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When robot Roz opens her eyes for the first time, she discovers that she is all alone on a remote, wild island. She has no idea how she got there or what her purpose is—but she knows she needs to survive. After battling a violent storm and escaping a vicious bear attack, she realizes that her only hope for survival is to adapt to her surroundings and learn from the island’s unwelcoming animal inhabitants.
As Roz slowly befriends the animals, the island starts to feel like home—until, one day, the robot’s mysterious past comes back to haunt her.
From bestselling and award-winning author and illustrator Peter Brown comes a heartwarming and action-packed novel about what happens when nature and technology collide.
I loved the movie! I didn’t know there were books but came across them as I was browsing my library’s catalog and just had to read them!
The Quotes
“The island was teeming with life. And now it had a new kind of life. A strange kind of life. Artificial life.”
“If you stand in a forest long enough, eventually something will fall on you.”
“I’ll tell you what: If I could do it all over again, I’d spend more time helping others. All I’ve ever done is dig tunnels. Some of them were real beauties too, but they’re all hidden underground, where they’re no good to anyone but me.”
“As the robot looked out at the island, it never even occurred to her that she might not belong there. As far as Roz knew, she was home.”
The Narrator(s)
Kate Atwater for the first book, Kathleen McInerney for the second and third book.
My Thoughts
I love that the movie stayed pretty true to the first book. There are some differences, of course, but I feel like the important points were covered. The stories for the second and third books aren’t told in the movie but I’m hoping there will be more movies, maybe! I personally loved the first book most; the other books had good stories to tell too but I wasn’t as invested and I think I didn’t feel the urgency as much. Still a wonderful series and I enjoyed it very much!
My Rating
⭐⭐⭐/5 stars.
Have you read this book? Would you read this book? Did you like the book or do you think you would like it?
Once upon a time, Maggie Cooper lived for adventure. Jumping out of planes was child’s play. Now she can’t even work up the nerve to ask out her coworker. For a bit of self-therapy, she begins to text her recently deceased mother’s phone—the only problem is that the number has been reassigned and for weeks she’s been unknowingly texting a stranger her deepest thoughts and feelings. There have also been some not-so-deep texts, like the ones about her appreciation for her coworker’s butt.
When Chase Beckett, the unsuspecting stranger who has more in common with Maggie than he’d like to admit, texts back, Maggie is beyond mortified. But message after message and night after night, Maggie realizes that Chase’s wit, charm, and advice are exactly what the doctor ordered. Is it enough, though, to get her back up in the sky? And what about her heart? Can she risk taking a leap of faith for the man on the other end of her accidental texts?
I was desperately needing a fun romance and this was available on Audible Plus.
The Quotes
“She used to tell me that it was my job to make myself happy. No one else can do that.”
“Life is short, this I do know. You have to find happiness where you can. That’s all we really have in the end.”
“My mom would sometimes tell us, when we were having a hard time with something, to look outside ourselves for answers. I never quite got what she meant until right now. Being there for someone else … well, it sort of feels like a balm on my soul.”
The Narrator(s)
Holly Warren. I enjoyed it very much!
My Thoughts
This was a quick, fun, read. I love the whole meet-cute story, and I love the chemistry between the two MCs. I love reading romance but it’s not always easy finding good ones that aren’t overly cheesy and/or unrealistic. To be clear, realism isn’t a priority for me when it comes to romance, but I still need things to make sense to an extent. I especially need the characters’ behaviors and motivations to make sense to me, so insta-love is often hard for me to swallow. I love that Maggie and Chase connected as friends and took time to get to know each other here. It was just a cute story that hit the spot for me.
My Rating
⭐⭐⭐/5 stars.
Have you read this book? Would you read this book? Did you like the book or do you think you would like it?
In his journal, Nobel Prize winner John Steinbeck called East of Eden “the first book,” and indeed it has the primordial power and simplicity of myth. Set in the rich farmland of California’s Salinas Valley, this sprawling and often brutal novel follows the intertwined destinies of two families—the Trasks and the Hamiltons—whose generations helplessly reenact the fall of Adam and Eve and the poisonous rivalry of Cain and Abel.
Adam Trask came to California from the East to farm and raise his family on the new rich land. But the birth of his twins, Cal and Aaron, brings his wife to the brink of madness, and Adam is left alone to raise his boys to manhood. One boy thrives nurtured by the love of all those around him; the other grows up in loneliness enveloped by a mysterious darkness.
First published in 1952, East of Eden is the work in which Steinbeck created his most mesmerizing characters and explored his most enduring themes: the mystery of identity, the inexplicability of love, and the murderous consequences of love’s absence. A masterpiece of Steinbeck’s later years, East of Eden is a powerful and vastly ambitious novel that is at once a family saga and a modern retelling of the Book of Genesis.
“And now that you don’t have to be perfect, you can be good.”
“I believe a strong woman may be stronger than a man, particularly if she happens to have love in her heart. I guess a loving woman is indestructible.”
“But the Hebrew word, the word timshel—‘Thou mayest’— that gives a choice. It might be the most important word in the world. That says the way is open. That throws it right back on a man. For if ‘Thou mayest’—it is also true that ‘Thou mayest not.”
“Sometimes a man wants to be stupid if it lets him do a thing his cleverness forbids.”
The Narrator(s)
Richard Poe. It was good, no complaints.
My Thoughts
I think I would’ve liked it more if I didn’t have such high expectations from the get-go. A friend from years ago once told me this was her favorite book and talked it up so much that I had the impression I was going to be blown away. Add to that, the fact that it’s been 20 years since and the legend of the book has only grown in my mind, so perhaps it was unsurprising that I would be disappointed.
In the interest of fairness though, I’m being as objective as I can about my thoughts on this book. I love Lee, he was the best character in the book, but I didn’t like most of the other characters. The women especially weren’t developed well enough; it didn’t feel like they were real people but rather just plot devices and caricatures.
I get that this story is a retelling of the Adam & Eve, Cain & Abel stories, but it felt a little on the nose and doesn’t bring anything new to the table. I love retellings, but I need them to serve the story a little more than this!
My Rating
⭐⭐⭐/5 stars.
Have you read this book? Would you read this book? Did you like the book or do you think you would like it?
A masterpiece of rebellion and imprisonment where war is peace freedom is slavery and Big Brother is watching. Thought Police, Big Brother, Orwellian – these words have entered our vocabulary because of George Orwell’s classic dystopian novel 1984. The story of one man’s Nightmare Odyssey as he pursues a forbidden love affair through a world ruled by warring states and a power structure that controls not only information but also individual thought and memory 1984 is a prophetic haunting tale More relevant than ever before 1984 exposes the worst crimes imaginable the destruction of truth freedom and individuality. With a foreword by Thomas Pynchon.
It was the Book of the Month for my online bookclub.
The Quotes
“Perhaps one did not want to be loved so much as to be understood.”
“Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.”
“Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.”
“Until they become conscious they will never rebel, and until after they have rebelled they cannot become conscious.”
The Narrator(s)
Simon Prebble. It was great, no notes.
My Thoughts
I’ve been curious about this book for a while. I’ve seen so many real world references to this book and the ideas in the book, of course, but interestingly, not many references about the characters themselves and what they do. It’s crazy that this was written so many years ago and still relevant now. It’s a scary world to live in and an extreme one. I would’ve never believed it could become a reality but a lot have happened that I never believed would.
I think it makes sense that the ideas and not the characters are the big players in this story. I don’t like the characters much, but I also don’t think we’re necessarily meant to like them. They are oppressed, brainwashed, indoctrinated, in some form or other.
The scariest part of the story for me is realizing how beliefs can totally change your reality, and it doesn’t matter if two plus two equals four. If you live in a world where everyone around you believes that two plus two equals five, then that’s your reality. It’s so easy to get gaslit and believe that you’re the one who’s got a perception problem. I’m scared just thinking about it.
I don’t think it’s necessary to read the book in order to get the ideas/references if you’re already exposed to discourse about these ideas, but I do believe that it’s helpful as recommended reading for school, for starting conversations and discussions about how these ideas take form in our world and how to prevent them.
My Rating
⭐⭐⭐/5 stars.
Have you read this book? Would you read this book? Did you like the book or do you think you would like it?
The New York Times bestseller from the Grammy-nominated indie rockstar Japanese Breakfast, an unflinching, deeply moving memoir about growing up mixed-race, Korean food, losing her Korean mother, and forging her own identity in the wake of her loss.
In this exquisite story of family, food, grief, and endurance, Michelle Zauner proves herself far more than a dazzling singer, songwriter, and guitarist. With humour and heart, she tells of growing up the only Asian-American kid at her school in Eugene, Oregon; of struggling with her mother’s particular, high expectations of her; of a painful adolescence; of treasured months spent in her grandmother’s tiny apartment in Seoul, where she and her mother would bond, late at night, over heaping plates of food. As she grew up, moving to the east coast for college, finding work in the restaurant industry, performing gigs with her fledgling band – and meeting the man who would become her husband – her Koreanness began to feel ever more distant, even as she found the life she wanted to live.
It was her mother’s diagnosis of terminal pancreatic cancer, when Michelle was twenty-five, that forced a reckoning with her identity and brought her to reclaim the gifts of taste, language, and history her mother had given her.
Vivacious, lyrical and honest, Michelle Zauner’s voice is as radiantly alive on the page as it is onstage. Rich with intimate anecdotes that will resonate widely, Crying in H Mart is a book to cherish, share, and reread.
This book was highly recommended by one of my friends who’s also a fan of the author’s music.
The Quotes
“It felt like the world had divided into two different types of people, those who had felt pain and those who had yet to.”
“There was no one in the world that was ever as critical or could make me feel as hideous as my mother, but there was no one, not even Peter, who ever made me feel as beautiful.”
“Some of the earliest memories I can recall are of my mother instructing me to always “save ten percent of yourself.” What she meant was that, no matter how much you thought you loved someone, or thought they loved you, you never gave all of yourself. Save 10 percent, always, so there was something to fall back on. “Even from Daddy, I save,” she would add.”
“Now that she was gone, I began to study her like a stranger, rooting around her belongings in an attempt to rediscover her, trying to bring her back to life in any way that I could. In my grief I was desperate to construe the slightest thing as a sign.”
The Narrator(s)
The author herself. It was great!
My Thoughts
This book was easy to read in terms of writing, but very hard to read emotionally for me. I have a lot of negative feelings and memories coming up while reading this book, and I’m struggling between having both compassionate feelings and mean feelings towards Michelle.
I relate so much to a lot of her feelings and experiences with her parents but I feel like I have a completely opposite realization about those experiences than she does; she seems to make excuses for them, and blames herself for not being a better daughter, thinking herself the problem, and for me, I know now that my parents are the problem. I do have compassion for my parents and realize they might have been doing what they believed was best because of the whole cycle of normalized abusive Asian parenting, but that doesn’t make it right regardless.
My mean feelings towards Michelle is because her thought processes with excusing her parents and blaming herself, reminds me of me when I was younger and doing the same thing, and I’m so angry at myself for not wising up sooner because it messed me up so much, and yet I feel compassion too because it was hard to go through that too. Obviously, I need therapy!
All the family trauma aside, I did really enjoy reading the book. I love the talk about food and culture, and learning to make comfort cultural food. I’ve also recently been looking into making kimchi myself and I’m excited to try it out. I love that maangchi was featured, I’ve definitely watched her videos before but I’m going to pay more attention now. I love that Peter was so loving and supportive towards Michelle and I thought their “proposal” was both hilarious and romantic, even while the circumstances were sad. I haven’t actually listened to a lot of her music except for Be Sweet, but I’m curious and I’ll check out more of her music.
My Rating
⭐⭐⭐/5 stars.
Have you read this book? Would you read this book? Did you like the book or do you think you would like it?
A time travel romance, a spy thriller, a workplace comedy, and an ingenious exploration of the nature of power and the potential for love to change it all: Welcome to The Ministry of Time, the exhilarating debut novel by Kaliane Bradley.
In the near future, a civil servant is offered the salary of her dreams and is, shortly afterward, told what project she’ll be working on. A recently established government ministry is gathering “expats” from across history to establish whether time travel is feasible—for the body, but also for the fabric of space-time.
She is tasked with working as a “bridge”: living with, assisting, and monitoring the expat known as “1847” or Commander Graham Gore. As far as history is concerned, Commander Gore died on Sir John Franklin’s doomed 1845 expedition to the Arctic, so he’s a little disoriented to be living with an unmarried woman who regularly shows her calves, surrounded by outlandish concepts such as “washing machines,” “Spotify,” and “the collapse of the British Empire.” But with an appetite for discovery, a seven-a-day cigarette habit, and the support of a charming and chaotic cast of fellow expats, he soon adjusts.
Over the next year, what the bridge initially thought would be, at best, a horrifically uncomfortable roommate dynamic, evolves into something much deeper. By the time the true shape of the Ministry’s project comes to light, the bridge has fallen haphazardly, fervently in love, with consequences she never could have imagined. Forced to confront the choices that brought them together, the bridge must finally reckon with how—and whether she believes—what she does next can change the future.
An exquisitely original and feverishly fun fusion of genres and ideas, The Ministry of Time asks: What does it mean to defy history, when history is living in your house? Kaliane Bradley’s answer is a blazing, unforgettable testament to what we owe each other in a changing world.
I was intrigued by the premise, and it was also a buddy read which motivated me to read it sooner.
The Quotes
“Life is a series of slamming doors. We make irrevocable decisions every day. A twelve-second delay, a slip of the tongue, and suddenly your life is on a new road.”
“Belief has very little to do with rationale. Why demand a map for uncharted territory?”
“You can’t trauma-proof life, and you can’t hurt-proof your relationships. You have to accept you will cause harm to yourself and others. But you can also fuck up, really badly, and not learn anything from it except that you fucked up. It’s the same with oppression. You don’t gain any special knowledge from being marginalized. But you do gain something from stepping outside your hurt and examining the scaffolding of your oppression.”
“Everything that has ever been could have been prevented, and none of it was. The only thing you can mend is the future.”
My Thoughts
I had high hopes for this book but initial reviews had me tempering my expectations. Even then, I continued hoping that it might turn out to be a good read after all but I was disappointed.
The one good thing I can say about the book is that I really enjoyed the banter between Gore and the narrator. Other than that, I don’t feel like I ever got to know the characters deeper, nor the narrator’s relationships with them. None of the characters got fleshed out enough, and I just didn’t care about them. I also thought it was weird that we saw a lot of Arthur and Margaret but not their bridges, and yet the narrator as Gore’s bridge hangs out with them a lot. It felt convenient to have this set cast of characters while the others hardly ever made an appearance.
The philosophizing was interesting at first but got more and more tedious. It’s funny that I loved the banter and the jokes, but didn’t much like the rest of the writing. The ending felt rushed and incomplete, almost like a DNF by the author, and I didn’t even care at that point.
It feels so mean to say all of that, but I genuinely did hope to like it and I am disappointed. I liked the idea and the beginning felt so promising but I feel like it didn’t live up to its potential. The whole bit with not telling the narrator’s name also felt unnecessary, there wasn’t any reason or meaning for it. The whole thing felt pointless and I don’t know how to feel about the book.
My Rating
⭐⭐⭐/5 stars.
Have you read this book? Would you read this book? Did you like the book or do you think you would like it?
In Robin McKinley’s Newbery Medal–winning novel, an outcast princess must earn her birthright as a hero of the realm
Aerin is an outcast in her own father’s court, daughter of the foreign woman who, it was rumored, was a witch, and enchanted the king to marry her.
She makes friends with her father’s lame, retired warhorse, Talat, and discovers an old, overlooked, and dangerously imprecise recipe for dragon-fire-proof ointment in a dusty corner of her father’s library. Two years, many canter circles to the left to strengthen Talat’s weak leg, and many burnt twigs (and a few fingers) secretly experimenting with the ointment recipe later, Aerin is present when someone comes from an outlying village to report a marauding dragon to the king. Aerin slips off alone to fetch her horse, her sword, and her fireproof ointment . . .
But modern dragons, while formidable opponents fully capable of killing a human being, are small and accounted vermin. There is no honor in killing dragons. The great dragons are a tale out of ancient history.
That is, until the day that the king is riding out at the head of an army. A weary man on an exhausted horse staggers into the courtyard where the king’s troop is assembled: “The Black Dragon has come . . . Maur, who has not been seen for generations, the last of the great dragons, great as a mountain. Maur has awakened.”
This is a reread although I don’t remember reading it before. I gave it only two stars previously, but I have enjoyed the author’s other works and I thought I should give this book a second chance.
The Quotes
“If you try to breathe water, you will not turn into a fish, you will drown; but water is still good to drink.”
“Yes, I am letting my own experience color my answer, which is what experience is for….”
“She felt like dead leaves, dry and brown and brittle, although leaves were probably not miserable; they were quietly buried by snow and burned by sun and harried by rain till they peacefully disintegrated into the earth…”
“She fell in love with him, and he with her; that’s a spell if you like.”
The Narrator(s)
Roslyn Alexander. It was great, no complaints!
My Thoughts
I enjoyed this book more than the last time but it’s still not one of my favorites from the author, so I’m only bumping it up one more star for a total of 3 stars. I did enjoy the listening experience very much though. It was suitably light and interesting at the same time, and I found Aerin to be an interesting character.
I must say though, having just recently read Sunshine by the same author, I really wonder about her stance on cheating/polyamory. There are instances of questionable romantic encounters that aren’t explicitly cheating because the relationships are never defined properly, but they aren’t necessarily consensual polyamory either. They bother me a little bit and I feel like I cannot wholly enjoy the romantic aspect of the stories without feeling like they might be morally wrong.
Other than that, I did enjoy the adventure and intrigue parts of the story. There is also a prequel that I’ve read before and also rated only two stars, that I intend to reread again. Let’s hope I enjoy that one more this time too.
My Rating
⭐⭐⭐/5 stars.
Have you read this book? Would you read this book? Did you like the book or do you think you would like it?
A literary speculative novel about an isolated town neighbored by its own past and future
Sixteen-year-old Odile is an awkward, quiet girl vying for a coveted seat on the Conseil. If she earns the position, she’ll decide who may cross her town’s heavily guarded borders. On the other side, it’s the same valley, the same town–except to the east, the town is twenty years ahead in time. To the west, it’s twenty years behind. The towns repeat in an endless sequence across the wilderness.
When Odile recognizes two visitors she wasn’t supposed to see, she realizes that the parents of her friend Edme have been escorted across the border from the future, on a mourning tour, to view their son while he’s still alive in Odile’s present. Edme––who is brilliant, funny, and the only person to truly see Odile––is about to die. Sworn to secrecy in order to preserve the timeline, Odile now becomes the Conseil’s top candidate, yet she finds herself drawing closer to the doomed boy, imperiling her entire future.
My library featured this book aggressively, and it also became my in-person bookclub’s BOTM as well as a buddy read on another bookclub.
The Quotes
“Ambition might be like a living organism, reliant on nurture to grow. With some encouragement, mine had protruded from the dirt, a tiny shoot crawling toward the light.”
“It’s not bad to want comfort, or respect from others. It matters more than you think.”
“What I felt was a kind of thrilling sadness, something I have since experienced when looking out over other open spaces and lonely boundaries: an emotion that lives on the desolate edge of the known.”
The Narrator(s)
Cindy Kay. Some parts of the narration were quite whispery and it was really difficult to make out what she was saying, but I did enjoy her narration and the way she voiced the characters.
My Thoughts
I’m not sure how I feel about this book. On the one hand, I thought it was a very interesting premise and I enjoyed a lot of the philosophical discussion about time travel and interferring with the timelines. On the other hand, I found it difficult to like any of the characters, and the whole experience of reading it was quite painful for me.
The experience of reading a book is often just as important to me as the story itself, and that’s why I enjoy buddy reads and book discussions so much. In this case, the audiobook was difficult to listen to, so I tried to switch to a print copy, only to find a lack of chapters and quotation marks so you never know where you are in the book or who is speaking. I ended up going back to the audiobook because at least the narrator’s voice acting identified the characters’ speech. Intellectually, I like that the author made that choice because the whole idea of timelessness in a book about time travel is quite brilliant. Experientially, it just didn’t work for me.
I did get very invested in the story and I kept wanting to know what happens next. There were a lot of things that don’t make sense outside of this world bubble, but I really liked it as a thought experiment. I enjoyed the idea and I think it was well-written, but I don’t think I will ever want to come back to it.
My Rating
⭐⭐⭐/5 stars.
Have you read this book? Would you read this book? Did you like the book or do you think you would like it?
Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone by Benjamin Stevenson
Everyone in my family has killed someone. Some of us, the high achievers, have killed more than once. I’m not trying to be dramatic, but it is the truth. Some of us are good, others are bad, and some just unfortunate.
I’m Ernest Cunningham. Call me Ern or Ernie. I wish I’d killed whoever decided our family reunion should be at a ski resort, but it’s a little more complicated than that.
Have I killed someone? Yes. I have. Who was it? Let’s get started.
There’d been a lot of hype for this book and I’ve been hearing about this book for a while. I thought it sounded really interesting.
The Quotes
“Family is not whose blood runs in your veins, it’s who you’d spill it for.”
“You can tell a lot about someone from whether they can handle an uncomfortable silence. If they ride it out or snap it off.”
“Anger is as much an heirloom as any Rolex.”
“Every basic task starts to feel like a decision, and that becomes so draining that you end up unable to make any of them.”
The Narrator(s)
Barton Welch. He was very pleasant to listen to.
My Thoughts
I must admit I didn’t love this book. I had high expectations coming into it and had been anticipating reading it and the other books in the series, but I’m not sure that I’ll continue with it. It’s not horrible, but I didn’t enjoy the writing style. It felt gimmicky, and the constant breaking of the fourth wall annoyed me and took me out of the story.
The story itself wasn’t incredible either and I didn’t connect very much with the characters. In fact, I would say that the book as a whole was quite forgettable to me. Perhaps the most memorable thing about it for me is the title of the book. I just finished it and I couldn’t tell you anything about the characters or significant things that happened because nothing and no one really stood out to me.
However, it is well-written and -crafted despite my dislike of the writing style, and there are some great quotes I really liked in the book. I can understand why people would enjoy this book, but it just didn’t connect for me unfortunately.
My Rating
⭐⭐⭐/5 stars.
Have you read this book? Would you read this book? Did you like the book or do you think you would like it?
A super-powered collision of extraordinary minds and vengeful intentions—#1 New York Times bestselling author V. E. Schwab returns with the thrilling follow-up to Vicious.
Magneto and Professor X. Superman and Lex Luthor. Victor Vale and Eli Ever. Sydney and Serena Clarke. Great partnerships, now soured on the vine.
But Marcella Riggins needs no one. Flush from her brush with death, she’s finally gained the control she’s always sought—and will use her new-found power to bring the city of Merit to its knees. She’ll do whatever it takes, collecting her own sidekicks, and leveraging the two most infamous EOs, Victor Vale and Eli Ever, against each other.
With Marcella’s rise, new enmities create opportunity–and the stage of Merit City will once again be set for a final, terrible reckoning.
I read Vicious, the first book in the series, and loved it. I wanted more of the story.
The Quotes
“How many men would she have to turn to dust before one took her seriously?”
“It doesn’t matter if you’re a human versus a human or a human versus an EO or an EO versus an EO. You do what you can. You fight, and you win, until you don’t.”
“The next time you point a gun at someone, make sure you’re ready to pull the trigger.”
“The life I had is gone. There’s no getting it back. I’d rather make a new one. A better one. One where I don’t have to pretend to be weak to survive.”
My Thoughts
I didn’t like this book as much as the first one. I loved the characters, and still do, but there were so many plot holes and issues with the story this time around that were really convenient and annoying. The storytelling style with the jumping timelines was also an issue; it was very confusing and tedious to get through.
The catalyst of the story was stupid, in my opinion, because Victor justified doing many bad things by saying that he was trying to cover their tracks, but that doesn’t make sense at all because anyone with any common sense would realize that it’s exactly what would bring attention to them. I also didn’t like how conveniently things were resolved in the end during the boss battles. I still love Sydney and Mitch, and I think June is a very interesting new character. I want to know what happens to them in the next book, but I’m not looking forward to slogging through the jumping timelines storytelling style, and if the plot is going to have issues like in this book, I don’t know if it’s going to be worth it. I truly hope it gets better.
My Rating
⭐⭐⭐/5 stars.
Have you read this book? Would you read this book? Did you like the book or do you think you would like it?
