apr/may 2025 media log
Jun. 9th, 2025 12:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
foggiesbooks:
the snap by elizabeth staple — 1.5/5
this book is so mid-budget lifetime movie. non-linear storytelling doesn't work if you (1) could predict what was going to happen from literally the first page of the book and (2) have the reveal come way too late and (3) make it two levels of disconnect from the central mystery of the book. they tried for a presumed innocent-type ending but it didn't work because the reader does not gaf about the dead coach or the suspects. i also had so much trouble keeping track of all the characters, simply because there are way too many irrelevant ones. the thread of all the high-up sportswomen being connected was... all a coincidence?? what was the point? i understand that women who work this high up in professional sports must have quite an interesting story to tell re: what must be an astronomical amount of misogyny they face. this book does not tell that story.
olive days by jessica elisheva emerson — 4/5
what a gorgeous book. such beautiful, methodical depictions of chores and routines and the thankless loads of work and the mind-numbing discipline it must take to do all of it. this book is not about love, and if you go in hoping to find some kind of love story and hoping to get to root for the adulterers falling in love, you're not going to find it. this book is really about the ramifications of the ambiguously SA-ish scene that happens in the first few chapters and how it utterly destabilizes the protagonist's worldview. if there was a moral of the story, i did not understand it. but it was so nicely hyperlexic and soothing to read
love can't feed you by cherry lou sy — 2.5/5
strong start. surely not an unusual story in life but an unusual story to get to read — i think the kinds of second-gen asian americans who tell the tales of our family's american journeys like to put on a face. it was one thing and then it got messy and then it turned into many stories. i guess that's real life, too, but when a novel takes a turn halfway through and all the main characters end up scattered and/or falling out of the MC's life, then there is no plot anymore. i read the ending quarter of the book like four times to try to figure out what i missed. but i must not be very smart
the missing half by ashley flowers — 2/5
i was tempted to score this lower, but for a few days i actually couldn't put this book down. so, as in my music reviews, +1 for forward motion. i lowkey started thinking this was going to end up a happy WLW love story. the ending is the MOSTTT deus ex machina thing ever... flipping back, i can see where they attempted foreshadowing... unfortunately, the writing was NOT strong enough for that to be effective...
piglet by lottie hazell — 4/5
i suppose i have developed a penchant for (1) fiction involving many many food depictions and (2) women who crash tf out. i consume (ha) a lot of food writing/content and cringe at so much of it for the tacky descriptions of food. hazell possesses a gift for making food sound prized, delicious, nauseating when she wants it to be. i get the story in a way that only someone with a former ED does, so yeah it really spoke to me. i think the ending could have been prevented if she'd had literally anyone to talk to in the week leading up to her wedding, but i guess that was the whole point. i'm still confused how she got together with her fiance in the first place; not something the book explains. good read
letterboxd
standout podcast eps:
"buried dead" from the nosleep podcast s22e19:
classic nosleep!!!!
