bklassen's reviews
728 reviews

Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat: Mastering the Elements of Good Cooking by Samin Nosrat

funny informative medium-paced

4.5

 This book was probably the first cookbook I’ve actually read through instead of reading just the recipes. I think it’s because it takes more of the Serious Eats/Food Lab approach and tells you HOW to cook, not WHAT to cook. Obviously this could not replace culinary school, but I felt like I learned invaluable lessons about why you bring your meat up to temp, why my boiled veggies are bland, what flavors go with each other, and the biggest one: if something feels “off” in a recipe, consider if it needs more acid, more salt, more fat, or different heat to really find that balance. 

I feel like I’ve gotten much better at balancing dishes or tweaking recipes when I ask myself about those four main components. 

Of course, Samin’s writing is very accessible and I really enjoy her professional yet conversational approach to the book. The watercolor diagrams were really nice (and the shortcut charts are handy to boot), but my gripe, as with many other cookbooks, is pictures!! You eat with your eyes, they say, and photographs not only entice you, but they give a good reference for what the final product will look like. 

Granted, I think experienced chefs literally go based on a title and list of ingredients because the rest is just knowing the processes and steps to execute meal components (or at least that’s what I’ve cursorily grasped from Epicurious videos and The Bear). They don’t need photos. But dang it, I’d like them! 

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin

dark emotional sad medium-paced

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

2.5

 What a disappointment. This book got so much hype and praise, especially from John Green; I loved Zevin’s other book, “The Storied Life of AJ Fikry”; I love video games and themes of friendship or collaboration – so why didn’t this book work for me? 

In a word: melodrama. In multiple words: Way too much melodrama. At times it felt like a more grounded soap opera. 

I have never wanted characters to get more therapy before, even though I actively know that characters becoming mentally or emotionally healthy resolves most, if not all, of the tension in a book. It actively hindered my enjoyment of the book, and I think the biggest issue is that there didn’t feel like enough growth, or any growth that occurred felt like it was in the last 10% of the book. 

The rest of the book felt like emotional torture porn. If you liked A Little Life, you might like this book! 

Spoiler

It starts off well with these two kids bonding over video games. His foot was destroyed in a car accident and she was visiting her sister with cancer, and they bond as two friends never have before. But then the “secret” of Sadie using their friendship for community service (or at least that’s how it started – she was a little opportunistic, but then she actually became best friends with Sam) comes out and he won’t talk to her for years because he’s hurt. 

Understandable! Kids don’t usually have the emotional reasoning to process and talk through that! Oh also he had just lost his mom in a car accident and his foot was mashed and he was in incredible pain, so he’s already not in the right mindset and is incredibly vulnerable. 

Years later, they into each other while in college and they agree to put the past behind them and become friends again because they used to be the best of friends. And they’re both brilliant when it comes to coding and video games. 

But then something else major happens, like Sadie accusing Sam of pushing her into an abusive relationship, and instead of talking it out, they just “break up” again.  

Rinse and repeat but with alternating characters initiating the cold shoulder for the rest of the book. Oh and throw in a love triangle, too. 

Want to know the full list of drama and awful things that occur in the book? 

Spoiler

Parent and grandparent death, suicide, abortion, unplanned pregnancy, estranged fathers, racism, abusive relationships where the two people STAY FRIENDS FOR THE REST OF THEIR LIVES, a love triangle, a shooting/death of a partner, amputation/medical trauma, depression, and more.

 

The whole book was a codependent relationship where the two main characters hated each other off and on – I wanted them to either get therapy and figure their shit out or just stop being friends because they’re both toxic. 

I am very aware of the conversation circling books: can you or are you supposed to enjoy a book with unlikable characters? I’d say it depends on why you read, the purpose of the book, and what you like in books. 

To me, it’s like the difference between Friends/Seinfeld, It’s Always Sunny, and Succession. The first shows have pretty terrible people in them but they try to convince you that they’re good people, the second show knows and revels in the fact that the MCs are all terrible people but it’s for comedy, and the third show knows you want that good, good drama about terrible people. All valid and great shows, but it’s crucial to know what you want to watch and what you’re getting into. For instance, I know I wouldn’t like Succession, so I don’t watch it because I wouldn’t enjoy it. 

This is all to say that this isn’t objectively a bad book, it’s more a warning to readers who are interested. KNOW WHAT YOU ARE GETTING INTO. If you don’t like melodramatic books about friendship that feels more off than on, then you’d almost certainly not like this book, especially if you despise love triangles. 

However, if you enjoy books with lots of dramatic life events, friendships that do feel real between people with lots of unresolved trauma and issues, and more, then you may enjoy this! 

I personally don’t enjoy those things and really did not connect with this book, so it wasn’t for me. 

To Zevin’s credit, she has an astounding vocabulary. More than 10-15 times I found myself looking up a word. And both the characters are almost too smart for their own good, so the usage of such words felt apt. 

Secondly, she did do a great job of putting forth one point of view or perspective so that I would understand, empathize with, and side with that character. But then the next POV switch would occur and I would switch sides. This shows a fundamental understanding of her characters that she was able to do that because context and understanding is more than half the battle.  

Another book about two best friends creating art together alongside the crazy ups and downs and trauma of life that I really enjoyed was The Animators by Kayla Rae Whitaker. I can’t put my finger on why I enjoyed that book more than T & T & T, but perhaps it was that I actually felt their friendship better and that even though the two characters go through highs and lows and insane shit, they at least felt like real friends and worked through it. I felt a deeper connection to the two of them and wanted them to work out whatever they go through. So maybe that is the difference. Oh and no love triangles! 

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Mass/school shootings, Suicide, and Death

Moderate: Racism, Sexism, Toxic relationship, Death of parent, Medical trauma, and Pregnancy

Minor: Abortion

Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi

dark emotional inspiring reflective sad medium-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

5.0

What absolutely stunning writing – this tells the story of 2 sisters from the same mother who have no idea of each other’s existence. The mother of one runs away during a fire and later has another daughter. Told in alternating chapters of each blood line with descending generations (for instance, the first 2 chapters are told from the perspectives of the two sisters, then the next 2 chapters are told from each of their child’s perspectives), we see these fully fleshed out lives of these generations of one family, one raised in America and the other in Africa. 

Besides the writing being absolutely gorgeous, I loved the storytelling method and the sheer quantity of characters who all feel so different and yet so similar, gathered by shared experiences. I was blown away by the different personalities, perspectives, thoughts, behavior, and lifestyles of all the characters – Gyasi truly has a talent for creating little vignettes that give you great insight into each character and how their parent affects their personality or opinions. 

It is also fascinating to read the myriad of perspectives of race, gender, class, and sexuality from each person. As you can imagine, race and the relationship of white people and colonizers has a great impact on each generation in different ways, especially in the Antebellum South. 

This book felt similar to Pachinko in that we get all these different perspectives across various eras and locations, all tied to one lineage and one where a previous generation still effects the later ones. Fascinating. 

I also really enjoyed the tie in of African values, beliefs, mythologies, and more that I don’t often get in other books. Mythology, especially, is a fascinating subject as it shows how a group explains the natural world. 

The Time in Between by María Dueñas

emotional hopeful mysterious reflective medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

I told my friend that this book feels a lot like a character study of a single person’s life, except that I wouldn’t say Sira Quiroga had THE strongest personality I’ve ever read. Sure, you get some qualities and personality from the writing, but the book takes a bit more of a distant, almost bird’s eye view for the most part. It’s more like if that bird is flying fairly close and just following one person, if that metaphor makes sense. 

The back of the book describes Sira’s life from poor seamstress in Madrid to jilted and broke lover in Morocco, then to accomplished seamstress and spy in Madrid again. If you hoped for a fast-paced spy story, this is certainly not it. The book is more content to move at its own pace and examine events as they happen with small moments of excitement. I think the spy stuff doesn’t even enter the scene until at least 50% or even 66% of the book. 

I liked that Sira was resilient and gained skills that served her later in life, even if her character development doesn’t feel quite as strong as other books I’ve read. Sure, she gains skills and learns lessons, but it almost feels matter-of-fact, rather than the whole point of the story. 

If anything, I’d say that the author really did her research into World War II in Madrid, how Spanish politics were affected and affected the landscape around them, and the history of the country during that time. I can’t say for certain that the fashion or sewing aspects were right on, but they seemed right to me! I have very little sewing experience, however. 

The closest book in terms of themes and writing style would be A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles – slower paced, follows one character during revolution and great change over the course of years, and really pays attention to the political landscape of the country during a period of unrest. 

Mythos: The Greek Myths Retold by Stephen Fry

funny informative lighthearted medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

I listened to the audiobook so that I could get that sweet, sweet Stephen Fry narration and boy, it did not disappoint. I was definitely a “Greek mythology” kid growing up, which of course included Roman and Egyptian mythology. While many of the myths or characters I already knew well or recalled hearing about, it didn’t diminish my enjoyment as Fry has a delightfully dry wit and some rather in-depth knowledge. I especially loved hearing about where the etymology of select words comes from. 

For all you mythology fans, this one cannot be missed! I found out that he has books on the Iliad and the Trojan War, and rest assured I will get to those as well some day. 

Crooked Kingdom by Leigh Bardugo

adventurous dark funny sad tense fast-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

4.5

How to Be Perfect: The Correct Answer to Every Moral Question by Michael Schur

funny informative inspiring lighthearted reflective medium-paced

5.0

Pachinko by Min Jin Lee

emotional hopeful inspiring reflective sad medium-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

5.0

Swordheart by T. Kingfisher

adventurous lighthearted medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

2.0

 

The synopsis of Swordheart sounds right up my alley – a magical swordsman (I should mention here that he is not only a swordsman, but also a man in a magical sword) becomes the bodyguard of a woman who is trying to save her late husband’s house from her scheming in-laws. 

This book has been described by others as cozy fantasy, and for many that’s a good sign. For anyone with a cynical bone in their body (that’s me), this is a potential warning. 

The fantasy setting feels like the lightest of set dressing. It was very shallowly examined, EXCEPT for how the sword works. And how do we know how the sword works? Because the book takes a hard stop for Zale and Halla to perform experiments on the road, like if he eats too much, does he have a full stomach if he goes in and comes out of the sword? What happens to his urine? Does he poop? 

Yes. I kid you not. And multiple pages or even chapters are dedicated to the most banal sections of explaining how the most trivial and unimportant parts of the world work. It feels very much like JK Rowling embarrassingly tweeting that you can vanish your poop and pee away. Smh. I believe there was also an in depth and extraordinarily boring part where the characters describe the minutia of engagement details, like which family pays whom and how to calculate that.  

The characters also do not speak like you think they would in a fantasy novel, especially one set in a medieval (or close to) fantasy world. They say “Ugh” and “Er” and other similar fillers that make the book feel too modern and also too annoying. 

Speaking of characters, they’re all also very flat – you won’t find a ton of nuance. Or character growth, come to think of it. Halla is one of the most annoying characters on the planet whose dialogue is almost always filled to the brim with run-on sentences, trivial questions, and just the most annoying chatter you could expect. It’s supposed to be the funny and lighthearted counterpart to Sarkis’ scowling and grumpy demeanor. She found a way to weaponize dithering, and it’s truly flabbergasting. More often than not, I found myself completely skipping her paragraphs of dialogue because nothing interesting or noteworthy is revealed during them. 

At least Zale is an interesting character, especially one who is a lawyer and a priest, and demonstrates some complexity or at least whatever comes closest to that here. 

The worst part is that the entire book is BORING. Nothing happens. They spend most of the book traveling on the road, upon which Halla just asks questions and talks at people who stop them until they get so annoyed that they go away. When they arrive at the house and have conflict with the in-laws, it’s resolved rather quickly and anticlimactically. 

And for the piece de resistance, the nail in the coffin, I didn’t particularly care for the relationship between Halla and Sarkis. It goes from begrudging acceptance that he’s now her bodyguard for a particularly unexciting event (escorting her to a city to get a lawyer and back; A Hobbit’s Dullard’s Tale) to attraction to feelings of love far too quickly. I wanted to see more push and pull, and instead it devolves almost into instalove for my taste. 

Furthermore, this book exhibits one of the worst and most contrived reason for conflict and a breakup that I have ever seen.

Spoiler

Sarkis reveals finally that he was put into the sword for being a traitor to his country. Which was like, 500 years ago. And Halla gets mad at him for letting her believe he was a hero, so she throws the sword on the ground, renounces ownership of it, and stalks off. Which leads to the final act of the book in which Sarkis then becomes property of Halla’s late husband’s friend and some bad guy from another religious group, so Halla and Zale must rescue him. Which they do, pretty uneventfully. I think there was some sort of reveal following this, that this new cult guy was tied to the events that happened earlier in the book, but it felt like such a stretch and not that important.

 

Another reviewer described this book as cheesy, having sitcom-level dialogue and sitcom-level hijinks, and at the end of the day, a slog. I found myself in complete agreement. 

Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo

adventurous dark funny lighthearted mysterious fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

I love a good heist story – it’s my kryptonite. Ocean’s Eleven, Lies of Locke Lamora, Artemis Fowl, Logan Lucky, Baby Driver, Inception… you get the drift. 

So naturally, when I heard that this book was a heist story, I was on board, despite the following factors: it’s YA, and not only that, but part of a larger YA universe of which I’ve heard less than stellar things (at least from non YA fans). That universe is the Grishaverse which is where the Shadow and Bone series is set, now also a Netflix show that I haven’t seen! 

Consider this a review from a former but not current popular YA reader, which you may or may not identify with. Certainly just keep that in mind as to whether or not you’ll agree with this review or if it’ll be helpful for you. 

The good news is that I did enjoy reading Six of Crows. It was fun, if a little formulaic, and I read it quickly. I also am planning on reading The Crooked Kingdom next (just got it from the library!). 

My more in depth thoughts are below, but WARNING: this section has spoilers referring to general plot or character points, but nothing too specific. Read at your own risk. 

For starters, this book isn’t the most suspenseful – it felt like they made it through most of the book with ease, and even when things went off script, they were able to quite quickly recover and pivot. Not once did the plan go totally off the rails. I also was able to quite accurately predict most of the book’s “twists”, which doesn’t ruin the book by any means, but it did reduce that tension and suspense. 

Everyone shacks up very neatly – officially Matthias and Nina, definite longing between Inej and Kaz, and flirty hints between Jesper and Wylan. Whether or not this was a bad thing, that’s up to you. 

Speaking of romance, I also felt a bit wanting when it came to most of it. Matthias and Nina were good at first with plenty of tension – they were at bitter odds, what with her being a Grisha (basically a witch, a magic user) and Mathias being part of a religious witch hunting cult. I really enjoyed their love-hate relationship, what with Nina trying to make up for her previous actions and Mathias struggling between his brainwashed training that had him against her from the start, as well as the push and pull between his attraction toward Nina and his hatred of her after what she did to him. Great stuff. However, it feels like they reconcile a bit too easily, before even halfway through the book, and it loses that great tension of “will they, won’t they”. I also enjoyed that their past together was eked out over the course of the book and that past events are referenced but the full flashback isn’t revealed until later. 

As for Inej and Kaz, they had more of longing and an unspoken yearning for a romantic relationship that benefits from Kaz’s cold and callous demeanor warring with his yearning for Inej, and Inej inner longing for him but rational acceptance that they wouldn’t be a good it for various reasons. Also, they both have plenty of trauma, so it presents plenty of hurdles for them to get together. 

As for Jesper and Wylan, theirs was certainly the weakest. There was some flirting, but they both felt rather flat and didn’t seem to have much chemistry beyond Jesper being a flirt. Moments between them didn’t quite reach the same level as the other two pairs. Also disappointing given that theirs is the only non-straight relationship in the book. I suppose I should also keep in mind that they just met in the book, whereas the other two pairs had history, but still. Also, Wylan feels the most underdeveloped and the least useful of everyone, almost like he was thrown in there for something very specific (collateral) and not given too much of a personality. 

I loved how Inej and Nina were written – kickass heroines who had their own set of talents and were feminine but more than held their own alongside the male characters. Kaz was the classic antihero ringleader – crazy smart, mysterious past, and holds himself at arm’s length. Matthias was fun because of his struggle with his religious and military upbringing as he becomes closer with this group of misfits. 

The main MCs are all 16-18, which makes sense given the audience, but it did stretch my suspension of disbelief too far. Mentally, I aged them up to at least early to mid 20s, but that’s more of a me thing. I should mention here that I am 30 and not exactly the ideal audience for this book. 

There are several main POVs in this book: Kaz (occasionally), Inej, Nina, Mathias, and Jesper. Personally, I felt like Jesper’s sections were the weakest. I am still unsure if his character felt that way because he was truly underdeveloped or if I just didn’t vibe with him. Mathias was also okay, but I personally enjoyed Nina and Inej’s the best, and Kaz’s were okay once in a while to either explain the plot or his backstory a bit. And his backstory is horrifically traumatic and nicely explains why he is the way he is now. 

There are some really cool moments when something a bit more violent and gorey happens, during which times my jaw would drop and I would whisper “oh hell yeah.” 

The world building feels very much “Earth, but not”. Like Ketterdam is Amsterdam, Fjerda is Scandinavia, Kaelish is Irish/Scottish, and Shu is China. Oh, and Ravka is Russia (but there are other reviews that slam Shadow and Bone for its shallow and inaccurate portrayal of a magical Russia). There are illusions to other races, ethnicities, cultures, and countries that feel like they have 1 to 1 counterparts with modern day Earth groups and countries. Much like the lack of tension, this isn’t certainly a dealbreaker or book ruiner, but it did just stand out to me and sometimes pulled me out of the book slightly. This wouldn’t be the book to read for someone who wants unique and in depth world building, unlike perhaps Lies of Locke Lamora, which was clearly based on Venice, yet it had lots of alien and magical components to it that made it feel fresh and original. Once again, this may be due to the fact that this is aimed at a younger audience and I’m being rather nit picky. 

Like I said, it was a fun and fast read with a heist and cool moments. I’m glad this is a duology because I certainly plan on reading the second book, but if it were stretched out in a full series, I’m afraid I’d have to bail sooner than that.