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My Goodreads Star Ratings Guide (As of February 25, 2025)
Prior to this date, all books were automatically given 5 Stars - except for those falling to 1 Star.
Prior to this date, all books were automatically given 5 Stars - except for those falling to 1 Star.
★★★★★ = exceptional, transformative, enduring.
★★★★ = strong, compelling, worth your time.
★★★ = mixed, but interesting.
★★ = flawed in craft or execution.
★ = harmful, careless, or ethically troubling.
★★★★ = strong, compelling, worth your time.
★★★ = mixed, but interesting.
★★ = flawed in craft or execution.
★ = harmful, careless, or ethically troubling.
CLICK AUTHORS NAME TO BE WHISKED TO THEIR WEBSITE
Top 2026
This is my order, yours may; likely will be, different!
Books Read in 2026
- You Will Not Kill Our Imagination - Saeed Teebi (Canadian Author)
- Pizza Before We Die - Hassan Kanafani
- The Disappearing Act - Maria Stepanova
- The Bad Indians Book Club - Patty Krawec (Canadian Author)
- A Mind Spread Out on the Ground - Alicia Elliott (Canadian Author)
- Honey In The Wound - Jiyoung Han
- Amapiano Eyes - D. Nandi Obiambo
- Letters to Kafka - Christine Estima (Canadian Author)
- Anything is Possible - Elizabeth Strout
- Skin and Bones - Paul Doiron
- Animal Farm - George Orwell
- Cleo Dang Would Rather Be Dead - Mai Nguyen (Canadian Author)
- Just Watch Me - Lior Torenberg
- White World - Saad T. Farooqi (Canadian Author)
- Let Me Go Mad In My Own Way - Elaine Feeny
- Red River Road - Anna Downe
- Disturbing the Dead - Kelley Armstrong
- Outspoken - Betty Baxter (Canadian Author)
- Staying Power - Zena Sharman (Canadian Author)
- The Fall Down Effect - Liz Johnston(Canadian Author)
- Jelly Belly* - Therese Estacion (Canadian Author)
- I Used to Be Pices - Camilla Gibb (Canadian Author)
- Them Bones - David Housewright
- The Thrashers - Julie Soto
- Darkhearts - James L. Sutter
- Mr. Good-Evening - John MacLachlan Gray (Canadian Author)
- Radiant White Light - Mo Duffy (Canadian Author)
- The Sacred Heart Motel - Grace Kwan (Canadian Author)
- Gold Star - Emma McKenna (Canadian Author)
- Me and Earl and the Dying Girl - Jesse Andrews
- Shades of Mercy - Bruce Borgos
- Return to Pauru Gai - Emiko Morita (Canadian Author)
- Canada in the Age of Rum - Allan Greer
- Nymph - Sofia Montrone
- The Roman Empire Got it Right - Steven Marr
- Warhead - Nicholas Wright
- Why We Drink Too Much - Dr. Charles Knowles
- Habits of The Sea - Shea Ernshaw
- Honeysuckle - Bar Fridman-Tell
- The Liars Playbook - Leslie Bradford-Scott (Canadian Author)
- Entangled Life* - Merlin Sheldrake
- The Hidden Life of Trees* - Peter Wohllebin
- The Wax Child* - Olga Ravn
- Friends with Benefits* - Marisa Kanter
- Intolerable* - Kamal Al-Solaylee (Canadian Author)
- Snow Road Station* - Elizabeth Hay (Canadian Author)
- Trickster Drift* - Eden Robinson (Canadian Author)
- Batshit Seven* - Sheung-King (Canadian Author)
BLUE = MEMOIR OR BIOGRAPHICAL
BLACK = FICTION
DARK RED = EDUCATIONAL + Historical Fiction
PURPLE = ESSAY OR STORIES
ORANGE = POETRY
BLACK = FICTION
DARK RED = EDUCATIONAL + Historical Fiction
PURPLE = ESSAY OR STORIES
ORANGE = POETRY
Reading Myself: A Life in Books (and the Lives They Unlocked).
Book Thoughts: The Reading Life of Lindsay Wincherauk.
Reading is a strange contract. A writer promises a world. A reader agrees to believe in it.
Sometimes the most interesting thing about a book is not the story it tells, but the story it reveals about the reader.
Sometimes the most interesting thing about a book is not the story it tells, but the story it reveals about the reader.
Book Thoughts: What a book does to me—how it lands, lingers, and connects to the world outside its pages.
Number of Books Read
Before 2022: A lot.
2022: 72
2023: 64
2024: 46
2025: 25
2026: 48 and counting.
Before 2022: A lot.
2022: 72
2023: 64
2024: 46
2025: 25
2026: 48 and counting.
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46
★★★★★
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★★★★★
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Intolerable – Conditioned Worlds. Shared Longing.
How did the book make me feel/think?
The connection arrived early.
I was born into a form of religious extremism—church-sanctioned erasure. The diminishing of women. An unwed pregnancy. An expectant mother deemed “unfit.” An unwanted child. A lifetime of searching—for meaning, for belonging.
I don’t confuse my experience with Yemen’s upheaval. But I recognize the structure: zero-sum. “Wrong place. Wrong time.”
Evolution moves slowly—like a tree through stone. Curiosity grows in upheaval.
Are the extremes of patriarchy—Islamic or Christian—so far apart? Or just different languages?
Kamal invites us into his life.
Gay. Youngest of eleven.
A mother—loving but constrained by illiteracy and too many lives.
Love is there.
Buried—under doctrine, expectation, repetition. Conditioning obscures it.
State TV. Fox News.
Different channels. Often the same function.
History presses in—colonization, ideology, power shifting hands.
Lives caught in the wake.
Economic precarity. Escape. Depression. A life made unlivable by being who you are.
Belonging, fractured.
And still—Al-Solaylee shares it.
Not to accuse. To reveal. To soften something in us.
Because beneath it all, most of us want the same things.
And the only true enemy might be intolerance.
By the end, one thought lingered:
Are we really that different? Or shaped by different propaganda?
Yemen and the quiet prison I was born into in Edmonton—worlds apart. But are they?
I felt his mother’s pain.
And found forgiveness for my own.
When I finished Intolerable, something shifted. My conditioning loosened. The world felt smaller.
Curiosity won.
WRITTEN 19 April 2026
***** = reflective, disarming, connective, forgiveness-seeking, gently hopeful.
How did the book make me feel/think?
The connection arrived early.
I was born into a form of religious extremism—church-sanctioned erasure. The diminishing of women. An unwed pregnancy. An expectant mother deemed “unfit.” An unwanted child. A lifetime of searching—for meaning, for belonging.
I don’t confuse my experience with Yemen’s upheaval. But I recognize the structure: zero-sum. “Wrong place. Wrong time.”
Evolution moves slowly—like a tree through stone. Curiosity grows in upheaval.
Are the extremes of patriarchy—Islamic or Christian—so far apart? Or just different languages?
Kamal invites us into his life.
Gay. Youngest of eleven.
A mother—loving but constrained by illiteracy and too many lives.
Love is there.
Buried—under doctrine, expectation, repetition. Conditioning obscures it.
State TV. Fox News.
Different channels. Often the same function.
History presses in—colonization, ideology, power shifting hands.
Lives caught in the wake.
Economic precarity. Escape. Depression. A life made unlivable by being who you are.
Belonging, fractured.
And still—Al-Solaylee shares it.
Not to accuse. To reveal. To soften something in us.
Because beneath it all, most of us want the same things.
And the only true enemy might be intolerance.
By the end, one thought lingered:
Are we really that different? Or shaped by different propaganda?
Yemen and the quiet prison I was born into in Edmonton—worlds apart. But are they?
I felt his mother’s pain.
And found forgiveness for my own.
When I finished Intolerable, something shifted. My conditioning loosened. The world felt smaller.
Curiosity won.
WRITTEN 19 April 2026
***** = reflective, disarming, connective, forgiveness-seeking, gently hopeful.
I Used to Be a Pisces – Restless in a World That Won’t Hold Still
How did the book make me feel/think?
This one isn’t about poetry. It’s about whether we’re paying attention.
Earth. Us. One. Stewards.
Without connection—grim.
I Used to Be a Pisces evokes the interconnectedness of all living things through lyrical writing and quietly menacing imagery.
Not heavy-handed. Not preachy. Just there—like something we already know but keep choosing to ignore.
Without a living earth… what exactly are we loving? What are we trying to regenerate?
Four women sit in a field. Hair in dryers. Eyes buried in magazines. Oblivious to a world burning in toxicity around them.
Apathy drying out their minds. Our minds.
Apathy feels like the eighth deadly sin—the one that doesn’t shout, doesn’t demand attention, but may end us all.
Our thirst for oil. Our ease with excess. Quiet acceptance.
This collection doesn’t accuse. It lingers. It unsettles. It asks:
Can love survive this?
Is renewal still possible?
What will be left when the updos are finished?
Hope?
Yes. Uneasy. Persistent. Still here.
WRITTEN 15 April 2026
***** stars = restless, searching, gently unmoored, hopeful.
How did the book make me feel/think?
This one isn’t about poetry. It’s about whether we’re paying attention.
Earth. Us. One. Stewards.
Without connection—grim.
I Used to Be a Pisces evokes the interconnectedness of all living things through lyrical writing and quietly menacing imagery.
Not heavy-handed. Not preachy. Just there—like something we already know but keep choosing to ignore.
Without a living earth… what exactly are we loving? What are we trying to regenerate?
Four women sit in a field. Hair in dryers. Eyes buried in magazines. Oblivious to a world burning in toxicity around them.
Apathy drying out their minds. Our minds.
Apathy feels like the eighth deadly sin—the one that doesn’t shout, doesn’t demand attention, but may end us all.
Our thirst for oil. Our ease with excess. Quiet acceptance.
This collection doesn’t accuse. It lingers. It unsettles. It asks:
Can love survive this?
Is renewal still possible?
What will be left when the updos are finished?
Hope?
Yes. Uneasy. Persistent. Still here.
WRITTEN 15 April 2026
***** stars = restless, searching, gently unmoored, hopeful.
All Batch 46 Reviews
| 46._book_thoughts_-_batch_46.pdf |
45
★★★★★
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★★★★★
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★★★★★
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★★★★
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★★★★★
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★★★★
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★★★★
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★★★★
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★★★★
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Shades of Mercy – Nothing Is What It Seems. Not Even Mercy.
How did the book make me feel/think?
This story is outside my lane. I didn't know I had one.
Mercy is the star.
A child genius. Weaponized. Used to bend narrative and power.
Porter Beck knows something is off.
Not American. Not quite what she presents.
He sees it. Or thinks he does.
The story sprawls—Cartels. Hackers. Opioids.
An incinerated prize bull.
Military capability folded into the margins.
It races.
A guess on every page.
Wrong. Wrong again.
Like Mercy—nothing is as it seems.
--- --- --- --- ---
My Life – Panama (1990): The roots of fiction.
I’m trying to buy a hotel in Jamaica.
I don’t have any money.
I pay for my flight with a friend’s expired passport.
--- --- --- --- ---
I fly in for funding.
Military helicopters circle my hotel 24/7.
Smoke rises in the distance.
There’s an attempted coup.
I walk into a meeting.
The doorman is holding an AR-15.
The funders have ties to Noriega.
I leave.
Closest I’ve ever come to international drama.
Is fiction ever just fiction?
--- --- --- --- ---
Will Mercy survive?
Who are the good guys?
Are there any?
Shades of Mercy earns 4 stars.
Not because it falls short—but because 5 has to mean something.
The first book to feel that line.
I read a lot.
If I give 5, it should be frame-worthy.
Ego in check.
A strong thriller—twisting, turning, always moving.
Is there a happy ending?
If there’s any mercy—there will be.
WRITTEN 18 April 2026
★★★★ = fast-moving, layered, unpredictable, and quietly unsettling.
How did the book make me feel/think?
This story is outside my lane. I didn't know I had one.
Mercy is the star.
A child genius. Weaponized. Used to bend narrative and power.
Porter Beck knows something is off.
Not American. Not quite what she presents.
He sees it. Or thinks he does.
The story sprawls—Cartels. Hackers. Opioids.
An incinerated prize bull.
Military capability folded into the margins.
It races.
A guess on every page.
Wrong. Wrong again.
Like Mercy—nothing is as it seems.
--- --- --- --- ---
My Life – Panama (1990): The roots of fiction.
I’m trying to buy a hotel in Jamaica.
I don’t have any money.
I pay for my flight with a friend’s expired passport.
--- --- --- --- ---
I fly in for funding.
Military helicopters circle my hotel 24/7.
Smoke rises in the distance.
There’s an attempted coup.
I walk into a meeting.
The doorman is holding an AR-15.
The funders have ties to Noriega.
I leave.
Closest I’ve ever come to international drama.
Is fiction ever just fiction?
--- --- --- --- ---
Will Mercy survive?
Who are the good guys?
Are there any?
Shades of Mercy earns 4 stars.
Not because it falls short—but because 5 has to mean something.
The first book to feel that line.
I read a lot.
If I give 5, it should be frame-worthy.
Ego in check.
A strong thriller—twisting, turning, always moving.
Is there a happy ending?
If there’s any mercy—there will be.
WRITTEN 18 April 2026
★★★★ = fast-moving, layered, unpredictable, and quietly unsettling.
Them Bones – On an Island of One
How did the book make me feel/think?
--- --- --- --- ---
How do you connect thoughts on a thriller, crime mystery, book?
I don’t know.
Rushmore McKenzie. That’s a cool name.
A beautiful woman rides in on a white horse. Halo surrounding her. Saving the protagonist from certain death.
A lifetime favour owed.
An archaeological dig. Paleontologists. On the take.
A dinosaur uncovered. Worth millions. Stolen. The black market.
And then--
I’m a child in Saskatoon. Three friends and I head into the forest. Walk with me (Stand by...).
We find a bunker.
We walk the railroad tracks.
We find bones. Crushed animals. Worthless.
Or so we think.
Rushmore starts talking past the story—almost through it.
Meta flashes. A narrator aware of the dig. A writer aware of the reader.
Is this David Housewright speaking directly to me?
A book about million-year-old bones shouldn’t move like this.
But it does. Fast. Clean. Relentless.
The story veers north to Saskatchewan. Regina. Close enough to feel personal.
Drumheller—the land of dinosaurs—666 kilometres away. The sign of the devil.
Coincidence? Sure.
But it doesn’t read like a coincidence.
From page one, Them Bones pulls you into the excavation.
Not just of fossils—but of memory, value, and what we decide is worth something.
What we leave behind.
What gets taken.
What gets found again?
WRITTEN 16 April 2026
★★★★★ = propulsive, reflective, quietly haunting, and sharply self-aware.
How did the book make me feel/think?
--- --- --- --- ---
How do you connect thoughts on a thriller, crime mystery, book?
I don’t know.
Rushmore McKenzie. That’s a cool name.
A beautiful woman rides in on a white horse. Halo surrounding her. Saving the protagonist from certain death.
A lifetime favour owed.
An archaeological dig. Paleontologists. On the take.
A dinosaur uncovered. Worth millions. Stolen. The black market.
And then--
I’m a child in Saskatoon. Three friends and I head into the forest. Walk with me (Stand by...).
We find a bunker.
We walk the railroad tracks.
We find bones. Crushed animals. Worthless.
Or so we think.
Rushmore starts talking past the story—almost through it.
Meta flashes. A narrator aware of the dig. A writer aware of the reader.
Is this David Housewright speaking directly to me?
A book about million-year-old bones shouldn’t move like this.
But it does. Fast. Clean. Relentless.
The story veers north to Saskatchewan. Regina. Close enough to feel personal.
Drumheller—the land of dinosaurs—666 kilometres away. The sign of the devil.
Coincidence? Sure.
But it doesn’t read like a coincidence.
From page one, Them Bones pulls you into the excavation.
Not just of fossils—but of memory, value, and what we decide is worth something.
What we leave behind.
What gets taken.
What gets found again?
WRITTEN 16 April 2026
★★★★★ = propulsive, reflective, quietly haunting, and sharply self-aware.
Jelly, Belly – On an Island of One
How did the book make me feel/think?
--- --- --- --- ---
I have some understanding of what it is like to feel erased. I do not compare my life to Therese’s. Doing so would be rude.
The book opened feelings inside of me.
Being an unwanted child, born into secrecy and familial shame, is not the same as losing limbs—but they share threads.
You feel alone. On an island of one.
You need to talk. But you don’t want to. The curiosity of others is often unknowingly cruel. A hundred people may ask what happened. Few take the time to live inside your pain. You might feel fetishized.
It might be easier to make a recording and press play. Unfortunately, every time you are asked about your plight, it can feel like erasure—again and again.
I understood Therese’s pain. Her frustration. Her solitude.
A few days ago, I was with a friend who has Parkinson’s. He said something I didn’t like. I was short with him.
Later, I thought about it. Not what he said—but what I hadn’t taken the time to understand.
Reading Jelly Baby felt like that. Learning something you should have known before you needed it. And realizing that understanding isn’t loud—it asks you to listen differently, and to carry that knowledge without making it about you.
Jelly Baby is an intense read. Therese has endured much. It is a blueprint of what ableism does to a person—the frustration, the anger, the slow erosion of being treated as if you are no longer here.
In one passage, Therese speaks candidly about her disdain for the happiness of childbirth—something taken from her. I understood that in my own way. Being unwanted, I have struggled, at times, to be around happy families with children.
Jelly Baby is a profound read. Not because it explains pain—but because it lets you feel it.
WRITTEN 14 April 2026
***** stars = unflinching, necessary, intimate, human.
How did the book make me feel/think?
--- --- --- --- ---
I have some understanding of what it is like to feel erased. I do not compare my life to Therese’s. Doing so would be rude.
The book opened feelings inside of me.
Being an unwanted child, born into secrecy and familial shame, is not the same as losing limbs—but they share threads.
You feel alone. On an island of one.
You need to talk. But you don’t want to. The curiosity of others is often unknowingly cruel. A hundred people may ask what happened. Few take the time to live inside your pain. You might feel fetishized.
It might be easier to make a recording and press play. Unfortunately, every time you are asked about your plight, it can feel like erasure—again and again.
I understood Therese’s pain. Her frustration. Her solitude.
A few days ago, I was with a friend who has Parkinson’s. He said something I didn’t like. I was short with him.
Later, I thought about it. Not what he said—but what I hadn’t taken the time to understand.
Reading Jelly Baby felt like that. Learning something you should have known before you needed it. And realizing that understanding isn’t loud—it asks you to listen differently, and to carry that knowledge without making it about you.
Jelly Baby is an intense read. Therese has endured much. It is a blueprint of what ableism does to a person—the frustration, the anger, the slow erosion of being treated as if you are no longer here.
In one passage, Therese speaks candidly about her disdain for the happiness of childbirth—something taken from her. I understood that in my own way. Being unwanted, I have struggled, at times, to be around happy families with children.
Jelly Baby is a profound read. Not because it explains pain—but because it lets you feel it.
WRITTEN 14 April 2026
***** stars = unflinching, necessary, intimate, human.
The Thrashers – Who Gets In, Who Gets Left, Who Pays
How did the book make me feel/think?
--- --- --- --- ---
A propulsive tale—twisting, turning, breaking—skirting the limits of believability just enough to keep you leaning forward.
Do you remember high school?
I do.
Wrong side of the tracks. A predominantly rich school. Designer clothes. Fancy cars. I drew a penguin on my shirt in chemistry class and drove a 1963 Epic Envoy—a box on wheels with a vice grip for a gear shift and a trouble light for a headlight.
Humour (the penguin) and athletics let me orbit the edges. Not quite in. Not fully out.
“Let’s go for coffee,” the cool kids would say.
I declined. I didn’t drink coffee.
I “Thrashed” myself.
A group of five. One is let in as a target. A joke.
Another kept at the door—shown the entrance, never allowed through. Cruelty as currency.
YA isn’t my lane. I don’t know what it’s like to be a teenage girl. But I know what exclusion feels like. That translates.
What’s changed? The stage. The audience. The permanence. The technology.
What hasn’t? The damage.
The Thrashers remind us that bullying isn’t a phase—it’s formative. It leaves marks that don’t fade neatly with time. The ghosts don’t just follow the victims. They follow everyone.
I sit at my desk, the past not so far away.
The penguin is still talking.
It says I never fit in.
The Epic gets a flat.
WRITTEN 9 April 2026
★★★★ = propulsive, thrilling, relatable, and thought-provoking.
How did the book make me feel/think?
--- --- --- --- ---
A propulsive tale—twisting, turning, breaking—skirting the limits of believability just enough to keep you leaning forward.
Do you remember high school?
I do.
Wrong side of the tracks. A predominantly rich school. Designer clothes. Fancy cars. I drew a penguin on my shirt in chemistry class and drove a 1963 Epic Envoy—a box on wheels with a vice grip for a gear shift and a trouble light for a headlight.
Humour (the penguin) and athletics let me orbit the edges. Not quite in. Not fully out.
“Let’s go for coffee,” the cool kids would say.
I declined. I didn’t drink coffee.
I “Thrashed” myself.
A group of five. One is let in as a target. A joke.
Another kept at the door—shown the entrance, never allowed through. Cruelty as currency.
YA isn’t my lane. I don’t know what it’s like to be a teenage girl. But I know what exclusion feels like. That translates.
What’s changed? The stage. The audience. The permanence. The technology.
What hasn’t? The damage.
The Thrashers remind us that bullying isn’t a phase—it’s formative. It leaves marks that don’t fade neatly with time. The ghosts don’t just follow the victims. They follow everyone.
I sit at my desk, the past not so far away.
The penguin is still talking.
It says I never fit in.
The Epic gets a flat.
WRITTEN 9 April 2026
★★★★ = propulsive, thrilling, relatable, and thought-provoking.
The Roman Empire Got it Right – Or at Least Wrote it Down Well
How did the book make me feel/think?
Am I reading Cliff Notes, Coles Notes, an encyclopedia, or a time-travel brochure about the Roman Empire?
Informative, certainly. Moments of “oh, I didn’t know that.”
A trivia goldmine. A writer’s reference manual.
An easy read lightening a darkening world.
500–1,400 years of control.
I liked it. My mind wandered and then--
Caveat emptor if you are looking for depth. Ergo, read with a curious mind. Ipso facto, the Empire gave the world much. Mea culpa, my previous lack of casual conversation on law and order, military, science, and math—oh, Roman Empire, you have given much.
You better have. You were in charge for a long time.
Your quid has given us a musical and theatrical pro quo.
For the longest time, you were the vox populi.
In the pursuit of the good life, the rich got richer, and everyone else has been given history to study.
Any book that provides snippets of history, in this reader’s mind’s eye, is a good thing.
A reader’s warning:
When trivia becomes identity, history stops teaching and starts performing.
“If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.” — Marcus Tullius Cicero
My thoughts drift.
I’m 39% Norwegian. I did a search; I’m about 1% descended from the Roman Empire.
That’s okay. With 1,400 years of control, they had better have gotten some things right.
Where are they now?
WRITTEN 7 April 2026
★★★★ = informative, accessible, and thought-provoking.
How did the book make me feel/think?
Am I reading Cliff Notes, Coles Notes, an encyclopedia, or a time-travel brochure about the Roman Empire?
Informative, certainly. Moments of “oh, I didn’t know that.”
A trivia goldmine. A writer’s reference manual.
An easy read lightening a darkening world.
500–1,400 years of control.
I liked it. My mind wandered and then--
Caveat emptor if you are looking for depth. Ergo, read with a curious mind. Ipso facto, the Empire gave the world much. Mea culpa, my previous lack of casual conversation on law and order, military, science, and math—oh, Roman Empire, you have given much.
You better have. You were in charge for a long time.
Your quid has given us a musical and theatrical pro quo.
For the longest time, you were the vox populi.
In the pursuit of the good life, the rich got richer, and everyone else has been given history to study.
Any book that provides snippets of history, in this reader’s mind’s eye, is a good thing.
A reader’s warning:
When trivia becomes identity, history stops teaching and starts performing.
“If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.” — Marcus Tullius Cicero
My thoughts drift.
I’m 39% Norwegian. I did a search; I’m about 1% descended from the Roman Empire.
That’s okay. With 1,400 years of control, they had better have gotten some things right.
Where are they now?
WRITTEN 7 April 2026
★★★★ = informative, accessible, and thought-provoking.
Gold Star – Witnessing, Not Belonging.
How did the book make me feel/think?
I find poetry difficult to write about. It’s a personal journey, and sometimes you’re not the one on it.
Emma McKenna identifies as a queer feminist writer. I read from a different lens.
I didn’t find myself on the pages.
The poems are intense—bodily autonomy, poverty, child abuse, and the struggle to escape conditioning. A life trying to become something other than what it was told to be.
“Gold Star,” the title poem, gutted me—innocence traded in the longing to be seen, heard, respected. To be more than a conquest. Predators, patient and practiced. Trust eviscerated.
Looping prose. A poem in flux.
For a stretch, the poetry rises like smoke, trying to leave the page.
Queer. Exposed. Disabled. Vulnerable. Manipulated. Longing. Desire. Exploitation.
The poverty and isolation sang loud enough. That’s where I connected. That’s where I felt concern—not as a reader, but as a human being reading another human being.
This is a courageous collection.
For many, it will feel like recognition. For others, like me, it is something to witness rather than inhabit.
That distance matters.
This collection is deserving of five stars. I gave it four—not because of its power, but because of where I stand in relation to it.
WRITTEN 6 April 2026
★★★★ = strong, compelling, worth your time.
How did the book make me feel/think?
I find poetry difficult to write about. It’s a personal journey, and sometimes you’re not the one on it.
Emma McKenna identifies as a queer feminist writer. I read from a different lens.
I didn’t find myself on the pages.
The poems are intense—bodily autonomy, poverty, child abuse, and the struggle to escape conditioning. A life trying to become something other than what it was told to be.
“Gold Star,” the title poem, gutted me—innocence traded in the longing to be seen, heard, respected. To be more than a conquest. Predators, patient and practiced. Trust eviscerated.
Looping prose. A poem in flux.
For a stretch, the poetry rises like smoke, trying to leave the page.
Queer. Exposed. Disabled. Vulnerable. Manipulated. Longing. Desire. Exploitation.
The poverty and isolation sang loud enough. That’s where I connected. That’s where I felt concern—not as a reader, but as a human being reading another human being.
This is a courageous collection.
For many, it will feel like recognition. For others, like me, it is something to witness rather than inhabit.
That distance matters.
This collection is deserving of five stars. I gave it four—not because of its power, but because of where I stand in relation to it.
WRITTEN 6 April 2026
★★★★ = strong, compelling, worth your time.
Skin and Bones – The Things Watching Back
How did the book make me feel/think?
Gather around the fire, readers, I have stories to tell. Flashlight please. S’mores on sticks. Logs crackling. Face blurred by light. A deep timbre.
A row of sugar maples surrounds the campsite.
A reader screams.
Eyes peer out from behind the trees: a large hermit. High-pitched squeaks, clicks, and chirps—bats fluttering. A Vietnamese woman with a gouged eye and a missing digit, her child crying. A mirrored image of self. Translucent skin. Rattling. Snakes everywhere.
A tamed wolf, surrounded by predators, grifting innocence.
The author steps into the firelight. A reader faints as a snake slithers over her leg.
I imagine storytellers living in these scenes, spinning yarns to a terrified audience. A classic in pacing. A classic in delivery.
The author slips from story to story, each one leaving readers gasping—and likely never to venture alone into the darkness of Maine’s nights.
Stephen King and Elizabeth Strout, members of Maine’s writing royalty, invite Paul to join them at the table.
What is in the water in Maine that has blessed us with these gems? Maybe it’s the lobster.
WRITTEN 4 April 2026
***** stars = exceptional, thrilling, cringy, enduring.
How did the book make me feel/think?
Gather around the fire, readers, I have stories to tell. Flashlight please. S’mores on sticks. Logs crackling. Face blurred by light. A deep timbre.
A row of sugar maples surrounds the campsite.
A reader screams.
Eyes peer out from behind the trees: a large hermit. High-pitched squeaks, clicks, and chirps—bats fluttering. A Vietnamese woman with a gouged eye and a missing digit, her child crying. A mirrored image of self. Translucent skin. Rattling. Snakes everywhere.
A tamed wolf, surrounded by predators, grifting innocence.
The author steps into the firelight. A reader faints as a snake slithers over her leg.
I imagine storytellers living in these scenes, spinning yarns to a terrified audience. A classic in pacing. A classic in delivery.
The author slips from story to story, each one leaving readers gasping—and likely never to venture alone into the darkness of Maine’s nights.
Stephen King and Elizabeth Strout, members of Maine’s writing royalty, invite Paul to join them at the table.
What is in the water in Maine that has blessed us with these gems? Maybe it’s the lobster.
WRITTEN 4 April 2026
***** stars = exceptional, thrilling, cringy, enduring.
Canada in the Age of Rum – The Blueprint Still Holds
How did the book make me feel/think?
These thoughts aren’t about rum. They’re about recognition.
This book reads like a template for the world we’re living in: commerce, control, exploitation—disguised as opportunity.
I’ve worked inside it.
You have too.
A labour agency. Insurance. Bars. Coffee.
Different industries. Same system.
I ran a labour agency for fifteen years. The owner exploited me—a phone, vehicle, and expense account—to exploit the workforce—people already falling through societal cracks. We advanced their pay daily, leaving them owing by nightfall.
They owed us. That’s how we owned them.
The fur traders and fishermen were paid the same way: partially in liquid. Enough to keep them working. Never enough to leave.
An insurance executive once told me the ideal employee is in debt, with a pregnant wife at home.
Strip away the misogyny and what’s left?
Indentured servitude—modernized.
A bar pays staff in “free” pints. A perk. An addiction.
A coffee chain offers caffeine on breaks. A perk. A future dependency.
I’ve seen every version of it.
The company pays wholesale.
The worker pays for life.
The model hasn’t changed. Only the packaging.
Colonizers introduced alcohol into Indigenous communities, then labelled those same communities as the problem. Control the substance. Control the narrative. Ignore the disease, the displacement, the resistance that came long before prohibition.
Rewrite the story. Keep the power.
Canada in the Age of Rum doesn’t just explain early Canada—it exposes a system that never left.
We like to think we’ve evolved.
We haven’t.
We’ve just refined the delivery.
WRITTEN 1 April 2026
***** = exceptional, transformative, enduring.
How did the book make me feel/think?
These thoughts aren’t about rum. They’re about recognition.
This book reads like a template for the world we’re living in: commerce, control, exploitation—disguised as opportunity.
I’ve worked inside it.
You have too.
A labour agency. Insurance. Bars. Coffee.
Different industries. Same system.
I ran a labour agency for fifteen years. The owner exploited me—a phone, vehicle, and expense account—to exploit the workforce—people already falling through societal cracks. We advanced their pay daily, leaving them owing by nightfall.
They owed us. That’s how we owned them.
The fur traders and fishermen were paid the same way: partially in liquid. Enough to keep them working. Never enough to leave.
An insurance executive once told me the ideal employee is in debt, with a pregnant wife at home.
Strip away the misogyny and what’s left?
Indentured servitude—modernized.
A bar pays staff in “free” pints. A perk. An addiction.
A coffee chain offers caffeine on breaks. A perk. A future dependency.
I’ve seen every version of it.
The company pays wholesale.
The worker pays for life.
The model hasn’t changed. Only the packaging.
Colonizers introduced alcohol into Indigenous communities, then labelled those same communities as the problem. Control the substance. Control the narrative. Ignore the disease, the displacement, the resistance that came long before prohibition.
Rewrite the story. Keep the power.
Canada in the Age of Rum doesn’t just explain early Canada—it exposes a system that never left.
We like to think we’ve evolved.
We haven’t.
We’ve just refined the delivery.
WRITTEN 1 April 2026
***** = exceptional, transformative, enduring.
All Batch 45 Reviews
| 45._book_thoughts_-_batch_45.pdf |
44
★★★★★
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★★★★★
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★★★★★
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★★★★★
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★★★★★
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★★★★
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★★★★
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★★★★★
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★★
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★★
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Pizza Before We Die – For What?
How did the book make me feel/think?
Not a single word of this is political. This is an attempt to find humanity in the sickness of our species.
What is the killing for?
What is the end goal of our endless conflicts? Ending us?
Our leaders position themselves as the ones who carry difficult decisions, but I don’t want to kill anyone. I don’t think anyone wants to kill me. We all want the same things: love, warmth, fleeting moments of happiness, and full bellies.
Instead, we are handed destruction—where a humane ending becomes a bomb strike instead of freezing or starvation.
My soul feels torn in two. A man in Gaza must prove he is worthy of pity to receive aid for his family. When I turned 65, I had to prove I wasn’t trying to outlive my years to receive a few hundred dollars—to prove I was worthy of dignity.
These are not the same. Not even close. But something in that proving feels broken.
Each day, I wake up strange. I wake up scared. I wonder if anything will change. A friend once said, “At least they are not bombing Burnaby Street.” We are far removed from the horror. Our lives are blessed. They are coming to clean my dryer vents this week.
I walk past a playground in Vancouver. Empty ball diamonds. Children inside, on their phones.
Pause.
Now imagine children playing in fresh bomb craters.
I have no answers. Only a deep sadness and a need to bear witness—to look, even when it would be easier not to.
It’s 2026, and we are still killing each other.
For what?
Thank you to the author for the bravery of these words—offering light from within one of humanity’s darkest failures.
There is no place for silence.
These words are not political.
They are human.
WRITTEN 19 March 2026
5 stars = exceptional, transformative, enduring.
How did the book make me feel/think?
Not a single word of this is political. This is an attempt to find humanity in the sickness of our species.
What is the killing for?
What is the end goal of our endless conflicts? Ending us?
Our leaders position themselves as the ones who carry difficult decisions, but I don’t want to kill anyone. I don’t think anyone wants to kill me. We all want the same things: love, warmth, fleeting moments of happiness, and full bellies.
Instead, we are handed destruction—where a humane ending becomes a bomb strike instead of freezing or starvation.
My soul feels torn in two. A man in Gaza must prove he is worthy of pity to receive aid for his family. When I turned 65, I had to prove I wasn’t trying to outlive my years to receive a few hundred dollars—to prove I was worthy of dignity.
These are not the same. Not even close. But something in that proving feels broken.
Each day, I wake up strange. I wake up scared. I wonder if anything will change. A friend once said, “At least they are not bombing Burnaby Street.” We are far removed from the horror. Our lives are blessed. They are coming to clean my dryer vents this week.
I walk past a playground in Vancouver. Empty ball diamonds. Children inside, on their phones.
Pause.
Now imagine children playing in fresh bomb craters.
I have no answers. Only a deep sadness and a need to bear witness—to look, even when it would be easier not to.
It’s 2026, and we are still killing each other.
For what?
Thank you to the author for the bravery of these words—offering light from within one of humanity’s darkest failures.
There is no place for silence.
These words are not political.
They are human.
WRITTEN 19 March 2026
5 stars = exceptional, transformative, enduring.
The Disappearing Act – You Carry the Beast
How did the book make me feel/think?
If you had a burning desire to escape, where would you go?
If your heart was being scarred because your country was willingly attacking a neighbouring country, indiscriminately killing its citizens.
Sounds like the times we are living in.
When I was a child, I escaped into a closet—a fantasy world—to avoid the assaults of my siblings chanting, “Lindsay, you are not one of us.” I wasn’t. We were all prisoners of the times. Unwanted. Forced into assimilation.
As I read, M felt like me.
M is an author, wordless, unravelling. Her homeland has become a beast. She wants no part of it.
But she was raised inside it.
The realization doesn’t arrive gently: the beast lives in her.
Worse—everywhere she turns, it lives there too.
You enter the subway. You try to escape back up the stairs. A sign greets you: There is NO Escape.
An escape room appears. You pay for one hour with a stranger. A puzzle for freedom. Or a choice. Talk. Say something real. Because when the hour ends, they let you back into the same life anyway. Nothing solved. Nothing erased.
A travelling circus passes through—an illusion of escape. But even here, there are rules. It doesn’t want her. Rejected for who she is. There is no outside. Only different versions of inside.
A foreign city. You try to blend in. Impossible. “Where are you from?” rains down. A reminder: you carry where you’re from. You are not one of us. In her homeland, there are two classes: the rich and the Petukh. Petukh: prisoner. Criminal or common. It hardly matters.
At one point, she checks into the Grand Petukh Hotel.
Even escape has a name.
M wants to disappear. Technology chains her—until her phone dies.
And just like that, something loosens.
Not freedom.
But a beginning.
My closet had a sign too. I just didn’t see it then: There is no escape.
You don’t step outside the system.
You carry it.
If you’re given an hour, use it. Talk. Because when the door opens, you’re still inside it all.
WRITTEN 18 March 2026
5 stars = exceptional, transformative, enduring.
How did the book make me feel/think?
If you had a burning desire to escape, where would you go?
If your heart was being scarred because your country was willingly attacking a neighbouring country, indiscriminately killing its citizens.
Sounds like the times we are living in.
When I was a child, I escaped into a closet—a fantasy world—to avoid the assaults of my siblings chanting, “Lindsay, you are not one of us.” I wasn’t. We were all prisoners of the times. Unwanted. Forced into assimilation.
As I read, M felt like me.
M is an author, wordless, unravelling. Her homeland has become a beast. She wants no part of it.
But she was raised inside it.
The realization doesn’t arrive gently: the beast lives in her.
Worse—everywhere she turns, it lives there too.
You enter the subway. You try to escape back up the stairs. A sign greets you: There is NO Escape.
An escape room appears. You pay for one hour with a stranger. A puzzle for freedom. Or a choice. Talk. Say something real. Because when the hour ends, they let you back into the same life anyway. Nothing solved. Nothing erased.
A travelling circus passes through—an illusion of escape. But even here, there are rules. It doesn’t want her. Rejected for who she is. There is no outside. Only different versions of inside.
A foreign city. You try to blend in. Impossible. “Where are you from?” rains down. A reminder: you carry where you’re from. You are not one of us. In her homeland, there are two classes: the rich and the Petukh. Petukh: prisoner. Criminal or common. It hardly matters.
At one point, she checks into the Grand Petukh Hotel.
Even escape has a name.
M wants to disappear. Technology chains her—until her phone dies.
And just like that, something loosens.
Not freedom.
But a beginning.
My closet had a sign too. I just didn’t see it then: There is no escape.
You don’t step outside the system.
You carry it.
If you’re given an hour, use it. Talk. Because when the door opens, you’re still inside it all.
WRITTEN 18 March 2026
5 stars = exceptional, transformative, enduring.
All Batch 44 Reviews
| 44._book_thoughts_-_batch_44.pdf |
43
★★★★★
|
★★★★★
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★★★★★
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★★★★★
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★★★★★
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★★★★
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★★★★
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★★★
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★★★★
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★★★★
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Where the Roads Narrow
How did the book make me feel/think?
First off, I adore Strout’s writing.
She captures small-town life like no other — a dichotomy of characters from all walks of life. The mundane brought to life. Boredom made whole.
A colourful collection: rich, poor, fat, trim, predators, PTSD, fractured family histories — all trapped inside small-town memory and judgemental eyes.
Lucy Barton grows up in poverty. Her brother Pete, a veteran of war, unable to find a place among the living. Her sister Vicky, tormented by their upbringing. Lucy escapes to the big city through writing.
I keep reading.
At times, I find myself lost on the pages as the dots quietly connect. In every Strout book I’ve read, an amazing thing happens at some point, I feel like my life is dancing on the pages — like she is writing directly to me. The clouds of uncertainty clear, and the small-town folk become each and every one of us.
Scenes spring forward — a highway to escape widening into multiple lanes. But for those unable to leave the mundanity of their lives, we return to where we are from. The roads into our beings narrow. The places we grew up look tired and worn yet are trapped inside the beauty of a story needing to be told to heal.
Escaping to the bright lights carries its own burden. When you sacrifice who you are, you risk never being able to go home.
Strout writes our lives as if she is witnessing the very essence of who we are.
WRITTEN: 25 February 2026
How did the book make me feel/think?
First off, I adore Strout’s writing.
She captures small-town life like no other — a dichotomy of characters from all walks of life. The mundane brought to life. Boredom made whole.
A colourful collection: rich, poor, fat, trim, predators, PTSD, fractured family histories — all trapped inside small-town memory and judgemental eyes.
Lucy Barton grows up in poverty. Her brother Pete, a veteran of war, unable to find a place among the living. Her sister Vicky, tormented by their upbringing. Lucy escapes to the big city through writing.
I keep reading.
At times, I find myself lost on the pages as the dots quietly connect. In every Strout book I’ve read, an amazing thing happens at some point, I feel like my life is dancing on the pages — like she is writing directly to me. The clouds of uncertainty clear, and the small-town folk become each and every one of us.
Scenes spring forward — a highway to escape widening into multiple lanes. But for those unable to leave the mundanity of their lives, we return to where we are from. The roads into our beings narrow. The places we grew up look tired and worn yet are trapped inside the beauty of a story needing to be told to heal.
Escaping to the bright lights carries its own burden. When you sacrifice who you are, you risk never being able to go home.
Strout writes our lives as if she is witnessing the very essence of who we are.
WRITTEN: 25 February 2026
Humour on the Edge of Tenderness
How did the book make me feel/think?
A high school. Like many others. Not in the best part of the city. Cultural diversity. Cliques everywhere.
It threatens to become a childish saga. A comedy skating toward offence.
But it doesn’t.
Jesse Andrews captures the essence of being seventeen — the awkwardness with parents, the social choreography with classmates, the burnt-out teachers watching it all unfold.
Three unlikely friends. Complicated families. Odd, loving homes.
A mother who forces her Jewish son to befriend a girl with leukemia.
A Black friend navigating a fracturing family.
A household in quiet crisis.
All the ingredients for a juvenile disaster.
But no.
Me and Earl and the Dying Girl holds a tenderness beneath the pubescent humour. Greg Gaines follows his mother’s instructions and awkwardly befriends Rachel, the dying girl. His “non-friend” Earl shares a gentleness that sneaks up on you. Through discomfort, sarcasm, and badly made films, the characters grow. Heartache arrives. So does something close to love.
On the surface, it reads like a young-reader comedy — laughs scattered generously across the pages. But by the final chapters, the humour gives way to something heavier. You may find tears leaking out before you quite understand why.
A book you might read in one sitting.
Or two.
Or however long it takes to find the tissues.
WRITTEN: 24 February 2026
How did the book make me feel/think?
A high school. Like many others. Not in the best part of the city. Cultural diversity. Cliques everywhere.
It threatens to become a childish saga. A comedy skating toward offence.
But it doesn’t.
Jesse Andrews captures the essence of being seventeen — the awkwardness with parents, the social choreography with classmates, the burnt-out teachers watching it all unfold.
Three unlikely friends. Complicated families. Odd, loving homes.
A mother who forces her Jewish son to befriend a girl with leukemia.
A Black friend navigating a fracturing family.
A household in quiet crisis.
All the ingredients for a juvenile disaster.
But no.
Me and Earl and the Dying Girl holds a tenderness beneath the pubescent humour. Greg Gaines follows his mother’s instructions and awkwardly befriends Rachel, the dying girl. His “non-friend” Earl shares a gentleness that sneaks up on you. Through discomfort, sarcasm, and badly made films, the characters grow. Heartache arrives. So does something close to love.
On the surface, it reads like a young-reader comedy — laughs scattered generously across the pages. But by the final chapters, the humour gives way to something heavier. You may find tears leaking out before you quite understand why.
A book you might read in one sitting.
Or two.
Or however long it takes to find the tissues.
WRITTEN: 24 February 2026
Love in a World on Fire
How did the book make me feel/think?
The world is in flux. The climate is changing. Giant corporations consume resources for profit — resources that fuel economies and provide the lives we’ve grown accustomed to, enjoy, and desire.
A conundrum. Something has to give. Or else — a world on fire.
It’s already on fire.
The Fall Down Effect is more than a story about stopping logging. It follows Tom and Liz and their children — Fern, River, and the outlier Sylvia — across decades of environmental activism. But at its core, it is a generational love story. Once the timbre of the pages settles in, you’re hooked.
At first, I resisted the activism. I questioned the methods. Many will. But as the story deepened, so did my understanding. I don’t agree with all the tactics — yet I’ve come to see how fortunate we are to have people angry enough to speak for the planet. Without them, we might drift in a comfortable fog, waiting for someone else to act.
The novel doesn’t romanticize protest. Stop logging — yes. But what about the livelihoods intertwined with it? Relationships become casualties. Families strain. Movements evolve. The struggle between consumption and ethics, right and wrong, greed and morality isn’t theoretical — it’s intimate.
What lingers is the love. However fractured the characters become, love never fully leaves. Nor does the need for people to live their truth while trying to make sense of a destabilizing world.
How much time do we have left?
We are lucky there are people willing to risk comfort — and conflict — to find the right mixture of protest to make a difference for all.
WRITTEN: 22 February 2026
How did the book make me feel/think?
The world is in flux. The climate is changing. Giant corporations consume resources for profit — resources that fuel economies and provide the lives we’ve grown accustomed to, enjoy, and desire.
A conundrum. Something has to give. Or else — a world on fire.
It’s already on fire.
The Fall Down Effect is more than a story about stopping logging. It follows Tom and Liz and their children — Fern, River, and the outlier Sylvia — across decades of environmental activism. But at its core, it is a generational love story. Once the timbre of the pages settles in, you’re hooked.
At first, I resisted the activism. I questioned the methods. Many will. But as the story deepened, so did my understanding. I don’t agree with all the tactics — yet I’ve come to see how fortunate we are to have people angry enough to speak for the planet. Without them, we might drift in a comfortable fog, waiting for someone else to act.
The novel doesn’t romanticize protest. Stop logging — yes. But what about the livelihoods intertwined with it? Relationships become casualties. Families strain. Movements evolve. The struggle between consumption and ethics, right and wrong, greed and morality isn’t theoretical — it’s intimate.
What lingers is the love. However fractured the characters become, love never fully leaves. Nor does the need for people to live their truth while trying to make sense of a destabilizing world.
How much time do we have left?
We are lucky there are people willing to risk comfort — and conflict — to find the right mixture of protest to make a difference for all.
WRITTEN: 22 February 2026
It’s such a gift to have someone respond like this, with such thoughtfulness and care, to the book. Means a lot, thank you!
Liz Johnston
Liz Johnston
Second Stories
How did the book make me feel/think?
As I started reading The Bad Indians Book Club, every book mentioned — and every book I’ve ever read — began talking to me. Words, passages, reflections. My life fell from the pages.
Thousands of people have origin stories sharing threads with mine — each story individual, yet reduced to a single box. I hesitate to share mine because someone is always ready to tell me how I should feel about it.
I was born in a home for “unfit” mothers. From my first breath, I was labelled “at risk.” Vulnerable. Exploitable. Marginalized.
I’m not sure where my story begins. Not at the beginning. Maybe the second story — the one shaped by silence. Nobody told me who I was. Society prefers comfortable narratives. The rest are controlled, softened, erased.
Erasure isn’t accidental. Columbus “discovered” lands already inhabited by millions. What does discovered mean? Narrative control enriches latecomers and expedites the disappearance of “others.”
Erasure leads to racism. It isn’t just the joke — it’s the story beneath it.
Safe Spaces: How can a place be safe if you don’t see me?
When we speak and are met with dismissiveness, we are lost in time. If my life makes you uncomfortable, don’t sweat it. You aren’t us. Our lives are not yours. I’m sorry if your mind is not open.
A flaw of the vulnerable — even when upset — is that we defend the very people who silence us. Who knows what origin story they were told? What second story are they protecting? We protect at great cost.
But resisting the narrative has blessed me with something unexpected: a superpower for seeing people. When you grow up unseen, you learn to notice who else is.
Searching for our stories keeps history alive.
A thousand stories are not enough.
Always carry a book.
WRITTEN: 21 February 2026
How did the book make me feel/think?
As I started reading The Bad Indians Book Club, every book mentioned — and every book I’ve ever read — began talking to me. Words, passages, reflections. My life fell from the pages.
Thousands of people have origin stories sharing threads with mine — each story individual, yet reduced to a single box. I hesitate to share mine because someone is always ready to tell me how I should feel about it.
I was born in a home for “unfit” mothers. From my first breath, I was labelled “at risk.” Vulnerable. Exploitable. Marginalized.
I’m not sure where my story begins. Not at the beginning. Maybe the second story — the one shaped by silence. Nobody told me who I was. Society prefers comfortable narratives. The rest are controlled, softened, erased.
Erasure isn’t accidental. Columbus “discovered” lands already inhabited by millions. What does discovered mean? Narrative control enriches latecomers and expedites the disappearance of “others.”
Erasure leads to racism. It isn’t just the joke — it’s the story beneath it.
Safe Spaces: How can a place be safe if you don’t see me?
When we speak and are met with dismissiveness, we are lost in time. If my life makes you uncomfortable, don’t sweat it. You aren’t us. Our lives are not yours. I’m sorry if your mind is not open.
A flaw of the vulnerable — even when upset — is that we defend the very people who silence us. Who knows what origin story they were told? What second story are they protecting? We protect at great cost.
But resisting the narrative has blessed me with something unexpected: a superpower for seeing people. When you grow up unseen, you learn to notice who else is.
Searching for our stories keeps history alive.
A thousand stories are not enough.
Always carry a book.
WRITTEN: 21 February 2026
Checkout Time
How did the book make me feel/think?
Excess. Consumption. A well-worn path.
Stop. Rest. Motel.
Unpack our take.
Luxury. A view. Designer shoes. Popcorn. Pretzels.
A bouquet of roses without worth.
Room 209.
A long journey — to nowhere in particular.
A body in ambient shadows. Writing. Shaking. Peace.
Boy. Girl. In-between.
Does it matter?
Who gets to decide?
Who does a body belong to?
Outsiders. Sold more.
Forced assimilation dressed as opportunity.
Meanwhile, the ghost of Didion writes for a heartbeat, then steps outside.
Franky Choi. C Pam Zhang. Ocean Vuong.
The siding cracks. Storm clouds inch closer.
Occupancy drops.
Checkout time.
Nobody swims in the overgrown pool.
WRITTEN: 17 February 2026
How did the book make me feel/think?
Excess. Consumption. A well-worn path.
Stop. Rest. Motel.
Unpack our take.
Luxury. A view. Designer shoes. Popcorn. Pretzels.
A bouquet of roses without worth.
Room 209.
A long journey — to nowhere in particular.
A body in ambient shadows. Writing. Shaking. Peace.
Boy. Girl. In-between.
Does it matter?
Who gets to decide?
Who does a body belong to?
Outsiders. Sold more.
Forced assimilation dressed as opportunity.
Meanwhile, the ghost of Didion writes for a heartbeat, then steps outside.
Franky Choi. C Pam Zhang. Ocean Vuong.
The siding cracks. Storm clouds inch closer.
Occupancy drops.
Checkout time.
Nobody swims in the overgrown pool.
WRITTEN: 17 February 2026
All Batch 43 Reviews
| 43._book_thoughts_-_batch_43.pdf |
42
★★★★★
|
★★★★★
|
★★★★★
|
★★★★★
|
★★★★★
|
★★★★★
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★★★★★
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★★★★★
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★★★
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★
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The Wound That Doesn’t Close
How did the book make me feel/think?
Honey in the Wound is a sprawling, essential, mythic tale of historical fiction that eviscerates the shackles of colonization.
How does one survive monsters?
Following Young-Ja from one unbearable tragedy to another, I found myself quietly cheering for her — hoping she might somehow transform the violence forced upon her into fury, redemption, maybe even hope.
The brutality is relentless, intimate. Not statistics. Not history-book distance. Family. Bodies. Memory.
As I read, I couldn’t stop thinking about what North American settlers did to Indigenous communities. Different geography. Same sickness. Colonization doesn’t just occupy land — it infects generations.
The horrors inflicted by Japanese imperialism on Koreans deserve to be brought into the light, not buried beneath denial or political convenience.
We’re often told to forgive and forget to move forward. But when the wound runs this deep, what does forgiveness even mean? How do you forget something etched into bloodlines?
Forgive? Never.
Forget? Never.
Healing can’t begin until the perpetrators admit the diagnosis.
Honey in the Wound isn’t just a novel — it’s testimony. A reckoning. A necessary act of remembering.
I’m better for having read it.
They say it takes seven generations to undo inherited trauma.
We’re only on generation three.
There’s still a long way to go.
WRITTEN: 5 February 2026
How did the book make me feel/think?
Honey in the Wound is a sprawling, essential, mythic tale of historical fiction that eviscerates the shackles of colonization.
How does one survive monsters?
Following Young-Ja from one unbearable tragedy to another, I found myself quietly cheering for her — hoping she might somehow transform the violence forced upon her into fury, redemption, maybe even hope.
The brutality is relentless, intimate. Not statistics. Not history-book distance. Family. Bodies. Memory.
As I read, I couldn’t stop thinking about what North American settlers did to Indigenous communities. Different geography. Same sickness. Colonization doesn’t just occupy land — it infects generations.
The horrors inflicted by Japanese imperialism on Koreans deserve to be brought into the light, not buried beneath denial or political convenience.
We’re often told to forgive and forget to move forward. But when the wound runs this deep, what does forgiveness even mean? How do you forget something etched into bloodlines?
Forgive? Never.
Forget? Never.
Healing can’t begin until the perpetrators admit the diagnosis.
Honey in the Wound isn’t just a novel — it’s testimony. A reckoning. A necessary act of remembering.
I’m better for having read it.
They say it takes seven generations to undo inherited trauma.
We’re only on generation three.
There’s still a long way to go.
WRITTEN: 5 February 2026
What Conditioning Leaves Behind
How did the book make me feel/think?
An essential read. A mind-bending read.
Reading A Mind Spread Out on the Ground as a Caucasian male is complicated. There’s an ever-present risk that attempting to understand exposes how deep one’s own conditioning and bias run. Sometimes, even reflection can sound like harm. I’m aware of that tension on every page.
For non-Indigenous readers willing to read with an open mind, this book offers a perspective that can’t be dismissed with the familiar escape hatch of “it was the times.” That phrase—so often used to absolve history—loses its power here. The consequences are not past; they are present, ongoing, and lived.
As I read, I hoped the book might help me shed some of my own ignorance. We grow when we admit our complicity. Just because we weren’t there does not give us a pass on the atrocities carried out by our ancestors—or the systems that continue to benefit some while crushing others.
A personal note: I was born into a religiously sanctioned home where unwanted children, for lack of a better term, were disposed of. Throughout my life, I’ve heard the same refrains: “It was the times.” “Get over it.” “You focus on the wrong things.”
What those voices refuse to acknowledge is that bias is ingrained and conditioned—and so is pain. Often, we carry it without knowing its origin, having been forced upon us long before we had language for it.
Listen to your friends. You may be surprised how many people are conditioned to fear or hate rather than understand. That conditioning is learned—and it’s not okay.
As I read, I hoped something loosened. That beneath the conditioning, a more empathetic mind might still be reachable.
WRITTEN: 2 February 2026
How did the book make me feel/think?
An essential read. A mind-bending read.
Reading A Mind Spread Out on the Ground as a Caucasian male is complicated. There’s an ever-present risk that attempting to understand exposes how deep one’s own conditioning and bias run. Sometimes, even reflection can sound like harm. I’m aware of that tension on every page.
For non-Indigenous readers willing to read with an open mind, this book offers a perspective that can’t be dismissed with the familiar escape hatch of “it was the times.” That phrase—so often used to absolve history—loses its power here. The consequences are not past; they are present, ongoing, and lived.
As I read, I hoped the book might help me shed some of my own ignorance. We grow when we admit our complicity. Just because we weren’t there does not give us a pass on the atrocities carried out by our ancestors—or the systems that continue to benefit some while crushing others.
A personal note: I was born into a religiously sanctioned home where unwanted children, for lack of a better term, were disposed of. Throughout my life, I’ve heard the same refrains: “It was the times.” “Get over it.” “You focus on the wrong things.”
What those voices refuse to acknowledge is that bias is ingrained and conditioned—and so is pain. Often, we carry it without knowing its origin, having been forced upon us long before we had language for it.
Listen to your friends. You may be surprised how many people are conditioned to fear or hate rather than understand. That conditioning is learned—and it’s not okay.
As I read, I hoped something loosened. That beneath the conditioning, a more empathetic mind might still be reachable.
WRITTEN: 2 February 2026
Snow isn’t pure
How did the book make me feel/think?
White World is set in a dystopian future that feels disturbingly familiar. A future built on the oldest lie we know, that history can be ignored if the walls are high enough and the gates are selective enough.
It offers a promise of a pristine world for those with means—clean, safe, empty. Empty of danger, yes, but also empty of pulse, reason, and vibrancy. A world achieved only by exporting suffering elsewhere and pretending it no longer exists. We’ve been here before. And the book suggests—correctly—that we are destined to repeat it.
Race hums beneath every page. So does religion. Islam. Christianity. The idea of “the chosen.” An impossibility dressed up as divine order. Sexuality is not condemned outright, provided desire remains dormant, hidden, obedient. The question lingers: are these systems really different, or simply rehearsing the same controls with different vocabularies?
Whiteness here is not an identity but an atmosphere—bland, anesthetized, stripped of contradiction. A ladder exists, but it’s fractured, warped by judgment, by God, by the sickness of certainty. Humanity, once again, proves it has no bounds when killing to protect what never belonged to them—what never belonged to anyone.
A kiss is condemned. A bullet is worshipped.
Snow becomes a symbol of purity—a lie we’ve told ourselves for centuries. It isn’t clean. It’s sickness falling from the sky, covering rot, so we don’t have to look at it.
History repeats. Not as a metaphor. As policy.
And the book leaves us with a question that refuses to sit quietly:
Are we already living in the dystopia?
WRITTEN: 29 January 2026
How did the book make me feel/think?
White World is set in a dystopian future that feels disturbingly familiar. A future built on the oldest lie we know, that history can be ignored if the walls are high enough and the gates are selective enough.
It offers a promise of a pristine world for those with means—clean, safe, empty. Empty of danger, yes, but also empty of pulse, reason, and vibrancy. A world achieved only by exporting suffering elsewhere and pretending it no longer exists. We’ve been here before. And the book suggests—correctly—that we are destined to repeat it.
Race hums beneath every page. So does religion. Islam. Christianity. The idea of “the chosen.” An impossibility dressed up as divine order. Sexuality is not condemned outright, provided desire remains dormant, hidden, obedient. The question lingers: are these systems really different, or simply rehearsing the same controls with different vocabularies?
Whiteness here is not an identity but an atmosphere—bland, anesthetized, stripped of contradiction. A ladder exists, but it’s fractured, warped by judgment, by God, by the sickness of certainty. Humanity, once again, proves it has no bounds when killing to protect what never belonged to them—what never belonged to anyone.
A kiss is condemned. A bullet is worshipped.
Snow becomes a symbol of purity—a lie we’ve told ourselves for centuries. It isn’t clean. It’s sickness falling from the sky, covering rot, so we don’t have to look at it.
History repeats. Not as a metaphor. As policy.
And the book leaves us with a question that refuses to sit quietly:
Are we already living in the dystopia?
WRITTEN: 29 January 2026
The Ghosts the Living Inherit
How did the book make me feel/think?
A recurring question surfaced while reading: What happens after you die?
Cleo Dang searches for an acceptable answer. I found myself doing the same.
Real Life: December 2025.
A friend’s mother dies. Another loses his grandmother. An acquaintance dies—not a particularly good person, but human, nonetheless.
An epiphany: those we lose haunt the living. The good and the bad. Death resurrects unresolved issues. Old relationships return uninvited, carrying unfinished conversations, buried hurts, and emotional debris we thought time had swept away. A lifetime of losses can arrive all at once.
Personal: A Memorial.
Grief storms back. The gathering becomes less about the person who died and more about the people still here—what was lost between us, what can no longer be repaired. We soften the bad and elevate the good, not out of dishonesty, but survival. Life is hard. Sometimes it’s easier—healthier—to grieve privately. There is no clock on grief. No correct posture. If the person we lost wasn’t a saint—because nobody is—that’s allowed too. We’re permitted to wash away the baggage they leave behind so it doesn’t follow us forever.
I think when someone dies, the only way to survive the onslaught of pain is through small, personal threads of comedy—tiny salves that make endurance possible.
Mai Nguyen takes an unfathomable premise—the loss of a newborn child—and renders it survivable by weaving humour into every page. Not to diminish grief, but to make space for breathing.
This is a book about the deeply personal nature of grief and how we find a way forward without pretending we’re healed.
Once, a doctor told me about a patient who asked if she had to take her medication for the rest of her life. He replied, “You can stop the week before you die.”
This weekend, I’ll attend another memorial. I hope I can survive the ghosts it resurrects. I feel guilty for my feelings—but there is no right or wrong way to grieve.
There is no timeline.
There is only grief.
WRITTEN: 28 January 2026
How did the book make me feel/think?
A recurring question surfaced while reading: What happens after you die?
Cleo Dang searches for an acceptable answer. I found myself doing the same.
Real Life: December 2025.
A friend’s mother dies. Another loses his grandmother. An acquaintance dies—not a particularly good person, but human, nonetheless.
An epiphany: those we lose haunt the living. The good and the bad. Death resurrects unresolved issues. Old relationships return uninvited, carrying unfinished conversations, buried hurts, and emotional debris we thought time had swept away. A lifetime of losses can arrive all at once.
Personal: A Memorial.
Grief storms back. The gathering becomes less about the person who died and more about the people still here—what was lost between us, what can no longer be repaired. We soften the bad and elevate the good, not out of dishonesty, but survival. Life is hard. Sometimes it’s easier—healthier—to grieve privately. There is no clock on grief. No correct posture. If the person we lost wasn’t a saint—because nobody is—that’s allowed too. We’re permitted to wash away the baggage they leave behind so it doesn’t follow us forever.
I think when someone dies, the only way to survive the onslaught of pain is through small, personal threads of comedy—tiny salves that make endurance possible.
Mai Nguyen takes an unfathomable premise—the loss of a newborn child—and renders it survivable by weaving humour into every page. Not to diminish grief, but to make space for breathing.
This is a book about the deeply personal nature of grief and how we find a way forward without pretending we’re healed.
Once, a doctor told me about a patient who asked if she had to take her medication for the rest of her life. He replied, “You can stop the week before you die.”
This weekend, I’ll attend another memorial. I hope I can survive the ghosts it resurrects. I feel guilty for my feelings—but there is no right or wrong way to grieve.
There is no timeline.
There is only grief.
WRITTEN: 28 January 2026
This is a book to be lived inside.
How did the book make me feel/think?
“Christine Estima doesn’t just write beautifully—she places the reader inside the prose and gives them a part to play.”
— Lindsay Wincherauk
Letters to Kafka might be the most beautifully written book I’ve read. Every page dances to life.
Christine Estima’s phraseology is intoxicatingly vibrant, each page standing on its own—visual, alive, and immersive. Her mastery places readers dead smack in the middle of the prose, giving them a role in the experience, something that becomes genuinely hard to put down.
At its heart, Letters to Kafka is an unrequited love story—about friendship, devotion, and the quiet damage done as feminism collides with a world struggling to adjust to shifting roles. The love here is unconditional. Kafka is reintroduced not as the symbol many reduce him to, but as a living presence—human, intimate, and reimagined.
Estima’s writing is profoundly visual. It feels dream-shaped, textured, and luminous, as if each page has already passed through the subconscious before reaching the reader. The result is prose that doesn’t just describe—it unfolds.
My own writing was once compared to Kafka’s. I took it as a compliment, though I assumed it meant I was a little unhinged. After Letters to Kafka, that comparison feels clarified. The brilliance isn’t madness—it’s exposure. Estima’s work makes that unmistakably clear.
This is a book to be lived inside.
Written: 4 January 2026
How did the book make me feel/think?
“Christine Estima doesn’t just write beautifully—she places the reader inside the prose and gives them a part to play.”
— Lindsay Wincherauk
Letters to Kafka might be the most beautifully written book I’ve read. Every page dances to life.
Christine Estima’s phraseology is intoxicatingly vibrant, each page standing on its own—visual, alive, and immersive. Her mastery places readers dead smack in the middle of the prose, giving them a role in the experience, something that becomes genuinely hard to put down.
At its heart, Letters to Kafka is an unrequited love story—about friendship, devotion, and the quiet damage done as feminism collides with a world struggling to adjust to shifting roles. The love here is unconditional. Kafka is reintroduced not as the symbol many reduce him to, but as a living presence—human, intimate, and reimagined.
Estima’s writing is profoundly visual. It feels dream-shaped, textured, and luminous, as if each page has already passed through the subconscious before reaching the reader. The result is prose that doesn’t just describe—it unfolds.
My own writing was once compared to Kafka’s. I took it as a compliment, though I assumed it meant I was a little unhinged. After Letters to Kafka, that comparison feels clarified. The brilliance isn’t madness—it’s exposure. Estima’s work makes that unmistakably clear.
This is a book to be lived inside.
Written: 4 January 2026
When Silence Is the First Violence
How did the book make me feel/think?
I read a page. I cry.
I read another page. I cry again.
I see myself in these pages — not in circumstance, never in scale, but in erasure.
I was born to an unwed mother, in a place of shame, where silence was the condition for being allowed to exist at all. Before my birth, the erasure had already begun.
I understand displacement. I understand the need to belong.
But how do you belong when no one is willing to say you exist?
My friends are conditioned. My life is heavy. They lack the bandwidth, and so I am dismissed — gifted the solitude of creativity, born of pain, born of being an outsider.
There are protests in our streets: Free Palestine.
Some ask why they don’t protest where they’re from — as if suffering should be kept out of sight — not understanding the complicity in suggesting people struggling to be seen return to an active genocide, simply because it took a few extra minutes to get to the store.
Saeed Teebi’s writing does not allow that silence.
This book is courageous.
It is an appeal for humanity.
We must not be erased.
We must never revert to lying.
This is an essential read.
Written: 2 January 2026
How did the book make me feel/think?
I read a page. I cry.
I read another page. I cry again.
I see myself in these pages — not in circumstance, never in scale, but in erasure.
I was born to an unwed mother, in a place of shame, where silence was the condition for being allowed to exist at all. Before my birth, the erasure had already begun.
I understand displacement. I understand the need to belong.
But how do you belong when no one is willing to say you exist?
My friends are conditioned. My life is heavy. They lack the bandwidth, and so I am dismissed — gifted the solitude of creativity, born of pain, born of being an outsider.
There are protests in our streets: Free Palestine.
Some ask why they don’t protest where they’re from — as if suffering should be kept out of sight — not understanding the complicity in suggesting people struggling to be seen return to an active genocide, simply because it took a few extra minutes to get to the store.
Saeed Teebi’s writing does not allow that silence.
This book is courageous.
It is an appeal for humanity.
We must not be erased.
We must never revert to lying.
This is an essential read.
Written: 2 January 2026
Batch 42 Reviews
| 42._book_thoughts_-_batch_42.pdf |
