murrderdith's reviews
487 reviews

Priest by Sierra Simone

2.5

If a man ever called me his little lamb and then crammed his duck up my ass, we’d have words…

The Rape of Nanking by Iris Chang

4.0

Chang is just unflinching in her account of the atrocities inflicted on the Chinese at Nanking.  

A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas

2.0

This is just fairy Twilight, isn’t it?

Waco: David Koresh, the Branch Davidians, and A Legacy of Rage by Jeff Guinn

3.0

There are no heroes here. The federal agencies (ATF/FBI) absolutely bungled the initial raid and the ensuing stand-off. David Koresh convinced a bunch of seemingly well-meaning folks he was the messiah all while fucking underage girls and stockpiling illegally converted automatic weapons.

You can trace a direct line from the siege to Oklahoma City, the rise of Alex Jones, etc.

Guinn’s account of the stand-off is exhaustive but I wish more of the book looked at the legacy of the raid for American politics and the far-right fringe.

The Nineties by Chuck Klosterman

2.0

I guess I just don’t care what a fifty-odd year-old man has to say about Alanis Morrisette.

Happy Place by Emily Henry

4.0

Elsewhere by Alexis Schaitkin

dark emotional 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

3.0

There were some really great moments in this novel and Schaitkin does a good job creating this unsettling town separated from the rest of the world where mothers just sometimes evaporate. I don't think the novel rises to Shirley Jackson levels of claustrophobic world-building...which is why they probably shouldn't have blurbed it like that. It's a lot to live up to.

Play It as It Lays by Joan Didion

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? It's complicated

4.0

There is an exquisite, stark bleakness to Didion’s writing. Now having her fiction to compare it to, I think I prefer her non-fiction work as her style has a journalistic quality that doesn’t always feel right for a novel. I think she captures the lie undergirding mid-20th-century American prosperity--that the material bounty of post-war America belies an existential crisis. A realization that all of that is empty.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Racial slurs, Eating disorder, Infidelity, and Abortion

Orlando by Virginia Woolf

challenging reflective slow-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? It's complicated

3.75

Listen, it's Virginia Woolf. It's good and this is groundbreaking work in its narrative use of gender fluidity. Orlando is an amazing character, even if they* are also an absolute aristocratic snob (I mean, so was Woolf.)

...it's also the book of hers I enjoyed the least. It turns out, my favorite thing about Woolf is her ability to shift perspective within the stream-of-consciousness style she pioneered. The interiority is still here but without that other element, this text felt more linear and rigid than Mrs. Dalloway or To The Lighthouse (my personal favorite.) I missed the writer's ability to embody so many people (and occasionally buildings) within a narrative. 

*The character shifts from masculine to feminine pronouns in the text, I'm using the singular they here for expediency's sake.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Racial slurs, Racism, Gore, Colonisation, Xenophobia, and Classism

Stolen Focus: Why You Can't Pay Attention—and How to Think Deeply Again by Johann Hari

informative medium-paced

3.0

Pretty clear and concise recrimination of social media and late-stage capitalism that also acknowledges better than other books I've read in this space the limits of what individual people can do to "fix" their focus problems (I'm looking at you, Cal Newport.)