Lnz Was Here

Red River by Chie Shinohara Overall Series Rating: ✰ Art: 3.5 Stars ✰ Story: 3 Stars Series Review: Red River's art is gorgeous and impressively consistent throughout all 28 volumes, but it has a distinctive 1980s–90s style. It is not my personal aesthetic preference, so I did not vibe with it, but I can objectively appreciate how well done it is. As far as the story is concerned, it is middling at best. I was almost desperate for it to be over by the time I got to the final volumes. The plot is redundant and unnecessarily drawn out into cyclic, mawkish events. Even when the pasts and motivations of the main antagonists come to light, their actions throughout the series still seem nonsensical. What I do love about Red River is its setting, historical details, and characters. Each of these elements is much stronger than the plot as a whole. I believe this is the only historical fiction I have read set so far back into the past. I love the historical facts sprinkled throughout th

New Moon by Stephenie Meyer My rating: 3 of 5 stars Raise your hand if you've ever been a silly teenage girl who felt personally victimized by Edward leaving Bella. 🖐️ Story Rating: 3 out of 5 Stars Audiobook (Narrated by Ilyana Kadushin) Performance Rating: 5 out of 5 Stars ❧ View all my Goodreads "reviews."

Midnight Sun by Stephenie Meyer My rating: 4 of 5 stars "This book is dedicated to all the readers who have been such a happy part of my life for the last fifteen years. When we first met, many of you were young teenagers with bright, beautiful eyes full of dreams for the future. I hope that in the years that have passed, you've all found your dreams and that the reality of them was even better than you'd hoped." –Stephenie Meyer ⬆ I feel exclusively targeted by this dedication. It made me cry the first time I read it back in 2020, and I teared up again during this read-trhough. And speaking of teenagers, this book makes it abundantly clear that the downside to being an immortal 17-year-old is an eternity of redundant overthinking and teen angst. Because I am pretty sure at least a quarter of this 658-page/25.82-hour book is Edward having the exact same mental dilemmas and defeatist thoughts over and over and over and over again. ("Is this The Big Thing t

Disenchanted directed by Adam Shankman My rating: 2 of 5 stars Making fun of this with my brother was the only thing that made it bearable. ❧ View all my Letterboxd "reviews."

Nothing But Blackened Teeth by Cassandra Khaw My rating: 2 of 5 stars I did not like this. Thankfully, it is a mercifully short novella, but I disliked it so much, it took me way too long to finish it. The one pro was the Japanese folklore—always guaranteed to please Certified Weeb Trash like me. Everything else was terrible. I suppose the characters were designed to be the most horrifying thing about the book. But it makes the book pointless and irredeemable. It is as if the author took note of the fact that a good story has dramatically flawed characters and responded with, "Well if I make everyone completely insufferable, that MUST make it the best thing ever written." Not. It is like five people who seem to hate each other come together randomly—under the guise of supposed history and improbable friendship—to see who can best play the role of human garbage. I felt no sympathy for a single one of them—including the annoyingly judgemental narrator. ❧ View all my Goodrea

Carrie by Stephen King My rating: 4 of 5 stars Which of us hasn't had the secret, sinful urge to take out all our enemies in a fit of telekinetic rage, amiright ? Also, periods s*ck. 🐷 ❧ View all my Goodreads "reviews."

Barbarian directed by Zach Cregger My rating: 4 of 5 stars So unexpected! So good! ❧ View all my Letterboxd "reviews."

Twilight by Stephenie Meyer My rating: 4 of 5 stars Imagine, if you will, the epitome of an angsty teenage girl. She lived in an uneventful, small, rural town. She held the age-old belief that she was a uniquely misunderstood individual. In actuality, she was a goody-two-shoes daydreamer with a fear of authority. Her extreme idea of Teen Rebellion™ was painting her nails black, being constantly morose, and giving unnecessary, unsolicited Hot Takes™ about every single topic that might have come up in conversation. If she had been honest with herself, she could have admitted that she was a privileged, boring, white girl whose greatest life trauma was the onset of puberty. Her biggest problems were gym class and the world moving around her much faster than her desire to grow up. Sure, these problems do not seem like that big of a deal, but for a middle school girl, every small issue has the tendency to become a major calamity. And similarly, every interest has the tendency to become

Carrie directed by Brian De Palma My rating: 4 of 5 stars I am grossed out by the gratuitous nudity in the opening scene. Even if the actresses aren't actually underage, they're supposed to be playing high school girls. And I'm not saying there shouldn't be nudity or that it doesn't tie in well with the Biblical themes of the story. All I'm saying is that only hetero males would imagine girls' locker rooms to be as explicit as that. In my own experience, even the chicks with hawtest bods™ just want to get the whole ordeal over with as soon as possible and get to the next class. High school locker rooms are not Girls Gone Wild, okay? Locker room scene aside, I do like Carrie , and it holds a special, nostalgic place in my heart. My mom loves it and randomly chants "Plug it up! Plug it up! Plug it up!" all the time. Also, my mom graduated from high school in 1976, and there's a weird part of me that likes to pretend this was her senior pro

What Are We Doing Here? by Marilynne Robinson My rating: 4 of 5 stars I don't think there is any type of book I progress through more slowly than a compilation of essays and lectures. This one took me almost an entire year. That being said, I think books like this always contain the most important and pertinent things I have ever read. These topics are raw, relevant, and real—which might explain why they're so much more difficult for me to get through than a good bout of fiction. "I talked once with a cabdriver who had spent years in prison. He said he had no idea that the world was something he could be interested in. And then he read a book. In the history of the West, for all its achievements, there is also a persisting impatience with the energy and originality of the mind. It can make us very poor servants of purposes that are not our own." Whilst reading this book, I felt myself relating to this cabdriver from one of this book's earlier essays and repenti