My Review of "Half His Age" by Jennette McCurdy on Goodreads

Half His Age by Jennette McCurdy
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Is this book good or bad? It’s fucking good, okay?

Are you, the person reading this review, going to like it? Maybe. Maybe not.

Does it have gross, gratuitous, graphic content? Yes, it does. If that’s a problem for you, don’t read it. Are your pearls easily clutched? Then move along.

I’m not going to comment on the literary merits or debate what was too much or too little; other reviews here already do that very well. What I will say is that, for me, as a man, reading this book was quite an experience. I wanted to understand the main character, and I could clearly see how pathetic, manipulative, and abusive the man was. Still, it was hard to put this book down.

I honestly feel a little guilty about how quickly I read it. I saw it at a bookstore, got hooked, found out who the author was, and then tore through it in just a few days.

I see this as a coming-of-age story. I also see it as a feminist story told through the perspective of a flawed, imperfectly likable character.

And yes, I liked the gross stuff. Don’t judge me. (Honestly, the graphic content isn’t even that bad.)

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My Review of Japanese Gothic by Kylie Lee Baker

Japanese Gothic by Kylie Lee Baker
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

There’s a little house hidden among the ferns somewhere in southern Japan. Don’t go there.

This is a good book. Just read it and don’t worry too much about reviews or what other people say. If you enjoy a good story with Japanese gothic vibes, give it a try.

I added this book to my reading list after I read Bat Eater and Other Names for Cora Zeng, though the pacing and structure couldn’t be more different. Japanese Gothic takes a bit longer to get going, and it took me a while to realize I was dealing with unreliable narrator(s).

It’s hard to pin this book down to a single genre: mystery, horror, gothic? (Whatever that means. I’m still not entirely sure what makes a novel “gothic” rather than just plain horror. I googled it, but I’m still not 100% convinced.)

I got completely lost in this maze of a book. There are so many themes to explore, along with plenty of emotional depth. I don’t want to spoil too much, but I’ll say I was pleasantly surprised. I’m not sure what I expected, maybe the equivalent of Mexican Gothic set in Japan, or something closer to What Moves the Dead. Instead, it gave me more Cloud Atlas vibes.

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My Review of "Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead" by Olga Tokarczuk

Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I really enjoyed this book.

Janina is an older woman living in a remote part of Poland, near the Czech border. That border theme shows up often in the story, which made me wonder if it’s tied to Poland’s history, especially around World War II. In any case, people in the area start turning up dead and it almost seems like the animals might be responsible.

The book pushed me to confront something deeply uncomfortable: how humans treat animals. I remember touching on this in a philosophy course in college the idea that we don’t really have a consistent moral framework to justify our relationship with animals. We exploit them, consume them, and kill them, sometimes for reasons we can defend, but often without much justification at all.

What I appreciated most is how the book balances weight and humor. It’s thoughtful and unsettling, but also genuinely funny in places I found myself laughing out loud more than once. I also got the sense that the translation must have been challenging. There are a lot of wordplays and linguistic nuances that don’t always carry over cleanly from Polish to English. As someone who’s dealt with translation, that felt very relatable.

The tone is difficult to pin down. I’ve seen it described as “mythical,” and that feels close, but to me it also reads as surreal and a bit gothic. The pacing is strange in a good way it feels both slow and fast at the same time.

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