pineconek's reviews
746 reviews

Oh how I wish to have had read this when I was seventeen!! I would've been absolutely obsessed with this book.

And I think the 17 year old who is somehow still tucked in the back of my brain is obsessed with this book. Hangsaman is Shirley Jackson's the Bell Jar, Girl Interrupted, Prozac Nation, Bunny... 

Told in three parts, the novella follows Natalie as she moves from living with her parents and younger brother to spending her first semester at college. Natalie is bookish, lonely, melancholic, traumatized... and struggles making friends conventionally. She eventually connects with her English teacher's wife, and later with another outsider. There's tarot cards, they're fantasies of destroying whole buildings, and there's a darkness in Natalie's head that is only found in teenage girls. The book is told in third person but with a heavy bias toward's Natalie's interpretation of events. And interpretation gets weirder and weirder.

Highly recommended!! 4.75 stars that I may round up to an even 5. 

I'm in a love-hate relationship with this book tbh.

I'll give you one paragraph of overall stuff that'll be spoiler free, and then it'll all be spoilers from there. Because this book is a haunted ride in a funfair and it's way funner to experience the thrill first hand when it's fresh.

so. Bloom is the story of Ro, a recently divorced assistant professor in English. Ro lives with her cat and enjoys farmer's markets. And one farmers market, she meets Ash. Ethereal, kind-hearted, attentive, Ash creates and sells soaps, cupcakes, and plants. A flirtation between the two women follows; many cupcakes get eaten, one plant doesn't get killed, and how many soaps does one person need?

Spoilers will begin after the following pet peeve complaint: why was the narration so incredibly rooted in the 2020s? The vocabulary choices made me feel like I was reading instagram infographics or millenial listsicles . Like the cottage core romance thing is already millenial-enough, but I wasn't expecting references to (specific) memes, wellness movements, or any millenial "therapy-speak". I'm not sure how this will age...':)

Spoilers start for real here: I think I have found the book that will be nicknamed the millenial "Misery" and the American "Audition" (both great books about being trapped and literally unable to walk away). The horror tropes were done right, and the pacing during the horror sequences were really solid.

The foreshadowing was delightful, if sometimes a little too on the nose. Those bits with ceramics around the 60% mark had me mentally shouting "it's people! Soylent green is people!". And this is where the novel does something truly stellar: the construction and marketing of this book is a huge risk.

This is marketed as a horror novel. I watched the percentage on my Kobo increase from 40, to 75, to 83.... and no horror. None at all! I knew this was a Bluebeard situation and worried there wasn't enough room left in the back to explain everything and horrify our readers. My heart was racing: I knew that the horror was either going to be spectacular or this would be a book I get angry at when I think about it.

I've read Misery, Audition, watched season 2 of American Horror Story, Hereditary, etc. I trained as a biologist and have done many a dissection - body horror usually doesn't get me. And it might just be a result of my ankle injury (which I got the day after I finished reading Audition...) but this had me crawling out of my skin.


And then I found out that the vibe this story was going for was "handsome female Hannibal" and... I think she nailed it.

I wrote this review with the intention of giving this book like 3.5-4.25 stars, but as I was writing I felt such genuine enthusiasm about the book that 4.5 (rounded up to 5) seems like a better fit. It did, after all, have me reading way past my bedtime.

Recommended if you enjoy psychological horror, books about intense obsessive relationships, and can tolerate the most saccharine cottage-core romance between two milenials. I should've added a disclaimer that I am also a milenials who enjoys farmer's markets.

"So, what are you reading lately" "Uh...."

I've read a lot of cannibalism-adjascent books this year so, when I walked past this in the recommendations section of the library display, I couldn't resist. And now I know far more about cannibalism than I thought there was to know. The book explored cannibalism in the animal kingdom and in humans, different forms of cannibalism (eating siblings, children, parents, or strangers all serve different purposes), and dispelled some myths around human cannibalism. The book explicitly leaned away from sensation; the author spent very little time on true crime cases and talked about those with lots of respect and sensitivity.

Otherwise, this book was funny in a "oh no, I shouldn't be laughing" kind of way. And it had pictures (some really nice, scientifically accurate diagrams). I look forward to reading more of the author's work.

Recommended if you, too, want to tell people that you're reading about cannibalism and ask if they'd like to hear some fun facts you've learned. Be that person at a party. 4.5 stars rounded down.

The audiobook features a full-cast recording. If you're into audiobooks or simply audio-curious, you should read this on audiobook. 

Horror Movie is about an indie horror movie called Horror Movie. The movie never actually got made due to Events, but scripts floated around the internet and a cult following grew. But perhaps it's time for a remake (does it count as a remake if the movie never got made in the first place?). 

A fun multi-timeline story built of script excerpts, the past Events around the first production of Horror Movie, and the developments towards finally producing this movie. I'm not super into cursed object / found footage horror plots, but I do enjoy creepy abandoned schools and characters who slowly descend into madness. So if those things sound appealing to you, you'll enjoy the ride. 

I'll confess that this is my least favorite Paul Tremblay because I didn't find it as clever or heart-wrenching as his other works. Or maybe I'm becoming desensitized to Paul Tremblay. 3.75 stars. 

I am, sadly, the wrong audience for this book. 

This is a high-fantasy novel anchored in a world based on norse mythology. There are fewer dragons than the cover suggests, and more people having their entrails removed (not that I'm opposed to entrail-heavy literature). It had a lot of "oh btw our main characters are Chosen Ones With Special Powers" going on, and unfortunately didn't keep my interest. 

I forced myself to finish this as reading it was part of a bookclub and, bookclub over, I'd hit a sunk cost fallacy. 

Recommended if you're a high fantasy reader (I am not). 1.5 stars rounded up. 

(written nov 2024, 2 months after finishing this book)

This is the first book I read on somatics and coaching, per recommendation of my masseuse/somatic therapist. While definitely very "out there", it's an interesting entry point into the concept of somatic therapy. It's written for coaches/body workers and not clients, but very accessible. Part of this is because the concepts are basic and none of the science is complex (largely because none of this has been explicitly rigorously studied). 

I'm a natural skeptic but enjoy dipping my toes in low-cost and low-harm areas of wellness. So far, I've benefited from embodiments, some posture exercises (starting from the feet and pelvis), and thinking of my body and brain as a cohesive unit. 

The book turned a bit too "corporate" for me in parts, and some claims felt fantastical. I'm a natural skeptic and resist corporate framework, but it was easy to put that aside and focus on what I found more useful. 

Recommended if you're interested in wellness modalities like yoga and meditation, gentle movement, etc. and don't mind suspending disbelief. 2.5 stars rounded up. 

This is one dark, bleak book. And I read a lot of dark, bleak books. 

Shipwrecks is a story about the frailty of humans when resources are scarce. Set in a coastal and isolated Japanese village, this story exposes the raw vulnerability of self-sustainded living in the pre-industrial era. The horrors of starvation and food rationing are infused into every page. Familial ties are constantly tested, as some children die while others need to work the fishing boats. Adults leave their families for years of indentured servitude, hoping that they'll return in time to save some of their kin from starvation. 

This reminded me of some other harrowing books that I read this year: The Terror by Dan Simmons and The Indifferent Stars Above (the tale of the Donner party). I recommend these books if you "enjoyed" Shipwrecks.

And I recommend Shipwrecks if you enjoyed those books, or just beautiful slow burn prose about terrible topics, and harrowing horrific scenes of human misery that will remain seared into your brain. 4.5 stars rounded down to 4.

irritating tbh

Putting this down for now cause the mood is spooky szn not Greek myths

I keep getting distracted by something else :')