bashsbooks's reviews
207 reviews

Hijab Butch Blues by Lamya H

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challenging hopeful informative reflective medium-paced

5.0

Hijab Butch Blues flawlessly demonstrates the complex interplay between religion, queerness, race, and immigration. It follows the life of the pseudonymous Lamya H, who is from an unnamed Southeastern Asian country, grew up in an unnamed Arab country, and eventually moved to the United States. I especially enjoyed the interweaving of the stories from the Quran and their application to Lamya's personal life and struggles.
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Clementine, Book One by Tillie Walden

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adventurous dark tense fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.25

Clementine is a fantastic read for those who loved her in the TellTale Walking Dead games - like myself. If you're unfamiliar with those games (for example, if you've only watched the TV show), then you will miss out on some of the character references and development here. The art is gorgeous and gritty, and the story is a compelling continuation on Clementine. I'm super excited for Book Two!
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Haben: The Deafblind Woman Who Conquered Harvard Law by Haben Girma

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funny informative reflective fast-paced

3.5

This memoir is a collection of stories from Haben Girma's life so far, touching on her heritage, her education, and her adapted ways of living with her disabilities. She is an engaging writer, and I enjoyed following her from California to Erirtrea to Mali to Oregon to Alaska to Massachusetts to Ethiopia to DC. However, the book lacked a certain cohesiveness, especially at the beginning. The end came together well - Haben's journey from Harvard to DC, from lawsuits to public speaking, was much clearer than the establishing shots of her youth.

I feel like I learned a lot about the deafblind experience from this book, though, and about accessibility in general, especially accessible technology. 
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We Both Laughed in Pleasure: The Selected Diaries of Lou Sullivan by Lou Sullivan

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challenging emotional informative inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

5.0

Lou Sullivan's diaries made me laugh, cry, scream, scratch my head, text my friends in the middle of the night... I think everyone should read them. He has a really casually poetic style to his writings, and peering directly into his diaries is so intimate. His quote, "They told me at the gender clinic that I could not live as a gay man, but it looks like I will die as one," is going to stay with me for a long time (I've been reciting it to everyone). What an amazing man. How devastating it is that we lost him so young. How lucky we were to have him when we did.

I will say, I didn't love all the stylistic choices the editors made - I wish there had been clearer markers of the passing time, and the footnotes were a little sparse.
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Firefly: Big Damn Hero by Nancy Holder, James Lovegrove

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adventurous dark emotional tense fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.0

This books reads like an unreleased Firefly episode. For the fans of the show, this is great - another slice of the characters we all love, out in the Black. It is a little unusual for a novel, but it is at least self-contained. I can tell the authors have much love for the series, too, and I think they write the character interactions well. That said, they lean into the Western aspect of the show in a way that feels MUCH more awkward, gimmicky, and cringeworthy than I remember.
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Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner

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emotional reflective sad medium-paced

4.5

A love letter to the complicated relationship between mother and child, Crying in H Mart navigates the grief of losing loved ones and the grief of being disconnected from your culture. Zauner has an incredible and strong voice, ripe with unique observations and striking linguistic choices. And tracing these emotion and relationships through food? Brilliant. 

Now I'm going to listen to Japanese Breakfast's Psychopomp.
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Book of Sith: Secrets from the Dark Side by Daniel Wallace

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dark mysterious reflective fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? N/A
  • Strong character development? N/A
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.75

Sith philosophy is so interesting to me. Why be a Sith? What do they believe? Like its companion book, The Jedi Path, Book of Sith clarifies a lot of details that are ambigious or glossed over in other Star Wars media. Fascinating for a hardcore fan, but probably not terribly interesting to more casual folks. My one complaint is that I wish there was more commentary across the whole text, like in the companion book - but I understand that would've been difficult to do from an in-universe perspective.
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The Merciless by Danielle Vega

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dark mysterious tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.75

To be honest, The Merciless was not what I would call a great book. I started it three or four times before I finally committed to finishing it - and the only reason I felt compelled to do that is because I impulse-bought the entire series at Barnes & Noble six or so years ago. This is billed as a teen horror on par with Stephen King, which is a laughable comparison. The plot twists were predictable and boring, and not much actually happened, despite Vega's desperate attempts to make it seem like there was a lot going on. It was just a slog through a nothing burger. Also, gore and grossness alone don't make a piece of media good horror. They have to serve a particular theme or plot in an interesting way. This book had so much potential, too, in its premise - a teen mil brat moves to a new town and gets embroiled with religion? That's a great premise. But it was rushed and it was nothing. Disappointing.

I may eventually read the other three books... but only because they're sitting on my shelf collecting dust.
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The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins by Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing

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challenging hopeful informative slow-paced

4.5

If I knew more about ecology, economics, international forestry politics, and mushrooms, I would possibly give this five stars, but this is one of those books that I felt I didn't know enough about the topics at hand to fully understand it all. That said, the parts I did understand were absolutely fascinating and compelling, and it gave even me, a layman, insight of how we can worm our way out from beneath capitalism without a Revolution. It also gave me a deeper appreciation for our potential for connections across nature and across cultures. I want to eat some matsutake now, too.
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A Place Called No Homeland by Kai Cheng Thom

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challenging emotional sad tense slow-paced

5.0

Thom's work is a must-read for white queers and cis queers everywhere. Tracking her complex relationships to race, gender, and her family, she does not flinch away from her experiences - fetishization, rape, abuse among them. She laments the ways in with the Queer Movement has failed her, and people like her, how we still have people who fall through the cracks in our communities, places where we are not intersectional. Some of these poems are tough to read, but they're all important.
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