davy’s library

just one more lesbian reviewer

[davyreads]

hi everyone, i'm a new book review sideblog. i've always wanted to start a blog but now i've actually taken that step. i love reading and now that i'm older, i am now more able to critically interact with the media i consume. i hope to share some books that i have read recently, books that i want to read and also any reading challenges that i have set for myself. below these very pretty headers, i will include some information about myself as well as the books i am currently reading, the music i am currently listening to and the shows or movies that i may be watching! i might also share my tbr list! thanks for reading!

davy / 21 / black / they-them / lesbian

currently reading i'm going to be honest, i tend to read a few books at once, however it is usually one novel and a couple encyclopaedic books, so right now i am reading edgar allan poe's the narrative of arthur gordon pym of nantucket alongside a classical mythology encyclopaedia. i'm also part of a book club and the books that we read together will make an appearance here. we recently read the letters we keep by nisha sharma, so expect a review for that, as well as one for weyward by emilia hart, which we read before that!

reading challenges currently doing a goodreads challenge to read 20 books this year since it has been quite difficult to get back into reading for pleasure + i am obsessed with mike flanagan's the fall of the house of usher on netflix, and i've already watched it twice but before i inevitably watch it for a third time, i've decided to read the tales, poems and novels by edgar allan poe that were referenced in the show; i'll try and include a link to my complete list!

currently listening to i love me some victoria monet and i've had her music on repeat consistently for the last couple years! i have also taken an interest in fleetwood mac, kate bush, and mos def. i've also been keeping up with the kendrick v. drake beef, so i've been listening to quite a bit of his recent releases. i might be willing to make a list (or maybe a playlist - not entirely sure) of some of my favourite songs at the moment.

currently watching not much unfortunately. i spend a lot of time on youtube but i am trying to find a way to watch season 7 of drag race. i've never watched the show before but i'm aware of trixie mattel and katya so i wanted to watch their season. as i mentioned earlier, i am obsessed with the fall of the house of usher on netflix but i am forcing myself to hold off before watching it again.

favourite books suzanne collins' the hunger games series, neil gaiman's american gods, silvia moreno-garcia's mexican gothic, ransom riggs' miss peregrine's peculiar children series (have not finished yet)

what do i like to read i like poetry a lot (though i sometimes struggle to understand it), as well as mythology, all types. i also like fantasy and dystopia and one of my favourite series is the hunger games series by suzanne collins. i am trying to expand my reading horizons, since i read a lot of ya fantasy when i was younger.

link to my tbr :)

short note: i also have not really sat down and written book reviews in a very long time and i am only just beginning this journey of literary analysis, even though i regularly analyse books in my head, so please be kind and patient as i come to grips with everything! thank you <3

[begthouorborrow]

Anyone who believes Katniss should have ended up with Gale doesn't understand her character but anyone who believes that Gale is pure evil doesn't understand his

[davyreads]

sometimes i read critiques of gale hawthorne’s character so stupid and braindead that i am swiftly reminded of the global literacy crisis

[spiteswallow]

I humbly suggest that true crime freaks should get into learning about scammers instead of serial killers. I LOVE reading about fraud and grifts and pyramid schemes. true crime ppl have all this paranoid energy about murder, which is rare in the grand scheme of things.....maybe instead that could be channeled into some productive rage toward capitalism.

[spiteswallow]

And u know a side effect of learning about scam artists is that you start to understand certain things about economics, and just how STUPID these systems are and how easily they are taken advantage of....and I'd much rather people gained a passing familiarity with economics than whatever armchair psychologist shit these true crimers get on. We need fewer people who think they're experts on "sociopaths" and more people who understand how people like Elizabeth Holmes and the WeWork guy were able to do what they did

[lindstromm]

Here are some of my favorite books about financial scams:

The Wizard of Lies: Bernie Madoff and the Death of Trust by Diana B. Henriques.

The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine by Michael Lewis (about the 2008 stock market collapse).

The Caesar's Palace Coup: How a Billionaire Brawl Over the Famous Casino Exposed the Corruption of the Private Equity Industry by Max Frumes and Sujeet Indap. (I admit I've never finished this one; the writing is hard to read.)

The Great Beanie Baby Bubble: Mass Delusion and the Dark Side of Cute, by Zac Bissonette. I bought this book because of the subtitle and I have never regretted it. You must read it.

Catch Me If You Can by Frank Abagnale. They turned this one into a movie! The book was very different and is worth reading.

The Cult of We: WeWork, Adam Neumann, and the Great Startup Delusion, by Elliot Brown and Maureen Farrell. I haven't read this one yet, but it's on my tbr pile!

Opus: The Cult of Dark Money, Human Trafficking, and Right-Wing Conspiracy Inside the Catholic Church, by Gareth Gore. I'm reading this one right now. The author is a financial journalist who stumbled onto this story by unraveling a bank failure in Spain.

And here's a list of more non-fiction books about fraud and financial scams. The first book on this list is about Theranos and Elizabeth Holmes, which I also haven't read yet.

Enjoy!

[strifer1der]

It's bothering me so bad that there's not enough people being furious about Amandla Stenberg being cast as Amari when anyone who read the damn book knows that her having a dark complexion compared to the rest of her family is the first thing we learn about her character.

[kory-dany]

children of blood and bone cast pushing 40 and not a single Yoruba woman in the entire cast… oh okay 👍🏾

[alexinmotion]

People are getting way too comfortable with the erasure of monoracial black girls in media.

Tomi Adeyemi is a JOKE for creating Amari’s character who is described as having dark copper colored skin just to only list light-skin biracial women to play her.

It’s so disappointing that whenever there’s colorism within casting in a book-to-movie adaptation the author always defends colorism especially a book with a PLOT that involves colorism.

[black-is-beautiful18]

I haven’t said anything about it on here but many have said the exact same thing: how is your character described, in your own words, as having dark copper skin. Faces colorism and fatphobia from her mother…

This is official art you had commissioned that’s literally in books…

And yet you cast Amandla to play her saying that she’s exactly how you envisioned Amari???

Tomi don’t piss me off. You’re rightfully getting dragged from all sides, but I will say this to my fellow Black ppl. Be respectful to our Nigerian siblings during this conversation cuz Children of Blood and Bone is using their culture, Yoruba culture to be more specific, in a fantasy setting. Some parts of the conversation we have no say in cuz we aren’t Nigerian and we can only support them and boost their opinions. I will also say that wishing for the movie to flop does more harm than good especially in our current climate in the US. Imma still call out the clear colorism and lies that were told but I also want this movie to do at least ok in the box office cuz we know exactly what will be said if it doesn’t do well and we also know what will happen afterwards. Not saying you have to go see it but just be mindful.

[davyreads]

okay so that children of blood and bone cast reveal…..

[frantastichenrik]

Sincere question why does the "Legacy of Orïsha" trilogy lack a fandom? Like yeah, I see people praising the books, and I myself enjoy them (have not read #3 yet) , but there is not a huge following, not many fanfic or fan art) when the 1st book came out I was looking forward to seeing a new fandom grow but it never happen. I wonder what is going to happen when the movies come out?

[displayheartcode]

so....do i make a post about other (re: better) magic school/wizard books or what?

because i have strong opinions!

[displayheartcode]

i want to read....

something that pre-dates jkr

young wizards by diane duane

wizard's hall by jane yolen

a wizard of earthsea by ursula k leguin

the worst witch by jill murphy

the dark is rising by susan cooper

something for adults that is darker and edgier

the scholomance by naomi novik

magic for liars by sarah gailey

rivers of london by ben aaronovitch

an unkindness of magicians by kat howard

babel by rf kuang

vita nostra by marina and sergey dyachenko

ninth house by leigh bardugo

something for middle schoolers

witchlings by claribel a. ortega

the last fallen star by graci kim

the school for good and evil by soman chainani

the marvellers by dhonielle clayton

charlie bone by jenny nimo

maya and the rising dark by maya barron

something for young adults

hex hall by rachel hawkins

the old kingdom by garth nix

the left-handed booksellers of london by garth nix

the whispering dark by kelly andrew

in other lands by sarah rees brennan

the demon king by cinda williams chima

how to succeed in witchcraft by aislinn brophy

witch haven by sasha peyton smith

legendborn by tracy deonn

dark rise by cs pacat

[davyreads]

reading lessons in chemistry and crying rn

[leahroy]

[sanguine-prince-deactivated2025]

i’m sure i’m not the first to say something like this, but let me tell you about my poc-passing-as-white jay gatsby headcanon!!

for some background, in the 1920s there was an interesting shift regarding (white) skin tones. previously, tans were viewed as a sign that a person worked out in the fields, and therefore a trademark of the lower class. however, slowly after the industrial revolution, it increasingly became a representation of luxury, since the rich upper class would have the time to lounge about and sunbathe at their leisure.

i say all this to show that a poc gatsby would have the ostensible class and wealth for a tan, which would ‘excuse’ a slightly browner skin tone in the public eye.

(the 20s was also the setting of passing by nella larsen, so that’s neat.)

in my vision, he’s biracial (maybe his mother was black & his father was a german immigrant) with skin light enough to pass for white.

the fact that nick states that gatsby keeps his hair neatly groomed and cut might be to prevent it from curling up.

additionally, i think it could contrast tom’s white supremacy & his fear of poc social progress.

it would also create a deeper divide between gatsby and daisy, and once again the contrast between him and tom. in my mind, daisy wouldn’t know about it until the point where tom reveals everything about gatsby’s bootlegging etc. with jay revealing it to her in the car ride back (oops then she hits myrtle).

then, when she chooses tom and the life of comfort, wealth, status, etc that their marriage offers, she also rejects not only gatsby’s new money but also his race.

it’s a lot more thematically significant for the american dream as well—it’s still unattainable and essentially tainted by capitalism, and it also emphasizes that it’s restricted to the white upper class. social mobility only becomes available to gatsby when he disguises his racial identity.

similarly, it fits with gatsby’s identity reconstruction—the quintessential american is white, rich, and educated.

daisy and tom have that ticket into society because they have that inherent thing that he will never have—pedigree, in both class and race. that’s something that even nick has.

(in my mind, he tells nick all about it the night before he dies & nick understands as best he can and doesn’t think less of him, because it further highlights the differences between his & gatsby’s relationship v. gatsby’s relationship with daisy; namely, the transparency -> acceptance give-and-take that he and daisy never had. because of having to hide himself from daisy in order to maintain her affection, he builds an expectation that he must be someone that he is not as well as developing a transactional definition of love (he gives, and people love him as long as he can continue to give) in order to be loved. therefore, nick’s immediate curiosity and fascination with who he truly is is foreign to him. not to get too into their dynamic lmao i just think it’s really interesting.)

finally, the very last part where nick is sitting and looking at the bay and thinking about the first immigrants and their dreams and how gatsby embodied the purity and naivety of those dreams is further exemplified by his racial ‘otherness.’

and there’s,,, technically nothing in the book to explicitly refute this from what i remember!

(n.b.: it has been a hot second since i’ve read tgg, so lmk if i’ve got anything wrong!)

[s4dpngs]

[thetypedwriter]

Children of Anguish and Anarchy Book Review

Children of Anguish and Anarchy Book Review by Tomi Adeyemi

This book was so horrible. 

No one is more disappointed than me to say that. 

I’ve gone to two of Tomi Adeyemi’s book signings, including a recent one for Children of Anguish and Anarchy.

Tomi Adeyemi herself is absolutely wonderful. She’s so intelligent, hilarious, addictively charming, and can work a room like no other. The book signing was fantastic. Too bad the book couldn’t hold up to the event itself. 

Children of Anguish and Anarchy follows as the third and last installment of the Legacy of Orisha trilogy, but doesn’t read like that at all.

Other than having the same four main characters of Tzain, Zelie, Amari, and Inan, nothing about the book concludes any issue, plot story, or character development from the previous two novels. 

A completely new villain is introduced, someone we haven't heard about as a reader in the last two books whatsoever, and obliterates any of the conflict and tension that Adeyemi worked so hard to build in her previous stories. 

Gone is the tension and literally hundreds of years of in-fighting between the Maji and the monarchy, gone is the civil war and its repercussions on Orisha, gone is even one of the main characters from the last novel, Roen, who was a significant love interest for Zelie and who has been completely disappeared in this new book all together (like, what???). 

It was incredibly lazy writing to wipe away everything the first two books created in order to “unite” against this new enemy. The sentiment is nice, but it’s not the finale we wanted or needed. 

I desired answers to Amari and Zelie’s broken friendship, closure to the Inan and Roen love triangle, a verdict on how Orisha would rebuild and who would rule. 

We get none of that. 

Instead Zelie and the others spend half their time in the book on a ship with very strong slavery parallels, and the other half in the introduced land of New Gaia.

While I thought the descriptions of New Gaia were beautiful (albeit very similar to Avatar), I was dissatisfied because the whole series at this point has been focused on Orisha and Orisha’s problems, not New Gaia and not the Skulls. 

While the plot was bad and aggrieving, the characters were even worse. 

None of the characters were interesting. They were carbon copies of each other in which all they talked about was avenging their fallen Orishan people, killing the Skulls, and protecting loved ones.

Rinse and repeat. It was boring as hell to delve into four different characters’ minds only to find that they all sounded exactly the same. 

I often had to go back to the start of the chapter to tell whose internal thoughts I was reading because they were so interchangeable and self-righteous and dull.  It is never a good sign when you can’t automatically tell who’s POV you’re reading based on their internal dialogue and tone. 

Lastly, the pacing of the book was atrocious. Everything happened so goddamn fast that I felt like I never had the chance to properly digest or internalize anything.

Oh they’re on a ship? Moving on from that. Zelie got some sort of medallion shoved into her chest?? Moving on. Wait, Maji and Titans and the monarchy are all working together after two full books of them killing each other??? Five pages and it’s done with. 

It was outrageous and insulting. 

The pacing made everything feel shallow, unimportant, and unnecessary. More than most of the plot were action scenes, while difficult to write and interesting in their own right, in this book it was so repetitive that characters killing other characters 90% of the time became egregiously tedious. 

And speaking of the action, I also found it incredibly violent and graphic for a YA book. As someone who is not a fan of gore and blood, this book had so many explicit details for no reason other than being gratuitous.

For example, at one point Zelie shoves a chicken bone through someone’s cheek. I found it repulsive and it was also incessant. 

I know some people can handle brutality, but I can’t, and found it a huge turn off and made me dislike the book so much more, especially as this was a majority of the book to boot. 

Disappointment can’t even contain my full feelings for this story. For such a wonderful trilogy to succumb to such a terrible end is a tragedy. I wish the best for Tomi Adeyemi and success for her future, but I will not read another book by her again. 

Score: 2/10

Recommendation: Read Children of Blood and Bone, a magical story that will inspire and entertain you. Read Children of Virtue and Vengeance if you really need something else, but even this book I wouldn’t recommend picking up.

Do not, I repeat, do not read Children of Anguish and Anarchy. It will leave you feeling dismayed and disheartened beyond redemption.

Bonus: Here's me, my fiance, and Tomi Adeyemi at her book signing!

[davyreads]

trying to read but thinking about how disappointing children of anguish and anarchy was and how my review of it still doesn’t encompass the despair i feel at this being the final entry