Author: sbhowell
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The Stranger by Albert Camus
The Stranger by Albert Camus Rating: 4/5, good I read this in high school and all I remembered was that he didn’t cry at his mom’s funeral and he shot a guy because it was too sunny. I picked this up to reread on a trip because it’s small (a little over 100 pages) and…
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No Longer Human by Osamu Dazai
Rating: 4/5, good I originally read this on a plane, quickly, without much thought. I tried to sit down and review it a few weeks ago, but I felt like I didn’t understand it well enough. I looked up Osamu Dazai’s biography and then reread No Longer Human, and it seemed to come into place.…
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The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin
The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin Rating: 5/5, excellent I loved this book. N.K. Jemisin creates a whole world for readers to explore. The way she obscures secrets to build tension and then reveals them at just the right dramatic moment is nothing short of masterful. N.K. Jemisin’s The Fifth Season is the first book…
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The Invisible Man by H. G. Wells
The Invisible Man by H.G. Wells Rating: 5/5, excellent WARNING: This review contains spoilers! This book is a touchstone for me. I read it the first time in middle school, and it really resonated with me. The Invisible Man is a very irritable, impatient, smart person. He reminds me a lot of myself and my…
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Diverse Reading Challenge
In my last post, I talked about how writers should read more books by minorities and PoC, and I got inspired to make my own list of books I want to read. I’ve read a couple of books by women and PoC on this blog, but I want to read more, so I’m making a…
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We Are Legion – We Are Bob (Bobiverse #1) by Dennis E. Taylor
We Are Legion – We Are Bob (Bobiverse #1) Rating: 3/5, average Oy. Here we go again… another scifi new release that I would never have picked up if it weren’t for our science fiction book club. 😛 The strongest part of the Bobiverse series is the science. The fiction part is a little weak,…
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Infomocracy by Malka Older (Centenal Cycle #1)
Rating: 4/5, good Infomocracy by Malka Older is a political science fiction thriller. It’s about a near-future world where 20 years ago, the peoples of the world split off from traditional countries into small local voting blocks of 100,000 people known as centenals. The people in these centenals vote to choose which global government to…
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Play It As It Lays by Joan Didion
Rating: 4/5, good This book is horrifically, horrifically depressing. I usually enjoy dark books, but I didn’t get anything resembling “pleasure” out of this one. It is SO INCREDIBLY BLEAK. It doesn’t have the dramatic despair of Darconville’s Cat, the humble nihilism of Too Loud a Solitude, or the morbid curiosity of Susanna Kaysen’s Girl, Interrupted.…