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PSA TO ALL READERS while wandering around a mall today I was ensnared by a powerful force that bade me enter a place called Barnes & Noble. in a daze I wandered the displays and was compelled to even pick up several books that this force attempted to foist upon me at great personal cost to myself. it was only through great strength of will that I was able to fight off this befouling force by withdrawing my cellular device from my pocket and logging into my library account to place requests for the same books at no cost that i was able to escape without grievous harm. truly it's crazy out there, stay safe and remember that libraries are always there to provide aid as you fight against such forces of darkness

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back when i hadn't read much before and was trying to find out what i liked (i couldn't really read very well til I was 16, it's not really relevant but does contextualise this) i reasoned that the best way to discover my own tastes was to read as eclectic a range of things as possible, and began a habit of asking people (mostly my English teachers), what the weirdest book they'd ever read was, and then reading that book. it introduced me to all sorts of things- some i liked, some i didn't- but even if i didn't like the book, i was reading! anyway, i mention this because i'm not sure where i want to go when i finish the book i'm currently reading, and i'm sure tumblr will have some interesting answers, so: what's the weirdest book you've ever read? leave it in the tags!

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embarking on confessions of the fox, as a lover of footnotes metahistorical fiction and the early 18th century and as a dedicated hater of pastiche that isnt trying hard enough

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it’s time for DAMP BOOKS DECEMBER

here’s a rec list of cold wet seasonal reads: atmospheric books about offputting people, featuring mud, bog, spit, blood, wine, fog, ash, etc.

let’s get clammy with it. additional damp recs appreciated.

o caledonia by elspeth barker

a weird little girl in midcentury scotland. bonus wets: mushroom spores, slush, jam

the western wind by samantha harvey

a medieval murder mystery. bonus wets: goose grease, floodwater, the blood of christ

eileen by ottessa mosfegh

a juvenile prison administrator’s quarter life crisis. bonus wets: vomit, stale wine, dirty snow

the pull of the stars by emma donoghue

a couple days in a spanish flu clinic/maternity ward in dublin. bonus wets: amniotic fluid, mucus, soggy newspaper

a mercy by toni morrison

a household dissolving in seventeenth century new york. bonus wets: pox, mist, molasses

wolf hall by hilary mantel

a bureaucrat in the court of henry viii. bonus wets: ink, fever sweat, the thames

ghost wall by sarah moss

a camping trip with stone age reenactors. bonus wets: damson juice, bog bodies, bramble

the man who shot out my eye is dead by chanelle benz

a short story collection. bonus wets: brain matter, milk, the blood of christ again

never let me go by kazuo ishiguro

a dystopian art school for mysterious children. bonus wets: rain, marshland, tears

the name of the rose by umberto eco

a monastic murder mystery and also a primer on every theological debate that ever happened in 14th century europe. bonus wets: pig’s blood, bathwater, ink

wuthering heights by emily brontë

a case study in isolation, incest, and insanity, and the novel that inspired the whole list. bonus wets: dog saliva, mist, assorted consanguineous fluids

close range by annie proulx

a collection of wyoming stories. bonus wets: spit, semen, cold coffee

the giant, o’brien by hilary mantel

a giant irish storyteller visits london and loses his body to science. bonus wets: gin, pus, graveyard mud

study for obedience by sarah bernstein

a stifled woman in her family’s homeland. bonus wets: potato mold, creekwater, milk

giovanni’s room by james baldwin

an american in paris makes a mess. bonus wets: cognac, condensation, the seine

moby dick by herman melville

a man, another man, a third man, and a whale. bonus wets: sperm, fish chowder, sperm (other one)

the lottery and other stories by shirley jackson

a collection of unsettling stories about polite people. bonus wets: hose water, flop sweat, furniture polish

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I just read Ghost Wall by Sarah Moss, and found the experience intriguing, in the sense that it’s the first book I’ve read in a while where, having finished it, I still can’t tell whether I liked it or not. So I thought I’d lay out some of my thoughts about it, in the hopes that it might make me more sure of how I feel about it. 

I’ll preface this review by saying that I don’t necessarily feel disliking a book to be a bad experience. I often stick with books I’m not wholly enjoying, as I feel even a book I don’t like, or that doesn’t contain much I do like, can be a valuable thing to read. I’m aware that this practice isn’t for everyone, and I have absolutely no judgement for people who prefer just to read things they actually like; it makes sense. For me, I tend to read to the end unless I find the content triggering or I’m bored, because I feel that being able to say I dislike something, and explain what I dislike about it, is as valuable a skill as being able to talk about what I like, and it’s a skill I want to develop. As long as I have something to say about a book, I’m enjoying myself, even if I don’t like the book itself— I guess my criteria for a ‘good book’ is ‘a book I want to talk about’, which would make Ghost Wall a very good book indeed for me. I say this so that, even if this review ends up being quite negative, that doesn’t mean I regard the time I spent with Ghost Wall as wasted time, or regret having read it. 

One of the main comments I have about it is that I feel the blurb was misleading. When I went into this book, I was expecting an exploration of human nature and the trappings of modern civilisation, which, as the blurb reads, ‘urges us to wonder how far we have come from the primitive minds of our ancestors’. Instead, I got something much more specific which I regarded as far more powerful; a look into power dynamics and ignorance, all converging in the character of Bill, the protagonist’s abusive father. He is a character who deeply interested me, because, even though I despised his views and actions, I could completely understand how they came to be. I found this refreshing, as, in a lot of books I’ve read, especially YA books which we see completely from the view of the protagonist (which this is), I’ve seen abusers portrayed as a nebulous, quite vague ‘evil person’ with little characterisation outside of their abuse of their victims. This makes complete sense to me, but I feel it’s misrepresentative. Abusers are people, like anyone else— and I say this not to justify their actions, but to illustrate that anyone, with any motivation, has the potential to be an abuser. If we create a stereotype that every abuser is essentially similar, without any defined characteristics, it can be easier to overlook the signs of abuse in real life. In this way, I felt that the portrayal of Bill as a person you could, on some level, understand, was good. As a person from a working-class background, I understood the lack of power he felt working a job that did not suit him but which his situation required him to do— I understood his desire to prove himself around the upper-class professor, and a willingness to do anything just to be taken seriously. This is not to say, of course, that I agreed with his actions, but that I felt he was a very well fleshed-out character. 

The portrayal of class through Silvie’s character was also something I could relate to a lot. One particular moment that resonated with me is when Molly imitated her accent, and Silvie had to tell her repeatedly not to, even though Molly insisted she wasn’t doing it out of mockery. Like Silvie, I have quite a strong regional accent— when I’m not making an effort to hide it, it’s difficult to go about my day in public without people repeating my words back to me after I’ve said them, even though they insist it’s not to make fun of me. I am very used to the assumptions people make about my personality, my education, and my interests; they’re constant, and I felt that the book portrayed the constant instances of classism very well, as Silvie faced the students’ ignorance.

I found the portrayal of very relevant present-day issues, juxtaposed with a plot surrounding iron-age re-enactment, was fascinating, and would happily have read more of it. However, I think my interest in these parts of the story meant that at the climax of the book— when the ‘sacrifice’ is attempted— the interest completely left me. The things I liked so much about the writing prior to this part were the realism, the familiar scenes that I could relate to, as the issues discussed were so prevalent in my community— compared to this, the sacrifice just felt a little bit too unrealistic or out-of-left-field for me to care about. I have known many people like Silvie go through what Silvie went through, which is part of why I cared so much about it— someone being sacrificed to a bog is something I’ve never heard about before, so, in comparison, it felt less important to me. This section of the book also felt a little rushed to me, and I felt that there could have been more build up to this part so it didn’t seem so much like it was going from 0 to 100 in the space of a page; that being said, I felt that this section was very nicely foreshadowed earlier in the book, and recognise that my increased interest in the earlier sections is largely down to my own life experiences, and so the section with the ’sacrifice’ would likely feel less anticlimactic to other readers. 

I don’t have a neat conclusion to draw here— I’m still uncertain as to whether I liked it or not, though I can say confidently that, either way, I found it interesting. Would I recommend it? Yes— if only so I have more people to discuss it with, and figure out how I feel about it. 

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Any recommendations for In Search of Destiny by Viktor Kryzhanivsky?

This art reminds me of the eponymous character in Sarah Perry’s Melmoth.

Melmoth was coming implacably down the street. She came not enclosed in a pillar of smoke but rimmed with light, with a bright, bluish light like that from a gas flame. Her robes lifted around her as she walked.

[… She] is the Wanderer, the Witness—she who is cursed to walk from Jerusalem to Constantinople […]; always seeking out everything that’s most distressing and most wicked, in a world which is surpassingly wicked, and full of distress. In doing so she bears witness, where there is no witness, and hopes to achieve her salvation.

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I just finished Melmoth by Sarah Perry, and enjoyed it immensely. The book follows a woman named Helen Franklin, who has done a terrible thing, for which she is trying to atone. The story begins when her friend Karel gives her a mysterious document, which details a man's encounters with a figure known as Melmoth the Witness, who appears at the moments when humanity is at its lowest, having been cursed to bear witness for eternity. As Helen finds more and more documents telling her about Melmoth, she wonders whether the myth may have shreds of truth, and begins to feel as though, for her whole life, someone has been watching her. 

One of the things I loved about the story was this premise; as a gothic horror enthusiast and Magnus Archives enjoyer, the theme of 'witness' is familiar to me, and I felt that the premise was carried out to its full potential, exploring this theme both in ways which I did and did not expect. The inclusion of multiple different accounts, across different time periods, served to emphasise the different ways that people can act as perpetrators during atrocities; through ignorance, or jealousy, or because they cannot see any ‘good’ options available to them, etc. It also gave the novel a somewhat epistolary feel, and put the reader almost in the position of Melmoth, where we are presented with the facts of a person’s life and have to bear witness to them. I felt that the different personas were conveyed very well, and that the different historical eras were accurately portrayed (to the best of my knowledge). During sections that referenced events I wasn’t necessarily knowledgeable about, I felt that I could still understand most of what was happening, and that the writing contextualised things well without feeling like it was being deliberately educational. 

I have written before about times where the format of an audiobook not only makes a story more accessible, but actually adds something to the experience of engaging with it. I felt that this was definitely the case here. Throughout the story, the reader is frequently addressed, as the narrator places them directly into the scene and instructs them to look a certain way, or listen closely for a certain sound. This has the effect of being very immersive, which is only heightened by the narration from Emelia Fox— it really feels as though the narrator is speaking directly to you. 

All of this comes together to form a book that I not only enjoyed for its story, but also deeply enjoyed the experience of listening to. The events it describes are often horrific, and it has moments of intense darkness— but as a reader I felt very satisfied by this book; I felt as though every thread was woven together in such a way that no character was overlooked or forgotten about, and, when I had questions as I listened to the story, I felt that they were always answered. I predicted both of the twists at the very end, but they didn’t feel boring or unimaginative as a result— it was more a sense of ‘aha! I was right!’ With one moment in particular (in the cafe, with the three windows), I distinctly remember thinking ‘oh, it would be such a good twist if [thing] happened next’— and then it did. In all, I deeply enjoyed this book, and I’d be interested to read more of the author’s work in future— this book was published in 2018, and I’d be fascinated to see what she’s come up with since. 

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could you drop the titles of some of the non cis books you've read recently that you've enjoyed ?

books that i've read and enjoyed:

rebent sinner by ivan coyote (essays, sort of)

stone fruit by lee lai (graphic fiction)

little fish by casey plett (fiction)

dream of woman by casey plett (short stories)

detransition baby by torrey peters (fiction)

super late bloomer: my early days in transition by julia kaye (graphic memoir)

gender failure by ivan coyote and rae spoon (nonfiction essays)

confessions of the fox by jordy rosenberg (metafiction)

manhunt by gretchen felker-martin (horror)

paul takes the form of a mortal girl by andrea lawlor (magic realism fiction)

something that may shock and discredit you by daniel lavery (memoir/essays)

the fire never goes out: a memoir in pictures by nd stevenson (graphic memoir)

books that i read that weren't for me but are worthwhile reads and undoubtedly would be perfect for someone else:

gender queer: a memoir by maia kobabe (graphic memoir)

dead collections by isaac fellman (vampire romance)

to-reads:

a natural history of transition by callum angus (short stories)

tell me i'm worthless by alison rumfitt (horror)

light from uncommon stars by ryka aoki (sci-fi/fantasy)

manywhere: stories by morgan thomas (short stories)

fairest by meredith talusan (memoir)

apsara engine by bishakh som (graphic short stories)

your body is not your body: an anthology ed. alex woodroe (horror anthology, proceeds go to equality texas)

the seep by chana porter (sci-fi)

tomboy survival guide by ivan coyote (essays)

maiden, mother, crone: fantastical trans femmes ed. gwen benaway (fantasy anthology)

side affects: on being trans and feeling bad by hil malatino (critical/political theory)

a safe girl to love by casey plett (short stories, available in pdf via the author here)

the story of silence by alex myers (historical fiction)

meanwhile, elsewhere: science fiction and fantasy from transgender writers ed. cat fitzpatrick and casey plett (short stories, available via one of the editors here)

the boy with the bird in his chest by emme lund (magical realism fiction)

trans girl suicide museum by hannah beer (genre VERY unclear but i respect that tbh)

even greater mistakes: stories by charlie jane anders (sci-fi short stories)

the thirty names of night by zeyn joukhadar (magical realism fiction)

for younger readers i've also heard good things about cemetery boys by aiden thomas, dreadnought by april daniels, lakelore by anna-marie mclemore, meet cute diary by emery lee, and different kinds of fruit by kyle lukoff!

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sry if you've answered this before, but do you have any fave or recommended poems centered around or related to disability?

thanks for your patience, i do! i'm including some of my favorite books below, as well as some individual poems.

i've also written some disability-themed pieces/books. Some pieces I've written that may be of interest include these two and these two in Electric Lit, Diagnostician's Note in Protean, RUNNING in X-RAY Lit, Late Summer Dispatch in Princemere, Headcase! in the New Orleans Review, and to a specified fate) and these two in The Institutionalized Review.

books (all of the authors listed also have individual pieces published that are worth checking out!)

Hannah Emerson, The Kissing of Kissing

Twoey Gray, Electrodaughter

Bhanu Kapil, Schizophrene

Sam Sax, Madness

Bettina Judd, Patient.

Jane Shi, Leaving Chang'e On Read

David Wolach, Occultations

Petra Kuppers & Neil Marcus, Cripple Poetics

Phil Smith, Writhing Writing: Moving Toward a Mad Poetics

Edited Anthology: Beauty is a Verb: The New Poetry of Disability

some poems i love (* marks those I have edited/helped bring into the world!):

Jess Silfa, Keeping Up

Dane Lyn, Stoner Termites*

Andy Jackson, Disfigured Fame

BEE LB, Two poems

torrin a. greathouse, SICK4SICK

Nora Hikari, The Fictive's Address

Matthew Tuckner, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, With Figurative Language

Isaac Pickell, In The Psych Ward*

Zachariah Claypole White, OCD Sonnets

Evan Reynolds, [ABJECTION]*

Jesse Rice-Evans, Snow Moon

hope you find something you like!

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Today I finished The Many Selves Of Katherine North by Emma Geen! This book was very interesting to me on a lot of different levels, and, even though I didn’t find everything about it entirely satisfying, there were still lots of things I liked about it! 

One of the main things I enjoyed about it was the originality of the premise— the protagonist, Kit, is a phenomenaut, a person whose job it is to ‘jump’ into the bodies of other animals, temporarily transferring her consciousness into their bodies in order to help scientists learn more about them. At nineteen, she is the oldest person to work in this job, having started at twelve— the majority of phenomenauts being teenagers, as their neuroplasticity makes it easier for them to adapt to living in animal bodies. Throughout the story, we see Kit living as a fox, an elephant, a tiger, a polar bear, a snake, a seal, an octopus, an eagle, and a spider— each of which requires her to adapt to new ways of being, and new ways of seeing herself. I felt that these sections were done extremely well. I was particularly impressed by the section wherein she lives as a spider; the author is not a biologist, and neither am I, but there was a sense of realism in the way that human notions began to mean less and less to her the longer she remained in that body. I appreciated that the sections where she wasn’t a human didn’t still feel human-centric— it formed a fascinating portrayal of what it is like to live as a species that fundamentally does not think like us. 

The way that Kit thinks, however, is one of the things about this book that I liked less— the book is written in the first person, and we only see the events unfold through her eyes, and, at times I found her to be naive. This meant that I found myself feeling frustrated often, and, a couple of times, secrets were revealed that were intended to form an unexpected twist, and, while Kit was shocked by them, I just thought ‘well, yeah.’ Her naivety makes sense for her character— she has been working full-time since she was twelve, with few friends outside of ShenCorp, and doesn’t seem to have much experience of the world outside of her job. However, I still found it frustrating, at times. 

Another limitation of Kit’s perspective is that, because we don’t know anything outside of her experiences, there are some questions that are left unanswered, and plot points that are left unresolved, in a way that I found unsatisfying. For instance, there is Kit’s relationship with her parents— I assume that she’s going to reconnect with them following the events of the novel, but I would still have preferred some kind of resolution there, even just a single line to say that she’s going to talk to them about what’s happened, rather than just not mentioning them at all as the story ends. There are also some of the mysteries of ShenCorp; how did Grandma Wolf go from being who she was to who she is now? What will happen to ShenCorp following the information Kit leaked, and how will that information be used? I think the main issue I had with these plot points is that these are questions I was asking but Kit wasn’t— if she had wondered, but resolved that she may never be able to truly know, perhaps I would have felt less dissatisfied, but, as it is, it just feels as though they’ve been overlooked. 

However, I still, broadly speaking, enjoyed the experience of reading this book, and I would recommend it, though I’d recommend it based on its explorations of identity and self-perception, rather than on the basis of the mysteries it presents. Some aspects of it were frustrating to me, but it still gave me an interesting look into different ways the world can be experienced. 

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I recently read The Girls by Emma Cline! I’d tried this book before, a couple of years ago, but not gotten any further than a couple of chapters into it— I decided on a whim to try it again, and I’m so glad I did, because it gave me a lot to think about! 

This story is centred around one girl who, in the 1960’s, becomes part of a cult. However, I think that just describing it as a story about a cult is misleading. When I tried to read this for the first time, I’d recently read other books like- off the top of my head- After The Fire by Will Hill, and was expecting a similar story, wherein the focus is on the actual workings of the cult, how it started, and how the leader exerts their control. These details are present in The Girls, but, having now read it, they’re not necessarily what I would say the story is actually about; they filter in through a haze of the protagonist’s obsession, or they’re given as afterthoughts when she looks back on the time she spent there. Instead, I would say that the story is- as the title says- about girls, specifically the ways in which girls and women can act as the enforcers of patriarchy and misogyny. 

The story takes place across two timelines; the summer of 1969, when Evie is 14, and the present day, where she, as a middle-aged woman, looks back on her experiences. In both timelines, she witnesses instances of misogyny, and hears misogynistic attitudes being voiced, noticing them even when she is younger, and stating that there are more likely more girls than boys in the cult because they ‘didn’t have very far to fall’, saying that ‘I knew just being a girl in the world handicapped your ability to believe yourself’. However, this misogyny doesn’t always come from men. It is echoed by her friend Connie, by Suzanne, by her mother, and, at times, by her own inner voice, which frequently criticises other women, having been taught to; one of the first observations she makes about Suzanne is that she ‘isn’t beautiful’. Evie has no female role models in her life, and nobody that can advise her who she will listen to, due to her strained relationship with her mother— and while she has many other circumstances in her life that lead to her social isolation, and subsequent vulnerability, it isn’t a charismatic leader that draws her into the cult initially, but a bus full of girls her own age, who she wants to fit in with. These girls are the ones by whom she feels pressured to conform to the group; these girls are the ones who encourage her not to prioritise her bodily autonomy. Throughout the book, there isn’t that much focus on the leader, Russell, at all— which may be frustrating to those who come into it expecting a straightforward cult story, or a scene-by-scene retelling of the Manson murders, on which the story is based. However, I enjoyed the psychological focus very much, and found it a very compelling exploration of misogyny and adolescence. 

As a final note: I realise that the last book I reviewed was by Emma Stonex, and this one is by Emma Cline— I want to say that this is a complete coincidence, and I’m not just reading books by people called Emma now. However, the book I’m currently reading is The Many Selves Of Katherine North by Emma Geen, so maybe I should just see how long I can carry this on for. If anyone has any recommendations for books by authors named Emma, then let me know! 

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love the library. there's no risk. you can take out a book and go "wow this sucks" and just give it back. and when you do that you're still making the library's Number Go Up so you'll be able to roll the dice on even more books. all for the low low price of free/you already paid for it with your tax money so you might as well use it

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As it's disability pride month and I'm a reading blog, I wanted to make a post about disability and reading. As a disclaimer, I'm not an expert- just one person with opinions- and my experiences are only my own, not universal.

I grew up with two disabled family members who struggled with reading, both for different reasons. One couldn't read at all, though had been able to once- the other could read a little, but wouldn't be able to read a whole page of text, and a street sign was around the limit of what she was able to read without assistance. I also have a disability that affects my reading— I have Irlen syndrome. Until I was sixteen, I didn’t know this. I was too ashamed to talk about my difficulties due to the stigma attached to struggling with reading, and, until my school librarian noticed and had me assessed for Irlen syndrome, I was more or less resigned to failing my GCSE’s as a result, having already failed my mocks. Now, I can read and access books very freely; I write for fun, and I enjoy reading, enough that I’ve got a blog related to it. But the stigma attached to literacy, and ability to read, still exists. 

It is undeniable that the ability to read well is a requirement to access many aspects of society. Lacking this ability can be isolating, and can leave you vulnerable, both in terms of physical living conditions and in your interpersonal relationships. If you do not experience any difficulty reading, I would encourage you to take note of just how many things, day-to-day, are dependent upon you being able to read and understand what you’re reading. For instance, you have things like your financial information, forms you have to fill in, job applications, information on voting and your rights, and medical letters. If you are unable to read these things, you can often be put into a difficult position wherein you are either locked out of accessing the services that they relate to, or you have to rely on others to read them to you, which can mean that you’re vulnerable to abuse. I am lucky enough never to have been put into this position— but it is still the case that this kind of thing can happen, and can often happen as the result of disabilities. 

Prior to receiving support for my disability, I struggled to read nutritional information on food packets, and, as a result, once ate something I was allergic to— thankfully not severely. I wasn’t able to use various pieces of technology until someone helped me to set them up, as I couldn’t read the instruction booklets. I avoided any board or card games with friends that involved reading, because I was embarrassed by my complete inability to read aloud— something I still struggle with to this day. 

Recently, there have been an increasing number of conversations regarding the way that reading is taught in schools, media literacy, and whether people’s ability to read, on the whole, is declining, for various reasons. These are all important conversations to have. However, I think it is also important that people are able to have these conversations without dehumanising those who struggle with their reading. Literacy is an important thing; however, people exist in the world who are illiterate, and they deserve your empathy, rather than mockery. In my experience, the use of ‘illiterate’ as an insult does not encourage those who have difficulties with their reading to seek support or to improve their skills; it can often have the opposite effect, creating a sense that struggling with your reading is embarrassing, something to be ashamed of. 

This sense of shame is something that I felt for a long time; one thing that I believe could have helped with that is the awareness that others in the world are in a similar situation, and that there was nothing  morally wrong with that. Literacy is important— but the ease with which you read is morally neutral, and, if you are unhappy with your own ability to read, there are often things out there that can help you. I wish that I had seen more reading aids included in disability aid positivity posts— things like overlays, tinted glasses, or scanning pens. I wish that more posts about neurodivergence had gone beyond just mentioning autism and ADHD, and also made an effort to include things like dyslexia, Irlen syndrome, brain injuries, and intellectual disability/ learning disability.

I’m aware that I’ve written a lot, and the irony of writing such a long post about people who have problems with reading, so I’ll wrap it up here. For Disability Pride month, I wanted to share my experiences of having difficulties with reading, in an attempt to lessen the stigma that is attached to them— however, as I have said, these experiences are only my own, and will not be universal. If you do not have any difficulty with reading, I hope that this post has offered a new perspective, and potentially encouraged you to think differently about people who may struggle with reading more than you. And if you do have difficulty with reading, whether it is due to a disability or not— I see you. You deserve to access everything that is currently inaccessible to you. You are loved.

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Hello! It has been more than two years since I posted anything on here, but- I just finished The Lamplighters by Emma Stonex, and wanted to write up a review! I listened to this as an audiobook- the way I've been engaging with many books recently, as it makes things easier with my Irlen Syndrome. I'm aware that there's a whole debate surrounding whether audiobooks truly count as reading- in my opinion, while it isn't reading in the strictest sense of looking at words on paper with your eyes, you've still experienced the story, you've still gone through the same emotional rollercoaster, theorised about how mysteries can be solved, et cetera. So, for me, I don't feel that engaging with a book via a different medium lessens the experience at all- in fact, sometimes it elevates it, as was the case with this.

I borrowed the audiobook from my library as the premise looked intriguing and- as is one of the best things about the library- if I didn't like it, I could just return it. It was late at night when I selected it on the app, and I told myself I'd listen to about fifteen minutes before I went to bed, and decide if I would be interested in sticking with it. Instead of doing that, I listened to three hours and thirty-eight minutes before I finally forced myself to turn it off and go to sleep. Several times, I thought about stopping at the end of a chapter, only to carry on, in part due to the excellent voice acting from Tom Burke and Indira Varma. They ensured that each character had their own voice, both in the most literal sense, and through their performance, and I found that each character's POV felt different not just due to the words the actors were reading, but also the ways in which they read them. When I'm reading a book with multiple points of view, it's quite important to me that not every character's voice is the same, so this is something I really appreciated.

The book itself has received quite mixed reviews, from what I can see, and, while I deeply enjoyed it, I can also see why that could be the case. Though I do not wish to give spoilers, I can say that not every mystery in this book is ultimately solved, and several things remain ambiguous at the end. Personally, I enjoyed this- I liked the theme of reality vs illusion, and I felt that not knowing the entirety of what took place was fitting. For me, it added intrigue to the story- feeling that there were some secrets that even we, as the readers, would never know, and that would maybe only ever be known by the lighthouse. There were also some tangents, and some events that I cannot be sure were 'real' even within the story- to me, not being able to tell what was real mirrored the effects of the isolation within the lighthouse. Outside of the lighthouse, the women's status as unreliable narrators of their own stories, sometimes lying to the interviewers, and sometimes genuinely believing in things that were untrue or implausible as they couldn't face reality, furthered this impression. However, I can definitely see why some people would find it frustrating. I went into this book with no expectations for what I would find, and without having read much in this genre before. If I'd been expecting a mystery with a neat ending, which can be unravelled and eventually solved, I think I would have been disappointed.

Despite this, I loved the uncertainty- I loved hearing the conflicting accounts of what had happened, trying to untangle the real events from the characters' psychology, and finding that task ultimately impossible. I don't know that I will come to regard this as one of my favourite books, or one of the ones that has had the most influence on me- but I know that this is the first book that has gripped me so intensely for a long time.

[i-read-words]

This is not your average Christmas tree.🎄

St Pancras station in London features a book tree this year where you can sit down and listen to an audiobook while you wait for your train.

[i-read-words]

"Here I was, the father of death, bringing life into this world as if I had any right."

[i-read-words]

If anything happens to Rambo I’m going to kill everyone in this room and then myself. He’s perfect your honor