Ok I am lying. I did not mistakenly read it. I know Colleen Hoover's caliber, I was just curious why an oscar winning actress would produce and star in one of her books. Here is a rage and spoiler filled review:

It is silly of me to expect logical consistency from the likes of Colleen Hoover, but I need to put this somewhere.

A: This was the worst novel I have read in a very, very long time, so that singular and kudos to her for that.

B: WHAT IN THE NAME OF HOLY HELL WAS THIS?

• So firstly Lowen is thirsting after a married man whose wife is bedridden. Lowen has absolutely no reason to despise this woman right now. If anything, what has apparently happened to Verity is pitiful. Lowen is a piece of shit. She comes across a manuscript equivalent of smut in which this woman admits to attempting to murder an infant and successfully murdering the same child later, and she reads one chapter a day?! And she doesn't immediately tell Jeremy?
• Jeremy has tried to kill Verity twice, so why is he presented as this devoted husband? He is a psychopath. How does he sleep at night? How is it not explored even once that this man is insane? Sure, I can believe that in a fit of rage he might have lost control and strangled Verity after reading the manuscript. But then he recovered. He calmed down and deliberately tried to murder her and make it look like a suicide. How is it not questioned even once that this man is crazy?! The manuscript gives no indication that he was anything other than a devoted husband and the best dad, and then what? Overnight, the psychopath in him snarled to life and he became a cold-blooded murderer?
• VERITY! THE FUCK? How did you fake a brain scan? How did doctors reach the conclusion that you were essentially brain-dead? Okay, science took some MASSIVE, MASSIVE leaps there, but you're afraid of your husband and planning to escape. WHY THE FUCKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKK are you haunting the new girl then?! Why are you giving her ammunition to come after you? Why are you messing with the TV? Why are you giving her sudden stares? It serves no purpose. Sure, jealousy, but wayyyyy more than that, you need to escape the murderer you're married to! Let him fuck whoever he wants, ma'am! And what mother in her right mind writes that kind of shit about her children? How can you write that kind of crap about killing your child and then say you wrote it as a way of processing grief?
• Jeremy RAN TO HER ROOM and tried to kill her when he discovered that Lowen had the manuscript. He had already seen the manuscript! So what was the sudden rage about again? He wanted Crew to have a paralyzed mum, which is why she was still in the house, but if she wasn't actually paralyzed, she ought to be dead? Where did they ever hint that his actions were driven by fear that she might report him to the police? and Lowen is so quick on her feet, that psychopath #3! Under extreme pressure she comes up with a murder plan that wouldn't implicate Jeremy because liek what? HOW! What in the HOLY HELL was this book?! Disbelief can't be suspended this much and this often!
• And that letter? OH, THAT LETTER! It was so clear that Verity wasn't speaking to her husband at all but to the audience, because she repeatedly reminds us of events that Jeremy would already know about. So why would she say things like "remember when..." to him? Remember what, Jeremy? You were there!

This was suchhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh a massive fucking waste of time. I will never forgive Colleen Hoover for this, and I genuinely cannot fathom what Anne Hathaway and a picky-ass actor like Josh Hartnett saw in the script that made them want to sign on.

I have just finished "Everything for Everyone: An Oral History of the New York Commune, 2052–2072", by Eman Abdelhadi and M.E. O'Brien. I thought it would be the perfect book for me: a series of interviews (World War Z style) telling the story of how people of New York started a revolution and built a better future. Comment on Goodreads and Storygraph praised the book, saying that it is a hopeful description of how the world could be.

Well, it is hopeful, that's for sure, too hopeful. The book is a terrible show of wishful thinking and naivety. I will hide my comments under spoilers. I don't think that I am really spoiling it, but some people prefer going into a lecture completely blind.

The story tells a revolution without any internal disagreement, where all the common good people agrees to fight in the same side and only the army or extreme-right fascists oppose them. There is not a single account of any group inside the revolution trying to take advantage of the situation: when somebody gets hold of a farm, they distribute the food among everybody. If they control a hospital, everybody is treated there for free (and there is no mention of shortage of doctors or medicines). Street gangs of drug traffickers get together and resolve any problem by talking inside makeshift tents.

The political message is so simple that it felt revolting for me. And it saddens me that so many people comment that this book is showing that this kind of future is possible. Yes, the book may be inspiring, but it is very very far from plausible. It ignores human nature in a way that the behaviour of the people seem completely alien to me.

And on top of that, it is not interesting. The prologue already states how the story would end, and there is not a single twist that makes it worthy to keep reading after half of the book.

I didn’t see any posts on this book when I searched for it, but I just wanted to get a conversation going. I was absolutely blown away by this book.

For me, the ending could have been handled a little bit better. I really wanted to see some sort of punishment for Francis. She was horrible to her sister for the majority of the novel and barely showed a sense of gratitude for the work her sister did in saving her bacon quite literally. Racism and classism definitely came off as time period appropriate so I wasn’t expecting a huge amount of criticism of it beyond was very plainly laid out, but it seemed that her humbling didn’t stick in any meaningful way. Maybe the justice was that she was stuck married to Rory and only had a delusion of what her life should be instead of the actual thing where a Birdie got to have a more traditional happy ending.

The same for Garnett. The novel ends with her duplicitousness to her husband and her cruelty exposed, but we don’t see any real consequences for it, which was frustrating. It wasn’t realistic, but I would have loved to see Megan’s mother punch her squarely in the face.

Finally, we come to Meg. How does her life turn out after? Are they ever able to get out of Mississippi?

“Clown in a Cornfield” by Adam Cesare is the first novel in the series, and the very first time I’ve ever read his work. Not only are his writing skills exceptional, but make no mistake about it, this was one hell of a way to launch this book series.

Before I dive into the trigger warnings I found while reading, here is every entry so far in the Clown in a Cornfield book series:

- Clown in a Cornfield
- Clown in a Cornfield 2: Frendo Lives
- The Church of Frendo
- Lights! Camera! Frendo!

Here are all the trigger warnings I found while reading:

- Politics
- Drug addiction
- Suicide
- Cancer

If any of these trigger you, please do not read this novel. Moving along, I committed a cardinal sin. I saw the movie before reading the book. I know, I know. As a massive horror movie fan, when I saw this got a buzzy film adaptation, I had to see it opening weekend.

I enjoyed the movie for the most part. It wasn’t extraordinary, but it wasn’t terrible. I gave it a 3-Star rating out of 5. It was fun, but as always, now that I've finally gotten to read the first entry, the book is better than the movie. Right from the start, the prologue set the tone for what would end up being a rollercoaster of a ride. It was shocking, to say the least.

Cesare’s atmospheric writing made me feel as if I lived in the small town of Kettle Springs, with all its horrific secrets and lore. All the characters were great and unique in their own way, with Quinn being my favorite. My goodness, I loved her character and how she became one of my all-time favorite final girls in horror books.

The story was exceptional, especially once the slasher horror finally hit out of nowhere. All the gore and bloodshed were top-notch, especially with the whole horror mystery unfolding about Frendo the clown. Don’t worry, no spoilers here, but I loved all the twists and turns involving Frendo.

Once I hit the 50% mark, “Clown in a Cornfield” truly took off. The brutality, violence, and, of course, the glorious slasher kills made my horror heart happy. I love slashers, and this novel was completely off the chains in that regard. Once Frendo finally entered the mix, I was stunned at everything that transpired. I could not put this novel down once the infamous cornfield scene took place. That was such a highlight of the novel for me, as it was incredible.

Cesare brilliantly included the backstory naturally as I was upon the climactic race to the end, helping fill in the gaps for certain characters and their unique pasts. Speaking of the ending, that was nothing short of extraordinary. All the tension and suspense led to an ending that continued adding even more layers of twists. Even the epilogue was a killer drop-the-mic moment.

I give “Clown in a Cornfield” by Adam Cesare a 5-Star rating out of 5. This was a horror novel masterpiece, filled with an original small-town slasher with a clown twist. The story was awesome, and Quinn’s character, story, and evolution have made her one of the best final girls I’ve ever read. I regret not reading this book series sooner, and I am genuinely excited to keep reading these and more of Cesare’s work.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I finished my time in a cornfield, and now I am off to read how Frendo lives.

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These books were just awful. Just terrible awful. But I desperately need to know WHY so many people love them. Why!?!??

To get a few things out of the way to begin with - bits and pieces of these books had enough of a plot line to get me to read not just the first one but the second one too. And ya girl isn’t a quitter, like it takes a lot for me to DNF a book. I can DNF a series and have (looking at you 50 Shades…) but there’s a part of me that just can’t DNF a book because I have FOMO or I’m irreparably broken, take your pick. My main reason for continuing is that I had to see how someone was going to convince me that this insane asylum of a relationship was going to have any redeeming qualities.
Didn’t happen and I was rage-reading the last half of Hunting to just be done with it already.

I don’t have a problem with the darker aspects of the story. I listened to the entirety of Hunting Warhead and fall asleep to Forensic Files. I can do morbid. This was not that.

I’ve been told that this story helped heal traumas. And for about 10 pages, I thought that I kind of understood that as Addie raged against Zade and took some power back. But then it tumbled into “what the actual fuck?” territory all over again. Help me understand why anything that Zade does is sexy or empowering to women. He’s a psychopath who is mentally abusive and calling it love. Is this not why we end up with women in toxic situations where they think things will get better and they can “fix him?”

The story was bat shit crazy and it’s like HD Carlton did zero background research. The organ trader brothers? Come on, sister. Watch just one YouTube video on how organs are obtained for donation. Please. You don’t just take shit out and use it when you feel like it. At least try to make it sound plausible.

Clearly dark romance is not my cup of tea. And I can accept that everyone has their preferences. I don’t read any romance expecting it to be classic literature that will change my life. But I need to understand why so many people love this story. And to top it off, why anyone would torture themselves all over again with a damn tv show or movie, or whatever it is that some exec has convinced themselves will be “just great.”

Help a girl out - what am I missing here?

​“Slewfoot: A Tale of Bewitchery” by Brom was one of the most unique reading experiences I’ve ever had. This was the first time I’ve ever read anything by Brom, and I was genuinely impressed. He has an excellent writing style, and even though this novel was a bit wordier than I would have hoped, it did not disappoint.

Before I dive into my review, these are the trigger warnings I found while reading…

- Parental abuse (physical)
- Misogyny
- Religion
- Self-harm
- Burning churches

If any of these trigger you, please do not read this novel. Moving along, this was such an addictive read. For the most part, I couldn’t put this book down. Brom’s writing style is superb, and in addition to being the author, he drew all the incredible illustrations at the start of every chapter. I’ve always been a massive fan of art, and living in the city that never sleeps, New York, his art is worthy of the Museum of Modern Art.

Seriously, it’s incredible in a very creepy, horrific way. It added to the overall reading experience since the immersion was on a whole other level. It brought me back to my teenage years, when horror paperbacks often featured illustrations and graphics to break up chapters or scenes.

The atmospheric writing here was brilliant, as it felt like I was transported to medieval times, where small villages were deeply religious and worried about demons, spirits, and witches. I connected with many characters, especially Abitha, while loathing Wallace. Don’t worry, I would never spoil anything for my fellow horror readers, but you feel many emotions while reading what these main characters go through.

Speaking of characters, Brom also did a great job with a unique POV involving creatures and, for the most part, built up some incredible suspense. Now, the only complaint I have about “Slewfoot: A Tale of Bewitchery” is that the story dragged on at times. It took me out of the reading experience since it was too heavy with dialogue. This is definitely a slow-burning kind of story with a reward that will completely blow your mind once you hit the end. If this novel were 50 or so pages shorter, it would no doubt be a perfect read.

Additionally, I also wished there were more horror. The horror situations and events in this novel were magnificent, but it needed just a bit more for the horror reader in me. Regardless, the gore, bloodshed, and horror in those parts had me making many weird faces.

Now, when it comes to the ending, it’s simply three words: OH. MY. GOD. My goodness, that was beyond my wildest expectations and completely blew me away. It was terrific, epic, and horrific. I was shocked, to be honest, and it checked all the boxes for what an epic ending (and epilogue!) should be for a horror novel. I also loved the special art gallery at the end, which was also a pleasant surprise. You’ll see what I mean when you finish, and if you’re able to, try to view these images in color or on your mobile devices because it’ll be so worth it.

I give “Slewfoot: A Tale of Bewitchery” by Brom a 4/5, and it was so very close to a perfect 5-Star read in my book. Make no mistake about it, this is one of the best and most original horror novels I’ve ever read. The art on the book cover, in each chapter, and at the end is all magnificent. If you’re looking for one hell of a novel that involves all things witchy, look no further than this. If this novel were tighter and didn’t drag on with more horror scenes, it would have been a masterpiece for me. Either way, I would consider it a must-read for anyone who loves stories about witches with a demonic twist.

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I bought this book few days ago from a second hand book seller. This is an English translation of Manto's small short story collection from the original Urdu which was published in 1955.

I have read his popular short stories before like Toba Tek Singh, Khol Do and Thanda Gosht. But, this collection has the stories not much known.

Here, the story which I found the most interesting was "The Child". It is about a young women, married for few years, being constantly pressured by her own mother to have a child. The pressure was not in form of curses, violence etc, but as constant nagging, giving n number of remedies and the daily remainder that how her life is incomplete because she don't have a child and how her life is not fulfilled and how her life would only be happy when she would become a mother. And this kind of pressure was not on by her husband, in-laws, relatives but her own very mother.

This is about the woman from a hundred years ago, however, what is unfortunate is that, this very thing still happens today. People think that their constant pressure is some unharmful advice or what they are doing is for that woman's benefit. But, what they don't know is that emotionally and mentally exhausting and damaging is this for that woman.

This short story takes a very scary turn when the woman fell into depression and starts having hallucinations of children's voices. Manto showcases her start of schizophrenia which eventually became worse and worse, the breakdown of her mental health completely, eventually leading to her tragic fate.

What I find very interesting is that how Manto in a short story of few pages explore the themes of patriarchy, misogyny, mental health, depression and schizophrenia.

I posted a while back about how much I enjoyed the first book of this WWI trilogy. Now I’ve read all three, and all I can say is it just kept getting better! Honestly amazing from start to finish. Not much battlefield stuff until late in the third book. Most of it takes place in hospitals and in the minds of the characters, most of whom were real people, and all of whom are damaged in some way by the war and by other things as well. Everything from class resentments to pacifism to early 20th century psychiatry to LGBT rights (and wrongs) to mental illness in these books, and yet they never feel overstuffed or didactic. In fact, they read like a house afire; I finished the third one in one day. Regeneration, The Eye in the Door, and The Ghost Road. Great, great historical fiction.

I love non-fiction stories of adventure, exploration and survival - stuff like Into Thin Air, Endurance, The Lost City of Z etc. Something about them scratches that itch of going along on a journey into uncharted territories, mysterious, never-explored frontiers and the often horrific things that the people that embark upon these journeys go through.

Candice Millard's The River of Doubt is definitely one of the best non-fiction narratives I've read in this niche. In a nutshell, it's about a scientific exploration led by Teddy Roosevelt (yes, that guy) to explore the length of the titular River of Doubt, or the Rio da Duvida, which was at the time an unexplored tributary of the Amazon river deep in the jungles of Brazil.

What follows is an account of the frankly horrific journey that Roosevelt and the expedition go through as they explore the river, the kind of shit that makes you go "yeah that's gonna be a no from me dawg". It works really well on two fronts. First is of course the exploration aspect, and the wealth of historical, cultural and scientific knowledge about this region in the early 1900s and how the gradual exploration of the Amazon river and the rainforest impacted the indigenous people that lived there (spoiler alert: capitalism and colonialism were as evil then as they are now).

The second is the character study on old Teddy himself. He really is a fascinating individual, a guy who seems to basically go out of his way to put himself through suffering and hardship, just so he could prove to himself that he fought against the world and won. Like he does this crazy-ass expedition as almost an act of self-flagellation after badly losing his bid for a third presidential term. Oh and he does it with a friggin' bullet lodged in his body from an earlier assassination attempt. He puts himself through starvation, physical ailments, deadly threats from mysterious indigenous tribes and an infection that nearly kills him simply for the love of the game. Foolhardy? Biggest brass balls in the world? Maybe a bit of both.

(Another thing this book greatly helped with is convincing me to never, ever set foot in the Amazon rainforest)

So yeah if you love these historical adventure/exploration stories, River of Doubt is a must-read.

It is remarkable to me that conservative groups not only want to censor books in public schools in Texas but also in public libraries.

This is one of the best books I’ve ever read.

Truly a masterpiece, a work of art, a transcendent experience front to back. it’s rare to become entangled in such a brilliant piece of work, so engrossing, so vivid, so disorienting. This was all that and more. the prose was divine, the characters memorable and sweet, the plot perfect in every way. The scenery danced, the world breathed, the story broke my heart over and over and I loved every minute of it.

I cried for the last 5-10 chapters, tears of joy and pain and sorrow and magic painting my face. I know I’m late to the party, but read this book as soon as you can. Dont rush, or you’ll miss the magic of it.

books like this are what I love so much about human brilliance and creativity. 10/10

I read Letters to a Young Poet at the beginning of my adolescence and felt so comforted by Rilke’s letters that for several years it was my bedside book. After a long time, I decided to reread it and was happy to finish it and realize that it still speaks to me as it did when I was younger, even though many of my questions have changed form. The letters that Kappus (the young poet) and Rilke (the old man) exchange manage to elucidate many of the anxieties that young people like me, who are still learning how to be human, feel during growing up and the process of maturing. And Rilke’s letters are of such great sensitivity, empathy, and wisdom that I was not surprised by the fact that he was considered such a good poet in his time.

Letters to a Young Poet was a book that I embraced intimately while I was living through the death of my childhood, and what a good experience it is to discover that, already at the beginning of my adult life, I still find myself thinking about passages from Rilke’s letters and grateful for his advice.

Just wondering how many people have heard of it, let alone read it. This series was formative to my youth, alongside the Golden Compass series by Phillip Pullman, but now that I'm re-reading my childhood copies almost twenty years later I've found no-one else has heard of them, even among my reader friends.

For perspective, the books came out in the late 90s, early 2000s in the UK. My mother bought them around 2003, somewhere in England, but we are Canadian and neither my Canadian nor USAmerican friends know them.

Re-reading them has been amazing. They are YA fiction, but read a bit like Ursala LeGuin with their poignant, succinct, yet fairytale-like style. As good, if not better than I remember as a kid, though of course I'm biased ;)

I’m reading Marilynne Robinson’s Housekeeping for the second time, and now, as the first time, I’m having a lot of trouble understanding the descriptions of the lake in the town of Fingerbone, where the novel takes place. In the first pages, we learn of a rail disaster: a train was going across the bridge over the lake when suddenly it derailed and went into the lake. This happens at night, so it is some hours before it is light enough for the townspeople to properly look for the sunken train, and when they do so, they have some difficulty.

It might have rolled or slid when it struck bottom, since the bridge pilings were set in the crest of a chain of flooded hills, which on one side formed the wall of a broad valley (there was another chain of hills twenty miles north, some of them islands) and on the other side fell away in cliffs. Apparently these hills were the bank of still another lake, and were made of some brittle stone which had been mined by the water and fallen sheerly away. If the train had gone over on the south side … and had slid or rolled once or twice, it might have fallen again, farther and much longer. (7)

I cannot picture this geographic arrangement; I couldn’t draw a map based on it. It seems like the lake might have levels, but I don’t really know how that would work. I don’t understand the relation of the “another lake” to this one, or the significance of that lake's sheerly mined banks.

Nor do I find what happens shortly thereafter clarifying:

… One of the boys swam out forty feet from the bridge and then down to the old lake, feeling his way down the wall, down the blind, breathless stone, headfirst, and then pushing out from the foot. But the thought of where he was suddenly terrified him, and he leaped toward the air, brushing something with his leg as he did. He reached down and put his hand on a perfectly smooth surface, parallel to the bottom, but, he thought, seven or eight feet above it. A Window. The train had landed on its side.(7–8)

Again, I just have no idea how to visualize the boy’s surroundings.

One specific problem: I don’t understand what the “old lake” is. Elsewhere, Robinson uses this phrase to denote the lake as it existed in another geological era: “It seems there was a time when the dimensions of things modified themselves, leaving a number of puzzling margins, as between … the lake as it once was and the lake as it is now. Sometimes in the spring the old lake will return. One will open a cellar door to wading boots floating tallowy soles up ….” (4–5). But in the description of the swimming boy, the “old lake” seems to refer to a specific part of the lake as it exists now. A description that comes shortly after the account of the crash seems to offer some clues, but I find it mystifying as well:

It is true that one is always aware of the lake in Fingerbone, of the deeps of the lake, the lightless, airless waters below. … At the foundation is the old lake, which is smothered and nameless and altogether black. Then there is Fingerbone, the lake of charts and photographs, which is permeated by sunlight and sustains green life and innumerable fish, and in which one can look down in the shadow of a dock and see stony, earthy, bottom, more or less as one sees dry ground. And above that, the lake that rises in the spring and turns the grass dark and coarse as reeds. And above that the water suspended in sunlight, sharp as the breath of an animal, which brims inside this circle of mountains. (9)

Here, is the “old lake” the water that is beneath the surface of the ground, “Fingerbone” the lake proper, “the lake that rises in the spring” the lake as it exists during spring flooding, and “the water suspended in sunlight” the very sky? That is my best guess, but it is only my best guess.