lmwanak's reviews
202 reviews

Parable of the Talents by Octavia E. Butler
Did not finish book. Stopped at 0%.

A bit too dark for me right now. I want to read lighter stuff. Plus, it's on my phone. I'm going to give myself a break and pick it up again at a later date.

The War of the Flowers by Tad Williams

adventurous emotional funny hopeful inspiring mysterious reflective tense medium-paced

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

5.0

I own this book. It's a fun romp through a Faeryland updated with electrical power. A thick standalone where I already know the ending, yet still manages to charm and fill me full of dread at all the right places.

Uprooted by Naomi Novik

adventurous dark emotional hopeful 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? No

4.0

This Here Flesh: Spirituality, Liberation, and the Stories That Make Us by Cole Arthur Riley

emotional hopeful inspiring reflective slow-paced

4.0

Reading this has been so good for my soul. I'm still struggling to find words. Riley writes with the same emotional heaviness that I've been carrying for the past decade--a disillusion to the Christian faith that it is not as perfect and blessed as it crows about. And yet, she also digs deep to find what exactly is at the core of our faith, and why overall, she keeps on believing, although it no longer looks like what it was before. She has help through mentors such as Alice Walker, Howard Thurman, and her own grandmother as to what faith should look like. 

I read this book slowly as I could, and yet I felt like I wasn't slow enough. It was so good and thoughtful. I want to read it again and create practices and rituals that will deepen my faith and help others. 

Every Tongue Got to Confess by Zora Neale Hurston
Did not finish book.

I initially got this for the stories, but then bought a copy of Mules and Men from Half Price books. I'll be reading that one first.

Skin of the Sea by Natasha Bowen

adventurous medium-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? No

3.0

I did like the folklore (I learned a lot about Yoruba folklore that was neat) and the slight callbacks on the Little Mermaid story, but overall found this one to be tropey and hard to read through because the main characters weren't all that engaging. The side characters were much more interesting, but I was turned off because

my favorite character, the young fairy, had so many death flags on him and true to form, he was killed off.

.  Other than that, it was an okay read. Might pick up the next book because it ended with the protagonist making a decision that had me actually interested in what she would do. 

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Content Warnings

Minor: Child death, Slavery, Trafficking, Colonisation, Confinement, and Kidnapping

The Color Purple by Alice Walker

challenging dark emotional funny hopeful inspiring reflective sad slow-paced

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

5.0

 Been spending most of my staycation this week reading this. Normally I would be like "Why didn't I read this when I was younger?!" Instead, I invited my younger self to sit and read with me. And the both of us was deeply encouraged. 

Also, it was the perfect book to read for this deconstructing soul who is unlearning and relearning who God is. 

The Black God's Drums by P. Djèlí Clark

adventurous hopeful fast-paced

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

3.0

A nice quick read about alt-history New Orleans that makes me want to know more about the world.

Reflections: On the Magic of Writing by Diana Wynne Jones, Neil Gaiman, Charles Butler
Did not finish book. Stopped at 18%.

It was nice. I could have extended the return deadline, but seeing I was barely reading it, I thought it best to take back to the library. The essays I read were nice, but a lot were specficially geared toward writing for children and I'm not interested in that right now.

Lambs of God by Marele Day

dark mysterious reflective relaxing slow-paced

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

3.0

This was an interesting book. The first book SG recommended to me, and it did not disappoint. I wanted something that involved faith but also myths, slow and reflective and maybe funny. Lambs of God fell into many of these categories. 

Three forgotten nuns on a remote island receive a visit from a priest, who is assessing the land for a high-class resort that would put money back into the church. For the nuns, this will not do. The crumbling monastery is their home, and the priest is anathema to everything they know. So, well, they prevent him from finishing the assessment.

The book wants to be funny. The nuns are uncivilized in the eyes of the priest and isolated from outside human contact, they are portrayed as almost as animalistic as the sheep they care for. Carla is the youngest  (roughly around her upper 40s, I think) and the most eccentric and child-like, having spent all her life at the monastery. Margurite is the most suspicious, and rightly so, given what we learn from her past. Ipaphengia is the oldest and has the curious talent of having the keenest nose, able to smell anything from anywhere on the island. Their faith has evolved to a mixture of Catholicism and paganism, with a smattering of retold fairy tales thrown in (they love to tell stories --  my favorite scene is when Margurite retells Beauty and the Beast and the priest gets upset). And there's knitting. So much knitting, that it feels like a religion itself.

Among this idyllic life, however

when the nuns learn of the priest's plan, they drug him and hold him captive by plastering his legs together so he can't run off. I think this is supposed to be humorous, but I found it horrifying. Pompous and arrogant as the priest is, it was very uncomfortable seeing him held captive and at the mercy of the sisters. There's also an action done by Carla that is very non-consensual (it isn't made clear, but the implications are enough). It's all very weird and uncomfortable and definitely took some enjoyment out of the book for me.

Writing-wise, I enjoyed the slow, rambling nature of the book. There's a lot of 3rd person POV mixing and muddling, but I think it works in this in that it gives a clear picture of what everyone is thinking (and it's been a long, long time since I've read an Omni-pov book. I kind of miss it.) Some of the revelations in the book did leave me wanting a bit more. I wanted to know why Ipaphengia chose the monastic life when we're given reasons about the other two. What was life like when there were more sisters in the monastery? What will happen to the sisters now? The ending seems happy, but it still gave me a sense of bleakness.

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Confinement, Kidnapping, and Misogyny