brittbat's reviews
1059 reviews

Oh, this book. I listened to it driving to and from work, and I cried and smiled the entire time. Of course, I listened to it from the perspective of someone who has recently fallen in love with a person I'm crazy about, so your reaction might vary depending on your situation. But I thought this was a perfectly charming, heartwarming, funny, and powerful collection of stories.

Gaaaahhhhhh. I have lots of inarticulate feelings.

Quick, factual, unbiased, relatively without frill but containing a few moments that made me wonder how wild the first draft might have been. Kirk finger-wags about getting wrapped up in the sensationalism of Plath's life, then concludes her chapters with foreboding cliffhangers. Surprisingly engaging.

A cleverly written future noir in which the Internet no longer exists and privacy is of such importance that people wear literal masks to hide their identities. Four stars because I wanted more and felt as though I was only skimming across the surface of a vast, detailed world.

This was a standing-at-the-circ-desk, I-can't-resist, sorry-not-sorry read. It was delightful and adorable, and it immediately became part of my list of books to buy for when I have a baby someday.

This is one of those books that lingered on the periphery of my mental to-be-read list, but it took a friend recommending it to make it personal and motivate me to finally read it.

In some ways, this novel did not live up to the hype surrounding it. I had only heard glowing reviews, so it was sort of impossible for it to live up to the reputation of perfection it carried.

Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe is, reduced to its most essential elements, the story of how two boys become a couple. However, this doesn't happen until the next to last page. The other 300-odd pages are about growing up, family, identity, and avoidance.

SO MUCH AVOIDANCE. Designating Ari as the narrator is a really interesting choice because he is so reticent to speak about truths he recognizes, even to himself. As a result, most of the important action in the book happens off the page, or is relayed to the reader in a highly simplified, obscured manner. It's impressive, and makes this novel unique in the world of gay YA narratives, where voices like Dante's are (in my reading experience) more common. However, I can see how this might frustrate readers. Because this is so character-driven and the plot focuses on slow, subtle changes, it sometimes feels like almost nothing is happening.

But I kept reading! I couldn't stop reading! For the first third of the book I kept thinking that the narration felt stilted, that the dialogue was unrealistic, that I didn't know where it was going... And then a thing happens, and I couldn't stop reading! Even when I continued to have reservations about it, I couldn't stop!

So I suppose this book wins, which is why I gave it four stars. I couldn't settle for three, for whatever reason, but I wasn't as blown away as everyone else I know who has read it, wasn't blown away enough to give it five stars. For whatever reason. It's probably for same reason why I would look back at my progress after a reading session and realize I had devoured huge chunks of pages.

To steal a word from Ari and Dante, the appeal is sort of inscrutable. But it's there.

"There's no graduating from this kind of education, couples just keep growing and changing until they either break up or die."

My god, what a beautiful and heartbreaking thing Saga is.

I think what made this volume especially heartwrenching--aside from the big death stuff that happens with certain characters--is the fact that at this point, the characters are established, the reader has emotions about them, and Brian K. Vaughan is free to spend more time destroying those emotions. It's not even that the situations are necessarily that much worse, because from the first page of the first volume, it's been nonstop obstacles for Alana, Marko, and their little family. But in Volume 5, you feel it so much more because you've been along for the ride longer, you're more invested, and things hit you way harder.

One of my favorite things about Saga is how impossible it is to describe it to someone without it sounding so, so stupid. In reality, of course, it's well-written and has interesting characters and is super stylishly drawn and is just all good things. But when I try to talk about it to someone who hasn't read it--in the hopes of brainwashing them into picking it up and sharing my obsession--I tend to get blank stares around the time I say "civil war between a planet where people have wings and its moon, where people have horns."

Which is all to say that the weirdness, the inexplicable stuff that gives Saga its characteristic Saga-ness, is well on display in this volume. I mean, there's a quest to gather dragon semen. But that quest to gather dragon semen, like all the other weirdness, is tied up in Serious Emotional Stuff. So it's not just a quest for dragon semen. It's a quest for dragon semen with a cause.

Really wish that I could convey that to the people I'm trying to convince to read this series.

I got a trial of Comics Plus through the library where I work, so I read this to test out the interface. Cute, with tone and pacing similar to the show, though I didn't find it as funny. It's a series of little mini-stories rather than a sustained narrative, so there isn't the drive to find out what happens next that powers most of my comics reading experience. So I'm glad I read it, but I don't feel like I have to continue reading the series.