emergencily's reviews
97 reviews

Written in the 1990s, the novel is set in the year 2024 in a USA on the brink of total apocalypse due to climate change, political collapse, and wealth inequality (familiar?). The government is an ineffectual farce, and a newly elected fascist, hyper-conservative president vows to "Make America Great Again" by driving out the undesirables of society and repealing labour protections to open the door for corporations to enslave workers in modern company towns. The social safety net is nonexistent; police and firefighters are corrupt and bloodthirsty; nightmarishly violent crimes are the norm, particularly against women and racialized people as gender and race relations deteriorate; and companies with monopolies on food and water drive prices to untenable levels. 

The teenaged protagonist, Lauren, lives in a small, majority Black gated community just outside LA, led by her pastor father. As the world deteriorates around them, Lauren loses faith in the Christian teachings her father preaches, and begins to secretly develop her own religious system that she calls "Earthseed" -- the belief that change is the only constant and akin to God, and that humanity is destined to leave the doomed earth and live in the stars. Her community is poor, but relative to the desperate poverty outside their guarded walls, downright privileged. They manage to eke out a living through mutual aid and redistribution of their scant resources and running armed watches. This tenuous peace is shattered when invaders knock down the walls. With the few survivors left, Lauren decides to travel north to try to seek refuge across the border in Canada. Along the way, she picks up other survivors and spreads belief in Earthseed among their small group.

I thought the world that Butler built was fascinating and eerie, like a funhouse mirror reflection of our current world. She captured all the same sociopolitical and environmental problems we have and dialed them to a hypothetical max, envisioning the apocalypse as a slow, downward spiral wrought by environmental devastation. The world as we know it ends with a long whimpering death knell, not a bang. I can imagine how fresh this book's take on a post-apocalyptic world was when it was published in the 90s, with its deliberate focus on a Black woman's experiences, on imagining the shape of race and gender relations in a crumbling empire, and its parallels of slavery imagined in a future fascist state. It was horrifying, scary and a crazy page-turner that I stayed up to finish in one night. 

But I felt like the climax of the book (the destruction of the community) came a little early. The second half of the book sort of fizzles out and drags on repetitively as she wanders down the highway picking up stray survivors. Like a monster-of-the-week format show, every chapter she finds a scrappy and vulnerable survivor, earns their trust, and inducts them into Earthseed - wash and repeat like 10 times in a row.

 I also felt like it was hard to understand Lauren's Earthseed religion and her emotional stakes in it, although a lot of her core beliefs were super fascinating -- the idea of God as a Trickster, as an intangible and ever-changing concept. But at times, I felt that Earthseed existed less as a religion with actual impact on the world and characters than as sprinkled blocks of exposition in the book. Maybe it was my own problem connecting to it as a generally not very spiritual person myself? But I also know she planned this series as a trilogy (sadly passing before she could complete the third book) so it's possible she handles the Earthseed plotline and religious themes more in depth in later books.

Narrated in omniscient first person by the titular protagonist, Eva Luna, as she recounts the story of her life in an unnamed semi-fictional South American country in the early 20th century. The story starts with her mother Consuelo's tumultuous childhood, following Eva Luna's birth and coming of age. She flits from employer to employer as a young serving girl, finds and loses members of a found family, gets caught up in the political turmoil of her country's military coups and attempts at communist revolution, finds love in father figures (ew) and lost childhood friends, and eventually makes her way in the world as a famed writer. 

I thought the first half of the novel, about Eva's mother's life and Eva's childhood and adolescence, was stronger than the second half when Eva is an adult. The sense of magic and fantasy in her world eventually disappears and the book starts to revolve around her stumbling into conveniently placed political subplots that wrap up neatly, and romances that play her as a waiting damsel. Her character in adulthood loses the rebellious spirit and chaos she had as a child. I wish the book had done more with the idea of magic in her powers of storytelling and how it impacts her world. I also wish more had been done with the politics beyond it just existing in the background setting. Eva's character is largely apolitical until it suits whichever man she's in love with, which seems a shame.

I wanted to fall in love with this as much as I did with "The House of the Spirits" (one of my all-time favourites), but I didn't. Nevertheless, Allende's writing style is beautiful and her descriptions of the world really make it seem magical and otherworldly.

An anthology of medieval horror stories. Overall a strong anthology with a clear thematic direction. I also loved the queer themes in multiple stories. A few stories are set outside of the European Dark Ages in Asia, Latin America, and Africa. Normally, I'd love that inclusion, but I actually wasn't sure if the settings outside medieval Europe worked for the anthology. Great stories alone, but I felt they didn't hold up the anthology's strong, recurring themes of the unique horrors wrought specifically by European colonialism & Christianity -- e.g. the religious Crusades, the hierarchical Great Chain of Being, the mass fervors of witch hunting, the tortures and punishment of Catholicism.

My favourite stories:

okay so murakami is capable of writing female characters with some amount of depth beyond stilted descriptions of their breasts and ears sometimes. thank christ!!! i thought he actually had some interesting depth to the women in this story for once, reflecting on objectification, voyeurism, and intrusion on women’s private spaces and inner worlds.

 set in an unnamed entertainment district (probably shinjuku) in late night tokyo, in the weird and magical witching hours between midnight (the last train home) and dawn (the first trains out). follows a small cast of separate characters, telling a snippet of a different person’s night in each chapter. all these characters are tangentially connected in some way, as ships passing in the night: a college girl who spends her overnight smoking in denny’s rather than going home; her beautiful, Snow White-like sister, unconscious in a long lasting and inexplicable sleep; the faceless man who watches her sleep in another realm behind her TV screen; a former showman-style women’s wrestler turned love hotel owner; and more.

if i can best describe the vibe of this book, it would be edward hopper’s painting “nighthawks.” to me, this is a love letter to the magic of night time in the city: the blissful autonomy of solitude in the cover of darkness; the kind of vulnerability you can only share in fleeting, nighttime encounters with people you may never see again; sitting in those ordinary places that transform into liminal spaces after dark (shoutout denny’s after midnight); and the certain knowledge that in a few hours, the sun is going to rise, and you are going to take the first train back home.

rest in peace to a chainsmoking, shit talking legend. i almost considered dropping the book after the first 1-2 chapters - we all love the guy, but frankly he could be a bit of a dick, and sometimes bought into american chauvinism beyond the ironic sense. his tv show host charisma didn't at first translate as well on page as on the tv screen for me, but i forced myself to keep reading. once i made it to the france chapter where he visits his childhood town with his brother, it made me remember his charms and continue reading with a more forgiving, open mind.

he had a lot of respect and admiration for the people and places he visited. the way he talked about other cultures' food with so much genuine admiration of their knowledge, and open-mindedness to their practices as a white american tv show host in 2001 was probably pretty singular at a time when racist dog eating jokes were commonly accepted as hilarious. he gives other cultures, whose food and practices are often disdained, their  flowers. what other white guy in the 2000s was proudly telling the world that vietnamese baguettes could be better than french ones? his philosophy of nothing being put to waste, and of using all the ingredients and cuts of meat that the west turn their nose up at, rings truer than ever today. 

i dug up the old 2001 show that he was filming while writing this book to watch in accompaniment, which made it much richer. watching certain sequences was much funnier, knowing that he was so drunk he could barely hide his slur. i've only seen him in CNN's parts unknown when he was much older and jaded, so it was both refreshing and wistful to watch his first show and see him young with a pep in his step and a sparkle in his eye.

i think everyone knows him primarily as a tv show host (apart from being a chef, ofc), but i think he would much rather be identified as a writer than "the guy on TV." his love of writing really shows in this book, and i was surprised by how simply beautiful his prose could be at times. also, he's really fucking funny - he might be even funnier in writing than he is on tv.

an extremely raw, honest and vulnerable autobiographical manga about the author's lifelong struggles with mental illness, self-harm, and eating disorders. throughout the manga she reflects on her troubled relationship with her family’s expectations, the pressure of sociocultural norms to conform, and her own troubles understanding her gender and sexuality. the story is focused on her inner emotional world as she self reflects and psychoanalyses herself, with the pivotal story beat centered on her having her first sexual experience at age 28 with a hired lesbian escort, while she traces the events that got her into this situation. seeing the mental and physical pits she falls into is painful but watching her slowly learn to care for herself and try to take back the reins in her life is beautiful. in short, it’s a 28 yr old lesbian's coming of age story. more than anything, i am rooting for the author ❤️

a short manga by famous horror mangaka, juno ito, about his domestic life with his two cats. this made me laugh out loud soooo many times. he’s so reknowned for his horror, but he actually has such a knack for impeccable comedic timing and set up. the juxtaposition of his dark, atmospheric horror art style with unexpectedly silly and humourous anecdotes about his cats was so damn good. a really charming and heartwarming read, with a surprisingly emotional final chapter and an extra about the 2011 earthquake. itll be a fun cute read for anyone, i think to fully enjoy this, you prob have to be a cat lover!