lilacwhisker's reviews
181 reviews

Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer

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

4.25

me when i GET you
The Raw Shark Texts by Steven Hall

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

2.0

utterly boring. all the characters are completely flat, especially the main character who is the least interesting person in the world.
did not like how over-sexualized Scout was, either (Hall CANNOT write women for his life omg).
the world-building was somewhat confusing, but not in a good, mysterious way.
the whole thing about Mycroft Ward was just… bad. why are we meant to care about him?? he literally NEVER ONCE actually appears. you think he might but just…nothing.
anyways the pictures were nice.
Tell Me an Ending by Jo Harkin

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dark emotional mysterious reflective tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

Just the vibe I was hoping for. Very entertaining, and the concept makes for some great twists. I will say that Noor's helplessness gets kind of repetitive near the end, and at some point you just want to reach through the book and TELL HER. Anyways, there were a lot of perspectives, and I found I liked Oscar's the best, and Finn's the least (especially since the latter's story just kind of felt... unresolved? maybe that was the point?). The other three were pretty good as well. I hope there is more to come from this author...
Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe

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

3.75

the ending to me is what really ties this together. for the majority of the book, we follow Okonkwo's life and come to understand who is his and where he comes from.
all of a sudden, he is dead. after 200 pages of learning about him, it is over almost out of nowhere, and immediately his life is called meaningless by the commissioner. this truly reflects the opinions of the missionaries: that the villagers are nothing but vessels for their religion; not even human in their eyes.
the book is definitely character-heavy, and Okonkwo truly is awful, but I did really enjoy the chapters about Ekwefi and Ezinma.
Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body by Roxane Gay

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emotional reflective sad fast-paced

4.25

Once again Roxane Gay has managed to write a beautiful work of nonfiction. I am always impressed with how easily her words seem to flow, how beautifully she writes about the world around us. This was a very insightful memoir, but could sometimes be a bit repetitive. I do really hope she finds the peace she is looking for. 
Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson

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challenging mysterious 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

3.0

has some good lines and clearly has so much deeper meaning, but I feel like I would only really enjoy this if a class was being taught on it. the story is ok… and the characters were decent, but after a while you just get bored, especially with the fairy tale segments. the relationships were also not very well written, as they were SO fast-paced that you could not even understand why two characters were together. probably would have been better if some parts were longer and others shorter. 
Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris

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funny fast-paced

3.0

it was okay. book is divided into two sections: one set mainly in the u.s., and the other in france. I think I enjoyed the french half a bit more, but mainly because sedaris’s cluelessness is only heightened. that’s probably how I would best describe this book: many short stories about a completely oblivious man who has had so many different lives and is also so incredibly obnoxious. it was kinda funny though.
The First Four Books of Poems by Louise Glück

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challenging emotional reflective medium-paced

3.75

Although I don't usually read much poetry, I have heard good things about Glück and decided to give this collection a try. In my opinion, if you are trying to get more into a particular poet's work, (or just poetry in general) PLEASE start with a shorter collection. I feel as though I would have appreciated Glück's work way more if I had read other things in-between, because it is easy to get sick of poetry after a couple days. This collection was not too bad, and she definitely improved over the years, but it is very easy to get lost in her poems at times/become confused about the meaning. My favorite poems of hers were ones that told stories from someone else's point of view, because she is very strong at world-building and making you understand how the character's mind works. I would say the main recurring focuses/mentions in her poems were: plants, sex/husbands, and religious stories. The biggest takeaway I got from this book was that too much poetry at once can be tricky to do, especially as someone who is not the best at reading poems. 
The Code Book: The Science of Secrecy from Ancient Egypt to Quantum Cryptography by Simon Singh

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challenging informative medium-paced

4.0

could I replicate any of the stuff he was talking about here? no. but it was a fun time
The Color Purple by Alice Walker

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

4.75

A truly beautiful book about family and religion... really this book should be taught in more schools, if it is at all. Walker is wonderful at writing about relationships between people and understands how complex they can be-- people are not stuck as just "good" or "bad". I also really liked how she explained both Celie and Nettie's connection with their God and how it changed over the course of the book. This is not a particularly difficult book, but I will say that the lack of punctuation around dialogue can make things a bit hard to understand sometimes.