A month in Reading: March 2022

 

In March, I finished six books and Did Not Finish 2. I'm a little underwhelmed with this month's reading, but am looking forwards to April to try and find some books better suited for me. 

1. Rituals- Kelly Armstrong:     

           ⭐⭐⭐.75

The last book in one of my new favourite series, and written by--as I discovered whilst looking for more of her books at my local library-- a Canadian author! I thought this book as a wrap-up to a series was okay, it felt kind of weird to have 100 pages left in the last book in a 5 book series and have so many things unresolved-- and, as a result of the limited pages at the end-- the ending felt a bit rushed. I think Armstrong should've either cut the last book, or added a 6th one to the series. Preferably the latter so I can get more Liv and Gabriel. 

The love triangle in this book was also kind of weird, like our main girl (Liv) spends like 3 of the five books with one guy who it's so obvious she's not going to end up with-- and I say that as a devoted lover of all things slow burn. I think the relationship with the 3rd guy could've been wrapped up a bit sooner to let Gabriel and Liv have a bit more time together. However, that's a very small complaint for me, because, as I stated earlier, it's always pretty clear who's meant to be together, and Armstrong spends a lot of time developing their platonic relationship and their characters as individuals, which I really liked. I feel a lot of romances leave the character development out in favor of the romance, and it does a huge disservice to their characters in the process, making them feel very shallow and unrefined. 

Back to Rituals. It was fine, I ended up skimming the last 50 pages-ish. The first three books in this series were my favorite, and by the end of the series, a lot of the stuff I really liked (like the superpower of omen reading) kind of fell to the wayside. A lot of what's keeping this rating above 3 stars, is my love for the rest of the series. 

3.75/5

2. Tender is the Flesh- Agustina Bazterrica:         

           ⭐⭐⭐⭐

I loved the concept for this book. It was such an interesting look at the meat industry and it's always really fun to read non-North American authors, too. I thought this novel could've been a little stronger narratively, specifically in going deeper into the "lore" of the dystopian world it's set in. Like is the virus even real? If it isn't, who made it up and how? How did people first become classified as "stock"? 

I like a little bit of mystery in my novels, I don't care for having everything spoon-fed to me, but a bit more delving into the world would've been appreciated. 

I liked the back-and-forth of the main character's development, where they felt like they were developing and treating the stock humans a bit better, but [SPOILER] the ending ruined any development you thought they were having, which I actually really liked.

It read more like a shallow sci-fi than a horror, and I skimmed a bit, but I still really enjoyed it and read it in one sitting.

4/5.

3. American Psycho- Bret Easton Ellis:      

            ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

I have so many thoughts on Ellis' American Psycho. It was  really hard to read, there's almost no emotion in the narrative, and it almost feels like reading a computer manual, but in the best way. The style of the writing adds so much to Bateman's characterization-- for example, the narrator just switches from first-person point of view to third-person, halfway through a paragraph. It's superb. It also has full chapters of informing the reader of the full discography of various artists that Bateman likes-- like Whitney Houston. It also gets really graphic at points, and reading it and feeling the narrator react to it neutrally is beautiful, but very difficult to read. 

I also like how (unlike the movie) the book doesn't show Bateman as this super cool and collected character. Ellis shows him as frequently nervous and awkward in normal conversations-- the best case scenario is an interaction between Bateman and a video store worker, where he freaks out and stutters through the conversation, saying some really weird things to her. In comparison to Bateman's frequent discussion of himself as super attractive and suave and intelligent, you almost never see any of Bateman at work, and most of his conversations (and internal monologue) revolve around the clothes and appearance of those around him. 

I ended up having to limit myself to 50 pages of this novel a night, so that I could continue mentally functioning, but I loved it, those 50 pages were kind of a sweet spot where I got to really get into it and enjoy it without becoming too detached and emotionless. In all, I loved this book. I read it from the library and now I want to buy it and read it again to annotate it. The more I think about this book, the more I love it.

5/5

4. The Substitution- Morgan Elizabeth:            

            ⭐⭐⭐.75

In short, it was a worse version of Mariana Zapata's All Rhodes Lead Here. City girl with a crappy rockstar ex moves to the small town and meets the small-town guy and they fall in love and settle down in said small town. However, I liked it well enough, even though I like Zapata as an author more, I did enjoy the love interest, but for the same reason as I enjoyed Zapata's novel-- that is that I love the "manly-ma" type love interest, and it's even better if he has a southern accent, which I definitely read in this love interest. I was really looking for a small-town romance and this definitely hit the spot for that. Because of it's similarity to All Rhodes Lead Here it did feel generic or repetitive at points, to the point where as I'm writing this  I'm realizing that I'm attributing aspects of Zapata's love interest onto this one.

I think I'd try this author again, especially because she kind of markets herself on TikTok as a small-town romance author, which I'm always into, but maybe something newer, where the author has developed their craft a bit more.

3.75/5

5. Beneath- Kristi Demeester:

Read as a headstart for women in horror month (April).

6. Consumed- David Cronenberg:                                           

            ⭐⭐⭐       

This was one that I had the most difficulty rating this month. I really loved the original concept, and the plot throughout the novel is really intriguing. However, I was constantly aware that this book was written by someone who usually works in film. The prose wasn't the best and it was written in a way that makes it feel like a movie. Two of the characters are these famous philosophers and it read like they were the main characters, when really they should've been treated more as the subjects of the story that they were. That is to say, there was so much needless rhetoric that I skimmed through large sections of as they didn't relate to the plot at all. Looking back on it, I'm wondering if it was just used as filler to reach a set page limit the publisher wanted. Or wasted page space on anti-consumerist theory, which I don't care for. I'm leaning towards the latter, as even just looking at the pages before I read the book I thought that the layout was really poorly done since my copy felt like it had a lot of empty space on each and every page. 

[SPOILERS]

My biggest issue with the novel is the character motivations. The only two with clear motivations are the main two characters-- Naomi and Nathan-- and their motive is entirely that everything they do in the novel is because it's their job (AKA- not a good enough motive). 

Other than that, I have no idea why any characters did most of what they did. Why did Celestine want to leave France enough to fake her death? What was going on with her mental state? Was she losing her mind? Why didn't Ari fake his death at the same time as his wife- was it really just to have the whole cannibalism angle? Why did he agree to give Naomi an interview then? Why did Chase start eating herself? What is this secret collective trying to do? What's their end goal? I even had question about the author's motives-- like why on earth was Herve given a curved penis? Like, what is even the point?

Lastly, in terms of literary sins, having a main character get kidnapped off-page is almost as bad as having your plot twist reliant on a wig. End of statement.

The cool plot is really saving this one this time. Even though I have a lot of issues with the characters and smaller aspects of the story, the twist was nearly perfect, the story just dragged a bit after all the pieces were put together.

3/5

This month I reached my goal of reading 6 books (albeit narrowly), but overall had a pretty mediocre month. I had a lot of 3-star-ish reads this month, which is my it-was-fine-who-cares score. The best of the month was definitely American Psycho and the worst ended up being Consumed. But, despite my love for Ellis' novel, I was still underwhelmed by this months reads. I got to almost every book on this months TBR, which I'm pleased with, and only missed 1 and DNF-ed The Vegetarian (by Han Kang) and My Year of Rest and Relaxation (by Otessa Moshfegh). 

In April, I'm going to work on my physical TBR, including using the month as my celebratory women in horror month. I'm hoping that once classes are over I'll have some more time to read, so I'm thinking I'm going to set my monthly goal at 6 again, but try and read closer to 10. In order to pick some better reads I think I'm going to try and focus on books that I'm really excited for, and (outside of my women in horror picks) maybe try some thriller novels, specifically Stacy Willingham's A Flicker in the Dark, which I recently picked up at my local bookstore. 

Another kind of bookish goal for next month is to visit a local used bookstore (which one is so far undecided). I'd be interested in seeing if I could find some cool older novels, specifically some classic horror.