'The Girl With All the Gifts' by M. R. Carey (46/52)

Melanie gets wheeled to class every day, chained to a chair. They have new teachers, but Miss Justineau's her favourite. Miss Justineau treats them like people. Brings them things from the outside world. Melanie and Miss Justineau don't know that their world is about to implode.

This book ticked a lot of my boxes - zombies! Female relationships! Uprisings! So it's disappointing that I didn't engage with it more. It's not that it's poorly written - it's very well written. With firm characterisations, some lovely imagery and a brisk pace to it. It's just that it also fell into so many tropes. The good teacher. The golden girl. The brutish military man with a heart of gold. The heartless scientist. There was the occasional twist on these tropes - and on the zombie genre - but none of it felt life altering or like something I hadn't read before. It was a good read, just not a great one.

3 out of 5 feral zombie children.

'Dark Places' by Gillian Flynn (45/52)

Libby Day was seven years old when  her brother murdered her mother and sisters. Now, years later, she finds herself broke, the only foreseeable income in reopening her own case with the backing of a murder club, convinced of her brother's innocence.

I really enjoyed Gone Girl which I read earlier this year, and a few of my friends told me shortly after that it was great, but didn't hold a candle to Dark Places. It's taken me a while to get to this, but I found it a month ago in a second hand book store, and while I think the opening scene was amazing, it took me a while to engage with the narrative. Libby's a lowly thing at the start, distasteful, and her voice, fully realised, has a hell of a bite.

But I fell in love with her in the end. A desperate, scrambling thing, a scavenger at the edges of life - a role so typically reserved for male protagonists. Libby was unappealing until she wasn't, until you were so on board with her, on this twisted journey into the past and the future. It amounts into this tense, wrought story with a deeper emotional impact than a lot of books I've read recently.

4.5 out of 5 secret notes.

'Yes Please' by Amy Poehler (44/52)

Writer, actress and comedian, Amy Poehler recounts her life so far in a series of essays, memoirs, random bits of advice and photographs.

Oh, man, I love Amy Poehler. I've never been a serious watcher of Saturday Night Live where she first came to the general public's attention, but she was pretty much an instant fave when fourteen year old Sophie saw her in Mean Girls way back in '04. It's been ten years since then, and she's skyrocketed fame-wise since then. And for good reason. She's warm, funny, takes no shit, and insanely smart. All of those traits are on show in this oddball collection which is, man, just a lot of fun.

Her advice is never pretentious, and her stories come organically, and without too much attention to typical structure which makes it more of a conversation with Poehler than a straight memoir. It may or may not have made me buy the audio book. (It definitely did)

4 out of 5 improv groups.

'Sex Criminals' by Matt Fraction and Chip Zdarsky (42/52)

Suzie is a lot of things. The daughter of a dead man, of an alcoholic mother, librarian to a going-out-of-business library, and a woman who can freeze time whenever she orgasms. The latter is just a quirk until she meets Jon, an actor, who shares her ability. Together they decide to use their time-stopping orgasms to rob a local bank and save Suzie's library.

Oh, this is just so much fun. Suzie's a delightful protagonist, sweet and whip smart and so fully realised, and Jon is such a fun match for it. His banter, and both general, fun insanity and actual mental health conditions make him an equally rounded and compelling character. The mythos of the series is introduced beautifully too, one step at a time, but never in a way that feels patronising or like its been dumbed down for a reader. All in all, a hell of a lot of fun.

I can't wait to see where it goes next.

4 out of 5 sex police women.

'Morning Glories Volume 4: Truants' by Nick Spencer and Joe Eisner (41/52)

Morning Glories Academy is an illustrious school for genius children, but there's more to it than appears. Shrouded in mystery, the school is a home for murder, backstabbing, time travel and strange powers, and in volume four, things come to an explosive head.

Man, I have such mixed feelings on this series. On the one hand, I love it. Boarding schools! Murder! Time  travel! Created families! Varied and competent female characters! It hits so many of my buttons! On the other hand, the mystery is occasionally a bit much - more than simply mysterious and heading towards totally disorienting. It can take pages to refind your footing in the narrative, and when you finally regain it, so much has happened you have to reread it a few times to catch everything. The designs are gorgeous, but occasionally characters can look very similar, which does little to help with the disorientation. You're expected to retain a lot of knowledge about characters, which I appreciate given my tendency to inhale that, but with a rapidly growing cast, it can make it difficult to absorb everything.

Great story, great characters, but it's not always easy to keep up with.

3.5 out of 5 time reset circles.

'Daughter of Smoke and Bone' by Laini Taylor (40/52)

Karou has two lives. On the one hand, she is a seventeen year old art student living in Prague suffering from a break up with an asshole ex. On the other, she's the ward of a created family of chimeras, travelling the world on the hunt for teeth, a precious bounty for the chimera sorcerer, Brimstone. While on a mission, she's confronted by the angel, Akiva, and her two lives conjoin and skyrocket towards a third one, old and new alike that could bring about the end of the world as she knows it.

This book came recommended by so many different people in my life that I was actually a little nervous to pick it up. If I didn't like it, I'd have a lot to answer to. It didn't prove to be an issue though. Laini Taylor's world building is as close to perfect as anything I've read. The depth and the scope are rich with history and life, with vivid, evocative detail. She has a thrilling lead in Karou too, who's journey is so defined, so perfectly carved out that you really do feel like you've been on it with her.

The supporting characters are pretty terrific too - from serpent Issa to bovine Brimstone, the sweet and snarky Zuzana, even asshole Kaz. It rounds out a story that explores morality and war and child soldiers and the brutality of total power. It's pretty magical.

5 out of 5 lost sketchbooks.

'What the World Will Look Like When All the Water Leaves Us' by Laura van den Berg (36/52)

An actress finds herself while imitating Big Foot. A woman falls out of love with her husband, her student, and etymology after her father drowns. Another looks for a twinflower while others search for the Loch Ness Monster. Laura van den Berg's debut collection explores myths, legends and those who seek meaning in them.

I wasn't sure what to expect from this collection, but I ended up really loving it. It's such a strange concept for one, and in the hands of a lesser writer could've been easily fucked up. It works though. Works on almost every level. These are beautiful episodes of strange lives returned to mundanity after tragedy, which is something I'm really interested in. Every story seems to embody this theme of life goes on after seemingly unthinkable things. Drownings and house fires and runaways and spider bites and big foots and monsters and masks are catalysts for some pretty perfect, intimate character studies. I'm a little in love.

5 out of 5 dead men mowing.

'We are All Completely Beside Ourselves' by Karen Joy Fowler (35/52)

The Cooke's are, in many ways, your typical family. Mum, dad and 2.5 kids, they bounce around from house to house, avoid confrontation and tease like any other. Or at least they used to. With Rosemary in college, her brother missing and her sister gone, she's successfully avoided any real reflection on it until she meets Harlow, a loud, brash, impulsive woman who gets them both overnighting in prison. In the space of a night, Rosemary finds her life changed forever, as the lid gets ripped off her past and years of simmering starts to overflow.

I can barely articulate my feelings towards this book. Funny, tragic, traumatising, where cruelty and kindness appear in the strangest places and people, We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves is unlike any book I've ever read. Rosemary is smart, savvy, weak, angry and ultimately unreliable, and her reflections on the past are told in and out of time, like someone keeps turning an hourglass over and over before the sand can ever hit the bottom. The effect should be jarring, but Fowler has such a handle on it, such an intimate knowledge of these characters and this situation, that ultimately nothing happens in isolation. It's pretty damn magical.

5 out of 5 red poker chips.

'I Await the Devil's Coming' by Mary MacLane (34/52)

Mary MacLane is nineteen and growing up in Butte, Montana in 1902. Over the course of three months, she conveys the mundanity of her daily life, and the expectations of women in the early 1900s, with the wild passion of a woman chomping at the bit, ready to live a life. In what's regarded as one of the first confessional memoirs, and an early feminist text, I Await the Devil's Coming is a collection of rages and monologues and desires from a young girl who wasn't allowed any.

I have such mixed thoughts on this collection. On the one hand, Mary MacLane can write. She has a wonderful handle on language that makes for a compelling read. She's angry and biting and bored, and I can't even fathom a life like what she's lived. Interestingly too, the memoir explores sexuality beautifully. MacLane's sexual desires extend from the devil to Napoleon to an old teacher, and stem from both a desire to be loved and a desire to, well, act on being the sexual being she is.

That said, it's also a nineteen-year old's memoir. I read a great review on Goodreads which said it was like being locked in the bathroom with the drunkest girl at the party, and I kind of agree. It's a similar rollercoaster of thought, the same bold, entitled, insecurity that she might have, and it makes this both a glorious read and a bit of a trying one at times.

3.5 out of 5 sexy devil fantasies.

'Blue' by Pat Grant (33/52)

Three teens face racism, neglect and a coming of age against the backdrop of an Australian coastal town.

I had the pleasure of seeing Pat Grant at Brisbane Writers Festival last year, and he's a pretty sweet, savvy guy (and kind of a babe). 'Blue' is certainly a representation of the first two things, if not the third. The push-pull between the leading three is in equal parts uncomfortable and nostalgic, nice and nasty. Their relationship is reminiscent of a lot of adolescent relationships, and with the added degree of racial intolerance, this graphic novel makes for something pretty remarkable.

Four out of Five sausage rolls.

'The Road' by Cormac McCarthy (32/52)

The man and the boy have been on the  road since the world ended, trying to get to the sea. Their existence is a bleak one, where food is scarce and the people still alive are skirting the edges of humanity. The man and the boy are not yet, finding their respective humanity in each other as they continue on their hopeless journey.

I have such mixed feelings on this book. On the one hand, I get why it's regarded as a modern classic. Cormac McCarthy's writing is beautifully taut, hopeless, honest, all things I think you need when you're writing such a bleak story. That said, I found the dialogue stunted, and the decisions, while not unthinkable or unremarkable, were just kind of dull. It's also a story that suffered from one of my biggest pet peeves - useless female character syndrome. I'm not saying that all books need to have useful ones, what I'm saying is some of them need to not be victims and some of them need to have agency.

Two and a half out of five flare guns.

'Winter's Bone' by Daniel Woodrell (31/52)

Jessup Dolly is AWOL which might not be a problem if it wasn't for the fact that he's due in court and put his house up as bond. At home, sixteen-year-old Ree is raising her little brothers and caring for her mentally ill mother, and when she finds out her father is missing, she sets off to find him, uncovering the small town's seedy underbelly in the process.

I saw the film adaptation of this a couple of years ago and loved it pretty hard, so picking up the novel was a bit of a no brainer. The film does the book justice, but beyond it, the book is a wonderful example of Southern Noir. Gritty and mean, harrowing, but not without it's bright spots, Woodrell does a wonderful job of opening up this small town and spilling it's guts on the page. Ree is a champion of a protagonist too, emphatic and steely and all sorts of wonderful, as is her relationship with her best friend, Gail, a woman of her own strength that shows itself in different ways. It's an awesome book, and one I wish was more popular!

5 out of 5 gutted squirrels.

'The Shining Girls' by Lauren Beukes (30/52)

Harper, a drifter in the 1930s, stumbles upon an abandoned house. In it, he finds his past, present and his future, the names of his shining girls, and the ability to time travel which helps him to find them. Harper hunts these women until he makes a wrong turn at Kirby, a tenacious young woman who survives Harper's attack in the 1980s, setting off a game of cat-and-mouse across time.

I really enjoyed this book. Beukes is a strong writer and has a knack for fleshing out compelling characters in limited words. All of Harper's victims are interesting and emphatic and, worse, characters you really don't want to see murdered, which makes Kirby's rise to hunter all the more thrilling. The themes of motherhood and death, life and love are so thoroughly interwoven too that when tensions build to a head, it's almost a relief. It's a great book, but I'd love to have seen a bit more time jumping on Kirby's part.

4 out of 5

Y the Last Man Book 1 by Brian K. Vaughan (29/52)

Out of the blue, every male organism on Earth dies instantly, plant, animal, human. Well, all but Yorick and his pet monkey, Ampersand. Yorick sets out to find his girlfriend, Beth, but the world isn't what it used to be without half the population, and society quickly devolves into chaos. With inter-group warfare, starving women and escaped criminals, Yorick, accompanied by a secret service agent and a cloning doctor, must find his girlfriend and try to provide a solution for humanity's dying generation.

I've raved about Brian K. Vaughan's more recent work, Saga, a lot, and so have been slowly working my way through his back catalogue. Y: The Last Man, interestingly, treads a lot of the same themes of Saga. Warfare, star-crossed lovers, created families and real ones torn a part and put back together wrong are all explored in a compelling fashion. As a writer, his handle on dialogue and slow reveals is almost unparalleled, and the illustrations are staged so beautifully and in such detail. It's a great read, but not quite as great as Saga. 

4 out of 5 magician monkeys.

'The Handmaid's Tale' by Margaret Atwood (28/52)

It's been three years since the religious wars put the women in habits and dissolved society as we know it. Offred has given up her family and taken on the role of a breeder, passed on to a commander with the sole purpose of having a child in a world which is making that increasingly hard. Things don't go as planned though, and the rumblings of rebellion are stirring beneath the city's orderly facade...

Everyone told me I'd love this book and, to be pretty frank about it, I really did. Margaret Atwood's writing is both accessible and compelling, her handle of characters fully realised and her world building immersive. She also has an insane ability with a slow reveal, and a lot of this novel feels like pulling clothes off someone in ski gear to get to the skin and bones beneath.

Offred is wonderfully flawed, and, as our entry point into the story world, a great point of access. She is not the stirring rebel, but rather a woman forced into obedience but not submission. Her strength comes not from grabbing a knife, but from her tenacity in surviving. It's a characteristic that reminds me a lot of Sansa Stark in Game of Thrones and one that really appeals to me within a narrative. Similarly, the supporting characters are awesomely rounded. Biting and desperate and subservient and mean, the whole story has the feel of characters backed into a corner on a social level and damn, if that isn't a good one.

5 out of 5 maydays.

'Coraline & Other Stories' by Neil Gaiman (27/52)

Coraline Jones has moved house. Well, perhaps not house. She's moved from house to apartment, and days into her family's stay there, she encounters a secret passage that leads her to her other family - mother and father, with buttons for eyes. Coraline loves the attention, but things take a turn for the sinister faster than she'd like, and she finds herself on an adventure that may cost her more than her life.

There's a lot to like in this collection of stories from Neil Gaiman. From the recently (awesomely) stop-motion-adapted, Coraline, to the months sharing stories in October in the Chair. It's a tight collection, and one that orbits themes that are prevalent in a lot of Gaiman's writing - children bearing burdens and magical seductions turning sinister, and strange people turning oddly wonderful. It works so well here too, particularly in the stories mentioned above. It helps that Gaiman. at his best, is so funny too. Some of the lines in Coraline made me laugh aloud, and it's been a long time a book has made me do that.

Four out of five soul catching marbles.

'Theft' by Peter Carey (26/52)

Michael Boone - or Butcher Bones - is an artist out of his prime. Ravaged financially by his recently exed wife and the full-time carer of his disabled brother, he's being kept out of prison by an old fan and living in a pool house. When American art-connoisseur, Marlene, stumbles into his path during a tropical storm, Michael finds his life changed for good.

I read Peter Carey's first novel, Bliss, back at university as a part of an Australian literature course, and, nine books later, Theft: A Love Story is simultaneously in tune with that story and a total deviation. It's certainly funnier at least, with less nasty taboos explored (I mean, there's no incest for one). It's charming, heartbreaking, and stars another down-on-his-luck antihero that seems to have taken over storytelling in the last ten years. The biggest point of difference though is that the voice is split between Michael and his simple brother, Hugh. The latter adds a really compelling dimension to the narrative and to the general tone of the novel, elevating it above other narrative tools.

Three out of five stolen paintings.

'Fahrenheit 451' by Ray Bradbury (25/52)

In the near future, books are regarded as wanted objects, set to be destroyed. The Firemen are up to the task, with the job of locating anyone who might harbour them and set them alight. Montag has been doing the job for years and never questioned it, that is, until his neighbour Clarisse, starts asking him the tough questions. Fahrenheit 451 is about our responsibilities to one another and to ourselves and to the freedom of thought.

Well, look. It's not that I hated Fahrenheit 451, it just isn't exactly a riveting read either. The prose is often obvious, the characters underdeveloped and the dialogue silly. I joked about it with a friend not long after I'd read it that it could be called The Poor Choices of Guy Montag instead, and in hindsight, man, did he make a lot of poor choices. On top of that, I struggled with the overt sentimentality of the novel, and how closely it aligns to the more modern idea of the manic pixie dream girl. The way Clarisse enters Montag's life with the almost explicit purpose of nurturing his development as a character feels heavy-handed and frustrating, and the treatment of Mildred, Montag's wife, felt pretty undercooked too.

That said, I did like elements of the novel. I think the concept is a great one, intriguing and compelling in its nature (but hey, I've always been a sucker for a good dystopia), and Beatty, the chief fireman, is kind of wonderful, even if his primary job is to deliver the exposition. All in all though, pretty underwhelmed by this classic.

2 out of 5 book-hunting robot hounds.

'He Died with a Felafel in His Hand' by John Birmingham (24/52)

John Birmingham lived with 89 people in the eighties and nineties. From dead men in beanbags to junkies to nymphos and kleptos, it seems like Birmingham experienced it all. He Died with a Felafel in His Hand is that story.

I've been share housing for the last three years with pretty varying degrees of success. Luckily, nothing's been abysmal, but I'm currently having a bit of a stand-off with a useless dude who is testing my ability to be as friendly as usual. In a lot of ways, that's what's made reading He Died with a Felafel in His Hand so much fun. It's sharp, funny, poignant and often heartbreaking, all rolled into one neat little package. John Birmingham's voice comes through stronger than you'd expect, and the stories, even when outrageous, never cross the line into gimmick. All in all, a hell of a lot of fun.

4 out of 5 sexual mishaps.

'Lola Bensky' by Lily Brett (23/52)

Lola Bensky is nineteen, fat and interviewing Jimi Hendrix. That's the opening scene of this oddly epic novel, which encompasses the impact of the Holocaust on the children of survivors, the way weight plagues women, music journalism, love, and fame.

I have such mixed feelings on this novel. On the one hand, it ticks almost all of my boxes - music! Women coming of age! History informing narrative! On the other hand, Lily Brett's writing style takes a while to adjust to. Stylistically, there's a lot of telling, and I'm not sure how much I like that, particularly in the context of this story. It also seems to change dramatically halfway through, flashing twenty years forward and rapidly caterpulting itself through years of Lola's life. Dramatically offbeat years too, that with deeper exploration could have been more compelling.

That said, Brett's dialogue is wonderful, and the banter between Lola and the musicians - Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and Mick Jagger in particular, makes for some pretty awesome scenes. The glimpses of the Holocaust are also well told - shocking, sickening and bold in a way that makes for compelling reading, and informs Lola's character beautifully as the novel unfolds. I'm just not sure it's enough to make me like it all that much.

2.5 out of 5 false eyelash sets.