TogeReads
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togereads.bsky.social
TogeReads
@togereads.bsky.social
44 followers 25 following 140 posts
2025: 45 read | 🇨🇦☕️📚 | she/her

Many book reviews. Occasional film reviews.

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Book review: Nightbitch, by Rachel Yoder #booksky #bookreview #fiction
Nightbitch by Rachel Yoder Deeply weird novel about a struggling mother who may or may not begin to turn into a dog. This experimental fiction novel explores the challenges of motherhood, especially with a partner who just doesn't seem to give a shit, and the mental toll it can take. Well done. Also sort of gross.
June 27, 2025 at 1:27 PM
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Book review: Neuromancer, by William Gibson #booksky #bookreview #fiction
Neuromancer by William Gibson I could not stand this book. I understand it's a groundbreaking cyberpunk novel, but it was incoherent almost to the point of readability, and the characters were one-dimensionally boring. It also did not pass the sexy lamppost test. Not even close.
June 13, 2025 at 2:24 PM
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Book review: Horse, by Geraldine Brooks #booksky #bookreview #fiction
Horse by Geraldine Brooks A book about a horse! Turns out the horse was real--who knew. The historical fiction sections were interesting and quite good. The modern bits were.. not. There was a lot trying to be done with this book, and I would have much preferred if it just stuck to the historical bits. Also, I thought the ending was terrible. Heavy-handed to the point of feeling exploitative. Not good.
June 13, 2025 at 2:08 PM
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Book review: The Death of Vivek Oji, by Akwaeke Emezi #booksky #bookreview #fiction
The Death of Vivek Oji by Akwaeke Emezi A beautiful, moving novel that tells the story of the death of Vivek Oji, a gender nonconforming youth and young adult in Nigeria. To sum: "I'm not what anyone thinks I am. I never was. [...] [T]he real me was invisible to them. It didn't even exist to them. So: If nobody sees you, are you still there?”
June 4, 2025 at 12:44 PM
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Book review: Thank You For Listening, by Julia Whelan #booksky #bookreview #fiction
Thank You for Listening by Julia Whelan This is a delightful little romance novel that gives a look into the lives of audiobook narrators. The book was written and narrated by Julia Whelan, a prolifically award-winning audiobook narrator. The characters were sweet and very funny.
June 4, 2025 at 12:36 PM
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Book review: American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of Robert J. Oppenheimer, by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin #booksky #bookreview #nonfiction
American Prometheus by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin This book took me a couple of months to read, but was super worth it. I read it before I allowed myself to watch the film, and I'm glad I did; I found it easier to track all of the characters once I did watch the film. This biography was written by reporters rather than by typical biographers, so I found the style to be much more easily consumable than other biographical tomes.
June 3, 2025 at 1:30 PM
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May 2025 books read #booksky #bookreviews
June 1, 2025 at 5:37 PM
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Criterion Challenge 2025 May update #filmsky #criterionchallenge #cc25
June 1, 2025 at 3:02 AM
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Book review: Kaikeyi, by Vaishnavi Patel #booksky #bookreview #fiction
Kaykeyi by Vaishnavi Patel This debut novel told the story of Kaikeyi, the vilified queen from the Ramayana and her role in the exile of Rama. This feminist twist on Kaikeyi's story was a fun read. The first sentence had a good hook: “I was born on the full moon under an auspicious constellation, the holiest of positions — much good it did me.” Excellent storytelling done by Patel.
May 29, 2025 at 1:10 PM
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Book review: Broughtupsy, by Christina Cooke #booksky #bookreview #fiction
Broughtupsy by Christina Cooke I found myself confused by the plot of this book. The first half was about the protagonist's relationships with her siblings and her experience in cross-cultural moves (Jamaica to US/Canada), but this plot seemed to be entirely abandoned in the latter parts of the book for a fairly shallow romance/ rebellion/self-discovery plot? There seemed to be little character development, even though the plot arc suggested that there should be one coming (especially for her older sister). There was a lot going on in this book, but it felt hollow and scattered, so I'm not really sure exactly what it was ultimately really going for. Stylistically, however, it was quite good.
May 28, 2025 at 1:41 PM
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Book review: The Dead Romantics, by Ashley Poston #booksky #bookreview #fiction
The Dead Romantics by Ashley Poston The first 75% of this paranormal romance was really good. I loved it. I loved the premise and the characters and the writing. The storytelling was excellent. The ending made me actively mad; I realize that that’s what needed to happen, but I felt that it really changed the tone of the rest of the whole book. It was otherwise *so close* to being a favourite.
May 28, 2025 at 1:29 PM
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Book review: In Blood Sister Scribe, by Emma Törzs #booksky #bookreview #fiction
Ink Blood Sister Scribe by Emma Törzs This book came highly recommended, but it fell really flat for me. The premise was very creative. The execution was.. not. It meandered through its plot and even the climax felt muted. It took me some time to get into, but the pace never quite picked up for me as much as I wanted it to.
May 27, 2025 at 1:59 PM
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Book review: This Time Tomorrow, by Emma Straub #booksky #bookreview #fiction
This Time Tomorrow by Emma Straub This is a time-travel-life-do-over book. I really did not enjoy it. It wasn't particularly compelling, and somehow had the world's oldest cat? In a way, it was like 13 Going on 30 but without the fun dancing.
May 26, 2025 at 6:39 PM
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ARC review: Wanting, by Claire Jia #booksky #bookreview #arcreview #fiction
Wanting by Claire Jia This was a fantastic debut novel. It is a multiple POV story of people wanting to survive, wanting to succeed, wanting the road not chosen, and the affect of each character's decisions on the others.The characters all feel very real; not perfect and not unlikeable, but deserving of empathy as they live their lives and make decisions based on the circumstances they find themselves in, even while these decisions have disastrous consequences at times. At the end, there is an open question of what success really means, and what is it that we really should be striving for with our lives? Jia's prose is absorbing, and I strongly recommend. Special thanks to Tin House for the ARC.
May 25, 2025 at 5:24 PM
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Book review: Banal Nightmare, by Halle Butler #booksky #bookreview #fiction
Banal Nightmare by Halle Butler Deeply unhappy white millennials are living their banal, miserable lives in a small town, thinking their narcissistic thoughts about how much they actually hate each other. Bitingly funny but also uncomfortable in that on-the-nose liberal millennial zeitgeist type of way. I wouldn't say I enjoyed it (so many paragraph walls), but I'll definitely keep thinking about it.
May 21, 2025 at 12:49 PM
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Book review: Lincoln in the Bardo, by George Saunders #booksky #bookreview #fiction
Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders Lincoln in the Bardo was good, but also very confusing to listen to as an audiobook. It had a cast of 166 people, so you sort of had to remember who was who when they were talking, and I wish I had listened to this while reading the book itself.
May 21, 2025 at 12:34 PM
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Book review: Nothing But Blackened Teeth, by Cassandra Khaw #booksky #bookreview #fiction #horror
Nothing But Blackened Teeth by Cassandra Khaw Five “friends” hung out in a haunted house and bad things happened. At 125 pages, there wasn’t much time to give background on why these people were even friends, but the relationships in this story made so little sense that it distracted from the rest of the book. It also appeared to be some sort of horror satire à la Cabin in the Woods, but a lot less clever.
May 16, 2025 at 4:17 PM
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Book review: Babel, by R.F. Kuang #booksky #bookreview #fiction
Babel by R.F. Kuang I loved this book, despite its lack of subtlety and abject heavy-handedness. Weaving etymological study into a plot in a meaningful way is not a small feat, and, having studied Classical languages myself, it made my heart very happy. The way magic was employed in this universe was creative and unique; diving into this dark academia setting was satisfying.
May 13, 2025 at 2:48 PM
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Book review: Parable of the Sower, by Octavia E. Butler #booksky #bookreview #fiction
Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler Very intense climate disaster speculative sci-fi. It was very good, but you need a bit of a stomach for it -- Octavia E Butler does not pull any punches when she writes. Written in 1993 and set in 2024, it was alarming to read it in 2024. Philosophical dystopian writing at its best.
May 9, 2025 at 12:33 PM
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Criterion Challenge 2025 Film #16: Charade #filmsky #criterionchallenge #cc25
Film #16: Charade is full of excellent flirtatious banter, sick (hep)burns, beauty shots of France, and fashion. This is a romantic screwball comedy mystery film that is hilarious from its very first scene and does not disappoint from that moment forwards. Audrey Hepburn and Cary Grant have great chemistry together.
May 6, 2025 at 1:45 PM
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Book review: Wenjack, by Jesmyn Ward #booksky #bookreview #fiction
Wenjack by Joseph Boyden This novella should be mandatory reading for Canadian high school students for an insight into the residential school system. Very good, raw, and distressing. This part of Canadian colonizer history needs to be told again and again.
May 6, 2025 at 1:35 PM
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Book review: Salvage the Bones, by Jesmyn Ward #booksky #bookreview #fiction
Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward A climate disaster book based on a real cataclysmic event -- Katrina. This one requires a bit of a stomach. It covers an impoverished family's 12 days up to and including Hurricane Katrina. Gut-wrenching, violent, emotional, visceral, and beautiful. Worth a read.
May 2, 2025 at 12:59 PM
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Criterion Challenge 2025 Film #15: Broadcast News #filmsky #criterionchallenge #cc25
Film #15: Broadcast News was a frustrating film for me. The writing was a lot of fun. It was a lot of good one-liners. It had a good commentary on news vs. entertainment, and nearly 40 years later, we can see that the warnings in this film were largely ignored with our current round-the-clock sensationalised news cycle. That said, the romantic chemistry was almost entirely non-existent and the relationship between Jane and Tom made no sense, and I felt offended on Jane’s behalf for pursuing a relationship with Tom, for whom she had zero respect. Just WHY.
May 1, 2025 at 5:58 PM
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Criterion Challenge 2025 April progress #filmsky #criterionchallenge #cc25
May 1, 2025 at 1:18 PM
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April 2025 books read #booksky #bookreviews
May 1, 2025 at 1:15 PM