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Progress. The first one kept me frozen for a while till I decided to just DNF it and move on. 😆

I have 6 months to declutter my 44 TBR books as part of the KonMari tidy up. I can’t bring myself to just get rid of unread books, so I prioritized some and then marked others that I wouldn’t be all that upset if I didn’t get them read by the time the 6 months was up.

Poison for Breakfast

Cloud Cuckoo Land

The Rest of Us Just Live Here

The Gray Man

Sierra Six- a gray man novel

Scyth

Thunderhead

The Toll

Project Hail Mary

Mysterious Benedict Society 1

Mysterious Benedict Society 2

Any Sign of Life

To Sleep in a Sea of Stars

Madhouse at the End of the Earth

The Lost Apothecary

The Madness of Crowds ✔️

The Ten Thousand Doors of January

The Apollo Murders

Congo

The Little Paris Bookshop

Unbirthday

Straight On Till Morning

Descendants 1

Descendants 2

Descendants 3

Descendants 4

The Force Awakens

The Disappearing Spoon

Venomous Lumpsucker

Where the Crawdads Sing

Gallant

The 5th Wave

Devil In White City

Alien Covenant

Ready Player 1

Go Set a Watchman

Mortal Engines 🔳DNF

The Compound ✔️

Radio Girls

The Art Thief

Star Wars High Republic Path of Deceit advanced copy

The Kill Order

Flower Crowns and Fearsome Things

Neverwhere

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Book blogs would you please reblog so that I can follow you; I need more book blogs in my life. ❤️

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Ugh. I started reading this one back in 2020 and it was just as convoluted as the movie, if not more so. I’ll give it one more go, but I have far too many books and little time, I’ll have to DNF some and not muscle my way through or keep it with the idea it’ll get better if I read it later???

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I have 6 months to declutter my 44 TBR books as part of the KonMari tidy up. I can’t bring myself to just get rid of unread books, so I prioritized some and then marked others that I wouldn’t be all that upset if I didn’t get them read by the time the 6 months was up.

Poison for Breakfast

Cloud Cuckoo Land

The Rest of Us Just Live Here

The Gray Man

Sierra Six- a gray man novel

Scyth

Thunderhead

The Toll

Project Hail Mary

Mysterious Benedict Society 1

Mysterious Benedict Society 2

Any Sign of Life

To Sleep in a Sea of Stars

Madhouse at the End of the Earth

The Lost Apothecary

The Madness of Crowds ✔️

The Ten Thousand Doors of January

The Apollo Murders

Congo

The Little Paris Bookshop

Unbirthday

Straight On Till Morning

Descendants 1

Descendants 2

Descendants 3

Descendants 4

The Force Awakens

The Disappearing Spoon

Venomous Lumpsucker

Where the Crawdads Sing

Gallant

The 5th Wave

Devil In White City

Alien Covenant ✔️

Ready Player 1

Go Set a Watchman

Mortal Engines 🔳DNF

The Compound ✔️

Radio Girls

The Art Thief

Star Wars High Republic Path of Deceit advanced copy

The Kill Order

Flower Crowns and Fearsome Things

Neverwhere

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Alien Covenant: Origins by Alan Dean Foster

I absolutely love the 1979 film Alien, I think it’s a pillar of cinema. The whole egg to face hugger to chest burster to double mouthed eyeless monster with acid for blood and a knife tail is like a perfect Pokémon evolution of both horror and terror. And don’t forget the set design holy cow. I was less impressed with everything that came after that until Prometheus which is, oddly enough, one of my comfort movies.

That’s when I became obsessed with the story line, it wasn’t just monsters and mayhem and roll credits anymore, nah bro we had malicious synthetics experimenting on humans without their knowledge or consent, and starting the chain reaction that led to the existence of the Xenomorph, and commits genocide no less. In Alien Covenant, which is a little too gory for me to watch a lot, the plot gets even more interesting with David disguised as Walter taking over the ship full of colonists and placing some embryonic face huggers in cryo storage.

I wanted to consume every available piece of information and additional lore or facts or information, I wanted to know so badly, I was so curious and fascinated. I’m telling you all of this so you know how much I love the franchise and how hard it is for me to tell you a hard truth: this book is terrible.

SPOILERS AHEAD

So first of all, the author has the same emoting capabilities as a paper towel. I felt nothing for any of the characters. Was that intentional? Should that have been intentional? Me thinketh not. For once I finally understand the faux pas that is “show don’t tell”, we get told a lot of things, things hard to envision and even harder to care about when the writing is as dry as a piece of burnt toast.

I swear this should not have passed editing inspection for several reasons. There were some continuity issues, the biggest one being a fight scene where descriptions like there being body parts flung in the air in an explosion and a soldier being pierced in the face with a long shard of bone ending in “no causalities on either side”. Uh, hello? Also a characters manner of speaking changes suddenly and jarringly in like, the last one sixth of the book? And was I to this a annoying old man British thing where he ended non questions with “what?” And called one character “old boy” a lot. You know the movie Chicken run? The old rooster? That’s all I could hear.

Sadly, this book doesn’t even need to exist at all. With the movie preceding it’s release and therefore the outcome already known, it held no intrigue or suspense in that department. We already know the Earthsavers don’t stop the Covenant from departing. And there is nothing added to the plot of Alien Covenant in any way, there’s just some stupid guy having dreams about the xenomorphs and gaining a cult following that try to prevent space colonization and fail. I cannot think of a single thing I can hold onto as being useful going forward. Nothing scientific, nothing notable about the characters was revealed, in 344 pages he drug out what could have been an after thought. Especially since none of the events in this book were actually brought up in the movie. I hate to say it, I hoped for so much more, but this story is useless and irrelevant. Worse, it’s not even interesting.

And oh my god don’t get me started on how confusing it was to keep track of characters when he used descriptors like “the matronly woman frowned at her smaller female counterpart as she spoke robotically to the portly and rotund pale man.” And then in the next bit he uses names but you have no idea who the name belongs to. Then he’s back to saying things like “the youngest male member of the council and the one with considerably more melanin than the rest of his associates”. I feel like he was kind of fat phobic but in a weird way like yeah imma write a bunch of fat characters so I can describe the way they’re fat in so many different ways, none of which are flattering or even neutral.

I wanted to like it. I wanted for it to be good. I hold the franchise and movie plots dear to my heart still. I am a devout member of this fandom, which I feel is still important to stress so when I say zero stars you know I was not coming from an antagonistic place or didn’t understand the subject, and I didn’t have any preconceived negative feelings toward it.

But I have been robbed by the worst thief of all. A bad book.

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Why did “be critical of your media” turn into “find all its flaws and hate it” why did people become allergic to FUN

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No you don’t understand, I hated this.

I was too hard on Monument 14 when I gave it 0 stars because now I have to go into the negatives to rate this book. What’s the opposite of a star? A black hole I guess. So five black holes from me, which is ironic since he talked about everyone’s holes. I skimmed it so I could pretend I didn’t really DNF it so I could feel qualified to leave a review.

🕳🕳🕳🕳🕳

🌶- 🤮 ☠️

Rating- X not suitable for any audience.

With prose more purple than Thanos’ ass, this book tells a two page short story in 72k words. Maybe I’m just not one of those intellectual types that can easily spot the satire and nuances of books that try to make a commentary on society, I’m just a poor schlub trying to find entertainment to escape my life. But I did not find entertainment here. I didn’t find anything realistic or likable. I only found profound irritation and disgust.

The sex scenes are not spice, it’s like you were walking down your block and looked over and saw a neighbors window open and without your desire or consent you are seeing the very raw act go down, not romantic, just explicit, and you leave feeling very uncomfortable.

What’s worse is things like a mother noticing the hairs growing around her underaged son’s nipples, or her even younger daughter’s snug one piece swimsuit that puts her “pudendum in relief”. (Google that word and you’ll hate it just like I did.)

We also get a whole page of what this woman buys at the grocery store. She bought this and this and this and this and this and this… I got angry.

Here are my favorite bits from its one star reviews on goodreads

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Unwind -Neal Shusterman

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

🫑

PG-13

“After the Second Civil War was fought over abortion, a compromise was reached, allowing parents to sign an order for their children between the ages of 13 and 18 to be "unwound" — taken to "harvest camps" and dissected into their body parts for later use. The reasoning is that, since 99.44% of the body is used, unwinds do not technically die because their individual body parts live on.”

Our three main characters are a troubled youth who’s parents have decided to have him unwound, an orphan ward of the state that is to be unwound due to budget cuts, and a 13 year old who is to be unwound as a religious tithe.

I think my one hang up is that a grown man with access to Google woulda and shoulda known you can’t give a newborn human baby cows milk, and he vastly overestimated how long a newborn can go without being fed. But as this is a YA novel maybe he just counted on his audiences unfamiliarity with the subject.

It would be important to mention that this book was written 14 years ago in 2007. So when it talks about how people aren’t called black and white anymore but “Umber” and “Sienna” it might strike you as odd, and wow it was almost a prophecy about pro life and pro choice fighting. If you keep in mind how it’s a product of its time you can definitely enjoy it.

I went along with the book, never thinking of DNFing it, I was just plain enjoying it. Toward the end though there was a particularly unsettling chapter that took the book from ‘good’ to ‘you gotta read it’. My mouth was literally, literally hanging open. I had to stop and shiver with the heebie jeebies before I continued. I was really impressed with the simple, easy way he wrote something so disturbing.

And then there was a moment of “no… no it’s not gonna be, tell me it’s not going- no no… OH MY GOD!”

It took the book from good to great.

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Ashes (book 1)- by Ilsa J. Bick

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

🫑

🧟‍♂️🩸

I really liked this one! It was believable, interesting, had high stakes, had plot twists, and the ending had me immediately going to order the rest of the trilogy.

Trigger warnings would be blood, gore, violence, and people turned feral going cannibal. But even with all that said I’d give it a PG-13 movie rating, if I could make up a rating though I’d say maybe PG-15

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Monument 14 by Emmy Laybourne

Synopsis- “Your mother hollers that you’re going to miss the bus. She can see it coming down the street. You don’t stop and hug her and tell her you love her. You don’t thank her for being a good, kind, patient mother. Of course not- you launch yourself down the stairs and make a run for the corner.

Only, if it’s the last time you’ll ever see your mother, you sort of start to wish you’d stopped and did all those things. Maybe even missed the bus.

But the bus was barreling down our street, so I ran.”

“In Emmy Laybourne’s action packed debut novel, six high school kids (some popular, some not), two eighth graders (one a tech genius), and six little kids trapped together in a chain superstore build a refuge for themselves inside. While outside, a series of escalating disasters, beginning with a monster hailstorm and ending with a chemical weapons spill, seems to be tearing the world-as they know it- apart.”

⭐️- 0/5

🌶- 😱😳👨‍👧☠️

😂- 1/5

I didn’t hate it, but I didn’t like it. I gave it two stars on good reads but honestly it’s only because I feel bad leaving unfavorable reviews because I feel mean and I wouldn’t want people to be “mean” to me as a writer. It’s a personality flaw.

So above the readmore line is spoiler free, below it will have spoilers.

Trigger warnings

Underage drinking

Drug use

Pedophilia

Sexual assault

Violence

Death

Gore

Ethnic/racial insensitivity

Homophobia/insensitivity

It was a good idea but just poorly executed. The science wasn’t solid enough to make me buy it. I had no emotional connection to anyone but like three of the small children. The writing style was amateurish in places to the point it threw me bodily from the story.

Now here comes the readmore line

On page 7 the first sentence that really let me know I was in for it was

“A monster hailstone hit Josie on the forehead and big pink gash opened on her dark forehead.”

And I believe it took till page 14 to learn the main character’s name. Every “Hispanic” or “Latino” character was described as “Chubby”, and one time this older guy is talking about how he and another man were helping a woman with a broken leg and it was hard because she was larger, he even said “of African American descent, 200 or 250 pounds” like why did we have to make it so awkwardly clear it was a fat black lady?? Also they were described as chocolate and mocha colored.

And it’s incredibly awkward reading about a high school boy nuzzling a girl’s bare breasts and calling them Cinderella and Snow White. Also a 13 year old CHILD wearing short shorts and bending over and high school boys, a SENIOR even, staring at the “creamy skin of her inner, inner thigh” and getting her tshirt wet so they could see her breasts in detail. Like, way way way way way over sexualized the 13 year old little girl who ends up getting sexually assaulted by one of the adults that showed up.

And then at the end the girl with the Princess boobs can’t leave with the rest of them because omg she’s pregnant, has been for four months but wow no one could tell.

I will not finish the trilogy or keep this book.

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This is going to be my disclaimer post for book reviews.

When I talk about things I like and don’t like, it’s not in broad terms of judgement on those things or the people who do like them. I am speaking very small, for myself and myself only.

For instance, when I say I don’t want to read smut it’s not because I think sex is a dirty horrible thing and the people who read it are sinners, and I don’t think I’m intellectually superior for not reading it. It’s because I have a trauma, I’m demi/grey sexual, and I’m just not comfortable with it. That is ok.

We don’t have to like everything. When I say I don’t like something it’s not a commentary on that thing or the people who do like it. Think of it as simple and nonconsequential as me saying I don’t like asparagus. Who cares? Who cares if I don’t like vampires, supernatural things or high fantasy? It literally has no impact on anything.

I don’t like to talk at length about things I don’t like, and I don’t like to be mean in reviews either.

So I’ll let you know what I am and am not into so you won’t find yourself disappointed or waiting around for a genre or book I’m not likely to read.

Not into:

Vampires

Werewolves

Demons

Supernatural themes

Witches

Wizards

High magic

High fantasy

Smut

What I am into:

YA

Dystopia

Scifi

Aliens

Monsters

Space travel

Comedy

Drama

Emotional

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*slaps the top of the three foot stack of books like it’s roof of a car and sends them crashing down*: this TBR stack has so much emotional trauma in it.

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Magnolia's TBR List- Fiction

Once I do a review for a book I will turn the title into a link to the review. As I add books to the TBR I will put the new date on them. I'm going to try not to buy more books until I get through these but... ha.

12/1/2021

Project Hail Mary- Andy Weir

To Sleep in a Sea of Stars- Christopher Paolini

Madhouse at the End of the Earth- Julian Sancton

The Lost Apothecary- Sarah Penner

Pan's Labyrinth- Guillermo del Toro and Cornelia Funke

Straight on Till Morning- Liz Baswell

Unbirthday- Liz Braswell

Never Ever- Sarah Saedi

The Rest of Us Just Live Here- Patrick Ness

Poison for Breakfast- Lemony Snicket

The Apollo Murders- Chris Haofield

The Last House on Needless Street- Catriona Ward

The Madness of Crowds- Louise Penny

Cloud Cuckoo Land- Anthony Doerr

Fresh Brewed Murder- Emmeline Duncan

The Ten Thousand Doors of January- Alix E. Harrow

Neverwhere- Neil Gaiman

Ready Player One- Ernest Cline

Temping Fate- Esther Friesner

The Bridesmaid- Hailey Abbott

Mortal Engines- Philip Reeve

The Compound- Stephanie Stuve-Bodeen

Ashes- Ilsa J. Bick

Monument 14- Emmy Laybourne

Unwind- Neil Shusterman

Any Sign of Life- Rae Carson

Radio Girls- Sarah Jane Stratford

The Art Thief- Noah Charney

Flower Crowns and Fearsome Things- Amanda Lovelace

The Isle of the Lost-

Return to the Isle of the Lost-

Rise of the Isle of the Lost-

Escape the Isle of the Lost- Melissa De La Cruz

The Devil in the White City- Erin Larson

The Mysterious Benedict Society-

the Mysterious Benedict Society and the Perilous Journey- Trenton Lee Stewart

Little Paris Book Shop- Nina George

Leave the World Behind- Rumaan Alam