my2023bookreads

[my2023bookreads]

from now on, whenever you see an art style you wish you had, instead of going "oh I WISH I could, I want ALL the art styles and yet I am CONFINED to only ONE, and anyway I am not GOOD enough to do that one!!!", repeat after me: "ooh, I wanna try that later."

like, yes, yearning feels Passionate and Artistic and Emotionally Intense, and by going "I could never do that" you leave the art you love with a kind of Legendary Mystique--as if you are a child watching a magic trick.

but you can also switch your brain to "how did they do that" mode instead and play around with anything you want. you can learn the trick for yourself. and it may seem less dazzling afterwards, but that's the price you pay to make your own magic.

in short, basically, you can do whatever you want forever.

[my2023bookreads]

some more Nimona!

[my2023bookreads]

Delphi

I'm a big Classics nerd. A book comes in that has a name that eludes to Greek mythology and I'm there baby. Delphi by Clare Pollard was another one that came in a while back and grabbed my attention, but at that point I didn't have the funds to be spending money on books willynilly. So of course I snapped up that reader copy.

Delphi is about a woman's thoughts on oracles and divination as she and her family (as well as the rest of the world) are dragged into the depths of Covid-19 isolation. This one was wild, because even though it's set in the UK - London I think - and I am the other side of the world, the events are all ones I recall happening vividly. It's like being flung straight back into 2020, and reliving the mishmash of events and feelings that happened, but through the eyes of someone else. I had to check that the characters were fictional, because it really felt like I was reading someone's diary or something. The people feel so real that I was shocked to find out that Clare Pollard is not herself a Classics professor - I thought for sure that bit at least was personal experience.

This is not a happy book (you could probably guess that, given it's set in 2020), but it does end up on a somewhat hopeful note. Trigger warning include death, alcoholism, and suicide.

9/10, I would probably read this one again, though right now in 2023 it feels a little too real

[my2023bookreads]

We Had to Remove This Post

I saw this book (by Hanna Bervoets) come into the store a little while ago and was intrigued by it, so when the reader copy was up for grabs I decided to give it a read. It's a small book, and Monday was dead quiet, so I read the whole book in a day.

Now this one. Hmm. It's a good book, it's well written, it's told from the point of view of a lesbian - all points in it's favour. I can't say I necessarily enjoyed reading this one though. It's one of those books that you start, and then you're in it until the end, otherwise you'll be haunted by thoughts about what happened next.

It's about a (fictional) group of people who work as moderators for a social media platform, reviewing content that has been flagged or reported as inappropriate. The story understandably goes a little dark, as the characters become more morally twisted from all the violent and conspiracy content they have to see, though it doesn't necessarily get as dark as you expect it to.

Either way, weird vibes from this one. I put the reader copy back on the pile.

7/10 for those who are interested in reading about the psyches of people working in that sort of job. Not really my cup of tea though

I would had a trigger warning here but it would be very long. If you don't like pretty graphic mention of gore, or psychological horror kind of vibes, don't read this one.

[my2023bookreads]

The Stranger

So I picked up The Stranger by Kathryn Hore on Friday. I finished it on Monday morning on my way to work. I enjoyed it thoroughly.

I thought I knew sort of what I was getting into with "Feminist Western" written on the cover. But the post-apocalyptic aspect that's so cleverly woven through took me by surprise. I was expecting a fairly classic western story, maybe a little gay, told from the perspective of a girl that gets a little too involved. Instead, I got a tale of a small town isolated against the virals, that swept through the world twenty years ago and still rage outside the walls. Which is also a little gay.

I will add that this book comes with a couple of trigger warnings, mainly coercion, discussions of rape, and of course violence. But it is well worth the read.

10/10, great post-apocalyptic, gay, feminist western - just be mindful of the triggers

[my2023bookreads]

She and Her Cat

Technically I started She and Her Cat by Makoto Shinkai in about October last year, but I only got about 30 pages in before I had to set it aside for the avalanche of work that encased me. But last week I got my hands on a reader copy, so I finally sat down to read the whole thing.

This book is very sweet, but also a little melancholy. It follows the stories of a few individuals in the same neighbourhood who through one way or another end up the owners of feral or abandoned cats. It’s told through the eyes of both the humans, but also the cats, and each perspective has an very different flavour to it.

I thoroughly enjoyed this little book, consuming it in a couple of days on the train and during breaks at work.

10/10, would recommend this cute cat book

Trigger warning for brief scene of a guy trying to convince a girl to have sex with him. Pretty mild though. Also animal death, though I promise none of the main cats die.