jjvaldezbooks's reviews
296 reviews

Piranesi by Susanna Clarke

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mysterious tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? N/A
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

Oh Crap! Potty Training: Everything Modern Parents Need to Know to Do It Once and Do It Right by Jamie Glowacki

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1.0

"crap" is right. repetitive, arrogant, fear mongering drivel with no back up plans for the 80% of kids this won't work on. not to mention no research to back it up! incredibly annoyed I wasted any time on this 
The Adventure Zone: The Suffering Game by Griffin McElroy, Clint McElroy, Carey Pietsch, Travis McElroy, Justin McElroy

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adventurous challenging dark emotional funny hopeful fast-paced
  • Loveable characters? Yes

5.0

Fathomfolk by Eliza Chan

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slow-paced
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

1.75

no stakes, got bored, too many chapters, and girl: fuck ur fascistass boyfriend. you know who you are.

this book wanted to be The Little Mermaid meets Jade City and ended up just mid in all aspects. could have been a 2 or even a 2.5 with a better ending but here we are
Witchcraft in the Southwest: Spanish & Indian Supernaturalism on the Rio Grande by Marc Simmons

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informative slow-paced

3.75

it's an older text, so not the most accessible, but charmingly written like a series of true stories with the themes pointed out as opposed to a dry academic text, and I appreciated that. the middle chapters that described the differences between the attitudes towards witchcraft in different regions of the southwest got a little repetitive but we survived it
Palestine: A Four Thousand Year History by Nur Masalha

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challenging informative slow-paced

4.0

i think i should have read his prior book first bc this is breaking down a TON of Zionist arguments without fully describing them, and it turns out I don't know much about what Zionists think. a real dense text but also once I got into it, I realized how full of shit the Zionist arguments I did know were. this will be an excellent reference text for me as I learn more