youreawizardjerry's reviews
114 reviews

this is all about the language. I don’t feel I can meet it where it’s attempting to meet me. more reason to improve my spanish to one day get to experience the original as it should be. Still love crg down tho. n killer playlist.

i spent nearly all of 2024 getting through this. while i was never excited to pick it up, nor was i reluctant. tartt is a master of characterization, however just as there are fully fledged people irl that simply aren't very interesting, neither are the ones we follow in this story. maybe thats the intention.

A great read for study, but if you're looking to enjoy the next "great american novel" it's often blurbed as, i would look elsewhere. in little ways is it that. it gets closest in it's descriptions of environments, particularly the nevada section. there are magical moments but it is uninteresting for the bulk of it's length. the ending is strangely heavy-handed as well. i still love the book, if mostly physically, because i bought my copy in the gayest part of san diego just before having a heartwarming illegal experience of class solidarity while looking for a place to piss. the comedically thick book shape (seriously why is it so wide) in my backpack the whole time. and the little bird rocking back and forth. i can't deny there is something thematically very theo decker about that. maybe he will follow you too.

i am a simple man

Being preemptively disappointed with US Latine media is probably my most Mexican-American trait. It's common for things to not be enough for us because it's hard to encapsulate an identity as nebulous as ours. I think we are mostly just cautious, and perhaps we have to be. More often, we are only a food reference and the sporadic italicized word in an otherwise unfamiliar landscape. Still, we can be our own biggest opps and this makes that clear.

I was just…so prepared to judge this harshly. I anticipated scrunching my face at a book full of cliches and laughing at its reduction of all that I am. Instead, I crumbled quickly. I probably cried 10 times. The majority of the tears from chapters not even a page long. Simple yet moving portraits that can echo the lives of anyone, but particularly reverberate in those from working-class immigrant families, first-gen children, and people who despite the suffering on their own Mango Streets will always dare to keep hope alive. Accessible yet its depth or style is never dulled to remain so. There is a lot of power in this little book and I really enjoyed it. A must-read for all Mexican-Americans.

It’s good, I suppose. Certainly on a rubric. But I didn’t enjoy it. Not as a story, and not as an American (the most important of authorities, of course /s). It was not enough, in the interesting sense nor in the lens of the author sense—for me. Which is frustrating. This is a recurring experience with these books y'all do tricks on the dong of. I could give it the benefit of the doubt, maybe it was not the right time. But then... when would it ever be? I will always be brown, and this will always be the most superficial telling of this countries' capitalist grasp tale. That’s right, I said it! I was at no point compelled. Well, I’m compelled to put a curse on the bloodlines of all who led me here. Sleep with one eye open, old sportz. Nah, I'm glad I returned to this outside of high school, honestly. If only to recall why I was so uninterested in it in the first place. At times it read as a sad and pretty song, a lot like wind chimes. That's enough some days, I guess. Not today.

🥺

Supremely mid in every way. Emma Straub's voice is never interesting, which translates into both a very bland writing style and story in general. Literal TIME ALTERATION is happening, yet very few (1) consequences are felt by the end. The characters are basic and boring and nothing ever culminates into any substance or depth. 300 pages of superficial lost opportunity after lost opportunity. Another author would've ate this up, but unfortunately, This Time Tomorrow, is generic and forgettable. Take my word for it and axe it from the TBR. ✌️

shes right, january is the lone gay man in a gregorian polycule of lesbians

I only made it ~100 pages in bc I was literally trapped in a diff country with no cell service and only had this book during wait times. otherwise I would’ve closed it a lot sooner. Mad YA vibes, didn’t jive w the writing. Super unfortunate to be a horror genre loving Indigenous person and to have to put this down. Feel like I’m the exact target audience yet it was never engaging, rip.