Tag: book review
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The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath by H.P. Lovecraft
Rating: 3/5 The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath is a novella of about 40,000 words written by Lovecraft in 1927. It’s one of his later stories, and it incorporates a lot of the monsters he created in earlier works. Even though it has the usual Lovecraftian horror suspects like Nyarlathotep, the night-gaunts, and the gibbering Outer…
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The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
Rating: 4/5 I tried to read The Bell Jar in high school, but didn’t get very far. I had just finished reading (and loved) Girl, Interrupted by Susanna Kaysen, and so I thought I would like The Bell Jar, but I couldn’t get into it. I couldn’t understand what made a person like Esther Greenwood…
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So Rich, So Poor by Peter Edelman
Rating: 4 So Rich, So Poor encapsulates in 162 pages the forces that keep people in poverty in America. It’s written by Peter Edelman, a lawyer and former policy advisor to Robert F. Kennedy and Bill Clinton. He draws on fifty years of experience in government to give a perspective on poverty in its historical,…
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Dawn by Octavia Butler
Rating: 4 Warning: this review contains spoilers! The other characters withhold a lot of information from the main character, so discussing the themes of this book is really difficult to do without spoiling it. I’m just not going to bother here, and assume you’ve either read the book or don’t care about spoilers. Octavia Butler’s…
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The Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut
I don’t know how to describe this book other than to say that it’s very, uh… Vonnegut-y. If you’ve read Slaughterhouse 5 or Cat’s Cradle or ”Harrison Bergeron”, you’re familiar with Kurt Vonnegut’s unique combination of satire, pacifism, and accidental time travel. The Sirens of Titan, one of his earliest novels, features the seeds of…
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It’s Kind of a Funny Story by Ned Vizzini
Mental-health memoirs are my guilty-pleasure reading for 5 reasons: Reason 1: They’re relatable. It’s comforting if you have a mental illness (or even if you just get moody sometimes) to know that someone else has had the same experiences. Reason 2: They provide insights into how to deal with mental illness. You get to follow…
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All the Birds in the Sky by Charlie Jane Anders
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Rating: ☆☆☆☆✮ January 2016 I’ve been following Charlie Jane Anders’ career for a couple of years now, and so I was super excited when I heard that she released a science fiction/fantasy novel. She was a writer and editor at i09, a science, science fiction, and pop culture news blog. Charlie Jane Anders is also the host…
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Weekly Update
Another week, another, uh… 25 pages. Oy this book goes slow! I’ve been reading A History of Western Philosophy by Bertrand Russell, slowly, a couple of pages every morning. It’s kind of relaxing but I wish I could read faster and I don’t know how much of it will stick. I’m taking notes and I’m planning to…
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But Why is the Blog Dead?
It’s not dead, it just looks that way… I realize I haven’t posted in a while, and this is for two reasons: Life Stuff – I’m engaged! And we bought a house! Unpacking boxes + decorating has taken a significant chunk out of my reading time. Also Fanime happened and my parents came to visit…
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The Conquest of Happiness
Published: 1930 Pages: 192 Rating: ☆☆☆☆✮ Bertrand Russell’s The Conquest of Happiness has immediately become my #1 favorite self-help book (not that there are a lot of contenders so far, but…). For anybody struggling with depression or an existential crisis, this is literally the best source of inspiration and practical advice. Most people try to defer the conversation…