Thought Train to Pusan

CBR11 Bingo Square: Listicle As found on the Book Riot list of “100 Must-Read Bisexual Books” https://bookriot.com/2017/09/21/100-must-read-bisexual-books/ I saw a lot of good reviews for this novel, and was excited to read it, given how it appeared to center on meaningful relationships (my favourite!), as well as the career of a filmmaker (something of great interest to me!). And yet, this is one of those cases where despite seeming like it has a lot of people who love it, I myself just don’t get it, even though I really want to. The Life and Death of Sophie Stark follows the life and filmmaking career of the eponymous Sophie Stark, but through the eyes of five different people she has had some sort of relationship with in her life: her brother, the boy she was obsessed with in college and first person she made a movie about, a girlfriend she coaxed into acting for her, her musician husband, and a film producer who offers her new opportunity. We Sophie...

--> CBR11 Bingo Square: Youths! This book was on the featured wall of the Young Adult section of our library, and the cover art immediately drew me in. Although written as a YA novel with a teenage protagonist, this novel specifically includes an author’s note at the beginning warning for content including racism, graphic violence, death, OCD and anxiety triggers. Suffice to say, this is a heavy book based on the real events of the 1969 race riots in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, albeit about a fictional character. The of The Weight of Our Sky follows a teenage girl named Melati, who is just trying to get through life like a normal kid her age, all while dealing with a Djinn inside her head. This Djinn is what today we would diagnose as OCD, and it takes the form of images of a gruesome death befalling Melati’s mother playing over and over in her head, unless she acts out elaborate schemes of counting and tapping in threes: if she doesn’t do what the Djinn wants, s...