ellist's reviews
99 reviews

Chain-Gang All-Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah

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adventurous challenging dark emotional funny hopeful informative reflective sad tense medium-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

5.0

The Morning Star by Karl Ove Knausgård

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adventurous challenging dark emotional funny hopeful mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

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

4.75

Knausgård has an almost supernatural ability to portray complex people with their own inner lives. Because of the multiple narrators and first person perspective, we are essentially rocketed into the inner worlds of a variety of people, most with the worst coping skills you’ve ever seen and almost no self awareness. This makes The Morning Star’s characters almost painfully human, and while you feel like you’re always one step ahead of them in understanding where the narrative is headed, it’s a real treat to stumble your way towards the afterworld with them.

Favorite quote: “Death similarly was taken from the cave and out into the forest, out of the darkness and into the light, where it appears to us as it is: a slight fissure in a blood vessel in the brain, a few microscopic bacteria in the bloodstream, a tiny cell beginning to multiply in the pancreas. What is happening here is death is becoming smaller and smaller, and so compelling has this development been that it is no longer inconceivable that death at some point will reach its nadir and vanish.“ -640-1

From a Native Daughter: Colonialism and Sovereignty in Hawai'i by Haunani-Kay Trask

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challenging hopeful informative inspiring reflective tense medium-paced

4.0

The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead

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challenging dark emotional funny informative reflective sad tense medium-paced

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

4.25

To say the narrative twist at the end was devastating would do a disservice to the grief present throughout the entire book and the history it tells. A must read, especially for those who don’t know about reformatories or residential schools.

Big Swiss by Jen Beagin

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adventurous challenging dark emotional funny hopeful mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

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

4.75

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami

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adventurous challenging dark emotional funny hopeful informative inspiring mysterious reflective sad tense slow-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? Yes

5.0

Deadly Class Volume 5: Carousel by Rick Remender

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adventurous challenging dark emotional funny sad tense fast-paced

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

4.0

I’ll probably get around to finishing the series eventually, but so far it’s shaping out to be a good comic that could’ve been made better if it wasn’t three ostensibly white men writing about the experiences of a variety of BIPOC characters. The various tokenizations are so pervasive as to seem purposeful, to say nothing about the strange sexualization of characters who we’re meant to understand as being in high school, the sanctimonious commentary on various punk and metal subcultures, and the cheap “cliche defying” trick used to subvert expectation for each character’s backstory. Woof.

Deadly Class, Volume 4: Die for Me by Rick Remender

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adventurous challenging dark emotional funny sad tense fast-paced