daumari's reviews
1182 reviews

The Battle of the Labyrinth by Rick Riordan

adventurous funny mysterious fast-paced

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

4.25

This was fun. I love the dynamic between friends, and there's a throughline about death (embracing it, facing it, etc.) Rachel Elizabeth Dare is fascinating as a character, and I'm so curious about where we go from here.

The Gate of the Feral Gods by Matt Dinniman

adventurous funny lighthearted fast-paced

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

3.75

 

I think I lost momentum because this is mostly a car listen for me, so it took two months to get through and piecemeal isn't great when you've got a number of quests you're jumping through (much like my very fragmented approach to video gaming where I go months at a time before picking up a game again). Our pals get separated from some of their allies and have to navigate quadrant bubbles to kind of work on a giant group quest for the stairwells.

We get more outside world info, and the epilogue was really weird for hearing non-Carl narration. How about that cliffhanger, eh?

 

The Titan's Curse by Rick Riordan

adventurous funny medium-paced

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

3.75

Percy Jackson continues to be fun! In this book, we very lightly do a little bit of the 12 Labors of Heracles (as well as Atlas). The world of godlings continue to expand and we meet more new friends. Prophecy? We'll continue to punt that down the road a few more years...

The Sea of Monsters by Rick Riordan

adventurous fast-paced

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

3.5

Week 2 of 17th Shard discord's PJO read along! I am a first time reader of these books.
3.5 rounding up because I still found this to be a fun adventure, riffing on the Odyssey (LOVE that we even got a reference to Penelope unraveling her weaving every day). We must protect Tyson at all costs and I love the lore with horses and cyclops- wondering what other Poseidon things will pop up in later books.

Bit of a discussion this week in the channel - in chapter 2, middle school bully Sloan calls Tyson (Percy's new friend this school year) the r slur, which took some readers out. I started on a library copy because I wanted to get to this quick, but I'd ordered a used copy online and it turned out to be a 2022 edition paperback, where the line has been updated to have Sloan call Tyson a deadbeat instead. Still a pejorative, but instead of using a slur he's being classist which still shows he's not a good person without being heinously offensive in a middle grade novel. 

Prophecy comes up again and how its interpretation can be fiddly, with repercussions. 

Interior Chinatown by Charles Yu

funny hopeful reflective 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? It's complicated

5.0

 As I stayed up to finish this, I wondered why I hadn't gotten to it earlier. I enjoyed How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe and it has a meta structure to it while looking at generational relationships but reading Yu on the other side of being a parent definitely made me cry at about the 200 page mark (also my pausing to note quotes in the book, ha).

I'm SO curious about how this was adapted given it's written entirely as a script. 

The genre shift to children's programming made me cackle because I've spent a lot of time recently watching the varying quality of shows out there and yeah, Phoebeland is definitely the kind of thing my mixed race daughter would probably be targeted by. The moment where he ponders if all the stereotypical/generic roles he and his parents played culminates in this assimilated role of just getting to be an American child is the point, divorced from context and history was my breaking point because YES, it's a thing I think about constantly with my mixed race child as well as discussions of media portrayals of Asians. 

In online Asian America space there's often Discourse around roles and like, is this good portrayal or not (I'm of the opinion that it's unfair to pin an entire diaspora's hopes and dreams on one film/show because that's narrative scarcity and we should be able to have fun romcoms like Crazy Rich Asians next to serious meditations on family like Minari, etc.) and like, are we setting the culture back with bit part stereotype roles or are we reclaiming it by being the Kung Fu Guy (the Shang Chi-Iron First discussions in particular).

And then, we get a discussion of the historical context of Perpetual Foreigner and like, this book felt very specifically made for me (probably would be even more so if I were a guy, but this hits on a lot of my soapboxes lol). Short, but impactful for me. 

The Lightning Thief: Percy Jackson and the Olympians by Rick Riordan

adventurous funny fast-paced

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

4.0

I was a little too old for these when they first came out, but I did watch the Disney Plus series earlier this year (and ordered a copy then but didn't start until this week with a discord book club on 17th Shard). This was fun! If you're knowledgeable about Greek mythology, plenty of fun Easter eggs. Looking forward to reading the rest of the Riordanverse. 

Immortal Longings by Chloe Gong

adventurous dark tense fast-paced

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

3.25

 I'm kind of wondering now if Chloe Gong is going to continue reimagining Shakespearean dramas in eastern settings, though I'm also reminded of how I... don't think I've actually read/watched Antony and Cleopatra so I'm fuzzy on side characters (who were mostly based on real people to be fair, so this is a layered narrative: a sci-fi interpretation of a Shakespearean dramatization of historical events based onPlutarch's biographies).

I don't remember if These Violent Delights/Our Violent Ends was also in present tense the entire time, but I thought it was an interesting choice here given the Battle Royale premise, adding urgency to Calla and Anton's moves (side note, would love it if people who read The Hunger Games read BR... does predate it by a bit). The idea of jumping bodies is fascinating, and I'm curious to see how it'll play in the second book (as a reminder, I kinda sped-read this after mistakenly checking out Vilest Things not realizing it was a book 2). I also appreciated setting this in a fantastical version of Kowloon Walled City. 

Wind and Truth by Brandon Sanderson

adventurous challenging emotional inspiring fast-paced

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

4.5

hooboy I stayed up late and finished this, still digesting the ending. keeping it spoiler free (I'll probably write a more in depth review on Goodreads later but copied Todd from Fable), it's definitely the end of an era but I almost have *more* questions coming out of this. there's resolution for most main characters, but definitely a paradigm shift going forward. 

I looked seeing some things across books come to roost, like Jasnah's Lesson, as well as setting fan theories come to fruition like Chana Davar and child champion.

Meet Isabel and Nicki by Julia DeVillers

funny lighthearted medium-paced

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

3.5

3.5. I'm taking a break from sad sword boys to quickly read this before I open the twins Christmas Eve in the 2024 American Girl advent calendar because I didn't know much about them. 

While the traditional series took place over the course of about a year generally, Meet Isabel and Nikki is truly a December story so it's very seasonal to read now! When they debuted last year, I joined the millennials having an existential crisis because *I was nine* in 1999 and therefore the same age as these characters. Husband pointed out that this would be historical for our infant daughter so... fine. I remember participating in family friendly activities around town NYE and my brother got interviewed on local news, lol. I haven't read any other books by the twin authors, but I do remember the Disney Channel Original Movie "Read It and Weep", which was an adaptation of one of the authors' books. 

Cynically, the brand names that pop up felt intrusive even though I do agree that maybe we were a heavily advertised-to generation (not sure I ever actually had a Baby Bottle Pop tbh). The Hoffman twins live in Seattle, and their dad is a former grunge band member who runs a coffee shop while Mom works in programming trying to prevent Y2K. The stakes are kinda low but the girls make new friends as they go through their Y2K goal list. I'm curious how this reads to an actual middle grader, as to me it feels like a member berry session (hey, remember that episode...?) but learning to make new friends and try new things are timeless. 

I initially thought, "wow, seems kind of late for Isabel to be super in to the Spice Girls" but that's pointedly addressed by her friend rift when they prefer N'Sync to Isabel (honestly let's call it mini nostalgia)'s old tunes. 

Asian spotting: mean girl fifth grader Cammy is drawn Asian, and Nikki's new skating friend Ari Lin is probably an ABC like me. I'm glad they're present in a story set in the PNW, at least. 

When Brains Dream: Exploring the Science and Mystery of Sleep by Robert Stickgold, Antonio Zadra

informative slow-paced

3.0

The second Dreams book for Oct/Nov 2024 Biere Library Storytime Book Club picks, though I definitely lagged in the second half (thus the late December finish). The first half was interesting, going over the history of dream investigation, and then about halfway through the authors propose a new framework (NEXTUP) on how to consider the purpose of dreams and how they work to make the brain explore weak connections for understanding what the brain experienced. I'll confess to forgetting what the acronym is (network exploration to understand possibilities). 

Overall, does make me think about the nature of dreams more, and I've never been so aware of dreams and what I'm experiencing than I was during this Oct/Nov period!