[{"content":"","date":"4 June 2026","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/","section":"","summary":"","title":"","type":"page"},{"content":"This was my first Toni Morrison book, and the expectations were incredibly high. I\u0026rsquo;d only ever read and heard good thing about Morrison\u0026rsquo;s writing, her beautiful and elegant prose, her sophisticated plot structures, and a myriad of other praises.\nAll that being said, my feelings towards \u0026lsquo;Beloved\u0026rsquo;, the book widely considered Morrison\u0026rsquo;s magnum opus, are complicated. I don\u0026rsquo;t think I\u0026rsquo;ve ever enjoyed a hard read this much. The difficulty of the book comes from various things:\nThe multiple subject matters handled in the book: grief, loss, guilt, racism, slavery, and a lot more, all equally hard-hitting. The novel\u0026rsquo;s structure, we bounce around different points of view and timelines from one paragraph to the next, with no warning or hint that we\u0026rsquo;ve done so. The prose, which is beautiful and poetic, but can also be hard to follow. Magical realism, which isn\u0026rsquo;t something that makes reading the book difficult, per se, but it does keep you on your toes wondering if what the characters are seeing, feeling or even believing, are true. As I read the novel I had to constantly take a step back to ponder on what I had read. I enjoyed the prose itself, but the constant back and forth with perspectives and timelines was a little rough, won\u0026rsquo;t lie. This kept me on my toes and forced me to read very carefully, which I hadn\u0026rsquo;t done in a while. This is both good and bad. Bad because even while paying attention, I just know there are many things I didn\u0026rsquo;t get. Good for the same reason, the re-readability of this novel is fantastic, I\u0026rsquo;m sure that if I were to re-read it again right now, having just finished it, I\u0026rsquo;d feel like I was reading a whole other novel. The content itself is that dense, in the best way possible.\nAs I grow older I\u0026rsquo;ve also grown to appreciate the more literary side of novels, and this one\u0026rsquo;s a doozy. Besides the hard-to-follow structure of the book itself, there\u0026rsquo;s a passage about two thirds of the way through the book which is Beloved\u0026rsquo;s inner monologue, and it\u0026rsquo;s just something out of this world. Incoherent sentences, many of them smushed together, with no real beginning or end, no punctuation, interwoven thoughts, feelings, and ideas. It made me uncomfortable, but at the same time I just had to keep reading, because I was just so enthralled with the way it all flowed. Despite the ramblings and confusing nature of the passage, it still flowed like poetry. This was a masterclass in writing from Toni Morrison.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s incredibly hard for me to describe what the book is, because it\u0026rsquo;s many things. At face value, it\u0026rsquo;s a book about an escaped slave who murders her own child to save her from returning to a life of slavery. However, like I said, it\u0026rsquo;s so much more than that, it\u0026rsquo;s a story about finding yourself, about growing, learning, being. It\u0026rsquo;s about living and letting go. It\u0026rsquo;s about love and the things we do because of love. And even with all that, the thing I take with me the most from reading this book, is how it made me feel, even when I wasn\u0026rsquo;t completely sure what it was that I was reading, I could feel the weight of the words, the feelings of the characters, the despair, the hope, the love, and the resentment.\nMy favorite quote from the book comes at practically the end, which is a pretty famous quote from the book, and with good reason:\n“She is a friend of my mind. She gather me, man. The pieces I am, she gather them and give them back to me in all the right order.”\nI think this might be my favorite description of love, even if you don\u0026rsquo;t understand the metaphor, you understand the feeling behind it. And in a book so dark, so depressing, to have this be what I\u0026rsquo;ve had in my head for a few days now after finishing the book, I think is pretty remarkable, and goes to show how deep the book is with its themes.\nThis book had nigh on impossibly high expectations, and it exceeded them.\nRating ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐\n","date":"4 June 2026","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/beloved/","section":"Posts","summary":"","title":"Beloved - Toni Morrison","type":"posts"},{"content":"","date":"4 June 2026","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/books/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Books","type":"tags"},{"content":"","date":"4 June 2026","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/classics/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Classics","type":"tags"},{"content":"","date":"4 June 2026","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/literary-fiction/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Literary Fiction","type":"tags"},{"content":"","date":"4 June 2026","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/magical-realism/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Magical Realism","type":"tags"},{"content":"","date":"4 June 2026","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/","section":"Posts","summary":"","title":"Posts","type":"posts"},{"content":"","date":"4 June 2026","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Tags","type":"tags"},{"content":"You ever feel like questioning your existence? Like that cliché question of “am I real?” or “what does it even mean to be human?”?\nThe last time that happened to me was when I read Piranesi by Susanna Clarke and it just left this void in me wondering, essentially “what the hell did I just read?” from about the time I finished reading and lasting even until now, over a year later. Never Let Me Go didn’t leave me quite with the same void in me questioning my existence, but I do think it explores a lot of very interesting philosophical questions without asking them directly.\nThe book is told through the eyes and voice of Kathy H., an ex-student of Hailsham, a school where human clones are educated and taught how to take care of themselves. With this sentence alone there are a ton of questions one might ask themselves regarding the book:\nWhy do clones need to be educated? Where are the clones created? Why even clone people at all? Is cloning normal in this world? Among a myriad of other possible questions, and I’m here to tell you that most of these questions don’t get answered, they aren’t even really made in the book. I don’t think I’ve ever read a book where the author was so meticulous about the things he didn’t say. I’d even go as far as saying that the things that aren’t mentioned are more important than whatever is presented to us. The reason for this is because this is a truly “point of view” narrative. Kathy is our narrator, and it becomes clear pretty early on that whatever details she doesn’t expand upon, anything she doesn’t say, is because those details aren’t important to her, or at least she thinks it’s not important for the story, which in part leaves the reader a little confused and frustrated as to why she drops these little tidbits and lore bombs then refuses to elaborate.\nThis is explained in the story when it’s explained that the clones receive this same type of “information drops” since they’re very young, and then their teachers (which they call carers) quickly change the subject, with the goal of ingraining in their minds these ideas of who they are (clones) and what their purpose is (donating organs) and never question it, just accept it as a simple fact of their lives. This becomes a recurring theme, the students are essentially trained to be obedient sheep and not question anything and accept anything their carers tell them as fact, while also trying to live their own lives and preparing themselves for life after Hailsham.\nThis is definitely not a feel-good novel, as the story progresses, and especially towards the end, a lot of things are clear to the reader that are not clear to Kathy herself, they were raised essentially as sheep for slaughter, because of the way they were brought up, they never even got the idea of rebelling, all they can hope for is a very simple life, which for them is very fulfilling despite it being a very empty life after everything is said and done, and they just accept all of that as normal.\nThe reader and analyst in me did have unanswered questions I’m just a little upset we didn’t get an answer to, such as:\nWhy isn’t the idea of normal humans being repulsed by clones explored more? Why didn’t Kathy become a donor and stayed as a carer for so long? Even other characters make a note of this. How are the clones made? They mention that the clones are made from junkies and other humans deemed as “low” by normal societal norms, but we never got a hard confirmation of this being the case. However, the most poignant question, at least to me, is this: are these clones human after all? For all intents and purposes, the only big difference between the clones and real humans, besides the obvious one of clones being made, is that all clones are infertile, but real people can be infertile too, so that’s not a deciding factor. Clones start off at least as children (we never get confirmation on if there are baby clones) and they grow up, mature, have feelings, independent thoughts, can learn, empathize, and have distinct personalities. At what point do they stop being humans, despite not being born in a conventional way? This is sort of the same question ‘Piranesi’ had me pondering, what does it mean to be you? What makes you, you? While not the same questions, I feel they explore the same sort of philosophical area, the exploration and understanding of self.\nFor instance, we have bio-engineered food in the real world, and widely accept it as “normal” food, it’s cheaper than fully natural produce for the most part, and is a net positive overall in my mind. Why then, would the clones be treated differently in the book’s world? This is something I’m still trying to wrap my head around even days after finishing the book. It has staying power.\nI read this as part of the book club I attend, the general consensus there was that the book was boring because the plot didn’t move at the pace most of the member expected, some even described it as not having a plot at all. I clearly don’t share that mindset, but kind of get where they’re coming from. I think this is the type of book you need to be ready to read between the lines to get the ideas that are being presented. I’m not saying that you must treat “Never Let Me Go” as an intellectual exercise, but I do think that trying to view the story a little beyond what’s just presented to us as fact will greatly enhance your reading experience.\nI love books that make you think and books that are well written, this book checks off both boxes. If you’re expecting an action packed narrative, this isn’t for you, if you’re looking for something mysterious that makes you feel uneasy and are OK with not getting answers and enjoy philosophical pondering around those unanswered questions, give this book a try.\nRating ⭐⭐⭐⭐☆\n","date":"25 March 2026","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/never-let-me-go/","section":"Posts","summary":"","title":"Never Let Me Go - Kazuo Ishiguro","type":"posts"},{"content":"It’s barely March 1st when I’m writing this and this might be the biggest surprise read of 2026 for me. I listened to the audiobook which has a full cast recording, something I always appreciate to break up the monotony I sometimes feel of listening to the same voice for hours when listening to audiobooks. This epistolary novel has us following septuagenarian Sybil Van Antwerp through her hand written letters and email exchanges with her family, friends, customer service reps, authors, and basically anyone she fancied getting in touch with.\nAt surface level, that’s all this novel is, we follow roughly 10 years of letters during Sybil’s twilight years, which I was fine with, my mom has always said “a nadie le gusta el chisme más que a los hombres” which roughly translates to “no one loves gossip as much as men” and here I am proving her right, because for the first half of the novel I really enjoyed listening to all the gossip in Sybil’s life. During the second half, we start recognizing email and letter chains that make up the main story threads we’re following throughout the rest of the novel.\nI started this novel knowing next to nothing about it other than it was an epistolary novel and that it was nominated and also won a bunch of awards last year. What I found was a deeply human, emotional novel that I really enjoyed. I’ve read some reviews of people disliking the novel because they dislike or sometimes even hate Sybil. Make no mistake, Sybil is not a perfect woman, far from it, but she is incredibly human in her feelings, her actions, her thoughts. She acknowledges her flaws while not compromising who she is, and this makes her a very interesting character. She’s not meant to be neither likeable or unlikeable, just like any one person would be in real life, it all comes down to personal preference. She’s stubborn, honest, a little rude, but also has a big heart, and capable of acknowledging her mistakes and shortcomings. I think we as humans all share these traits, it’s what makes us so complex that sometimes even we ourselves don’t know what we’re thinking or doing.\nThe last third of the book was particularly great for me, I won’t go into too much detail to avoid spoiling the book for others, but suffice it to say that I found the emotional payoff from the book’s conclusion to be very much worth it. I didn’t expect this book to make me emotional, but it did, the audiobook narration helped a lot in that regard, the actress playing Sybil did a fantastic job making her emotions come through in her narration.\nIf you think you can handle a flawed protagonist, I think you should give The Correspondent a try, it might surprise you as much as it did me.\nRating ⭐⭐⭐⭐☆\n","date":"1 March 2026","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/the-correspondent/","section":"Posts","summary":"","title":"The Correspondent - Virginia Evans","type":"posts"},{"content":"","date":"22 February 2026","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/classic/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Classic","type":"tags"},{"content":"If there’s one thing I learned last year from reading Yellowface, Lolita, and Wuthering Heights, it’s that I love having a protagonist that’s easy to hate. Similarly, what I learned from Kendrick from his diss tracks towards Drake, is that I can be a bigger hater. All this to say, I really liked this book, and I really enjoyed hating on the protagonist, Florentino Ariza.\nThis is the first book by Gabriel García Márquez I’ve read, and it didn’t disappoint. The book tells us the story of Florentino Ariza and his obsession with Fermina Daza, his childhood “love” he never grew out of, even after getting rejected. I put love in quotes because I don’t think this is a love story at all, I view it as an obsession with love, or the idea of someone, yet not the person itself. This reminded me a lot of Wuthering Heights, since it’s a subject matter I found very interesting when reading that novel, and found it just as interesting here, especially given how many people interpret both novels to be about real love.\nThe story implements a non-linear narrative, we start towards the end of the story’s timeline, when Fermina’s husband, Dr. Juvenal Urbino dies while trying to get one of his wife’s pets back in the house, and Florentino appears at the end of his funeral to sweep Fermina off her feet after 50+ years of pining for her. We then go back in time to when both Fermina and Florentino are children/teens and we follow mostly Florentino until we get back to where the novel began and we see them going off on a never-ending cruise for the rest of their days.\nFlorentino lives a very empty life, filled with meaningless flings and casual sex that he uses to try and fill the gap in his life he believes can only be filled by Fermina. He does some great mental gymnastics to justify treating other women like objects because it’s not “real” according to him, it could only be real if it’s with Fermina. The reason why I believe this is not a love story but rather a story about obsession is because both Fermina and Florentino have crushes for each other when young, but most of their communication is through written letters, they fall in love with the idea each one has of the other person. This idealization quickly shatters for Fermina after she sees Florentino in person after a long time of exchanging letters, but he doesn’t know how to take no for an answer, and his obsession simply intensifies from that point forwards.\nAt the end of the novel, after her very decently deceased husband’s funeral, Fermina decides to rekindle her friendship with Florentino, which he very gladly accepts, and eventually they leave to live together for the rest of their days. Fermina’s decision at the end also showcases how she’s a flawed character as well. After being so straight forward in her rejection towards Florentino in her youth to then simply going along with him when older. She’s not free of blame throughout the story either, she is constantly indecisive about what she wants in life, which results in her stringing along men. Additionally, she’s extremely proud, the main thing that caused her to reject Florentino to begin with (he was ugly and poor) and why she married Juvenal Urbino (rich doctor with high social status) despite not really loving him, these two decisions being central to the whole narrative.\nI mentioned that she takes back Florentino when they’re both older, I think this is due to another one of her flaws, in old age she settled with Florentino so she won’t be alone, in a sense, I viewed Florentino as her relationship rebound, or she might have reverted back to her childish ideals of romantic illusion and figured that that was better than staying alone. I feel like this is just the tip of the iceberg in regards to Fermina and I’m sure there was a lot of other character features and flaws I missed.\nThere’s a lot of things I can say about this novel, I loved reading about Florentino and all his escapades, but highly disliked him as a character, which I believe to be a sign of a great writer. It’s easy to write likeable protagonists, but writing compelling anti-heroes I find is a whole different beast.\nThere were a few stylistic choices made by García Márquez which I quite liked: the fact that every single character is always referred to by their full names without fault. It felt like a very polite and educated person telling me this story. I also like how the prose was a little flowery (for me) but never felt like it overstayed its welcome, I think he nailed the balance between poetic descriptions and actually moving things along. The dialogue was also quite unique in that it rarely happened, and that was something I noticed pretty early in the book, but he made it work with great storytelling and prose.\nI think this was a fantastic read, while it might not have changed my life, it is something I can see myself coming back to in the future, it’s the type of story that makes you think and lends itself to lots of debates, which did happen in my case as this was read for the book club I attend. Most went back and forth on their feelings for Florentino, from feeling sorry for him, to then disliking him, then pity, back to hate, so on and so forth.\nRating ⭐⭐⭐⭐☆\n","date":"22 February 2026","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/love-in-the-time-of-cholera/","section":"Posts","summary":"","title":"Love in the Time of Cholera - Gabriel García Márquez","type":"posts"},{"content":"","date":"22 February 2026","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/spanish/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Spanish","type":"tags"},{"content":"Hello 🙂\nI haven’t updated the blog since September of last year, which means I’m due for a big update regarding my 2025 wrap up and the reviews of the books I didn’t create dedicated posts for. I’m not going to lie, I don’t currently feel like writing a whole post for each of the 7 books I’ve read but that I haven’t written reviews for yet, so we’ll kind of do a rapid-fire type of thing here, then we’ll dig into my personal thoughts about my 2025 in regards to books in a different post.\nWith that out of the way, let’s do this:\nLittle Women by Louisa May Alcott This book is a certified classic©, incredibly forward thinking for its time, it brings cozy vibes, and a testament that character focused stories can be great. That being said, I thought it was just OK. I understand the historical impact the book had, and I do really appreciate how it started paving the way for more feminist stories in literature. But I read this in 2025, where the world has changed, and the impact isn’t as big nowadays, so it was harder for me to connect with the story at a more personal level (in addition to my being male, and I also recognize that my life experience is very different from womens’ life experiences).\nThe book also felt very “serialized” to me, there isn’t really a focused, main plot, but each chapter focuses on a different aspect of each of the main characters, which works lovely for the book, but it just isn’t for me. I do think this might be one of the first character driven stories I’ve read, and I’m looking forward to read more of them. All in all, I liked it, I don’t think I’d read it again (maybe if I ever have a daughter I’d read it to her though).\n⭐⭐⭐☆☆\nLas Muertas by Jorge Ibargüengoitia Yes, it’s true, I’m a born and raised Mexican, so when we chose this book for our September read in the book club I go to I was pretty excited. We read it during peak hype, the Netflix series had just released (called “The Dead Girls” in English), Ibargüengoitia is one of the most famous Mexican authors, and is especially known for his dark humor. I really like dark humor, especially when it comes to mocking our own government (which is a very Mexican thing to do, by the way).\nThe book is loosely based on the poquianchis, who were 4 sisters from Jalisco, Mexico, who ran a prostitution ring and where at least 91 took place, and the Guinness World Records called them the “most prolific murder partnership”. Taking such a tragic, serious, and sensitive subject matter and turning it into a dark comedy, mocking our own government (which, again, very Mexican) takes skill, and doing a great job at it, is masterful.\nThis is a short book, it’s fast paced, it’s funny, honestly, just all around a great time. I really really enjoyed my time with the book and I definitely look forward to reading more by Ibargüengoitia.\n⭐⭐⭐⭐☆\nLessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus I was worried about not liking this book, I thought that the main character would be one-dimensional, and an annoying Mary Sue (kind of what I experienced with Project Hail Mary) but if this isn’t a testament to not prejudge books, then I don’t know what is, because I found this book incredibly enjoyable.\nThe book centers around chemist Elizabeth Zott, as she works around the misogynistic and belittling idea of women most people had back in the 1950s, she eventually gets fired from her lab technician job and finds work as the host of a cooking TV show, which becomes a smash hit, to the dismay of the director of the TV station.\nThe book is unapologetically feminist, and it gets its point across without being preachy, while also delivering an interesting and charming narrative. The worries I had at the beginning were non-starters. The protagonist could be viewed as a Mary Sue, but honestly, her superpowers are limited to chemistry and cooking (which the book did a great job of convincing me was a consequence of her being so into chemistry). Was the daughter a little annoying in how prim and perfect she was? Maybe a little, but not enough to distract me from the main storyline, so I’m fine letting that minor gripe go. Elizabeth is also complex, like any human should be, the book focuses a lot on her personal struggles, and highlights her moments of weakness as much as her highlights, this brings a balance I thoroughly enjoyed.\nThere’s also an Apple+ TV mini series based on the book, it’s not a 1:1 adaptation, but honestly? It’s pretty close, and the bigger things that were changed were honestly not even bad, so I’d actually also recommend watching that if it fancies you.\n⭐⭐⭐⭐☆\nMandíbula by Mónica Ojeda Here’s another book club pick, this time for October, where we picked this one expecting spooky vibes. What did we get? A psychological horror novel focused on the twisted “games” of a group of high school girls obsessed with internet creepy pastas, and who make up their own “White God” who they now worship and give offerings to. One of the leaders of this group ends up being kidnapped by one of their teachers who the group had previously bullied, and the plot follows a dual timeline that is woven throughout: before and after the kidnapping.\nI honestly had zero expectations for this book, I’d never read anything by the author, and the synopsis made it sound interesting but I wasn’t sure if the author would pull it off, and she did! I will admit this book isn’t for everyone, opinions on it were very divisive in the book club, one member called it “the worst book she’d ever read”, she just couldn’t connect with the prose or the story.\nOn the other hand, I had a blast. I did feel just the right amount of uneasiness/creepiness during certain chapters, and found the plot to be intriguing and creative. It also didn’t overstay its welcome, it was a fast read, a good conclusion, and one of the better individual chapters I read all year long, which consisted of an essay one of the girls writes to the bullied teacher explaining to her what her belief system is in regards to the White God, and what fear actually is. This felt a lot like the author talking directly to the reader and felt like the true climax of the book. I didn’t expect such a literary section in the book, it took me by surprise in the best way possible.\n⭐⭐⭐⭐☆\nNOS4A2 by Joe Hill I won’t lie to you, I’ve only read one Stephen King book, which wasn’t even a horror book, I read 11/22/63, which I really liked, and I actually nominated Pet Sematary for the book club October pick, which clearly didn’t win (see review above). So given that, I somehow rationalized that I should read a book by King’s son instead. Don’t ask me to explain the logic behind this, it was honestly a decision based on vibes and that’s what I felt like reading.\nI feel like I got catfished by this book, I was expecting a horror story, and got more of a thriller. Don’t get me wrong, I love me a thriller (and this is a good one!), but since I was expecting more horror, it just took me a bit to rearrange my expectations.\nThe story follows Victoria (Vic) McQueen, a woman who can travel “between spaces” so to speak, when riding her bike she can imagine and essentially materialize a bridge that will take her wherever she wants. She uses this power to track lost belongings at first, but it eventually leads her to the house of Charles Manx, a kidnapper who also possesses a similar power and kidnaps children to steal their vitality and turn them into soulless individuals.\nI still have some mixed feelings about this book, more positive than negative, so this review is subject to change, but as of right now: despite not being the exact genre I was expecting, I really like the plot, but I did find it dragged in some places. I think it could have shaved anywhere between 200-300 pages and it would’ve been a much better experience. The beginning in particular I feel like it took a long time to get the story going, I listened to the audiobook and was surprised at how much time passed before we got to the main plot of the book. I guess the idea is to have a big reward for being patient, which might just not be quite my cup of tea.\nAs a thriller, this was really good, there are clear antagonists and trying to figure out what they or the protagonist will do next did keep me wanting more, so if the synopsis seems even remotely interesting to you, give it a shot.\n⭐⭐⭐☆☆\nNote For the purposes of being completely transparent, NOS4A2 was originally 4 stars, but like I said, it was subject to change, as I\u0026rsquo;ve let my feelings and thoughts about this book settle, it\u0026rsquo;s a very firm three stars for me now.\nLa Ridícula Idea de No Volver A Verte by Rosa Montero You guessed it, another book club pick.\nThis is more akin to an essay than an actual novel. The author uses this essay to explore her grief after her husband passed away, and she does so by drawing parallels between her experience and that of Marie Curie. The way Montero mixes stories from Curie’s early life up until her death and all the struggles she faced with her personal experience and things she’s faced in her life are fascinating. She also references letters Curie wrote to her family and also draws from them to explain her feelings.\nThis book felt like it was super cathartic for the author, and I feel it also has the potential to be very cathartic for people currently trying to process grief. I never thought I’d ever read a book like this, much less like it, but I do think that to fully appreciate it you need to have some level of life experience, I’ve never been married, for example, so it was hard for me to connect with the author’s feelings on marriage, but I still found the book interesting and worth reading.\n⭐⭐⭐☆☆\nThe Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka This has got to be among the heaviest hitters, even among classics, right?\nThere’s not much I can say that a billion other people haven’t already, so I’ll keep it short. I had never read anything by Kafka, and I must say: everything I’ve read about this book is true.\nI found the narrative straight-forward at surface level, but absolutely packed with symbolism and a fantastic take on the human condition of how anyone can be viewed as an object, or just a means to an end, even by your own family. There’s a lot packed into a short book. I will definitely come back to it in the future and I’m sure each time I’ll take away something different.\nIf you haven’t, read it.\n⭐⭐⭐⭐☆\n","date":"7 January 2026","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2025-q4-wrap-up/","section":"Posts","summary":"","title":"2025 Q4 Wrap Up","type":"posts"},{"content":"","date":"7 January 2026","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/horror/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Horror","type":"tags"},{"content":"","date":"7 January 2026","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/wrap-up/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Wrap Up","type":"tags"},{"content":"I was 17 when Obama’s first term as president began in 2008. Being the nerdy, Mexican teen I was, I wasn’t really aware of anything regarding politics, either Mexican or otherwise. All I remember from back then was knowing Kevin Rose having an Obama sticker on his laptop I would see whenever I watched Diggnation.\nFast forward to now, I’m still no expert in politics, but I know enough to know that everything in life is politics, or at the very least is affected by them. Since the US is a worldwide leader in many aspects, not to mention the important relationship between the United States and Mexico, I had a go at listening to Obama’s memoir, narrated by the man himself.\nThis book gives us a fantastic look into the mind of President Obama during (most) of his first term in office, with part 2 still being a work in progress as of the day I’m posting this. As I listened to some of the big events he had to deal with, it took me back to that same time in my life and what I was doing back then, events such as the BP oil spill, his winning the nobel peace prize, and the killing of bin Laden.\nI will admit it got a little tedious towards the middle, but I can’t imagine that happening with anyone who really loves politics and the minutae it entails.\nObama himself is an excellent orator, and that comes through in his reading of his own memoir. He has that distinctive cadence to his speech that is very much his, I think the audiobook benefits greatly from having him read his own words directly to us.\nOverall I enjoyed the book, it was definitely out of my comfort zone as a reader, but I don’t regret it at all, I feel I have even gained a better understanding of certain aspects of American politics, and will keep an eye open for the second part when it releases.\nRating ⭐⭐⭐☆☆\n","date":"15 September 2025","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/a-promised-land/","section":"Posts","summary":"","title":"A Promised Land - Barack Obama","type":"posts"},{"content":"","date":"15 September 2025","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/memoir/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Memoir","type":"tags"},{"content":"","date":"15 September 2025","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/non-fiction/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Non Fiction","type":"tags"},{"content":"In a world filled with books where prose is treated almost like an afterthought, Lolita manages to demonstrate why that shouldn’t be the case, even with the horrifying subject matter.\nLolita follows the tale of “Humbert Humbert” – pseudonym he gives himself for anonymity, and his predatory relationship with Dolores “Lolita” Haze. From the very beginning, Humbert establishes himself as a pedophile, and he begins telling us of the story of how he met Lolita, her mother, and all the horrible actions he took to fulfill his fantasies.\nThe subject matter in the book is obviously very delicate, and a hard read, definitely not for everyone. But if you can get past that, this might be the most beautifully written book I’ve ever read (and can’t see myself reading one that surpasses it for a while), the prose itself is as much a character in the book as any other. The way you can almost open the book to any random page and think you’re reading a poetry book is astounding. I found myself having to re-read certain passages because I was too absorbed in the language to actually process what was actually being said, which was something completely in contrast to the words being presented to the reader.\nThe main themes throughout the book – besides the obvious, are also difficult subjects to tackle: unfair power dynamics, the loss of innocence and youth, obsession, desire, and control. Humbert seeks to control every single aspect of Lolita’s life in order to fulfill his own selfish desires. He mixes beautiful language to describe his “love” for her in an attempt to convince the reader to sympathize with him, almost treating the prose itself as a weapon, but in the end, his actions are irredeemable in my opinion. That’s where the difficulty of talking about this book lies. The subject matter is an incredibly horrifying, sensitive, subject, but it’s written in such a beautiful way that it’s hard not to want to keep going.\nTowards the end of the book, there’s a scene where the power dynamics reverse between Lolita and Humbert, which made me, for just a second, see a new side of him that had been absent until that point. For the first time, he seemed to show a bit of humanity, which he had been sorely lacking for the whole novel. Acknowledging the damage he did and realizing that he had no one else to blame but himself, not only for his own situation, but the situation that Lolita ended up in as well. It all circled back to him, his selfish desires and actions, that led them to that point. Make no mistake, I know Humbert is an unreliable narrator, and I don’t pretend to assume that he actually felt sorry for any of it, but for just a couple of pages, he showed some humanity, and being human is as great as it is sorrowful, the highest highs are only that impactful because there were such low lows that we can compare them to, and I can sympathize experiencing one of those low points.\nThe subject matter is hard to get past for some people, and I get that, this book won’t be for you. But if you can get past that, you will be in for a ride unlike anything you’ve probably experienced before, being in the mind of a most heinous person, not wanting to keep going, but not being able to stop either.\nRating ⭐⭐⭐⭐☆\n","date":"10 August 2025","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/lolita/","section":"Posts","summary":"","title":"Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov","type":"posts"},{"content":"We all made tantrums and got upset at our parents \u0026amp; siblings for the dumbest things when we were kids, right? And it’s ok, because deep down they’re still our family and we learn to accept and love our family for who they are, knowing that at the end of the day, they’re the only ones who really have our backs, support us, and love us unconditionally.\nWell, in “Educated” – Tara Westover tells us her story, and how it doesn’t fit the mold most of us grew up with. This book is equal parts horrifying, inspiring, stressful, and hopeful. Westover’s childhood was marked by her survivalist parents, always preparing for an upcoming apocalypse (or the government raiding their home), they didn’t believe in the government, much less on relying on public services. That means no medicine, much less hospitals or even doctors. Whenever Westover or any other member of her family got sick or hurt, they’d be tended to by her mother, a midwife who also dove into herbal medicine.\nThe book continues the story of the horrible things Westover lived through, violent, abusive siblings and equally abusive parents (though more psychological abuse rather than physical). All the way to her decision to quit that life and get a formal education by applying to college at BYU, and the path she took that eventually led to her earning a PhD from the University of Cambridge.\nI come from a family of educators, so the subject matter of the book immediately appealed to me. I’ve always been very pro-education, and see ignorance as an opportunity to learn more rather than as a negative trait to have. But I wasn’t ready for the first half of this book, it honestly read more like a horror story than a memoir. It’s hard to believe the hardships Westover went through in her life and still end up a better person, free from the shackles her family put her in for so many years.\nThen the second half hits us with her story of her struggles with going to an actual school, and how she had to learn how to learn, I found it truly fascinating how resilient Westover is and how no matter how much she herself doubted she was able to move forward, she constantly did, it made my problems feel like child’s play.\nThere’s not much I can say that others haven’t said already, I really liked it, it is a hard read, abuse is not and easy subject matter to read, much less to have lived it and write about it for everyone to learn about. At the end of the day, this is a story about a woman who against all odds, managed to take the hardest road before her – letting go of her past (and family) for a better life, for her, and, as is usually the case, those hard roads are usually the best decisions we can make.\nRating ⭐⭐⭐⭐☆\n","date":"8 August 2025","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/educated/","section":"Posts","summary":"","title":"Educated - Tara Westover","type":"posts"},{"content":"It’s August, and I’ve learned two very important things this year:\nWe’re way past the halfway mark of the year (at least for these kinds of posts) Very late is better than never So with that out of the way let me tell you something about myself – I love books, and, as an engineer, I love numbers and stats, which means I LOVE numbers and stats about books, especially books I’ve read. For this purpose, I’ve kept a spreadsheet for the past year or so of every book I’ve read, in case Goodreads, Storygraph, Fable, or whatever other bookish social media ever gets puts down, or we all decide to switch to a different platform, I’ve still got my handy dandy, local (ish, it’s a Google sheets spreadsheet, which I can download at any time, so I’ll count it as “local”), reading spreadsheet, which I completely own. Pretty much the same reason I started this blog to post my reviews, it’s mine, and I control what I can post on here.\nThe spreadsheet itself wasn’t made by me, it was made by a lovely user on Reddit with the handle Dazrin, if you’d like a copy of this spreadsheet, you can create a copy by visiting this link (not I make to guarantees that the link will still be valid in the future), just follow the instructions there and you can start using it to your heart’s content. At a glance, it’s a very complete, but simple, tool. It has worksheets to keep track of your TBR, Books you’ve read and are currently reading, complete with ratings, comments, tags (or codes, as the spreadsheet calls them), and even a basic “Stats” worksheet as well. The coolest thing about the spreadsheet, however, is actually a second spreadsheet, which is all about detailed stats taken from the first one.\nWith that in mind, let’s take a look, shall we?\nSimple Stats Not shown, more stats to the right of the charts displaying how much I’ve spent on books this year (and total overall). This is just the “simple stats” worksheet, but let’s break it down. At the top we can see today’s date, in which I now realize we’re 2 days into August, truly, I’m an expert in procrastinating these posts. More interesting, however, is right below it we can see a month-by-month breakdown of my reading this year (so far) (up to June, because, you know, mid year review and all that ¯_(ツ)_/¯). I do have to point out that the “Avg Rating” column is kind of weird, it takes into account the date started, not finished, so for January, my average rating for books I started in January (regardless of when I finished them) was a 3, the rest of the columns read as you would expect.\nThe “projected” column is also interesting, it calculates how many books you’ll likely read by the end of the year if you keep up your current reading pace across the whole year, naturally, the more books you finish, the more you’ll be predicted to read by year’s end. You might notice there’s no data for July or August, that’s because I removed that info since that just created noise for the stats regarding the first half of the year (but if you’re curious it projects I’ll read 26 books this year now). the blue highlighted cell simply highlights the current month.\nI like audiobooks, but I haven’t listened to many of them, so I’ve been diving into them a little more in the past few months, it’s an easy thing to listen to while driving, or doing chores around the house, and it’s like a “free” extra book or 2 at the end of the month, highly recommended. What I don’t understand however, is how some people lift weights at the gym while listening to audiobooks. Listen, man, I’m either counting my reps, or paying attention to what I’m listening to, I don’t know if it’s because I’m a guy, but I just can’t do both, if you can, then just let me express how jealous I am of you, and I wish I could do that.\nThe charts on the right display a ton of information that actually pops up when you mouse over them, but the gist of it is it charts your current, actual reading vs your reading goal (which I just set to 12 books a year), and also vs your projected number of books read.\nI’d also like to point out my average rating so far this year is a 3.3, which, if I’m honest, sounds pretty good to me.\nNow, let’s check out some other graphs that piqued my interest.\nAuthors Read, Sorted Alphabetically, by Number of Books Read, and by Number of Pages Read Tip: Click on any image in this post to view it in full size. Unsurprisingly, the author I’ve read the most is Terry Pratchett, with 6 books so far (love me some Discworld), followed by Matt Dinniman (ditto for Dungeon Crawler Carl). Then things get into subjective territory, I read Dante’s Divine Comedy this year as part of the book club I’m a part of in my city, we read all 3 of Inferno, Purgatory, and Paradise. I counted it all as one book, even though technically it’s 3. But it’s considered one single, big work overall? I don’t know, I just decided to treat it all as one, if I were to switch it to 3 then my boy Dante would be tied for second for most read author so far (and since I started tracking using this spreadsheet, I haven’t felt like importing all my Goodreads history here, but I could, I just haven’t felt a real need for it yet).\nPages read tells a similar story, same top 2, but at 3rd is the master of big tomes himself, Stephen King, whose book I read last year was 11/22/63. I expect this final column to change the most as I dive into some of the lengthier book series I have on my TBR in the coming months (Malazan, Wheel of Time, maybe re-read A Song of Ice and Fire?)\nSeries Stats All I have to say here is that this just reiterates my love for Discworld and Dungeon Crawler Carl. Also, we’ll talk about Nevernight in a little bit.\nBook Length Stats There’s a more in-depth version of this chart available, with more granular data, but for now I think this is good enough. I think most bookish people prefer books in the 300-500 page range. Huge tomes are awesome, but they also take a while to get through, so it makes sense I’ve read fewer of those, again, I have some certified big boys™ on my TBR for the upcoming months, so I do expect to have at least 1 entry in the “\u0026gt; 1000 pgs” section by the end of the year (but don’t hold me to that).\nLongest Books The yellow cells indicate books from this year, as I’m writing this post, I’m currently reading Dune, which will overtake The Divine Comedy for the #1 spot in longest pages, but as of this point, Dante’s taking that prize. For the audiobook section, I don’t have enough audiobook data to fill out that chart completely, that’s why only the first few have info on the “Length” column. Last year the only book I listened to was 11/22/63, a massive 30 hour undertaking (worth it, by the way), this year I’ve been a little more tame in that regard, and both I’m Glad My Mom Died and Everyone In My Family Has Killed Someone were really good, to be honest.\nGenres Read One of my big reading goals for 2025 was to read more genres instead of being just a Fantasy reader, and I think I’ve done a pretty good job. I think Fantasy will always be my favorite, but I have discovered something about myself:\nI also LOVE literary fiction (who would’ve guessed?) Turns out I really really like reading thrillers as well For the first point, I always saw literary fiction as this high-brow, super complex writing that was incredibly hard to both read and understand. Don’t get me wrong, there are some books like that, but there are also so many other books that are just beautifully written, that tackle incredibly complex themes in just the most incredible, literary (har har) way. I really love literary fiction now.\nFor the second, this was self-imposed, I must admit. I always thought thrillers worked best on a screen, a TV show, a movie, etc. I always just felt that way, despite not reading that many thrillers. Well I’m happy to say I’ve proven myself wrong on that and have found myself really enjoying more than a couple of thrillers this year.\nBook Formats Read I won’t lie, I’m an e-reader kind of guy. Not because I think it’s better than physical, because it’s not, but because you just can’t beat how practical it is. Reading gigantic books on this lightweight device, whose charge lasts weeks, and is easy on the eyes is truly hard to beat. The big downside of the kindle is it’s very awkward and slow to write notes in books, but the new Kobo Libra Colour with its shiny pen is tempting me to try that out and see if it addresses that issue for me.\nAnyway, There’s not much else to say here, other than I think it’s an interesting graph to look at\nAuthor Gender This is actually kind of surprising to me, I thought I’d read around 25% female authors, so it being at 36 is a welcome surprise. I’d like to up the number of books written by female authors (or who identify as women), so that’s a good goal to have by the end of the year (which, I must say, I think I’ve been doing a decent job at in July and August.\nThat’s it for the charts and stats, but trust me, there’s so many more in the spreadsheet I mentioned, literally over 60 different worksheets worth of stats: There’s 61 in total, but saying “over 60” just sounds cooler. I can share a link to all of them if any are interested, or you can fill out your own copy and share it, I’d love to see your stats!\nWorst Read So Far in 2025 There’s not much I can tell you about Nevernight by Jay Kristoff that hasn’t been said in the Goodreads review section. I’m one of the few that didn’t really like it. Honestly, I feel that if I had read it when I was 15-20, I would’ve loved it. But now in my early 30s, it just doesn’t click for me. Also, here are a few of my favorite reviews addressing the prose used throughout. Honestly, a book about assassin school sounds freaking awesome, it’s a shame the execution didn’t land for me.\nAll in all, I think this book veers very strongly to a YA audience while not being a YA book, so it missed the mark for me. But hey, if that sounds like something that’s right up your alley, please go ahead and enjoy what I didn’t.\nBest Read So Far in 2025 Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte EASILY takes this one. The gothic setting, the themes of obsession and revenge, a big, complex story that takes place completely in a setting that is made up of exactly two houses, is incredible. This fell juuuuust shy of a 5 star book for me, because navigating who’s who in the beginning is kind of confusing and the subject matter took me a while to really “click” for me, and it’s pretty deep with its themes of revenge and abuse which did leave me feeling uneasy. This is one where I’m really interested in seeing if a re-read will alter my score on it, but so far, this has been the best book I’ve read so far.\nMost Surprising Read So Far in 2025 La Muy Catastrófica Visita al Zoo, Spanish for “The Very Catastrophic Zoo Visit”, is a middle grade book by author Joel Dicker, who’s more well known for writing adult thriller novels. He wanted to write a book that would “be enjoyed by anyone between the ages of 7 and 120”, and you know what? He did it. The book is about a special needs school that gets flooded, and the 6 or so kids who attend that school make it their life’s purpose to find out who was the mastermind behind such a heinous crime. This book knows exactly what it is, it doesn’t try to pretend it’s some high-brow, complicated story with beautiful prose. It’s pure fun in the most innocent way possible. I knew next to nothing when we read this at the book club, and I left with a great book I’ll recommend to friends and family for a while to come. Full disclaimer, I believe the original was written in French, I read the Spanish translation (Spanish is my native language), but I haven’t seen and English translation for sale yet. If you can read French or Spanish, definitely pick this one up, you won’t be disappointed.\nConclusion So far 2025 is shaping up to be a pretty good year for me, bookishly speaking, at least. I’m hoping to read at least 25 books by the end of the year, which I’m well on my way to completing, so we’ll see how all this data looks like at the end of the year.\n","date":"3 August 2025","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2025-mid-year-wrap-up/","section":"Posts","summary":"","title":"2025 Mid-Year Wrap-Up","type":"posts"},{"content":"","date":"1 August 2025","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/series/dungeon-crawler-carl/","section":"Series","summary":"","title":"Dungeon Crawler Carl","type":"series"},{"content":"","date":"1 August 2025","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/fantasy/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Fantasy","type":"tags"},{"content":"","date":"1 August 2025","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/litrpg/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Litrpg","type":"tags"},{"content":"","date":"1 August 2025","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/series/","section":"Series","summary":"","title":"Series","type":"series"},{"content":"I can very confidently say this is the best book centered around trains I\u0026rsquo;ve ever read. This is also the only book centered around trains I\u0026rsquo;ve ever read.\nThe third book in Matt Dinniman\u0026rsquo;s \u0026lsquo;Dungeon Crawler Carl\u0026rsquo; LitRPG saga sees Carl, Donut, Mongo, and new party member Katia brave the 4th floor of the crawl, which is made up of a very confusing maze of train tracks.\nI don\u0026rsquo;t really have much to say about this — at this point you\u0026rsquo;re either really into the series or not I think. It\u0026rsquo;s still the same winning formula of LitRPG/video game elements mixed with humor, and a plot which has started to become more mature as an overall story, in my opinion.\nIn a vacuum, this book would probably be a 4 star read for me, but books in a series are kind of trickier to rate, wouldn\u0026rsquo;t you say? It\u0026rsquo;s hard not to compare them with other entries of the same series, so with that in mind, as a DCC book, it\u0026rsquo;s a 3 star read for me (and that\u0026rsquo;s the rating I\u0026rsquo;ll be standing on). It\u0026rsquo;s really a good book with one big caveat in my opinion. The very beginning of the book, even before the novel properly begins, is essentially a note from the author saying that we shouldn\u0026rsquo;t worry about not understanding how the train tracks and stations work and to just go along for the ride.\nBut here\u0026rsquo;s the thing — I can\u0026rsquo;t just ignore it. I don\u0026rsquo;t know about you, but when I read, it\u0026rsquo;s like a movie is playing in real time in my head. I imagine whatever I\u0026rsquo;m reading, vividly, in my mind. That means I can\u0026rsquo;t \u0026ldquo;just go along for the ride\u0026rdquo; in this case. I definitely enjoyed the book, but I was confused for a fair bit of it, which is something I wasn\u0026rsquo;t super stoked about while reading. Maybe in a re-read I\u0026rsquo;ll get a better hang of it.\nAnyway, I still love the series, and like I said — if you\u0026rsquo;ve already read up to this book, there\u0026rsquo;s no point in me recommending it or not to you. Unless you haven\u0026rsquo;t read any of the books in the series yet, in which case: why are you reading a review for the 3rd book? Go read from the beginning and enjoy it, it\u0026rsquo;s just good ol\u0026rsquo; fun all around.\nRating ⭐⭐⭐☆☆\n","date":"1 August 2025","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/the-dungeon-anarchists-cookbook/","section":"Posts","summary":"","title":"The Dungeon Anarchist's Cookbook - Matt Dinniman","type":"posts"},{"content":"","date":"31 July 2025","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/arc/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Arc","type":"tags"},{"content":"You know that cartoon trope with children dressing up as adults and it\u0026rsquo;s obvious to everyone that they\u0026rsquo;re children, but the kids themselves think they\u0026rsquo;re so slick? That’s what Lexie Janson\u0026rsquo;s debut novel feels like.\nThe book follows the story of Mayu (royalty), Aaron (army general, also Mayu’s protector/childhood friend), and Enzo (assassin, also Mayu’s protector), as they must face the many dangers that come their way, political, physical, and magical.\nBeing the first book in a new fantasy series, the world building is a big focus here and it’s pretty solid, I found the multiple religions, cultures, and traditions that the people in the kingdoms of Logarain and Thurait to be well thought out. The story itself is also interesting and engaging, with a good flow that made it easy to jump into and go along for the ride.\nThat being said, there were a couple of things that just weren’t for me – while there is magic in this world, nothing about it is explained, we’re just told when magic is being used, but have no idea on how it works. Being a huge fan of hard magic systems this was kind of off-putting, but since the book does a good job of not making such a big deal of magic users, I accepted it as part of the narrative.\nThat brings me to my next point, there’s a lot of telling instead of showing, we have a lot of dialogue focusing on explaining to us what is going on through dialogue, it kind of felt like being in a classroom at times because of the amount of exposition going on. This might be one of my biggest gripes about the book, it felt like it was looking down on me sometimes, with all these info dumps, almost like it\u0026rsquo;s telling me \u0026ldquo;didn\u0026rsquo;t you know?\u0026rdquo;. Same thing with all the things it doesn\u0026rsquo;t outright tell us, like how the magic system works. It feels like it\u0026rsquo;s keeping this great, big secret that only makes me wonder if the payoff will be as big as the narrative makes it out to be.\nI also believe the book has a hard time in having a consistent tone throughout. The world building is rich and makes you feel in your typical high fantasy™ setting we all know and love, only for the dialogue to be more modern in tone and style, which really took me out of my immersion more than once. There was also a lot of whispering, like, a lot, to the point where it felt a little unnecessary at times.\nNow let\u0026rsquo;s talk romance. A lot is unexplained regarding the romance, characters constantly remind us how much they love each other, but we don’t know why, we just have to take their word for it right from the get-go, which makes connecting with this narrative hard, since there’s a lot of trust that the reader will just accept these intense emotions from the characters with no evidence or anything to show for it.\nI do see the potential this series has. For all the things I’ve been nit-picky about, the world-building was solid, the story entertaining without feeling clichéd, and the unanswered questions did leave me wanting to know more. With just some small tweaks to the dialogue and a little less exposition, this series would really make huge jumps in the right direction.\nUltimately, I think the book was just OK, it\u0026rsquo;s not really my cup of tea, but if you’re looking for a darker narrative that acts as a bridge between YA and adult fantasy, I think you’ll have a great time with it.\nThanks to NetGalley and Koehler Books for the ARC in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.\nRating ⭐⭐☆☆☆\n","date":"31 July 2025","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/crown-of-shadows/","section":"Posts","summary":"","title":"Crown of Shadows - Lexie Janson","type":"posts"},{"content":"","date":"22 July 2025","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/discworld/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Discworld","type":"tags"},{"content":"","date":"22 July 2025","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/series/discworld---witches/","section":"Series","summary":"","title":"Discworld - Witches","type":"series"},{"content":"I’ve watched plenty of whodunnits in movies \u0026amp; TV, but I don’t think I’ve ever really read many books on the subject, so this year I decided to change that, and this makes my second book of that genre this year (although I’ve already read 3 by the time I’m writing this review), and this has been my favorite so far. ‘Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone’ is the first book I’ve read by Australian author Benjamin Stevenson, and it delivers.\nThe story follow Ernest “Ern” Cunningham, as he tells the story of a family reunion in a snowy mountain lodge in Australi. Like any family reunion, there’s drama and internal conflicts, which acts as one of the main themes throughout the book. Oh and there’s some killing as well, which just helps to increase the family tension. Throughout the story, Ern tells us more details and backstory about the members of his family and how it is that they each killed someone. Like any good whodunnit, the focus on the story revolves around solving the mystery behind the murder and figuring out what Ern and his family have to do with everything going on around them.\nI must say I really enjoyed this one, I felt like this is a book that doesn’t take itself too seriously, and when done well, which in this case it is, I really enjoy it. There’s a lot of 4th wall breaking right from the beginning, with Ern assuring the reader that he promises to tell the truth (or what he believed to be the truth at the time of the events taking place he’s talking about), and even tells us in what chapters murder happen in the very first chapter (so thoughtful). The narrative also continually switches between past and present so we learn more about each member of Ern’s family (and Ern himself) as we start uncovering more and more of the mystery.\nI\u0026rsquo;d say the book revolves around the family dynamics and the murder mystery is actually secondary to this, and I think the book is better for it. No family is perfect, and I think the book did a good job of having somewhat realistic family dynamics. One of the other themes is that of an unreliable narrator, but one you know is unreliable and yet you still like. Ern tries so hard to convince us that he’s impartial and honest that all it does is make us doubt his every word, but still he manages to come across as at least an ok person, at least relatively speaking when compared to the rest of his family and he\u0026rsquo;s just a tiny bit more moral than them as well. You sort of root for him, which I think is an achievement. Throughout the story, we learn about pretty much every member of Ern’s family in the mountains, and while not all of them are very deep characters, they do all have a distinct voice, they have personality, and they all get a chance to have the spotlight in the story.\nI feel like with the way the book is structured, with the constant changing between past and present, it would actually work pretty well as a TV show or a movie. I don’t know if the author had that in the back of his mind while writing this or not, but I do think a screen adaptation would work pretty well.\nOne aspect the book did fall short for me was that they were just a couple too many characters. Ern’s family is large, and it was kind of hard keeping track of everyone in the beginning, especially with the mystery and the changing timelines going on at the same time, once I had more time to get to know the different characters the story had a better flow for me, but from time to time I still had to look up who was who, although that might have just been a side effect of listening to the audiobook instead of reading a physical copy (I have been known to lose my place in audiobooks with even the smallest of distractions).\nAnother thing I wasn’t a huge fan of was the ending, it felt like the final reveal was just not super convincing for me. This might 100% be a ‘me’ problem, but the big explanation at the end just didn’t do it for me, it makes sense, don’t get me wrong, but I felt like it was way out of left field and that took me out of the story somewhat.\nOther than that, I really liked the book’s pacing, it kept things moving along, and it did enough to make me believe all the information that was presented was relevant or plausible, even if they inevitably ended up being red herrings. Similarly, I think the plot itself worked as a very fun murder mystery akin to ‘Knives Out’, maybe not as funny, but the Australian humor does hit the spot pretty well for me.\nI did listen to the audiobook for this, I had no idea the book was set in Australia, so when the narrator’s accent hit me it threw me for an unexpected, but welcome loop. I quite enjoyed the different voices the narrator used for each character, and, while I found it kind of hard to keep track of who was who, props to the narrator for giving each character a distinct voice. Ern’s personality really came through with his performance which honestly is probably what bumps the audiobook from a 3 star experience to a 4 star experience for me.\nIf you liked ‘Knives Out’ but wish it were more Aussie and less American, I think this book is worth checking out, it bring the same kind of fun, not-quite-so-serious murder mystery.\nRating ⭐⭐⭐⭐☆\n","date":"22 July 2025","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/everyone-in-my-family-has-killed-someone/","section":"Posts","summary":"","title":"Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone - Benjamin Stevenson","type":"posts"},{"content":"Hercule Poirot returns to investigate the murder of a tween girl, Joyce Reynolds, who is drowned in a bucket of water used to bobble for apples. This marks the beginning of this story that includes all the twists and turns you’d expect from a murder mystery. I haven’t read that many books of this genre, so I’ve been making an effort to read more of them this year, this being the third I read, and honestly, it might be the weakest (not to say I didn’t like it, though!). I feel like the story tried too hard to give/present red herrings to the reader, and, while I personally didn’t figure out who the murderer was until the very end, I was kind of close, and can actually see how others might have guessed it from pretty early on. This is my first Agatha Christie read, and from other reviews I’ve read it seems that this might be one of her weaker novels. If that’s the case, then I’m all in on her books, because I did like this quite a bit, so if it only gets better from here, sign me up.\nThe book is super British, which might or might not work for you. It personally works for me, other than that, I really liked Christie’s plot work and the mystery in general and how it was handled. I definitely don’t think it was anything outstanding, but for what it is, it is a fun page turner, which is honestly all I look for in these types of books.\nI think this is one of those books where even if you’re the slightest bit interested in it, just give it a chance, after a few chapters you’ll either be hooked and keep going, or you won’t and you’ll drop it, you either like it or you don’t. Don’t expect the greatest mystery in the history of mankind, but a fun page turner and I think you’ll be fine.\nRating ⭐⭐⭐☆☆\n","date":"22 July 2025","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/hallowe-en-party/","section":"Posts","summary":"","title":"Hallowe'en Party - Agatha Christie","type":"posts"},{"content":"","date":"22 July 2025","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/mystery/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Mystery","type":"tags"},{"content":"","date":"22 July 2025","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/thriller/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Thriller","type":"tags"},{"content":"My quest to read all the Discworld novels in chronological order (and collecting the sick Collector’s Library editions) continues as we now dive into the 6th novel overall – and 2nd in the Witches’ books, which happens to parody some of Shakespeare\u0026rsquo;s works, mainly MacBeth.\nWyrd Sisters by Terry Pratchett manages to combine Shakespeare and the over-the-top setting of Discworld in a single, fun, loud story centered around the Lancre witch coven. The plot manages to be a satire of Macbeth, King Lear, and other Shakespeare classics while managing to be its own separate story with its own intricacies and personality that sets it apart enough that even if you haven’t read the material it’s based on (like me), you’ll still enjoy it. I’ve been reading the Discworld novels in chronological release order (to the chagrin of most people on the internet), but with this book I feel like Terry Pratchett really started hitting his stride. My enjoyment of this book compared to the previous entry in the Discworld (Sourcery) and even compared to the first Witches book (Equal Rites) is on a different level. Pratchett manages to have a interesting story while keeping the jokes rolling.\nThe character work on this book is great, Granny Weatherwax is much more fleshed out compared to the previous Witches book, and the addition of Nanny Ogg and Magrat as the “Wyrd Sisters” from Macbeth make for some great interactions between them. Despite it being a very on the nose satire/parody of Shakespeare’s work, this is still a great story that is able to stand on its own.\nThis is the first Discworld I’ve read where the comedy really worked for me, this definitely upped my enjoyment a ton. Despite there being humor and tons of jokes all throughout the book it never felt like it was annoying or too “in your face”, it somehow always felt like a literary device to even help the plot. In the interest of full disclosure, since I’ve not read the original material the book satirizes, I do feel like there were references I didn’t get due to my limited knowledge on the topic. I will definitely add Shakespeare to my TBR and do a re-read of this after having more context, I’m sure it’ll only improve my already great experience.\nThe story itself is solid, you’d even say it’s tried and true since it’s mostly based on Macbeth, but it does feel overtly simple at times, which is not necessarily a bad thing, but it did make certain sections feel a little slow for me. I understand it can’t be all full throttle 100% of the time, and this is a minor nitpick, but it is important for me to lay it all out there with my honest opinion and experience.\nFinally, the character work is by far my favorite part of the novel, the witches, like I mentioned, are fantastic: witty, funny, and full of sass. But even other characters like the king, the new duke and his wife, the theater troupe, they all have great personalities that make for some great scenes that were so much fun to read.\nI think this works as a really good starting point for Discworld, even though it’s Granny’s second appearance as a main character, she has so much more personality this go around and there aren’t any reference to the previous book anyway. If you’re looking for a good fun time filled with humor, this is it.\nRating ⭐⭐⭐⭐☆\n","date":"22 July 2025","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/wyrd-sisters/","section":"Posts","summary":"","title":"Wyrd Sisters - Tery Pratchett","type":"posts"},{"content":"","date":"20 July 2025","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/contemporary/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Contemporary","type":"tags"},{"content":"","date":"20 July 2025","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/series/discworld---unseen-university/","section":"Series","summary":"","title":"Discworld - Unseen University","type":"series"},{"content":"How to Stop Time is the story of Tom Hazard, a man in his 400’s but that physically looks 40. The book moves back and forth between specific events in Tom’s past that marked special events in his life, such as meeting and saying goodbye to loved ones, or how he met certain famous historical figures, and then going forward to the present. The “present” chapters many times serve as a sort of prelude or introduction to what the next “past” chapter will be about. The plot is very basic, Tom is trying to find his long-lost daughter, Marion, who has the same slow-aging condition he has. All while he’s been changing identities and traveling all over the world with the help of Hendrichs, another long-living human, who heads a society called “The Albatross Society” (whose members are called “albas”), which serves to help anyone “afflicted” with slow aging. There is a little bit of romance sprinkled in but honestly it just felt like a quick side-note overall.\nAs the story progresses, Tom comes to terms with what he wants in life and what it even means to be alive, and must face the consequences of taking charge of his own life again. Themes and Character Notes\nThe book’s central theme is that of identity, Tom is continually made to start a new life every 8 years, since the society deems that is the maximum amount of years an alba can stay in one place before starting to draw unwanted attention, putting them at risk to be found and putting themselves in danger. The book also tends towards the philosophical, it has many good quotes and passages that would resonate with many people regarding life, identity, and how to live in the present. That being said, I also felt that the book served more as a device to present these philosophical ideas instead of them being a result of the plot. This also lead to the plot feeling very thin and sometimes as a secondary priority, while the philosophical musings took center stage.\nThis was an entertaining read with an actually interesting premise, which makes its shortcomings hit harder for me. It’s also a pretty quick and easy read, despite the philosophical leanings. I would have really loved the plot to be more fleshed out, the climax at the end had an outcome that felt very convenient, and everything just happened so, so fast. I didn’t really have time to even feel any real tension about what was going on. This is one of those cases where the ending is satisfying, but the way we got to that ending left me wanting more, but I’d still take that over a bad ending any day of the week.\nThe romance in the “present” timeline also didn’t really land for me, in reality all we get is 2 or 3 interactions between the couple, which includes them meeting, developing a relationship, then having a fallout and making up, and then fast forward to their happy ending. It’s just not enough for me to care about their relationship, especially when one of them is over 400 years old and those interactions are not even blimps in his lifetime.\nThe book overall feels like a palate cleanser, it’s ok, but nothing to write home about, and none of my issues with it are so big that I would say the book fails in what it’s trying to achieve, or even to say it’s not worth reading or that it’s bad, but I expected something deeper, more fleshed out. I liked it, enjoyed it even, but didn’t love it. I also acknowledge that some of my criticisms are entirely subjective and anyone reading this review is most definitely welcome to disagree with me.\nIf philosophical musings about memory, time, and life, with some romance sprinkled throughout, is something that might peak your interest, definitely pick this up, with the caveat that it only touches on those themes at a superficial level, it doesn’t really dive all that deep into any of them.\nRating ⭐⭐⭐☆☆\n","date":"20 July 2025","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/how-to-stop-time/","section":"Posts","summary":"","title":"How to Stop Time - Matt Haig","type":"posts"},{"content":"In this memoir, Jennette McCurdy talks about her early childhood, how she got her start with her acting career, and how her mother was the main controlling force behind every decision in her life. The book continues until McCurdy’s adulthood, her mother’s death, and the consequences and fallout of her personal relationships after her mother\u0026rsquo;s passing. The book is very raw and personal. I listened to the audiobook, narrated by the author, and you can tell it’s her own voice telling all of these stories. She even gets choked up at certain points, which emphasizes the impact these events had on her life.\nThe author touches on some heavy subjects throughout the book, the abuse she suffered from her mother, her experiences with eating disorders, and alcoholism. It’s a deep dive into the world of child actors and how our parents can sometimes be the source of trauma or emotional scarring we can carry into adulthood. I appreciate how open the author was in this book, it’s not easy to talk about many of the things she touches on, it\u0026rsquo;s a very eye-opening experience to see the world from her perspective. The writing style helped bring forward the idea that it really is McCurdy’s words we’re reading/listening to, and not some ghostwriter, it reads like a friend talking to you about her life, or how I feel some therapists would feel during a session with a patient.\nI knew next to nothing about the author other than she appeared on iCarly in Nickelodeon, which I never really watched as a kid. Nevertheless, I found this to be a fascinating and eye-opening read. if you are sensitive to topics such as child abuse, eating disorders, and alcoholism, you may want to approach this book with caution, if, however, you want to take a deep dive into the world of child actors in Hollywood and the effect that childhood trauma can have well into adulthood, this would be a great book for you.\nRating ⭐⭐⭐☆☆\n","date":"20 July 2025","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/im-glad-my-mom-died/","section":"Posts","summary":"","title":"I'm Glad My Mom Died - Jennette McCurdy","type":"posts"},{"content":"Project Hail Mary tell us the story of Doctor Ryland Grace, PhD, a middle school science teacher who left academia because the science world called one of his published papers dumb, when suddenly, the Sun becomes little less bright. This leads to discovering that the Sun dimming will cause an ice age that will completely erradicate most, if not all, life on Earth. As luck would have it, Dr. Grace is tasked with the impossible, to study the single-celled organisms that are causing the Sun to become dimmer (called ‘astrophage’), by traveling light years away to a star that apparently isn’t affected by these organisms. The book moves back and forth in time, with the present being Dr. Grace aboard the ship (called Hail Mary) travelling to the target star to study it (called Tau Ceti), and the past being the backstory of how this all began leading up to how he ended up aboard the ship. After arriving, Grace discovers we are not alone in the universe, but most importantly, he is not alone studying Tau Ceti. He meets his soon to be BFF, an alien that looks like a giant spider with a body made up of a huge rock/boulder, who he affectionately names “Rocky”, and who just so happens to be studying Tau Ceti for the same reasons as Grace. After lots of Science, they discover a different organism that acts as predator to astrophage (which they call taumeoba), giving hope to both their planets facing extinction by astrophage.\nI must say I liked the book, but I didn’t love it, it felt like for every highlight within the book, there’s an equally annoying aspect of it that just doesn’t let me get fully invested in the story and characters to love the book. Part of this is definitely in part because I had such high expectations from the book, and the other part because I wasn’t expecting it to be so similar to ‘The Martian’, so it might just be completely my fault it felt short.\nThe book follows a very similar structure to ‘The Martian’: problem arises -\u0026gt; panic (mixed with humor) -\u0026gt; try to fix it -\u0026gt; possibly fail (add more humor) -\u0026gt; try again -\u0026gt; fix it -\u0026gt; repeat. This by itself doesn’t really bother me, what bothered me was that Grace was skilled and knowledgeable enough to know how to do anything and everything he needed, he studied molecular biology, but he’s also incredibly adept at math, physics, astronomy, music, even coding! Truly one of the greatest minds of his generation, despite the book telling us he was just Earth’s last resort and not the first option.\nBy far the best character is Rocky, who at first only communicates via sound, but eventually shows some personality, which is great, because a lot of the other characters really fell short for me, especially during the ‘past’ sections. Rocky was a little sassy at times, which I identified with, because I feel I would have been worse about it if I were stuck with Grace for so long. the characterization/creativity of Rocky’s species is something I really enjoyed and felt fun to learn more about them.\nI really felt most of the characters to be really shallow and without any real discernible identity, the scientists only cared about science, the mission director only cared about the mission, there was no room for depth or growth.\nI read ‘The Martian’ around 10-ish years ago, and it quickly became one of my favorite books I’d read in a really, really, long time. So much so, that I held off on reading ‘Project Hail Mary’ for fear it wouldn’t meet my expectations – it didn’t. I did like this book, but in many ways it just felt like ‘The Martian 2.0’, and I worry that Andy Weir can only write about lonely sarcastic guys in stuck in space who must overcome impossible odds.\nThe plot itself is very entertaining and this is definitely a page-turner, but the combination of my gripes I’ve stated above really held this book back for me.\nThe ending also felt incredibly lazy, it felt rushed, there wasn’t really any emotional payoff (which was something I expected), and it just completely fell flat for me, I had a couple of different endings in mind, but I can confidently say I didn’t expect the ending Weir chose for this book, I’ll give him that.\nI’ve read some people feeling like the science was not their cup of tea, I personally didn’t mind it, and understand it’s needed to explain things in this science fiction book, I did get the feeling once or twice however of being talked down to with some of the explanations given.\nI’d be remiss in mentioning that I listened to the audiobook, which is fantastic, the production behind it was incredible, from the musical notes when Rocky speaks, to the actual voice acting, no notes from me, I really feel like if I had read it and not listened to the book, my experience would have been worse.\nIf you love a good plot about a man having to beat incredibly low odds of succeeding in his mission, with some impromptu bromance with an alien sounds like a good time for you, knock yourself out. If you’ve read ‘The Martian’, I would say be wary that this feels very similar, so if you’re looking for something different, it might not be for you.\nRating ⭐⭐⭐☆☆\n","date":"20 July 2025","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/project-hail-mary/","section":"Posts","summary":"","title":"Project Hail Mary - Andy Weir","type":"posts"},{"content":"","date":"20 July 2025","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/sci-fi/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Sci-Fi","type":"tags"},{"content":"This book is part of the Rincewind sub-series in Discworld, specifically dealing with the eight son of a wizard, who in this case is not a wizard, but a sorcerer. The plot circles around our sorcerer, a kid named Coin, being manipulated by his father, who transferred his consciousness to his son’s staff, into infiltrating Unseen University, taking it over, and creating an army of wizards to do as he says and effectively rule all of Discworld. Coin himself doesn’t really want any of that, but his dad is the stubborn kind, Rincewind has his own kind of side adventure as much of this is going on, and eventually syncs his adventure with Coin’s in the book’s final act, ending with a happy ending for most, excepting those who die, of course.\nIt’s hard for me to give an opinion on this book. Most people say that the first two books in the Discworld series (The Colour of Magic and The Light Fantastic), aren’t a great place to start because they don’t represent Discworld as a whole, and both the story, writing, jokes, and basically everything gets better as you go further along. I personally have found this book to be the weakest I’ve read so far, and I’m reading them in chronological order as the books were released, so I’ve read the first two books most people say to shy away from at first and honestly I liked them better.\nThat’s not to say I didn’t like this book, it’s just the one I’ve enjoyed the least, if that makes any sense. I thought the pacing was weird, it felt like there were long stretches where nothing happened, then a bunch of action and some pretty good jokes then back to a sort of lull in the story.\nLike always, Death absolutely steals the show every time he appears, with just the most incredible quotes, such as:\n“I meant,” said Ipslore bitterly, “what is there in this world that truly makes living worthwhile?” Death thought about it. CATS, he said eventually. CATS ARE NICE.\nand\n“And what would humans be without love?” RARE, said Death.\nThe book itself satirizes a bunch of fantasy tropes we all know and love, epic scale plots, magical wars, men = natural barbarians and women = natural homebodies, among other things. I think the way Pratchett manages to put so much of himself and his ideologies in the books without it feeling too in your face is an incredible skill that even to this day, not many authors can replicate.\nAll in all, I’d say this book was good, if just average. The pacing was weird, and the plot itself I wasn’t too invested in, but that’s been the case with the other Rincewind-centered books I’ve read so far, so maybe Rincewind just isn’t for me. Regardless, it did have some high points that I think make it worth it for me to revisit this book sometime in the future, maybe when I’m finally done reading all of the series.\nIf you want to read a good old fantasy satire with some witty humor, or, alternatively, if you want a story about how wizards think they’re the toughest people in the block until a smaller bully comes along, I think you’ll like this book.\nRating ⭐⭐⭐☆☆\n","date":"20 July 2025","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/sourcery/","section":"Posts","summary":"","title":"Sourcery - Terry Pratchett","type":"posts"},{"content":"","date":"20 July 2025","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/series/the-thursday-murder-club/","section":"Series","summary":"","title":"The Thursday Murder Club","type":"series"},{"content":"I won\u0026rsquo;t lie, it took me a while to realize that the authro Richard Osman was the same person I\u0026rsquo;ve been watching in British panel shows for years. Osman really has an interesting premise for his series of whodunnits: our main group of crime-solving protagonists are all in their 70s and live in a retirement village. They gather every Thursday to discuss and to try to solve unsolved murders from one of the members’ past work as a detective (hence the name of the group and the book). This is all fun and games until an actual murder occurs, and then a couple more, all around or relating to the retirement village. The members of the Thursday Murder Club all have their eccentricities and quirks that set them apart from each other and also highlight what each one bring to the table when it comes to solving crimes. Along with our elder protagonists, we also have the help of two of the city’s finest detectives, who mostly dismiss the Thursday Murder Club as a quirky group of grandparents, but who also provide some interesting moments throughout the book.\nAs for the mystery itself, it’s not anything out of this world, but does provide some interesting moments. I will mention that I did expect a bit more from the way the murders were presented, in the end none of them were really connected, and I feel like it was a lost opportunity to just have a more interesting plot with more impactful discoveries.\nThe way the book is written made me feel like I was almost reading the screenplay for a movie or a TV show, the chapters are so short, and they jump from one perspective to the next, it felt like the different cuts to different scenes we constantly see in TV shows. I do have to wonder if the this was intentional on part of the author to make easier adaptations for movies or TV shows.\nI feel that as a murder-mystery, this is pretty cookie cutter, run-of-the-mill, normal, which is not a bad thing at all. The twist here is obviously that the main crime solving group we follow are older people who combine the adorableness of grandparents with the cunning of a crime solving squad, and that does help set this book apart from others. The characters also have very distinct personalities, Elizabeth, the leader of the Thursday Murder Club, is a very cunning, straight to the point, woman. Joyce is the newest member of the group, an ex-nurse, who is more casual about the whole murder solving thing in the beginning, but grows to take it more seriously. Ibrahim, an ex-psychiatrist, whose people skills and introspection abilities also help out a lot. Finally, Ron rounds out the club as a former union leader, headstrong and belligerent. This mix of personalities make for some very interesting interactions and moments throughout the book.\nThere is a definite focus in the various interactions between the characters throughout the book, while the murder itself is the main driving force behind the plot, it sometimes feels like it takes a backseat to character interactions. I personally didn’t mind this, but I can also see how some might be turned off from this if they are more interested in the murder itself.\nThe super short chapters and constant, quick perspective changes can also be a jarring at times, it really clicked for me when I started viewing it as a TV show with many cuts between different scenes, but it did take me some time to get used to.\nIf you want an easy read about a murder mystery, with interesting and quirky characters, and don’t mind short chapters that don’t dwell too much on one subject and constant changes in point of view and perspective, I’d definitely say to give this book a try, otherwise, this might not be for you. Additionally, if you want a very complex mystery with intricate connections and red herrings between many characters that keeps you on your feet guessing what might come next, you might want to avoid this book as it might fall short of those expectations. For me, personally, I like this book and will probably continue to read the rest of the series, just maybe not immediately.\nRating ⭐⭐⭐☆☆\n","date":"20 July 2025","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/the-thursday-murder-club/","section":"Posts","summary":"","title":"The Thursday Murder Club - Richard Osman","type":"posts"},{"content":"Wuthering Heights is a book that mainly revolves around the lives of two families, the Lintons and Earnshaws, and the complex relationships between them after Mr. Earnshaw adopts a boy named Heathcliff and raises him as one of his children. We accompany the children from both families throughout most of the book, starting from early childhood and all the way to adulthood and even follow the lives of their children up to a certain point. The main plot of the book revolves around Heathcliff and Catherine, who fall in love with each other, but won’t have their love materialize with each other for reasons their own. This unfulfilled love turns into obsession, combined with the complex relationships between most of these characters mixed with some physical and emotional abuse makes for a very intriguing and intricate story that is both impactful and interesting.\nI’ve read many people describe this book as a romance novel, which I very much disagree with, this is a fantastic view into how generational trauma can be deeply ingrained into the personality of people and how difficult it can be to overcome said trauma and try to be the change you want. The characters Heathcliff and Catherine are very complex characters who are most affected by these kinds of trauma, they love each other, then torture each other for not being able to be together. Even after Catherine’s death, Heathcliff constantly suffers and blames Catherine for making him suffer so, and this trauma is reflected in how poorly he treats others in turn. In addition to all of this, Heathcliff’s main motivation in most of his actions is that of revenge. Revenge on Catherine’s brother for making Heathcliff’s life miserable when they were children, and revenge on Edgar Linton (Mr. Linton’s son), who’s the one that actually ended up marrying Catherine, and who Catherine chose over Heathcliff simply for his money and status, despite her admitting she actually loves Heathcliff.\nThe main themes of obsession (not love!) and revenge are present all throughout the book, and different ways they affected even Heathcliff’s and Catherine’s children are made very apparent very early on. It is these children, who at first are victims of said generational trauma, and who are also seen as abusive characters to begin with, who break the cycle of abuse, at least from the Earnshaw and Linton side, Heathcliff’s only son, unfortunately, ends up being a victim of his father’s obsession, but it does make for a very powerful moment when we see that these behaviors can be broken and that each person is the owner of their own destiny and have the free will to decide how to act for themselves.\nI came into this book without knowing anything about it and with a very open mind, it turned out to be better than I could have anticipated. I felt the characters very real, and their torment and suffering was just as emotional for me at times as it was for them, the book is filled with some very powerful moments which only makes the book more impressive as the whole story takes place in the two houses each family lives in and the road that connects them, we see nothing outside of this small bubble, and that just helps create this feeling that these relationships are all that these characters have.\nOn the other hand, I did find the book a bit too dreary at times, which could turn some readers off the novel, make no mistake, this is a dark and emotional journey. A lot of times, the book focuses too much on what the characters, Heathcliff and Catherine, mostly, would do to take their revenge, and seeing a lot of those plans come to fruition makes the novel take on a darker tone. On the topic of Catherine, she has a daughter, also called Catherine/Cathy, which makes an already complicated family tree more confusing. It’s normal for parents to name their children after themselves, but in this case, I think it does make the plot and understanding who’s who more complicated than it needed to be.\nThe whole story is told from one of two perspectives – Mr. Lockwood and Nelly. Mr. Lockwood is a complete stranger to both families who comes to Wuthering Heights (originally the Earnshaw’s house) to rent Thrushcross Grange (originally the Linton’s house) from Heathcliff, who, as part of his plan for revenge, ended up owning both houses at the end of the story. Mr. Lockwood is, in reality, a minor and fairly forgettable character, throughout the story, which makes using him as one of the voices we learn about these families an interesting decision. The other voice we hear this story from, Nelly, is originally one of the housekeepers for the Earnshaws, and hers is the main voice we learn everything from. The issue that might arise with Nelly, is that given her role as a housekeeper, it’s hard to imagine she had as clear an idea of everyone’s intentions and what they were thinking as she believes she has. In this sense, she might be seen as an unreliable narrator for some readers. In my opinion, that just adds to the intricacies of the story and makes it that much more interesting, to allow us, as readers, to form our own judgements towards each of the characters, since we’re learning everything from someone who would have their own biases as well.\nGiven the impactful story, complex characters and relationships, this is definitely a story worth diving into, I wouldn’t recommend this book for people who are sensitive to dark themes or if abuse and trauma are triggers. If, on the other hand, you can handle these things and are looking for an intense read that really looks at generational trauma and how it can stop with one’s own choices, this is a definitive recommendation from me.\nRating ⭐⭐⭐⭐☆\n","date":"20 July 2025","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/wuthering-heights/","section":"Posts","summary":"","title":"Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte","type":"posts"},{"content":"You know how everyone thinks Robert Downey Jr.\u0026rsquo;s character in Tropic Thunder is generally regarded as really funny and not racist despite the blackface? This book is like reading about the opposite version of that.\nYellowface revolves around two central characters, Juniper (June), our incredibly unlikeable protagonist, and Athena. Both are authors, however, Athena has substantially more success, having Netflix deals and being an international best seller, while Juniper struggles to barely make ends meet with her earnings. Despite that, they’re friends and hang out for drinks and food. On one of these outings, a series of unfortunate events happen, and Athena dies, while having just very conveniently shown June the manuscripts for her latest novel, which no one knows about, not even her publisher.\nSo what does June do in such a dire situation? Steal the manuscript and publish it as her own, obviously, but not without first editing it enough to where she feels comfortable telling herself it’s just as much hers as it is Athena’s.\nThe rest of the book very much reads as a sort of “monster of the week” show, where June is presented with a difficult situation which she must face head on, brought up mostly by the fact of being a white woman who suddenly \u0026ldquo;wrote\u0026rdquo; a very successful book centered around Asian culture. These situations just turn into complete trainwrecks, because she just handles every single situation in the worst way possible. June is definitely the type of character you love to hate, her racism is so apparent, even though she tries her hardest to convince herself she’s not.\nMost of the book follows the same path, and, well, it ends on that same note, which I really liked, it was a very human ending, narcissistic people don’t tend to change when shown the error of their ways, rather, they double down and keep going on whatever path they had already decided was the best, which I thought was a very clever way to end the book.\nSo was the book fun? Yes. Did I like it? Also yes, but I didn’t love it. It’s certainly well written, and it’s very fast paced, each chapter just leaves you with enough of that cliffhanger feeling that you just want to keep reading the next one. This is all great, but I do feel like some of the themes that are explored in the book aren’t actually explored that deeply, which I think could have been fleshed out more. For instance, June’s relationship with her family presented an interesting family dynamic, where she’s (now) super successful after publishing Athena’s work, but they are completely oblivious to it and their interactions are just a loop of June trying to make them understand her struggles and them just diminishing her feelings. I would have loved to have these relationships fleshed out since some of these characters just felt very one-dimensional.\nSomething I think works both in favor and against the book is how modern it is, by that I mean that the protagonist is someone who is chronically online, and the book constantly references and makes emphasis on her struggles with reading about herself on social media like Twitter and Goodreads. I think this was more of a stylistic choice, which I liked.\nOn the other hand, I feel like those same references might make the book feel a bit dated, even now (Twitter is called X now, for example), and I do think that this reduces the potential audience for the book, older generations might not understand or just not care about why June is so obsessed with strangers’ opinions on the internet, and I also feel like even younger generations might not care, since they are also online all the time, but the concept of book publishing might be seen as some archaic, old-school thing that’s no longer relevant when you can just self publish on the internet nowadays without much trouble.\nThe author mentioned in an interview that she wanted the book to feel like an anxiety attack, while I’m not sure I feel that way, I can see where she’s coming from, with June just constantly doing the opposite of what a decent person would do. I also can’t help but wonder how much of what is portrayed in the book is the author personally inserting certain aspects of her life (albeit in an exaggerated way) in the story, which is fine, but it did make it feel a little to meta at times to me.\nThe best thing about the book is hands down the relationship between Athena and June, since Athena dies so early in the book, it makes their relationship extremely ambiguous, and we are left feeling that they weren’t friends so much as tools they each were using for their own benefit. Athena preyed on other peoples’ life stories (including June) to create her own narratives, while June pined for the life Athena had so she would let her invite her for drinks and food. It’s clear neither of the two were what we would describe as good people, but since June is herself an unreliable narrator, everything is up for grabs regarding how we choose to interpret their relationship.\nUltimately, I think this is a fun, quick read. While not everything the author did landed with me, it has its merits, it is well written, and does offer an interesting view into the modern publishing world which I don’t think many books dive into, even if in a fictional/exaggerated context. Kuang\u0026rsquo;s prose is easy to follow, and I\u0026rsquo;m definitely curious to read some of her other work, especially since everything else she\u0026rsquo;s written is Fantasy, I think it\u0026rsquo;ll be really interesting to see if her writing style is different when it comes to Fantasy or if there are stylistic differences.\nRating ⭐⭐⭐☆☆\n","date":"20 July 2025","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/yellowface/","section":"Posts","summary":"","title":"Yellowface - R. F. Kuang","type":"posts"},{"content":"When I was about 12, one of my absolute favorite TV shows was a video game review show called Xplay on TechTV, a video game review show that was equal parts informative and funny, while also sparking my interest as a child to start writing, because I thought I\u0026rsquo;d be a video game journalist. While the journalism thing didn\u0026rsquo;t pan out as I grew and started getting interested in other things like computers and programming, I still always really liked writing, and I especially love writing about my interests.\nSo that\u0026rsquo;s the basis for this blog, I like writing about books read and assign them a rating similar to what Xplay did back in the day. It\u0026rsquo;s a simple 5 star rating system, no half stars to keep things simple, because, really, what\u0026rsquo;s the actual difference between a 3 and a 3.5? Or a 3 and a 3.25? In both cases you liked it, you just liked it slightly more on one but the general message is the same: you enjoyed whatever it is you\u0026rsquo;re rating. I feel like some people love to have that level of granularity, some even going to the extreme of having a 100 point system, but then only rate everythin an 80 or higher, which defeats the whole purpose of the scale. Listen, if I have a full rating scale available to me, I\u0026rsquo;m using the whole scale.\nThe Scale ☆☆☆☆☆ — DNF. Didn\u0026rsquo;t finish it, no rating.\n⭐☆☆☆☆ — Not for me. Something about it actively got in the way of my enjoyment.\n⭐⭐☆☆☆ — Alright. Some good stuff, but definitely has things holding it back. Might work better for someone else.\n⭐⭐⭐☆☆ — Good. Fun, solid, maybe a few minor flaws. Most books land here, and that\u0026rsquo;s not a bad thing.\n⭐⭐⭐⭐☆ — Great. It\u0026rsquo;s up there, but missing that intangible thing that makes it perfect.\n⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ — Perfect. My absolute favorites. These are books I couldn\u0026rsquo;t put down.\n","date":"1 January 2024","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/my-rating-system/","section":"","summary":"","title":"My Rating System","type":"page"},{"content":"I\u0026rsquo;m Luis, an engineer based in Mexico, with lots of hobbies, bouncing around from one to another being one of the main ones.\nI started this blog because I like the idea of having my own place on the internet, however small it might be. It doesn\u0026rsquo;t hurt that I enjoy writing too, I guess. I especially like writing about topics that I find interesting, whether it\u0026rsquo;s some weird super specific subject I\u0026rsquo;m currently fascinated with which I\u0026rsquo;ll drop in a few weeks, or some of my long-time favorite hobbies: reading, video games, 3D printing, D\u0026amp;D, computers and other expensive ways to distract myself from adulthood.\nI mostly write book reviews, just to capture my feelings towards as I finish reading each one, I like going back and reading my own thoughts about books I don\u0026rsquo;t remember much about, they sometimes make me feel like re-reading books. I like to stay honest to my own voice but I also like to try to be analytical of whatever I\u0026rsquo;m writing about. So a best of both worlds type of situation.\nWhat I read Mostly it\u0026rsquo;s Fantasy and Literary Fiction these days (it\u0026rsquo;s mid-2026 as I\u0026rsquo;m writing this), but honestly I\u0026rsquo;m open to anything, a good story is a good story, regardless of \u0026ldquo;genre\u0026rdquo;.\nIf you\u0026rsquo;d like to get in touch, feel free to head over to the Contact page.\n","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/about/","section":"About","summary":"","title":"About","type":"about"},{"content":"","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/books/","section":"Books","summary":"","title":"Books","type":"books"},{"content":"Would you like to recommend a book for me to read? Want to yell at me for my hot \u0026amp; spicy takes? Wanna be digital friends?\nThe best way to reach me is via email at luis@forgedbyluis.com or Discord: @eizfrim, just make sure to mention the blog or I might not respond because I\u0026rsquo;ll assume you\u0026rsquo;re trying to either sell, scam, or otherwise take advantage of me. You can also find me on Goodreads and Instagram.\n","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/contact/","section":"Contact","summary":"","title":"Contact","type":"contact"}]