For one thing, this didn’t have the same mastery of language as the first. It seemed in Sorcerer’s Stone that every word was a careful choice. Here, the phrase “after all” was used three times in one measly paragraph. It wasn’t poorly written by any stretch of the imagination...but it could be a bit sloppy.
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Two: not as exciting. The second act plot-line may have been better than the first book’s, but it took forever to get to that point. The first two-thirds or three-quarters of this book dragged for me, really. And I needed some excitement to break up the endless studying and work of finals week!
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Three: as I mentioned in my HPSS review, my favorite part of this series is the worldbuilding. Every aspect of this world drips with magic, and it’s so lovely. I’ll never tire of reading about Diagon Alley, or Hogwarts feasts, or Quidditch - and I cannot wait for Hogsmeade! There was a lot less discussion of the world here. God, how I wish there was. Is there more in the other books? It seems there’d have to be in Goblet of Fire, no?
Four: I missed Hermione! I didn’t realize how much of the appeal of this series for me was based on her. At least this book really confirmed my adoration of her. Absolutely one of the best YA characters ever, in my opinion. I missed Neville, too! At least Hermione had a reason for not being there, but where was the lovely Neville this whole time?
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Five: In general, this book seemed a bit...stuck. Sorcerer’s Stone has a great variety of characters, and features different classes and aspects of Hogwarts life. This installment gave me cabin fever. The whole thing is limited almost entirely to Harry and Ron. They’re great, don’t get me wrong, but...I wanted there to be other people too. Hagrid wasn’t here much, nor Fred and George. Quidditch only happened, what, once? The only class truly described was Lockhart’s, which made me want to bang my head against the wall. In short, I missed everybody. All the new characters introduced here are just unbearable. (Colin, Lucius, Gilderoy...even Dobby at some points. Sorry.)
On the bright side, I don’t think this is anybody’s favorite Harry Potter book. I’m a bit deflated, but overall rather excited to get on with this reread. (Once a few of my finals are done with, though. Shiver.)
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Bottom line: every series has its weak points. I’m still thrilled to be doing this reread, and am sure I’ll love the next one!...more
I bought this book on November 8, 2016, and then I somehow picked it up by sheer coincidence precisely on November 8, 2020.
In spite of this divine coiI bought this book on November 8, 2016, and then I somehow picked it up by sheer coincidence precisely on November 8, 2020.
In spite of this divine coincidence, I did not like the read much.
If I had read it when I actually bought it, I probably would have, but I think I've evolved past this kind of unilateral-view things-are-sad white-woman-book-club energy. Societally, we all have. In the early 2000s, maybe we only had room for 1 feeling about Afghanistan (or okay, 1 in addition to War), but now we can have complex views of places. And I wish this were a more complex narrative than Suffering.
Also, the treatment of hijabs and burqas in this book explains why white women thought their sole quest on this earth was to """free""" Muslim women from """having""" to wear them.
This was not a terrible book at all, but it just is no longer my cup of tea.
I can count clearing it off of my incredibly aged owned TBR as a win, though.
Bottom line: Good! Just not for me.
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the hits keep coming and they don't stop coming
review to come / 2.5 stars
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my passions include: owning books for years before even considering picking them up...more
short but technically full review at https://emmareadstoomuch.wordpress.co... i just don't have that much to say about it. i was a little disappointed when i saw it was another guided-tour-of-europe form of travel book. (the titular similarity to wanderlove, which breaks that cliché, aimed my hopes higher). at least it was european cities that are covered less frequently (i.e., not the usual cycle of rome, paris, etc.). but it wasn't very setting-based, which is obviously a dealbreaker in a travel themed book, and was all around just kinda boring. :(...more
pros: easy to read, fun to read, i found myself slightly caring about a few of the characters by the end.
cons: sometimes unbearably cheesy/cliché/evenpros: easy to read, fun to read, i found myself slightly caring about a few of the characters by the end.
cons: sometimes unbearably cheesy/cliché/even nonsensical, not a fan of the writing style (it's poorly written in my opinion, more so than cass's other books, but i have no intention of undermining the opinion of others), spent the large majority of the book not caring about the outcome or anyone involved in the story.
once upon a time, i read a collection of (silly, summery, teenage) short stories, and NOT ONLY TOOK NOTES ON THEM, but wrote up a synopsis, a review, once upon a time, i read a collection of (silly, summery, teenage) short stories, and NOT ONLY TOOK NOTES ON THEM, but wrote up a synopsis, a review, and a rating for each one, and combined them all into a blog post.
imagining doing something like that now is akin to imagining myself traveling to the moon, or running a marathon. (which in turn is as absurd as running down the block.)
i didn't even like the book!
part of a series i'm doing in which i review books i read a long time ago...more
welcome back to project 5 star, in which i ill-advisedly pick up books i remember fondly and put them to the test of my current evil mind.
and, well.
i'welcome back to project 5 star, in which i ill-advisedly pick up books i remember fondly and put them to the test of my current evil mind.
and, well.
i'd like to apologize for 18 year old me. she knew not what she'd wrought.
this does have moments of true loveliness and piercing observations of the human experience, but it is so weighed down in pretension and gimmicks that it's almost impossible to see to them.
it was actually all i could do to get through this book, which shifts between three perspectives that each manage to be as unreadable as the last. our characters — 18th century residents of a shtetl, a metafiction JSF, and a pathetic tour guide named alex — have the power to be memorable and real, but are only the former.
and not in a nice way.
sorry to the ex-boyfriend who bought me a signed first edition of this.
bottom line: people change! it's a bummer. kinda.
2.5
----------------- original review
(view spoiler)[when it's 1:20 a.m. and you're thinking about your favorite book of the year (so far) again and you realize you never posted your review and you just havetohavetohaveto let everyone know how much you loved it.
This book was incredible. Truly. I’ve taken the last hour or two to just kind of continue with my life and try to absorb that experience. Because even though I’ve been reading this book for almost three weeks (bananas long for me), it still feels like one cohesive experience.
I just want to quote this book to you, if that’s okay. Just for a hot sec.
“There is no love--only the end of love.”
Between a grandfather and a grandson: “(You have ghosts?) (Of course I have ghosts.) (What are your ghosts like?) (They are on the inside of the lids of my eyes.) (This is also where my ghosts reside.) (You have ghosts?) (Of course I have ghosts.) (But you are a child.) (I am not a child.) (But you have not known love.) (These are my ghosts. The spaces amid love.)”
Maybe quoting it wasn’t a good idea, because I want to give swaths of it to you all. I’ll end up trying to trick you into reading by including ever-lengthening passages.
These characters may very well stay with me for the rest of my life. Lovely Alex, with his love for his brother and his grandiose lies and his dashed dreams and his wonderfully terrible English (“Did you manufacture any Zs?”). The metafiction how-much-is-real Jonathan Safran Foer, dedicated to his notebook, staunch vegetarian. Brod and her 613 sadnesses, her love for everyone and everything and no one and nothing. The Gypsy girl whose heart broke for Safran, whom she did not love, and his books organized by the colors of their spines. The shtetl of Trachimbrod, its Trachimday and the Time of Dyed Hands and surname-initialed residents (Bitzl Bitzl R was my favorite).
This book sometimes gave me a feeling like my heart was swelling up. My hand twitched for a pencil or a Post-It while I read these lovely words, but I was always too absorbed and soon forgot what I was trying to remember to do. That feeling is why I read.
This was slow to start, and I almost--god forbid--DNFed it. Can you imagine? Even two-thirds in I contemplated three stars, sadly reminiscing on my vast love of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close.
I know this review isn’t of YA, or a book that’s “in” right now, or a new release. I still hope you guys read this and will consider picking it up, though. Because I want to live inside this book.
Bottom line: I don’t even know what to say. I so badly want you to read it. But if you do and you don’t like it, even when you get to the beautiful, beautiful last seventy-five pages, please don’t tell me.
This book is very, very long (it has tissue-paper pages! That’s how you know a YA book is too damn long). It intrMeh.
That’s really all I have to say.
This book is very, very long (it has tissue-paper pages! That’s how you know a YA book is too damn long). It introduces more characters I don’t care about, allowing me to realize that I really only care about Cress and Thorne. It spends a hundred thousand million years wrapping up every loose end, and still the plotline and conclusion manage to feel unsatisfying.
I really don’t have much to say beyond that.
The fact that this book is 827 pages long and I can’t even summon up two paragraphs about it says it all.
So let’s call that my bottom line and call it a day.
----------- pre-review
things about this book that are cute: - Cress - Thorne - Cress and Thorne
things about this book that are not cute: - the fact that it is 827 PAGES LONG.
review to comeee
----------- currently-reading updates
uh, this book is...long
----------- tbr review
if this book doesn't break my heart and make me cry i Will demand a refund...more
there was a time in my life when i bought every single book in the young adult section of my local Target that even looked a little bit like a romancethere was a time in my life when i bought every single book in the young adult section of my local Target that even looked a little bit like a romance.
when i think about the amount of money i spent in $15.19 increments (the price, according to my five-year-old memories, of a 20% off hardcover), i want to weep. if i had put it in my savings account, with inflation i could have probably bought a house. if i had played the stock market, i would likely know what the stock market is. if i had invested it in cryptocurrency, i would presumably die from complications of being annoying. but on like a gold-plated toilet or wherever rich people perish.
instead, all i have to show for it is a bunch of interchangeable teens falling in love with each other. most of which i don't even own anymore because why would i keep punishing myself.
this was good because it has body-positive representation, which was a good and rare thing in my teenage years as it is today.
but it was not good for every other reason.
part of a series i'm doing in which i review books i read a long time ago...more
this book contains a very important lesson: even Roald Dahl can't win them all.
yes, he is the mind behind Matilda, and The BFG, and Charlie and the Chthis book contains a very important lesson: even Roald Dahl can't win them all.
yes, he is the mind behind Matilda, and The BFG, and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and a soldier memoir that launched me on a dad-like lifelong mild interest in World War II, and the criminally underrated Fantastic Mr. Fox, but he also wrote this, a moral/didactic misfire that is also boring.
i also think, like the protagonist, that hunting for fun is bad, but so does Fantastic Mr. Fox, and that book is whimsical enough to warrant a Wes Anderson adaptation.
this one does not even warrant mention in anyone's naming of Roald Dahl's works off the top of their head.
remember that old series where i review books i read forever ago? this is that...more
i'll probably have the ending of this half-memorized for the rest of my life. shoutout to my 2015 AP lit class for how long we had to talk about the li'll probably have the ending of this half-memorized for the rest of my life. shoutout to my 2015 AP lit class for how long we had to talk about the line "falling faintly and faintly falling."
like we GET it, snow was general all over ireland! what am i supposed to about it, james!
part of a series i'm doing in which i review books i read a long time ago...more
i read this book in a french class in high school, and my fondest (and only) memory of it is that we convinced our friend who wasn't taking french thai read this book in a french class in high school, and my fondest (and only) memory of it is that we convinced our friend who wasn't taking french that this was called "Chief Keef Demain," and was a memoir of Chief Keef's time married to his first wife, a french woman (pictured on the cover).
this was four years ago and i am still laughing just thinking of it.
(this is part of a project i pick up every year or so where i review books i read a million years ago because i am stubborn.)...more
this is a book i know for sure i have read twice. but not in a good way.
i spent 12+ years of my life (excluding a few in middle school during which i this is a book i know for sure i have read twice. but not in a good way.
i spent 12+ years of my life (excluding a few in middle school during which i was too cool to read, by which i mean i was very very uncool and doing as much damage control as possible) sourcing most of my books from my local library. while strides have been made in recent years, the young adult section for most of that time was made up of books twice as old as me that no one had ever heard of with fever-dream-like names (I Am the Cheese comes to mind). this meant i was in dire straits.
so some of the less memorable but relatively youthful-looking books got picked up by both, say, a 12 year old me and a 17 year old me, with an unpleasant sense of unasked for deja vu permeating throughout.
this is one such book. wasn't memorable the first time, wasn't memorable the second, and i have nothing else to say.
except, that is, for the 6 word review 17 year old me left here for us: "everything is wrong!!!!! i'm so upset."
enough said.
once again, the project i'm doing where i review books i read a long time ago, where i spend the whole time talking about a) high school, b) the library, or c) one of my sisters. never the book....more
The point of contention in a lot of reviews of this book is: Is it too much like Harry Potter?
But I don’t really like Harry Potter, so I don’t care abThe point of contention in a lot of reviews of this book is: Is it too much like Harry Potter?
But I don’t really like Harry Potter, so I don’t care about that. What I care about is: IS THIS THE ADORABLE GAY ROMANCE I’VE BEEN LOOKING FOR? IS THE PLOT EXCITING? IS THERE ENOUGH MAGIC? IS IT FUN TO READ? DO I FEEL EACH AND EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THE PAGES PASS BY IN A NOT-TOO-DIFFICULT BUT STILL NOT EFFORTLESS READING EXPERIENCE?
The answer to those questions, in order: yes, no, no, no, yes.
I think if you like Harry Potter, and you’ve always wanted Harry and Draco to date but in a world in which Draco isn’t a total sh*tbag and doesn’t require so much overexplanation and crazy analysis of kids’ books in order to seem baseline tolerable, then you will love this book.
I don’t really like this book, but I do love Fangirl. This book is a spinoff of my least favorite part of Fangirl, the fanfiction sections I always skip.
Considering this is a whole book of something I couldn’t even tolerate reading for a handful of chapters, the amount I liked it is pretty impressive. But really, there wasn’t enough magic or plot. Rainbow Rowell was always a strictly-romance writer before this, no fantasy involved, and it shows.
So I’m not even embarrassed to say: I would have liked this more if it was just a straight-up romance, little to no plot/magic/worldbuilding/school for wizards with a mean wizard magic guy making things fall apart/Britishness on the side.
Okay, I’m kind of embarrassed to say it.
Bottom line: This book could not have been less for me, and it went...surprisingly fine.
--------- pre-review Make Emma Able to Read Again
(i finally finished a book!!!!!) (and it was...fine.)
review to come / 2.5 stars
--------- currently-reading updates
definitely rereading this book because i liked it, or because the sequel is coming out this year, and not because i'm 100% sure that every book i used to enjoy is actually terrible and it's my life's work to continually update my ratings until eventually i am nothing but cynicism and one-star reviews...more
i distinctly remember reading this anthology in my middle school environmental science class, which maybe would have been an apt setting if i liked sci distinctly remember reading this anthology in my middle school environmental science class, which maybe would have been an apt setting if i liked science even a little bit, even at all.
but i've always been a useless humanities nerd and never a more traditional STEM one. if i liked science or math, do you think i'd be here right now, devoting swaths of my daily life to this hellsite? no. i'd be off making millions and discovering the cure for some niche disease or solving insane equations like good will goddamn hunting or something.
but i am math illiterate and have the scientific prowess of a misogynistic cheerleader stereotype on a mid-2000s teen drama, so. if wishes were fishes or whatever.
this collection is so mediocre that the memory of its mediocrity traveled through time from sixth grade, a time i have attempted to fully repress filled as it was with Aeropostale long-sleeve graphic tees, light bullying, and cultural appropriation-based group projects.
nevertheless, this book's mehness has persisted. you kind of have to give it credit for that.
this review is part of a project i'm doing where i review books i read a long time ago, as part of my life's unending and doomed quest for perfection....more
this goes for a good message of, like, self-esteem and all, but MAN does it get into a good deal of fat-shaming and slut-not my favorite sarah dessen.
this goes for a good message of, like, self-esteem and all, but MAN does it get into a good deal of fat-shaming and slut-shaming and girl-hate and just really horrendous unjustified nonsensical bullying along the way.
also, every single background character in this book is a goddamn villain out to get at least one of the main characters. and that's just unreal.
i do like the theme of "the only thing it takes to be a beautiful girl is decide you're one" because, um, extremely true as hell. and i think dessen was going for something good here. did she get there? questionable.
bottom line: mehhhhhh. but the sarah dessen reread extravaganza will continue!!!...more
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