Rate the last Book you read

Yesterday I started reading The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes by Susanne Collins. It's a prequel to her The Hunger Games novels.

Re-read.

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I’m here only on Mondays, Wednesdays & Fridays. That’s why I’m here now.

Just finished this and loved it...from 2015

Re-read. So frickin sad that in the depths of depression & despair she took her own life at age 30.

Third re-read. The French parts were easy to find in translation this time so that was good. I’m not an intellectual & I confess I don’t understand at least a quarter of the book. But it’s a lovely book & one of my all-time favorites.

Dazai's No Longer Human: 7/10 overall. I really like the beginning and the end, but the random womanizing, alchohol/drug abuse, etc. made the adult portions of the character's life rather irritating and unsympathetic (i.e. too human).

I'm sold.

I really dig non-fiction about the American Old West... and this one, exhaustively detailing the James Brothers' most notorious criminal exploit, is an absolute page-turner.

Attachments

 

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"If it was priggish for an older generation of reviewers to be ashamed of what they enjoyed and to feel they had to be contemptuous of popular entertainment, it's even more priggish for a new movie generation to be so proud of what they enjoy that they use their education to try to place trash within the acceptable academic tradition." -- Pauline Kael

It's a lot less scandalous than it might sound. haha A worthwhile read, though.

Re-read. (No clue how many times I’ve read this book.) Read it in one sitting yesterday.

Seeders (2014)

A couple tropes were unnecessary, but overall good enough that I might check out her other novel.

Poster Girl (2022)

From the author of the Divergent series, this was pretty good. It borrows heavily from other ideas many may be familiar with (Black Mirror, even Divergent, etc). Enjoyable read nonetheless, might make an interesting short series/movie in the future (I could picture actors as certain characters in my head haha)

Was gifted these American books when I was a little girl. I loved them. Re-read this week & they still hold up.

The Force by Don Winslow -

Very good book about a team of New York City vice cops who have special privileges, which they abuse regularly. Eventually, the FBI finds out and forces their leader, Malone, to rat on his buddies. It sort of plays out like a Prince of the City for the 2010's; after all, the main subplot is about the police killing an unarmed black man. Malone is a classic antihero and total bastard who I especially find interesting for how he's seduced by Manhattan life, which he finds "real" as opposed to his fake, predictable Staten Island family life. James Mangold was going to direct an adaptation, but I'm not sure if it's still in development or not.

One of the best non-fiction books I've ever read. There's a bit of repetition at several points, but it's surprisingly readable for such a massive volume.

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I read the complete works of Nostradamus after seeing yet another ''nos predicted this political event!" news article. I scoured the entire volume and out of the thousands of predictions he mentions exact dates only about a dozen times. Almost all of the years he mentions are within his own century. A few for the 1700s, one for 1999 and then nothing until the year 6000. So, when these news reporters try to fill page space with these so called accurate prophecies just remember that Nostradamus in fact did not predict anything specific for 2022, 2023, 2024 nor the next 1000 years. Such dates are fabricated and there is nothing at all in the text to indicate any connection to any of the years you and I will ever see. It seems those news reporters that cover him are every bit as phony as he was himself. I cannot believe in this junk and there are almost no parallels with anything specific that could seem viable without a considerable stretch of the imagination, suspension of your scientific skepticism and a willingness to take on a blurry perspective.

As a piece of entertainment it lags far behind the classics of his time as his literary skills are nothing to get excited about. I rate to this volume 5/10

Goth: A History by Lol Tolhurst -

Very enjoyable and informative book about Gothic rock, which the author and drummer for the Cure witnessed and which he helped flourish. A large chunk of it consists of profiles of bands that inspired him and others who started the genre, the most famous bands in it, recent bands who are keeping it alive, etc., but they are not just dry encyclopedia articles. Tolhurst includes his personal experiences with the bands from how they influenced them to his interactions with their members. Other than that, he discusses the dire economic and political situations in the U.K. that led to the creation of Gothic rock, clears up its typical misconceptions and talks about his experiences as a founding member of The Cure. You could say that the structure of the book is also "punk" in that it is a bit haphazardly structured. Even so, it is bound to make you even more of a fan of this kind of music or extremely interested if you do not know much about it.

The Sisters Brothers by Patrick de Witt 8/10

'Anathem' by Neal Stephenson. Excellent sci-fi book. 4/5.

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“You must be the change you wish to see in the world.” — Gandhi​