zelos's reviews
43 reviews

She Who Became the Sun by Shelley Parker-Chan

adventurous challenging dark emotional tense 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? It's complicated

5.0

sometimes when someone writes a ~queer retelling~ of myth or history it gets sanitized so heavily as to lose a lot of its appeal. This Book Did Not Do That. it’s dark and confronting and stunningly intimate at every turn. absolutely breathtakingly good. the song of achilles WISHES she could do half of what this book does 

Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer

emotional funny hopeful informative inspiring reflective medium-paced

5.0

this was a re-read for me, but it's stunning every time 

Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses by Robin Wall Kimmerer

emotional hopeful informative inspiring reflective medium-paced

5.0

kimmerer never fails to write something as beautiful as it is informative. i found it a bit dryer than braiding sweetgrass, but it's also been a few years since i last read braiding sweetgrass so i may be remembering it with rose-colored glasses. more than worth a read either way!

Grit: Poems by Silas Denver Melvin by silas denver melvin

challenging emotional inspiring fast-paced

5.0

i think transsexual poetry is the point of it all

Canine Enrichment for the Real World: Making It a Part of Your Dog's Daily Life by ALLIE BENDER, Emily Strong

informative medium-paced

5.0

The Odyssey by Homer
Did not finish book. Stopped at 25%.

loan was up at the library and powells keeps lying to me about having a used copy in stock. someday she'll come home and then i'll finish her

Queen of the Damned by Anne Rice
Did not finish book. Stopped at 13%.

i'll come back to her someday but my loan is up at the library and i got onto a podcast kick so my audiobooks have been languishing :(

The Vampire Lestat by Anne Rice

adventurous dark funny mysterious sad tense slow-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

3.75

mrs. rice ma'am why were you so so so determined to be as racist as you could possibly be at any point? you made the egyptians white. they're white. ma'am they're white. you can't- that's not--

okay whatever. fine! whatever. i think lestat is the worst man on earth and i think i would do anything for him anyway. this book was somehow worse than iwtv and better? ms. rice made me make me make a face like a baby tasting its first lemon like, once very 7 minutes in the first half of the book and then as soon as i had forgotten about the whole thing where lestat wanted to fuck his mom she sucker punched me one more time in the end for good measure. why were the egyptians white btw

The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin

adventurous emotional hopeful inspiring slow-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

5.0

slow, but that kind of works for it. le guin's prose is always such a joy to read and the characters kept me interested when the plot was moving a little too slowly early on. it could have ended up at 4 stars, but by the end i was so emotionally invested i can't imagine rating it any lower.

Interview with the Vampire by Anne Rice

challenging dark emotional sad tense 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? Yes

4.0

my first time rereading this book in 10+ years and i liked it more this time than the first for certain. rice's prose gets muddy sometimes and her pacing can be abysmal, but when it's good, it's killer. when i read this book at 14 claudia unsettled and terrified me, but today she mostly makes me sad - the way other characters react to her is far more unsettling, and at times it almost feels like rice isn't totally aware of how strange it is, and other times it seems entirely intentional. louis is a character i really had little interest in until the end, at which point i decided i actually adore him despite the... everything. i think if the pacing in this book wasn't so abysmally slow and it didn't linger so often on louis looking at claudia as his "lover" it would make the muddy prose and stilted dialogue way easier to swallow lmao. but it's still a 4 bc no matter how much i complain about this book it continues to stick in my brain