Kaiju Reviews > Recent Status Updates

Liked but didn't love the conclusion to OK Mr. Field.
Enjoyed A house is a body - 3

'Simple Pleasure. Pure Pleasure.' - didn't get this at all. I guess this is PR Crime Noir. Maybe a translation issue. Dunno. Complete pass.

Love the crazy Edie Fake images... especially the Stick It Inn... but total miss on the accompanying essay.

These are not good poems. The topics may be important, and some of the imagery is good, but bleh... distasteful... preachy, saccharine, melodramatic. Better suited for greeting cards.

What We Didn't Know About Cuba is almost good for a moment. At least the ugly American biographic part felt authentic.

Matters of the Sea: exhaustively tired metaphor. The worst kind of 'we are the world' type drivel.

Sadly this very enjoyable book feels like its fizzling out a little here at the end.

Slow but steady start. Does feel a little overwritten, but its good over writing...

Difficult but good start to Jablokov's story.

Jan Morris Diaries didn’t do much for me. Entries were interesting, and obviously written by a well educated and extremely lucid (for 90) person, but felt premeditated and emotionally distant. Hilst poems in translation in translation were enjoyable but didn’t resonate with me. Gbessa by Wyetu Moore: only the self-fulfilling prophecy element of this descriptive, but choppy, fable saved it for me. A sluggish start.

A slow start, but once I adapted to the style, quite good. Elise and Lorena come off as sisters despite being totally different. Some developments took me by surprise. The switch to Lorena’s 1st person viewpoint after Elise’s and Gus’s 3rd person was jarring and is my only concern, though independently, it worked well.

Man, this book is awful.

'Landscapes' is beautiful, and shines with some of the narrative moments. But it certainly doesn't let you in easily. 'Talking to Whom' with its darkened and demolished movie theaters struck me.

Soon, this epic fail to DNF will end, and I will be happy.

Okay, the repetition is beginning to wear on me. I'm ready for something to happen. Enough with the preparation of food and sitting down to listen to music already... (though i do love that stuff)

I didn't hate Complaint of el rio grande, but i didn't like it either. Similar imagery. Same highschool writing assignment content.

Inferno - excellent. Doesn't get much better than this.

Fascinating story by Rachel Cusk. Must read more. Very heavily debated readership.

Not much memorable going on here so far... Major Jackson technically very well done, but didn't speak to me all that much. Scapegoat Child I can't even remember reading, and it wasn't all that long ago.

I've only just begun and I'm already really struggling. The first poem Election Year was very highschool, thinly veiled politics, with decent if been-there imagery. The 2nd: Dreaming a Wall... I'm already so tired.

2nd favorite Murakami to Hard Boiled Wonderland

Not very well written, but with some interesting personal touches and a few decent suggestions. ... so far anyway.

Part One was excellent. Somehow all the repetition feels necessary and not annoying. Interesting really.

Excellent. Crisp and evocative. Murakami is treading familiar water here, but unique enough to keep my interest for sure.

Part One's ending was so dumb, I almost quit right there. I'm so close to quitting I can almost taste my freedom. Very little to like. I'll give Part Two a fair shot, then I'm out... admittedly, part two starts okay.

Laughed out loud - I never do that.

Flour - enjoyed this. Solid short story.

Dare I say the Bloom chapters are almost readable? I'm too scared to say that...

On a pretty steady decline downward from the start.