Author: sbhowell
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The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon
Rating: 4/5, good I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It reminded me of how fun fantasy novels can be! When I was reading this, I was reading it only at night and I was super excited to go to bed because I could read it before going to sleep. It was a little intimidating at around…
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Axiom’s End by Lindsay Ellis
Rating: 2/5, bad WARNING: ALL OF THE SPOILERS!!! I love Lindsay Ellis’s channel and was super hyped for this book but I thought it was extremely boring, if intricately conceived. Here’s a basic summary: Axiom’s End is about a 21-year-old woman named Cora who is aimlessly drifting through life working temp jobs. Her dad, Nils,…
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Year in Review 2020
Oy, this was a long year… I had originally planned to read only female authors this year to see if I could go a year without reading men, but I ended up reading 12 Rules for Life by Jordan Peterson on my Dad’s recommendation and Chthon by Piers Anthony on unfinished business and spurred by…
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Too Much and Never Enough by Mary L. Trump
Rating: 5/5, excellent It feels odd writing this after Trump’s been voted out of the presidency. I want to be done talking about him, but this book was fantastic and deserves the attention. Too Much and Never Enough is Mary L. Trump’s memoir/biography of the Trump family. Mary analyzes how Donald came to be the…
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A Gift of Magic by Lois Duncan
Rating: 4/5, good Have you ever had a book mirror your life so much it’s spooky? A Gift of Magic is a children’s paranormal book. It was first published in 1971 and I read it in 2000 when I was about ten years old. It got re-released in 2012 and after looking up the synopsis…
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Women, Race & Class by Angela Y. Davis
Rating: 5/5, excellent This book should be required reading—especially for white feminists! Angela Y. Davis’s Women, Race & Class is a classic feminist text. It came out in 1981 but it’s just as relevant today, and I think it will be evergreen because of its well-referenced discussion of black history. Women, Race & Class is…
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Chthon by Piers Anthony
Rating: 3/5, average TW: rape This book is either brilliant or stupid and I’m not sure which one… possibly both. I saw this as #1 on a list of Weirdest Science Fiction some years ago and tried to read it, but only got about 30% in because there’s a pretty brutal rape scene that seemed…
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The Real Lolita by Sarah Weinman
Rating: 3/5, average CW: rape, pedophilia The Real Lolita posits that Vladimir Nabokov’s (in)famous masterpiece Lolita (which I reviewed in 2014) is based on the true story of Sally Horner. Sally Horner was kidnapped by a man named Frank La Salle from Camden, NJ, in 1948. He caught her stealing a notebook from a five-and-dime…
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Free Women, Free Men by Camille Paglia
Rating: 3/5, average Trigger Warning: pedophilia, transphobia, sexual assault I must have been in a rebellious mood or something when I bought this. I’d been following Reason magazine online for a little while because my dad was a libertarian and I thought I’d come to understand his politics more by reading it. He never mentioned…
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I Rise: The Transformation of Toni Newman
Rating: 4/5, good I picked up this book because I saw Toni Newman on a Zoom call with Charlie Jane Anders and a lot of other trans and nonbinary authors. There were so many cool authors and good books to pick from it was a little overwhelming (the call included Alok Vaid-Menon, Meredith Talusan, Vivek…