? It's a fun exploration of, confrontation of, many classic horror tropes and questions, with a lively dark humor that reminds me of T. Kingfisher, toned back. But the question "why stay in a bad home" naturally becomes an extremely literal metaphor for [spoilers removed], and then graduates to painfully belabored real-or-delusional section, complete with police and the threat of involuntary commitment. Here are the spoilers I wish I'd had: [spoilers removed].

I'm a sucker for the realistic consequences of a speculative concept, and the practical approach to a haunting scratches that itch. But the fun dies as the plot progresses and later sections are frustrating and, for me, triggering. Does the text pay back the pain? Not really; the tone's too mishmash, and for all the trope-awareness in the horror premise, all the later reveals are tropey and flat, down to the silly climax.
]]> 54120408
In Klara and the Sun, Kazuo Ishiguro looks at our rapidly changing modern world through the eyes of an unforgettable narrator to explore a fundamental question: what does it mean to love?]]> 340 Kazuo Ishiguro 059331817X Juushika 2 Never Let Me Go, and, unsurprisingly, didn't like it here, either. But it was an interesting book club read, so: not entirely without merit.
]]> 3.71 2021
author: Kazuo Ishiguro
name: Juushika
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2021
rating: 2
read at: 2025/01/20
date added: 2025/01/20
shelves: genre-literary-and-contemporary, genre-science-fiction, status-borrowed
review:
A solar-powered robot is purchased to be the companion of a sick child. This is sunk deep into Klara's close perspective, limited, often unconvincingly, by her knowledge; shaped by the logic she invents to explain the world. And this is the book's strength. It's an excuse to deliver plot & world piecemeal, to do fun things with visual framing, the encourage the reader's large perspective to echo, uncomfortably, the human cast. But. It also a cloaks a lack of genre-awareness and dearth of research into AI and robots, straining said worldbuilding and plot twist, substituting instead a tiresome sentimentality. I didn't like how Ishiguro handled the speculative/literary crossover in Never Let Me Go, and, unsurprisingly, didn't like it here, either. But it was an interesting book club read, so: not entirely without merit.

]]> 61176341
Once upon a time, Marcel’s sister injured herself in the forest while gathering herbs. Marcel was at a loss for what to do until a fearsome horned man appeared, offering help–in exchange for a promise. Now, ten years later, Marcel returns to the woods, steeling himself for death. Instead, he finds something quite different: a gentle soul, friendship…and perhaps something more.]]> 184 Aki Aoi 1638586527 Juushika 3 ]]> 3.42
author: Aki Aoi
name: Juushika
average rating: 3.42
book published:
rating: 3
read at: 2025/01/20
date added: 2025/01/20
shelves: genre-fantasy, genre-comic, genre-romance, status-borrowed
review:
2.5 stars, bumped up for my favorite. One novella-equivalent with a Beauty & the Beast vibe and a few short story-equivalents, all gentle BL. Very gentle: tender, sexless dynamics, that, without either heat or friction, are a little bland. The exception is "Corrosion," which is weird and embodied and much more memorable. The art is beautiful, especially (and somewhat ironically) the loving, detailed backgrounds against which vaguely undifferentiated pretty boys wander. All told, I'm not wild about this.

]]> 59811239 Bree Paulsen's brave little protagonist, Garlic, is back in this charmingly illustrated standalone companion to Garlic and the Vampire, serving up another tale of friendship, magic, and self-discovery. Give both books to readers who fell in love with Tidesong or Witch Boy!

Garlic loves spending time with Witch Agnes, Carrot, and her new friend, the Count, who has proven to be a delightful neighbor to the village of vegetable people rather than a scary vampire. But despite Agnes's best attempts to home-brew a vegetarian blood substitute for Count, the ingredient she needs most can only be found at the Magic Market, far from the valley.

Before she knows it, with a broomstick in hand, Garlic is nervously preparing for a journey.

But Garlic is experiencing another change too--finger by finger, she appears to be turning human. Witch Agnes assures her that this is normal for her garden magic, but Garlic isn't so sure that she's ready for such a big change. After all, changes are scary...and what if she doesn't want to be human after all?]]> 160 Bree Paulsen 006299512X Juushika 3 ]]> 4.34 2022
author: Bree Paulsen
name: Juushika
average rating: 4.34
book published: 2022
rating: 3
read at: 2025/01/15
date added: 2025/01/15
shelves: genre-mg-and-ya, genre-fantasy, status-borrowed
review:
Garlic is slowly changing into a human. I didn't like this as much as the first book, more for themes than execution. The art remains sweet and softly vibrant, the setting charming, the intentions heartfelt and graceful, particularly in the uncomplicated insistence on queer characters. But becoming-human feels weird in retrospect (so many questions: why make so many, why make them to be servants, why not tell them they were proto-people?), and, while I understand the parallels to adolescence for a middle grade audience, atypical characters becoming increasingly typical isn't a trope that speaks to me. Does this sweet little graphic novel warrant such nitpicking? Not really. I still breezed through it happily, and the character redesigns are fun. But I'd stick to just the first book.

]]> 193544852
Spirits are drawn to salt, be it blood or tears.

Roos Beckman has a spirit companion only she can see. Ruth—strange, corpse-like, and dead for centuries—is the light of Roos' life. That is, until the wealthy young widow Agnes Knoop visits one of Roos' backroom seances, and the two strike up a connection.

Soon, Roos is whisked away to the crumbling estate Agnes inherited upon the death of her husband, where an ill woman haunts the halls, strange smells drift through the air, and mysterious stone statues reside in the family chapel. Something dreadful festers in the manor, but still, the attraction between Roos and Agnes is undeniable.

Then, someone is murdered.

Poor, alone, and with a history of 'hysterics', Roos is the obvious culprit. With her sanity and innocence in question, she'll have to prove who—or what—is at fault or lose everything she holds dear.

"A Sapphic seance of preternatural proportions, My Darling Dreadful Thing summons a stunning new literary voice to be reckoned with. Johanna van Veen reaches beyond the veil to conjure up a gothic shocker like no other."—Clay McLeod Chapman, author of What Kind of Mother and Ghost Eaters

©2024 Johanna van Veen (P)2024 Tantor]]> 375 Johanna van Veen 1728281547 Juushika 2 Rebecca inversion with seductive sapphic tendencies. Unfortunately, this is a debut, so the "but" is predictable: lackluster writing. There are exceptions, namely the loving, precise descriptions of physical injury, but both in plot structure and on sentence-level, this feels raw, clumsy, killing much of the atmosphere and pushing the mystery/thriller narrative frame (the protagonist accused of a crime she attributes to her companion) to a tedious breaking point.]]> 3.85 2024
author: Johanna van Veen
name: Juushika
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2024
rating: 2
read at: 2025/01/15
date added: 2025/01/15
shelves: genre-gothic, genre-historical, genre-horror, status-borrowed, trope-unusuallyintimaterelationship
review:
2.5 stars. Our protagonist performs false séances, but she has a true spirit companion that only she can see. The vibes here are earnest and appealing: gothic abundances set in 1950s Netherlands, with spirit companions that look distinctly dead and nibble the blood & tears of their human partners; a Rebecca inversion with seductive sapphic tendencies. Unfortunately, this is a debut, so the "but" is predictable: lackluster writing. There are exceptions, namely the loving, precise descriptions of physical injury, but both in plot structure and on sentence-level, this feels raw, clumsy, killing much of the atmosphere and pushing the mystery/thriller narrative frame (the protagonist accused of a crime she attributes to her companion) to a tedious breaking point.
]]> 58673883 Humanity is on the verge of discovering immortality, which means the avatar of Death is out of a job� or is she?

Humanity is on the verge of discovering immortality. As a result, the avatar of Death is cast down to Earth to live a mortal life in Mumbai as twenty-something Laila Starr. Struggling with her newfound mortality, Laila has found a way to be placed in the time and place where the creator of immortality will be born. Will Laila take her chance to stop mankind from permanently altering the cycle of life, or will death really become a thing of the past? A powerful new graphic novel from award-winning writer Ram V (These Savage Shores, Swamp Thing) and Filipe Andrade (Captain Marvel) that explores the fine line between living and dying through the lens of magical realism. Collects The Many Deaths of Laila Starr #1-5.]]> 128 Ram V. 1684158052 Juushika 2 ]]> 4.30 2022
author: Ram V.
name: Juushika
average rating: 4.30
book published: 2022
rating: 2
read at: 2025/01/09
date added: 2025/01/09
shelves: genre-comic, genre-fantasy, status-borrowed
review:
2.5 stars. The god of death is fired and sent to live on earth when the baby who will invent immortality is born. The art here has a stretchy, caricatured flow and vibrant colorwork, celebrating the setting (Mumbai) & related cultural imagery. But the plot bores me. It's a meditation on the fear of & inevitability of death and doesn't offer anything new to that well-tread ground: chose to value life in the face of death; okay. When short comics are released in individual issues, I think they suffer; the beats (introducing/dismissing supporting characters; tackling the resolution) are too regular & often rushed. The big takeaway, and one day I'll internalize this, is that American comics tend not to work for me.

]]> 217896248 From the nationally bestselling author of The Luminous Dead and The Death of Jane Lawrence, a transfixing, intensely atmospheric fever dream of medieval horror.

Aymar Castle has been under siege for six months. Food is running low and there has been no sign of rescue. But just as the survivors consider deliberately thinning their number, the castle stores are replenished. The sick are healed. And the divine figures of the Constant Lady and her Saints have arrived, despite the barricaded gates, offering succor in return for adoration.

Soon, the entire castle is under the sway of their saviors, partaking in intoxicating feasts of terrible origin. The war hero Ser Voyne gives her allegiance to the Constant Lady. Phosyne, a disorganized, paranoid nun-turned-sorceress, races to unravel the mystery of these new visitors and exonerate her experiments as their source. And in the bowels of the castle, a serving girl, Treila, is torn between her thirst for a secret vengeance against Voyne and the desperate need to escape from the horrors that are unfolding within Aymar’s walls.

As the castle descends into bacchanalian madness—forgetting the massed army beyond its walls in favor of hedonistic ecstasy—these three women are the only ones to still see their situation for what it is. But they are not immune from the temptations of the castle’s new masters� or each other; and their shifting alliances and entangled pasts bring violence to the surface. To save the castle, and themselves, will take a reimagining of who they are, and a reorganization of the very world itself.]]> 352 Caitlin Starling 0063418819 Juushika 3
But, structurally... Weird, I say again, but here that means: a hot mess. The narration rotates between the three characters, and they rarely come together or stay long in one place. It's a lot of traveling from one end of the grounds to the other, passing connections and deferred confrontations, and the result is something more gestural than inhabited. I think I appreciate the attempt; I prefer a strange read to an easy one, and this strange is viscous and hungry. But it's also a borderline slog.]]> 4.02 2025
author: Caitlin Starling
name: Juushika
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2025
rating: 3
read at: 2025/01/05
date added: 2025/01/05
shelves: genre-fantasy, genre-gothic, genre-horror, genre-historical, status-borrowed, trope-unusuallyintimaterelationship
review:
ARC via NetGalley. A castle under siege is saved from starvation by dangerous figures in the form of the Lady and her Saints. This is one of the weirder books I've read in recent memory, and I love weird, but I'm not sure that this weird works. The world is stylized, and the developing plot and magic system lean in hard: medieval vibes, a knight and bee-keeping nuns and an apostate madwoman; monsters masquerading as divine and fey bargains. The cast is very Starling, prickly women negotiating codependent murder/love desires, featuring sexy choking and revenge-lust, what's not to like.

But, structurally... Weird, I say again, but here that means: a hot mess. The narration rotates between the three characters, and they rarely come together or stay long in one place. It's a lot of traveling from one end of the grounds to the other, passing connections and deferred confrontations, and the result is something more gestural than inhabited. I think I appreciate the attempt; I prefer a strange read to an easy one, and this strange is viscous and hungry. But it's also a borderline slog.
]]> 56470362 A farm-fresh debut graphic novel starring a heroine who is braver than she realizes.

Garlic feels as though she’s always doing something wrong. At least with her friend Carrot by her side and the kindly Witch Agnes encouraging her, Garlic is happy to just tend her garden, where it’s nice and safe.

But when her village of vegetable folk learns that a bloodthirsty vampire has moved into the nearby castle, they all agree that, in spite of her fear and self-doubt, Garlic is the obvious choice to confront him. And with everyone counting on her, Garlic reluctantly agrees to face the mysterious vampire, hoping she has what it takes.

After all, garlic drives away vampires�right?]]> 160 Bree Paulsen 006299509X Juushika 4 4.29 2021
author: Bree Paulsen
name: Juushika
average rating: 4.29
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/27
date added: 2024/12/29
shelves: genre-comic, status-borrowed, seasonal-summer, seasonal-autumn, trope-vampire, genre-mg-and-ya, genre-fantasy
review:
When a vampire moves back into the local castle, Garlic is volunteered to scare him off because ... she's garlic. This is adorable. Of course, middle grade defangs (haha) the danger, although picture books and MG can be weird and unsettling when they want to and I wish this were moreso; it's not even spoopy. But that's balanced by the characters: Celery is mean, and that meanness doesn't have a neat heel-face turn; relationships and character arcs have movement without easy resolution, they're nuanced, and I appreciate that. This is cozy, quirky, sentient garden-grown garden-helpers and a vampire that drinks V8; I would have enjoyed weirder, but am more than sufficiently charmed to read the sequel.
]]> 56269288
Library is a collection of paintings by two of Canada’s most influential contemporary artists, Michael Dumontier and Neil Farber. From the simple premise of the book title comes a series of images that are laugh-out-loud funny. A collection of book covers adorned with titles painted in simple handwritten fonts are displayed on brightly colored hardboard. Each book forms part of an ongoing series Dumontier and Farber started in 2009.

In Dumontier and Farber’s Library, titles like I Lost the Human Race, Change Your Relationship to Your Unchangeable Past, and I Have a Medical Condition That Makes It So I Don’t Have to Talk to You offer surprising and astute observations, all in the duo’s characteristic deadpan style. The simplicity of the shapes and text evokes an immediate but lasting profundity, with each piece causing one to wonder about the thoughts that roam their consciousness, and the books that take up residence on their―and our―shelves.

Dumontier and Farber are founding members of the influential art collective the Royal Art Lodge, and have been collaborating on art projects for more than fifteen years, exhibiting internationally. Library is playful and insightful as it pokes and prods at the human condition.]]> 108 Michael Dumontier 1770464123 Juushika 2 ]]> 3.61
author: Michael Dumontier
name: Juushika
average rating: 3.61
book published:
rating: 2
read at: 2024/12/27
date added: 2024/12/27
shelves: genre-art, status-borrowed, genre-comic
review:
A collection of book covers that aren't, not in any particular arrangement. Some are "honest book covers" pastiche, and many have contemporary literature vibes, preoccupied with loneliness, social prestige, and death. I could see myself liking this if this were structured, if it had an internal narrative; if this were more fantastical, if the titles inspired wonder or curiosity. As is: tedious, pointless; at best, cute.

]]> 39073052
LA Times Book Prize finalist Julian Hanshaw (Tim Ginger) returns with another feast of visual imagination and emotional intensity that will haunt readers' dreams long after the book is closed.]]> 176 Julian Hanshaw 1603094253 Juushika 2
Unfortunately, that's the best of it. The mundane plot he endeavors to escape is conventional, the speculative half is set-piecey without real depth, and the art is bad, with incoherent movement between panels and awful stylization: children look like middle-aged men, adults look like bobbleheads, and blocky shadows around the eye render every character interchangeable. I love a weird graphic novel, but this manages to be weird in a tedious way.
]]> 2.67 2018
author: Julian Hanshaw
name: Juushika
average rating: 2.67
book published: 2018
rating: 2
read at: 2024/12/26
date added: 2024/12/26
shelves: genre-comic, genre-fantasy, status-borrowed
review:
1.5 stars. When he disappears in the woods, a boy ends up at a strange hotel that he can reenter at will--as long as he refuses to answer the lobby's ringing phone. Weird premise, right? And the tone sometimes sells it: the protagonist escaping into the surreal, refusing to step fully into either realm, has a particular melancholy-but-intriguing vibe.

Unfortunately, that's the best of it. The mundane plot he endeavors to escape is conventional, the speculative half is set-piecey without real depth, and the art is bad, with incoherent movement between panels and awful stylization: children look like middle-aged men, adults look like bobbleheads, and blocky shadows around the eye render every character interchangeable. I love a weird graphic novel, but this manages to be weird in a tedious way.

]]> 60097467 A young woman in need of a transformation finds herself in touch with the animal inside in this gripping, incisive novel from the author of Cackle and The Return.

Rory Morris isn't thrilled to be moving back to her hometown, even if it is temporary. There are bad memories there. But her twin sister, Scarlett, is pregnant, estranged from the baby's father, and needs support, so Rory returns to the place she thought she'd put in her rearview. After a night out at a bar where she runs into an old almost-flame, she hits a large animal with her car. And when she gets out to investigate, she's attacked.

Rory survives, miraculously, but life begins to look and feel different. She's unnaturally strong, with an aversion to silver--and suddenly the moon has her in its thrall. She's changing into someone else--something else, maybe even a monster. But does that mean she's putting those close to her in danger? Or is embracing the wildness inside of her the key to acceptance?

This darkly comedic love story is a brilliantly layered portrait of trauma, rage, and vulnerability.]]> 336 Rachel Harrison 0593545826 Juushika 1 repetitively thematic (transforming to a werewolf parallels various female losses of bodily autonomy), the rest of the plot is unexceptional, and it ends as conventionally as it can: werewolf problem? found a workaround. promiscuity? not once you get a boyfriend! social & body dysphoria during pregnancy? don't worry the baby will fix all that. Just read Tokuda-Hall's Squad, which has similar but more complex themes, a constrained length, and much sharper teeth.
]]> 3.82 2022
author: Rachel Harrison
name: Juushika
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2022
rating: 1
read at: 2024/12/21
date added: 2024/12/21
shelves: genre-romance, genre-horror, genre-literary-and-contemporary, status-borrowed, seasonal-winter, seasonal-autumn, trope-werewolf
review:
Our super-cool protagonist returns home to stay with her pregnant twin sister, when homecoming and incipient romance shenanigans are interrupted by a werewolf attack. The smash cut to werewolf is appreciated, the ultra-short paragraphs and confessional tone have momentum, I did get through this. But this is a contemporary romance at its heart and, as such, not for me. The werewolf is a big part, and interestingly gross at times, but it's primarily thematic and it's repetitively thematic (transforming to a werewolf parallels various female losses of bodily autonomy), the rest of the plot is unexceptional, and it ends as conventionally as it can: werewolf problem? found a workaround. promiscuity? not once you get a boyfriend! social & body dysphoria during pregnancy? don't worry the baby will fix all that. Just read Tokuda-Hall's Squad, which has similar but more complex themes, a constrained length, and much sharper teeth.

]]> 43622977 Soon after he purchases a dusty can of monster blood at the funky old toy store near his great-aunt Kathryn's house, Evan begins to notice some strange things happening to the people around him.

While staying with his weird great-aunt Kathryn, Evan visits a funky old store and buys a dusty can of monster blood. It's fun to play with at first, and Evan's dog, Trigger, likes it so much, he eats some!
But then Evan notices something weird about the green, slimy stuff. It seems to be growing.
And growing.
And growing.
And all that growing has given the monster blood a monstrous appetite...

Spanish title: Escalofrios: Sangre de monstruo]]> 3 R.L. Stine 0545749735 Juushika 1 The Werewolf of Fever Swamp. Multiple factors, I think: the initial delight of nostalgia has worn off; this is less atmospheric, although the monster blood's varying qualities are evocative and gross; there's a lot of animal imperilment with a side of soft ableism, which saps my fun. Consensus seems to be that this is one of the weaker Goosebumps books; seems likely, but I think I've exhausted my interest in rereading.
]]> 3.08 1992
author: R.L. Stine
name: Juushika
average rating: 3.08
book published: 1992
rating: 1
read at: 2024/12/19
date added: 2024/12/19
shelves: format-audiobook, genre-mg-and-ya, status-borrowed, genre-horror
review:
1.5 stars. Stranded with his strange great aunt for a few days, our protagonist buys a slime toy ... with dire results. I didn't like this as much as The Werewolf of Fever Swamp. Multiple factors, I think: the initial delight of nostalgia has worn off; this is less atmospheric, although the monster blood's varying qualities are evocative and gross; there's a lot of animal imperilment with a side of soft ableism, which saps my fun. Consensus seems to be that this is one of the weaker Goosebumps books; seems likely, but I think I've exhausted my interest in rereading.

]]> 1095950 326 Jemiah Jefferson 0843953640 Juushika 3 Wounds in the sense that it's less intentionally aggravating; indeed, the lack of friction is glaring. Ricari is such a piece of work in the other books; here, he's too normal for too long, where normal still contains the convoluted, delightful, erotic tensions of Jefferson's vampires--and it's gratifying to see the Ricari-has-two-mommies backstory play out in full color. Unsurprisingly, Daniel is, again, the turning point. The slide into disaster isn't wholly convincing, but it's pretty good, and the later tableaux--vampires at an affected remove from volatile human spaces, politics, & ethics, out of sync but entangled, with the consequences sublimated into and thus destroying their interpersonal relationships--are striking. I don't like this as much as the first book, but I'm glad to still be reading the series.
]]> 3.65 2005
author: Jemiah Jefferson
name: Juushika
average rating: 3.65
book published: 2005
rating: 3
read at: 2024/12/18
date added: 2024/12/18
shelves: genre-historical, status-borrowed, trope-unusuallyintimaterelationship, trope-vampire
review:
This sequel steps back in time to explore the birth and early life of Ricari. It's a better read than Wounds in the sense that it's less intentionally aggravating; indeed, the lack of friction is glaring. Ricari is such a piece of work in the other books; here, he's too normal for too long, where normal still contains the convoluted, delightful, erotic tensions of Jefferson's vampires--and it's gratifying to see the Ricari-has-two-mommies backstory play out in full color. Unsurprisingly, Daniel is, again, the turning point. The slide into disaster isn't wholly convincing, but it's pretty good, and the later tableaux--vampires at an affected remove from volatile human spaces, politics, & ethics, out of sync but entangled, with the consequences sublimated into and thus destroying their interpersonal relationships--are striking. I don't like this as much as the first book, but I'm glad to still be reading the series.

]]> 46223363 An Atlantis-like city from Celtic legend is the setting of this mythical graphic novel fantasy re-imagining the classic Breton folktale of love, loss, and rebirth, revealing the secrets that lie beneath the surface..

Ys, city of wealth and wonder, has a history of dark secrets. Queen Malgven used magic to raise the great walls that keep Ys safe from the tumultuous sea. But after the queen's inexplicable death, her daughters drift apart. Rozenn, the heir to the throne, spends her time on the moors communing with wild animals, while Dahut, the youngest, enjoys the splendors of royal life and is eager to take part in palace intrigue.]]> 206 M.T. Anderson Juushika 3
Good thing, too, because the narrative is weaker. This is a retelling of Breton folklore, and making Dahut a more complex and sympathetic character is a great jumping off point. Indeed, she's the only character with real depth; but introducing a second daughter both dilutes and simplifies Dahut's arc with a good/virginal/uncultured vs Problematic�/sexual/cultured dichotomy which is extremely tedious. Not recommended; at the same time, I was happy to read it, and would seek out more of Rioux's work.
]]> 3.83 2020
author: M.T. Anderson
name: Juushika
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2020
rating: 3
read at: 2024/12/18
date added: 2024/12/18
shelves: genre-art, genre-comic, genre-fantasy, genre-historical, subgenre-retelling, status-borrowed
review:
2.5 stars. After the death of the fairy mother, the lives of two princesses radically diverge. Rioux's illustrations are remarkable. I wasn't initially sold on the faces, but the stylization grew on me (the horse was my tipping point), and the real strength is the color work: superb, varied palettes, deep and dark and with fantastic use of contrast; the art can sell this whole book.

Good thing, too, because the narrative is weaker. This is a retelling of Breton folklore, and making Dahut a more complex and sympathetic character is a great jumping off point. Indeed, she's the only character with real depth; but introducing a second daughter both dilutes and simplifies Dahut's arc with a good/virginal/uncultured vs Problematic�/sexual/cultured dichotomy which is extremely tedious. Not recommended; at the same time, I was happy to read it, and would seek out more of Rioux's work.

]]> 228539
He was wrong.

When Jay falls in with a crowd that's dabbling in drugs and the occult, he finds himself in over his head and doing things he never thought possible. Fascinated by the dark arts and in love with a dangerous girl, Jay falls deeper and deeper into a life he no longer recognizes...and sees no way out.]]> 192 Beatrice Sparks 0671735594 Juushika 3 Unmask Alice. So: shaking my head to show I disapprove of Sparks/the harm done by Jay's Journal, while also saying:

Boy, what a ride. Is it good? Absolutely not. It feels more unhinged than Go Ask Alice, like Sparks had to do more inventing than exaggerating and it shows; the core of authenticity is lost. But when pushed to vomit up an imagining of what the occult (Satanic Panic version) looks like in practice, Sparks is insightfully incoherent. There's a lot of the quaint: we levitated objects again, it was cool I guess; we had occult-fueled Deep Insights into the Universe, none of which I'll record here. And then there's the picturesque, the ridiculous and, like most id writing, the weirdly compelling: seduced by a counselor at my residential treatment center, possessed by a demon named Raul who wants me for my hot bod; bloody orgies and cattle mutilation given long, loving descriptions to break up one-paragraph entries about debate tournaments. The pacing is horrible, the writing worse, Debbie/Tina are interchangeable, but in many ways this is just what I was hoping for. The YA problem novel succeeds because it's titillating; because I'm being told, no, don't, while watching with undisguised fascination the evolving grotesque. And the shape of that grotesque exposes the things that compel and scare us, that are 'problems,' like queer desire and sex and the furor of adolescence. Sparks deserves none of that as praise. This is bad, full stop, and its context unforgivable. But! It was worth the interlibrary loan.
]]> 3.27 1979
author: Beatrice Sparks
name: Juushika
average rating: 3.27
book published: 1979
rating: 3
read at: 2024/12/14
date added: 2024/12/14
shelves: status-borrowed, genre-mg-and-ya
review:
A troubled teen boy is seduced by the occult. This is impossible to separate from its genesis, especially as I picked it up immediately after reading Emerson's Unmask Alice. So: shaking my head to show I disapprove of Sparks/the harm done by Jay's Journal, while also saying:

Boy, what a ride. Is it good? Absolutely not. It feels more unhinged than Go Ask Alice, like Sparks had to do more inventing than exaggerating and it shows; the core of authenticity is lost. But when pushed to vomit up an imagining of what the occult (Satanic Panic version) looks like in practice, Sparks is insightfully incoherent. There's a lot of the quaint: we levitated objects again, it was cool I guess; we had occult-fueled Deep Insights into the Universe, none of which I'll record here. And then there's the picturesque, the ridiculous and, like most id writing, the weirdly compelling: seduced by a counselor at my residential treatment center, possessed by a demon named Raul who wants me for my hot bod; bloody orgies and cattle mutilation given long, loving descriptions to break up one-paragraph entries about debate tournaments. The pacing is horrible, the writing worse, Debbie/Tina are interchangeable, but in many ways this is just what I was hoping for. The YA problem novel succeeds because it's titillating; because I'm being told, no, don't, while watching with undisguised fascination the evolving grotesque. And the shape of that grotesque exposes the things that compel and scare us, that are 'problems,' like queer desire and sex and the furor of adolescence. Sparks deserves none of that as praise. This is bad, full stop, and its context unforgivable. But! It was worth the interlibrary loan.

]]> 48915818
By morning, Augustine is himself again, but Jane knows something is deeply wrong at Lindridge Hall, and with the man she has so hastily bound her safety to. Set in a dark-mirror version of post-war England, Starling crafts a new kind of gothic horror from the bones of the beloved canon. This Crimson Peak-inspired story assembles, then upends, every expectation set in place by Shirley Jackson and Rebecca, and will leave readers shaken, desperate to begin again as soon as they are finished.]]> 368 Caitlin Starling 1250272580 Juushika 5 Last to Leave the Room. I don't think the book is perfect (synchronicity becomes an excuse for any plot development; Chapter 0 & the ending are both too neat, although less frustrating than equivalent resolutions in Starling's other books), but I adore how Starling places character development(/relationship development) against speculative systems. This is why the romance doesn't bother me as much as it would: Jane's journey is driven as much by pride and curiosity as it is by her husband, and the way that the key tenants of magic transform that otherwise rushed romance is grounded & defined by flaws, by the limitations to the love. The interpersonal dynamics are more pointedly, delightedly fucked up in Starling's other books, but here, within Jane's narrow, evolving perspective, they feel the most fully realized.


Original review, 2022: A woman makes a marriage of convenience in order to preserve her independence--but her new husband hides tragic secrets at his family home. This is stupidly gothic. That's a compliment, but I sometimes bounce off of modern gothic--I share the desire for an excess of style, but that excess can also render comedic any attempt at horror. So I appreciate those elements that mix this up: the gory details of historical surgery, a weird fiction/Lovecraftian bent, an increasingly developed magic system. The first half is gothic romance/thriller, with effective but transparent, pulpy tension in a string of mysteries and reveals. The second half grows less obvious, more chewy, and reminds me just a smidgen of the Dyachenkos's Vita Nostra: magic is vast and alien; so to comprehend it, Jane must render herself incomprehensible. This is favorite by Starling so far and makes me glad I've kept an eye on her work.]]> 3.19 2021
author: Caitlin Starling
name: Juushika
average rating: 3.19
book published: 2021
rating: 5
read at: 2024/12/11
date added: 2024/12/11
shelves: genre-gothic, genre-horror, genre-weird-and-new-weird, status-borrowed, favorite-and-formative
review:
Reread, 2024: Welcome to five stars. This was a fantastic reread, giving me exactly what I knew I wanted to revisit after reading Last to Leave the Room. I don't think the book is perfect (synchronicity becomes an excuse for any plot development; Chapter 0 & the ending are both too neat, although less frustrating than equivalent resolutions in Starling's other books), but I adore how Starling places character development(/relationship development) against speculative systems. This is why the romance doesn't bother me as much as it would: Jane's journey is driven as much by pride and curiosity as it is by her husband, and the way that the key tenants of magic transform that otherwise rushed romance is grounded & defined by flaws, by the limitations to the love. The interpersonal dynamics are more pointedly, delightedly fucked up in Starling's other books, but here, within Jane's narrow, evolving perspective, they feel the most fully realized.


Original review, 2022: A woman makes a marriage of convenience in order to preserve her independence--but her new husband hides tragic secrets at his family home. This is stupidly gothic. That's a compliment, but I sometimes bounce off of modern gothic--I share the desire for an excess of style, but that excess can also render comedic any attempt at horror. So I appreciate those elements that mix this up: the gory details of historical surgery, a weird fiction/Lovecraftian bent, an increasingly developed magic system. The first half is gothic romance/thriller, with effective but transparent, pulpy tension in a string of mysteries and reveals. The second half grows less obvious, more chewy, and reminds me just a smidgen of the Dyachenkos's Vita Nostra: magic is vast and alien; so to comprehend it, Jane must render herself incomprehensible. This is favorite by Starling so far and makes me glad I've kept an eye on her work.
]]> 58290997 #1 New York Times Bestselling cartoonist Johnnie Christmas and Prism Award Nominee Dante Luiz bring you a haunted tale of love, ghosts, and coffee beans.

Esme, a barista, feels invisible, like a ghost... also, when Esme drinks too much coffee she actually sees ghosts. Yara, the elegant heir to a coffee plantation, is always seen, but only has eyes for Esme. Their world is turned upside down when the strange ghost of an old-world nobleman begs Esme to take his letter from New York City to a haunted coffee farm in Brazil, to reunite him with his lost love of a century ago. Bringing sinister tidings of unrequited love.

Collects the ComiXology original digital graohic novel Crema in print for the first time.]]> 120 Johnnie Christmas 1506726038 Juushika 2 ]]> 3.31 2020
author: Johnnie Christmas
name: Juushika
average rating: 3.31
book published: 2020
rating: 2
read at: 2024/12/11
date added: 2024/12/11
shelves: genre-fantasy, genre-comic, genre-romance, status-borrowed
review:
1.5 stars. When caffeinated, our protagonist can see ghosts; then she meets the owner of the coffee shop where she works. The all coffee all the time aesthetic is gimmicky, but I like the complementary warm wash over the art. This takes inspiration from telenovelas to justify its big, tropey plot beats; an admirable effort. Nonetheless: unrefined, predictable, with an undifferentiated whirlwind romance and hasty, oversized ghost story. Give this a miss.

]]> 210208630 For better or worse, the bodies we inhabit are our homes. But despite the old adage, home isn't always the safest place to be�

Within these pages, Ashley Robin Franklin leads you through the corridors of the uncanny in eight horror comics that are just begging to get under your skin. Whether set in the arid desert or the rain-soaked forest, these stories reveal the fallibilities of flesh that lurk just beneath the surface. A strange desert flower offers an intoxicating balm to grief, a group of friends invoke an old tale by the campfire, and outside a remote farmhouse, something miraculous and terrible falls from the night sky. Bodies are found, lost, celebrated, borrowed, haunted � and irrevocably changed.

The Skin You're In is the definitive collection of Ashley Robin Franklin's horror comics, showcasing her skillful exploration of queer horror and the ways in which our bodies, relationships, and environments affect us straight to the bone. The book collects all her previously published work, such as One Million Tiny Fires and Fruiting Bodies, as well as five never-before-seen comics, including the 100-page graphic novella Contest Winner. It's all packaged in a deluxe fabric-bound hardcover with foil accents. Just be warned: you might want to read this collection with the lights on.]]> 376 Ashley Robin Franklin 8886200412 Juushika 3 3.74 2024
author: Ashley Robin Franklin
name: Juushika
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2024/12/03
date added: 2024/12/10
shelves: genre-comic, genre-horror, genre-short-fiction, status-borrowed
review:
A collection of eight comics, many short stories, one a novella, of queer horror: bodies, social dynamics, to meet or be the monster. I really want to like this, and sometimes do. It opens strong with "One Million Tiny Fires" and the closing novella runs overlong but has a perfect ending, and this is the strength: body horror as transformative, as destructive, as desirable, is beautifully queer and highkey aspirational. But all the other stories, I'd pass on. Short fiction collections often have issues with repetition and variably quality, especially ones like this that visibly grow with the artist. Some of the other plots are interesting, too many spent time with boring problematic men when I'd rather be getting weird with horror, and even at its most polished I'm not crazy about Franklin's art, which has heavy line weights and struggles to convey action; which, frankly, feels messy.
]]> 63051128 The English debut of Spanish cartoonist and illustrator NĂşria Tamarit, Daughters of Snow and Cinders conjures the awesome natural beauty of the frozen north in vibrant color. A rugged adventure story with two strong young women at its heart, this graphic novel offers a poignant message about the urgent need for humanity to overcome our greed and base impulses to be good stewards of the world in which we live and depend on.]]> 216 NĂşria Tamarit 1683967569 Juushika 3
It's narrative that struggles, here. The overland journey is slow and contemplative and shadowed by danger; it's a compelling tone. But the themes of environmentalism and anticolonialism, however well-intended, have no nuance, offering only repetitive, unproductive messaging: all men are dangerous, humans are a blight on the land, etc. Such a letdown in such a gorgeous work.]]> 3.50 2022
author: NĂşria Tamarit
name: Juushika
average rating: 3.50
book published: 2022
rating: 3
read at: 2024/12/10
date added: 2024/12/10
shelves: genre-comic, seasonal-winter, status-borrowed
review:
A young woman follows a goldrush expedition after they leave without her, journeying into distant woods. This is breathtaking: rich colors with such depth, vibrant royal purples and blues, textured shadows and pale snows and the vivid warm tones of blood and fire. It's one of the most beautiful graphic novels I've ever read. Tamarit gives her characters distinguishing injuries and birthmarks that combat same face syndrome and introduce a lot of, well, character.

It's narrative that struggles, here. The overland journey is slow and contemplative and shadowed by danger; it's a compelling tone. But the themes of environmentalism and anticolonialism, however well-intended, have no nuance, offering only repetitive, unproductive messaging: all men are dangerous, humans are a blight on the land, etc. Such a letdown in such a gorgeous work.
]]> 38812871
Bestselling editor Pornsak Pichetshote (Swamp Thing, Daytripper, The Unwritten) makes his comics writing debut alongside artist extraordinaire Aaron Campbell (The Shadow, James Bond: Felix Leiter), award-winning colorist and editor Jos� Villarubia (Batman: Year 100, Spider-Man: Reign), and letterer / designer Jeff Powell (SCALES & SCOUNDRELS).

Collects INFIDEL #1-5
]]> 168 Pornsak Pichetshote 1534308369 Juushika 2 3.83 2018
author: Pornsak Pichetshote
name: Juushika
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2018
rating: 2
read at: 2024/12/06
date added: 2024/12/08
shelves: genre-comic, genre-horror, status-borrowed
review:
2.5 stars. Racism as horror: after what appears to be an extremist attack in her building, a young Muslim woman is haunted by the angers that reside there. The paratext attests that horror & politics in comics are rare and rarely successful, so I guess I'm glad this is making strides with its WoC leads. Otherwise, I'm not impressed: my takeaway from most American comics is that I don't like comics, and this is no exception; I should have DNF'd, but instead struggled through the art and typesetting, and found no scares here, which left just talky politics not strong enough to support the narrative.
]]> 23529
Having proved himself peerless in the arena of reinterpreting superheroes, Alan Moore turned his ever-incisive eye to the squalid, enigmatic world of Jack the Ripper and the Whitechapel murders of 1888. Weighing in at 576 pages, From Hell is certainly the most epic of Moore's works and remarkably and is possibly his finest effort yet in a career punctuated by such glorious highlights as Watchmen and V for Vendetta. Going beyond the myriad existing theories, which range from the sublime to the ridiculous, Moore presents an ingenious take on the slaughter. His Ripper's brutal activities are the epicentre of a conspiracy involving the very heart of the British Establishment, including the Freemasons and The Royal Family. A popular claim, which is transformed through Moore's exquisite and thoroughly gripping vision, of the Ripper crimes being the womb from which the 20th century, so enmeshed in the celebrity culture of violence, received its shocking, visceral birth.

Bolstered by meticulous research that encompasses a wide spectrum of Ripper studies and myths and coupled with his ability to evoke sympathies in such monstrous characters, Moore has created perhaps the finest examination of the Ripper legacy, observing far beyond society's obsessive need to expose Evil's visage. Ultimately, as Moore observes, Jack's identity and his actions are inconsequential to the manner in which society embraced the Fear: "It's about us. It's about our minds and how they dance. Jack mirrors our hysterias. Faceless, he is the receptacle for each new social panic."

Eddie Campbell's stunning black and white artwork, replete with a scratchy, dirty sheen, is perfectly matched to the often-unshakeable intensity of Moore's writing. Between them, each murder is rendered in horrifying detail, providing the book's most unnerving scenes, made more so in uncomfortable, yet lyrical moments as when the villain embraces an eviscerated corpse, craving understanding; pleading that they "are wed in legend, inextricable within eternity".

Though technically a comic, the term hardly begins to describe From Hell's inimitable grandeur and finesse, as it takes the medium to fresh heights of ingenuity and craftsmanship. Moore and Campbell's autopsy on the emaciated corpse of the Ripper myth has divulged a deeply disturbing yet undeniably captivating masterpiece. �Danny Graydon]]> 576 Alan Moore 0861661419 Juushika 1 ]]> 4.19 1999
author: Alan Moore
name: Juushika
average rating: 4.19
book published: 1999
rating: 1
read at: 2024/12/08
date added: 2024/12/08
shelves: genre-comic, genre-historical, status-borrowed, status-dnf
review:
DNF at 10%, and that 10% took me weeks to get through. There are moments in the tone--painfully forthright in the way that tips into dark humor--that could work. If not for the endless asides into conspiracy theorizing; if not for the unappealing art and dense, rambling text. Each page, a headache; I concede to the inevitable and acknowledge I'm not going to get through this.

]]> 195660529
Rowan Sterling should be worrying about normal teenage things like attending college and whether her best friend, Lucas, is maybe more than a friend. . . . Instead, she’s having terrifying visions of blood and violence. As the premonitions increase in number and intensity, Rowan seeks her father’s help, but instead finds herself drugged, kidnapped, and sent to a mysterious facility called Rosewood. It isn’t long before Rowan discovers Rosewood isn’t a boarding school or an it’s a training center for teens with special abilities who are known as Harrows.

Harrows can view the actions of would-be murderers before they commit crimes, and the scientists at Rosewood believe it is their duty to use the Harrows� powers to make the world a safer place. Rowan is immediately drawn to Rosewood’s mission; after all, she lost her mother to a random act of violence two years prior. Empowered by the skills she’s acquired and ready to change the world, Rowan returns home, but when a series of visions lead the Harrows to pursue Lucas, Rowan starts questioning everything she learned at Rosewood—and sets out to protect him at all costs.]]> 240 Kristen Kiesling 141976084X Juushika 3 Minority Report-plots aren't resolved when the system is made a little more forgiving, right, the problem is bigger than that; [spoilers removed], but we can agree it's not super great! So this lets itself down, but I still liked it & would try more by the author.]]> 3.69
author: Kristen Kiesling
name: Juushika
average rating: 3.69
book published:
rating: 3
read at: 2024/11/27
date added: 2024/12/06
shelves: genre-horror, genre-mystery-or-crime, genre-mg-and-ya, genre-comic, status-borrowed
review:
A teen girl discovers she's inherited her mother's ability to sense future killers through hand-to-hand contact, and is shipped off a school to train other Harrows. What a great premise, and the telling is well balanced, troubled home life against budding romance with a likeable love interest against a cozy/ominous boarding school rife with mystery and ethical conundrums and strong supporting characters. Kiesling is willing to get dark, which the premise demands. But this needs another ~100 pages, because the reveals are rushed & neat, the ethics don't fare any better. Minority Report-plots aren't resolved when the system is made a little more forgiving, right, the problem is bigger than that; [spoilers removed], but we can agree it's not super great! So this lets itself down, but I still liked it & would try more by the author.
]]> 184048109
Eddie’s parents may be arguing about the disappearance of his infant brother Danny, but Eddie’s facing a terror all of his own. There’s a strange figure outside that claims it has Danny safe and sound—all Eddie needs to do to get his brother back is open that window.

Eddie’s father is filled with guilt over his relationship with his own lost brother. His mother has been abandoned to navigate her grief and terror alone. His grandmother carries with her a disturbing and all-too-relevant truth about their shared family history. As minutes tick by and hope for Danny grows ever smaller, the very fabric of their world disintegrates, welcoming eldritch terrors of unspeakable provenance to their doorstep.

The family is losing a decades-long struggle against an entity that is not of this world, and its hunger threatens to swallow them whole.]]> 114 Colin Hinckley 1959790927 Juushika 3
Included is a short story: another spooky tree, another remarkably evocative moment, interestingly oblique Noodle Incident treatment of the inciting events, another climax that doesn't quite sell me. Hinckley is doing cool things with narrative structure and has an eye for horror, but his meeting of themes to horror is a little staid for me.]]> 4.01 2023
author: Colin Hinckley
name: Juushika
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2024/12/06
date added: 2024/12/06
shelves: genre-horror, status-borrowed, genre-short-fiction
review:
3.5 stars. The disappearance of an infant presages the return of an entity that has haunted his family for three generations. This opens strong with its horror, no slow build from mundane to speculative, and I admire that; and then the narrative loops back, an unusual, risky structure, introducing new PoVs to explore the backstory of folk horror meeting cosmic horror. Hinckley leans into kinesthetic descriptions, into precise unsettling moments, which I find refreshingly effective (as an aphantasic reader who bounces off of most horror monsters as a result). But the titular Black Lord is too late introduced to a narrative otherwise so exhaustive in developing its lore, and while parts of the family dynamic feel true, family history isn't an anxiety that speaks to me; this most me a little as it went on.

Included is a short story: another spooky tree, another remarkably evocative moment, interestingly oblique Noodle Incident treatment of the inciting events, another climax that doesn't quite sell me. Hinckley is doing cool things with narrative structure and has an eye for horror, but his meeting of themes to horror is a little staid for me.
]]> 122780492 144 Laura PĂ©rez 1683968972 Juushika 4 3.44
author: Laura PĂ©rez
name: Juushika
average rating: 3.44
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/05
date added: 2024/12/05
shelves: genre-comic, status-borrowed, genre-fantasy
review:
3.5 stars. In interlocking narratives and flashbacks, a recent murder case frames the protagonist's memories of her girlfriend's disappearance. The art is exceptionally clean, airy, with a minor (if intentional) case of same face syndrome which makes the abstruse plot a little too hard to follow, especially in the middle sections. But that floaty style, the cultivated inaccessibility, also invites interpretation, without which the vague spiritual/interconnectedness plot might be a little too hand-wavey. I read this twice, seeking more depth and coherency on reread; and it reads fast, its atmosphere is captivating, but I didn't find that payoff.
]]> 61089867
A dark, twisty modern fairytale where three sisters discover they are not exactly all that they seem and evil things really do go bump in the night.

Seventeen-year-old Iris Hollow has always been strange. Something happened to her and her two older sisters when they were children, something they can’t quite remember but that left each of them with an identical half-moon scar at the base of their throats.

Iris has spent most of her teenage years trying to avoid the weirdness that sticks to her like tar. But when her eldest sister, Grey, goes missing under suspicious circumstances, Iris learns just how weird her life can get: horned men start shadowing her, a corpse falls out of her sister’s ceiling, and ugly, impossible memories start to twist their way to the forefront of her mind.

As Iris retraces Grey’s last known footsteps and follows the increasingly bizarre trail of breadcrumbs she left behind, it becomes apparent that the only way to save her sister is to decipher the mystery of what happened to them as children.

The closer Iris gets to the truth, the closer she comes to understanding that the answer is dark and dangerous � and that Grey has been keeping a terrible secret from her for years.

©2021 Krystal M. Sutherland]]> 9 Krystal Sutherland 059334183X Juushika 3
But this is willing to get dark & fantastic, and I appreciate that. It's a slow, overly-broadcasted journey into the speculative, but it has payoff, big spooky fairyland vibes, good; every reveal and consequence is generally as awful as it could possibly be, even better. Grey's character and her stranglehold over her sisters is seductive and empowered and ruthless and toxic, and that messy, compelling heart of the story doubles down on its own weirdness even when the plot resolves too neatly around it.
]]> 3.62 2021
author: Krystal Sutherland
name: Juushika
average rating: 3.62
book published: 2021
rating: 3
read at: 2024/12/01
date added: 2024/12/01
shelves: format-audiobook, genre-fantasy, genre-mg-and-ya, trope-unusuallyintimaterelationship, status-borrowed, genre-horror, genre-mystery-or-crime
review:
3.5 stars. As children, the Hollow sisters disappeared for two weeks and then came back changed; now, the eldest has disappeared again, and her sisters must uncover their past to find her. I struggle with YA, so that I don't hate this is backhanded compliment but compliment nonetheless. It retains YA markers that bug me: Snark's hard to write, Sutherland does a mediocre job, so instead of balancing out the dark fantasy aesthetic it just exaggerates an already exaggerated tone; predictably, a bevy of neat explanations undermines the very intentional liminality.

But this is willing to get dark & fantastic, and I appreciate that. It's a slow, overly-broadcasted journey into the speculative, but it has payoff, big spooky fairyland vibes, good; every reveal and consequence is generally as awful as it could possibly be, even better. Grey's character and her stranglehold over her sisters is seductive and empowered and ruthless and toxic, and that messy, compelling heart of the story doubles down on its own weirdness even when the plot resolves too neatly around it.

]]> 13235673
In our distant future, science will provide access to eternal life. With immortality a universal constant, the concept of crime takes on a new definition, giving rise to the “Philosophical Police�, agents trained to solve conflicts between individuals as well as entire species of aliens who have integrated into our society. When two such species erupt in violence over a crime committed centuries ago, Police agent Elijah must submerge himself in each culture to understand how to overcome their ignorance of each other and bring about peace. Soon, however, he finds himself confronting his own immortality, and examining the concept of death itself�

In a world where death no longer exists, why do so many want to give up on life?

LAST DAYS OF AN IMMORTAL is a classic, cerebral science fiction story in the tradition of JG Ballard, Gattaca, Solaris, and THX 1138.]]> 152 Fabien Vehlmann 1936393441 Juushika 3 ]]> 3.66 2010
author: Fabien Vehlmann
name: Juushika
average rating: 3.66
book published: 2010
rating: 3
read at: 2024/11/27
date added: 2024/11/27
shelves: genre-comic, genre-science-fiction, status-borrowed
review:
In a distant, intergalactic culture, a member of the police-equivalent solves interpersonal and intercultural disputes across space while juggling his relationship with his instanced self and the degradation it causes in his immortal memory. Very cerebral, and made moreso by the understated art, which creates an emotional distance from what's often an emotional text. I'm not a big fan of that approach, and Scott-Clary's Post-Self series does such a good job, and a much more thorny and emotional and nuanced job, with highly speculative instanced identities meeting casefic that I can't help but making the (admittedly niche) comparison to find that this falls short. I still like what it's trying to do, and it's an interesting, quick read, surprisingly dense narrative in a deceptively sparse style.

]]> 626254
Vampire Daniel Blum imagines himself the most ruthless, savage creature in New York City, if not the world. He once feasted on the blood of Nazi Germany and left a string of shattered lovers behind him. But now the usual thrill of seduction and murder has begun to wear off. Until he meets Sybil, the strange former stripper whose mind is the first he’s ever found that he cannot read or manipulate.]]> 361 Jemiah Jefferson 0843949988 Juushika 3
Except ... a lot of excepts. I want more longterm vampire relationships, instead of another falling-in-love, which the first book already had in droves. I want more of the trends revealed across Daniel's interpersonal relationships, loving and murdering en masse and with almost-sympathetic specificity, reliant on and secretly resenting his powers; Sibyl highlights his patterns, but her stranglehold on the plot also overshadows them.

This maintains the delightfully shameless vulgarity and perversity of the first book, so it's still a fun "guilty" pleasure even when unlikable. And it's interesting! But it's not the direction I would have picked for this series. I'll still continue on.
]]> 3.64 2002
author: Jemiah Jefferson
name: Juushika
average rating: 3.64
book published: 2002
rating: 3
read at: 2024/11/26
date added: 2024/11/26
shelves: genre-horror, status-borrowed, trope-unusuallyintimaterelationship, trope-vampire, genre-fantasy
review:
Not long after the events in the first book, Daniel has rebuilt a life for himself as an artist in New York. Enter Sybil, an unusual young woman resistant to his various psychic vampire powers. Jumping into Daniel's PoV is a bold move, because he's a larger than life character even for this series, and maybe more tolerable and convincing as a supporting character. The answer is to pair him with someone even more unhinged. Sibyl, young and insecure and mortal, impulsive and vicious and immune to consequences, is an exaggeration of Daniel, speedrunning his violence with even less justification &, in doing, asking if there is such thing. She's awful, but I don't mind an awful character fulfilling such a complicated motivating role.

Except ... a lot of excepts. I want more longterm vampire relationships, instead of another falling-in-love, which the first book already had in droves. I want more of the trends revealed across Daniel's interpersonal relationships, loving and murdering en masse and with almost-sympathetic specificity, reliant on and secretly resenting his powers; Sibyl highlights his patterns, but her stranglehold on the plot also overshadows them.

This maintains the delightfully shameless vulgarity and perversity of the first book, so it's still a fun "guilty" pleasure even when unlikable. And it's interesting! But it's not the direction I would have picked for this series. I'll still continue on.

]]> 43688352 teeth and growls like a lion? What if it tries to eat him up? And what if the
monster has a mum and dad too? But Dad reassures Amir that if
the monster family comes to play, then Amir might just make a friend
instead.

A timeless tale of monsters under the bed, Grobblechops is based on a
story by the thirteenth-century poet, philosopher and Sufi mystic Rumi.]]> 32 Elizabeth Laird 9781910328 Juushika 3 ]]> 4.08 2019
author: Elizabeth Laird
name: Juushika
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2019
rating: 3
read at: 2024/11/25
date added: 2024/11/25
shelves: genre-art, genre-childrens, status-borrowed
review:
2.5 stars. A befriending of the monster under the bed, which is a productive, endearing process. It's the art that gets me. I love running background details like the teddy bear, and the monster design is a little doughy but certainly unique. But the human figures ... I always struggle with people in picture books, but this is the most off-putting I've ever found them, and combined with the skewed perspectives and proportions I found this the wrong kind of unsettling.

]]> 44025414 32 Erin Barker 1936669773 Juushika 3 ]]> 4.17 2019
author: Erin Barker
name: Juushika
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2019
rating: 3
read at: 2024/11/25
date added: 2024/11/25
shelves: genre-art, genre-childrens, seasonal-autumn, status-borrowed
review:
Adorable illustrations, rich watercolors with an abundance of spoopy, cozy, whimsical autumnal vibes. But it's a counting book, and not a great one: the vocabulary may be too advanced for that age, some panels ("eleven" is the worst offender) aren't great counting material, and the writing is a failed attempted at lyrical. I wish this had picked a direction, either aged down with better counting or, more likely, aged up with a richer narrative, because what's here is lovely to look at but hollow.

]]> 177755
But League politics will not tolerate pride in a refugee people, and the White Wing is under insidious attack. A powerful enemy attempts to brand one unit of the Wing as traitors, discrediting the entire human race.

But the Honor of the Wing is not so easily compromised....]]> 320 Gordon Kendall 0812517709 Juushika 4
(Very much a 3-3.5* book but I liked it, so.)]]> 4.26 1985
author: Gordon Kendall
name: Juushika
average rating: 4.26
book published: 1985
rating: 4
read at: 2019/09/20
date added: 2024/11/22
shelves: genre-science-fiction, status-owned, trope-unusuallyintimaterelationship
review:
A flight within the stoic, ostracized White Wing is challenged when the loss of one of their own coincides with an attempt at political sabotage. I came for this for the group marriage which constitutes the flight, and to my delight it's both textual (despite limitations of being published in 1985, read: no homo) and central to the narrative. The primary tension is the flight's need to hide the intimacy, vulnerability, joy, and even the fact of their marriage, and that setup is contrived--and the book also struggles on a technical level, with headhopping, overacting, and dense early scenes that all stem from an excess of "show, don't tell." But the payoff, although predictable, is hugely gratifying. I eat this stuff up: interpersonal issues hidden within a harsh space opera setting; martyrdom and longing and outsider status; intimacy as weakness, but that weakness as a hidden source of strength. Gordon Kendall is an overtly masculine pseudonym for Shariann Lewitt and Susan Shwartz, which I feel explains a lot: this is written directly from the id, but it's a different id than most sci-fi, and it's an id similar to my own.

(Very much a 3-3.5* book but I liked it, so.)
]]> 61710179 “Five of us sat in a circle doing our best to emulate the girls in The Craft, hoping to unleash some power to take us all away from our home to the place of our dreams. But we weren’t witches. We were five Chicanas living in San Antonio, Texas, one year out of high school.�

One hot summer night, best friends Lourdes, Fernanda, Ana, Perla, and Pauline hold a séance. It’s all fun and games at first, but their tipsy laughter turns to terror when the flames burn straight through their prayer candles and Fernanda starts crawling toward her friends and chanting in Nahuatl, the language of their Aztec ancestors.

Over the next few weeks, shy, modest Fernanda starts acting strangely—smearing herself in black makeup, shredding her hands on rose thorns, sucking sin out of the mouths of the guilty. The local priest is convinced it's a demon, but Lourdes begins to suspect it’s something else—something far more ancient and powerful.

As Father Moreno's obsession with Fernanda grows, Lourdes enlists the help of her “bruja Craft crew� and a professor, Dr. Camacho, to understand what is happening to her friend in this unholy tale of possession-gone-right.]]> 4 V. Castro Juushika 3 3.58 2021
author: V. Castro
name: Juushika
average rating: 3.58
book published: 2021
rating: 3
read at: 2023/12/27
date added: 2024/11/22
shelves: format-audiobook, status-borrowed, seasonal-summer, genre-fantasy, genre-horror, genre-new-adult, trope-unusuallyintimaterelationship
review:
Inverting the usual possession narrative, a group of high school grads summon an indigenous female spirit who brings violent transformation to one of their number. The audio narration of this is bad, injecting an overacted quality that amplifies the clumsy elements of the writing. I would have liked this more in print. Irreverent, honest, on-the-nose but still doing interesting things particularly in the intersections of race/colonialism with pop feminism. It's not subtle, and the revenge fantasy elements and antagonist veer towards hot mess. But it's fun, and the dirtier moments of female sexual empowerment and the more restrained elements in the evolving dynamic between possessor/possessed are engaging.
]]> 2014462 192 Minami Ozaki 3551747806 Juushika 3 4.08 1991
author: Minami Ozaki
name: Juushika
average rating: 4.08
book published: 1991
rating: 3
read at: 2024/02/08
date added: 2024/11/22
shelves: genre-comic, genre-romance, trope-unusuallyintimaterelationship
review:

]]> 401730 Margaret Wise Brown's classic barnyard story is now available in this sturdy board book edition. A lulling text and exquisite illustrations follow the animals' day on the farm as they make their noises, play in the grass, and return to the big red barn to fall sound asleep.]]> 32 Margaret Wise Brown 0694006246 Juushika 3 ]]> 4.19 1956
author: Margaret Wise Brown
name: Juushika
average rating: 4.19
book published: 1956
rating: 3
read at: 2024/03/21
date added: 2024/11/21
shelves: genre-art, genre-childrens, status-borrowed
review:
This is MWB at her most list-y, physical and specific. But the wording is restrained, with only a few evocative lines ("And that is where the children would play, but in this story the children are away, and only the animals are here today"), and the only movement is the transition to night. Hartman's illustrations (1956) are sketchy, red and green against graphite, and grow outright ominous as night comes - memorable, somber. Bond's illustrations (1989) are pretty jank and much cuter, happier, more vibrant and less memorable, although the transition to night, vibrancy faded away, lands cozy rather than creepy. Either way, I'm not crazy about this. I'm not convinced the Hartman illustrations work, but they're just about the only memorable bit of this book.

]]> 237337 32 Margaret Wise Brown 0694016608 Juushika 4 Goodnight Moon. I struggle with repetition in picture books as an adult reader, but the use of it here is surprisingly dense: simple sentences evoking expansive feelings; inverting the order of objects in the art and text to encourage active reading. It's hardly the only picture book where a child's mimicry of the adult world serves as a teaching tool, but it's a solid take on the premise, simultaneously unique and generalized. The art was recolored in 2001 and I wish I could compare it with original (and I wonder, as always, why there isn't more robust documentation of or even study of children's literature!), but if I had to guess I'd say it was to make a perfect color match to Goodnight Moon, because this successfully expands that iconic room into an entire house. This is lovely and engaging, but not necessary; Goodnight Moon still stands strongest alone.]]> 3.42 1949
author: Margaret Wise Brown
name: Juushika
average rating: 3.42
book published: 1949
rating: 4
read at: 2024/03/21
date added: 2024/11/21
shelves: genre-art, genre-childrens, status-borrowed
review:
It's strange to return to such a familiar world without the veil of nostalgia, but it's telling that this doesn't feel like a cheap follow-up to Goodnight Moon. I struggle with repetition in picture books as an adult reader, but the use of it here is surprisingly dense: simple sentences evoking expansive feelings; inverting the order of objects in the art and text to encourage active reading. It's hardly the only picture book where a child's mimicry of the adult world serves as a teaching tool, but it's a solid take on the premise, simultaneously unique and generalized. The art was recolored in 2001 and I wish I could compare it with original (and I wonder, as always, why there isn't more robust documentation of or even study of children's literature!), but if I had to guess I'd say it was to make a perfect color match to Goodnight Moon, because this successfully expands that iconic room into an entire house. This is lovely and engaging, but not necessary; Goodnight Moon still stands strongest alone.
]]> 1123177 32 Margaret Wise Brown 0060244828 Juushika 4 The Sleepy Book aka The Golden Sleepy Book as a two-page spread, which is the reason it feels spread thin over 30 pages. But the illustrations transform this work, doing as much as the text: in vibrant, detailed linocuts with rich back outlines, Wolff creates a distinct sense of place, and the journey from rural farm to nearby jungle to coastal city, with a cast of color, roots this, grounds it, shapes it to bring out the best from MWB's gentle, precise lists. This impressed me.]]> 3.80 1938
author: Margaret Wise Brown
name: Juushika
average rating: 3.80
book published: 1938
rating: 4
read at: 2024/03/20
date added: 2024/11/20
shelves: genre-art, genre-childrens, status-borrowed
review:
As noted elsewhere, this story is also in The Sleepy Book aka The Golden Sleepy Book as a two-page spread, which is the reason it feels spread thin over 30 pages. But the illustrations transform this work, doing as much as the text: in vibrant, detailed linocuts with rich back outlines, Wolff creates a distinct sense of place, and the journey from rural farm to nearby jungle to coastal city, with a cast of color, roots this, grounds it, shapes it to bring out the best from MWB's gentle, precise lists. This impressed me.
]]> 13664900 32 Margaret Wise Brown 1445465833 Juushika 3 The Sleepy Book aka The Golden Sleepy Book as a two-page spread, which is part of the reason it feels spread thin over 30 pages.]]> 4.17 1961
author: Margaret Wise Brown
name: Juushika
average rating: 4.17
book published: 1961
rating: 3
read at: 2024/03/20
date added: 2024/11/20
shelves:
review:
2.5 stars. I'm biased against this style of excessively cute, very modern illustration style, but I'm pleasantly surprised to find I don't hate it here. This is a very basic bedtime book, rhythmic, gentle, almost motionless, and the very textured/fluffy art enlivens what could be a vapid cuteness. As noted elsewhere, this story is also in The Sleepy Book aka The Golden Sleepy Book as a two-page spread, which is part of the reason it feels spread thin over 30 pages.
]]> 7102943

From the Hardcover edition.]]> 48 Margaret Wise Brown 0375927794 Juushika 3 The Whispering Rabbit is better as a standalone; but Goodnight Little One aka Little Donkey Close Your Eyes, which can be read as standalones, feel a little slight and this is why: they could also just be two pages in a book of lullabies. The 1975 edition is the more complete, and it's the only place I've seen The Dreaming Bunny, which is worth seeking out, dreamy and beautiful with a message (everyone is "contributing," even if their contributions are unseen or undervalued) that I appreciate.]]> 3.57 1948
author: Margaret Wise Brown
name: Juushika
average rating: 3.57
book published: 1948
rating: 3
read at: 2024/03/20
date added: 2024/11/20
shelves: genre-childrens, genre-art, status-borrowed
review:
Various bedtime stories, songs, and poems, the contents varying between editions, with some of these longer works published as standalone texts elsewhere, all of which makes this a beast to review. The compact, collected work is convenient and allows for very short work that couldn't stand alone, but lacks the expansive, satisfying, fully illustrated read-along format of a picture book. So The Whispering Rabbit is better as a standalone; but Goodnight Little One aka Little Donkey Close Your Eyes, which can be read as standalones, feel a little slight and this is why: they could also just be two pages in a book of lullabies. The 1975 edition is the more complete, and it's the only place I've seen The Dreaming Bunny, which is worth seeking out, dreamy and beautiful with a message (everyone is "contributing," even if their contributions are unseen or undervalued) that I appreciate.
]]> 6072802 Margaret Wise Brown Juushika 3
Weisgard illus. 1951 are much more saturated and dark, with a bold graphic quality. Bosson illus. 1997 is pastel, cute, a little wonky, stylistically reminiscent of Home for a Bunny, and the text is edited from the original. It's a simplification (compare: "Time passed: hours and minute and nights and days. And Pussy Willow grew more fur." (1951) vs "Nights passed and days passed and Pussy Willow grew more fur." (1997)) and cuts down on the number of encounters with other creatures. I don't mind the latter so much, as it makes for an easier read for a young audience, but MWB's voice is so much more distinctive in the original; the rewrite lacks detail and character.
]]> 3.54 1951
author: Margaret Wise Brown
name: Juushika
average rating: 3.54
book published: 1951
rating: 3
read at: 2024/03/19
date added: 2024/11/19
shelves: genre-art, genre-childrens, seasonal-spring, status-borrowed
review:
Very charming, not very deep, teaching the wheel of the year, ending, delightfully, with the line "Everything that anyone would ever look for is usually where they find it." But I get grumpy about outdoor cat narratives even if they were published in 1951, and this doesn't have enough to counterbalance in my eyes.

Weisgard illus. 1951 are much more saturated and dark, with a bold graphic quality. Bosson illus. 1997 is pastel, cute, a little wonky, stylistically reminiscent of Home for a Bunny, and the text is edited from the original. It's a simplification (compare: "Time passed: hours and minute and nights and days. And Pussy Willow grew more fur." (1951) vs "Nights passed and days passed and Pussy Willow grew more fur." (1997)) and cuts down on the number of encounters with other creatures. I don't mind the latter so much, as it makes for an easier read for a young audience, but MWB's voice is so much more distinctive in the original; the rewrite lacks detail and character.

]]> 216330 24 Margaret Wise Brown 0064432270 Juushika 4 Goodnight Moon it's a fascinating alternate example of the same general approach.]]> 4.09 1949
author: Margaret Wise Brown
name: Juushika
average rating: 4.09
book published: 1949
rating: 4
read at: 2024/03/19
date added: 2024/11/19
shelves: genre-childrens, genre-art, status-borrowed, genre-classic
review:
This is just poetry, isn't it! I appreciate the arbitrary simplicity of each importance, fundamentally non-definitive and therefore open to counter-definition, to reader involvement. The bold art and emphasis on graphic design compliments this nicely; there's a poster vibe to each panel. Brown has a penchant for list-oriented, experimental work, and while this is no Goodnight Moon it's a fascinating alternate example of the same general approach.
]]> 194883 24 Margaret Wise Brown 0307001385 Juushika 4 ]]> 3.93 1965
author: Margaret Wise Brown
name: Juushika
average rating: 3.93
book published: 1965
rating: 4
read at: 2024/03/19
date added: 2024/11/19
shelves: genre-childrens, genre-art, status-borrowed
review:
This is so cute that it made me lose my mind a little. Sweet, pastel, adorable art (Szekeres illus.), but not obnoxiously so. But the narrative is what won me: the invitation to creative invention which is so small, so gentle, so quiet, so thoughtful and sweet is a delightful, gentle premise and must make for a great bedtime book.

]]> 42505366
It started slow. First the teachers died one by one. Then it began to infect the students, turning their bodies strange and foreign. Now, cut off from the rest of the world and left to fend for themselves on their island home, the girls don't dare wander outside the school's fence, where the Tox has made the woods wild and dangerous. They wait for the cure they were promised as the Tox seeps into everything.

But when Byatt goes missing, Hetty will do anything to find her, even if it means breaking quarantine and braving the horrors that lie beyond the fence. And when she does, Hetty learns that there's more to their story, to their life at Raxter, than she could have ever thought true.]]> 357 Rory Power 0525645586 Juushika 4
It makes for a wildly vacillating reread: so often flawed, too easy, unconvincing; phenomenal premise, great cast, beautiful setting*, and the different relationships different characters have with the tox, with their isolation, with their probable fate is captivating. So much to love, and, having written about/for this, I love those parts with an intensity I never would have expected after my first reading, and carry that adoration back the source material. Enough so that I'm moving this from 2 to 4 stars. I'm glad that I can appreciate this, now, because when it it's good it's very very good & exactly my kind of thing.

* Except that most things about how the school is run strain my suspension of disbelief. Boat shift doesn't do watches? Even though they're picked for their combat aptitude? Cliques run the school in a student body this small and diverse in age? Everyone sleeps in separate the dorm rooms despite the lack of heating? doubt.gif


Original review, 2022: A girls' school is quarantined after the students become infected with the Tox, which mutates their bodies in unusual, deadly ways. I love me some messy queer girls and love a delightful excess of body horror, especially the organic mutation variety--the body transforming and betraying, growing powerful and wild, maps beautifully to adolescence. But I don't like anything else about this. The action sequences and plot dumps are rocky, and the tone is all grimdark, all the time; I wish we saw more of the school-as-community or even more of the romance to provide some contrast. Honestly, my issue here is probably with genre. YA doesn't work for me, and it turns out this isn't an exception: there's so much room for characters to be messy, unforgiving, and selfish, which I like in theory, but which in a first person present tense teen tableau mostly bores me.]]> 3.46 2019
author: Rory Power
name: Juushika
average rating: 3.46
book published: 2019
rating: 4
read at: 2024/11/19
date added: 2024/11/19
shelves: genre-horror, genre-mg-and-ya, status-borrowed, favorite-and-formative, format-audiobook, trope-unusuallyintimaterelationship
review:
Reread, 2024: This is a totally different experience upon reread, approaching it through the lens of "fell down a transformative works rabbithole." It recasts my frustrations with this book, making it clear that my issue is less character choices, as I first diagnosed, and more the combination of big speculative/dystopic premise, a cast of flawed and prickly teen girls, and the urge to cram in every action & every explanation. It's an issue of balance and pacing: the protagonists uncover so many plot points and directly cause numerous disasters and get together/break up/get back together and have multiple discoveries/closures within just a few days' time, and far be it for me to criticize a speculative work for its cogent, complete worldbuilding, but I don't need to know every how and why when that space could instead give breathing room to character arcs or focus instead on the experience of bodily transformation.

It makes for a wildly vacillating reread: so often flawed, too easy, unconvincing; phenomenal premise, great cast, beautiful setting*, and the different relationships different characters have with the tox, with their isolation, with their probable fate is captivating. So much to love, and, having written about/for this, I love those parts with an intensity I never would have expected after my first reading, and carry that adoration back the source material. Enough so that I'm moving this from 2 to 4 stars. I'm glad that I can appreciate this, now, because when it it's good it's very very good & exactly my kind of thing.

* Except that most things about how the school is run strain my suspension of disbelief. Boat shift doesn't do watches? Even though they're picked for their combat aptitude? Cliques run the school in a student body this small and diverse in age? Everyone sleeps in separate the dorm rooms despite the lack of heating? doubt.gif


Original review, 2022: A girls' school is quarantined after the students become infected with the Tox, which mutates their bodies in unusual, deadly ways. I love me some messy queer girls and love a delightful excess of body horror, especially the organic mutation variety--the body transforming and betraying, growing powerful and wild, maps beautifully to adolescence. But I don't like anything else about this. The action sequences and plot dumps are rocky, and the tone is all grimdark, all the time; I wish we saw more of the school-as-community or even more of the romance to provide some contrast. Honestly, my issue here is probably with genre. YA doesn't work for me, and it turns out this isn't an exception: there's so much room for characters to be messy, unforgiving, and selfish, which I like in theory, but which in a first person present tense teen tableau mostly bores me.
]]> 58724737
We are surrounded by death. It is in our news, our nursery rhymes, our true-crime podcasts. Yet from a young age, we are told that death is something to be feared. How are we supposed to know what we’re so afraid of, when we are never given the chance to look?

Fueled by a childhood fascination with death, journalist Hayley Campbell searches for answers in the people who make a living by working with the dead. Along the way, she encounters mass fatality investigators, embalmers, and a former executioner who is responsible for ending sixty-two lives. She meets gravediggers who have already dug their own graves, visits a cryonics facility in Michigan, goes for late-night Chinese with a homicide detective, and questions a man whose job it is to make crime scenes disappear.

Through Campbell’s incisive and candid interviews with these people who see death every day, she Why would someone choose this kind of life? Does it change you as a person? And are we missing something vital by letting death remain hidden? A dazzling work of cultural criticism, All the Living and the Dead weaves together reportage with memoir, history, and philosophy, to offer readers a fascinating look into the psychology of Western death.]]> 288 Hayley Campbell 1250281849 Juushika 4 ]]> 4.25 2022
author: Hayley Campbell
name: Juushika
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2024/11/18
date added: 2024/11/18
shelves: format-audiobook, genre-non-fiction, genre-non-fiction-morbid, status-borrowed
review:
I'm of two minds on this one. I read a lot about death work, as one does. Campbell's pool of subjects is broad, but the category is broader; some of her picks feel chosen for novelty more than representation, but some (specifically bereavement midwives) were genuinely new to me and captivating. Campbell structures the book chronologically in order to explore her own changing relationship with death through the course of her research; and she turns an open mind to a diversity of experiences and, fundamentally, coping mechanisms. All good. And all flawed, as the personal anecdotes are overbearing but sympathetic, and the human interest focus is unreliably applied, hypercritical one moment, complacent the next (the section on the Mayo Clinic filled me with concern and then rage, as Campbell blithely agrees, yes, fatphobia is probably a good and necessary training tool for medical professionals!). I read about death work for much the same reason Campbell was compelled to write about it, so of course I enjoyed this: many morbid curiosities answered, complicated relationships with death given compassionate room, good stuff, my jam; but, occasionally, frustrating.

]]> 61420120 Sly, surprising, and razor-sharp, Natural Beauty follows a young musician into an elite, beauty-obsessed world where perfection comes at a staggering cost.

Our narrator produces a sound from the piano no one else at the Conservatory can. She employs a technique she learned from her parents—also talented musicians—who fled China in the wake of the Cultural Revolution. But when an accident leaves her parents debilitated, she abandons her future for a job at a high-end beauty and wellness store in New York City.

Holistik is known for its remarkable products and procedures—from remoras that suck out cheap Botox to eyelash extensions made of spider silk—and her new job affords her entry into a world of privilege and a long-awaited sense of belonging. She becomes transfixed by Helen, the niece of Holistik’s charismatic owner, and the two strike up a friendship that hazily veers into more. All the while, our narrator is plied with products that slim her thighs, smooth her skin, and lighten her hair. But beneath these creams and tinctures lies something sinister.

A piercing, darkly funny debut, Natural Beauty explores questions of consumerism, self-worth, race, and identity—and leaves readers with a shocking and unsettling truth.]]> 272 Ling Ling Huang 0593472926 Juushika 3 genre-horror ]]> 3.79 2023
author: Ling Ling Huang
name: Juushika
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2024/11/18
date added: 2024/11/18
shelves: genre-horror
review:
I didn't love this when it felt like a hyperbolic satire of the beauty industry, but that was mostly a personal disconnect between tone and reader; I liked this less when it developed a speculative plot, which exchanges the oversized strangeness for overexplained answers. It's still fine. The focus on race elevates it, providing what character and depth of commentary there is. But this is a debut and feels like it: interesting style, but clumsy execution.

]]> 54470507
Rosa Parks was often described as a sweet and reticent elderly woman whose tired feet caused her to defy segregation on Montgomery’s city buses, and whose supposedly solitary, spontaneous act sparked the 1955 bus boycott that gave birth to the civil rights movement. The truth of who Rosa Parks was and what really lay beneath the 1955 boycott is far different from anything previously written.

In this important book, Danielle McGuire writes about the rape in 1944 of a twenty-four-year-old mother and sharecropper, Recy Taylor, who strolled toward home after an evening of singing and praying at the Rock Hill Holiness Church in Abbeville, Alabama. Seven white men, armed with knives and shotguns, ordered the young woman into their green Chevrolet, raped her, and left her for dead. The president of the local NAACP branch office sent his best investigator and organizer—Rosa Parks—to Abbeville. In taking on this case, Parks launched a movement that exposed a ritualized history of sexual assault against black women and added fire to the growing call for change.]]> 11 Danielle L. McGuire 0593152077 Juushika 5 ]]> 4.50 2010
author: Danielle L. McGuire
name: Juushika
average rating: 4.50
book published: 2010
rating: 5
read at: 2024/07/16
date added: 2024/11/16
shelves: format-audiobook, genre-historical, genre-memoir-and-biography, genre-non-fiction, status-borrowed
review:
This is one of the most difficult books I've read, emotionally; and I've read a fair bit of true crime which intentionally places specific cases within the cultural context that birthed them; but this is many cases, spanning decades, and it's a brutal read. Like much academic writing, there's an excess of signposting and repetition; and, because the message is so emphatic, the repetition can make it feel preachy. But who cares. This is a crucial reframing of the historical narrative, centering the ubiquity of black women's experiences with sexual violence, using it to chart the changing tides of the civil rights movement and to uncover the formative role women played in building it--a necessary reclamation.

]]> 14686 240 Lord Dunsany 034543191X Juushika 5 ]]> 3.82 1924
author: Lord Dunsany
name: Juushika
average rating: 3.82
book published: 1924
rating: 5
read at: 2024/06/16
date added: 2024/11/16
shelves: genre-fantasy, genre-classic, format-free-ebook, status-owned, seasonal-spring, seasonal-winter, seasonal-autumn
review:
4.5 stars, rounded up for being very my thing. The chief citizens of an obscure village petition their king to put them on the map by sending the prince to fairyland, there to win the hand of a fairy princess and bring magic to the world. In a word, magical--which of course is the point, but magic is hard to write, magic which feels truly more-than-mundane, truly other. And this manages, primarily by inhabiting liminal spaces, boundaries crossed, worlds intermixing: bringing the alien beauty of fairyland into the fields we know is as crucial as the journey the other way, the vivacity and changeability of the moral world a necessary counterpoint to the danger and still beauty of fairyland. The plot rambles, wandering that borderland as it follows its two and a half plot threads, but it's as accessible as any modern mythic fiction/mythpunk. Transporting, funny, beautiful; more about premise than characters, but with memorable characters. This is on my reread list, bookmarked for spring or autumn or even winter: it has an indulgent, evocative voice that lends well to any seasonal setting and evokes many.

]]> 62627863
Gaspar is six years old when the Order first come for him. For years, they have exploited his father's ability to commune with the dead and the demonic, presiding over macabre rituals where the unwanted and the disappeared are tortured and executed, sacrificed to the Darkness. Now they want a successor. Nothing will stop the Order, nothing is beyond them. Surrounded by horrors, can Gaspar break free?

Spanning the brutal decades of Argentina's military dictatorship and its aftermath, Our Share of Night is a haunting, thrilling novel of broken families, cursed inheritances, and the sacrifices a father will make to help his son escape his destiny.]]> 736 Mariana EnrĂ­quez 1783789689 Juushika 5 ]]> 4.00 2019
author: Mariana EnrĂ­quez
name: Juushika
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2019
rating: 5
read at: 2024/11/16
date added: 2024/11/16
shelves: genre-fantasy, genre-horror, genre-historical, status-borrowed, trope-unusuallyintimaterelationship
review:
A father fights to free his son from the grip of a powerful cult and dark figure that they summon. This is long, and long always makes me worry about bloat; but there isn't much here that I'd trim back. A family saga, it unfolds in pieces, in perspectives, unlocking like a puzzlebox new information about the family, the substantial worldbuilding, and the cultural context. The focus on the perpetuation of power is ruthless, with more triggers than I could list here, but it's character-focused, not preachy, and the speculative premise gives momentum to what might otherwise be a depressing slog. I loved this: devastating, tender, captivating; one of my best reads of the year.

]]> 61484875 In this graphic novel by Emily Carroll, a young woman marries a kind dentist only to discover a dark mystery surrounding his former wife’s death.

After many lonely years, Abby’s just gotten married. She met her new husband―a recently widowed dentist―when he arrived in town with his young daughter seeking a new start. Although it’s strange living in the shadow of her predecessor, Abby does her best to be a good wife and mother. But the more she learns about her new husband’s first wife, the more things don’t add up, and Abby starts to wonder...was Sheila’s death really by natural causes?

As Abby sinks deeper into confusion, Sheila’s memory seems to become a force all its own, ensnaring Abby in a mystery that leaves her obsessed, fascinated, and desperately in love for the first time in her life.]]> 256 Emily Carroll 125025552X Juushika 4 The Low, Low Woods, Squad, The Deep Dark: all phenomenal concepts sincerely explored; but all too simple or too solved in a way that, instead of the conceit extending the issue of identity, it somehow pulls it neat and tight and resolved, which doesn't resonate with me.

And then A Guest in the House, which is distinctly not that. If anything, the resolution is too many twists not quite resolved, but I'll take that over the alternative. I still have a grip on the story, and the fact that there is no clear, solvable line from haunting to identity to plot reveals to resolution is what I've been missing in other similar stories. It keeps things weird, keeps things thorny and complicated, which does resonate. When I Arrived at the Castle does it better, is more consistent in tone & better plotted, but I like the contrast here of the protagonist's pedestrian daily life and the strangeness of her inner world.
]]> 4.06 2023
author: Emily Carroll
name: Juushika
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/11/16
date added: 2024/11/16
shelves: genre-comic, genre-horror, trope-unusuallyintimaterelationship
review:
4.5 stars. Our protagonist finds her new marriage haunted by memories of her husband's first wife. I've been mildly dissatisfied a number of "speculative metaphors for issues of female/queer identity" narratives lately, specifically graphic novels. I'm thinking of The Low, Low Woods, Squad, The Deep Dark: all phenomenal concepts sincerely explored; but all too simple or too solved in a way that, instead of the conceit extending the issue of identity, it somehow pulls it neat and tight and resolved, which doesn't resonate with me.

And then A Guest in the House, which is distinctly not that. If anything, the resolution is too many twists not quite resolved, but I'll take that over the alternative. I still have a grip on the story, and the fact that there is no clear, solvable line from haunting to identity to plot reveals to resolution is what I've been missing in other similar stories. It keeps things weird, keeps things thorny and complicated, which does resonate. When I Arrived at the Castle does it better, is more consistent in tone & better plotted, but I like the contrast here of the protagonist's pedestrian daily life and the strangeness of her inner world.

]]> 6146042 Catherine, a spirited and inquisitive young woman of good family, narrates in diary form the story of her fourteenth year—the year 1290. A Newbery Honor Book.

]]> 0 Karen Cushman 0788795201 Juushika 4 ]]> 3.79 1994
author: Karen Cushman
name: Juushika
average rating: 3.79
book published: 1994
rating: 4
read at: 2024/06/15
date added: 2024/11/15
shelves: genre-historical, status-borrowed, format-audiobook, genre-mg-and-ya
review:
Our protagonist is thirteen in 1290, navigating life as the marriageable but spirited daughter of minor nobleman. This is a reread from my youth, but all I remembered going in was vague positive impressions, maybe that I liked the diary format. As an adult reader: I love the diary format. I'm a sucker for a justified first-person narrative, and no better justification than a journal spiced by cultural minutia and calendar-building elements, like marking time through Saint's Days. The details are dubiously accurate I'm sure, but it grounds the narrative in its setting; and, appropriately, Birdy doesn't manage some miraculous escape from her society, but finds a measure of safety and hope within it. Along the spectrum of period pieces where the heroine struggles with her contemporary social restrictions, this one is less rather than more egregious. I don't like the secondary theme of finding the hidden depths of/forgiveness for abusive family members, but it's a prevalent arc in YA, so I can overlook it. Sincerely a fun read; I'm glad I came back to this one.

]]> 125238826
Cover art by Kate Blairstone.]]> 125 Danger Slater Juushika 2 ]]> 3.71
author: Danger Slater
name: Juushika
average rating: 3.71
book published:
rating: 2
read at: 2024/11/15
date added: 2024/11/15
shelves: genre-weird-and-new-weird, genre-horror, status-borrowed
review:
Newlyweds find themselves trapped in their new home by an enthusiastic, couch-eating, floor-eating, flesh-eating mold. Novellas more than novels can really commit: bound by length, they're freed to get weird. And this is weird! It's also funny, with in-your-face millennial anxieties and shouty millennial humor, and I don't have a sense of humor so, predictably, this didn't work for me. Intriguing publishing house & I'll check out their other offerings, phenomenal interior illustrations, but I should have put this down as soon as the tone started to bug me, because it only gets more exaggerated as the premise does.

]]> 63122255 72 Blue Delliquanti Juushika 4 3.58 2022
author: Blue Delliquanti
name: Juushika
average rating: 3.58
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2024/10/09
date added: 2024/11/15
shelves: genre-comic, status-borrowed, trope-unusuallyintimaterelationship
review:
A self-defense trainer meets a former student under different circumstances, beginning an evolving, complicated relationship. This is a dense graphic novella, incredibly nuanced in its depiction of queer people and relationships and power dynamics and the internalized narrative of gendered violence, set in the early days of COVID lockdown & its social fallout. The ending tends perhaps too far in that direction (dense; sociopolitical), but I won't shun a graphic novel that immediately demands a second reading, and repays the effort.
]]> 175299123
Lives are interwoven and transformed forever when pacts are drawn, deals are made, and when hatred is left unrestrained.

Some will succumb to the darkness that lurks in the cellar of Mr. Heart Crowley’s home, others will resist, and some will face a truly remarkable being—creator of tides, vessel of infinity, eater of darkness.]]> Eric LaRocca 1666634379 Juushika 1 genre-horror, status-borrowed Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke was so silly; reader, I still think about it all the time), but this is simply that bad. It's a first draft with an ISBN, laden with clumsy, sometimes competing metaphors and overwrought interior views, following two disconnected narratives which unite only in the final pages, one going Lovecraftian cult, the other going hate crimes and on-page sexual violence. And the thing is, I get it. These anxieties, about disability and disfigurement, sexuality and social isolation, rape and God and the bonds & violence that exist within/around the queer community, are compelling, are discomforting, and could be refined into ... something. But they're not, here. Exploitation is as exploitation does, I don't really have an issue with what's depicted (except the ableism, which is straight-up Bad); it's just, to what purpose? Shock, yes; gestures at pretension or depth, but somehow with even less refinement that LaRocca's usual, signifying a "you tried, kind of," which in a published book is approximately nothing.]]> 2.70 2023
author: Eric LaRocca
name: Juushika
average rating: 2.70
book published: 2023
rating: 1
read at: 2024/10/01
date added: 2024/11/14
shelves: genre-horror, status-borrowed
review:
The rating on this one made me expect that other readers just didn't get LaRocca's queer exploitation horror; I should have actually read the reviews, because we're all picking this up for the same reasons (Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke was so silly; reader, I still think about it all the time), but this is simply that bad. It's a first draft with an ISBN, laden with clumsy, sometimes competing metaphors and overwrought interior views, following two disconnected narratives which unite only in the final pages, one going Lovecraftian cult, the other going hate crimes and on-page sexual violence. And the thing is, I get it. These anxieties, about disability and disfigurement, sexuality and social isolation, rape and God and the bonds & violence that exist within/around the queer community, are compelling, are discomforting, and could be refined into ... something. But they're not, here. Exploitation is as exploitation does, I don't really have an issue with what's depicted (except the ableism, which is straight-up Bad); it's just, to what purpose? Shock, yes; gestures at pretension or depth, but somehow with even less refinement that LaRocca's usual, signifying a "you tried, kind of," which in a published book is approximately nothing.
]]> 195263612 From Molly Knox Ostertag, writer-illustrator, comes a darkly beautiful story of identity, family, love, loss, and magic.

Everyone has secrets. Mags’s has teeth.

Magdalena Herrera is about to graduate high school, but she already feels like an adult with serious responsibilities: caring for her ailing grandmother; working a part-time job; clandestine makeouts with a girl who has a boyfriend. And then there’s her secret, which pulls her into the basement each night, drains her of energy, and leaves her bleeding. A secret that could hurt and even kill if it ever got out -- like it did once before.

So Mags keeps her head down, isolated in her small desert community. That is, until her childhood friend Nessa comes back to town, bringing vivid memories of the past, an intoxicating glimpse of the future, and a secret of her own. Mags won’t get attached, of course. She’s always been strong enough to survive without anyone’s help.

But when the darkness starts to close in on them both, Mags will have to drag her secret into the daylight, and choose between risking everything... or having nothing left to lose.]]> 480 Molly Knox Ostertag 1338839993 Juushika 4 4.34 2024
author: Molly Knox Ostertag
name: Juushika
average rating: 4.34
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/11/14
date added: 2024/11/14
shelves: genre-comic, genre-fantasy, genre-romance, status-borrowed
review:
3.5 stars, rounded up. Our protagonist keeps the world at a distance because a secret burden waits for her under the floorboards of her family home. Beautiful art, effective use of color, evocative setting; compelling read, with a slowly evolving mystery and convincing emotional landscape; earnest in its queer cast and the room it allows for imperfect but optimistic arcs. And a little too sweet, for me. I get frustrated by "my identity issues are embodied by this unsolvable and very real speculative danger; oops, nevermind, danger resolved through-self acceptance!" - I get what motivates that drive towards resolution, but I find it gently alienating and it lacks (no pun intended re: the book's content) teeth.
]]> 220636610
Protect him. Lie for him. Kill for him.

High school senior Andrew Perrault finds refuge in the twisted fairytales that he writes for the only person who can ground him to reality—Thomas Rye, the boy with perpetually ink-stained hands and hair like autumn leaves. And with his twin sister, Dove, inexplicably keeping him at a cold distance upon their return to Wickwood Academy, Andrew finds himself leaning on his friend even more.

But something strange is going on with Thomas. His abusive parents have mysteriously vanished, and he arrives at school with blood on his sleeve. Thomas won’t say a word about it, and shuts down whenever Andrew tries to ask him questions. Stranger still, Thomas is haunted by something, and he seems to have lost interest in his artwork—whimsically macabre sketches of the monsters from Andrew’s wicked stories.

Desperate to figure out what’s wrong with his friend, Andrew follows Thomas into the off-limits forest one night and catches him fighting a nightmarish monster—Thomas’s drawings have come to life and are killing anyone close to him. To make sure no one else dies, the boys battle the monsters every night. But as their obsession with each other grows stronger, so do the monsters, and Andrew begins to fear that the only way to stop the creatures might be to destroy their creator…]]> 9 C.G. Drews 1470371766 Juushika 2
Because there's a kernel of something here which I adore. It's at the heart of that tortured artist forest prince nonsense and it's in the way that asexual desire scales back the importance of sex to focus instead on other forms of ardent expression: violence, entwinement, codependent need. It doesn't have to be less cringe to be good reading - the cringe, the raw idealization and projection, is a strength - but it has to be better written. I find this a lot when I dip my toe into YA: the clumsy balance of captivating dynamic to poor writing breaks my heart. This makes me want to reread The Wicker King, which is incredibly similar in premise & dynamic but which I remember fondly.
]]> 3.77 2024
author: C.G. Drews
name: Juushika
average rating: 3.77
book published: 2024
rating: 2
read at: 2024/11/14
date added: 2024/11/14
shelves: genre-fantasy, genre-horror, seasonal-autumn, status-borrowed, format-audiobook, trope-unusuallyintimaterelationship, genre-romance
review:
2.5 stars. Best friends at boarding school are hounded by monsters born of their art. This unforgivably overwritten, with one extra adjective in every sentence and dialog that apes that narrative voice, everything tortured metaphors about forest thorns and unrequited love and the monstrous self. I desperately want it to be scaled back: that language; the talky identity issues, which overflow with convenient GSA meetings and coming-outs where our protagonist explains he's this type of ace but all ace people are different and valid!!, the twist and [spoilers removed] resolution.

Because there's a kernel of something here which I adore. It's at the heart of that tortured artist forest prince nonsense and it's in the way that asexual desire scales back the importance of sex to focus instead on other forms of ardent expression: violence, entwinement, codependent need. It doesn't have to be less cringe to be good reading - the cringe, the raw idealization and projection, is a strength - but it has to be better written. I find this a lot when I dip my toe into YA: the clumsy balance of captivating dynamic to poor writing breaks my heart. This makes me want to reread The Wicker King, which is incredibly similar in premise & dynamic but which I remember fondly.

]]> 1095949
For Ricari's is the world of the undead, the vampire, a world far beyond the myths and legends that the living think they know - a world of cold-blooded slaughter more horrifying than the living could suspect. From the nightclubs of San Francisco to a deserted Hollywood hotel known as Rotting Hall, the denizens of this land of darkness hold sway over the night. And as seductive and erotic as these predators may be, Ariane will soon discover that a little knowledge can be a very dangerous thing indeed.]]> 288 Jemiah Jefferson 0843948302 Juushika 4 Lost Souls and paranormal romance: not as gritty or amoral as Brite, but sharing Brite's aesthetics, plenty thorny as questions of vampire morality/mortality ought to be, and glossed by an indulgence of sex. I plowed through this and will probably try the sequels.]]> 3.68 2001
author: Jemiah Jefferson
name: Juushika
average rating: 3.68
book published: 2001
rating: 4
read at: 2024/11/14
date added: 2024/11/14
shelves: genre-fantasy, genre-horror, genre-romance, genre-erotica, status-borrowed, trope-vampire, trope-unusuallyintimaterelationship
review:
How I became a vampire by falling in love with four disparately sexy guys and having a lot of crazy sex: the novel. I've been an avid reader of idfic since, oh, forever, and never landed such a motherlode in trad publishing. Is it too much of a good thing? Absolutely. This is fanfic rules applied to OCs, ridiculous and masturbatory; it feels like it could have posted on LJ in serial installments. And it's great. The total commitment is eminently satisfying: love, bound up in weird psychic vampire mind control powers, examined in depth from radically different angles via multiple overlapping relationships. File this between Lost Souls and paranormal romance: not as gritty or amoral as Brite, but sharing Brite's aesthetics, plenty thorny as questions of vampire morality/mortality ought to be, and glossed by an indulgence of sex. I plowed through this and will probably try the sequels.
]]> 5890 Librarian note: Alternate covers can be found here and here.

'In one moment, every drop of blood in my body was brought to a stop... There, as if it had that moment sprung out of the earth, stood the figure of a solitary Woman, dressed from head to foot in white'

The Woman in White famously opens with Walter Hartright's eerie encounter on a moonlit London road. Engaged as a drawing master to the beautiful Laura Fairlie, Walter becomes embroiled in the sinister intrigues of Sir Percival Glyde and his 'charming' friend Count Fosco, who has a taste for white mice, vanilla bonbons, and poison. Pursuing questions of identity and insanity along the paths and corridors of English country houses and the madhouse, The Woman in White is the first and most influential of the Victorian genre that combined Gothic horror with psychological realism.

Matthew Sweet's introduction explores the phenomenon of Victorian 'sensation' fiction, and discusses Wilkie Collins's biographical and societal influences. Included in this edition are appendices on theatrical adaptations of the novel and its serialisation history.]]> 672 Wilkie Collins Juushika 4 ]]> 4.00 1859
author: Wilkie Collins
name: Juushika
average rating: 4.00
book published: 1859
rating: 4
read at: 2024/11/11
date added: 2024/11/11
shelves: genre-classic, format-free-ebook, genre-gothic, genre-mystery-or-crime, status-owned
review:
4.5 stars. This is overlong, absolutely, and the epistolary format is to blame but it's also the book's great strength, as it roots a story of contrived schemes and mistaken identity firmly in the characters: what they know, which is often a step behind the reader's larger picture and trope awareness, a distance which is frustrating but abundant with gothic tension; what they record or omit, and for whom; what they feel and who they are. And they're remarkable characters, particularly Fosco and Marian (Marian, best beloved).

]]> 63336920
For hundreds of years the Interprovincial Medical Institute has grown by taking root in young minds and shaping them into doctors, replacing every human practitioner of medicine. The Institute is here to help humanity, to cure and to cut, to cradle and protect the species from the apocalyptic horrors their ancestors unleashed.

In the frozen north, the Institute’s body will discover a competitor for its rung at the top of the evolutionary ladder. A parasite is spreading through the baron’s castle, already a dark pit of secrets, lies, violence, and fear. The two will make war on the battlefield of the body. Whichever wins, humanity will lose again.']]> Hiron Ennes 1250870909 Juushika 5 3.42 2022
author: Hiron Ennes
name: Juushika
average rating: 3.42
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at: 2024/11/11
date added: 2024/11/11
shelves: format-audiobook, genre-gothic, genre-horror, genre-science-fiction, seasonal-winter, status-borrowed
review:
4.5 stars rounded up. An instance of the Institute travels to the farthest reaches of the north to discover how one of its bodies died without its knowledge. This is layers within layers of worldbuilding, from a parasitic hivemind to a rising competitor to the post-apocalyptic, highly speculative world that spawned them, and I love the styling: larger than life, gothic, chilly, horror-touched as parasites ought to be, with a prickly cast & an extremely dynamic narrative voice, especially on audio--Thorn goes absolutely ham with voices; it may be the most vibrant audiobook I've ever read. I'm compromised by my love of/fascination with the Institute, so the later emotional beats, while thematically grounded, didn't grab me as strongly as they wanted to; I'll be interested to see if I like them better on reread. Because I'll certainly reread. I think this is missing some readers who expect sci-fi or horror and are getting both plus an experimental first person PoV, and definitely this is a weird book, but the total and thoughtful commitment to that weirdness is a delight, not a drawback; I loved the hell out of this book.
]]> 203578865 From the acclaimed author of The Death of Jane Lawrence.

The city of San Siroco is sinking. The basement belonging to Dr. Tamsin Rivers, the arrogant, selfish head of the research team assigned to find the source of the subsidence, is sinking faster.

As Tamsin becomes obsessed with the distorting dimensions of the room at the bottom of the stairs, she finds a door that didn’t exist before � and one night, it opens to reveal an exact physical copy of her. This doppelgänger is sweet and biddable where Tamsin is calculating and cruel. It appears fully, terribly human, passing every test Tamsin can devise. But the longer the double exists, the more Tamsin begins to forget pieces of her life, to lose track of time, to grow terrified of the outside world.

With her employer growing increasingly suspicious, Tamsin must try to hold herself together long enough to figure out what her double wants from her, and just where the mysterious door leads. . . .]]> 320 Caitlin Starling 1250353432 Juushika 4 The Luminous Dead: there are concrete explanations which, while generally a good thing in speculative fiction, here are less interesting than any of the questions raised. This is particularly disappointing after The Death of Jane Lawrence, which does the opposite, growing stranger and more transformative as the speculative elements progress.

So: A slow open, establishing the protagonist's pre-speculative life, and she's unpleasant to hang out with. A great middle, with a glory of momentum and some creepy horror moments and interpersonal dynamics and particular expressions thereof (identity issues abounding, personal and bodily boundaries violated via body horror, relationships as dependency and infantilization and homemaking) that could have been written just for me. And then an ending which is too quickly paced and wraps up too neatly, both thematically and speculatively. I liked this a lot, I'll doubtless reread it, but was primed to love it and didn't quite get there.
]]> 3.86 2023
author: Caitlin Starling
name: Juushika
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/11/09
date added: 2024/11/09
shelves: genre-horror, genre-science-fiction, status-borrowed, trope-unusuallyintimaterelationship
review:
Our protagonist is the cutthroat head of development behind an ansible-like technology. Only the technology may have knock-on effects, like the city sinking; like the basement in her home growing; like the door that appears there, and what comes through. Starling's oeuvre is composed of high-concept speculative hooks with pulpy but effective horror tensions set against issues of identity & queer longing, and I'm an easy sell on that combination even if the books don't always succeed. This one is very close to great, but missteps in similar ways to The Luminous Dead: there are concrete explanations which, while generally a good thing in speculative fiction, here are less interesting than any of the questions raised. This is particularly disappointing after The Death of Jane Lawrence, which does the opposite, growing stranger and more transformative as the speculative elements progress.

So: A slow open, establishing the protagonist's pre-speculative life, and she's unpleasant to hang out with. A great middle, with a glory of momentum and some creepy horror moments and interpersonal dynamics and particular expressions thereof (identity issues abounding, personal and bodily boundaries violated via body horror, relationships as dependency and infantilization and homemaking) that could have been written just for me. And then an ending which is too quickly paced and wraps up too neatly, both thematically and speculatively. I liked this a lot, I'll doubtless reread it, but was primed to love it and didn't quite get there.

]]> 46223320 A monster slayer needs no bedtime!

Once her parents are off to bed, Poesy excitedly awaits the monsters that creep into her room. With the knowledge she’s gained from her trusty Monster Book and a few of her favorite toys, Poesy easily fends off a werewolf, a vampire, and much more.

But not even Poesy's bubblegum perfume can defeat her sleep-deprived parents!]]> 40 Cory Doctorow 1626723621 Juushika 4 3.80 2020
author: Cory Doctorow
name: Juushika
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2020
rating: 4
read at: 2024/11/09
date added: 2024/11/09
shelves: genre-art, genre-childrens, genre-fantasy, genre-horror, seasonal-autumn, status-borrowed, trope-werewolf, trope-vampire
review:
3.5 stars, rounded up because of the art. A very Halloweeny read, with the familiar list of cliché monsters and a vibrant nighttime color palette. This is very fun, very tight & polished, verging on overwritten (both narrative and art). So it lacks the larger-than-itself weirdness and liminality that makes a picture book really memorable - ironic, as it's about an overactive imagination - but I like it fine.
]]> 5573895 Bei Minami Ozaki unwahrscheinlich. Endlich wird aufgeklärt wer Dr. Baby wirklich ist. Kojis Bruder trifft eine folgenschwere Entscheidung. Und jemand verliert sein Leben...]]> 240 Minami Ozaki 3551761345 Juushika 4 3.85 2006
author: Minami Ozaki
name: Juushika
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2006
rating: 4
read at: 2024/02/08
date added: 2024/11/08
shelves: genre-comic, genre-romance, trope-unusuallyintimaterelationship
review:

]]> 11673107 208 Minami Ozaki 3551761337 Juushika 4 4.02 2003
author: Minami Ozaki
name: Juushika
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2003
rating: 4
read at: 2024/02/08
date added: 2024/11/08
shelves: genre-comic, genre-romance, trope-unusuallyintimaterelationship
review:

]]> 5573899 208 Minami Ozaki 3551761329 Juushika 4 4.11 2003
author: Minami Ozaki
name: Juushika
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2003
rating: 4
read at: 2024/02/08
date added: 2024/11/08
shelves: genre-comic, genre-romance, trope-unusuallyintimaterelationship
review:

]]> 2014466 192 Minami Ozaki 3551761310 Juushika 4 3.98 2000
author: Minami Ozaki
name: Juushika
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2000
rating: 4
read at: 2024/02/08
date added: 2024/11/08
shelves: genre-comic, genre-romance, trope-unusuallyintimaterelationship
review:

]]> 2014460 192 Minami Ozaki 3551747903 Juushika 4 4.01 1998
author: Minami Ozaki
name: Juushika
average rating: 4.01
book published: 1998
rating: 4
read at: 2024/02/08
date added: 2024/11/08
shelves: genre-comic, genre-romance, trope-unusuallyintimaterelationship
review:

]]> 2014467 192 Minami Ozaki 355174789X Juushika 4 4.03 1997
author: Minami Ozaki
name: Juushika
average rating: 4.03
book published: 1997
rating: 4
read at: 2024/02/08
date added: 2024/11/08
shelves: genre-comic, genre-romance, trope-unusuallyintimaterelationship
review:

]]> 2014470 192 Minami Ozaki 3551747881 Juushika 4 4.07 1996
author: Minami Ozaki
name: Juushika
average rating: 4.07
book published: 1996
rating: 4
read at: 2024/02/08
date added: 2024/11/08
shelves: genre-comic, genre-romance, trope-unusuallyintimaterelationship
review:

]]> 2014473 224 Minami Ozaki 3551747873 Juushika 4 4.12 1995
author: Minami Ozaki
name: Juushika
average rating: 4.12
book published: 1995
rating: 4
read at: 2024/02/08
date added: 2024/11/08
shelves: genre-comic, status-borrowed, genre-romance, trope-unusuallyintimaterelationship
review:

]]> 2014459 192 Minami Ozaki 3551747865 Juushika 4 4.06 1994
author: Minami Ozaki
name: Juushika
average rating: 4.06
book published: 1994
rating: 4
read at: 2024/02/08
date added: 2024/11/08
shelves: genre-comic, trope-unusuallyintimaterelationship, genre-romance
review:

]]> 2014458 216 Minami Ozaki 3551747857 Juushika 4 4.14 1994
author: Minami Ozaki
name: Juushika
average rating: 4.14
book published: 1994
rating: 4
read at: 2024/02/08
date added: 2024/11/08
shelves: genre-comic, genre-romance, trope-unusuallyintimaterelationship
review:

]]> 2014450 176 Minami Ozaki 3551747849 Juushika 4 4.14 1994
author: Minami Ozaki
name: Juushika
average rating: 4.14
book published: 1994
rating: 4
read at: 2024/02/08
date added: 2024/11/08
shelves: genre-comic, genre-romance, trope-unusuallyintimaterelationship
review:

]]> 2014452 176 Minami Ozaki 3551747830 Juushika 4 4.04 1994
author: Minami Ozaki
name: Juushika
average rating: 4.04
book published: 1994
rating: 4
read at: 2024/02/08
date added: 2024/11/08
shelves: genre-comic, genre-romance, trope-unusuallyintimaterelationship
review:

]]> 5573906 176 Minami Ozaki 3551747822 Juushika 4 4.09 1993
author: Minami Ozaki
name: Juushika
average rating: 4.09
book published: 1993
rating: 4
read at: 2024/02/08
date added: 2024/11/08
shelves: genre-comic, genre-romance, trope-unusuallyintimaterelationship
review:

]]> 5573908 198 Minami Ozaki 3551747814 Juushika 4 Zetsuai 1989 the proof of concept: restrained (by contrast! it's actually ridiculous!), brief, forward-heavy in its speeches on impossible, obsessive love. Bronze - Zetsuai since 1989, meanwhile, is unwieldy but it's all follow-through: the consequences of the protagonists's backgrounds and professions; their relationship not in speeches but as lived experience, marked particularly by an elaboration on rape-as-love tropes. Izumi's choice at the end of the original run is remarkable, and a continuation seems insupportable; this continuation is plagued by every predictable BL flaw, and yet Izumi's relationship with his relationship - functionally heterosexual in a queer romance, craving and courting attention which is retraumatizing and toxic and true - is captivating. It's hot mess material, some plot arcs are flops, and of course it stands unfinished. But Ozaki's willingness to go there (where? everywhere, but particularly following through on dramatic, no-takebacks plot twists) is phenomenal.]]> 3.97 1992
author: Minami Ozaki
name: Juushika
average rating: 3.97
book published: 1992
rating: 4
read at: 2024/02/08
date added: 2024/11/08
shelves: genre-comic, genre-romance, trope-unusuallyintimaterelationship
review:
3.5 stars rounded up. Review of the series entire. I hate to say it, as it's inconsistent, tortured, improbable angst, but this is great. Call Zetsuai 1989 the proof of concept: restrained (by contrast! it's actually ridiculous!), brief, forward-heavy in its speeches on impossible, obsessive love. Bronze - Zetsuai since 1989, meanwhile, is unwieldy but it's all follow-through: the consequences of the protagonists's backgrounds and professions; their relationship not in speeches but as lived experience, marked particularly by an elaboration on rape-as-love tropes. Izumi's choice at the end of the original run is remarkable, and a continuation seems insupportable; this continuation is plagued by every predictable BL flaw, and yet Izumi's relationship with his relationship - functionally heterosexual in a queer romance, craving and courting attention which is retraumatizing and toxic and true - is captivating. It's hot mess material, some plot arcs are flops, and of course it stands unfinished. But Ozaki's willingness to go there (where? everywhere, but particularly following through on dramatic, no-takebacks plot twists) is phenomenal.
]]> 25849 190 Kazuo Umezu 1421507226 Juushika 2
Anyway. I didn't like this and wouldn't recommend it. But I did finish it. It's not without redeeming qualities, and I appreciate its place in genre history.]]> 3.80 2006
author: Kazuo Umezu
name: Juushika
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2006
rating: 2
read at: 2023/05/15
date added: 2024/11/07
shelves: genre-comic, genre-horror, genre-science-fiction, status-borrowed, subgenre-dystopic-post-apocalyptic
review:
Review of the series entire. An elementary school is ripped from preset day Japan and [spoilers removed]. This is a classic horror manga, and I spent much of my reading time reminding myself to judge it in that context. Its structure is surprisingly episodic, which allows for unhinged creativity that can result in memorably horrific elements. The overarching plot is tedious, frequently concerned with interpersonal fighting which is less interesting than the speculative setting. But I like the ending, which resolves to be hopeful and responsible where most eco-horror would prefer defeatism. The real dealbreaker for me is the art and the tone. It's so abrasive: stiff movement and endless panels of children open-mouthed yelling and/or crying. The series desperately wants for some tonal variation, and there's so much potential for that in the childcare, food preparation, and other mundane elements of survival - all elements delegated to the female realm, therefore shunted offscreen. To critique a 1970s manga of sexism is so obvious as to be pointless, but - this would be objectively better were it less sexist!

Anyway. I didn't like this and wouldn't recommend it. But I did finish it. It's not without redeeming qualities, and I appreciate its place in genre history.
]]> 159812408
The triffids are grotesque and dangerous plants, over seven feet tall, originally cultivated for their yield of high-grade oil. So long as conditions give the mastery to their human directors, they are a valuable asset to mankind. But when a sudden universal disaster turns those conditions upside down, then the triffids, seizing their opportunity, become an active and dreadful menace.

The story of what happens is told here by one of the few people lucky enough to escape the disaster.]]> 0 John Wyndham Juushika 3
But this is almost cozy in its apocalypse. Like The War of the Worlds, it's a devastatingly large event explored on a personal level (a necessary focus, as the triffids are pretty boring baddies); unlike almost any apocalypse narrative I can think of, it's about agriculture, about life after the grocery stores are looted, about the labor of rebuilding society. When I read this, it was an interesting touchstone in the genre but not my thing; but, in the months since then, I've thought about it with surprisingly regularity, every time I've encountered another apocalypse story utterly unconcerned with farming.]]> 4.07 1951
author: John Wyndham
name: Juushika
average rating: 4.07
book published: 1951
rating: 3
read at: 2024/06/07
date added: 2024/11/07
shelves: genre-classic, genre-science-fiction, status-borrowed, subgenre-dystopic-post-apocalyptic
review:
Stories about how the world falls apart are rarely "enjoyable," and appropriately I didn't enjoy this. Wyndham's read on the apocalypse runs into predictable pitfalls, namely ableism and sexism; Golden Age SF often manages to be forward thinking for its time and profoundly trapped in that time, and rejecting vs. preserving marriage is the locus of that conflict here.

But this is almost cozy in its apocalypse. Like The War of the Worlds, it's a devastatingly large event explored on a personal level (a necessary focus, as the triffids are pretty boring baddies); unlike almost any apocalypse narrative I can think of, it's about agriculture, about life after the grocery stores are looted, about the labor of rebuilding society. When I read this, it was an interesting touchstone in the genre but not my thing; but, in the months since then, I've thought about it with surprisingly regularity, every time I've encountered another apocalypse story utterly unconcerned with farming.
]]> 175312 THE SONG OF DEATH-

Bannon and Vree, brother and sister, they are assassins of the highest caliber who have long plied their trade for the Havalkeen army. But all their skill and experience cannot save them from a magic-sprung trap that will see the two forced to share one body when the very man they've been sent to assassinate steals Bannon's body for himself. How long brother and sister can coexist in one body neither can guess. And so they set out to catch and defeat this foe who has already bested them once.

But when Bannon and Vree confront this master of a magic beyond their comprehension, he offers them a terrible choice - to continue their new dual existence forever, or to betray the Empire they have served all their lives. For it is not control of Bannon's body which is Gyhard's true goal but rather the body - and with it the identity and power - of the Imperial Prince!]]> 416 Tanya Huff 0886776511 Juushika 4 Sing the Four Quarters, another cross-country chase, only slightly less burdened by unproductive sideplots but plagued by just as much headhopping. But this is so much my style--a punishing mess ruthlessly explored, but delightfully rooted in the id.]]> 3.91 1995
author: Tanya Huff
name: Juushika
average rating: 3.91
book published: 1995
rating: 4
read at: 2024/02/07
date added: 2024/11/07
shelves: genre-fantasy, status-borrowed, trope-unusuallyintimaterelationship
review:
A pair of assassins find themselves in an unusual situation when confronted with a target who can jump between bodies. --And not the situation that implies; this is grim study of bodies and souls and identities, of strange intimacies and extreme pressures weighing on a sibling bond, of relationships grown in inimical circumstances. Huff's queer characters and non-normative dynamics is consistently refreshing, but this is a level of above, living deep in the id, thorny and intriguing. It's still not a strong technical work: There are relationship arcs I don't buy on both sides (Gyhard's developing feelings make sense; Vree's less so) and the structure here is too similar to Sing the Four Quarters, another cross-country chase, only slightly less burdened by unproductive sideplots but plagued by just as much headhopping. But this is so much my style--a punishing mess ruthlessly explored, but delightfully rooted in the id.
]]> 175300 413 Tanya Huff 0886776988 Juushika 4 3.89 1996
author: Tanya Huff
name: Juushika
average rating: 3.89
book published: 1996
rating: 4
read at: 2024/02/07
date added: 2024/11/07
shelves: trope-unusuallyintimaterelationship, genre-fantasy, status-borrowed
review:
Unfinished business follows Vree and Gyhard to Shkoder when they seek bardic assistance for their unusual arrangement. That central dynamic is more successful here than in the previous book, where it was too rushed; there's space within the intimate interior view for clashing motives and repressed desires and storied histories, and it builds a convincing relationship arc. The larger plot is serviceable but less interesting: another cross-country chase (it occurs to me that all four Huff books I've read have had one) with a familiar conflict and reoccurring characters. Magda, with simple but engaging characterization, is the thread that best ties all three books together.
]]> 3008
This unique and fully annotated edition appends excerpts from Frances Hodgson Burnett 's original 1888 novella Sara Crewe and the stage play that preceded the novel, as well as an early story, "Behind the White Brick," allowing readers to see how A Little Princess evolved. In his delightful introduction, U. C. Knoepflmacher considers the fairy-tale allusions and literary touchstones that place the book among the major works of Victorian literature, and shows it to be an exceptionally rich and resonant novel.]]> 242 Frances Hodgson Burnett 0142437018 Juushika 4 The Secret Garden, but of course the comparison is unfair, especially since I have nostalgia for one but not the other. This is bigger, with an almost campy contrivance and predictability, as the reader is let in on secrets far ahead of the protagonist. But that's just what grew on me: Burnett's willingness to intrude on the narrative, to explicate and to remove the veil of suspense just when it grows too thin, is great fun, the narrator almost a character itself, tamping down the sentimentality. I love a story of isolated-but-romanticized suffering, and self-romanticization certainly fulfills that niche; I probably would have liked this better as a young reader but, hey, better late than never.
]]> 4.22 1905
author: Frances Hodgson Burnett
name: Juushika
average rating: 4.22
book published: 1905
rating: 4
read at: 2024/11/07
date added: 2024/11/07
shelves: genre-classic, format-free-ebook, genre-mg-and-ya, status-borrowed, trope-desert-island-paradise, format-audiobook
review:
This is no The Secret Garden, but of course the comparison is unfair, especially since I have nostalgia for one but not the other. This is bigger, with an almost campy contrivance and predictability, as the reader is let in on secrets far ahead of the protagonist. But that's just what grew on me: Burnett's willingness to intrude on the narrative, to explicate and to remove the veil of suspense just when it grows too thin, is great fun, the narrator almost a character itself, tamping down the sentimentality. I love a story of isolated-but-romanticized suffering, and self-romanticization certainly fulfills that niche; I probably would have liked this better as a young reader but, hey, better late than never.

]]> 61869773 Two teens. Two diaries. Two social panics. One incredible fraud.

In 1971, Go Ask Alice reinvented the young adult genre with a blistering portrayal of sex, psychosis, and teenage self-destruction. The supposed diary of a middle-class addict, Go Ask Alice terrified adults and cemented LSD's fearsome reputation, fueling support for the War on Drugs. Five million copies later, Go Ask Alice remains a divisive bestseller, outraging censors and earning new fans, all of them drawn by the book's mythic premise: A Real Diary, by Anonymous.

But Alice was only the beginning.

In 1979, another diary rattled the culture, setting the stage for a national meltdown. The posthumous memoir of an alleged teenage Satanist, Jay's Journal merged with a frightening new crisis—adolescent suicide—to create a literal witch hunt, shattering countless lives and poisoning whole communities.

In reality, Go Ask Alice and Jay's Journal came from the same dark place: Beatrice Sparks, a serial con artist who betrayed a grieving family, stole a dead boy's memory, and lied her way to the National Book Awards.

Unmask Alice: LSD, Satanic Panic, and the Imposter Behind the World's Most Notorious Diaries is a true story of contagious deception. It stretches from Hollywood to Quantico, and passes through a tiny patch of Utah nicknamed "the fraud capital of America." It's the story of a doomed romance and a vengeful celebrity. Of a lazy press and a public mob. Of two suicidal teenagers, and their exploitation by a literary vampire.

Unmask Alice . . . where truth is stranger than nonfiction.]]> 10 Rick Emerson Juushika 3 ]]> 3.80 2022
author: Rick Emerson
name: Juushika
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2022
rating: 3
read at: 2024/11/06
date added: 2024/11/06
shelves: format-audiobook, genre-memoir-and-biography, genre-non-fiction, status-borrowed
review:
The extensive character assassination based on what feels like embarrassing but petty flaws like self-aggrandizement becomes increasingly justified as those flaws are revealed to be the definitive elements of some infamously falsified, culturally significant books. This is thorough, which sometimes means belabored, and Emerson's approach to citing sources sucks; the historical context and room for the redeeming qualities is thoughtful; Emerson's voice is conversational to the point of obnoxious and muckrakey. Fascinating but infuriating, and not always on account of the offenses of Beatrice Sparks.

]]> 51116307
Shudder-to-Think, Pennsylvania, is plagued by a mysterious illness that eats away at the memories of those affected by it. El and Octavia are two best friends who find themselves the newest victims of this disease after waking up in a movie theater with no memory of the past few hours.

As El and Vee dive deeper into the mystery behind their lost memories, they realize the stories of their town hold more dark truth than they could've imagined. It's up to El and Vee to keep their town from falling apart...to keep the world safe from Shudder-to-Think's monsters.

Collects issues # 1-6.]]> 168 Carmen Maria Machado 1779504527 Juushika 3
It's the plot that leaves me unsatisfied. This is one of those narratives where the speculative element is a metaphor for an institutional issue in a way that manages to undermine both halves, simplifying the issue, pulling magic from the magic. Which is weird, because it's a balance the author consistently nails in her other work. That said, reviews seem roundly shocked that a) women mad about sexism and/or b) queer people real, so perhaps even an uneven effort is a triumph. ]]> 3.96 2020
author: Carmen Maria Machado
name: Juushika
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2020
rating: 3
read at: 2024/11/06
date added: 2024/11/06
shelves: genre-comic, genre-fantasy, genre-gothic, genre-horror, status-borrowed, subgenre-magical-realism
review:
3.5 stars. In a dying Appalachian mining town, best friends wake with memory loss--an issue known to plague the town's women. This is published by DC despite being more graphic novel than comic, so I wish they'd refrained from the practice of distracting bold text. But the tone here is phenomenal: sketchy (albeit occasionally messy) art in dark autumnal tones, a setting which is increasingly magical realist, and a queerplatonic relationship between lesbian best friends which, although simplified by the story's scope, is alive and convincing.

It's the plot that leaves me unsatisfied. This is one of those narratives where the speculative element is a metaphor for an institutional issue in a way that manages to undermine both halves, simplifying the issue, pulling magic from the magic. Which is weird, because it's a balance the author consistently nails in her other work. That said, reviews seem roundly shocked that a) women mad about sexism and/or b) queer people real, so perhaps even an uneven effort is a triumph.
]]> 4731898 31 Ruth Tiller 1561451061 Juushika 1 3.46 1995
author: Ruth Tiller
name: Juushika
average rating: 3.46
book published: 1995
rating: 1
read at: 2024/10/29
date added: 2024/10/29
shelves: genre-art, genre-poetry, status-dnf, status-borrowed
review:
How bad does a text of this length have to be to warrant a DNF? Insipid poetry and weird-looking uncanny valley cats; I could not nope fast enough. (Good title, though!)
]]> 8739904
Book HardcoverPublication 5/24/2011 32Reading Age 3 and Up]]> 32 Nancy Tillman 0312368402 Juushika 2 ]]> 3.69 2008
author: Nancy Tillman
name: Juushika
average rating: 3.69
book published: 2008
rating: 2
read at: 2024/10/29
date added: 2024/10/29
shelves: genre-childrens, status-borrowed
review:
I've read some strange picture books, and this is in the running for the strangest. Not in a good way. The art is photo edited/collage absurdity of a chubby cat in galoshes; the text has a didactic young reader message, but the wording is overlong, but the tone is singsongy to the point of obnoxious. And all of it clashes with the surreal art. The result is a chaotic mess that misses its intended age range while still failing to appeal to adult readers, so, not great; but Tumford himself is fun.

]]> 621739
An American classic with a refrain that millions of kids love to   Hundreds of cats, thousands of cats, millions and billions and trillions of cats .

Once upon a time there was an old man and an old woman who were very lonely. They decided to get a cat, but when the old man went out searching, he found not one cat, but millions and billions and trillions of cats! Unable to decide which one would be the best pet, he brought them all home.

How the old couple came to have just one cat to call their own is a classic tale that has been loved for generations. Winner of a Newbery Honor, this collector's edition—featuring a heavy interior stock, spot gloss and embossing on the cover, and a thread-sewn binding—will bring this beloved tale to a whole new generation of readers.]]> 32 Wanda Gág 0142407089 Juushika 4
Original review, 2019: Stories about domestic animals age rapidly and poorly as twee remnants of evolving ethical standards, but the "hundreds of cats, thousands of cats, millions and billions and trillions of cats" is so delightful and ridiculous; it marries well to inoffensive and universal cat themes cat themes: all cats are beautiful, all are conceited; every scraggly kitten deserves love; wanting more cats, all cats, is a perpetual desire but unfortunately untenable. This gets weirdly dark in its climax, which the ridiculous tone can't quite balance. The art style is unremarkable save for some nice detailing, particularly in the millions and billions and trillions of cats. It's always a pleasure to read a book which isn't interesting just as a cultural artifact--this is the oldest American picture book still in print--but also enjoyable in its own right.

(Ratings are a fiction: this is a 3-star book, but it's so rare that I find a book about cats I don't hate.)]]> 4.09 1928
author: Wanda Gág
name: Juushika
average rating: 4.09
book published: 1928
rating: 4
read at: 2024/10/29
date added: 2024/10/29
shelves: genre-art, genre-childrens, status-borrowed, favorite-and-formative, status-owned
review:
Reread, 2024: I'm amazed I ever thought this was anything but fantastic. Turns out that if you spend a lot of time translating a text into toki pona and then find a copy at a little free library and read it aloud to your partner then, by their powers combined, this will become one of your favorite picture books. To want to adopt every cat because each is perfect & beautiful is highkey relatable, and the whimsically WTF climax is hilarious. Hundreds of cats, thousands of cats, millions and billions and trillions of cats! I'm delighted that I own this now.

Original review, 2019: Stories about domestic animals age rapidly and poorly as twee remnants of evolving ethical standards, but the "hundreds of cats, thousands of cats, millions and billions and trillions of cats" is so delightful and ridiculous; it marries well to inoffensive and universal cat themes cat themes: all cats are beautiful, all are conceited; every scraggly kitten deserves love; wanting more cats, all cats, is a perpetual desire but unfortunately untenable. This gets weirdly dark in its climax, which the ridiculous tone can't quite balance. The art style is unremarkable save for some nice detailing, particularly in the millions and billions and trillions of cats. It's always a pleasure to read a book which isn't interesting just as a cultural artifact--this is the oldest American picture book still in print--but also enjoyable in its own right.

(Ratings are a fiction: this is a 3-star book, but it's so rare that I find a book about cats I don't hate.)
]]> 52866613 128 Lucy Sullivan 178352880X Juushika 3 ]]> 3.56
author: Lucy Sullivan
name: Juushika
average rating: 3.56
book published:
rating: 3
read at: 2024/10/29
date added: 2024/10/29
shelves: genre-comic, status-borrowed, favorite-and-formative
review:
After the death of a friend, a black dog haunts our protagonist as her mental health deteriorates. The black dog as an avatar for mental illness, companion and predator both, is a central element of my personal mythology, and Sullivan's rendering is exactly that creature, dark and half-perceived. So I love this for that. Unfortunately, there isn't a lot to the narrative beyond that conceit, and what there is is muddied by the sketchy, high-contrast art and hostile font choice: good for rendering tone, bad for, y'know, reading. There has to be a compromise for legibility; I really want to like this, but it left me more frustrated than moved.

]]> 2224824 Necrophilia Variations is a literary monograph on the erotic attraction to corpses and death. It consists of a series of texts that, like musical phrases, take up the theme and advance it by means of repetition, contrast, and variation. To love someone dead is merely nostalgia, but to make love with someone dead is necrophilia, and this book is about that.

Although a work of fiction, Necrophilia Variations uses literary means to probe the psychopathology of sexual perversion. Eros, the book asks, is naturally drawn to beauty, and yet nothing would seem to be less inherently beautiful than a cadaver. How is it that a necrophile ends up confusing the two, or making the leap, such that he finds beauty in what most people would find repugnant? How does he come to desire that which would seem to be intrinsically undesirable?

Written in a style that ranges from the lugubrious to the ludicrous � from purple prose to black humor � Necrophilia Variations exhibits a world of depravity from the inside out. Each of its texts utilizes the first person � not because it is autobiographical but rather because it is personal, even intimate. Why intimate? Because that's how death is � near you, beside you, eventually inside you as well. It would be nice to say that that's how sex is too � intimate � but then it's no secret just how impersonal sex can be, especially when your lover is unconscious or worse.

If you have ever contemplated the curious points of contact between eros and thanatos � if you have ever wondered why femmes fatales are alluring, or why sex can be made more exciting by games that simulate danger and pain, or why that bit of French slang that deems orgasm a "little death" seems so appropriate � then you may well enjoy this book. And if you do, then your joy in reading may even unlock the necrophiliac mind for you � since a text is, like a corpse, the remains of a living being, and as a reader you will no doubt be determined to extract pleasure from it.]]> 200 Supervert 0970497113 Juushika 2 4.00 2005
author: Supervert
name: Juushika
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2005
rating: 2
read at: 2024/10/26
date added: 2024/10/27
shelves: trope-unusuallyintimaterelationship, genre-short-fiction, genre-horror
review:
1.5 stars. As more or less the ideal audience for this, I appreciate the audacity and the literal approach of "variations," a density of short and micro fiction riffing on the theme of necrophilia and beauty in death. Unfortunately, it's also ... bad. While not without standout moments, the best of the writing is marred by repetition, there's a pervasive and unproductive misogyny, and necrophilia is constantly compared to queerness and sex work as if these are deviations on a sliding scale of perversity, as if they speak to the same cultural anxieties, which ... they don't, and the insistence otherwise is limiting in every possible direction. 80% boring shock value, 20% "I might like this if someone else wrote it."
]]> 906070
Illus. in full color.]]> 48 Natalie Standiford 039499695X Juushika 2 4.27 1989
author: Natalie Standiford
name: Juushika
average rating: 4.27
book published: 1989
rating: 2
read at: 2024/10/26
date added: 2024/10/26
shelves: genre-childrens, seasonal-winter, status-borrowed, genre-historical
review:
An interesting peek into an early reader; I'm enthusiastic about picture books, but have no experience reading this category/demographic, even as a young reader IIRC. This is in every way the expected telling of Balto's story, which is to say: simplifying the relay down to the big finale is reductive and aggrandizing. But it's also super engaging, so I can see why it would make this early reader stand out from the crowd. The illustrations don't do much for me; they're remarkably light on atmosphere, which is a lost opportunity given the extremity of the setting. All in all, not for me & not meant for me, but I'm not mad to've read it and gained some understanding of this category of children's books.
]]> 2652560 32 Eric A. Kimmel 0823410315 Juushika 5 Hershel and the Hanukkah Goblins, so, dude loves a spooky Jewish story and, guess what, me too. () Atmospheric, weird, and a little free library find that I'm keeping for a winter reread.]]> 3.32 1993
author: Eric A. Kimmel
name: Juushika
average rating: 3.32
book published: 1993
rating: 5
read at: 2024/10/19
date added: 2024/10/19
shelves: genre-art, genre-childrens, genre-fantasy, status-owned, seasonal-winter
review:
4.5 stars? Rounded up, why not. While seeking an egg for Hanukkah latke, Asher is instead swept up by capmaking fairies in a journey to Jerusalem. The illustrations resemble colored woodcuts with dark, slanting linework, dynamic and twisting; that magic and borderline-spooky edge is in the writing, too, which borrowed from Celtic mythology to whisk its protagonist away. Kimmel also wrote Hershel and the Hanukkah Goblins, so, dude loves a spooky Jewish story and, guess what, me too. () Atmospheric, weird, and a little free library find that I'm keeping for a winter reread.
]]> 958211
“One fine day a fox traveled through the great forest. When he reached the other side he was very thirsty.� The jaunty red fox stole milk from an old farm woman, lost his tail under the annoyed woman’s knife, and spent the day bargaining to get it back. Awarded the Caldecott Medal for the most distinguished picture book of 1971.]]> 32 Nonny Hogrogian 0020436203 Juushika 4
]]> 3.86 1971
author: Nonny Hogrogian
name: Juushika
average rating: 3.86
book published: 1971
rating: 4
read at: 2024/10/19
date added: 2024/10/19
shelves: genre-art, genre-childrens, status-borrowed, seasonal-summer, seasonal-autumn, subgenre-retelling
review:
A reversed for want of a nail slash cumulative song narrative apparently based on an Armenian folktale, this has a lot of structural repetition while eschewing literal repetition--not a combination I often see, and I like it! It does a picture book a distinct disadvantage to introduce a fox into a vaguely autumnal setting & palette and then not draw his most distinctive feature; still, lovely rich texture and golden colors, with slightly janky art. Interesting, atmospheric, not a keeper (this was a little free library find).


]]> 1717287
Jessie lives with her grandmother in a poor village in the valleys of eastern Europe. When, to everyone's surprise, young Jessie is chosen by the village rabbi to travel to America, and to leave her grandmother behind, they both feel their hearts will break.

Award-winning author Amy Hest brings her sure and inspired touch to the story of our immigrant heritage as she follows Jessie across the ocean to a new life—and a new love—in America.

Exquisitely illustrated by P.J. Lynch, with paintings that glow with warmth and carefully observed detail, WHEN JESSIE COMES ACROSS THE SEA transcends time and culture in a tribute to the courage and hope of all who seek a better life. It is destined to become a modern classic.]]> 40 Amy Hest 0763600946 Juushika 3 The Haunted Lake, and it's exquisite and richly detailed and classical. All perfectly nice but not especially memorable.
]]> 4.34 1997
author: Amy Hest
name: Juushika
average rating: 4.34
book published: 1997
rating: 3
read at: 2024/10/19
date added: 2024/10/19
shelves: genre-art, genre-childrens, genre-historical, status-borrowed
review:
I'm glad that explicitly Jewish picture books exist; the more explicitly [demographic] [medium] out there, the better the odds that there will be great ones. But I don't know that this is one of the great ones: It's a relatively straightforward, earnest but sanitized, immigration narrative. Including "rest in peace" is weird--this might be a different story if written today, when it could be even more Jewish. I recognize Lynch's art from The Haunted Lake, and it's exquisite and richly detailed and classical. All perfectly nice but not especially memorable.

]]> 52565391 A storm and its sunny aftermath come to life through gorgeous art and lyrical text.

What do you do when the clouds roll in,
When the wind chimes clang and the weather vanes spin?

When stormy skies threaten, people stock up on supplies, bring in their outside toys, and check the news for updates. And during the storm, if the power goes out, they can play games and tell stories by candlelight. But what do animals do? They watch and listen, look for a cozy den or some other sheltered spot, and hunker down to wait. After the storm, while the people are cleaning up their yards, making repairs, and checking on the neighbors, the animals emerge from their hiding places and shake off the rain. And everyone is happy to be out in the sunshine again, grateful for better weather and the company of friends.]]> 32 Linda Ashman 039954609X Juushika 2 3.99 2020
author: Linda Ashman
name: Juushika
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2020
rating: 2
read at:
date added: 2024/10/19
shelves: genre-art, genre-childrens, status-borrowed
review:
Very cozy, a little dark, and diversely community- and family-focused. All good things! But nothing that sticks with me as an adult reader of picture books, and the jewel-toned cool greens and deep blues could not be more repulsive to me aesthetically, which is a personal problem but still stops me from appreciating this.
]]> 200113484
A queer complication on the Pygmalion myth, brought to life through Lonnie Garcia’s emotional, multimedia comic art.]]> 72 Lonnie Garcia 8886200420 Juushika 2 4.12 2024
author: Lonnie Garcia
name: Juushika
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2024
rating: 2
read at: 2024/10/18
date added: 2024/10/18
shelves: genre-art, genre-comic, genre-fantasy, status-borrowed
review:
2.5 stars. A lonely radish creates a companion using a banned children's sculpting toy. So this should be weird, right? Aesthetically, it is: fun character design and a phenomenal use of multimedia and image editing which gives this a crunchy, retro vibe. But even with the violent climax, this still feels like the most straightforward take on "reasons to maybe not try crafting a best buddy from clay": the uncomfortable power dynamics are forefront yet somehow still so tame.
]]> 65212029 Nat Cassidy is at his razor-sharp best again with his horror novel Nestlings, which harnesses the creeping paranoia of Rosemary's Baby and the urban horror of 'Salem's Lot, set in an exclusive New York City residential building.

Ana and Reid need a break. The horrifically complicated birth of their first child has left Ana paralyzed, bitter, and struggling―with mobility, with her relationship with Reid, with resentment for her baby. Reid dismisses disturbing events and Ana’s deep unease and paranoia, but he can't explain the needle-like bite marks on their baby.]]> 293 Nat Cassidy 1250265258 Juushika 0 genre-horror, status-borrowed ]]> 3.81 2023
author: Nat Cassidy
name: Juushika
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at: 2024/10/18
date added: 2024/10/18
shelves: genre-horror, status-borrowed
review:
DNF at 25%. Probably there is something here, because even though I don't like the conversational, punchy voice, it had enough momentum to keep me reading. But then I realized that stories about childcare give me ickybad feels even when they're not about postpartum depression. Being trapped, socially and situationally and etc-ally is very much at the heart of this book, but my hangups doubled down on that and tore away any of the fun or atmospheric or provoking elements this probably is meant to have.

]]> 60784409 A haunting Southern Gothic from an award-winning master of suspense, A House With Good Bones explores the dark, twisted roots lurking just beneath the veneer of a perfect home and family.

"Mom seems off."

Her brother's words echo in Sam Montgomery's ear as she turns onto the quiet North Carolina street where their mother lives alone.

She brushes the thought away as she climbs the front steps. Sam's excited for this rare extended visit, and looking forward to nights with just the two of them, drinking boxed wine, watching murder mystery shows, and guessing who the killer is long before the characters figure it out.

But stepping inside, she quickly realizes home isn’t what it used to be. Gone is the warm, cluttered charm her mom is known for; now the walls are painted a sterile white. Her mom jumps at the smallest noises and looks over her shoulder even when she’s the only person in the room. And when Sam steps out back to clear her head, she finds a jar of teeth hidden beneath the magazine-worthy rose bushes, and vultures are circling the garden from above.

To find out what’s got her mom so frightened in her own home, Sam will go digging for the truth. But some secrets are better left buried.]]> 247 T. Kingfisher 1250829798 Juushika 2 The Hollow Places; I can see the formula of quirky protagonist and humorous voice and handful of cobbled-together striking images too clearly.

* I have a lot of thoughts about where this book lands on the spectrum of genre awareness/character incredulity & subsequent relationship with the supernatural. I like the pivotal relationship between Sam & Gail; and I can appreciate that, in the aftermath, the book is happy to throw subtlety to the wind. But! The escalation from probable to unequivocal to truly ridiculous renders that whole surprisingly tender internal debate retroactively meaningless. Two great tastes that taste bland together.]]> 3.65 2023
author: T. Kingfisher
name: Juushika
average rating: 3.65
book published: 2023
rating: 2
read at: 2024/10/18
date added: 2024/10/18
shelves: genre-horror, genre-gothic, seasonal-summer, status-borrowed, subgenre-southern-gothic
review:
Our protagonist comes to stay with her mother to find the house & her mother changed, as if repossessed by her deceased grandmother's spirit. This is really quite silly, with an aggressive escalation of events* that makes for striking imagery but failed entirely to get under my skin. I keep striking out with Kingfisher books, despite how much I liked The Hollow Places; I can see the formula of quirky protagonist and humorous voice and handful of cobbled-together striking images too clearly.

* I have a lot of thoughts about where this book lands on the spectrum of genre awareness/character incredulity & subsequent relationship with the supernatural. I like the pivotal relationship between Sam & Gail; and I can appreciate that, in the aftermath, the book is happy to throw subtlety to the wind. But! The escalation from probable to unequivocal to truly ridiculous renders that whole surprisingly tender internal debate retroactively meaningless. Two great tastes that taste bland together.
]]>