Book Reviews: August 1 to October 15

I read 10 books in this 2.5-month period, which is slower than my summer reading rate but still on track to read 52 books this year. 

Long Way Down - Jason Reynolds
Rating: 4 stars
Source: Library app
Date finished: August 3
Pages: 306

When the main character's brother is shot in a long story of gang retaliation, he takes his brother's gun and gets on the elevator to go down to kill the guy the guy who did it. The story takes place on the elevator, as people killed in his past come on at each floor. It's narrative poetry, so it was quick enough to read in one sitting, and I really liked the writing. It was pretty emotionally powerful. 

The only things I didn't like were the cruelty to animals mentioned by the main characters and the ambiguous ending.




Am I Normal Yet? - Holly Bourne
Rating: 3 stars
Source: Library app
Date finished: August 7
Pages: 434

This is about a girl recovering from severe OCD and trying to get back to the Normal Teen Experience of friends and boyfriends. I'd heard rave reviews about how well Holly Bourne writes YA, but while the book was decent it wasn't really my thing.









Things a Bright Girl Can Do - Sally Nicholls

Rating: 3.5 stars
Source: Library app
Date finished: August 11
Pages: 418

This is historical fiction about three teenage suffragettes/suffragists before, during and after World War I. While it was fairly slow-paced and I couldn't connect hugely to the characters, it had a really cozy historical writing style, loads of interesting historical detail (assuming they're true!) including a character going on hunger strike in prison, a tax strike, and the outbreak of world war I, and a nice lesbian relationship. 






Screen Queens - Lori Goldstein

Rating: 3 stars
Source: Library app audiobook
Date finished: August 30
Pages: 368

This is about three girls who meet at a high-intensity summer tech incubator. Having been through similar things in my adolescence, I was definitely interested by the concept. Unfortunately, and perhaps because this was my first audiobook, it took me forever to get into the book so it was a slog for a long time. That said, it finally got good about 2/3 or 3/4 through, and the ending was super tense and then cute. From my experience, it would've been interesting to get more into their heads and their opinions of each other and themselves.




Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchet (radio dramatisation)

Rating: 3 stars
Source: Library app audiobook
Date finished: September 12
Pages: 512 pages in mass market paperback

I'd heard a lot of good things about this, but listening to it was a very confusing experience. It was certainly funny on a moment-to-moment bias, and I liked the characters, but I had no idea what was going on. Probably didn't help that I was listening on 1.5X or 2X speed but it'd take forever otherwise. 





Structuring Your Novel - K.M. Weiland
Rating: 3 stars
Source: Bought for Kindle app
Date finished: September 14
Pages: 295

This expands on Weiland's blog to go in detail through both story and scene structure. For the story structure half, she describes her idea of things that should happen at particular points in a novel:

• Hook (1%)
• Inciting Incident (12.5%)
• Key Event aka 1st Plot Point, that forces the main character to engage with the plot (25%)
• First Pinch Point - show of power from antagonist (37.5%)
• Midpoint - a big change or flip, transition from reaction to action (50%)
• Second Pinch Point - reminder of power from antagonist (62.5%)
• Third Plot Point - turning point into the climax (75%)
• Climax (88-98%)

She also talked about this idea of Scenes, which are made up of scenes (action - goal, conflict, disaster/outcome) and sequels (reaction, dilemma, decision leading into the next Scene). 

I liked the book overall, particularly the story structure half, but some gripes:

• at the end of every chapter, she says something like 'This will allow you to write a captivating story your readers will never forget'. It's a lot of repetition to sum up the chapter.
• so many 'rules of 3'
• She used examples from four stories for each of her points, and some of them didn't fit particularly well, or it felt like she could've said any event was the inciting one.

The Science of Storytelling - Will Storr

Rating: 2.5 stars

Source: Library app

Date finished: September 20

Pages: 289 (according to Amazon - Goodreads says 144?)

While the science is pretty bullshit (collectivist culture in China due to their geography?!) it gave me interesting ideas for writing. It talked about how our brain is stuck in the box of our cell so we can't actually perceive anything directly and just piece together the info our eyes give us into a story with us as a protagonist, and how that relates to things like status, wounds and change in stories.

Red, White & Royal Blue - Casey McQuiston



Rating: 4.5 stars
Source: Bought for Kindle app
Date finished: September 29
Pages: 421


This is an NA book in which the First Son of the US and the Prince of Wales, both 20-somethings, fall in love.

As well as being the sort of high concept you wish you'd come up with, it's a delight. It's funny and charming and incredibly camp - they meet by falling over a cake together, and that sort of thing keeps happening. As someone who primarily reads YA novels, I was surprised to see it having sex scenes, though to be fair it does skip a lot with 'Afterwards'.
Lovely book.


Bridge 108 - Anne Charnock

Rating: 2 stars
Source: eARC from Netgalley for review
Date finished: October 13
Pages: 204

This is about the sad life of a climate refugee from Spain - I was not a fan. I do full reviews for books I get for review so here it is.











Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World - and Why Things Are Better Than You Think - Hans Rosling

Rating: 4 stars
Source: Bought for Kindle app
Date finished: October 15
Pages: 342 (~260 excluding appendices)


Really liked the first part of this - it demonstrates that the world is not getting worse, it's getting much better, and gives tips for being able to think that way (e.g. when you see a terrorist attack reported, remember that that place could be just as peaceful as yours - you live in one place while the rest of the world is millions of places). 

For example, it explains population dynamics, saying that the number of births has already plateaud at 2 billion and that population growth over the next 50 years is just going to involve the big already-born generations coming into adulthood - 'filling up' the population pyramid. He also had a really cool chapter about the different shapes of curves of progress (e.g. linear, S-shaped). He said there's no such thing statistically as the 'first world' and the 'third world' - yes, in 1965 there was a gap between poor and rich countries, but now - while there are differences - there's no empty gap between them. Instead, he talks about Levels 1 to 4 of income (below $2 adjusted a day, below $8, below $32, above $32) and goes into detail on what life is really like on each level and how different trends apply to them. We on Level 4 see all the poor as the same, but there's actually a huge difference to them between Level 1 and above, where your basic human needs tend to be met.

There are also little relevant anecdotes from Rosling's life - thankfully not too much because I wasn't looking for a biography, and they're all interesting - and he had a truly remarkable life as a public health professional, working on infectious diseases in all sorts of places in Africa before his famous TED talks. On the negative side, I didn't love the framing device, where each chapter is a different instinct like 'fear' or 'negativity' or 'size' that explains why we systematically underestimate progress - but I liked the content inside. He's also vocally anti-communism. 

He complains about activists stretching the truth to get action for their cause e.g. scaremongering, which I think is a complicated issue. I'm a big fan of honesty personally, but if you have to lie to prevent a catastrophe or cause something really good it's kind of hard to defend total and unyielding honesty.

Review: Bridge 108 by Anne Charnock

Rating: 2 stars
Source: eARC from Netgalley for review
Genre: Dystopian
Pages: 204

This book is about Caleb, a twelve-year-old refugee from climate-ravaged Spain who’s reached England and is doing slave labour on a rooftop sewing clothes. A quarter of the way through the book, he escapes, and the rest follows his journey after that. It’s all in first-person, with every second chapter told by him and the others each by a different character. We hear from the traffickers and employers of undocumented slave laborers, an undercover cop, and a simulant. That was interesting if unsavory - I would’ve liked to hear from his parents, who he lost on the way to England.

I did not like the book. It says that the first few chapters were originally a novella, and it does feel like that  - there’s no forward movement in the rest of the plot. I probably shouldn’t spoil, but it involves a lot of indentured labour and is depressing. It doesn’t even have the kind of depressing ending of Only Ever Yours by Louise O’ Neill, which was heartbreaking but gorgeous. For one thing, I didn’t relate to or feel for Caleb the way I did for the MC in OEY.

There aren’t highs, or hope - just this sad grind without a break, and an ending that suggests human trafficking is the best option. There’s a scene where a fellow immigrant vineyard worker (he doesn’t know her) dies of dehydration in front of him - moral: everything sucks? - and then he steals her necklace (and so do you?). There are also random advanced technological bits that seem to be there just to make it sci-if because they don’t matter to the plot.

When I picked it up I thought it was YA initially, but it isn't - the main character is twelve for most of the time, and half of the book is told by adults, plus you don't have that YA experience of a close relationship with the main character.

Was the idea of the book to send the message that climate change sucks, that if we don’t fix it now things won’t be magically okay afterwards? Because, you know, I'm aware.

The book gets points for being about climate change, for decent writing on the sentence level, and for being short. It comes out in January 2020.