dumbidiotenergy's reviews
114 reviews

Kafka on the Shore was, uh, fine. it's my first Murakami, and i knew what i was getting into, but... hm. it took me ages to read, and i think that's telling.

i think the first half of the book intrigued me, but towards the mid-end point it started to drag. the ending was great, but Hoshino's role was, uh... whatever. some things, like that, felt pointless. this is not because of the surreal magical realism of the novel-- i actually really enjoyed the magical elements and felt that they added necessary depth to the novel. but occasionally Murakami's application of the magical felt like a cop-out for a lack of ideas on how to tie up certain loose ends (namely with Johnnie Walker, Crow, and Hoshino) (though I did really like Crow's role in the novel, especially that part at the end).

i'm finding it difficult to be articulate about this book, because i feel like it itself is surprisingly inarticulate. it is both heavy-handed and vague in its themes, both obtuse and acute in its emotional tensions. in a way it reminded me of The Stranger in that i understood it yet don't feel as though i truly value the understanding i gleaned from it.

Kafka on the Shore had some great characters that I got excited about when they appeared, but the quantity of characters made some of them feel diluted. Sakura and Sada, for example, are two characters whom I was intrigued by yet felt that they were given little to no attention by Murakami. generally, though, Murakami is talented at creating characters who feel distinct from each other and who each have their own problems, motivations, and relationships with the world around them.

lastly i'll touch on the, uh, fantasies. i think every reader of Kafka will have the same mental hangups and i doubt i'll add anything new to the conversation about that, but i do want to note the intense sexism that seeped from the pages. it felt incredibly self-indulgent on Murakami's part, where i got the feeling that as he was writing the book he simply got bored and wanted to insert a weirdly sexual encounter. i also feel like Kafka (the character)'s sexual fantasies and prophecy added absolutely nothing to the already complex themes of the novel, sorry. 

anyway. i guess i'm glad i read this? but i don't think i'll be reading more Murakami in the future. which sucks. i was really excited for this book, and am a bit disappointed, despite me definitely liking some aspects of it.

Nevada is about self-love and self-hate. it's about identity, transness, community, lack of community. it's about hating everyone but especially hating yourself and figuring out what to do with that feeling. it's a rambling story, one that is punctuated by long paragraphs of protagonist Maria's reflective and unrestrained internal workings. these monologues firmly assert themselves, stealing your attention like a hand at your throat. at times Nevada felt more like an essay or a blog post than a novel, one where Maria is telling you all about herself and her worldview as if you weren't there at all, and that is a good thing.

i loved it. it's hard for me to sit here and pretend that what i have to say matters, since i am not a trans woman and this story is certainly not designed for me. so i won't say much at all, but i'll at least express this: Nevada is worth the read, no matter if you're trans or cis or queer or straight, because it is a practice in empathy, and it is exceptional.

man, i love Dune. the environment is so detailed and rich and the political sphere is so specific and interesting.
basically? i liked this! not as engaging or tense as Dune book 1, but still a good continuation of the story that had me hooked.
i did feel like some threads (specifically the stories of irulan and jessica) were incomplete. but i know irulan will at least be a focus of book 3 so I'm not too mad about that lol

Shuggie Bain is a story about a mother and son whose relationship is taut with the stress of alcoholism. Shuggie is a loving, patient, persistent, and odd boy who wants desperately for his mother Agnes to be happy, but Agnes is hell-bent on destroying her closest relationships and drinking herself into oblivion. Through it all, Shuggie is struggling with his identity; how can he have time to find his sense of self if he has to take care of his alcoholic mother?

Douglas Stuart amazes me again with his prose, the way he so easily invokes the grim and despair of his setting and the tenderness of his characters. this being said, at times there were descriptions that started to feel repetitive, particularly when it came to Agnes' drinking; it seems that, since there are simply so many scenes where she is drinking the same cheap lager, that Stuart at a point runs out of words to describe it. it was a bit disappointing, but paradoxically pretty effective at frustrating me with Agnes' drinking.

in fact, repetition is one flaw i have to take up with Shuggie Bain. so much of the book's shocking moments are diluted by their repetition

like Agnes' suicide attempts, the men in her life taking advantage of her, and Shuggie's bullies

. i think Stuart dances on a line here, where the repetition is somewhat intentional to bring us on Shuggie's emotional journey; we get tired of what happens because we should be, because it is indeed grating, because Shuggie himself is tired and bored from the same tragic occurrences. in terms of a novel, though, it whittles down the reader's sense of engagement. i think Young Mungo is more refined in this way, and is more successful for me personally as a result. but Shuggie Bain is still a heartwrenching story that excels in its goal: to make us empathize with the characters, as flawed as they may be, and to make us live their lives with them. 

in fact this empathetic tactic works so well that i found myself adopting similar thought processes as the characters. i felt the same desire to escape as Catherine, the same watchfulness of Leek, the same weariness of Shuggie. it was so cool and so, so emotionally interesting.

though i felt Shuggie's love, i couldn't fully understand it. there is no ideal Agnes that Shuggie wishes her to return to that we see in the novel--all he wants is for her to get better, because she is his mom, which is a noble enough effort but gives the reader a hard time siding with him when he refuses to part with her. i wish we had been able to see a bit of her good traits instead of only her bad ones.

i felt such an overwhelming sense of relief when Agnes died, which i think was intentional on Stuart's part, but found it hard to mourn her when it was clear i was supposed to. i empathized with her, of course, but i think that her death would have been more impactful if we had seen more into her goodness. as it stands, i am saddened by her death because the death itself is a tragedy; not because she herself is dead.

this shows that again, as with Young Mungo, Stuart reaches near emotional climax but ultimately misses the mark with its payoff. there are scenes i wish would linger longer while there are less impactful scenes that i wish were cut short. it's an odd thing that i haven't seen many readers of his criticize, but it's a hangup i simply cannot get over. 

Frisk is an unrelenting novel, one where the depravity of humanity is exposed like a well-kept and filthy secret. i have never, ever had such a nauseated response to a novel as i did to this one. this book is definitely not for squeamish readers--every page is swollen with descriptions of bodily fluids, sex acts, and violence that made me repeatedly squirm with discomfort. there are no reprieves.

but Frisk is not just a grotesque story. it is also a deep look into intimacy and what it means to truly know another human being, what is necessary to feel a true sense of understanding with another. the novel is disjointed yet paradoxically united in a way that made me feel as though i was floating through the consciousnesses of the characters, bouncing between them one by one until i reached the end of their story. it was wonderful... and, uh, pretty gross.

oh, where to begin...

The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes is a prequel to the Hunger Games series. it follows Coriolanus Snow as a teenager before he rises to the position of Panem's president. we see Coriolanus mentor a girl from District 12, Lucy Gray. Coriolanus has to balance maintaining his family's status with Lucy Gray's survival, yet he finds this task more and more difficult as tensions rise and trouble stirs.

this book did not need to be written. I have never seen something so clearly meant to prey on nostalgia and an already successful series that has failed so horribly. why Collins decided to make this book from Snow's point of view, i'll never understand. the stakes feel so low when we already know it's all going to work out for him in the end, that he's going to become a terrible person. it's like Collins is trying to imbue him with sympathetic characteristics just to throw those characteristics out of the window in the final stretch of the book, and besides, i could never fully empathize with Snow knowing what i do from the original trilogy.

let me get my nitpicks out of the way first. firstly, the title of this book is so ridiculous. the characters' names are somehow even more ridiculous, somehow surpassing the already ridiculous names in the original trilogy.firstly, the title of this book is so ridiculous. the characters' names are somehow even more ridiculous, somehow surpassing the already ridiculous names in the original trilogy. there are also way too many characters, too many names floating around-- and it seems like Collins knows this, because she kills half of them off in weird, random mishaps. why she designed the book this way, i have no clue. she gave each tribute a mentor, totalling in FOURTY EIGHT characters to keep track of, and even when she was clearly telling the reader "hey, don't worry about this one they don't matter" it still added to the confusion.

speaking of those random characters' deaths, there was an appalling amount of death! and not in a good way! there was unbelievable, avoidable, senseless death that served no purpose except to narrow down the cast of characters. and each death was treated without any tact; every scene, even the most violent and sad ones, happens so quickly that the reader cannot sit with it and feel it. Collins' scenes in general are often swiftly paced, and this is an asset in the original trilogy because it's rife with action content; yet in this novel it is a detriment because there is simply not enough action to warrant the speed, so the reader is left reading pages of fluff and circulatory internal monologue from the world's least interesting character, young Coriolanus Snow. the emotional moments fall completely flat because, for some reason, it seems like Collins cares more about us reading Snow quarrel with himself than CHILDREN DYING.

with that, let's get into the characters! Snow is analytical, terrible, and entirely uninteresting. his "friend" Sejanus Plinth is way more enthralling and it is clearly a sort of Jesse Pinkman-to-Walter White dynamic but without the finesse of Vince Gilligan. Lucy Gray is alright, i guess, but all she ever does is sing. i felt that her character was so empty that when i finally realized there was going to be a Snow and Lucy Gray romance i laughed out loud. i don't know why Collins felt the need for a romantic subplot, but um, it's certainly... there. the pair have absolutely zero chemistry and i prayed one of them would die so i would stop having to read about them.

it seems like star-crossed lovers, starvation, and self-congratulatory callbacks are all Collins has in here repertoire in Ballad. she attempts at humor via Lucky Flickerman in the middle of the novel and fails horribly. she adds absolutely nothing new to her already stellar original trilogy and instead has made me personally infuriated and with a newly tainted view of the series.

trauma is the most interesting part of the Hunger Games original trilogy. we see how trauma informs every single one of the characters' decisions, how it scars them, changes them. in Ballad trauma is written with such a fumbling hand that it feels like none exists at all. SpoilerLucy Gray seems unphased after leaving the arena and Snow seems unbothered by the blood on his hands. none of it makes any sense.

in general, this novel was one of the least engaging books i have had the displeasure to read in recent years. i cannot overstate how miserable that makes me, as someone who harbors a deep love for the Hunger Games original trilogy. sigh.

original but pedestrian, The Invention of Sound is one of Palahniuk's weaker works. it seems to me like Palahniuk is channeling himself, trying to use his once-natural methods of writing to tell this intriguing story, but it is ultimately ineffective. the writing is lackluster and the plot frequently feels murky and idle, almost like the book is a parody of a generalized Palahniuk book. 

the plot development often follows a somewhat confusing progression while being oddly paced at times. it lacks the shocking revelations i've come to expect from Palahniuk's work, but that isn't for a lack of trying--there are plenty of surprising moments in the novel, yet their buildups are either not enough, or the moments themselves are downplayed. 

the truly shocking moments are often couched in passages that reach for some kind of all-encompassing philosophical ideology that is only half-present in the novel. each page is riddled with philosophical quips that don't quite seem to fit with the larger themes of the novel, yet Palahniuk seems to be trying to convince the reader that, actually, they *do* fit. there is too much going on while not enough going on. the limbic resonance philosophy that Mitzi holds is easily the strongest ideological undercurrent in the novel, but it isn't fleshed out. instead, the mere fact that Mitzi cares for limbic phenomena is just repeated over and over without giving the reader a glimpse into why it matters so much to her, or why we should care, or anything of that sort.

the characters, while all interesting, multi-dimensional, and unique, wind around each other while somehow never connecting. they don't collide as well as the characters in, say, Fight Club or Choke did. Invisible Monsters, too, comes to mind; the Foster-Mitzi dynamic could have easily been as tense and gripping as Brandy and her sister's, yet there is a lack of exploration into this particular dynamic in The Invention of Sound. it was disappointing, to say the least, especially because Mitzi has so much going for her as a character. Foster's obsessive personality also could've been fascinating to read about if he had been in any sort of real relationship with another person.

we get a little bit of this in his relationship with Amber, yet it seems swept under the rug. Foster believes she's part of the deep-state operation, but the novel makes a point of never illustrating Amber and Foster's emotional/romantic relationship post-Lucy abduction; i believe this to be a flaw.

lastly, the plot itself was actually a bit basic. there are times where Palahniuk inserts sparkling details and surreal occurrences that elevate the plot, yet there are also storylines that feel half-baked (

Dr. Adamah being the true killer..?

) or feel like fumbling grasps at intrigue (

Robb and Blush being part of a deep-state operation..?

).

regardless, the book had me hooked for the majority of it. i just wanted to know what was going on! towards the end, though, i found myself more wanting it to be over than wanting to relish in the conclusion of the novel. but god, i wish i could hear one of Mitzi's screams, as messed up as that sounds.