Beautiful You – Chuck Palahniuk

Pros: Interesting concept, distinct voice.

Cons: Too sci-fi for me, too outlandish of a concept, and I just generally disliked the entire book.

One More Thing: Stories And Other Stories – B.J. Novak

A woman true from every angle, beautiful and spontaneous and grounded and funny and wise, a person as worthy of my permanent admiration as a sunset or a song, a partner in crime at the beginning and a partner in punishment later, for the child with the crayons – I’ve always figured that I needed to advance farther, first. – Sophia

It is an inside joke of history that its most exciting adventures inevitably end their careers as homework. – J.C. Audetat, Translator of Don Quixote

Pros: Funny; quick read; relaxing; quirky stories.

Cons: Nothing particularly special stood out to me; not memorable; I have no desire to revisit and reread anything in the collection.

Saint Anything — Sarah Dessen

“Eric problems.” She sighed. “They’re like first world, but even more privileged.”

Pros: Heartwarming; quick read; good for a beach day or a “me” day.

Cons: Not super memorable. To be honest, it blurred together with the other Sarah Dessen books I read and I don’t remember much about it.

Read Bottom Up: A Novel – Neal Shah & Skye Chatham

I mean, you have been saying that you’re looking for someone who is gonna call you on your shit… though there’s a huge difference between what you “say” you’re looking for and what you “are” looking for.

Madeline, on the other hand, has been cool and accommodating and seems well-adjusted and seems to like you, which you now don’t even know how to process, because you’re so conditioned to only like girls who treat you like shit.

Anyway I am a combination of “us” and “them”. I don’t wake up seeing forever but I also acknowledge it as a real destination.

Emily is pretty cool btw. Potentially too much of a real person for me right now, but when I’m looking for something serious in the next 8-10 years, I would like to revisit that.

You know, they’re all assholes until one isn’t. I’m so sorry to say that both our asshole quotas have been, I think, unreasonably high. I think it should have ended at 26. I’m not saying I wanted to be taken off the market at 26 because um, no thank you. But I just think that 26 has a nice end-of-the-bs-from-guys-who-don’t-know-what-they-want vibe. Like you can rent a car at 25 and then the next milestone should be “yay! 26! You’re free from games!!”

Pros: I loved that this book were email exchanges back and forth; I loved that they were funny and sincere and that I could read them in little snippets; I loved that it felt like a conversation between friends / new lovers; I loved that it felt both relatable and sincere. Overall, I just straight-up loved it.

Cons: I wish it had been longer so I could’ve enjoyed it longer. Also, I wish it had a sequel.

Station Eleven — Emily St. John Mandel

Pros: Fascinating characters, interesting take on the “Doomsday Novel” genre, great portrayal of life “before” vs. life “after.

Cons: I remember just not really being into the book.  It was fine and I loved the idea of the whole thing, but it never really gripped me in the way that I had hoped it would.  However, I think that me not being interested in it was mostly a preference problem on my end.

A Little Something Different — Sandy Hall

“Don’t think of it as illegal,” I say. “Think of it as helping local business owners.” (1)

“You should probably converse.”
“Maybe.  Could also be fun to like her from afar and make up stories about her in my head and pretend that we’re dating.”
“So, stalk her?”
“You call it whatever you need to call it,” he says with a straight face. (18-19)

“‘Cause they come in here every once in a while, and she goes to one corner and he goes to the other, and then they move around the store creating parabolas as they come together and bounce apart.  They’re the weirdest couple on Earth.  I want to write math equations about them.” (176)

So much better than the people who take their coffee orders far too personally, who have deep-seated emotional issues about how many pumps of mocha they get. (195)

Highlights: This novel was written in fourteen different viewpoints; the different viewpoints actually really worked; one of the viewpoints was a squirrel, which was phenomenal.

Lowlights: none to speak of — I just really loved it.