svetyas4's reviews
193 reviews

Two stars only for the nice descriptive writing. I have just remembered that it is not fun to read about women damaged by men, when a man is writing about it. Apologist and relentlessly depressing.

A quick and good read on an interesting case! Part crime story, part biography of a few interesting people, part history of some niche subject matter.

A really, really great book. You can read it very quickly but you learn so much. Everyone should check this out!

This is a weird one, but that's about all it has going for it. This book is extremely dark and pessimistic. Do not read it to feel good. Regardless of which short you read, you will come out feeling worse.

It's hard to tell what problems lie with the writing versus with the translation. There are extremely specific themes repeated in some of the shorts seemingly for no reason at all (billboards and fish tongues, to be exact) and some elements reincorporated into almost every story despite the fact that they add nothing. Seriously, this author is obsessed with: garbage, vomit, the smell of piss, and sweating. Almost every story has a reference to all of these - some more than once. If those are things you like reading about, knock yourself out! And engaging aspects become tedious quickly as they're recycled; the unreliable narrator, the unnamed characters (simply referred to as "the man" or "the woman", which starts to become confusing after a while), etc. At first I liked that the author refused to give an answer about how the stories ended, but at some point I began wondering if ending a story is simply her weak point, because none of them ended on a powerful, strong note.

Two stars for sheer inventiveness. I have to give her that. But the rest of it was a totally unpleasant experience, like if there was a version of A Series of Unfortunate Events that wasn't funny.

And major, serious trigger warning that I'm amazed is not addressed anywhere to give the reader a heads up: in the second short, "The Nightmare", repeated and violent sexual assault. Avoid, seriously, if this will be triggering for you.

You know, this writing style is fun, some of the essays are interesting, some of them are just silly. I smiled a lot reading it. But, this book has a lot to do with facts, figures and statistics that are simply out of date due to when it was published. I stopped because it's very informational but the information is no longer accurate. If there was ever a reprised version, however, I would pick it up again!

Whew... What the hell! I'm not a big believer in giving up on books but this was so rough that I had to stop. I understand the appeal of tackling unlikeable or challenging characters, but these ones are exceptionally horrible to the point that you don't even want to read anything more about them. Not to mention what I must believe is a seriously damaging, unresearched and offensive portrayal of autism... If one of your main characters is autistic and another one is an autism expert, like, research autism before you write your book. This is a condition that already has a lot of misinformation floating around; to exacerbate that feels incredibly irresponsible. I feel as if this author sat down and wrote out a list of the most miserable people, the most miserable places, and the most miserable situation they could be in, and then called it a book. I was disappointed because I actually liked the descriptive style and some of the voices at the beginning; not so by the time you hit, eh, page sixty, I'd say. Also whichever reviewer wrote on the back of this book that it's "sexy" needs to get some help. Two stars only cause the writing style has pull. Too bad about the characters, themes and plot!

Beautiful. Amazing. Never giving up my copy.

The descriptive writing is really pretty but overall this style just wasn't my thing. 2.5 stars

This is a beautiful book. The setting and scenery and cultural descriptions are next level, super creative but close enough to real-world equivalents that you can have a gorgeous mental image. I loved the story, loved the characters, and will definitely be getting my hands on the next one ASAP. 5/5 definitely recommend!