emilyusuallyreading's reviews
746 reviews

What I Liked
This novel is beautiful. Absolutely stunning. Each word has been carefully crafted until the entire book is as delicious as poetry. The characters are lovable (or hate-able), their stories are powerful, and the magical realism found within these pages works brilliantly.

What I Didn't Like
I don't understand why Ava's story is written in first person. She writes third person omniscient about multiple generations of her family. In fact, Ava is not even born until halfway through the book. Throughout the entirety of the novel, the reader adventures through the thoughts and hearts of characters other than Ava. Hearing Ava speak of herself in first person and just as easily describe what her mother is thinking is a bit distracting. Also, even though Ava speaks of herself in first person, I felt the least connected to her emotions and motivations than I did to any other character.

The pacing is a bit slow. The book is titled The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender, but not much of it is actually about Ava. It's a beautiful book, and once I got through the slowest of the pacing, I became completely absorbed. But it is certainly not a fast-paced book.

This book is witty, charming, and clever. Letter after letter is removed from the beginning until the end. By the second-to-last chapter, only a few letters of the alphabet are permitted for the townspeople of Nollop to use.

While I was taken aback by Mark Dunn's clever handling of the English language, I was bored by the trivial plot within the book. The words he used were extravagant and borderline purple prose, which created wordy and unrealistic letters between friends.

Ella Minnow Pea is a brilliant idea, but it came across as gimmicky and even tiresome. I flipped through the book in an hour, unwilling to spend too much of my time studying a novel that contains next to no real story.

The relevance of The Bell Jar decades after its publication is haunting. Esther's frustrations with mental healthcare, the hypocrisy in expectations for men and women, and the pressures of a college student who struggles with depression are all powerful observations that reflect today's society as well as yesterday's.

What I appreciate the most about this novel, aside from Plath's lovely writing, is the realistic depiction of someone suffering from depression and mental illness. Esther's depression is meant to be taken seriously as an illness, not as a simple state of mind. When Esther's mother encourages her to stop thinking this way, her words sound ridiculous, for good reason.

It's impossible to discredit Esther's mental illness when one reads The Bell Jar. Her illness is just as real and as much of a hidden killer as the TB that put Buddy in a sanatorium for months.

While the novel ends with a taste of hope, it is impossible not to remember the tragic suicide of Sylvia Plath.

If you haven't read Never Let Me Go, don't read this review. There aren't blatant spoilers, but the less you know before you read, the more powerful it will be. I read this book for the first time when I was a freshman in college, knowing absolutely nothing about the story, and I was astounded.

This novel is haunting. It's dystopian and science fiction, although both genres are far from the purpose of the book.

The apathetic motivation of the characters in Never Let Me Go is both frustrating and compelling, because it so perfectly frames humanity. Throughout the entirety of this novel, I wanted to say, "Just run away. Hide. Save yourselves." But this is how people live. I'm reminded of the saying that goes: "I always wonder why birds choose to stay in the same place when they can fly anywhere on the earth, then I ask myself the same question." Similar to Kathy and Tommy's calm resignation to the fates chosen for them, their advocates live in a comfortable house and do not truly fight for their cause. Even more similarly, how often do we take a stance against the people who are misused and exploited for our own gain?

Although this is a gentle, peaceful novel, it is disturbing. Haunting. Even frightening. The looming fate of these students creates an overwhelming tension without the necessity of detailed description of their actual fates.

Spoiler

Towards the end, when Miss Emily admits to being repulsed by her students almost every single day at Hailsham, when the cruel truth behind the gallery is actually revealed, a feeling of horror is unavoidable.

Above all, after reading Never Let Me Go for the second time, I cannot help but think how humanity loves to categorize what makes people human. In the American age of slavery, in Germany during WWII, and today in regards to the global hunger problem, it is easy to strip humanity from those who are being cruelly used and from those that would inconvenience us to stand up and make a stance for change.

Critiques: The conversational narrative of the book is a little rambling. It is largely not chronological, and Kathy will mention a story, have a long flashback, and then jump right back into the story she was first telling. This can become a little startling and distracting. Also, the lack of knowledge that the students have is understandable, but I could not help but end the novel wishing for a little bit more about their world.

I read the concise edition of this collection for a Young Adult Literature class I am taking for university. While this book only contains Little Red Riding Hood, Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, and Hansel and Gretel, these particular stories are very comprehensive. There are multiple tellings and detailed history of each classic folk tale. I learned a lot about the fairy tale and about the history of children's literature from Hallett and Karasek. I'm glad for the reading experience.

In many ways, this is quite similar to The Little Princess, which is one of my favorite books of all time. However, The Lost Prince did not capture my attention. It was obviously written to appeal for boys, which is perhaps why it did not attract my attention, but the twist ending seemed so contrived and predictable that I guessed it from the first chapter.

There are memorable characters within the book, and I always love Burnett's portrayals of the relationship between father and child.

The Lost Prince didn't hit the mark for me. Perhaps if I were younger and a boy.

The premise of Pure is fascinating. In the wake of nuclear war, survivors are either hidden in safety within a giant dome or else they are struggling as "wretches" in the outside world and fused to their surroundings. Babies have melted into the arms of their mothers. Pressia has a doll head for a fist and Bradwell has birds in his back.

The world-building of Pure is exceptional. Julianna Baggott did not take the easy way out to create the stereotypical Big Bad Government and Strong Heroine who overcomes it. Her world is fully fleshed out to the point where I was startled and haunted by the descriptions. I had prickly chills as I saw through the eyes of these characters, in a good way. I even like the third person present tense. It's unusual, but it works.

Another thing that I appreciate about Pure is the way that it handles romance. Certain YA dystopias are so romance-focused that the Big Bad World seems like only an unfortunate annoyance. The romances in this book develop naturally and slowly and do not take center stage above the action and twists.

Even though the world-building and writing style of Pure are impressive compared to much of YA dystopian fiction, I was overwhelmed. This novel is long. It consists of more subplots than actual plot, more world-building than characterization, and more perspective-changes in narration than necessary. I'm a quick reader and often will finish a book in a day or two. This one dragged on for a couple of weeks. There were too many subplots and descriptions to keep me interested for long. I found myself putting the book down again and again.

Certain plot points are predictable and even a little contrived.

Spoiler

Partridge and Pressia conveniently being half siblings? Really?

Over and over again, the teens survive solely by coincidence (meeting someone they know among a post-apocalyptic wasteland, finding an obscure clue, being connected in some weird way, defeating bad guys, being rescued, etc, etc). I know there's a writing quote somewhere that goes something like: writers may allow bad things to happen by coincidence, but they should never save the day by coincidence. As the story wrapped up, every discovery and achievement seemed a bit too easy.

This book is a fast, suspenseful read. I finished it in a sitting and found myself laughing at certain moments and feeling eerily creeped out in others. While this is a thriller, it is not a horror story. Tension builds from the first page to the last, creating a question that sums up the entire story: What's with the women in Stepford?

So many moments in The Stepford Wives are strikingly memorable. The mild-mannered husbands with dark plans that they concoct up on the hill at the Men's Club. Joanna holding her own in conversation with her husband's friends, only to find herself sketched into an unrealistic ideal of herself and treated like a waitress. Bobbie's paranoia of being ultimately turned into one of them. The ending is ominous.

There are certainly questions about how a society like The Stepford Wives could exist for an extended period of time. Do the fathers plan to surgically alter/turn into robots their daughters as they grow into adulthood? Will the young girls be brainwashed into believing their only goal in life is to clean and please men, or will they rebel and become the wildest teenage girls in the state? Will the fathers want their own daughters to be over-sexualized, brainless caricatures of themselves?

The Stepford Wives makes you stop and think.

This is one of the strangest books I've ever read. I'm usually repelled from science fiction, but my American literature professor chose this book to study this semester. I was pleasantly surprised. Dawn gave me the heebie-jeebies, in a good (but also uncomfortable) way.

What I Liked
Humanity is portrayed vividly in this novel. Butler mirrors the biggest flaws of humanity, such as our tendency towards hierarchy and our xenophobia that can be found between humans through racism.

Lilith's reaction to the Oankali, as well as the alien descriptions of the ship and the Oankali themselves were extremely well written. I can't stop thinking about this book, and I don't think I will for a long time.

What I Didn't
The Oankali have problems with consent. They genetically change the bodies of humans and

Spoiler

ultimately end up seducing them and having weird alien/human sexual relations

. This has the potential to shine a light on the problems surrounding rape, and to an extent, Butler does this. However, sexual consent is something that is handled too lightly for my taste.

Spoiler

At one point, Nikanj seduces Joseph, and after the man says he will never consent to mating with the ooloi, Nikanj basically says, "Your words are saying no, but your body is saying yes." Nope, nope, nope, it's still not okay.

It's clear that the reader is meant to root for Nikanj and Lilith, at least to some degree, but the pleasure and relational bond forged between human and ooloi is extremely coerced and lacking real consent.

I got into the Harry Potter series late in the game. At age 21 to be precise. The first few books were compelling, but I honestly felt that I began reading too young to have the admiring obsession than many of my friends have.

This seventh book was by far my favorite. It is gritty and frightening, bonding the three friends together in new ways while thrusting Voldemort and Harry into a final confrontation that amazed me. I stayed up all night reading the final installment of this series. I was hooked from the first chapter to the last.