Posted in Reviews

Review: How To Turn Into a Bird by Maria Jose Ferrada (translated to English)

How to Turn Into a Bird by María José Ferrada

Summary

After years of hard work in a factory outside of Santiago, Chile, Ramón accepts a peculiar job: to look after a Coca-Cola billboard located by the highway. And it doesn’t take long for Ramón to make an even more peculiar decision: to make the billboard his new home.

Twelve-year-old Miguel is enchanted by his uncle’s unusual living arrangement, but the neighborhood is buzzing with gossip, declaring Ramón a madman bringing shame to the community. As he visits his uncle in a perch above it all, Miguel comes to see a different perspective, and finds himself wondering what he believes—has his uncle lost his mind, as everyone says? Is madness—and the need for freedom—contagious? Or is Ramón the only one who can see things as they really are, finding a deeper meaning in a life they can’t understand from the ground?

When a local boy disappears, tensions erupt and forgotten memories come to the surface. And Miguel, no longer perched in the billboard with his uncle, witnesses the reality on the ground: a society that, in the name of peace, is not afraid to use violence. With sharp humor and a deep understanding of a child’s mind, How to Turn Into a Bird is a powerful tale of coming of age, loss of innocence, and shifting perspectives that asks us: how far outside of our lives must we go to really see things clearly?

Thoughts

?????

I don’t think I “got” this book, but I still didn’t mind reading it. I ended it feeling pretty bemused and wondering why? in a general way. This was a strange book for me in a few ways.

I had a physical copy, and it was a special printing in hardcover from Aardvark book club. I assume because it wasn’t published that way originally, it led to the oddity of having an extremely generous amount of blank space on each page. The margins were enormous on all 4 sides of the text, and when that combined with a poignantly short paragraph or chapter of only a few sentences, I had a full sized page with about eight words on it. Then it would be a full blank page, and the start of a new chapter. This actually worked really well for the mood of the book in some ways, since it was all about space and freedom and solitude, and the physicality of the words reflected that.

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Posted in Reviews

Review: Beyond the Wand: The Magic and Mayhem of Growing Up a Wizard by Tom Felton

Beyond the Wand: The Magic and Mayhem of Growing Up a Wizard by Tom Felton

Recommended: yup!
For Harry Potter fans, for a behind-the-scenes look at film life particularly when young, for a gentle memoir that’s treated with teasing humor and sensitivity

Summary

From Borrower to wizard, Tom Felton’s adolescence was anything but ordinary. His early rise to fame saw him catapulted into the limelight aged just twelve when he landed the iconic role of Draco Malfoy in the Harry Potter films.

Speaking with candour and his own trademark humour, Tom shares his experience of growing up on screen and as part of the wizarding world for the very first time. He tells all about his big break, what filming was really like and the lasting friendships he made during ten years as part of the franchise, as well as the highs and lows of fame and the reality of navigating adult life after filming finished.

Prepare to meet a real-life wizard.

Thoughts

Woman at book club: Ugh, my library hold for Tom Felton’s book is MONTHS away still!
[I glance over and see the title is Beyond the Wand and has a moody picture of a man — and assume it’s some kind of light paranormal erotica)
Me: Who’s Tom Felton?
Another woman: Draco!!!
Me: ???
Me: OH!!!
Me: (places my own hold and is pleased that it’s only a few weeks away)

Y’all this is yet another book I did not expect to read, but boy am I happy I did! If you’re somehow here and also not sure who Tom Felton / Draco is, it’s the actor who plays antagonist Draco Malfoy in the Harry Potter movies. I was curious about this because: 1. sure, I like Harry Potter; 2. I’ve been really enjoying my tv / movie related nonfiction in the past few months; and 3. his character is largely portrayed as a hated villain, so I’m extremely curious to take a little peek behind the curtain and see what his experience of it was like.

Continue reading “Review: Beyond the Wand: The Magic and Mayhem of Growing Up a Wizard by Tom Felton”
Posted in Chatty

Top Ten Tuesday: Books With Love in the Title!

Hey y’all! It has BEEN A WHILE since I did one of these! And even longer since I did them consistently! But I felt like a list today, and what easier time then to do it with a love / Valentine’s Day theme? Things I love!

Top Ten Tuesday is a bookish question idea that was originally created and hosted by The Broke and the Bookish, from way back in June 2010! Since January 2018, Top Ten Tuesday has been hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl. Thanks for taking it over! The idea is to make a list of ten books or bookish things on different topics each week. Check out her site for details on how to join and what the upcoming prompts are. 😊 You can also see all the posts from other bloggers linked on each weekly post on their main site.

This week’s prompt as I kind of hinted at above is a freebie on the theme of love or focused on Valentine’s Day. Originally, I had gone through and looked at all the books I’ve read on or around Valentine’s Day each year to see if there was ever a pattern I wasn’t aware of. There wasn’t. xD I just read whatever I’m reading, and it wasn’t really what I wanted to do for the bulk of this post. However, I will include a simple list of those titles after the main post here!

I ended up going for something much simpler: books I’ve read with the word love in the title. xD Here we go!

The Books

The reasons

Anna K: A Love Story by Jenny Lee

I had to read Anna Karenina by Tolstoy my senior year of high school and while parts of it were cool, parts of it (*ahem* LENIN) suuuper dragged. So I was HYPED when this YA re-imagining of the book came out, and was curious / wary of how it would end. In short: loved this book, have the duology, and will probably re-read it soon now that I’m thinking about it.

Continue reading “Top Ten Tuesday: Books With Love in the Title!”
Posted in Reviews

Review: Age of Vice by Deepti Kapoor

Age of Vice by Deepti Kapoor

Recommended: I don’t think so?
Because I ended it feeling like I didn’t really get much out of it, and it’s low-key depressing. Go for it if you like sprawling stories that cover decades and multiple characters, with a tale that weaves between everyone it touches

Summary

This is the age of vice, where money, pleasure, and power are everything,and the family ties that bind can also kill.New Delhi, 3 a.m. A speeding Mercedes jumps the curb and in the blink of an eye, five people are dead. It’s a rich man’s car, but when the dust settles there is no rich man at all, just a shell-shocked servant who cannot explain the strange series of events that led to this crime. Nor can he foresee the dark drama that is about to unfold.Deftly shifting through time and perspective in contemporary India, Age of Vice is an epic, action-packed story propelled by the seductive wealth, startling corruption, and bloodthirsty violence of the Wadia family — loved by some, loathed by others, feared by all.In the shadow of lavish estates, extravagant parties, predatory business deals and calculated political influence, three lives become dangerously intertwined: Ajay is the watchful servant, born into poverty, who rises through the family’s ranks. Sunny is the playboy heir who dreams of outshining his father, whatever the cost. And Neda is the curious journalist caught between morality and desire. Against a sweeping plot fueled by loss, pleasure, greed, yearning, violence and revenge, will these characters’ connections become a path to escape, or a trigger of further destruction?

Thoughts

If you ask me what this book is about I would probably have a bit of a hard time explaining. It’s strangely complex, one of those stories where every character you meet is involved with all of the others in some obscure way. While that can have a pretty cool effect, in this one it left me a bit unsure of why things mattered. And when it came to the very end, I genuinely had no idea what happened, let alone why it happened.

My biggest struggle with this book is that everything in it is terrible. Nothing good happens, basically ever. If you think something good has just happened, know that you’re probably wrong and it will be later revealed to actually be a terrible thing. Everyone is unhappy, even the people who are “supposed” to be happy because they’re rich, or in control, or whatever it may be. This was just such a tale of misery that it was really hard to witness it all.

Continue reading “Review: Age of Vice by Deepti Kapoor”
Posted in Reviews

Review: The Duke and I by Julia Quinn

The Duke and I by Julia Quinn

Summary

In the ballrooms and drawing rooms of Regency London, rules abound. From their earliest days, children of aristocrats learn how to address an earl and curtsey before a prince—while other dictates of the ton are unspoken yet universally understood. A proper duke should be imperious and aloof. A young, marriageable lady should be amiable… but not too amiable.

Daphne Bridgerton has always failed at the latter. The fourth of eight siblings in her close-knit family, she has formed friendships with the most eligible young men in London. Everyone likes Daphne for her kindness and wit. But no one truly desires her. She is simply too deuced honest for that, too unwilling to play the romantic games that captivate gentlemen.

Amiability is not a characteristic shared by Simon Basset, Duke of Hastings. Recently returned to England from abroad, he intends to shun both marriage and society—just as his callous father shunned Simon throughout his painful childhood. Yet an encounter with his best friend’s sister offers another option. If Daphne agrees to a fake courtship, Simon can deter the mamas who parade their daughters before him. Daphne, meanwhile, will see her prospects and her reputation soar.

The plan works like a charm—at first. But amid the glittering, gossipy, cut-throat world of London’s elite, there is only one certainty: love ignores every rule…

Thoughts

I didn’t read this on purpose. I was looking at special edition collections of books on a site, and they had all the Bridgerton ones, and I was like dang there are so many! What’s this book even about?? So I looked it up in my library app to read the summary. Then I started reading a sample. Then I read the 120 page sample and ended up borrowing it and reading it in like two days and loving every second.

Continue reading “Review: The Duke and I by Julia Quinn”
Posted in Reviews

Review: Really Good, Actually by Monica Heisey

Really Good, Actually by Monica Heisey

Recommended: no
If you want to read several hundred pages of a person’s sad thoughts and self-destructive choices, then I guess this will do it. If you want a plot, anyone likable or relatable, self-growth, etc. then skip it.

Summary

Maggie is fine. She’s doing really good, actually. Sure, she’s broke, her graduate thesis on something obscure is going nowhere, and her marriage only lasted 608 days, but at the ripe old age of twenty-nine, Maggie is determined to embrace her new life as a Surprisingly Young Divorcée™.

Now she has time to take up nine hobbies, eat hamburgers at 4 am, and “get back out there” sex-wise. With the support of her tough-loving academic advisor, Merris; her newly divorced friend, Amy; and her group chat (naturally), Maggie barrels through her first year of single life, intermittently dating, occasionally waking up on the floor and asking herself tough questions along the way.

Thoughts

I’m so glad this is over.

There’s no plot, just a lot of miserable indulgence in sad feelings for about 87% of the time. She and her friends do things that are completely bizarre to me, a person only a year younger then her, like cocaine in a portapotty during a threesome where she’s really just a third wheel. I didn’t enjoy reading this at all, but I wanted to see if it ever got better. It didn’t.

One positive I can find is that the writing itself had some flair and flavor, but sometimes that felt oppressive, like when the witty list of things was taking up an entire page. It was a bit much.

I guess this could be called a character study, or maybe similar to a stream of consciousness in a way, because all we hear are her thoughts on everything (“everything” at this point largely being her divorce) and seeing the way her thoughts and actions are incredibly misaligned and she’s deluding herself in many ways.

Posted in Chatty

February 2023 TBR: just a few

Hey y’all! I only have a few books specifically planned for this month, and the rest is going to be a lot of mood reading. Here’s what I have in mind!

Miscellaneous united!

Her Name Is Knight by Yasmin Angoe is a book I got from Kindle First Reads a while back, but didn’t end up reading yet. It’s part of the current Kindle Challenge as an option for Black History Month, so I figured now was the time! Unfortunately, it’s incredibly graphic and violent and covers some really terrible things. So far I’ve been really struggling to read it because it’s just so incredibly grim, even though it’s also interesting and compelling and intriguing. I think I’m past the worst of it though (god willing…) so I’ll continue on… slowly.

Hero in a Halfling by William Tyler Davis is my answer to the book above, and some of the others I’ve finished recently that were on the darker side. I really needed a light fantasy where no one was worried about suicide or rape or financial ruin. So far, none of those have come up. I have a feeling this is a bit similar in vibe to the wildly popular Legends & Lattes by Travis Baldree, though I haven’t read that one (yet). It’s lightly parodying and makes me smile a lot.

Divide Me By Zero by Lara Vapnyar is a book I had not heard of until I found it on a shelf at the bookstore today where I treated myself to picking one book out. This was the winner! It’s a reflective book with a Russian immigrant who was raised on math as the MC. It’s also by Tin House Books, which I’ve been recently introduced to through Aardvark Book Club and have enjoyed their unusual subject range in their titles. Maybe this is another winner?

Honestly, that’s it. This is all the energy I have for planning right now. I haven’t even posted in a week, which is extremely uncommon for me. This is what I could manage. Back to reading….

Posted in Chatty

Upcoming & Recent holds I’m excited about!

Hey y’all! Just sharing some excitement and good luck I’ve had with getting in holds for newer books lately at my library. Have you heard of any of these?

From Borrower to wizard, Tom Felton’s adolescence was anything but ordinary. His early rise to fame saw him catapulted into the limelight aged just twelve when he landed the iconic role of Draco Malfoy in the Harry Potter films.

Speaking with candour and his own trademark humour, Tom shares his experience of growing up on screen and as part of the wizarding world for the very first time. He tells all about his big break, what filming was really like and the lasting friendships he made during ten years as part of the franchise, as well as the highs and lows of fame and the reality of navigating adult life after filming finished.

Prepare to meet a real-life wizard.

Good people can be bad at relationships.

One night during his divorce, after one too many vodkas and a call with a phone-in-therapist who told him to “journal his feelings,” Matthew Fray started a blog. He needed to figure out how his ex-wife went from the eighteen-year-old college freshman who adored him to the angry woman who thought he was an asshole and left him. As he pieced together the story of his marriage and its end, Matthew began to realize a hard truth: even though he was a decent guy, he was a bad husband.

As he shared raw, uncomfortable, and darkly humorous first-person stories about the lessons he’d learned from his failed marriage, a peculiar thing happened. Matthew started to gain a following. In January 2016 a post he wrote–“She Divorced Me Because I left the Dishes by the Sink”–went viral and was read over four million times.

Filtered through the lens of his own surprising, life-changing experience and his years counseling couples, This Is How Your Marriage Ends exposes the root problem of so many relationships that go wrong. We simply haven’t been taught any of the necessary skills, Matthew explains. In fact, it is sometimes the assumption that we are acting on good intentions that causes us to alienate our partners and foment mistrust.

Maggie is fine. She’s doing really good, actually. Sure, she’s broke, her graduate thesis on something obscure is going nowhere, and her marriage only lasted 608 days, but at the ripe old age of twenty-nine, Maggie is determined to embrace her new life as a Surprisingly Young Divorcée™.

Now she has time to take up nine hobbies, eat hamburgers at 4 am, and “get back out there” sex-wise. With the support of her tough-loving academic advisor, Merris; her newly divorced friend, Amy; and her group chat (naturally), Maggie barrels through her first year of single life, intermittently dating, occasionally waking up on the floor and asking herself tough questions along the way.

Posted in Reviews

Spotify Wrapped Challenge 2022

Hey y’all! I saw a super fun sounding tag on Dinipanda’s site recently and immediately was hyped to join in and give it a go. The goal is to take your most listened to songs from 2022 and put them on shuffle, then try to match the first five songs that are played to a book you read in 2022 that fits it somehow! Even if it’s not a perfect fit, it’s more about seeing what you think of for each one. 🙂

I tracked this back through several layers of tags and I think I’ve got the original post here from Lace and Dagger books, then to The Corner of Laura, then to Ace Reader, then to Dinipanda Reads, and now, here! 😀 What a journey it’s been.

I’m also taking this two steps more by also choosing a book from my list to be read that fits and adding it to my upcoming, and also by adding all the songs I’ve seen in other folks’ posts to my playlist below. 🙂 If you do this post as well, tag me in it so I can add your songs to the playlist!

Dancing King – Exo x Yu Jae Seok

2022: Review: Kiss & Tell by Adib Khorram

This is a book about a boy in a boy band who’s maybe falling for a new guy while getting over his ex. There’s inherent dancing in a boy band, so of course I thought of this one!

2023: A Time to Dance by Padma Vankatraman

I think the title makes this one obvious. xD It’s also on my shelf, plus a friend recommended it, so I think it’s a safe bet!

Cookie Thumper! – Die Antwoord

2022: Review: Our Chemical Hearts by Krystal Sutherland

I really struggled with this song because I don’t think I read anything badass enough to suit this song vibe. I’d need like, a heist book or something. This book is more about a maybe toxic love and grief and death, so not exactly right, but it still has a bit of that wild-love style to it that I get from this song.

2023: Hum if you Don’t Know the Words by Bianca Marais

This is a much more straightforward and obvious choice: this book is set in South Africa. Die Antwoord is from South Africa. Simple right? I’ve also wanted to read some books about Apartheid because I know woefully little about it and want to start filling that gap.

LUCIFER – SHINee

2022: Review: A Touch of Darkness by Scarlett St. Clair

This is literally a book about a relationship with the devil (Hades in this case rather than “Lucifer” but same idea). I can’t think of something more perfectly spot on. xD

2023: It Ends With Us by Colleen Hoover

From the miscellaneous bits I’ve heard about this book, I think there’s some abuse / toxic relationship elements to it and that sort of aligns with the song’s lyrics about a love that’s cutting but alluring.

In The End – Linkin Park

2022: ARC Review: The End of Getting Lost by Robin Kirman

This book has a lot of confusion and pain and fear vibes, which I think are echoed in the song quite a lot. Plus of course it shares the word “end” but that’s a bit flimsy on it’s own.

2023: Kingdom of Ash by Sarah J Maas

I’ve been saying I would read this book and finish this series for about five years now. IT IS TIME!! So this book for me is a very literal “in the end” by ending the series and ending this absurd ongoing wait!

Ice Cream Cake – Red Velvet

2022: ARC Review: Booked on a Feeling by Jayci Lee

One of the sweetest books I read this year! I loved this romance read and it’s a book about books. How could it miss? Plus it was surprisingly spicy and that perfectly suits this song with it’s slyly innocent sounding lyrics. 🥰

2023: How to Win a Breakup by Farah Heron

This is a super sweet YA romance with baking and nerdy gaming and a love of math. In all honesty, I started it this morning and I’m already over halfway through because it is just so good! This one has the literal food element to mirror the song, but it’s also really damn sweet!!

What have I learned? …I only listen to older songs. xD The newest song on this list is from 2016, and the oldest? 2000. I guess I find what I like and stick with it! 😂

Posted in Release Day!

Just Published: Spice Road by Maya Ibrahim!

Hey y’all! Just a reminder that Spice Road by Maiya Ibrahim published today! Check out the full review here or grab a copy of your own!

Summary

In the hidden desert city of Qalia, there is secret spice magic that awakens the affinities of those who drink the misra tea. Sixteen-year-old Imani has the affinity for iron and is able to wield a dagger like no other warrior. She has garnered the reputation as being the next great Shield for battling djinn, ghouls, and other monsters spreading across the sands.

Her reputation has been overshadowed, however, by her brother, who tarnished the family name after it was revealed that he was stealing his nation’s coveted spice–a telltale sign of magical obsession. Soon after that, he disappeared, believed to have died beyond the Forbidden Wastes. Despite her brother’s betrayal, there isn’t a day that goes by when Imani doesn’t grieve him.

But when Imani discovers signs that her brother may be alive and spreading the nation’s magic to outsiders, she makes a deal with the Council that she will find him and bring him back to Qalia, where he will face punishment. Accompanied by other Shields, including Taha, a powerful beastseer who can control the minds of falcons, she sets out on her mission.