Rated The Great Gatsby 9/10
Edited 32d ago
book
Rated The Opposite of Loneliness: Essays and Stories 4/10
A resounding "This is fine, I guess."<br><br>Her speech/essay at the beginning of the book is more or less a very good commencement speech. You'd be pleased to have it at your graduation. As an "amazing" essay? It's nothing extraordinary, though the idea of "The Opposite of Loneliness" is very lovely.<br><br>Keegan has a preoccupation with mentioning people's weight (fat is rarely portrayed as positive), or pressing her/her characters' foreheads/faces against each other (AKA... a writer-tic that one might not notice until all the pieces are presented as a whole), and maybe I'm just too far away from college to be excited by someone who, as the introduction says, "writes like she's 20." The ideas of her being jealous of others, while completely natural, kind of made me laugh a bit because Oh okay, you who has an internship at The New Yorker, lived on Cape Cod, and otherwise had all these interesting opportunities in life, you're somehow lacking? Sure. Okay. Fine. <br><br>I'm sure Keegan was a lovely person, with a lot of potential to do amazing things down the line. Her story is indeed tragic, but I remember being more moved by the essay about her from a friend on Buzzfeed Books, when this came out.<br><br>So, this is book is fine, but like Keegan said herself, there's always a better thing.
Rated Doctor Who: The Wave of Destruction 7/10
<div>This was fine. The tone was very much like one of the just okay Classic serials of the era, but maybe different elements reminded me of too many other Doctor Who stories. 1960s London, weird signals transmitted through popular entertainment devices, etc. etc. Always enjoy hearing Romana II though, and K-9 gets some jokes in.</div>
Rated The Master and Margarita 10/10
Really enjoyed this and now sorta want a black cat named Behemoth.
Rated The Confessions of Dorian Gray: Frostbite 6/10
This was way more of a setup to a story than an actual story. I had hoped for a little more, but as a freebie, it's perfectly fine.
Rated Doctor Who: The Auntie Matter 8/10
<div>Fun one with the first Romana.</div>
Wants to read Erotic Stories for Punjabi Widows
Rated Riddance: Or: The Sybil Joines Vocational School for Ghost Speakers & Hearing-Mouth Children 7/10
<div>I think I should have read this in print and not via audiobook. This sort of "found documents" format might have been a little easier to follow. Your mileage may vary.<br><br>Still, the idea that people who stutter can learn to communicate with the dead is an interesting concept for a novel. I'm not sorry that I read it, for sure, but I should've used the Libro.fm credit for something else!</div>
Rated In Search of Gil Scott-Heron 7/10
<div>This is part memoir, part biography — though a lot of the musical biography is written by Dortheé Nolan and appears as an article at the end of the graphic novel. I knew a little about Gil Scott-Heron's influence on hip-hop, but this book is more about the influence he had on the author's career. That's fine too, but there isn't quite enough introspection here to make us really feel an impact, apart from the frustration of the near-miss and the W years. The art pairs well with the text though, and perhaps the book will make more people seek out Scott-Heron's work.</div><div><br></div>
Wants to read Laura Lamont's Life in Pictures
Rated Into This World 8/10
I read from page 40-ish until the end in one evening, despite the fact that I should've gone to sleep. So that should give you an indicator of its appeal.<br><br>Read my full review at <a href="http://glorifiedloveletters.blogspot.com/2012/05/into-this-world-by-sybil-baker.html">Glorified Love Letters</a>.
Wants to read Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands
Wants to read Unmastered: A Book on Desire, Most Difficult to Tell
Rated True West: Myth and Mending on the Far Side of America 8/10
<div>This is a fairly solid look at how some western states have become the somewhat difficult places they are now —both politically and in lifestyle— and how that plays into broader myths about the West. Though the idea of "sitting down face to face will help solve our problems" is agreeable in theory, it is a privilege that not everyone can afford, and I do wish the book engaged a bit more with that. However, Quammen approaches her subject matter clearly, and she has a far greater stomach for researching the vile than I would.</div>