February Book Review (9)

Happy Tuesday everyone it's not Tuesday.

1.) Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson

This is the story of a girl in high school who is ostracised after calling the cops on a party where she was r*ped. Obviously, it deals with some difficult themes but I think it is really important for teens, especially, to read.

I first read this book when I was maybe thirteen and watched the movie with Kristen Stewart as Melinda. She was a perfect actress for the role and I always picture Melinda as her. Reading the graphic novel version changed how I pictured Melinda a bit but it's still really cool and a lot like the movie. I loved seeing Melinda's art the way she actually would have made it. It gives new life to an older story and I wouldn't have read it again if I hadn't seen the graphic novel version.

2.) Her Vol.2 by Pierre Alex Jeanty

I really did not like Volume Two of Her. It's obvious that the writer wanted to branch off and do some things differently with his second book such as font size, style and format of the poems. It's all over the place. And the drawings! The first book had very nice and simple line drawings while volume 2 has shading and mixed media as if the artist tried to do better than the last drawings but isn't that good of an artist. It looks horrible. And one of the poems features a drawing of Her Volume One. He included a drawing of his first book in his second book. Horrible.

With the style of the poems and the bad art along with it, the whole book seems amateur. The poems are good but everything else takes away from that.

I loved Volume One but everything Volume Two does differently in an effort to make it better ended up making it worse.

3.) Chasers of the Light by Tyler Knott Gregson

I love the concept of this book, it is so beautiful. Most of the poems are written with a typewriter on found paper along with a couple of pictures that also feature poems. It is so beautifully done.

Aside from liking the book from an aesthetic standpoint, the poems are also beautiful. I think the medium in which it is written and presented makes the poems stand out amongst other poetry books.

This may not be pertinent to my review but the paper feels really nice.

4.) Ghost Boy by Martin Pistorius and Megan Lloyd Daries

This book follows the life of a young boy who starts out as your average, healthy kid but by the time he's fourteen he is a mute quadriplegic. At first, his mind is as gone as his body until it's not. For ten years he is completely conscious trapped inside his body while no one knows. The book tracks how he climbs his way up from being unable to express the simplest of thoughts to writing his own story.

I was fascinated within the first few pages and read the whole book to the end in one sitting until two in the morning. There are some parts that are hard to read but it's because Martin is honest in describing some of the most traumatic moments in his life. But it's those low points that make the high points so much more amazing to read. When everyone around him realizes that he is awake and when he is able to communicate and everything that follows is simply miraculous.

Here are some quotes I bookmarked:

"Boxes make us easier to understand, but they also imprison us because people don't see past them." (Pg 17)

"Dreams can be any size you want them to be. But the important thing is that you have one that is yours." (Pg 94)

Thanks for getting me this book for Christmas Aunt Melinda and Happy Birthday!

5.) 2fish by Jhene Aiko Efuru Chilombo

This is my new favorite poetry book. Compared to Milk and Honey by Rupi Kaur, which was my favorite poetry book, the poems themselves are equally as beautiful but where 2dish pulls ahead is its presentation. 2fish has typed poems with drawings just like Milk and Honey does but it also has more. There are also scans of handwritten poems on lined paper with scribbles and doodles. I think seeing into a writer's personal journal like that is so amazing and something I want to do when I write my own poetry book.

2fish also does this really cool thing where it names each poem 1fish, 2fish then 3fish all the way up to 70fish. I think it's really cool to name poems numerically like that.

6.) When the Moon was Ours by Anna-Marie McLemor

I adore this book but I'm having a hard time reviewing it because it's so different. There is so much magic in it without it being labeled as magic or anything else it just simply is. All of the characters are so different and special in really creative ways. Sam and Miel are best friends that turn into something more. Miel has roses that grow from her wrists and she was found in an abandoned water tower. What makes Sam different was a pretty big shock to me so I kind of don't want to spoil it even though I think it is so amazing.

It reminds me of Sarah Addison Allen's Garden Spells, Lost Lake, and Peach Keeper where the characters are special in a... Special? Way.

7.) Planting Gardens in Graves Volume One by r.h. sin

My dad said the cover looks like, "A ghost pooping in a hole".

r. h. sin has spit out quite a few books in the last couple years that I have only read in the last couple months so it seems he is writing even faster. This is the fourth book of his that I have read, the first three being Whiskey Words and a Shovel I, II and III.This book feels very much like a continuation of that series unlike Algedonic that I'm reviewing in just a second.

I wouldn't say r. h. sin is one of my favorites poets but I do enjoy his writing a lot and will continue to read his books as fast as he puts them out there.

I added two of the poems from this book to my post on slut-shaming and prude-shaming.

8.) Daughter of the Pirate King by Tricia Levenseller

This book had me so fast. I mean it had me at the dedication page that doubles as an epigraph (I just learned this word. It's when there's a quotation at the beginning of a book or chapter.) Even if the book as a whole wasn't good I would love it for this epigraph. One of my favorite Jack Sparrow quotes.

Now the book itself is really awesome. I love pirates almost as much
as I love badass female leads. Alosa is the sixteen-year-old, red-headed daughter of the "Pirate King" and "Siren Queen" (I'm guessing by the title of the second book that I haven't read yet). She is a ruthless, killer captain of an almost all women crew (she keeps a few men because they're the only ones who can hear her siren call). Technically the fact that she was a siren was a secret at the beginning of the book so this is kind of a SPOILER ALERT but it wasn't hidden well and including the title of the second book didn't help.

9.) Algedonic by r.h sin 

I looked up the definition of Algedonic and it basically means pain and pleasure.
I like how this was organized compared to Sin's other books that I've read. Half of the pages are black and the others are white. The black pages are titled, Pain | Chaos (I just now realized I had that symbol on my keyboard) and the white pages are titled Pleasure | Peace. I always thought the other books should be organized into categories similar to Pillow Thoughts by Courtney Peppernell. Without some sort of organization, the poems switch between heartbreak and love and back to heartbreak and it turns into an emotional roller coaster. So I liked this book for its organization.

I was just a tad disappointed that these poems didn't have titles like the other ones but I understand not all poems have titles and I really only liked it for the aesthetic and the fact that one of the titles was my birthday.

Aside from all of that the book is very similar to r.h. Sin's other work. 

Totally Ky