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This is one of the only books I've read about being the privileged class during a genocide that doesn't scream to me that it should've been written about the more marginalized group.

The Diabolist by Nathan Ballingrud: 4/5 The voice wasn't totally believable, but I loved the plot and characterization so much. Very well-executed.

This Whole Demoning Thing by Patrick Ness: 4/5 The plot was kind of flimsy, but Patrick Ness is just an awesome writer, man. This was lots of fun, and the characterization and allegories were great. What did we even do to deserve this good of a writer?

So, was the 'tab' key on this guy's typewriter broken or something? Did old typewriters even have the 'tab' key, or did they have something else? Whatever, the point is, Conrad's prose consists of increasingly exhausting walls of text. I know that this is from a time where this kind of thing was considered more accessible, but even so, this is inexcusable.

This is very well-written so far. That said, even though I haven't read a whole lot of memoirs, this one doesn't strike me as particularly noteworthy. I'm not sure where I get that feeling from, maybe it's because I keep finding myself tempted to write a New York Times-style blurb for the book jacket. But I probably don't have any basis to really back that up.

On the surface, this book isn't that different from anything else I've read. But I think there's something to be said about the fact that I have no idea how to articulate the experience of reading this book. I could only tell someone to read it for themselves.

Look, maybe this is only because I went in expecting it to be bad, but I already hate this. This is one of the most overwritten things I've ever seen - I can't imagine how you could write with this style and not be unbearably pretentious.

Quick Hill by M.T. Anderson: 4/5 I kind of feel like Anderson goes over my head a lot of the time, which is why I'm reluctant to praise this too highly. But I generally liked the ideas behind this story - it follows a familiar archetype, but I've never seen it done this way before. And the setting and characters were quite vivid.

This is going to be a hard book to review. I like it so much, and I have so little to say about why I like it. It's just really good, okay?

This is actually a lot more boring than I expected it to be. This is less society breaking down into chaos and more society breaking down into that time in middle school your substitute teacher never showed up and you got to do whatever you wanted for a class period. All of the drama is way less intense and way more petty than I expected - Golding fails to build a sense of tension.

I like that Conroy specifically says that he wasn't a white savior, and that he never could have had the impact on these kids' lives that he wanted them to. I'm still not sure if I'm totally behind this book's politics, but that's a big plus. And apart from the politics, the book is so well-written that it's hard to complain.

Ten Rules for Being an Intergalactic Smuggler (The Successful Kind) by Holly Black: 4/5 The writing isn't great, but I like the story and the characterization a lot. I'm kind of a sucker for this kind of 2nd person, and Black makes good use of it. And the story is pretty original and engaging. I don't always like Holly Black, but this is one of her better stories.

I'm not a huge fan of how Golding writes his dialogue. It's sort of confusing, and it doesn't seem particularly realistic to me. He's definitely going for realism, but the way he tries to get across several people talking over each other strikes me as kind of artificial.

I have so many questions about the kids on this island. What happens to them after school? How do they make money? Some of them must be still alive today - what are their lives like now? I'd say that I'd rather be reading a memoir from one of them, but I don't know if any of them ever learned to write well enough to write a memoir.

For something so popular, this is surprisingly subtle and slow-burning. I love it.

Old Souls by Cassandra Clare: 2/5 She tried, at least, and the writing is actually not bad for a Clare short story. But the themes just don't work - they're established too suddenly, and they're kind of vague. I feel like this would've worked better as a full novel. This had a decent set-up, and even a decent protagonist, but the ending was so rushed and the themes so weak that this doesn't work.

This is actually pretty interesting. I feel like this is a pretty realistic look at what would happen if a bunch of boys were left alone on an island with no supervision. Golding definitely has a lot of cynicism in him, but I appreciate that it's subtle so far. This isn't perfect or anything, but it's better than I expected.

I don't really have much to say about this book. It's very good in a nonspecific way - it's more of just a feeling I get from reading it.

For what this is, it's actually surprisingly funny. Conroy is good at doing self-deprecation in a way that doesn't make it look like he wants you to feel sorry for him.

Moriabe's Children by Paolo Bacigalupi: 4/5 I wish we had been a little closer to Alanie as a character, but Bacigalupi's prose is excellent, and this is a great example of using narrative summary in a way that isn't totally boring. It has a nice fairytale feel, and the effect is very evocative. Overall, a good start, although this isn't the best I've read from Bacigalupi.

Max and Liesel are both such well-written characters. Having Death narrate could've easily kept us at an arm's length from them, but Zusak is skilled enough to avoid that. The whole thing works really well.

The characterization strikes me as a little broad so far. I mean, I'm still early in the book, maybe it'll improve later, but as of right now, I only have a vague idea of who these people are.

I am admittedly still iffy on whether or not I want to criticize this for being racist, I'll have to do more research. But whether it's racist or not, it's hard to deny that Conroy is a damn good writer. It's almost worth the price of admission just for his prose.

I very much liked this book at the opening. But this is starting to feel like all buildup, no payoff. I mean, I'm still less than halfway through, so I could be wrong, but I feel like I should have at least a little payoff by now.

I'm realizing that I've been conditioned to see British language from this era as really pretentious, unless it's in a kid's book. So this is a bit of an uphill battle for me. But I'm sorta enjoying it nonetheless. It reminds me of a less fantasy version of Gone.

I'm probably a bad person for laughing at this as hard as I am. Makes me feel like a hypocrite for being so self-righteous in the last status update. But to be fair, Conroy doesn't seem to be dehumanizing the black kids he teaches, at least not to my eye.

I will say that maybe the pacing is a tad bit slow. The writing is good enough that it's not a huge problem, but we've been in basically the same place for a while, which is a bit of a problem in a book this long.

It's actually interesting to see a book about Nazi Germany that doesn't totally suck where the protagonist isn't Jewish. I don't think I've read that before.

This isn't gonna be a white savior story, is it? I can only stand this kind of story when it's like Entre les Murs, where the white person turns out to be the real villain. I do appreciate that Conroy immediately owns up to his flaws, but whenever I see a story about a white teacher teaching a bunch of black students, I prepare myself for something bad.

I wonder if I would like this play as much if I didn't already know how it ended. I might still have enjoyed it - there's definitely a distinct sense of buildup here, and Nora is a fascinating character even if you don't quite see the point to her story until the end. I'm just worried that the whole thing would feel a little formless.

I've been reviewing for a while now, and I'm rarely at a loss for words anymore. But I legitimately don't know how to describe how good this book is, or everything that makes it work. The only thing I can think of is that it captures the same insight on childhood that The Ocean at the End of the Lane had, but setting it in Nazi Germany makes it even more powerful.