User Profile

Otts

otts@books.theunseen.city

Joined 3 years ago

I read 10-12 novels a week in grad school and some heavy literary theory. No interest in non-fiction now, and mainly read sci-fi and fantasy. Using this account to track/share my reading from 2023 onward (and maybe backward, if my completionist tendencies kick in).

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Mike Chen: We Could Be Heroes (2021, Harlequin Enterprises, Limited)

Squanders a great premise

This just made me sad. Sad that I fell for yet another poorly written superhero story. The premise is so good! A hero and a villain with amnesia run into each other at a support group and decide to help each other. But all the tension and unexpected places this could’ve gone are wasted almost at the start. I skimmed the final battle. Not even worth commenting on the problematic “inclusion” of gayness. 🙄

Louise Penny: A Trick of the Light (Paperback, 2012, Sphere)

Girl, your whiteness is showing

This mystery series is starting to feel predictable, which can be a comfort and largely why I read one every winter. But I’m tired of the bitchy exchanges with Ruth (they’re not even funny or endearing), the constant need to refer to Myrna by her size and Blackness … The addiction angle in this one was shallow, but at least there’s developments with Jean-Guy, Clara, and Peter.

Rachel Ingalls: In the Act (2023, New Directions Publishing Corporation)

Hilarious

The tiny annoyances that accumulate in a marriage erupt into a delightful what’s-good-for-the-goose-is-good-for-the-gander story. Wonderfully petty. A quick read that could easily work on stage, as a Black Mirror episode, or a movie. Eat it up. I need to look up more of Ingalls’ work.

Peter Mendelsund: What we see when we read (2014)

"A gorgeously unique, fully illustrated exploration into the phenomenology of reading--how we visualize images from …

At least it’s a quick read

Girl, look: I have an MA in literature. I did not plod through tons of literary theory including French deconstructionists—who here understands Derrida? Shut up! Stop your lying!—for some book jacket illustrator to repackage reader-response criticism and tell me it’s new … Oh! Look at all the pretty pictures!