So tonnes of people loved Pachinko. The Netgalley blurb gives me:

NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST * A NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW TOP TEN OF THE YEAR * NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF 2017 *A USA TODAY TOP TEN OF 2017 * JULY PICK FOR THE PBS NEWSHOUR-NEW YORK TIMES BOOK CLUB NOW READ THIS * FINALIST FOR THE 2018 DAYTON LITERARY PEACE PRIZE Roxane Gay’s Favorite Book of 2017, Washington Post NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * #1 BOSTON GLOBE BESTSELLER * USA TODAY BESTSELLER * WALL STREET JOURNAL BESTSELLER * WASHINGTON POST BESTSELLER

Okay. But you know what: I did not love Pachinko. It isn’t as if I think the book is unimportant; in fact, I think it is an important book, documenting the story of ethnic Koreans in Japan over generations. It just isn’t very … um … good isn’t the right word, because it isn’t the goodness or badness that annoyed me throughout. I guess, at a level, it’s fairly shallow a book. It’s almost like if a photo album was a novel: we get scenes, and strung together, the scenes tell a story, but there is just as much narrative in the gaps that gets completely written off as lonely sentences here and there (i.e., Oh, so and so’s wife died, moving on). As for the characters, again, somewhat stock ones, like in a photograph, never moving very far beneath the surface. You can see the people in the photos, you can see them smiling, or fake-smiling, or frowning and say to yourself, “On that day they were happy/faking/angry,” but in the end, a photo doesn’t tell you what type of happiness they felt, whether some of their fakery was tinged with regret, whether the anger was a joke on the photographer, etc. Pachinko is like that. You can almost feel it all, but really, it’s pretty flat.

But then again, what do I know compared to everyone else who love, love, loved this book.

Pachinko by Min Jin Lee went on sale February 7, 2017.

I received a copy free from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

I hate when they market books with blurbs that are all like “You’ll never see the twist!” Well, of course I will now. Why can’t I discover there is a twist on my own? Trust your damn readers publishers. We are smarter than you think.

So Behind Her Eyes is a fairly typical Jane Eyre-esque Brit-mystery that alternates points of view between Behind Her Eyes‘ Jane and Mrs. Rochester. There’s some missing people and bodies and burning-down of things. Then there’s the twist, which the book builds up to, so it isn’t completely out-of-nowhere, nor was it particularly hard to guess. What took me until the explanation to figure out was the why of the twist (because my mind works in a bland hetero-normative way I found out via Behind Her Eyes).

So I don’t know. There is definitely some cleverness to Behind Her Eyes. The pacing doesn’t drag (as it shouldn’t) for a mystery novel. At some point, when I was a kid living in the UK, I must have visited some similar places to the novel, because I could envisage the apartment and the houses and the office perfectly. Or maybe I should give credit to the author’s ability to describe these places without dragging down the plot through over-description. Ignoring the twist, it’s an above-average, vicarious-thrill-safe-from-the-comfort-of-my-own-home, marketed-to-women, thriller. Including the twist, it’s still that, but a bit harder to categorize.

Behind Her Eyes by Sarah Pinsborough went on sale January 26, 2017.

I received a copy free from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Ever since Fabulous Animal Facts That Hardly Anyone Knows (Fact: I still have my original edition from 1981, all taped up but still fact-full), I have enjoyed books filled with animal facts. Is True or Poo? a book filled with animal facts? Yes. Did I enjoy it. Yes. Are there pictures? Yes. Are there as many pictures, and as in colour, as Fabulous Animal Facts That Hardly Anyone Knows. No, but the facts are just as odd, and given with more detail and explanation (likely because Fabulous Animal Facts That Hardly Anyone Knows is geared towards, let’s say five year old me while True or Poo? is geared towards ten year old me. Doesn’t matter; thirty-eight year old me loves books filled with animal facts!). I did know most of the facts already, likely because of my (have I mentioned it yet?) interest in other books on animal facts. But I still love this animal fact book.

Plus the same authors have one on farting. I bought it for my nephews.

True or Poo? by Nick Caruso and Dani Rabaiotti went on sale October 23, 2018.

I received a copy free from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

(I continue with books I got from Netgalley, never read, and then later took out from the library to review.)

The stories here are hard and sad and difficult, like the women, who, of course, are difficult because we blame women for their faults, for the faults of others inflicted against them, for the faults of the world that weigh down on their, and only their, shoulders. It is not a book for those who need comfort. It is not a beach read, or a cozy Christmas time blanket curled up read (when I read it) either. I read it and felt sad and powerless and lay under my blanket and hurt.

Difficult Women by Roxane Gay went on sale January 3, 2017.

I received a copy free from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review, although I read a copy from the library not the netgalley one.

Yup. I disliked high school too.

Yup. I wished I could magically make myself into something wonderful.

Yup. We can take the past tense out of the last paragraph and switch it to a present tense too: I still wish I could magically make myself into something wonderful.

So Willow Sparks can, via what she finds in the super-secret room in her town library, where also the cool kids hang out. Do cool kids hang out at libraries? Of course, there are consequences because stories with monkey’s paws need consequences, although no one dies (other than of embarrassment), and again, I realize, that I need to start mentally considering most graphic novels as short stories rather than novels because even with all their pages, most of the time they end up being more amuse-bouches for my brain than full meals. And, unlike the monkey’s paw, non of the consequences are too severe, because the audience, I assume, is for middle-school/high school kids, and me (What would your high school senior quote be? my ten year old asked me yesterday. Didn’t high school end eighteen years ago? I told her. That would be my quote. Didn’t high school end eighteen years ago?).

So it’s a cute, little morality tale. My middle-school child will like it. I liked it well enough too.

The Altered History of Willow Sparks by Tara O’Connor went on sale March 6, 2018.

I received a copy free from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

(Yesterday I went to write this review and one of my cats sat on my hand, so I didn’t write anything. Today that cat is sleeping on the floor downstairs, so I have no excuse unless I spill my iced coffee on the keyboard or something.)

It took me more than one try to get into this book. More than two. Maybe even three or four. I order epubs on my kobo by size and then pick the largest file I haven’t read. Or, the smallest. I kept hitting Acid West as largest (it has some pictures), read a sentence or two, and then go pick the smallest epub I hadn’t read instead.

All that was a shame because when I sat myself down, not almost already asleep with a drifting mind, and said That’s it. I’m going to do this and started reading, I completely fell in Wheeler’s essays of New Mexico, of cows blanched by nuclear bombs, of space ports built by millionaires, of low hung houses and ranches, all of it. But the tales did require concentration. View them as an antidote to internet listicles and mindless candy crush games, a mental cleanser for an afternoon such as the ones I have here, a continent away from New Mexico, full of snow rather than sand.

Acid West by Joshua Wheeler went on sale April 17, 2018.

I received a copy free from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

(I am so far behind in reviews. I have so many to do and, as the three readers of my blog have noticed, I stopped doing anything about that months ago and *sigh*. Then, instead of writing the reviews, I just go straight to my dealer, i.e. Netgalley, and request more books and then the publishers on Netgalley give them to me. Why have you not cut me off, Netgalley? Plus I buy books and go to the library and I am totally going to die by being crushed by the huge piles of unread books I have all around my house. And, of course, the books from Netgalley expire, so then I take them out of the library and review them because I can’t let some multinational publishing conglomerate down. Plus the new WordPress editing system annoys me because I hate change. If I were a true reviewer, I’d make a plan to review at least 52 books this year, or something. But no, I’ll just go to the bookstore, then the library, then Netgalley and add to my unread pile so that, when crushed, it will take an excavator to dig my mummified corpse free.)

I decided, before opening the book, that I was going to dislike One day we’ll all be dead and none of this will matter by Scaachi Koul. I based this on the following reasons:

1. she is younger than me;
2. she is more successful than me; and
3. I read a similar book a few years ago and found the narrator insufferable and idiotic;

Then I opened Koul’s book and was annoyed with myself because it was good and amusing at times and heart-rending at others and dammit why are people more talented than me? How is that fair? And I shouldn’t prejudge books. I learned my lesson (although I reserve the right to prejudge any books with side-boobs on the cover).

Essays on being female, being Canadian, being first-generation, having boyfriends, having friends, people who are jerks, etc. Depth but not smothering (like how my piles of books are going to smother me if they don’t shatter all my bones first). I enjoyed reading it.

One day we’ll all be dead and none of this will matter by Scaachi Koul went on sale March 7, 2017.

I received a copy free from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.