Selwyn College

167,653 pages read and 3,700 team points

Team members

Andrew Thompson

5,966 pts

(5,966 pages read)

Thirst

By Marina Yuszczuk

0 stars
The Mysterious Benedict Society, Book 1

By Trenton Lee Stewart

5 stars
Wandering Stars

By Tommy Orange

3 stars
Cloud Cuckoo Land

By Anthony Doerr

4 stars
Manhunt

By Gretchen Felker-Martin

2 stars
The Turn of the Screw

By Henry James

4 stars
Everything the Darkness Eats

By Eric LaRocca

2 stars
The Ministry of Time

By Kaliane Bradley

4 stars
Silver Nitrate

By Silvia Moreno-Garcia

4 stars
If We Were Villains

By M.L. Rio

4 stars
Where the Dead Sit Talking

By Brandon Hobson

4 stars

Depressing coming of age social realism. On the first page, the narrator Sequoyah says this is about the night he watched a girl die. We know who it is: Rosemary and we’re waiting throughout to short novel to see how this unravels. Both Sequoyah and Rosemary are indigenous Americans dislocated from tribal land, struggling in the foster care system. Rosemary is bold and and out of control. Sequoyah is introverted and sensitive. He wears eyeliner and wanders around a lot trying to connect with his environment. When Rosemary invites him into her bath, he climbs in never-nude style with jeans on. When her death finally comes, it’s not a huge catharsis - just really bleak. There’s hope in Sequoyah though. The story is more about Rosemary’s impact on Sequoyah than her death. His androgynous emo ways seem anti-assimilationist and that’s cool.
You Should Have Left

By Daniel Kehlmann

3 stars

Shining-type novella of a grumpy, impatient screenwriter who has promised a producer a sequel to his successful first film. His wife and daughter join him for a winter writing retreat in a remote modernist home on the top of hill. Lots of arguing. Like Palace of Shadows, the architecture of the house is all wrong. A local shopkeeper gives screenwriter dad (SD) a triangular ruler that doesn’t add up. SD bisects a right angle and measures it: 40x42. He draws a rectangle, intersects lines joining opposite corners. Angles add up to 100 degrees. He falls victim to the house’s multidimensional portal terror–or is it just a dream? Either way, madness ensues. Fun quick read.
The Mars Room

By Rachel Kushner

5 stars
Creation Lake

By Rachel Kushner

5 stars

Sadie Smith, an extremely emotionally detached spy working for a private intelligence firm, infiltrates a marxist environmental commune in southern France. The spiritual leader of the group is Bruno Lacombe, an acolyte of Guy Debord who now and then emerges from troglodyte life to send his followers philosophical emails about Neandrathal intelligence, aesthetics, and astronomy – I really liked the passage on Tupaia. The deeper Sadie gets into her mission the more she vibes with Bruno’s emails. Amazing writing. Such a fun read.
The Martyr

By Kaveh Akbar

5 stars
God of the Woods

By Liz Moore

3 stars

I kind of enjoyed this book, but it was pretty maddening – always teetering on the verge of collapse under the weight of its overwrought structure. Nonlinear narrative with so many characters to keep track of. Most chapters end in a mini cliffhanger, often introducing another new character. There’s a Peter 1, Peter 2, Peter 3, Peter 4, a JP and a JP Sr. The author seems to justify the clutter in the name of genre: it’s a mystery dammit, so we need red herrings! Despite all this, I did like tracing the investigation and the setting of American North East summer camp. The big reveal at the end G.O.T.W. is a bit of a letdown (I was ok with who was guilty and how things basically resolved, but the circumstances were too unbelievable).
Bel Canto

By Ann Patchett

3 stars

I don’t know why I read this. I think maybe it popped up algorithmically: If you liked Trust by Hernan Diaz, you might like Bel Canto by Ann Patchett. I loved Trust and didn’t really like Bel Canto. It’s well written, but not really my thing. It’s a very 2001 novel: Beautiful international lives are disrupted by terrorists, but at the end of the day despite threats of violence (and later actual violence), we’re all global citizens who can forgive our captors and even fall in love with them! I did enjoy the Dog Day Afternoon style plot of a bungled hostage situation where you feel bad for the idiots who staged the takeover.
The Coin

By Yasmin Taher

5 stars
The Sellout

By Paul Beatty

5 stars

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Selwyn College

167,653 pages read and 3,700 team points

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