Category Archives: Book Reviews

Review: Ernman and Thunberg – Our House is on Fire

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Our House is on Fire
Ernman and Thunberg

“When climate activist Greta Thunberg was eleven, her parents Malena and Svante, and her little sister Beata, were facing a crisis in their own home. Greta had stopped eating and speaking, and her mother and father had reconfigured their lives to care for her. Desperate and searching for answers, her parents discovered what was at the heart of Greta’s distress: her imperiled future on a rapidly heating planet.”

I fully admit that I don’t follow politics and I specifically ignore the news because I find it quite depressing and frustrating. Thus, although I was aware of the ‘Greta phenomenon’ happening, I wasn’t really aware of the specific circumstances about it. This book won’t give you those either. What it will provide you with is a thoughtful commentary by Greta’s mother on some of the challenges of raising a neurodiverse child.

What did annoy me was the focus on Greta’s mother (whose name I still don’t remember) and her status as a celebrity. I’m really sorry, but I have no idea who you are, and why you might be important. I respect you for being accepting of your neurodiverse, eating disorder and autism-having offspring. But you aren’t the only person with that particular combination of problems. I feel like this book was marketed as being about Greta, but it wasn’t focused enough on her. Maybe borrow it from the library, it’s not worth buying (unless you are then going to pass it around to different people).

This book actually made me feel a bit more guilty about not making better choices for the planet. I had sunk into a ‘enough’ mindset, rather than thinking about how I could improve. I have the cash flow to afford to shop more responsibly, but I don’t always make that choice. This book could serve as a good reminder that we can do more, and that it’s not completely hopeless to try to save the planet.

Penguin Random House | 4th March 2020 | AU$32.99 | paperback

Review: Patrick Lencioni – DEATH by Meeting (S)

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DEATH by Meeting
Patrick Lencioni

“Death by Meeting” is nothing short of a blueprint for leaders who want to eliminate waste and frustration among their teams, and create environments of engagement and passion.

A friend gave this book to my wife, and she read it across two days. I’ve never seen her so excited, even with the other books she’s reviewed for me (eg. Brew a Batch, Permission to Screw Up). This review is therefore written from her perspective.

The cover, as you can see, is a business guy head desking on top of a meeting agenda. I figured I’d just skim over it and then read the other bookies waiting in my bedroom. A trusted business friend recommended it to me – otherwise I wouldn’t have picked it up on my own. Once I had it, I thought I might get more insights into meetings.

Most of the book is a fictional story about a leadership team and how they are currently running their meetings. You get suckered in (invested) in how they improve their meetings. Given that it has this story you see real life examples of how it can be used and not just the plain theory. The characters give some of the reader’s thoughts back at them like ‘Why do we need more meetings? or ‘Really? You want me to do this in a meeting?’ where it is answered in the story as a group and the characters chatting about it.

Unlike the other business books where they try to cram in a bunch of theories and just hop about in meaningless or difficult to follow manner the story creates a framework. I would have preferred a little more of the ‘Fast Forward’ (non-fiction) at the end with the theories. This could have included more examples with the team doing the good meetings, the different types of good meetings. It was really interesting and enjoyable. This really has one meeting theory that can be summarized on a single page, so it’s not a reread of the whole book, just a revisit of the summarized theory at the back if need be.

Perhaps the most gleaming commendation for this book is that my wife stayed up late, and read this over two days. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her so absorbed! Also, she’s a passionate fiction hater, and I could hardly believe she was reading a fictional story (and I teased her mercilessly too).

Review: Fiona Cummins – The Neighbour (K)

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The Neighbour
Fiona Cummins

Four people have been murdered, their faces painted to look like a doll’s, and their eyes replaced with glass replicas. Everyone has secrets and it seems that nobody on the street is safe, so when a new family moves in, they’re not expected to stay long. Instead, as more murders are committed, the hunt for the killer starts to near its close – but at what price?

This book was structured quite differently to other mystery books that I’ve read. Instead of focusing on the police or a victims POV, the entire case was set in the past, and parts of the book are given from the killer’s perspective in the ‘present day’ as they run from the cops. I really enjoyed this style, as it provided more hints to who the killer was from the way they talked/acted, and opened up new questions by the cryptic way they described events.

Near the end of the book, when all the ‘past’ events had been told, the focus was exclusively on the killer after they have been determined by the cops. The ‘spoiler’ at the beginning that they were found didn’t detract much, as I usually expect in a mystery book that the killer will eventually be caught. For this type of horror/mystery genre, the ending of the book worked wonderfully. It left me feeling a little spooked, and with chills down my spine. I really appreciated this, as one of my least favourite parts of a mystery book is the ending where the detectives all congratulate themselves on solving the case, and the excitement has died down. This book didn’t do that at all, and ended in an amazing, terrifying, manner.

My one issue with this book was with the introductions to characters. While the main characters were distinct and 3-dimensional, it took me a while to be able to tell apart some of the side characters, because there wasn’t enough time early on dedicated to them. That said, I can understand why they were included, as each character provided their own flavour and added to the story in some way. I just wish that they had been fleshed out more thoroughly in the beginning of the book, instead of waiting to the middle/end.

In all, this was quite a good book, that I enjoyed reading immensely. I finished it in under a day, which tells me that it was good enough to prevent me being distracted from it too many times. I would definitely recommend this book, with the caveat that anyone who picks it up understands that it’s equal parts horror and mystery, and is much more scary than a typical mystery novel.

 

Review: Rita Therese – Come

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Come
Rita Therese

“Rita Therese is a 25-year-old sex worker, artist and writer based in Melbourne, Australia. She entered the sex industry at age 18, and has worked as a stripper, porn and as an escort. She currently works as an escort under the alias Gia James. She has written for magazines like Frankie, Vice and Penthouse Australia, and had a monthly sex and dating column for Sneaky magazine.”

I wanted this to be new and innovative, but in the end I actually felt disappointed. I’ve read a similar novel/memoir in the past that still stuck with me. What really frustrated me about this was that it had a ‘fearless new talent’ but the writing itself wasn’t that amazing. It seemed to reply on shock factor, and speed, in order to keep the reader interested.

Arg! The biggest irritation for me was the way that the timeline endlessly jumped around. The novel seems to open at the end, where Rita has already lost her two older brothers to suicide. But then it jumps between when she is just starting out as a topless waiter through to being a porn star, and then back to working at a brothel. Honestly I wasn’t sure what was going on. Maybe some more informative chapter headings would help? I wasn’t sure if her abusive relationship was before her rape or her brothers’ deaths, or something else. It made it hard for me to follow the storyline.

Some of the things that Rita tells you how to do are honestly really gross, and probably not very healthy for your biological workings! I am slightly worried that some people might think of this as a ‘how to’ in terms of getting into sex work, and take some of the things she’s described as good things to try at home. If you’re looking at getting into kink or exploring your own sexual side more (nothing wrong with that!) perhaps I could suggest Oh Joy Sex Toy? As the name suggests, this comic takes a light hearted approach to reviewing sex toys, discussing kinks and quirks, and also takes on sexual health.

One of the few things I appreciated about this book was that Rita does touch on the fact that she attended therapy to help her cope. But I’m not sure her ‘alternative’ lifestyle should be blamed at all for her personal failings. Not all sex workers are drug-riddled alcoholics? If you’ve looked at an AMA, or watched You Can’t Ask That you’ll know that sex workers can have healthy sex lives as well as working.

An interesting exposé that provides an ironically happy and sexual read that will last you at least as long as a night out at a club (and make you think about what the dancers are doing in the ‘spare time’ they have). Remember that sex workers are people too, and that they are all different. There’s nothing wrong with this book, I just wish it was a bit better organised.

Allen & Unwin | 31st March 2020 | AU$29.99 | paperback

Review: Agustina Bazterrica – Tender is the Flesh

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Tender is the Flesh
Agustina Bazterrica

The flesh of animals has become poisonous to humans. Unbelievably, the only source of protein left is ‘special meat’. Otherwise known as meat from ‘heads’, there are specially bred humans that are used only for meat and hides. Marco’s job is to check and maintain their quality. And yet, gifted with a beautiful head, Marco isn’t sure if humans are still valid meat.

This is a rich novel that is intended to be confronting and powerful, but is instead I found it off putting. It seemed like a train wreck from the start, and yet I kept hoping for a satisfactory conclusion. Instead what I read made me feel irritated and grossed out. Also there were parts (such as Marco’s ?affair? with the butcher) that I didn’t understand the importance of. This is literature, not light reading. It demands attention and thinking that I just didn’t have the space to give.

Some of the imagery in this novel was very disturbing. For me, it was reading how the pregnant humans had their limbs removed so that they couldn’t kill their own fetuses. See, now, doesn’t that say to a ‘head’ farmer that you shouldn’t do that? To my knowledge, no animal currently harvested for meat does this.

Maybe I missed the point of this novel? Should it have humanised the (non-human) meat industry for me? Unfortunately growing up as a beef cattle farmer’s daughter, I’m pretty pragmatic about meat, and where it comes from. I knew all those beef burgers and lamb chops by name before they were meat, and it never bothered me.

I didn’t realise that this was originally translated from Spanish (the author is Argentinian). That’s not something to hold against it – I’m honestly pretty sure that I wouldn’t have enjoyed it regardless of the language. It’s supposed to be a critique on meat eating, but I interpreted it as an actual hypothetical situation. It turned me off reading in a way similar to the way that The Biggerers did (again, maybe I missed the point?).

A high flaunting novel that missed the mark for me. I finished reading it, but was left disgusted and dismayed. I think the answer from me is ‘yes’ I would do cannibalism if you told me that I had to, in order to survive. But I wouldn’t accept human meat that’s been bred for the purpose.

Faber Factory Plus Ffp | 31st March 2020 | AU$27.99 | paperback

Review: Phil Stamper – The Gravity of Us

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The Gravity of Us
Phil Stamper

Cal’s going to make his FlashFame feed support his career as a journalist, do an internship at BuzzFeed and get a free ride to college with a full scholarship. When his dad is selected to become an astronaut of the Orpheus Twenty Cal’s plans are derailed – going to Texas isn’t in his ideal future! But with a cute boy in the picture, maybe something about this summer might not be a waste afterall.

The cute cover should give this away as a gay fiction. The recommendation statement on the back from Becky Albertalli says this book is a ‘story I didn’t I know I needed’. And she’s right! I didn’t know that I could be excited about a somewhat futuristic space voyage – but it turns out that there really is a current program to have humans on Mars by 2032. Thus I can confidently say that this is NOT science fiction.

The single paragraph devoted to his final high school year seems a bit perfunctory. I’m not complaining, because there are plenty of teenage fiction novels out there that cover high school and being gay well. At the same time though, I felt like that could have added a bit more depth for the protagonist, who seems to exist in his own little bubble most of the time.

I struggled with the sense of time passing. Perhaps instead of boring chapter numbers, a handy chapter date would have been more useful. This lack of time made their romance feel instant, and their feelings insincere. What I did appreciate was that Leon’s depression wasn’t cured in an instant by falling in love (lust?) and neither was Cal’s mom’s anxiety completely treated by therapy.

There seems to be a growing interest for novels about space and mathematics. I’m loving it! From avoiding meteoroids (Learning to Swear in America), to general astrophysics (The Square Root of Summer and Stargazing for Beginners), I’m excited for what will happen next. 4 stars for this one from me.

Bloomsbury | 17th March 2020 | AU$15.99 | paperback

Review: Lucia Osborne-Crowley – I Choose Elena

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I Choose Elena
Lucia Osborne-Crowley

Lucia Osborne-Crowley was on track to be an Olympic gymnast. She knew her body intimately and knew where she was going. On a night out age 15 she was violently raped, setting off a chain of events that lead to a life of chronic illness.

This memoir almost moved me to tears with the hopelessness and frustration that leaked out of its pages. How could no-one help Lucia when she was obviously in so much pain? Surely bleeding from the vagina should always be treated as serious. I guess that this was some years ago, when endometriosis and Crohn’s Disease were poorly understood, and even more poorly treated.

The statistics that Osborne-Crowley provides the reader with are unsurprising. Men tend to get help/pain relief faster than women, and their complaints tend to be taken more seriously. Yet which gender is it that goes through childbirth? Women are more resilient in my opinion, and Osborne-Crowley has done a fantastic job of making her story accessible and increasing awareness about trauma recovery.

Unlike Foul is Fair, this memoir deals with the subject of rape gracefully and sensitively. Rape is a triggering subject, but this book doesn’t dwell on the rape, instead depicting This reads so smoothly it could almost be fiction – yet I only wish that this was fiction because then Lucia would not have had to go through such hell.

I’d recommend this book both for people who have experienced similar trauma, and those that haven’t. It is a relatively gentle and pleasurable read that highlights both the importance of coming to terms with trauma through counselling and reading literature. Fantastic non-fiction.

Allen & Unwin | 18th February 2020| AU$16.99 | paperback

Review: Hannah Capin – Foul is Fair

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Foul is Fair
Hannah Capin

Elle and her coven rule their high school in a mean girls’ sort of manner. All of that changes after Elle is gang raped at a party and she vows to get revenge. Her rich parents pay for her to change schools, and she hatches a plan with her friends Mads, Jenny, and Summer to kill them all. And she’s going to use the Goldenest boy of all to do it.

This book left me with an incredibly bad mouth feel. I felt violated and unsatisfied, and frankly a bit offended! This is a vague retelling of Macbeth, but Macbeth was time-appropriate, and Shakespeare! Death and madness are no longer ‘normal’ (and therapy will help with avoiding both of those things).

What irritated me about this novel was that Elle is clearly emotionally damaged, and emotionally unstable. But her parents don’t bother to get her help, and let her run along with her nasty plans. Elle keeps revisiting the rape in her mind, and is suffering from PTSD. If you’re someone who is sensitive or triggered by this kind of content, definitely don’t even read the blurb of it.

So the moral of the story? If you’re rich, basically you can get away with anything you bloody well want to. Your best friend has a lawyer dad after all – he’ll get you out of any consequences. I’m not really a fan of the death penalty in general, so why would I be keen on Elle plotting (and succeeding) at killing the entire Golden sports team? I’d have been much more impressed if she had found a way to torture them and inflict the same fate!

Feminism without filter? Unapologetic feminism? Why does feminism have to be so brutal to be effective? Feminism is “the advocacy of women’s rights on the ground of the equality of the sexes”. That’s not what I see here. There’s no equality of the sexes, and there’s not really any women’s rights. There’s just one petty teenage girl killing off her abusers.

I was trapped under my sleeping wife on an aeroplane with no access to other books – so I finished reading it. But lest that make you think it’s worth reading, I’m giving it 1 star even though I didn’t give up. Oh, and did I mention the horrifically pink and yellow cover with a dripping blood red lipstick? Shudder.

Penguin Random House | 21st January 2020 | AU$16.99 | paperback

Review: Lois Duncan – Down a Dark Hall (K)

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Down a Dark Hall
Lois Duncan

When Kit’s mother and stepfather go to honeymoon in Europe, Kit is sent away to a boarding school in the middle of nowhere. She hates the idea from the very beginning, but little does she know, the school is much worse than she could have ever imagined.

This book was focused more on atmosphere and feeling than on having a complicated storyline, with detailed descriptions of the characters and scenery. At first I wasn’t too fond of the descriptive nature as I felt like it was just fluff that didn’t add to the story, but over time I realized that it added to the atmosphere of the book and made it a much scarier read than it otherwise would have been. Considering that I read this book in the middle of the day, it did a great job at getting me spooked.

The mystery throughout the book, on what the school was trying to do, was quite well-written. The blurb on the back, describing it as a ‘psychic prison,’ gave away some of the mystery, which I wish hadn’t been included, but the details of what exactly was going on were still left to be discovered.

The ending of the book took me on quite a roller-coaster. At first, it seemed like the book was going to end in quite an unsatisfying manner, but at the last minute everything got turned around, and it became much more exciting.

This was quite a satisfying short book. I typically prefer reading longer books as I spend a lot of energy getting invested in characters, but for a short, few-hour read, it went through a nice arc and had a satisfying conclusion. The book also feels complete, which is nice as I often feel that shorter books leave loose ends that need to be tied up. The version of the book I read is the one written in 1974, not the 2011 update.

(This book was given to me by my grandmother, so I wanted to say thanks! And I love you <3)

Review: Tamora Pierce – Tempests and Slaughter

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Tempests and Slaughter
Tamora Pierce

Numair comes from a family that is delighted and bewildered by his brilliance at magery and academics. From being a lonely student, he finds himself befriended by Orzone the leftover prince and Varice, an attractive young woman who is a witch in the kitchen. As Orzone gets closer to the throne and Varice becomes more attractive, what will Numair find himself doing?

This has what could be called a ‘slow burn’. There’s no real action, and no real climax to it. There are hints at the Orzone behind the Emperor Mage but that’s about it. It’s like the first Harry Potter books where the focus was on learning, and let’s face it, those books were my favorites for that reason!

Let’s talk about sex. Generally Tamora Pierce talks about safe sex and some canoodling. In this novel she approaches Numair’s body changing as he hits puberty, and what this means for him. I actually found it quite awkward to read, and I wonder whether this was deliberate on the author’s part or just a facet of this novel that didn’t work.

I almost can’t believe that I didn’t purchase this at the beginning of last year, it’s been published for more than a year and I forgot to check! I haven’t been keeping up to date with authors that I used to follow avidly, mainly because I receive a lot of novels from publishers and I don’t really have a budget for buying novels (hello mortgage!).

I’ll eventually be purchasing this, probably once the other novels in the trilogy are published (I wouldn’t want them not to match!). When that happens I’ll be primed to read it again too. So four stars from me.