Book Review: Sheets by Brenna Thummler

Posted on 03/20/2023 by Lenn

Title: Sheets

Author: Brenna Thummler

Publication Date: August 28, 2018

Number of Pages: 239

Format: E-book

Publisher: Oni Press

Genre: Comics, Graphic Novel, Paranormal

Synopsis:

Marjorie Glatt feels like a ghost. A practical thirteen year old in charge of the family laundry business, her daily routine features unforgiving customers, unbearable P.E. classes, and the fastidious Mr. Saubertuck who is committed to destroying everything she’s worked for.

Wendell is a ghost. A boy who lost his life much too young, his daily routine features ineffective death therapy, a sheet-dependent identity, and a dangerous need to seek purpose in the forbidden human world.

When their worlds collide, Marjorie is confronted by unexplainable disasters as Wendell transforms Glatt’s Laundry into his midnight playground, appearing as a mere sheet during the day. While Wendell attempts to create a new afterlife for himself, he unknowingly sabotages the life that Marjorie is struggling to maintain.
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Book Review: Daisy Jones & The Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid

Posted on 03/19/2023 by Lenn

Title: Daisy Jones & The Six

Author: Taylor Jenkins Reid

Publication Date: March 5, 2019

Number of Pages: 362

Format: Hardcover

Publisher: Hutchinson

Genre: Historical Fiction, Contemporary, Literary Fiction

Synopsis:

For a while, Daisy Jones & The Six were everywhere. Their albums were on every turntable, they sold out arenas from coast to coast, their sound defined an era. And then, on 12 July 1979, they split.

Nobody ever knew why. Until now.

They were lovers and friends and brothers and rivals. They couldn’t believe their luck, until it ran out. This is their story of the early days and the wild nights, but everyone remembers the truth differently.

The only thing they all know for sure is that from the moment Daisy Jones walked barefoot onstage at the Whisky, their lives were irrevocably changed.

Making music is never just about the music. And sometimes it can be hard to tell where the sound stops and the feelings begin.
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Book Review: How to Stand Up to a Dictator by Maria Ressa

Posted on 03/18/2023 by Lenn

Title: How to Stand Up to a Dictator: The Fight For Our Future

Author: Maria Ressa

Publication Date: November 17, 2022

Number of Pages: 320

Format: E-book, Audiobook

Publisher: HarperCollins

Genre: Non-Fiction, Memoir, History

Synopsis:

Maria Ressa is one of the most renowned international journalists of our time. For decades, she challenged corruption and malfeasance in her native country, the Philippines, on its rocky path from an authoritarian state to a democracy. As a reporter from CNN, she transformed news coverage in her region, which led her in 2012 to create a new and innovative online news organization, Rappler. Harnessing the emerging power of social media, Rappler crowdsourced breaking news, found pivotal sources and tips, harnessed collective action for climate change, and helped increase voter knowledge and participation in elections.

But by their fifth year of existence, Rappler had gone from being lauded for its ideas to being targeted by the new Philippine government, and made Ressa an enemy of her country’s most powerful man: President Duterte. Still, she did not let up, tracking government seeded disinformation networks which spread lies to its own citizens laced with anger and hate. Hounded by the state and its allies using the legal system to silence her, accused of numerous crimes, and charged with cyberlibel for which she was found guilty, Ressa faces years in prison and thousands in fines.

There is another adversary Ressa is battling. How to Stand Up to a Dictator is also the story of how the creep towards authoritarianism, in the Phillipines and around the world, has been aided and abetted by the social media companies. Ressa exposes how they have allowed their platforms to spread a virus of lies that infect each of us, pitting us against one another, igniting, even creating, our fears, anger, and hate, and how this has accelerated the rise of authoritarians and dictators around the world. She maps a network of disinformation–a heinous web of cause and effect–that has netted the globe: from Duterte’s drug wars to America’s Capitol Hill; Britain’s Brexit to Russian and Chinese cyber-warfare; Facebook and Silicon Valley to our own clicks and votes.

Democracy is fragile. How to Stand Up to a Dictator is an urgent cry for Western readers to recognize and understand the dangers to our freedoms before it is too late. It is a book for anyone who might take democracy for granted, written by someone who never would. And in telling her dramatic and turbulent and courageous story, Ressa forces readers to ask themselves the same question she and her colleagues ask every day: What are you willing to sacrifice for the truth?
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Book Review: Mukbang Princess by Rayne Havok

Posted on 03/15/2023 by Lenn

Title: Mukbang Princess

Author: Rayne Havok

Publication Date: March 15, 2021

Number of Pages: 10

Format: E-book

Publisher: Independent

Genre: Splatterpunk, Horror

Synopsis:

Hot pink, glitter, and stars! Mukbang Princess’ profile has gotten my attention.
“I have a once in a lifetime meal planned for you all, something that will delight all the fans of filth.”
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Book Review: Talia by Daniel J. Volpe

Posted on 03/14/2023 by Lenn

Title: Talia

Author: Daniel J. Volpe

Publication Date: April 25, 2021

Number of Pages: 211

Format: Kindle

Publisher: Independent

Genre: Splatterpunk, Horror

Synopsis:

In the early 1990s the rising popularity of the video cassette gave birth to a seedy, underground world of illicit pornography.
Talia, a Midwest dreamer, leaves home in search of fame under the blinding Broadway lights. But nothing could have prepared her for what she finds instead. Savage violence, bottomless depravity, and no way out.

Talia will unapologetically drag you into the foul underbelly of society. A sanity straining journey, full of hot bloodshed and betrayal.
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Stuff I’ve Been Reading Lately #31

Posted on 03/10/2023 by Lenn

BOOKS READ:

The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton
The Nanny by Gilly Macmillan
The Dead Romantics by Ashley Poston
Time is a Mother by Ocean Vuong
Beyond the Wand: The Magic and Mayhem of Growing Up a Wizard by Tom Felton

BOOKS BOUGHT:

The Mysterious Case of the Missing Tuk-Tuk by Zach Brodsky
The Troubling Case of the Stolen Shoes by Zach Brodsky
The Bizarre Case of the Suicide Killer by Zach Brodsky
Cursed Bunny by Bora Chung
The Heights by Louise Candlish
The Tenth Circle by Jodi Picoult
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie
In A Cottage In A Wood by Cass Green
The Killer Inside by Cass Green

BOOKS RECEIVED:

Who Moved My Cheese? by Spencer Johnson
Journey Beyond Selene by Jeffrey Kluger

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Book Review: The Dead Romantics by Ashley Poston

Posted on 03/03/2023 by Lenn

Title: The Dead Romantics

Author: Ashley Poston

Publication Date: June 28, 2022

Number of Pages: 368

Format: Paperback

Publisher: Berkley

Genre: Contemporary, Romance

Synopsis:

A disillusioned millennial ghostwriter who, quite literally, has some ghosts of her own, has to find her way back home in this sparkling adult debut from national bestselling author Ashley Poston.

Florence Day is the ghostwriter for one of the most prolific romance authors in the industry, and she has a problem—after a terrible breakup, she no longer believes in love. It’s as good as dead.

When her new editor, a too-handsome mountain of a man, won’t give her an extension on her book deadline, Florence prepares to kiss her career goodbye. But then she gets a phone call she never wanted to receive, and she must return home for the first time in a decade to help her family bury her beloved father.

For ten years, she’s run from the town that never understood her, and even though she misses the sound of a warm Southern night and her eccentric, loving family and their funeral parlor, she can’t bring herself to stay. Even with her father gone, it feels like nothing in this town has changed. And she hates it.

Until she finds a ghost standing at the funeral parlor’s front door, just as broad and infuriatingly handsome as ever, and he’s just as confused about why he’s there as she is.

Romance is most certainly dead… but so is her new editor, and his unfinished business will have her second-guessing everything she’s ever known about love stories.
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Bangkok Book Haul

Posted on 02/26/2023 by Lenn

Of course, our trip wouldn’t be complete if I don’t drop by bookstores and shop for books. I knew that they have one of my favorite bookstores when travelling in Asia (I haven’t travelled outside of Asia yet, but you get my point), Books Kinokuniya, so it was instantly on our itinerary! But we also dropped by Open House at Central Embassy Mall which I learned from Kathryn Bernardo’s Instagram post when she went to Thailand last year. Ever since I saw her post about this beautiful bookstore, I knew that I wanted to visit it and that’s why I convinced my husband to spend our first anniversary in Thailand.

Open House is located at the 6th floor of Central Embassy mall. Take note, they occupy the WHOLE floor. They sell different kinds of books from educational, cultural, memoirs, and fiction. They also have cafe’s and restaurant’s inside the bookstore! It was really a cool place to visit if you’re a bookworm like me. Oh, and they also offer art materials for painting, drawing, etc. Continue reading →

Book Review: Time is a Mother by Ocean Voung

Posted on 02/22/2023 by Lenn

Title: Time Is A Mother

Author: Ocean Voung

Publication Date: April 5, 2022

Number of Pages: 128

Format: E-book

Publisher: Penguin Press

Genre: Contemporary, Poetry

Synopsis:

In this deeply intimate second poetry collection, Ocean Vuong searches for life among the aftershocks of his mother’s death, embodying the paradox of sitting within grief while being determined to survive beyond it. Shifting through memory, and in concert with the themes of his novel On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, Vuong contends with personal loss, the meaning of family, and the cost of being the product of an American war in America. At once vivid, brave, and propulsive, Vuong’s poems circle fragmented lives to find both restoration as well as the epicenter of the break.

The author of the critically acclaimed poetry collection Night Sky With Exit Wounds, winner of the 2016 Whiting Award, the 2017 T.S. Eliot Prize, and a 2019 MacArthur fellow, Vuong writes directly to our humanity without losing sight of the current moment. These poems represent a more innovative and daring experimentation with language and form, illuminating how the themes we perennially live in and question are truly inexhaustible. Bold and prescient, and a testament to tenderness in the face of violence, Time Is a Mother is a return and a forging forth all at once.
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Book Review: The Nanny by Gilly Macmillan

Posted on 02/21/2023 by Lenn

Title: The Nanny

Author: Gilly Macmillan

Publication Date: May 1, 2019

Number of Pages: 432

Format: Paperback

Publisher: Century

Genre: Mystery, Thriller, Suspense

Synopsis:

Jocelyn loves her nanny more than her own mother – until the night that the nanny disappears. Jo is seven years old when it happens and never gets over the loss.

Now, thirty years later, Jo is returning to her family home with her daughter in tow – just as human remains are pulled out of the house’s lake.

Then there’s a knock on the door. And a woman claiming to be her nanny stands outside.

Is she who she says she is?
Can she be trusted?
And what really happened on that fateful night all those years ago?

Sometimes the truth hurts so much you’d rather hear the lie.
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