sydneyedens's reviews
307 reviews

How to Kill a City: Gentrification, Inequality, and the Fight for the Neighborhood by P.E. Moskowitz

informative reflective medium-paced

4.0

i’m glad multiple cities were covered - the New Orleans section blew my mind tbh. i wish Chicago was included! important to reflect on how i’m contributing to gentrification and what i can do each day to combat it. very informative, def recommend to any american 
i’d like to see a 2023 update 

Dogs of Summer by Andrea Abreu

emotional reflective medium-paced

3.0

10 yo girls being gross - i liked it

Family Lexicon by Natalia Ginzburg

5.0

lovely! so funny! so straightforward and yet insightful! heavy intertwined with the light = life 
little family sayings/injokes really are some of the funniest things in life, whether u like it or not lol

Season of Migration to the North by Tayeb Salih

dark reflective slow-paced

4.0

the very last chapter really did it for me - i choose life! 

Notes of a Crocodile by Qiu Miaojin

dark reflective medium-paced

4.0

growing up and learning how to be a person is really fucking hard! not to mention being a lesbian on top of that!! this book was good and sad and funny and real and confusing and dramatic. so dramatic lol. but that’s being a 20 year old. queer friends save our lives fr!! the crocodile parts were an added lovely piece. will be thinking about this one for a while. 

Grand Hotel by Vicki Baum

medium-paced

3.0

not too shabby, but i absolutely need to read a book about a woman next…
like vickiiiii give more depth to flämmchen and grusinskaya pls
also this took me forever to finish!! annoying! 

Pageboy by Elliot Page

emotional reflective medium-paced

4.5

so glad elliott wrote this, so glad book club is reading this!! the style was so conversational, so easy to listen to, i loved the nonlinear aspect. i loved listening to him narrate the audiobook himself. cried a couple times bc this is heavy shit!! but so important and so beautiful 

In the Heart of the Heart of the Country: And Other Stories by William H. Gass

challenging reflective slow-paced

2.0

really had to push to finish this collection. i struggled with his writing style. i think i liked the titular story the most. the pedersen kid was good too. i didn’t like any of the others

i did like this line a lot:
my god, i said, this is my country, but must my country go so far as terre haute or whiting, go so far as gary?

You and Yours by Naomi Shihab Nye

emotional reflective medium-paced

4.0

this is the second collection of hers that i’ve read. i connected with quite a few of these - again, so many different topics! the palestinian and anti-war poems are so important

The Beggar Maid: Stories of Flo and Rose by Alice Munro

reflective slow-paced

3.75

go girl boss!
not my favorite Munro, but still very good. love Rose but wish there would been more Flo like it seemed there would be in the description
short stories but in the form of a book basically