historyofjess's reviews
2012 reviews

The Menopause Manifesto: Own Your Health with Facts and Feminism by Jen Gunter

informative medium-paced

3.0

This wasn't as informative as I had hoped it would be. There's definitely a lot of information in it, but I had wanted it to feel more activating and less of an info dump. And there are a few hobby horses that the author keeps riding throughout it: exercise, diet and discussions of (breast/ovarian) cancer, cardiovascular disease and osteoporosis. There's good information in here, but it's buried under a lot of history, some anti-patriarchal ranting (which, normally, I'm all game for, but when I'm trying to learn something new, it kinda gets in the way) and those repetitive themes.

As someone who is beginning perimenopause, I didn't find much in here about what I'm going through right now and what I can expect in the near future. Like a lot of menopause resources, when it comes to symptoms, this is focused largely on the big ones like hot flashes (or flushes, as the author prefers to call them) and brain fog. So, it was a bit of a let down as I didn't feel like I found what I was looking for here.

The Battle Drum by Saara El-Arifi

adventurous dark mysterious slow-paced

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

3.25

This was a bit of a let down after The Final Strife. I always have a bit of pet peeve of second volumes (or seasons of television) that split characters apart that we so enjoyed together in the first. Sometimes that can be overcome, but in this case, it's just the beginning of an overly complex second book that introduces a ton of new world-building and characters but really loses a lot of of the momentum that was built in the first book.

It's one thing to separate Sylah and Anoor, but Sylah feels like she is barely a part of this book and when Anoor is, she doesn't have any of the charm she did in The Final Strife. Hassa fairs a bit better, still suffers from the broken up narratives.

I'm curious how it all ends, so I'm likely to read the third volume but I don't feel anything like the motivation I did after reading the first.

Fangirl, Vol. 4: The Manga by Rainbow Rowell

emotional funny lighthearted fast-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

4.0

Getting to the end of a new version of this same story makes me a bit sad all over again. I don't want it to be over. I want to know what's going on with all these characters (I mean, I've read the Reagan short story, so at least I know what's going on with her a bit). I just love being with these people, as I always do with Rowell's characters.

Fangirl, Vol. 3: The Manga by Rainbow Rowell

emotional funny lighthearted fast-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

5.0

This volume definitely has some of the best content from the book in it and I really loved a lot of the tweaks that were made to it. It's just packed with a lot of those trademark Rainbow Rowell emotional beats that I really love about her writing. Plus, it's also an incredibly solid volume for Reagan, who is such a fun character.

On to volume four, I guess. I've been plowing through these so fast that I'm a little sad about it.

Bury Your Gays by Chuck Tingle

dark emotional funny mysterious medium-paced

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

3.75

After years of being aware of Chuck Tingle, without having ever read any of his stuff, this was a really fun entry point. It's campy. It's cheeky. It manages to find some lovely emotionally authentic moments in the midst of all the genre playfulness. It's also an incredibly cinematic book and not just because it takes place in Hollywood setting. Reading it felt like watching a movie in the way the story progressed and the descriptions of all the action.

Fangirl, Vol. 1: The Manga by Sam Maggs, Rainbow Rowell

emotional funny lighthearted fast-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

4.0

While I've read lots of comics/graphic novels before, I'm confident this is the first "manga" I've read. I imagine it's kind of a training wheels manga for Westerners given that it's still very much a Western story, written by Western folks, but I'm enjoying a lot of the artistic flourishes that seem more in line with the medium. Mostly I'm excited to have a reason to return to Fangirl after having enjoyed the hell out of it on my first read a few months ago.

Fangirl, Vol. 2: The Manga by Sam Maggs, Gabi Nam, Rainbow Rowell

emotional funny lighthearted fast-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

4.0

This continues to be a really fun way to revisit everything I loved about reading Fangirl. Because I read the book so recently, I'm picking up on the adaptive changes quite a bit and I like a lot of them and think they add to the story a lot. It's just a good time hanging with Cath and the gang, warts and all.

A Queer History of the United States by Michael Bronski

informative medium-paced

3.5

I like what I've read of the ReVisioning history series that I've read so far but all of them have the same issues: 1) it's impossible to be comprehensive in such a short book, so they always move through issues very quickly and it can feel a little scattershot because of it, and 2) writing the history of marginalized groups is always going to have gaps and then add in the added factor in queer history, which has a lot of "this person was probably queer."

On the one hand, I wish there was a little bit more about trans folks in this volume, but I did generally appreciate that Bronski was, from the outset, wrapping sexuality up with living outside of gender identity/norms/roles as one big package.

Slow Dance by Rainbow Rowell

emotional medium-paced

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

5.0

Aw, hell. She's done it to me again. This feels like Fangirl all over again.

I love this book. I love these characters. I love how Rowell does romance. I love the way she focuses on the little things and the aspects of being together and being couple and working through personal baggage. She doesn't stop at a "happily ever after" moment. She gives you space and time to know who these people are and to understand why they should be together.

Rowell writes really great romance between young people, but after this and Landline, I'm starting to think that she's even more amazing at writing romance between adults (though, to be fair, in both books, you experience them being in love as young people, as well). I love how complicated she allows their lives to be and how complicated the characters get to be, as well.

Like Fangirl, I think I'm going to come back to this again. It's just so rich and I felt so emotional reading the entire thing that I think I'm going to need to start it all over again knowing how this all works out for these two complete messes of human beings that have such a hard time getting out of their own way.

The Familiar by Leigh Bardugo

adventurous dark emotional mysterious medium-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

3.5

I'm not always as big a fan of Bardugo as others, but one thing she always excels at is creating really engaging, morally gray characters and there are a whole bunch of them in this book that I loved getting to know.

There were aspects of the competition at the center of this book that I was often just powering through, because it felt a little overly familiar and uninteresting. But the lovers at the center of this story were really fun and complicated and I had a blast with them. But I also really enjoyed the chapters that focused on some of the supporting characters. Seriously...Bardugo is just great at making me fall in love with characters that I wouldn't normally expect to be interested in.

I was a little thrown that I had heard this book described as a "vampire novel" because it's definitely not and so I kept expecting one of the characters to be revealed as a vampire for the first half of the book until I just relaxed and stopped trying to out guess things. :P