imogenrose97's reviews
490 reviews

John Green's voice calms my anxiety more than anything else. Listening to him discuss the Anthropocene, makes me feel both powerful and very small. It gives me perspective when I am fearful and feels like someone telling you that everything is going to be okay even when it's not.

This is likely the most hilarious book I have ever read. Not only was I giggling but also fully laughing. Sometimes multiple times a page. Unheard of. 
The characters were beautiful and interesting and relatable as a 27 queer woman who went to primary school in a town half an hour from Kerikeri (mentioned literally one time and referencing the people from there appreciating good seafood, I'm pretty pleased to say I fit the bill). 
I loved everything about this book. I want to read everything the author writes and hope that she has a long and prolific career so I can greedily consume every drop of writing.
This would have gotten 5 stars but I found the end to be too complex and messy. So many things were flying about that needed to be resolved so quickly. I wish one of the discoveries had either happened sooner in the story leaving more time to wrap it up or there were another 50 pages to make sure it all came together with more clarity. 

This is likely the most hilarious book I have ever read. Not only was I giggling but also fully laughing. Sometimes multiple times a page. Unheard of. 
The characters were beautiful and interesting and relatable as a 27 queer woman who went to primary school in a town half an hour from Kerikeri (mentioned literally one time and referencing the people from there appreciating good seafood, I'm pretty pleased to say I fit the bill). 
I loved everything about this book. I want to read everything the author writes and hope that she has a long and prolific career so I can greedily consume every drop of writing.
This would have gotten 5 stars but I found the end to be too complex and messy. So many things were flying about that needed to be resolved so quickly. I wish one of the discoveries had either happened sooner in the story leaving more time to wrap it up or there were another 50 pages to make sure it all came together with more clarity. 

 

I have never read a book that made me as hungry as this one. I want to go back and read it again and eat all of the meals to eat while I read the descriptions. Butter was one of those books that have a whole nest of things that link back into each other and leave you confounded that it all came together like that. Food was used as a device to depict Japanese society. Whether you could cook or not, whether you cooked solely for your family or made the effort simply for yourself. Having lived alone and as someone who views food as not only sustenance but as an enjoyable activity and a luxury I have always sought to give myself. Cooking is a meditative and sustaining practice and as someone who has had an eating disorder and still struggles with disordered eating, I try my best to approach food as an exciting part of my day and not just something I force myself to do in order to survive. The analogy of food as how much you look after yourself, and how much you will care for yourself in the future was stunning. 
I was mildly frustrated by Reiko and Rika's internal monologues about each other, which had me hoping for and expecting them to end up together.  But also happy for a book to end without the need for a romance to tie it all back in.
Rika's kindness towards Kajii was something I found particularly interesting. She never judged her harshly. Spent much of her thoughts objectively trying to understand why Kajii was the way she was. Instead of following the mass thoughts of judgment, she tried to understand how society had shaped Kajii and in turn, she grew to understand how society had shaped her own life. By the end, it became clear how much was linked back to how her father died and how society blamed her mum for leaving an abusive relationship and "letting" him die, how Rika in turn blamed herself. 
Though this book might seem like a simple exploration of food, it somehow covered an entire society's view of women and the foundations that they support.
 

I heard about this book from a friend's review and strangely enough, a few days later a bookshop newsletter had an event that Friday. Though from the review and the blurb I wasn't too sure if the book was going to be for me, I thought I might as well go and get inspired at a book launch. What followed was the most incredible discussion of writing, thoughts, culture and womanhood. Alongside Yasmin Zaher was Aysegul Savas, both women spoke about their writing practice in such captivating clarity. They knew who they were and how they wrote and they were so encouraging and excited about each other's work, it was impossible not to be excited with them.
I went home and had the luxurious pleasure of getting to start a book I had bought that day. Though slim The Coin felt large. I got lost in the streets of New York, chasing a beautiful woman with a CVS basket. Zaher spoke of her character as a bad woman. I could not see it. I saw a woman who was doing all she could to thrive in a world that plays obvious favourites. As she tried her best to teach this lesson to children who might grow up to be seen as another stain on society's pockmarked coat, I could do nothing but be impressed with her determination. 
With vivid, visceral, poetic and often hilarious writing I could not get enough. I could not recommend this book more.

Well, this book was so completely unexpected in all of its twists and turns. The first portion within the spaceship dragged on a little too long, I almost lost interest. Thankfully I persevered because DAMN. What an incredible piece of art. This was a striking mediation on the incarceration system, on humanity's devaluation of other humans, on first impressions, on the pain of being alive and dealt the cards you were dealt from birth. I didn't expect any of what happened to happen, a truly original book with timeless themes and so much heart. the author wrote with honesty and kindness in a way that mainstream media so often doesn't. I'm really looking forward to reading more of her work.

 

This was unfortunately another poetry book not for me. Most definitely because I think in too much of a lateral way and I should have been thinking outside the context of the words themselves. But that's just not the way my brain works.

The nine women writers one just completely infuriated meeee because it was non fiction, and it was talking about  Mary Wollstonecraft (Mary Shelley's mum!!!!). It mentions this friendship she had with a woman called Frannie, a romantic friendship that she wrote a whole book about a similar friendship that was really romantic. Then there was all this other context and her heart being broken when Frannie died and that she never got over it. But the author didn't take any of it seriously and only went on and on about how all these men she flirts with and might have been involved with and I was like lady stop straight washing her!!! It just made me so mad

This book was a far step from my normal genres and I spent each night while I was reading it, jittery with images of shadows watching from the dark with needlelike teeth. The characters were vivid and bold and made me so furious I could have screamed. Each pious hypocritical word rang true with what I know of the period of burning witches and ostracising the other.
Slewfoot/Samson's identity struggle was such a fun mystery to read, trying to work out who was telling him the truth and who was using him for their own gain was intriguing and perfect for reading as a buddy read. Though, once again, clear communication could have solved that problem pretty early on. 
Abitha was wild and strong and most importantly kind, even if she did not receive kindness herself, and had an incredible sense of right and wrong and constantly worked to be godly, hard as it was with the town and fucking Wallace being a bitch. I'm really not sure I would have been allowed to live and would likely have been burnt as a witch if I had lived back then.

I particularly enjoyed the depictions and visions of all gods as one, so many eyes watching humanity, different but one. 
Now though I truly enjoyed the ending and the just desserts received, something in me made me want the townsfolk to know and understand what is truly good, that their cruelty was not godly, that to look at something or someone different and decide devil without so much as a conversation is no way to be good (though correct for the time). I wanted their minds to be changed, for them to see, as the reverend did, that good and godly is about actions and kindness and questioning. That to be good or bad is not black and white. While I know that this would have taken waaaay too much writing and maybe wouldn't have been satisfying for anyone but me, someone understanding their wrongdoing is still my most perfect ending.

Hiromi Kawakami is one of my just read authors, her writing holds a bewitching mood that is impossible to escape, each book I've read feels outside of time. While there might be recognisable signs and places, feelings and dreams, it feels completely removed from life, transporting you to somewhere beyond. This is highlighted in Dragon Palace in the breaking apart of taboo, from tentical porn adjacent stories to a younger brother drinking the milk of his sister. Though weird and typically wrong, because her writing feels outside of life it doesn't make you squirm as it would on a screen. None of it feels gratuitous either, it felt more like breaking apart the preconceived ideas of how life is to explore what's underneath. 
Though this was for sure not my favourite Kawakami, it still held the mystifying candour that I love so much.