Thought Train to Pusan

Right off the bat I will say that I have not watched the HBO adaptation of this novel, so my review is free of any comparisons which may have affected my feelings on the novel. That said, it seems a little counterintuitive to read a story about the aftermath of the disappearance (and seeming death) of a percentage of the population around the world given *gestures vaguely* everything, you know? But I thought, maybe this will make these strange feelings and emotions I’m having right now feel as though they are being seen and validated. What I am experience more than anything right now is a sense of being checked-out: a numbness or all-encompassing feeling of “blah” if you will. And that is certainly echoed int his novel through the everyday mundanities and seeming detachment the main characters experience in most of the their days. But coupled with my own detachment to things, most of the characters left me feeling very little, with the exception of a couple. Am I not in the right mi...

Funny enough, after finishing this book, my friend and I started watching I’m Not Okay With This together (see: video chatting while watching separately, hitting play at the same moment), and both that show and this novel involve young people who are unable to control innate abilities within themselves, that always seem to burst forth when the individual is angry or agitated in some way. But in both cases, this concept, while integral to the plot, is a vehicle for reaching into the deeper truths of humanity, growing up, and finding a sense of belonging. Nothing to See Here centers on a woman named Lillian, years after a scandal at her private boarding school forced her to leave, and in the process leave behind her roommate and good friend, Madison. Since then, Lillian has been adrift in her life, working dead-end jobs and living in her mother’s attic. But when Madison contacts her one day with a potential job offer, Lillian is quick to reunite with her friend. The job? A nanny...

Like Gosford Park by way of Source Code , with a zest of Black Mirror . This might have been better as an actual read rather than an audiobook: due to the complexities of the plot and many many characters, if my mind drifted for even a second I would find myself confused as to what was happening or who was who. But then, with all the moving parts I might have had a time keeping everything straight even if I were to have read it. I know this book has been reviewed by a number of Cannonballers in the past couple years, so I’ll leave the recap brief: a man wakes up on the estate of an old manor with amnesia. After learning that he has been invited here among many people to attend a party that evening, he continues through a confusing day, trying to discover who is he and whether or not he really saw a woman being murdered in a forest the night before as he believes. At the end of the day, however, he wakes up in a new body, and the day starts all over again. He learns that he ...

This novel ended up on my to-read list after being recommended by our library’s website after I finished Celeste Ng’s Everything I Never Told You . I really didn’t know what I was getting into though, to be honest, but I did assume that like Ng’s book, it would be some kind of personal family drama. That is certainly was, and this is a genre I usually quite like, but this time I find myself feeling a bit lukewarm about the whole endeavor. Commonwealth begins with a man named Bert Cousins showing up to the christening party of Fisk and Beverly Keating’s 2 nd daughter, Franny. Bert doesn’t really know the family, but has loose ties to friends-in-common through work, and goes to the party on a whim to have some time away from his own family. By the end of the party, however, Bert and Beverly end up kissing, and Bert can’t help but feel like his life has now changed forever. Unsurprisingly, this leads to an affair and eventual divorce, yet now the two families of the Cousins and t...

Unintentionally, this is the second novel I have ended up reading so far this year that takes place in a setting where magic used to exist freely, but has since disappeared, causing major changes to society in its wake. But despite this seeming similarity, both novels are very different from one another. While the first used the concept of returning magic in a YA quest, using the injustices of the class structure to create a direct allegory to the violence committed against black communities in America, The Last Smile in Sunder City presents us with a fantasy noir, following a hardened man-for-hire in a gritty city that once thrived, but was hit hard when the magic left. In this case, the distinction between magical beings and humans still clearly bears symbolism to our real world, but presented in more of a general sense of the “other”, or people trying to find a way to obtain something they do not (and have no right to) possess, or destroy those with it in order to feel more powe...

It’s been a long time since I’ve listened to the Welcome to Night Vale podcast, a surreal little trip into a strange desert town with unexplained incidents that the people are just accustomed to and seem to live with like that’s just life. I’m not sure if my previous knowledge and experience with the series made the reading of this novel better or worse: on the one hand, it certainly filled in a couple of spaces at the end that might make those unfamiliar confused, but on the other it took away a lot of the mystery behind the faceless old woman which her character in the series so interesting. Either way, you don’t really need to listen to the podcast or read the other novels (which I haven’t yet) in order to understand the story. The version of The Faceless Old Woman Who Secretly Lives In Your Home that I took in was the audiobook read by Mara Wilson, who has one-sided conversations with the present-day Craig – the man whose home she inhabits—all while also detailing her pers...

My Sister, the Serial Killer begins at the cleanup of a murder; Korede is the older sister of Ayoola, and this is the third time Korede has had to come to the rescue of her little sister’s crimes in order to help her clean up and dispose of a dead body. Korede has always been protective of her little sister after a traumatic childhood with their father, but at this point she is beginning to question if the trail of bodies Ayoola has been leaving behind were really in self-defence or not. Being that she is implicated in the cover-up of these crimes, Korede keeps quiet, but when Ayoola strikes the interest of a doctor that Korede works with and has feelings for, their dynamic gets thrown for a new loop. This book is short and sweet: it contains a darkly humorous and intriguing story that doesn’t give us a murder mystery to solve (we know Ayoola has killed the man at the beginning) so much as a playout of what comes after, holding the reader in suspense as to what decisions will b...