oz617's reviews
467 reviews

It wasn’t as racist as I expected it to be, but the bar was on the ground

I didn’t understand a great deal of this play. This isn’t a slight – it wasn’t written for me to understand, and there’s something quite refreshing in that. For me it was an interesting slice of life into a world I’m unfamiliar with, for others I’m sure it’s even better in its relatability.

This is the first short story collection I’ve read where the stories are linked by more than theme. I wish I’d known that going in – I’d have looked out more for connecting threads from the beginning – but discovering familiar characters halfway through was equally fun. Definitely one to reread.

Looking up necromancy techniques so I can resurrect Mr Dickens and clobber him over the head with this brick of a novel. My new literary arch nemesis. The one good thing I can say about this is that you could make a fairly interesting queer and/or feminist reading of some of the side characters, but I have no idea why you’d put yourself through such a thing rather than analysing a better (and shorter) book.

Pratchett’s writing always feels so Real. This short story beautifully disrupts fairytale conventions, making a very honest political allegory.

I’ve never been more convinced that a storyline would be queer, nor more confused when it wasn’t. I don’t mean this in an abstract, general cry for more representation. It really felt like the story was setting up Hazel and Katie to get together at the end, or for Hazel to realise she didn’t have to date at all, so the sudden way it wrapped up was jarring. A couple pages of “and then this dysfunctional couple lived happily ever after, and this girl cut her hair and met a nice boy and now she fits in and everyone likes here” was just disappointing.

I spent the vast majority of this book wondering when the titular spy would show up, and the remaining pages wishing he’d go away again.

It would be a decent but forgettable guide book if it weren’t for how the author uses examples of his own works – especially since those works have the plots of straight to TV horror films of the 1980s, updated to include more female survivors. Adding Maneater to my TBR list…

My stepmother bought me this book on a museum trip when I was clinically depressed. I’m not sure how much the words of great philosophers helped, but the thought behind the gesture meant a lot. As with any collection of quotes, most of the context that makes the quotes so interesting is lost, but the book still manages to provide a hopefully melancholy overview of some important history.

TERF rhetoric off the charts. I feel viscerally uncomfortable after reading this, and not in the way the author seems to have intended. In a world where humans are devoid of sexuality to the point of sterility (yet clearly, always, gendered to conform with their genitals), the evil corporate overlord running the show is… a transgender man… who gets outed in the final pages… which talk about how disgusting his mutilated flesh is, while misgendering him…