book review

  • The Sound of Blackened Teeth

    I needed to be told the story to fully appreciate it. I wasn’t a fan of Cassandra Khaw’s Nothing But Blackened Teeth when I first read it. The audiobook changed my mind. Its narrator, Suehyla El Attar gave Cassandra’s words a rhythm and an “oomph” that the voice in my head could not. Listening. I

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  • The Tsundokuist

    I learned a new word: Tsundoku. It’s a portmanteau (another new word I learned) of the Japanese words tsunde-oku (to let things pile up) and dukosho (to read). Tsundoku is the act of buying books and letting them just pile up without reading them. According to Tanner Garrity, it’s supposed to be an expression of

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  • Dementia 21 might be my Steppenwolf

    SPOILERS! There may be spoilers in this post. Do not read further, if it concerns you. It is definitely my age that gives Shintaro Kago’s Dementia 21 a little more bite. A little more darkness. A little more sadness. And a little more humor. A friend once told me that Herman Hesse’s Steppenwolf tells an

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  • Dandadan: Allegory or just immature fun

    Dandadan by Yukinobu Tatsu can be read as an allegory about male pubescent ascendance and anxiety. Or it can just be fun. It can be a silly immature schoolyard joke that the author has imagined into an exciting fast-paced supernatural horror comedy. According to Anime Hunch, Yukinobu Tatsu wrote Dandadan as a desperate final effort

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  • “helping” in James Tynion IV’s Something is Killing the Children

    James is the sole survivor of an otherwise innocuous sleepover game of truth or dare. He and his friends go into the ravine in the back of his house in search of a monster he swore he didn’t make up. Unfortunately, there is a monster there and it kills all of his friends. The book

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  • Rules To Keep A Story Real

    POSSIBLE SPOILERS! I worried that my ignorance of Arthurian lore would make it difficult to read Kieron Gillen’s Once and Future* series. Happily, this wasn’t the case. While I’m sure familiarity would make the story even more enjoyable because I’d pick up on nuances specific to the mythology, through Duncan, Gillen’s museum curator hero, I

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  • Revisiting Mol (An Updated Review of Hye-young Pyun’s City of Ash and Red)

    Hye-young Pyun’s City of Ash and Red is a more impactful book after a worldwide pandemic lockdown. We all experienced firsthand the frustration and tribulation Pyun’s nameless protagonist endured as he attempted to begin his new life in Country C during an epidemic. Not that the examiner’s choice of words was particularly difficult, but the

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  • The Hope Conservationist

    Published 22 years ago, before 9/11, before Madoff, before Black Lives, before the pandemic, the January 6 White terrorist attack on the Capitol, and a lot of other things that drain my psyche, Jane Goodall’s Reason to Hope is the book I needed right now. While I don’t know if I am any more or

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Vincent Young