alekz's reviews
66 reviews

Rock Paper Scissors by Alice Feeney

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adventurous challenging mysterious tense fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

What a rollercoaster of events 
I Know Who You Are by Alice Feeney

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challenging mysterious tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

1.0

Absolutely bonkers insane stuff /derogatory. I usually love this author’s stuff but this was …. odd. Tw incest, kidnapping, abuse, csa, moreso than her other works.  
Tastes Like War: A Memoir by Grace M. Cho

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adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful informative inspiring reflective sad tense medium-paced

5.0

"Tastes Like War" by Grace Cho is a memoir that also straddles the line toward academic. 
Cho is a professor and writes about her life as it relates to her mother and their immigration to the US from Korea. Cho tells us of her mother's development of schizophrenia, her upbringing in the Korean War, her experience as a state sanctioned sex worker for the US military, and their experiences as Korean immigrants in a very small, white town in the Pacific Northwest. Cho both lets us into her life and her family with beautiful clear prose and vulnerability, and contextualizes the generational trauma of herself and her mother through memoir and academic dives into these huge looming societal and cultural traumas. You learn so much about colonialism, imperialism, the culture of sex work not just in Korea but most notably in Korea in the beginning of the 20th century, about schizophrenia and the huge difference in its manifestation in the US and other countries - that schizophrenia is a social disorder, that our culture exacerbates it, that people from India (for example) can experience remission in far higher levels. You learn about the importance of food as love, as communication, as communion, as memory, as survival. 
And all of this told from Grace - a Korean American who loves her mother deeply, who wants to untangle the knot of trauma from her mother's life to free her - or maybe herself - from it's oppressive power as inexpressible. This book is a must read. 
As the child of a mother with mental illness, as the child of a father whose love language is cooking, as a writer, as a reader, this book was phenomenal. It had me gasping out loud, it had me choking up, it had me remembering my mother and my lifelong personal work of trying to untangle the knot of her trauma. 
As a white person, I am so grateful to be able to hear the stories of those living lives I'll never be able to fathom. 
And, professors! This can be assigned for classes anywhere from Women's and Gender Studies, Social and Cultural importance of Food, Korean History, Race in and Out of the US, Psychology classes, Social and cultural relationships with Mental Illness. It's written very clearly, very eloquently, and without any jargon. It's easily understandable for people unfamiliar with any of the above things, and is primarily a memoir, so don't be afraid of the nod to academia!
Jaws by Peter Benchley

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adventurous mysterious medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

I enjoyed the way the attacked were described almost from the shark’s point of view, and the added context to the reasons why the town couldn’t shut down. There’s a random chapter of erotica and the book is problematic a few times in way a book from 1972 often is. A couple weird moments of racism, use of the word r+pe to refer both to actual acts and to describe violations of other random types. Used at will. Definitely not the best thing ever but some parts were interesting. 
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

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adventurous dark emotional mysterious fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

His & Hers by Alice Feeney

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adventurous challenging dark mysterious tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Sometimes I Lie by Alice Feeney

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adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Insaaaaaaaane!!! Sharp objects kind of twists, kept me on my toes the whole time, and the narration was stellar. 
TW: abt ¾ the way through, there is an explicit depiction of r*pe. 
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Nightbitch by Rachel Yoder

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funny lighthearted mysterious medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris

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Did not finish book. Stopped at 29%.
Hm. Microaggressions. And an entire chapter with repeated use of the M slur to describe his guitar teacher who is a little person. 
The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields

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Did not finish book. Stopped at 6%.
Weird amounts of gross fatphobia and I stopped at the introduction of antisemitism on page 20.