Khan A.

AMAZING!!

Revisado: 05-23-21

As someone who’s interested in psychology, I loved listening to a story from a therapist’s perspective. It gave me so much insight about what happens inside their heads; how they can’t help but psychoanalyze people. The narrator is very perceptive, as I’d imagine a therapist would be, and it was so fascinating hearing her thought process and observations.

The voice actor was fantastic! She changed her accent, pitch, and general talking style to distinguish each character from the other. She captured their personalities and mental states so well!

The story gets progressively stranger and stranger, keeping me hooked; I literally took my phone with me in the shower to keep listening. The pacing was fantastic, I never wanted to stop. In pretty much every chapter there’s a new development that takes you in a completely different direction than what you were expecting, up until the very last minute. Not a moment of boredom! I always try to predict what’s going to happen in a story, but I couldn’t predict a thing with this one. At multiple points I literally gasped out loud.

This is an absolutely fantastic listen, I’d recommend to everyone!

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Beautiful, just beautiful

Revisado: 05-20-21

I don’t know what I loved more about this book, the intriguing story, the complicated characters, the colorful language! This book is filled to the brim with symbols and motifs and fascinating questions such as “how does one live a good life, especially when one resides in an oppressive system?” Morrison discusses race, gender, friendship, love, sex, death, war, community, labor, family and so much more in each vibrant chapter of this wonderful work of art!

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Honest and painful and beautiful

Revisado: 05-18-21

One of the major things that captivated me about Hunger was how Gay presents seemingly contradictory perspectives; how she holds two beliefs at once. For example, the shame she feels towards her body with the simultaneous knowledge that this shame isn’t hers to bear. This internal back and forth was probably the only thing I, someone who’s been petite all her life, could relatable to. Everything else was very new to me, and it pained me in a way that very few things have pained me. I don’t want to say that I felt Gay’s anguish because I don’t think that’s possible, but her writing did capture many, many awful and beautiful scenes so well that I often found myself tearing up and highlighting and writing in the margins. Thank you for this work of art.

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A little ambivalent...

Revisado: 05-16-21

This was my first Poirot story, so I had really high hopes/expectations. Firstly, the juvenoia, especially towards young girls, was interesting to read because it reminded me a lot of things you’d hear nowadays about Gen Z and millennials, though it was a little frustrating at times because I couldn’t tell if Christie was condemning this kind of sexist talk that keeps coming up or simply representing how people spoke about young women in her time (or both?).
The voice actor is fantastic! Each character was unique. I loved Mrs. Oliver! Smart, quick on her feet, brave, funny, overall a cutie.
The book dragged on a few times and felt like it was getting nowhere, and then everything sort of happened all at once. In all honesty, the ending kind of felt like a Scooby Doo reveal where everything got tidied up really quickly. Something happens at the end that was sort of brushed over and felt like a quick fix to a bigger problem.
Overall I was definitely interested in the story, but I couldn’t help but feel a little disappointed at the end.

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Not for me, but maybe you?

Revisado: 05-13-21

I knew that I was setting myself up for disappointment because my expectations for this book were REALLY high considering how much praise it’s been getting. I liked the general story idea, I deeply appreciate the casual portrayal of two gay LatinX boys, and I was fascinated by the various institutions that popped up along with Death Cast, such as Make-a-Moment and Last Friend. I think Silvera raised so many interesting questions about death, especially our denial of its existence. I also loved the connections between each of the characters, though it didn’t add much to the story as a whole.

I wasn’t sold on the love story. I understood why the anxious and constantly afraid Mateo fell for the extroverted and sometimes reckless Rufus, but I couldn’t understand what Rufus saw in Mateo. That’s not to say I didn’t like Mateo’s character, in fact, Mateo’s character was the only one that felt real. It was no surprise to me when I learned that Adam Silvera had initially written the majority of the book in Mateo’s perspective. It’s clear that Silvera got to spend a lot of time with Mateo, which is why this character felt so genuine. Rufus, on the other hand, felt sort of...distant? He seemed to care more about his friend group, which the readers didn’t get to spend as much time with and therefore didn’t really get to care about the way Rufus cared about them.

Another thing that made Rufus feel less genuine was his style of speaking. As a New Yorker...it was mad corny at times. This was especially difficult to read after the quite beautiful scene where Mateo admits his love for Rufus in such an innocent way, only to be followed with the lines “Yo. You know damn well I love you too.”

Also I have a general gripe with the whole “live your life to the fullest” kinda of books and movies. TBDATE and similar books (such as The Fault in Our Stars) seem to be saying that we must strive to do unusual things in our lives such as skydiving and going to clubs or something, and this notion bothers me. Is my life somehow less valuable simply because I’m not traveling to Amsterdam with a cute boy to meet my favorite author, or because I didn’t skydive or fall in love before my death? I like the message of not being afraid and whatnot, but something about this kind of story doesn’t sit right with me.

There were also a lot of minor characters, such as Lidia, who were really interesting and I just wish we got to spend more time with them.

That being said, I enjoyed the experience of listening to the different voices through Audible, it really helped to differentiate between the characters, and the voice actors were great! This book has touched a lot of hearts so if you want to read it definitely give it a shot, it just wasn’t what I was looking for.

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Eloquent and heartbreaking

Revisado: 05-13-21

I finally got the chance to read this classic and was not disappointed. Baldwin’s thorough historical understanding is so present in his writing (unfortunately I wasn’t able to grasp every historical or political reference, but Baldwin wrote in such a way that I understood his point even if I didn’t understand the specifics). My favorite aspect of his writing is the empathy with which he views every individual he encounters. It’s very easy to diminish people into labels and boxes, but Baldwin acknowledges every person’s complexities and regards them not as tropes and simple stereotypes, but rather as products of their and other’s intricate histories. The “stream of consciousness” style of writing caused me, at times, to feel a little lost, but other than that I actually felt much closer to him; I didn’t feel like he was preaching to me or throwing a bunch of facts at me, but rather that we were sitting together and he was telling me everything that came to mind.

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