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Amber H

Amber H

  • San Francisco, CA, USA
  • member since November 29 2007

Reviews

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Displaying 1-10 of 26 reviews
  • Stone Butch Blues: A Novel
    • Rated 4 stars

    “Anyone with an interest in gender identity just has to read this book eventually. If you don't do it on your own, it will be assigned to you in your next Queer Studies class. Brutally, heart-wrenchingly, unabashedly told--it's not the most literary thing you'll ever read, but the transgendered voice is one that needs to be heard a lot more often.”

    Amber H wrote this review Thursday, February 12 2009. ( reply | permalink )
  • The Giant's House: A Romance (P.S.)
    • Rated 3 stars

    “Narrated by a loner librarian with intimacy issues and an obsession with a young man who has gigantisim--I thought that I would like this a lot more than I did. It's a solid book, but I just never really liked the main character. She's aloof, which can be interesting, but she goes past the point I would fondly described as "quirky." At the end, I just felt indifferent to the so-called romance. It's strange because I love the idea of an ironic, non-traditional, strange romance. I'll definitely read something else by this author to see if this was just her warm-up first novel.”

    Amber H wrote this review Thursday, February 12 2009. ( reply | permalink )
  • Hotel World
    • Rated 4 stars

    “This book swept me off my feet or off the floor or into the dustbin or off a steep cliff or into the ocean or onto a slip-stream-of-consciousness-word-association bender or into a neat pile that was later partially hoovered up and partially blown out the window by a little breeze that may have been the sigh of Princess Diana's ghost. The language will either put you off or pull you in from page 1. I'm glad it pulled me in because the themes and characters couldn't be more fascinating. Overall, I feel as if I didn't really "get" everything that Smith was doing (or maybe just gesturing toward) with her play on verb tenses, but it didn't take away from the stories at all.”

    Amber H wrote this review Sunday, January 25 2009. ( reply | permalink )
  • Love in the Time of Cholera
    • Rated 2 stars

    “I read this such a long time ago that I can't be sure if I would have the same opinion of it now, after drastic changes in both my world-view and in the way I read books; but I was not impressed with it. It bored me and left only the lingering image of excrement filling a street and rising up the cracked wall of a building, reaching up toward vines of jasmine, which in turn retreat up to the roof-top where an old man is having a siesta. Rather than a certain taste, it leaves a certain smell.”

    Amber H wrote this review Saturday, June 7 2008. ( reply | permalink )
  • A Ghost in the Closet: A Nancy Clue and Hardly Boys Mystery (Hardley Boys Mysteries)
    • Rated 3 stars

    “This 1990's spoof on 1950's teen mysteries with a queer twist is hilarious and satisfying in its commentary on heterosexism--for all of about the first 150 pages. I keep reading a chapter here or there, but I'm not really invested in finishing it. The punchline of the joke passed several chapters back and I'm not convinced that the Scooby-style plot is really going to be worth hanging in for another hundred pages, even if there are ironic sketches, ala Garth Williams of Little House on the Prairie fame, next to every chapter title. The narration captures the Nancy Drew millieu perfectly, but I just can't imagine reading the rest of the books in the series. . .

    Finally finished and found the ending fantastic! The tireless descriptions of clothing and mannerisms were summarily exposed as a kind of freedom of gender performance in a last sentence that would lend itself as perfect epigraph to a Judith Butler essay.”

    Amber H wrote this review Saturday, July 12 2008. ( reply | permalink )
  • In Cold Blood
    • Rated 4 stars

    “Really pretty amazing. The unraveling of the events leading up to the crime and the subsequent apprehension and execution of the criminals was flawless. Capote did justice to the hard facts while creating a very dignified sense of suspense and mystery. Unlike many other accounts of true crime (mostly TV/film examples come to mind) this story is virtually free of rubber-necking blood lust. There is plenty of lust behind the narration, it just reads more like a yearning to make that ultimately impossible step inside the minds of Perry Smith and Dick Hickock. That step is necessarily impossible not because the narrator and his gentle readers are better than these unfathomable killers, but because every person is fully alone and separate from "Others" in her/his consciousness. The finality of death, both of the Clutter family and their murderers, brings out the psychological aspect of this despair. Overall, I got the sense that the author wanted very badly to know who these men were, not just why they did what they did. The knowledge that who they were would be irrevocably erased from the world once the execution was carried out must have been an intensely traumatic experience for Capote. In any case, the book is marvelously well-organized. Seems a strange thing to extol, but I really enjoyed the presentation as part of the story-telling.”

    Amber H wrote this review Tuesday, June 3 2008. ( reply | permalink )
  • Strangers In Paradise Book 19: Ever After
    • Rated 5 stars

    “The story ends here! It's hard to believe. Now I have to go back through and re-read some of the middle books that seem to have bent the timeline. ”

    Amber H wrote this review Wednesday, February 6 2008. ( reply | permalink )
  • The Book Thief
    • Rated 4 stars

    “I'm so glad that Markus Zusak writes for young adults. He offers a kind of unflinching exploration of deep, dark existential questions that is softened by his endearingly complicated characters and poetic prose. The story of an adolescent German girl during WWII is told by the overworked, eternally burdened Death. The stylistic choice works very well to give character to the inhuman specter that haunts humans and is likewise haunted by the heart-breaking contradiction of our beauty and brutality.”

    Amber H wrote this review Sunday, February 3 2008. ( reply | permalink )
  • Angry Young Spaceman
    • Rated 4 stars

    “This book was solidly excellent from start to finish. It kept surprising me with new levels of interest. It deals with: xenophobia, rampant consumerism, cultural imperialism, twenty-something life crises, a couple varieties of terrorism, the phenomenon of summer love, violence, and the mainstream appropriation of everything. All of this AND it's set in space. The best part about that is how refreshingly free of exposition it is for a space drama with plenty of futuristic gadgets.”

    Amber H wrote this review Friday, January 25 2008. ( reply | permalink )
  • Magic for Beginners
    • Rated 5 stars

    “I'm not one to rank favorites--too heirarchical, if you know what I mean. That said, Kelly Link is my absolute favorite contemporary author. Her stories are just the right kind of magical, wordy, beautiful, sexy, sad, smart, gory and downright weird stuff that tickles me and makes me cry--usually at the same time. I had to read this one again this year and maybe will go on reading it every year. Stranger Things Happen, her first collection, is also great; but Magic for Beginners is hypnotic. There are too many good stories to decide which will make you go out and buy this book (from your local independent bookstore) right now, but just know that you may find yourself describing the plots of the stories in great detail in those inebriated moments that make the idea of a band named Palindrome who record all of their Side A songs backwards on Side B, or vice versa, or a guy with zombie contingency plans who crashes college parties and hates boutique soaps, or a pirate TV show about a multi-dimensional library that shows up at irregular intervals on random channels, that much more intriguing.”

    Amber H wrote this review Tuesday, June 3 2008. ( reply | permalink )
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