oenophile_bibliophile's reviews
426 reviews

Brotherless Night by V.V. Ganeshananthan

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challenging dark emotional reflective sad tense slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

A fictionalized account of a civilian woman during the Sri Lankan civil war. Told in a painfully factual way. Not an enjoyable read, but an important and deeply feminist one.
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The Making of a Manager: What to Do When Everyone Looks to You by Julie Zhuo

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medium-paced

3.0

A strange mix of advice too basic for anyone who has been a manager for more than five minutes and advice only relevant for higher level executives with multiple layers of management beneath them. None of the information was new to me or packaged in a unique way to make this one memorable.
Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World by Naomi Klein

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medium-paced

3.75

Parts of this I really enjoyed, but I wish the author had spent more time analyzing her doppelgänger and, by extension, the far right, and how we got to this point in society. She went off on too many tangents for my liking and some chapters had very loose linkages to her central thesis. It felt a bit like she just really wanted to write about a few topics near and dear to her, but didn’t have enough content for a full book, so she forced them into this one.
Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt

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lighthearted slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.75

I get the appeal, but this was too slow and I didn’t really care about the human characters and all their failed communication that drove the entire plot. 

It also really irritated me that the octopus just magically knew things to drive the plot forward.
How did he know where the driver licence was in the first place? How did he know that Tova would recognize the last name on it as Daphne’s?
How to Say Babylon by Safiya Sinclair

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challenging dark emotional hopeful reflective slow-paced

4.25

Really beautifully written and really eloquently balanced abuse alongside respect for her Rastafarian father
The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism by Naomi Klein

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informative slow-paced

3.0

She spent a lot of time forcing world events to fit into her thesis and ignored the other factors at play (mainly good old fashioned corruption). An interesting read, but it was far from perfect.
Orbital by Samantha Harvey

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relaxing slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

2.0

This was just boring, and prose was a bit pretentious at times… I also hated the ending
Thunderclap: A Memoir of Art and Life & Sudden Death by Laura Cumming

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Did not finish book. Stopped at 14%.
I’m sure others would appreciate the prose, but for me, it just feels wrong to read lengthy descriptions of paintings and how the author feels about them…
The Bee Sting by Paul Murray

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Did not finish book. Stopped at 23%.
Just too long to carry on when it’s not grabbing me and I don’t care what happens to any of the characters
Beach Read by Emily Henry

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dark emotional funny hopeful medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0