A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki

Dracula by Bram Stoker

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

Burn The Witch by Tite Kubo

Kafka On The Shore by Haruki Murakami

At The Mountains Of Madness by H.P.Lovecraft

Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton

American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis

It got repetitive quick. After a while the extensive outfit descriptions became a chore to get through. There was only so many times I could hear about McDermott's double breasted Armani suit. The kills also became tiring. All the prostitutes being murdered in similar ways, feeling indistinguishable from each other made me know what would happen in every chapter titled "Girls". This may be because it has repetitive language, always referring to the women as hardbodies.

A rare case of the film being better than the book. I think it's like that because the movie was a more compressed version, taking the best and essential parts of the book. This could have been shorter, there are many unessential, tiring chapters.

The Umbrella Academy: Apocalypse Suite (Gerard Way and Gabriel Bá)

I like Gerard Way. His music's great and he seems like a nice guy, but he's not a good comic writer. I think the problem is that whilst he's incredibly creative he doesn't know how to get his ideas onto paper, resulting in a comic full of muddled not-fully developed ideas seemingly there just to be there.

Fangirl (Rainbow Rowell)

So why did I hate this book? Let's go through my reasons.

1: The Characters

There really isn't any characters I like besides Cath's dad, Art. They were all terrible: especially Cath, I loathed that bitch. But let's go through the other characters before I get to her.

Wren:

Cath's twin sister. Honestly right off the bat I disliked her, she was just irritating. I owe her an apology though: she wasn't the worst character in the book. She just mildly annoys me.

Reagan:

At first I just disliked her, not the type of person I'd want to be around, but later on in the book Cath asks her why she broke up with Levi, and she says "I kept cheating on him." This is said so casually. WHY HAVE YOUR CHARACTERS SO UNLIKEABLE, ROWELL?

Levi:

Levi is a bit like a blank slate. His whole personality is smiling and struggling to read. That's it.

Cath:

I hate Cath. She may be one of the worst protagonists of all time. She's worse than Greg Heffley. Cath is mean to everyone, she ruins everything. All she cares about is her fanfiction (which is complete shit by the way). In fact, her love for fanfiction is so great she sent in one of her fanfics for one of her assignments in her fiction-writing class. Yes, you're hearing me write: for a SERIOUS part of her class in university, she sent in fanfiction. The assignment was to make an ORIGINAL short story with an unreliable narrator. She sent in Simon Snow fanfiction told from the point of view of Baz, the Draco Malfoy of Simon Snow.

Luckily, her teacher gave her an F. Don't get me wrong: writing good fanfiction takes a lot of skill, and is a different form of art, I actually write it myself. But, no matter how creative your fanfic is, it's not original. You're still using characters from another person's world. For example, if someone was to write their own sequel to a film they liked without the original creator/writers involved, it still wouldn't be original. No matter how you frame it, sending fanfiction into a class for original writing is wrong.

Okay, so Cath does some stupid things, but that doesn't make her a bad person. Don't worry: she says things which are very horrible! Here is an excerpt from the book. For context: Cath's father is struggling with his mental health a lot, and this is pretty apparent. Cath is also aware of this.

"Cath snorted. "He obviously needs us. If he had a cat, the man would be one bad day away from Grey Gardens. I think he eats all of his meals at QuikTrip, and he's sleeping on the couch.""

Wow. What a bitch.

Cath is also horrible to her sister. She falls out with Wren because Wren wanted to reconnect with their mother who left them at a young age. It's understandable that Cath wouldn't want to talk to her mum, I wouldn't as well: but Wren can do what she wants. She never forced Cath to: she never even brought it up with Cath. Cath only knew because her dad asked if she would want to as well. Then Cath felt like Wren was keeping a secret from her, and Cath is just mean to Wren for what she wants to do. This is really irritating, because Cath and Wren want to be separate people, because as twins they felt like the same person. Cath, if you want to be different, LET YOUR SISTER DO WHAT SHE WANTS.

I could go on forever about Cath, but in short: she is the most horrid, miserable bitch I've had the displeasure of reading about.

2: The fanfiction/Simon Snow excerpts

Remember how I said that Cath's fanfiction is shit? Well I know it is because there are so many excerpts of her fanfic (and also excerpts of the actual Simon Snow books and other miscellaneous things) which are usually at the end of a chapter, but are also scattered throughout the main book. My problem with these excerpts is that they're complete crap. For one, they're completely unnecessary. I don't need to read parts of Simon Snow, as I said, it's the Fangirl-verse version of HP, and pretty much everyone knows what HP is like. Why do I need to read Rowell's version of it? My other reason for hating the random excerpts is that it's so poorly written, especially Cath's fanfiction. Speaking of poorly written, that lead me to my next part.

3: The Writing

Fangirl's writing isn't good. Here are some examples of poor writing:

• "It was just Levi - leaning against the lamppost like the archetypical "man leaning against the lamppost.""
• "Baz hated to be in their room. He said it smelled like good intentions."
• "Simon twisted his lip to one side."

And now my favourite example of Rowell's incompetent writing:

"It's hard to get my head around. It's like hearing that Harry Potter is gay."

This is horrifically bad because it makes zero sense in Fangirl. Throughout the book, it's show that Simon Snow is just this world's version of Harry Potter. When actually mentioning Harry Potter it ruins everything you've set up. So what is Simon Snow then? Temu Harry Potter?

I have to wonder what Rowell was thinking with this book. I've only ever read one other book by her, Pumpkinheads, and that was below mediocre, with the only merit being a nice artstyle and setting. People will eat up any YA book, regardless of quality and Rainbow Rowell's popularity is an example of that.

So, fuck Cath and fuck this book.

Thirteen Reasons Why (Jay Asher)

So what are Hannah's reasons? Some of the things which happen to her are horrible, such as what she witnessed at that party and felt guilt over. But others are more... questionable. For example, some of these more questionable ones are:

• A boy in her class made a list of the hottest and least hottest girls in the class, done by different categories. Hannah was voted as having the "best ass."
• Someone stole compliments out of her compliment bag.

Those are naming some. Throughout the book Hannah refers to things as being a snowball which collects together and gets bigger. I get this: the small things all add up. But this is where her hypocrisy comes in. She goes on and on about how people should think about how their actions will harm others, but not once did she think about how harmful hers are. Imagine this: you were the boy who wrote the list of hottest girls, it was a joke of course. Then you end up receiving tapes from a girl in your class who killed herself. On these tapes she blames you for why she committed suicide. You'd feel horrible! Imagine being the reason for why someone took their own life! But did Hannah ever think about how others would feel? NO!

Another thing I hate: how revenge-y her death felt! The whole thing seemed like she was just trying to get back at others. With how she opens up the first tape, it feels like that. She even has a second-box of tapes to be released and aired publicly if the first set wasn't passed to all of the people she blames for her passing. With the amount of things she does and how she talks at the start of the first tape, it's like she views herself as this mastermind.

Another thing Hannah does that I fucking hate: she goes on and on about how no one bothered to look for the signs of her being suicidal. Because god forbid no one pay constant attention to everything she does. She thinks everything is all about her.

There are other things I dislike as well. The amount of times the word sliver was used and the anti-climactic part where it reveals why Clay was on the tapes. This isn't even a case of "I disliked it, but it's fine if you liked it." No. How is it possible to like this book? Hannah is horrid, the writing is mediocre and even as a mystery book it fails, with how anticlimactic the part with Clay was.

Fuck this book and fuck Hannah Baker, the little bitch.

Fruits Basket volume 1 (Natsuki Takaya)

Choujin X volume 3 (Sui Ishida)

Dragon Ball: That Time I Got Reincarnated as Yamcha! (Dragonarow Lee)

In short, this book is a lazy, boring and uninspired self-insert fanfic which was actually published. It's sad to think that this was published, if this was made then why don't I make "Mob Psycho 100: That Time I Got reincarnated as Tomie!", it'd probably be better than this.

I Am Not Starfire (Mariko Tamaki)

Nothing about this book is interesting it's 50% whining, 25% OH CLAIRE, MY CRUSH CLAIRE WHO IS SOOOO PERFECT, 20% I'm not going to college, and 5% superhero fight scene we had to add in to count this as a DC comic.

The art also sucked. I dislike criticising art, because I know how hard it is to draw and art is subjective, but the drawings in this book are just bad. It isn't nice to look at.

So is there any redeeming factors to I Am Not Starfire? No, there is almost nothing I liked about this. The only complement I have is that they didn't make a big deal out of Mandy being gay. Lincoln and Mandy were acting like they had seen two episodes of Daria and made it their whole personality. Don't bother with this comic, it's not even worth it for the laughs.

Zom 100 (vol 1) by Haro Aso

Lord of the Flies (William Golding)

The characters (using the word lightly as the characters in Lord of the Flies are more of planks of wood with personalities spray painted over them) are very 2 dimensional. Look, William Golding, if you want me to be invested in your story you need to have decent characters. This is especially true if you're writing something about how people can become barbarous in times of panic. If you want me to believe that this would happen to a person, give them more depth. Now I have said all that, let's go through some of the characters!

Ralph is the main character (I guess) and he starts off being very unlikeable, but halfway through the book the author decided to change his personality, so he's somewhat tolerable. Not much can be said about Ralph, because there isn't much to him, he just fills out the "Leader" role.

Then there's Piggy. Piggy (along with Simon) fill out the "Wise one with common sense" role. He was one of the only characters that was likeable, but that doesn't mean he's a good character. Like everyone else in this book he was boring.

Jack is more of the bad guy. Jack slowly goes insane, hahahaha I'm joking, he doesn't slowly go insane, he just does out of the blue because William Golding has no talent! Jack really likes meat, so he enjoys killing the pigs on the island, and gets upset when he can't go hunting because NO ONE IN THIS FUCKING BOOK CAN GO A DAY WITHOUT EATING MEAT I GUESS! That's what pushes this guy to insanity!

Then there's Simon. Him and Piggy were the only ones I kind of liked. Simon is the smart character and that's it to him. Not much to say besides that. The other planks of wood- no, characters, are even more boring and completely interchangeable with each other.

I believe that this book and Shakespeare's terrible works are the reason why a lot of teenagers and kids don't like reading. Being forced to read this trash and others like this and being told that they're "classics" and "amazing" must make someone hate reading as a whole. Anyway, in short, William Golding, along with being a sexual predator also has the writing skills of a ten year old.

Peach (Emma Glass)

Earthlings (Sayaka Murata)