I watch a lot of murder-y shows, but I don’t read a lot of murder-y books. Ruth Rendell was unknown to me before I read The St. Zita Society. Apparently, she’s a beloved novelist of almost a hundred murder-y books, so it appears to be bad luck that introduced me…
Category: Fiction
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The Q Review | Next to Heaven | James Frey
(And no, I don’t think these two statements are contradictory.) The result is a fast-paced, surface level story about a bunch of terrible, gorgeous, insanely wealthy and super horny white couples who live in the rarified air of New Bethlehem, Connecticut and whose relationships begin to unravel immediately after a…
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The Q Review | Twilight | Stephanie Meyer
It is the year 2025 AD, and I, a fifty-one-year-old woman, have read Twilight by Stephanie Meyer for the very first time. It should also be noted that I have never seen any of the films based on this series. Any prior knowledge I had of this book and its…
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The Q Review | Algorithms of Betrayal | Anat Deracine
I found Algorithms of Betrayal by Anat Decine on NetGalley. This book took a while to grow on me, but once I got into it, I was hooked. I’m chalking my initial reticence up to my baggage working in and around technology for 20+ years. Initially, it felt like this…
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The Q Review | Yours, Eventually | Nura Maznavi
Nura Maznavi’s Yours, Eventually is a combination of a Pakistani television drama and a Jane Austen novel. Neither of these things on their own is particularly compelling to me, but put them together and set the action in the Bay Area, and I’m in. Like, really in. I am so glad I got the…
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The Q Review | The Grand Scheme of Things | Warona Jay
A couple of months ago, I read Yellowface by R.H. Kuang. While I enjoyed it for all the juicy drama (and gave it four stars), part of my critique was that the characters felt two-dimensional, making the book seem less about people and more about the issues on which the…
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The Q Review | Yellowface | Rebecca F. Kuang
I like fiction about terrible people (see also: The White Lotus), so Yellowface by R.F. Kuang was fun for me. The book is about two friends – one Asian (Athena Liu), the other white (June Hayward) – who come up together through university, both pursuing authorship. When Athena dies unexpectedly…
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The Q Review | Sister Snake | Amanda Lee Koe
Sister Snake is a fresh, fast-paced novel that is, ironically, rooted in one of China’s Four Great Folktales called The Legend of the White Snake. This reimagining of a centuries-old myth by author Amanda Lee Koe shows that, regardless of when it was conceived, a good story is a good…
Art
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Social Media isn’t Art
I’ve been pretty quiet on social media lately. After two decades of daily immersion in online spaces, gulping down other people’s opinions, hot takes, think-pieces, tweet threads and TikTok diatribes (and contributing plenty of my own perspectives) my voice has all but dried up. Oh sure, I’m still on the…
Books
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Q Review | The Life of Insects | Victor Pelevin
I love weird books but they’re surprisingly hard to find. I don’t mean books with weird characters, or edgy themes. I mean books that turn your brain upside down and make you wonder what in the hell you’ve just read. (I’m always on the lookout, so drop me a line…