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zinelib's reviews
524 reviews
6 Times We Almost Kissed (And One Time We Did) by Tess Sharpe
hopeful
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Diverse cast of characters? No
3.25
Tate and Penny's moms are BFFs, so they've been in each other's lives since before they were born. They were as close as sisters when they were little, but diverged a bit as they got older, each having their own universe of friends. And yet, each was always fully aware of what was going on with the other. Tate was present for Penny when Penny's dad died before her eyes in a rafting accident, which was good because Penny's mom Lottie sure wasn't.
Now the moms have brought the girls into one household because Lottie is donating part of her liver to Tate's mom, Anna, and while they're alone in the house, they have to deal with their attraction to one another, as much as they seem not to want to.
The will-they-or-won't-they, as you might guess from the title, goes on for a long-ass time. Folks who like a slow burn won't mind, but I did.
Now the moms have brought the girls into one household because Lottie is donating part of her liver to Tate's mom, Anna, and while they're alone in the house, they have to deal with their attraction to one another, as much as they seem not to want to.
The will-they-or-won't-they, as you might guess from the title, goes on for a long-ass time. Folks who like a slow burn won't mind, but I did.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Death of parent
The Pairing by Casey McQuiston
adventurous
emotional
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
The Pairing pairs Theo and Kit and food and wine. If you're a foodie or a wine enthusiast you might be as obsessed as the will-they or won't they again lovers. Theo is a member of a Hollywood family and a sommelier-in-training. Kit was Theo's boy next door and the guy who broke Theo's heart. He now lives in France and works as a high end pastry drudge. The two already did the friends-to-lover thing, having lived together and everything. Their total separation happened on their way to this very three-week European food tour four years ago. They both happened to have rebooked. Theo literally runs (falls) into Kit on the tour bus, causing a nosebleed. The rest of this book, which takes its sweet (or tedious, depending on your perspective) time with their inevitable reconciliation / unreconciliation / conclusion.
It went on too long for me, but I still liked it. The lovers are both bisexual and as adventurous sexually as they are with their other appetites (remember they're both foodie drinkies). Their queer lives are matter of fact front and center, just as McQuiston's other characters' are. The rest of the cast also consists of folks who seem like they might be boring, but can surprise you. I wouldn't mind reading novels from other pairs' points of view.
It went on too long for me, but I still liked it. The lovers are both bisexual and as adventurous sexually as they are with their other appetites (remember they're both foodie drinkies). Their queer lives are matter of fact front and center, just as McQuiston's other characters' are. The rest of the cast also consists of folks who seem like they might be boring, but can surprise you. I wouldn't mind reading novels from other pairs' points of view.
Yours Truly by Abby Jimenez
hopeful
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
4.25
Super enjoyable fake dating enemies-to-lovers story in the same universe as Part of Your World, which I read last month. The lovers are ER doctors Briana something and something WASPy that starts with a J. J has social anxiety, and Briana is super cool about it. J is otherwise perfect. Both have recent exes, but J's is worse because the ex (Amy, I think?) feel in love with his brother a few months after their breakup. Or Briana's is worse because her ex started hooking up with his new chick while he and Briana were still married.
The Witch's Sister by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor
mysterious
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
3.0
This was my homie's favorite book as a child, but I just couldn't get into this story of a tween who thinks her 14-year-old sister and their neighbor lady are witches.
Private Equity: A Memoir by Carrie Sun
dark
reflective
slow-paced
4.0
Author/narrator Carrie Sun isn't the most likable narrator. She makes poor choices, at least in her own life. As the executive assistant to a billionaire hedge fund founder/manager, her work is unimpeachable. I've read a few memoirs of women of color who seek their fortune in fortune 500 companies and ultimately leave to save their lives. There is an undeniable appeal to making a gazillion dollars, living luxuriously, and taking care of one's immigrant parents (and giving them something to brag about even while they criticize and disown you on the regular, in Sun's case). However, Sun ultimately realizes that helping billionaires and the billionaire business is pretty much the same thing as fucking over the poor, and she wants out. Plus she's depressed, in poor physical shape, flirting with an eating disorder, and goes back to a controlling ex-fiancé.
Content by Kate Eichhorn
She points out how hard it was to find information in those days, but that at the same time as discoverability tools improved, so did efforts to game the system using search engine optimization (a term possibly not coined yet, but that I'm using to describe what Eichhorn reports).
Eichhorn references Writely, which became Google docs a year after its 2005 launch, and which I used back then! I'm not usually an early adopter, but I was in early on that one! (This has nothing to do with the book; I'm kind of just bragging.)
I bookmarked a page that engages with the theorist Lyotard, information as commodity, and "payment knowledge," but I'm not sure what in particular I had in mind to share. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
She goes on to discuss the greater access "amateurs" have as creators, not necessarily coming down on the side of credentialism or popularism. She focuses on Instapoet Rupi Kaur, whom I hadn't heard of, a Canadian who rose to fame on Instagram at 17 for her performance poetry.
Oof--the chapter on bots, including the Macedonian teens who contributed to Donald Trump's 2016 win, treats us to information on how Google's AdSense was (is) weaponized in the fake news industry. Many fake news purveyors are just in it for the money. They don't have to have a horse in the American race for the presidency.
Eichhorn ends on a despairing note
Published in 2022, this book could use a generative AI addendum. Eichhorn told me she was forced to cut AI content that, when the book was in production, seemed too outrageous to be believable. Lolsob.
dark
informative
fast-paced
4.75
This slim, elegant work is like a book report by a cultural studies PhD on a topic they were randomly assigned. Kate Eichhorn is a brilliant genius who can go deep on anything and explain it to you like you're 50. The book's title, Content, refers to digital content--user generated, automated, fake, etc.
She mostly concerns herself with the WWW, dating back to the early 1990s.
She mostly concerns herself with the WWW, dating back to the early 1990s.
In 1994, the editors of Postmodern Culture, one of the first academic journals to start publishing on the web, were concerned enough about this new medium to warn their readers that venturing onto the web, which had grown from an estimated 100 sites in June to over 600 sites by December 1993, may result in "a kind of information vertigo."
She points out how hard it was to find information in those days, but that at the same time as discoverability tools improved, so did efforts to game the system using search engine optimization (a term possibly not coined yet, but that I'm using to describe what Eichhorn reports).
Eichhorn references Writely, which became Google docs a year after its 2005 launch, and which I used back then! I'm not usually an early adopter, but I was in early on that one! (This has nothing to do with the book; I'm kind of just bragging.)
I bookmarked a page that engages with the theorist Lyotard, information as commodity, and "payment knowledge," but I'm not sure what in particular I had in mind to share. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
She goes on to discuss the greater access "amateurs" have as creators, not necessarily coming down on the side of credentialism or popularism. She focuses on Instapoet Rupi Kaur, whom I hadn't heard of, a Canadian who rose to fame on Instagram at 17 for her performance poetry.
Oof--the chapter on bots, including the Macedonian teens who contributed to Donald Trump's 2016 win, treats us to information on how Google's AdSense was (is) weaponized in the fake news industry. Many fake news purveyors are just in it for the money. They don't have to have a horse in the American race for the presidency.
Eichhorn ends on a despairing note
...content resisters will never bring the content industry to its knees. Content and the content industry are here to stay; indeed, much of the damage has already been done. ... Content resisters [including zine creators] will stubbornly reject the temptation to accumulate content capital.
Published in 2022, this book could use a generative AI addendum. Eichhorn told me she was forced to cut AI content that, when the book was in production, seemed too outrageous to be believable. Lolsob.
Heavyweight: A Family Story of the Holocaust, Empire, and Memory by Solomon J. Brager
challenging
informative
medium-paced
4.75
The title Heavyweight refers to the author's great grandfather, who was a boxer, but also to the heft of Brager's relationship with the Jewish holocaust. I know Solomon Brager from zine cultures and as an anti-Zionist Jew. Those two identities inform this graphic historiography, as does their PhD work in gender studies. I don't think I've ever read a smarter graphic book, and that includes the works of Alison Bechdel.
Poster Girl by Veronica Roth
Sonya is numb to her life as the youngest person in the house arrest style prison, the Aperture, but she still has some fight in her. She challenges Alexander
Deep!
Here, an underground agent is discussing a piece of cyborg tech called an Insight installed in everyone's eye and brain under the Delegation.
He goes on
So not all technology is bad, but some decidedly is.
adventurous
dark
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.25
I don't encounter that many books about female anti-heroes, maybe because there's an arrogance to the anti-hero narrative that isn't as common in women and nonbinary authors. I didn't enjoy reading this book that much, but by the end I appreciated the uniqueness of likability of irredeemable characters in a dystopia.
Sonya Kantor (Jewish name--interesting in this current context of the evil nation state of Israel) is the title character. She's imprisoned for her part in a fallen Orwellian government known as the Delegation. Her now-deceased father was a leader in the regime, and she herself was the face of it, having posed for a propaganda poster captioned "What's right is right." Thanks to the intervention of her dead fiancé's brother Alexander, she is given a chance to right a wrong. The book is the story of that journey.
There are some good bits of writing like
Sonya Kantor (Jewish name--interesting in this current context of the evil nation state of Israel) is the title character. She's imprisoned for her part in a fallen Orwellian government known as the Delegation. Her now-deceased father was a leader in the regime, and she herself was the face of it, having posed for a propaganda poster captioned "What's right is right." Thanks to the intervention of her dead fiancé's brother Alexander, she is given a chance to right a wrong. The book is the story of that journey.
There are some good bits of writing like
All anyone wants in Building 2 is to grind time down like a molar.
Sonya is numb to her life as the youngest person in the house arrest style prison, the Aperture, but she still has some fight in her. She challenges Alexander
"It seems to me," she says, "that if your every choice is in defiance of a system, you are as much a servant of that system as someone who obeys it."
Deep!
Here, an underground agent is discussing a piece of cyborg tech called an Insight installed in everyone's eye and brain under the Delegation.
"The Insight wasn't some aberration or anomaly," he says. "It is the symptom of a disease that still infects our population--the desire to make everything easy, to sacrifice autonomy and privacy for convenience. That's what technology is, Ms. Kantor. A concession to laziness and the devaluing of human effort."
He goes on
"A device that you carry with you everywhere you go, a device that monitors and watches you, is no the same as one that sites in your house and plays music or dries your hair."
So not all technology is bad, but some decidedly is.
Content Warnings
Minor: Suicide
It Gets Better . . . Except When It Gets Worse: And Other Unsolicited Truths I Wish Someone Had Told Me by Nicole Maines
hopeful
informative
medium-paced
3.5
I loved Maines's voice in the first half of the book, but the second half felt forced. I appreciate so much that she shares that she had a ghostwriter, but it's wild to me that the second half of the book could be so contrived with professional help. I don't mean to hate on this book, and I really enjoyed the beginning. It left me a little soggy.
The author knew she was a girl and expressed her gender as soon as she was able to. Her utter certainty prevented her reluctant, conservative dad from denying her reality. It took him a minute, but he ended up being Nicole's biggest crusader. We don't hear as much about Nicole's monozygotic twin brother, other than apologies and gratitude. I think he's an actor, too? If you didn't know who Nicole was before looking up this book (I didn't), she's an actor who gained fame/notoriety as a superhero buddy to Supergirl on the eponymous TV show. I say "notoriety" because I don't know anything about the fandom, but Maines reports that it was dictatorial and unforgiving. People wanted a lot out of the first out trans superhero played by an out trans woman. They didn't always get what they wanted, and they were mean about it. The fans are probably unrealistic shits, but I think that's the kind of thing you need to complain about to other people in your position. Still, I appreciate the Maines's voice and activism. This book will probably go down better with people who know Maines's work. I read it because someone from Feminist Press has me on a list.
The author knew she was a girl and expressed her gender as soon as she was able to. Her utter certainty prevented her reluctant, conservative dad from denying her reality. It took him a minute, but he ended up being Nicole's biggest crusader. We don't hear as much about Nicole's monozygotic twin brother, other than apologies and gratitude. I think he's an actor, too? If you didn't know who Nicole was before looking up this book (I didn't), she's an actor who gained fame/notoriety as a superhero buddy to Supergirl on the eponymous TV show. I say "notoriety" because I don't know anything about the fandom, but Maines reports that it was dictatorial and unforgiving. People wanted a lot out of the first out trans superhero played by an out trans woman. They didn't always get what they wanted, and they were mean about it. The fans are probably unrealistic shits, but I think that's the kind of thing you need to complain about to other people in your position. Still, I appreciate the Maines's voice and activism. This book will probably go down better with people who know Maines's work. I read it because someone from Feminist Press has me on a list.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Transphobia
Anastasia Krupnik by Lois Lowry
Oh, Anastasia! This is how it is for kids in certain kinds of families. Or maybe all? You're lead to believe you're the most important person in the world, and it's kind of a shock when you learn that you're not. She may not be the most important kid in the world, but she is a distinct children's book heroine.
funny
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.5
In the intro to the edition I read, author Lois Lowry invokes Amy Carter (living at the White House at the time of the book's original publication), who influenced the character of Anastasia with her forthrightness. Anastasia is ten, and, at this point an only child. Her mother is an artist, and her father is a poet and Harvard professor. She keeps a diary that is a bullet journal forerunner, where she maintains lists of loves and hates, and other things. Over the course of the book, items move from one column to the other, as Anastasia experiments with things like pumpkin pie and getting a nice phone call from a former object of her hatred. Or maybe having to confront some things about herself, as when she learns her mother is pregnant.
"Dumb, dumb, dumb," she thought immediately. "I'm being dumb, again. I'm the only one in the whole world, for Pete's sake--the whole world including even my parents--who thinks that I'm important enough to be the only kid in my family."
Oh, Anastasia! This is how it is for kids in certain kinds of families. Or maybe all? You're lead to believe you're the most important person in the world, and it's kind of a shock when you learn that you're not. She may not be the most important kid in the world, but she is a distinct children's book heroine.