ferociablejbear's reviews
224 reviews

1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus by Charles C. Mann

5.0

challenging emotional reflective 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

I’d be shocked if this doesn’t end up my book of the year. The prose frequently gave me goosebumps. The descriptions of people and relationships were so evocative and beautifully realized. I often had to put the book down to recover from the beauty of the language. Even more often, I’d have to put it down because it was impossible to read with tears in my eyes. It’s hard to say definitively how I’ll feel about this novel long-term so soon after finishing it, but it really feels like I’ve just read a book that I’ll think about for the rest of my life.

Ada's Room by Sharon Dodua Otoo

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challenging dark reflective medium-paced

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

4.0

Really finds its legs in the second half.

Whalefall by Daniel Kraus

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adventurous emotional tense fast-paced

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

2.0

Honestly don’t know if this is the best or worst book I’ve read so far this year because I’m having a hard time judging the author’s intent. Maybe given enough time and distance, I’ll convince myself that the author meant for the book to be so overwrought that it veered into the comedic, but I think it was probably just badly written.

Pink Slime by Fernanda Trías

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challenging dark sad medium-paced

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

4.0

Tram 83 by Fiston Mwanza Mujila

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challenging dark 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

1.5

This book was a first for me. The prose is masterful. Mujila is able to effortlessly use language to alternately create monotony, freneticism, and musicality.

He deftly crafts characters and situations that show the arrested development of the people and the society within the City-State (and by extension the DRC).

The characters are adroitly rendered metaphors, e.g, the failure of intellectual idealism to adapt to the realities of post-revolutionary societies (Lucien) and the persistence of violence and nihilism in the ideology of the soldiers in the aftermath of war (Requiem).

I think Mujila accomplished everything he intended to do when he set out to write this novel, and he did it well.

Despite all of that, I really disliked this novel. I would not have finished it if it weren’t part of a reading challenge. I don’t know how to reconcile those two realities. I think many people will find a lot to like here, and I wish I were one of them.

I don’t know that there’s much of a conclusion here, but I wanted to document the first time I thought a novel was both almost perfectly executed and almost completely unreadable (for me).

Augustus by John Williams

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reflective slow-paced