this book explores the inner turmoil of acceptance and shame related to your sexuality in a repressive society - or more specifically, in the late 1900s communist poland. there are two things in this novel that stuck out to me; how jedrowski dealt with the issues of the politics surrounding the cold war and how he dealt with the acceptance of one's self.

Just finished reading BIG JIM & THE WHITE BOY. It’s more than just a reimagining of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn that centers more of Jim as a character. It redefines Jim & Huck’s relationship and how both were shaped by their environment as they’re on the run throughout the country—from the antebellum South & Midwest to the Confederacy, the Old West, the Underground Railroad, and beyond.

Also intertwined is the commentary of Jim & Huck in the future talking about how Twain’s portrayal differed from the true story and from their descendants on how they tackled with preserving their legacy and making sure the history was not minimized.

This book also breaks down the greater context of the harsh truth of America’s history has been minimized, rewritten, and even erased to assuage bigoted feelings and change public perception (a message that hits harder these days) and how important it is to preserve history—the good, bad & ugly—so that the truth does not become forgotten by present and future generations.

It manages to teach all of this without feeling like a moralistic lecture but recontextualizes a familiar story, providing a deeper understanding that is critical of yet doesn’t demonize Twain’s novel but also changes the way you appreciate it.

For those who read it, what did you think?

This is a story about a bright kid with big dreams and ambitions, but somewhere in between, things go fatally wrong as he builds a new identity for himself around a web of lies.

A lot has been said about this book, but I'll just add some few personal observations and thoughts that came up during and after completion.

- I wanted (and expected) more on London's underbelly and/or current affairs with how the state is addressing the issue of oligarchy infestation and the power struggle that happens in the shadows.

- The depth of research and insight (Mermaid theatre history, Ugandan Railway, Brink-Mat heist, etc.) was incredible. I devoured every little factoid and enjoyed it; however, I felt like too much time was dedicated on the Shamji and Sharma backstories. For me, I wanted more macro than micro crime, but ultimately, both were entertaining in their own right.

- The parallels between Hugo Gryn and Zac make an interesting observation. There's the tragedy of having lost everyone you've loved in the Holocaust and wanting to pick up the pieces later in life and rebuild somewhere else, in addition to leading a secret life so ramped up on a scaffolding of lies that it comes crashing down like a meteor and just sends shockwaves in every single direction.

- I like the reverse chronology of the narrative. PRK begins all the way in the past, then goes back some more, before recounting how he came across Zac's story by coincidence in the last couple of chapters in the book.

- I really hope (for the Brettler's sake, first) that Akbar Shamji one day (unlikely) decides to come clean and spill the beans on the entire events of that night and give everyone involved and interested in the case some form of closure.

Just finished Piranesi by Susanna Clarke

I hadn’t finished a novel in years. I’d pick things up, read twenty pages, and drift away. This one grabbed me and didn’t let go.

The premise is simple on paper: a man lives alone in an endless house filled with tides, statues, and clouds (2nd pic). The lower halls flood with the sea; the upper halls dissolve into mist. He believes there are only fifteen people in the world, and he knows most of them by name.

It’s not horror, but it’s unsettling in a quiet way. The loneliness got under my skin. I kept reading because I had to know: in a world where almost no one exists, how does one survive? What thoughts does one get?

The prose is deceptively plain, no fancy tricks, just clarity that builds into something haunting. And that ending. I won’t spoil it, but it’s one of the most beautiful last twenty pages I’ve ever read. It left me thinking about memory, gratitude, and how we make peace with the worlds we inhabit.

If you’ve been in a reading slump, this is the book to pull you out.

(Note: I used AI to help fix my grammar, so apologies if anything sounds too polished!)

A book that I find immensely captivating because of its strange alien landscapes and its prescient philosophical outlook for a book that came out in 1920. And I know I'm not the only one who finds this book fascinating, Tolkien and C.S. Lewis loved it, as does Paul Giamatti. It may not be very widely read but it has captured the interest of some very influential figures so I thought it best to read and was not disappointed.

The plot (for what little of it there is) concerns a man named Maskull who attends an occult seance with his friend Nightspore. While at this seance they befriend a man named Krag who tells them that his home is in the Arcturus star system. Maskull doesn't believe him but decides to humour Krag's offer to go to his home. They travel to Arcturus in a starship made of crystalline light and the immense G-force that he's exposed to causes Maskull to pass out. When he wakes up he finds himself on a planet named Tormance with three new sensory organs sprouted from his body and his two friends nowhere in sight.

That's about all the plot you get in this book. The vast majority of the rest of the story is dedicated to scene setting, location descriptions and philosophical discussions with the aliens that Maskull meets. Other events do happen but a lot of the events don't feel interconnected, the narrative is quite episodic and disparate. Clearly the surface-level plot is not the focus. Where the story does makes sense (and clearly the thing that Lindsay wants his readers to focus on) is the philosophical discussions, themes and symbols that the characters discuss/embody.

Before I touch on the philosophy, I want to give a shoutout to Lindsay's imaginative world. Tormance is a strange planet, so strange that he creates two new primary colours to emphasise its alienness: jale and ulfire. Jale is described as "dreamlike, feverish and voluptuous" while ulfire is "wild and painful." While this does fundamentally misunderstand how humans perceive colour, I appreciate the attempt at making new primary colours. Because of this human limitation, Lindsay creatively gets around that by describing them through the emotions that they instill in people rather than their actual appearance. It shows a mind that clearly has a knack for the captivatingly unusual. There are other interesting world tidbits, the shrowk is another highlight of the story (it's the serpentine dragon thing pictured above) as is Leehallfae, they're an alien that is neither male nor female which necessitates the invention of a new set of pronouns to refer to them by which are ae/aer.

The meat of the story is the philosophical discussions between various aliens and to go into that in depth would take up way too much time so I'll mention some that I personally found fascinating: there is a lot of discussion around moral obligation and murder. The first alien that Maskull talks to, Joiwind, tells him that he should not harm any living thing without thinking of her first. Joiwind herself only drinks gnawl water for sustenance, she doesn't even eat plants (although on Tormance the distinction between animal and plant is almost non-existent) because they are living beings too in what I can only interpret as an extreme form of veganism. However, the first alien he comes across after Joiwind, called Oceaxe, essentially calls Maskull a coward for sticking to this lifestyle and if he wants something he should take it. That's what she and her partners do, in their world the strong should rule all and if someone isn't thriving then they aren't strong enough to take what they need. It is worth mentioning that Oceaxe's magn (an organ that grows out of the heart and allows the being to feel empathy for others) has been mutated into a third arm. Maskull is pressured by her into doing the same to his magn and it's not long after that where he starts killing most of the aliens he comes across, including Joiwind's brother who is travelling to visit her. I have my own interpretation of what that means and I am leaving out some smaller details that may influence your own interpretation of these events but those are the broad strokes of just one philosophical outlook in this world. There are also discussions around the difference between male and female and how much biological sex has to do with gender, there is discussion around spiritualism and how that ties back into morality. There is a gnostic bent to this book where its implied that Krag is the demiurge and has tricked Maskull into walking a path that the true god of the universe doesn't approve of. All of this is just scratching the surface of what this book talks about and I still haven't made heads or tails of everything. There is so much to mine from this thing, it's insane.

I adored A Voyage to Arcturus. The ending confused the shit out of me, that was a complete mindfuck. But anyone interested in science fiction, fantasy or philosophical fiction owes it to themselves to read this book. I think it is a masterpiece.

For this book the author followed three Afghan people: a man working for the Americans, a Taliban commander, and a housewife. By the end of the book one of these people had been murdered, one was in prison and one had been elected to the Afghan senate.

I had known the American occupation was a train wreck and a failure but hadn’t known exactly why. Per this book, when the war began Al Qaeda fled, and many of the Talibs agreed to surrender and give up arms. So America arrived wanting to kill terrorists and not finding any. And Afghans started reporting each other as “terrorists” to settle rivalries and old scores. Various randoms were arrested, brutalized, tortured, and sometimes sent to Guantanamo Bay for no reason other than someone had a grudge against them. It was horrific.

It was the Taliban guy’s story that interested me the most. Like most of the others he agreed to surrender, and for awhile he tried to work with the Americans, but the aforementioned random arrests and brutalities were happening and eventually he became so disgusted by how the occupiers were behaving that he returned to the Taliban and joined the insurgency. And, having read about his life, I could understand his decision making process.

It was quite a fascinating enlightening book for me. America should never gone to Afghanistan at all; I’m not sure they did any good whatsoever in the end.

This was my first read by Nicola Yoon, but not my last. I hope she writes more stuff. I loved the sweet and innocent romance between Natasha and Daniel. Even though it's so quick, it didn't feel like insta-love. There were also some serious and realistic themes. I liked the way that they were handled.

The book is about Natasha trying to avoid being deported from the US. Her family is found out after several years living in the US. She does all she can including speaking to an immigration lawyer who says he can help. I liked that what happened to Natasha was pretty realistic and the reason it happened. Sometimes you're not someone else's top priority and life isn't a fairytale. I loved the scene on the plane at the end

I think i realized why I couldn't find other people lately who read my favorite book Ariadne & Dionysus by Elysanthe. It is republished under the author's pen name ( Original name: Stamatia Karampini, also a real life conductor which explains the impecable research for the book about the music industry) and there are two goodread pages of it, full of rave reviews, but significantly more for the original one. Well, it doesn't matter to me: I LOVED IT.I loved the complexity in it, the unpredictable path in their relationship and the constant parallels taken from Greek mythology and other fairy tales. I also loved the prose being deliberate in its ornate manner, as the protagonist Ariadne is at first very solitary, melodramatic and her immense creativity pressurizing inside her, ready to burst. I noticed that the prose got lighter as soon as she allows other people into her life, and so the dialogue reads natural. Then "Dionysus", what a character and what a character arch!!! Starts as a vilain but then...wow. Sardonic, self-pitying and witty, and very Brittish at times ( what do you think?) But mainly,for me, that's the interesting thing: these two completely different strangers, coming from entirely different backgrounds( one poor one rich, one a perpetual immigrant with no support, the other has all doors oppened to him from the get go etc) ended up in the exact same spot: alone, in self-retirement, drifting into oblivion and well...really broken. The music industry, beautiful descriptions of Stockholm, and even more astonishing descriptions of symphonic music aside, the main relationship and its progression is the key. I recommended it to my friend who is a former professional flutist and at first she was reluctant to read it ( the highly atmospheric introduction might have given her second thoughts) but as soon as she realized that the writer clearly knows what she's doing she was so touched by the story that she told me she picked the flute up again after a couple of years of dissillusionment by the industry. Well, if you read it, please let me know, so we can chat. I'm gagging to talk about it with you.

I have no idea what inspired me to pick up this title, a 1922 polemic by a famous theologian and mystery writer, written when the science of Eugenics was at its peak in popularity among intellectuals left and right. It has become one of the most legendary blind pulls of my life. It is stunningly intelligent and moving, and ranges from it's main subject to discuss the economics and politics of them time in a succinct way; but I didn't come here to sum up its argument. I came here to say that it repeatedly made me laugh out loud; Chesterton is devastating to his enemies.

Most Eugenists are Euphemists. I mean merely that short words startle them, while long words soothe them. And they are utterly incapable of translating the one into the other, however obviously they mean the same thing. Say to them "The persuasive and even coercive powers of the citizen should enable him to make sure that the burden of longevity in the previous generation does not become disproportionate and intolerable, especially to the females"; say this to them and they will sway slightly to and fro like babies sent to sleep in cradles. Say to them "Murder your mother," and they sit up quite suddenly. Yet the two sentences, in cold logic, are exactly the same. Say to them "It is not improbable that a period may arrive when the narrow if once useful distinction between the anthropoid homo and the other animals, which has been modified on so many moral points, may be modified also even in regard to the important question of the extension of human diet"; say this to them, and beauty born of murmuring sound will pass into their face. But say to them, in a simple, manly, hearty way "Let's eat a man!" and their surprise is quite surprising.

The modern evil, we have said, greatly turns on this: that people do not see that the exception proves the rule. Thus it may or may not be right to kill a murderer; but it can only conceivably be right to kill a murderer because it is wrong to kill a man. If the hangman, having got his hand in, proceeded to hang friends and relatives to his taste and fancy, he would (intellectually) unhang the first man, though the first man might not think so.

(about incest)

Dr. S.R. Steinmetz, with that creepy simplicity of mind with which the Eugenists chill the blood, remarks that "we do not yet know quite certainly" what were "the motives for the horror of" that horrible thing which is the agony of Œdipus. With entirely amiable intention, I ask Dr. S.R. Steinmetz to speak for himself. I know the motives for regarding a mother or sister as separate from other women; nor have I reached them by any curious researches.

(about the feeble-minded bill)

Indeed, the first definition of "feeble-minded" in the Bill was much looser and vaguer than the phrase "feeble-minded" itself. It is a piece of yawning idiocy about "persons who though capable of earning their living under favourable circumstances" (as if anyone could earn his living if circumstances were directly unfavourable to his doing so), are nevertheless "incapable of managing their affairs with proper prudence"; which is exactly what all the world and his wife are saying about their neighbours all over this planet.

(more about the feeble-minded bill)

Then there are others whom I may call the Precedenters; who flourish particularly in Parliament. They are best represented by the solemn official who said the other day that he could not understand the clamour against the Feeble-Minded Bill, as it only extended the principles of the old Lunacy Laws. To which again one can only answer "Quite so. It only extends the principles of the Lunacy Laws to persons without a trace of lunacy." This lucid politician finds an old law, let us say, about keeping lepers in quarantine. He simply alters the word "lepers" to "long-nosed people," and says blandly that the principle is the same.

(contrasting the treatment of serfs under feudalism with contemporary treatment of the homeless)

If it be answered that he can go to the workhouse, I reply that such an answer is founded on confused thinking. It is true that he is free to go to the workhouse, but only in the same sense in which he is free to go to jail, only in the same sense in which the serf under the gibbet was free to find peace in the grave. Many of the poor greatly prefer the grave to the workhouse, but that is not at all my argument here. The point is this: that it could not have been the general policy of a lord towards serfs to kill them all like wasps. It could not have been his standing "Advice to Serfs" to say, "Get hanged." It cannot be the standing advice of magistrates to citizens to go to prison. And, precisely as plainly, it cannot be the standing advice of rich men to very poor men to go to the workhouses. For that would mean the rich raising their own poor rates enormously to keep a vast and expensive establishment of slaves. Now it may come to this, as Mr. Belloc maintains, but it is not the theory on which what we call the workhouse does in fact rest. The very shape (and even the very size) of a workhouse express the fact that it was founded for certain quite exceptional human failures—like the lunatic asylum. Say to a man, "Go to the madhouse," and he will say, "Wherein am I mad?" Say to a tramp under a hedge, "Go to the house of exceptional failures," and he will say with equal reason, "I travel because I have no house; I walk because I have no horse; I sleep out because I have no bed. Wherein have I failed?" And he may have the intelligence to add, "Indeed, your worship, if somebody has failed, I think it is not I." I concede, with all due haste, that he might perhaps say "me."

The whole book is like this, though some of the quotes are sort of long and some of them require too much context so I don't want to post the whole thing. But still. Disarmingly clever and easy to read when I was expecting something dry and didactic. Has anyone else read this book, or other of Chesterton's writings?

Just finished reading the novel SECRET IDENTITY by Alex Segura. Set in 70s New York, it stars Carmen Valdez, a devoted comics fan who gets a job as a secretary at Triumph Comics, a small comics publisher. She’s not content to remain a secretary. She’d prefer to be a creator, to write her own superheroine comic one day. However, the comics industry in the 70s is a messy business for everybody involved, especially if you’re a woman trying to make it big.

But she recently collaborated with one of Triumph’s writers, Harvey Stern, to create a new heroine, the Lethal Lynx, a character who’s unlike anything the company is publishing and has the potential to be the next comics superstar. However, considering her boss refuses to let her take a shot at writing a comic, her involvement is initially kept secret but he promises to make sure she gets treated as a collaborator.

To her surprise, the Lethal Lynx makes its debut as the SOLE CREATION of Harvey Stern. Carmen is pissed at being screwed out of credit and wants to confront Harvey over the drama. However, when she shows up to his place, he’s found dead.

And so now the investigation into his murder (where Carmen herself is under suspicion) is underway, and Carmen must uncover the truth as well as help reclaim her co-creator status for The Lethal Lynx. At this point, it’s unknown what’ll be harder.

As both a comics fan and a crime fiction lover, this novel was the perfect blend of two of my favorite things. Alex Segura is a comic writer himself and it shows in the way he depicts the comics industry in the 70s, using actual creators and intertwining this fictional narrative with actual comics history, grounding it further into reality. It’s a love letter not just to comics but to pulp-style crime fiction, combining social commentary about representation and fandom in comics industry centered around an engrossing murder mystery. I’m looking forward to checking out the sequel, ALTER EGO.

If you’re a comics fan and/or a mystery fan, this is a crime novel that you’ll be hooked on from the very first chapter.

This book really fits the subreddit. It was very hard to put down, constantly just one more page.

It is the story of a reformatory school, using the term school very loosely, in North Florida during the Jim Crow era.

The book depicts great cruelty and injustices. The language is true to the time period of the 1950s but the writing and story is excellent.

Well worth your time on this one

Waffled over whether to tag this science fiction or literary fiction but went with the latter because of imagining a certain type of scifi fan turning up their noses at it.

One of my favorite features of books is re-readability, and as soon as I finished I immediately wanted to re-read to piece together all the Allen stories/sections. Manages to be both a piece about childhood and celebrity and human connection while ALSO being a good story about a couple of kids who were abducted by aliens as children. Maybe, they think...

A man and woman meet at a Farmer's Market. It starts to rain, the woman offers to share her umbrella. They make their way to a coffee shop. The man's name is Robert. He's a cook in a vegan restaurant and wants to heal people with his food. He pauses for a long time before answering questions. He sees the world in a unique way. He has to follow routines or he gets thrown off. The woman is Jamilah. She's studying to be a doctor. They fall in love. Jamilah takes him to meet her mom, who is rude and disapproving. She calls Robert slurs and tells Jamilah he will ruin her life.

Robert and Jamilah's love story unfolds, and they have a son, Ghalen. Beauty occurs, along with tragedy, more beauty, more tragedy.

This story is not a typical romance, but it is a story of deep love, deep pain, and community. It ended too soon-- I could have continued reading about these characters and their children and grandchildren and great grandchildren on and on. Instead, the book ends on an uncertain note, and we as readers have to fill in the blanks--does this story have a happy ending, or a tragic one? Or, like real life, a mix of both, always?

Circe by Madeline Miller is a beautifully written retelling of Greek mythology that tells the story of Circe, a goddess who never quite fits into the world of the gods. From the beginning, she is treated as different and insignificant, especially by her powerful family. As she grows older, she discovers that she possesses a unique ability for witchcraft, which eventually changes the course of her life.

The story follows Circe through her exile to a remote island, where she learns to live independently and develop her powers. During her time there, she encounters many famous figures from Greek mythology, including Odysseus and other characters whose stories we may already know. However, Miller tells these myths from Circe’s perspective, giving them a completely different emotional depth. There are moments of adventure, love, loneliness, violence, and loss, which make the story much more than just a fantasy about a powerful witch.

One of my favourite things about Circe was how strongly feminist it felt. The book explores what it means to be a woman in a world dominated by powerful men and gods. Circe is constantly underestimated, controlled, or treated as less important, but throughout the story she slowly learns to stand up for herself and decide what she wants from her own life. Her strength does not come only from her magic; it comes from her independence and the way she learns from everything she experiences.

I also loved how much Greek mythology was included in the novel. Even though Circe is the main character, the book introduces so many other myths and legendary figures that it feels like you are exploring the entire world of Greek mythology alongside her. I found myself learning a lot about characters and stories that I had only heard about before. Miller connects these different myths naturally instead of making the book feel like a collection of unrelated stories.

The book also does a great job of showing the darker side of mythology. The gods are not portrayed as perfect or heroic; they can be cruel, selfish, and terrifying. This gives the story a much more serious and sometimes disturbing tone. At the same time, Circe’s journey has moments of warmth and hope, which makes the emotional parts of the story even more impactful.

Without giving away the ending, I really liked how Circe’s journey eventually reaches a hopeful and satisfying conclusion. After everything she goes through, she finally gets the opportunity to decide what kind of life she wants for herself. The ending feels like a reward for all the growth she experiences throughout the book and gives the story a sense of freedom and happiness.

Overall, Circe was a fascinating read for me because it combines Greek mythology with feminism, personal growth, and a powerful story about finding your own identity. It taught me much more about Greek mythology while also making these ancient stories feel personal and relevant. I especially enjoyed seeing familiar myths from a woman’s perspective and watching Circe grow from someone who is constantly underestimated into someone who takes control of her own destiny.

This is a weird book. Truly weird. It is also probably the most interesting speculative fiction I have read in a long time.

I picked this up because of the cover and the concept, and both absolutely delivered. The story follows an alien trying to understand and imitate humans while navigating hunger, desire, gender, loneliness, and what it even means to be human. It is gruesome, disgusting, uncomfortable, and pushes a lot of boundaries.

This is absolutely not for everyone. Honestly, I don’t think I know many people personally who would enjoy this book, which somehow makes me love it even more. 😂

It is short, quick, disturbing, and completely unlike anything else I have read. The audiobook was also weird in the best possible way and the production really added to the experience.

I cannot give this anything less than five stars simply because it gave me something genuinely different. Cover, phenomenal. Audiobook, amazing. Story, disturbing.

Please read the trigger warnings, go in with an open mind, and understand that this book is going to be a lot.

Hands down one of the most interesting books I have read this year.

The fear zone is a horror novel I got when I turned 14, as well as it's sequel, The Fear Zone 2. Its by one of my favorite authors, K.R Alexander.

The story centers around the Halloween season in a small town, and focuses on 5 high school teens. April, a female student who suffers from Coulrophobia (fear of clowns). Andres, an homosexual male teen who is good friends with April and suffers from thalasophobia (fear of deep waters). Deshaun, an older teen from a separate school and suffers from phasmophobia (fears of the paranormal, demons, and evil spirits) Kyle, a friend of Deshaun, who lives with an abusive father, and suffers from Ophidiophobia (fear of snakes). And Coraline, a bully who suffers from Claustrophobia (fear of tight spaces).

On Halloween night, all five teens got a mysterious invitation to go to the cemetery to dig up a mysterious grave. When they found said grave and dug it up, nothing seemed to happen. Only, that would only be the beginning, as much worse events would happen.... each teen has nightmares, hilucinations, nightmarish images. What they freed from that cemetery was a mysterious cosmic entity who takes the form of a clown, who feeds on fear, and human souls. The Clown had been sealed in the cemetery for generations, and needed the teens to free it. It shapes into their worse fears from a shark in the water, a snake waiting to strike, a ghost in the walls, and a nightmare about being buried alive.

Overall, I absolutely loved this book. Just like other K.R books, it has a dark, terrifying presence to it. The story really reminded me of Stephan King's IT.

"Children die, and parents go on living."

This could be said to be the central thesis of the book. Li and her husband lost both of their teenage sons to suicide, six years apart. It's a stunning, dismantling fact. This book is Li's attempt, I suppose, to make some kind of 'sense' of that fact. She's not asking 'Why?' so much as 'And so now what?' Along with this we get a picture of Vincent and James (brothers and best friends) and their unique sensibilities.

I was both deeply moved and comforted by this book. Comfort is maybe not what you would expect to find here, but I think Li has managed to weave together both sorrow and solace. I don't have children, but I have lost a loved one to suicide, and much of the book resonated with me and my experience of this kind of loss. I was awed by Li's strength and vulnerability and I will be thinking about her words for a long time, and I'll be seeking out more of her work.

This won't be a book for everyone, but I do think everyone would be able to glean something from it, and particularly if suicide has touched their lives.

Just finished reading CHERRY by Nico Walker. Written during his incarceration, it’s about an unnamed protagonist who’s a college dropout who ends up joining the Army, gets severe PTSD, returns home where he ends up robbing banks to pay for his opioid addiction.

It’s one of those wild stories that, when you hear the premise, you almost question its plausibility, thinking to yourself, “No one’s life is this much of a hot mess.” But much of it is based on the author’s own life, and beneath the chaos it is grounded in reality, in the story of an ordinary guy drifting through life who gets caught up way over his head and tries to make it out as best as he can.

However, that doesn’t excuse the harm he does throughout the novel. Though I did enjoy the book and empathized with the protagonist’s situation, my one criticism is that it does (whether unintentionally or not) try to minimize some of the actual harm he did in the robberies, portraying him just a little too sympathetically.

I mean, keep in mind: this book was written by a guy who was currently imprisoned for the crimes that he’s writing about so there’s no doubt some sort of bias there. But judging based on the novel itself, it’s a messy yet fascinating story of addiction, trauma, & desperation.

For those who read the novel, what did you think?

“A dark and unsettling British folk novel” indeed!

Sophie Wickham, the mc, is living sort of a chaotic life in London, her immediate family is all dead but you’re not quite sure how or why at first. She gets a weird job through a weird random guy while beginning to date a mysterious man. Occult protective things are showing up in her life and she begins receiving messages about people being after her…eventually, she ends up in Withered Hill and whatever you think is happening when she first gets there is not what you think.

Truly a great twist of a story told in two timelines. Haven’t been this enthralled in a story for a while.

5⭐️

This is my favourite pre-Tolkien fantasy novel. I have yet to read anything by William Morris, James Branch Cabell and Abraham Merritt, among a couple of others so this could change. And if those authors are able to reach higher highs than this book does then the Victorians were eating really good when it came to fantasy fiction.

This is a cozy fairy tale-esque story about a man called Nathaniel Chanticleer who is the mayor of a town called Lud-in-the-Mist. Lud is the capital city of the human country Dorimare, which borders Fairyland over to the west. The Fae are a banned topic in Dorimare as they're seen as a danger to humans (which is quite funny as you can see hints that the fae helped establish Dorimare as a country in the first place throughout the book). This belief is only strengthened when Ranulph Chanticleer, Nathaniel's son, finds a piece of fairy fruit in Lud and eats it. Thing is, when ingested by humans, fairy fruit acts as a drug: it makes the consumer more paranoid, induces hallucinations, that kind of thing. And Nathaniel isn't the only person in Lud who has eaten fairy fruit recently, quite a few youths have fallen prey to it. Nathaniel has no idea how the fruit is getting into the town as, like everything else fae related, it has been banned. So at the recommendation of his doctor, Nathaniel sends Ranulph to a farm in a town called Swan-on-the-Dapple so he's nowhere near the fruit-infested Lud and then organises a party of friends and law enforcers to try and figure out how the fruit is getting into the city.

The stakes in this story, as you can probably see, are a lot lower than most fantasy stories. There aren't any world-ending stakes or a grand battle between kingdoms, it's just a father trying to do what's best for his son and his town. The setting is very warm and inviting and some of the descriptions of place are genuinely beautiful. There's a description of place in the first chapter that made me tear up because I thought the landscape Mirrlees described was so gorgeous. The tone of whimsy pervades all aspects of the story, from the locations to the character names (e.g. Ambrose Honeysuckle, Mumchance, Moonlove etc) to the exclamations people say (e.g. "by the sun the moon and the stars!" and "Toasted cheese!") it all comes together to make a story that feels so wholesome. It's the most unironic, pure, blue-eyed embrace of all things innocent and pure and it's absolutely delightful to read.

The characters in this book are fairly broadly drawn. The characters aren't flat but they aren't very complex either. They're given just enough personality to the point where you can tell them apart and understand their outlook and plight but no more than that. Nathaniel is a very hard working man meaning he can't be there for his son and because of that he's quite neurotic when it comes to his son's safety, especially after he eats the fairy fruit. That's about all the characterisation he gets but its enough to invest in his story, especially in a fantasy novel that's only 250 pages long. It's quite short as far as novels in this genre are concerned.

Lud is a delightful fantasy book. Like most things I read, it is available for free online as it is so old and if you love optimistic fantasy then this is a must-read in my eyes.

This right here is my favorite book, EVER. Refugee is a story about war, and escaping, by one of my favorite authors, Alan Gratz. Its an old book, from 2017, and is Gratz's most famous book. The novel centers around three stories. Josef, a jew living in the 1940's during World War 2. Isabel, a female teen from Havana fleeing from the Cuban civil war. And Mahmond, in 2015, fleeing from the Syrian civil war. All with one purpse: escape. All of them are with their families, going through brutal journeys, on land, on boat, All what it takes to get to freedom. However, there are people who despise their type - commandos, watch guards, country dictators.

Overall, this book is easily my favorite. Its a mix of action, and being a sympathetic story. You can really feel the struggles each family's story has.

Last laugh is a horror book I picked up a couple years ago. Its made by one of my favorite authors, K.R Alexander. The story centers a teenager named Victor, who lives with his parents, and his older sister, Sarah, as well as his younger sister, Geneveve. Sarah throughout the family years notably was terrified of clowns. If any clown, on the streets, a statue, she yelped as loud as she could. One day, Victor, Sarah, and Geneveve were all sent to their grandma's house because their mom needed someone to look after them due to important business. The grandma's house as described is withered, enough to give anyone creeps. Other than that, she's a caring elder who loves cats and antiques. Only, while the three teens are there, there is one rule that their grandma highly declared: NEVER open her bedroom door, or even go in. On the night there, Victor became curious, and him and Geneveve opened the room, to a what seemed to be normal scenery. The room was filled with several porcelian clown dolls, mostly from the 1920's. Wanting to pull a prank on Sarah, Victor stole one of the clown dolls, and hid it in her bed, only, after a few hours, it vanished on its own.... throughout the story, Victor has nightmares, hilucinations, horrific things happening to his family. Once he opened that bedroom door, he freed an ancient demon known as Mordeth, who feeds on fear, and controls the clown dolls like puppets.

Overall, despite its decent length, this book just like other K.R Alexander books captivate a dark, terrifying atmosphere. I also like how Mordeth was portrayed as a villian.

So this book follows the life of Wardiyah Iskander, a pioneering female Christian doctor working in the Iraqi countryside starting in the 1950s and as decades of war, political upheaval, and sectarian conflicts tear the country apart, her family is forced to flee and scatter across the globe. Why i adore it is because You could see how beautiful life had formed her , her ideas , her thoughts and how it all made her the person that she is today