kingofspain93's reviews
238 reviews

Kawaguchi capitalizes on the inherent emotional power of certain types of relationships (new love, old love, siblings, parents and children) to give his story weight in the absence of compelling style or plot. I like stories about loss and I really wanted to like this but the formulaic encounters were literally each the same: person travels in time to speak to a loved one, gets there and doesn’t quite know what to say, suddenly as the coffee is about to cool the loved one breaks the awkwardness by confessing something emotional and healing, and then the time traveler returns to the present with a new perspective on an unchangeable situation. It was cute once but after the fourth time I was totally checked out. 

Except for two really good moments I resented the times this book made me emotional because it felt manipulative rather than earned. I also found the stilted writing and clumsy dialogue extremely irritating, though I am chalking that up to poor translation by Trousselot. I wish publishers would stop getting white guys to translate Japanese literature.

my first encounter with a foam book. I was and am stunned. the pages kind of stick together which is maybe a side effect of it being shipped from Romania, or maybe a side effect of it being published in Romania. very good vocab for a little one and/or me, a dummy.

the flaps are great, way less intimidating than a pop-up book but with the same amount of fun interactivity. pop-up books always used to stress me out when I was little because I was afraid of tearing them, or they would fold up wrong and get all crumpled, and my tiny brain wanted them pristine and magical forever. the flaps are durable! the bait-and-switch when I guessed that "mare" meant "ocean" because it was next to a whale lol

I was very proud when I guessed what "claxonează" meant from context. definitely the word that dropped me on my ass was "bebeluşului." a beautiful little book!

extremely cute drawings from the iconic Martina Hogan! nice to see doi cute ursuleți make an appearance.

great illustrations that make each color seem pretty and playful (even historically obnoxious colors like orange). my new favorite colors are albastru and mov!

this is a fun little Georgian era heist novel with strong royalist sensibilities, which is actually a refreshing break from relentless, mindless anti-aristocracy narratives even if it is simultaneously fairly uncritical. mostly it is about two dashing hot people pulling off an audacious feat. though it was for the convenience of the plot I liked that we mostly followed Marguerite's POV. still, despite its slight length The Scarlet Pimpernel tends to drag in places and by the end I was more than ready to say goodbye to the characters, not to revisit them in a dozen sequels.

They tell me when I was five or six, they asked what I wanted Santa to bring. “A small basement with a light in it,” I said. Now what kind of child is that?

Nietzke has written herself into an interesting position here. she moved to Venice Beach post-divorce simply because California was a point on a map, “the edge of the country” as she sometimes puts it, and thousands of miles from everything she knew and wanted to leave behind. Venice Beach in the ‘90s is reminiscent of Portland (a terrible city I can’t wait to leave) in the here and now. stupid evil liberals craving an emotional creative high rush into a city, gentrify relentlessly, and then villainize the ballooning homeless population made up of people driven out of their homes by the yuppies. Nietzke doesn’t hate homeless people. she does write about them with interiority and humanity, sexuality and sensuality, their personhood relatively intact. and yet she is still an artist capitalizing on the relative security of her vantage point to turn the poverty of others into a way to feel good about herself. her sense of ownership over place is clear, even if she never forgets that she shares that place with others who were there first. she’s processing her grief and loneliness, and at its best Windowlight is sweet and curious in that bold way that only women can write. at its worst, it is sentimental voyeurism that exoticizes homelessness (and, subtly, Blackness). whether or not I agreed with Nietzke (or even liked her 100% of the time) this was a stimulating little piece of autofiction and I’m glad I sought it out. the bar is so low at this point that even reading a book that just takes homeless people seriously as human beings is refreshing.

I appreciate the logical approach to writing about magic and how it works and is theorized in a fantasy world but the main character is just too much of a little whiny shithead. he’s like a bad visual novel protagonist whose entire personality is being mildly irritated by everything. the whole story is from his perspective, so it’s a constant inner monologue of him being bored or annoyed by totally mundane things like basic social interactions or the weather. if I read two thousand plus pages of this I would turn into a school shooter shooter (someone who gathers a lot of incels in one place and shoots them with a gun I got at Wal-Mart) out of self-defense.

I’m reading the Drizzt books in chronological order and it’s so surprising to me that, in terms of publication, this is the first one! Salvatore’s grasp of the character is already firm and he throws you right into the world with no useless exposition but also with no disorientation. he is good at writing puzzles and logical conundrums and his plotting also makes the most of archetypal characters and their conflicts, putting them into situations where their honor is challenged and they must work through their turmoil. the combat is excellently written and there are several memorable and exciting battles in here, which is a rare feat for any book. I am so excited for the world to continue to expand; the next one seems like it’s going to be a road trip novel! I wish there were more female characters.