A Welsh masterpiece about a boy recounting the formative events of his childhood in a small village, ostensibly over the course of one night but also not really. On the surface it's just a simple coming of age story with a focus on religion, family, friends and community, but beneath the surface it's a deeply strange, sad and beautiful look at the human condition. Still trying to piece together exactly how I feel about some bits, but this is a great book that will stick in my head for a long time

This is about a guy returning home to West Belfast from university with his life at a crossroads, caught between his old friends and family, a lack of opportunity for working class people in post-Troubles Belfast and a desire for something more. It's a beautifully written and really well-observed look at what home means, and there's so much in here that I was able to identify with. Really good!

This is #2 in the Green Bone trilogy. Fonda Lee does a fantastic job of immersing you completely in her world. I love how she manages suspense and action to tell this story at such a satisfying pace. I found myself having to physically block the next paragraphs while reading some particularly suspenseful sequences because my eyes just needed to know what happens next. Fonda Lee really makes you love and care about all of these characters. (Shae-jen was the real mf mvp in this one, iykyk 😭)

The pacing of this book was a bit slower than Jade City, as the that book was basically an all-out street war, but in this one the war became a lot more cerebral— secret plotting, manipulation, geopolitical maneuvering, etc. but I didn’t mind that at all. I also really enjoyed being able to explore locations outside of Kekon (the main island where the main characters live) in this book.

I can’t wait to see how one minor but increasingly important character’s storyline, which has mostly been occurring parallel to the storylines involving the main characters, finally collides with the greater conflict between the clans and all of the surrounding geopolitical conflict. It’s taking all of my self control to not completely disregard my reading queue and dive directly into Jade Legacy.

5/5 stars

Los Ejercitos / The Armies by Evelio Rosero

novel about a retired professor in a small Colombian town that is being overrun by an unnamed army of guerillas and the police trying to stop them. some interesting character development but I found the story repetitive and the writing wasn't particularly strong

7/10

The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

read TBK and C&P like 15 years ago so wanted to give Dostoyevsky another try. engaging story about a naive young man who tries to fit in to high society in 19th century Russia. this was a challenging read that I had to power through at times but the ending was strong and the themes of of innocence, nihilism, power, and desire were well fleshed out. some long drawn out conversations that lost my interest and I needed to check a character map throughout but on the whole the novel was extremely well written. gonna try to read more Dostoyevsky this year

8.5/10

The Hike by Drew Magary

definitely needed something light after The Idiot and this did not disappoint. novel about a man who goes on a hike by himself while on vacation and suddenly gets thrown into another dimension that he tries to escape to reunite with his family. fun read and definitely unpredictable with a strong ending as well. heard a lot of great things about this and I thought it could've been better but I still enjoyed it for what it was

7.5/10

Eye of the World
4.2/5

Pachinko - Min Jin Lee: 10/10

Easily one of the most beautiful and moving novels I have ever read and that has probably ever been written. Told through the eyes of one family over the course of several generations, it is about colonization, being the outsider, honor, duty, love, death, the role of women, bravery and from the first line you are drawn in completely.

Just have to give it the absolute highest praise.

I really struggled through this one, RJ’s prose reads so stiff. What’d you think of the ending?

this has been on my list for ages. finally read it this month and this has to be the greatest graphic novel I’ve ever read. every chapter held my attention and the character writing was just incredible. I have yet to watch the movie or seen the show, so I got some more Watchmen content for the year to get into!

finished this last tuesday, first book of 2025!

the story follows a father and daughter who connect for the first time after a cataclysmic event occurs where all white people in America walk into the water and drown. The premise had me intrigued so I was excited to see what topics the book would attempt to tackle. Cebo Campbell opts for a more intimate road trip story/family drama about finding yourself and reconnecting with your blackness. To be honest, I don't think this book was really written for black people! It reads more like a book for white people so they can understand what black people could be if they just stepped aside and let us do our thing. the writing is serviceable but everything that happens in this book is bit too neatly put together. overall, i left the book feeling more frustrated than understanding. and sci-fi/dystopian elements aren't really well utilized.

2.5-3/5

what a read. beautiful prose, incredibly frustrating characters, wrapping around a story that just leaves you dulled. 4/5

just finished this moments ago. I'm not really a literary critique guy, I read with my head empty and heart open. this one moved me. 4/5

This was a really layered thriller/mystery. The way this story unraveled had me constantly flipping back to past chapters to reread things that seemed unimportant at the time. The main characters surprisingly had a lot more depth than I expected. You can tell David Ellis developed interesting characters and built this story around them, which is what I think took this book to the next level. He didn’t just plop 1-dimensional characters into a cool plot that never reaches its full potential. None of my theories were correct—and I don’t necessarily hold it against a book when I guess the twist—but I love when the I don’t see the twists coming! 4.5/5 stars

Thug tears were dropped!!! This was one of the most impactful stories that I’ve ever read. I loved the action and magic system but I absolutely adored the themes that were explored in this book. This is an insanely cool (albeit graphic) story with heart-pumping martial arts fight scenes and interesting elemental magic. This is also a heartbreaking story about grief, loss, & deep regrets. But I think this is—above all— a moving story of forgiveness and reconciliation. The amount of personal growth that ML Wang was able to achieve for these characters is incredible. The emotion that Wang was able to evoke through these characters and their experiences is nothing short of awe inspiring. This breaks my 5-star rating scale.

I Who Have Never Known Men: Jacqueline Harpman - 8/10

Pretty much a book about what would you do if you had nothing, at least that's how I took it. If you want a reading experience that is very singular I would definitely recommend this one. The writing is fantastic, the narrator's voice is certainly one of a kind and the premise is wholly original and it is kind of sad at points. The lack of chapters did make it a longer read for me despite being only 164 pages and it does kind of slog at times because again, we are dealing with nothingness here. There is no "climax" or grand reveal

What a tremendous first half this has. Front-loaded with all the best prose, the novel seems to weave several strains of legitimately incisive commentary through the existential/metaphysical gothic horror it’s setting you up for. Four elderly small town power brokers of the lily-white East Coast aristocracy, relics of the past themselves, meeting regularly to assuage repressed guilt over their horrid actions (fucking each other’s wives, murder, statutory rape, racism, etc) by transmuting them into ghost stories.

But their story characters, which were based on real people, are becoming real themselves. The reverberations of these entities through time, reincarnating again and again to exact revenge on the men’s lives one by one, it’s just genius.

But then, wouldn’t you know it, the whole thing starts to slip. Slowly at first, with the introduction of Dr. Rabbitfoot in Part 2, but by Part 3: The Coon Hunt it’s devolved into standard King s*** and gotten straight up sloppy. Characters actively grow less defined over time, and any potential critique offered by the first half is totally defanged as we arrive at the conclusion that “all these guys are actually great, and sure, if they did happen to rape a teenager or murder someone, they were a shapeshifter”

You get the sense that Straub was literally rushing to bring this to an end, words will get reused multiple times in the same sentence (“the shadows cast by the clouds left them in shadow”) and the voids left by excised sentences leave the whole denouement feeling scrabbled and slipshod.

Part 1: 9/10
Part 2: 7/10
Part 3: bad/10

Upsetting doesn’t even begin to cover it. One of the most accurate depictions of trauma conditioning and sexual manipulation ever written. The violent excess is somehow less sickening than the way that people who “care” for the protagonist use her. 9/10

(Febos, who was brave enough to admit in her Introduction that this book turned her on the first time she read it, should be burnt at the stake for that)

A great start to a series that I can tell will only get better from here! I loved the ancient Roman and Greek influences on the story. The Institute, the proctors and the proctors’ involvement in the Institute really makes it feel like you’re reading a sci-fi version of an epic Greek poem like The Iliad. Darrow is a fantastic protagonist. I was ready to throw on a wolf pelt and howl at the moon lol.

4.5/5 ⭐️

This Great Hemisphere - Mateo Askaripour: 7/10

Fantasy/Sci-fi book about the oppression and subjugation of a race of people deemed invisibles both for their role in society and their see through skin - it felt a bit YA at times and I feel like there will definitely be a prequel, but the plot was intriguing enough to make it a page-turner especially in the back half. the political jostling was also interesting and I thought the book did really well with one of the twists it introduced. However, the final twist felt too abrupt and unless I'm missing something, I didn't really see any sort of clues for it. Regardless a fun read overall but nothing groundbreaking

I don’t think I’ve ever used the word lovely in a review, but that is what I would describe this book as. I’m so glad it randomly caught my eye in the bookstore.

This a post-apocalyptic literary fiction set in a world where our current society is hanging on by its very last threads. The plot follows a bereaved musician who embarks on an (mini compared to Homer) odyssey in a sailboat hoping to find his wife again. Orpheus is definitely another inspiration for this. And while the plot is interesting once it gets going, it’s not the star of this story.

Lake Superior serves the role of both setting and character while Leif Enger’s stunning prose breathes life into the sentient sea lake. The writing here is remarkable and masterfully crafted. Enger is able to capture large-looming life truths in simple sentences that you find yourself thinking about days later.

The characters in this book were some of my favorite that I’ve met in a book. The protagonist and the people he meets along the way leave a lasting impression. A lot of sad and horrific things do take place in this world and story, but this is ultimately a story about keeping kindness alive in an ugly world.

5/5 ⭐️ easily for me.

(I’ve never had so many 4+ star ratings in a row before but I’m truly having so much fun with the books I’ve been picking up lately. I think I’m finally mastering picking books that match my taste.)

I agree about his prose. The ending was underwhelming a bit. Liked the ending to The Great Hunt more. I'm actually downgrading the rating a bit.

The Great Hunt
4.5/5

Great review, added to my list 🫡

Been meaning to return to the series, i can’t front his characters did draw me in.

possibly THE most hyped novel of book tok

Babel: An Arcane History by R.F. Kuang

historical fiction/fantasy novel based in the 1830s about an orphan taken from his home in China and brought to England to study translation in Oxford. Kuang did an excellent job world building and with a creative blend of magic and academia told an entertaining story that also tackled deeper themes of belonging, friendship, capitalism, and imperialism. went into this mostly blind and it was a fun read with strong character development and an subversively political while still engaging plot

seen some critiques that it's too preachy or on the nose but I thought Kuang toed the line well. any book that gets this much hype will have its contrarians and while it's not without its faults I had a good time reading it

8.5/10

Motherless Brooklyn by Jonathan Lethem

noir novel about a private investigator with Tourrettes looking into the death of his scheming father figure who got too involved in Brooklyn's organized crime world. takes place in modern times but feels like it's in the 50's. I like Lethem and he crafts mysteries well but where he really shined here was in the voice of the main character. was interesting reading in first person about the challenges and alienation of having Tourrettes and the story was well crafted, funny at times, and moving

8/10

La Sombra del Viento (The Shadow of the Wind) by Carlos Ruiz Zafón

2001 novel about a young boy in mid 20th century Spain who comes across a book about a mysterious author and when he tries to learn more about the author he finds their stories intertwine and bring him into a dangerous world. while not as world famous as Don Quixote or Cien Años de Soledad, I was surprised to find out this is one of the most sold books originally written in Spanish. the prose is lyrical and poetic, so I feel like it might not translate well to English, but I was captivated throughout the whole book. strong world building and character development, the story slowly unravels a mystery through unreliable narrators and different perspectives. thought it lagged a bit towards the middle but after that it really picked up. one of the best novels I've read in Spanish, highly recommend it

9.5/10

@KoGoYos

like 100 something pages, offputting and kinda cringe title

But easily one of the greatest things I’ve ever read

read it 10 years ago absolute clásico

must read for any creative or people struggling with procrastination

sold already