songcatchers's reviews
820 reviews

'A sleeping sickness. That’s what the local reporters are calling it.'

Lightly speculative and deeply mysterious. Set in a town where people start randomly falling asleep and staying that way. It's compelling and suspenseful, waiting to see who will succumb next and under what incongruent or mundane circumstances.

'These are not the brains of ordinary sleepers. These are not the brains of the comatose. These brains are extraordinarily busy.'

'Art wasn't...normal. At least not like any other ten-year-old he'd ever seen before.'

A couple of dudes on the run with emotional baggage and Artemis Darth Vader, a little girl as exceptional as her name. This is a quest of wonder and awe, danger, humor, and so much tenderness. 

'In front of him sat a little girl. A man stood near her. They spoke of things that should be impossible.'

'Your parents were stuck at home, feeding their minds on a steady diet of conservative cable news and now they are… Whatever this is.'

The social commentary felt earnest, and as the description says, it  '...holds a mirror to our divided nation...'. But what's really fun is how flamboyantly and positively gross it is. The yuck is abundant, diverse, and so well written. This is a really good read, just not at the dinner table.

'Their channel of choice has changed them from the inside out.'

'“What’s your gut telling you? Is there some kind of monster in Lake Michigan?”'

Charming and offbeat mystery set in Wisconsin. The first in the Monster Hunter series, with a cryptozoologist who owns a bookstore filled with oddities and has a doggie sidekick that goes everywhere with her. In this, they're hunting for a Nessie-type monster in Lake Michigan.

'“The police want to find out what’s killed two men and some animals out on the water by crushing them in what appears to be a giant bite.”'

'I’m trying to rationalize this shit. In me, an immense panic reigns.'

Liminal, transitional space as metaphor. A severely depressed man is stuck in an unending subway station. Beautiful, raw, and unsettling. This has accurately been compared to House of Leaves and Piranesi, but it's an easier read (despite the emotional heaviness) than either of those.

'I don’t want to die in a place with no stars.'

'"I have a feeling," he said slowly, "that this is going to be a big affair—a long, troublesome problem that will not be easy to work out."'

Hercule Poirot is called to France by a man who is dead by the time he arrives. He and Hastings stay to solve the murder. I was confused through much of this and consulted Wikipedia at the end for clarification. But I do really enjoy 'Papa' Poirot.

'I understood next to nothing of what had occurred. The events of the night seemed fantastic and impossible'

'It doesn't look like an accident at all. It looks to him like murder.'

Lots of secrets and lots of suspects. Very conventional (a little in the way of a comfort read, but unremarkable in every way) popcorn mystery. Cold and snowy secluded inn, multiple dead bodies. 

'For now, each one of them is a suspect.'

'Shesheshen liked priests. They tasted righteous.'

A gruesome, fairy tale-like fantasy with a sweet and gentle love story. An oddly endearing shape-shifting monster is looking to lay her eggs when she finds love in Homily, a human girl. My favorite thing is the way Shesheshen absorbs things into her body, jello mold style, like wood, bear traps, and human bones. 

'Like smothering a victim, comforting was easier to do with a good grip.'

'He looked like the kind of guy who'd be savvy about which highway exit had the best wooded area for dumping a body.'

A cute romcom with a fun, macabre humor. A girl with a scholarly interest in serial killers and true crime, and the guy next door she's giving side-eye to. But honestly, I was just as much invested in her brother Connor and his thwarted attempts at proposing.

'Connor frowned. "But that’s what I'm talking about. You're holed up in here, reading about grisly murders and then getting paranoid about your neighbor..."'

'As universal donors, the O- negs enjoyed the highest demand for their blood, which meant it fetched the top prices.'

This actiony horror/thriller is set 40-odd years into an unrecognizably dystopian future. Humanity lives in a caste system based on blood type. This has a dark, Underworld vibe where it always feels like nighttime. It's drab, unlike the gorgeous cover, and I was uninterested. 

'The worst part about the whole thing– from the Harvest, to the Trade, from cash- for- blood donations to neighborhoods segregated by blood type– was that it didn’t have to be like this.'