Personal Rating: 3.5 Stars Goodreads Rating at time of review: 3.73 stars Content Rating: PG-13 Trigger Warnings: Cancer, family deaths The postman’s days are numbered. Estranged from his family, living alone with only his cat Cabbage to keep him company, he was unprepared for the doctor’s diagnosis that he has only months to live. But before he can tackle his bucket list, the Devil appears to make him an offer: In exchange for making one thing in the world disappear, our narrator will get one extra day of life. And so begins a very bizarre week… With each object that disappears the postman reflects on the life he’s lived, his joys and regrets, and the people he’s loved and lost. (goodreads.com) Now, you’re probably looking at the cover of this book and thinking “Corrie, why in the world would you pick up a book with such a depressing title?!” And when I first saw this title, I was also astounded by the very notion that anyone would even dare to think of removing cats from this world. I mean, can you imagine a world without cats? What would become of the internet?! It is unthinkable! But you have to admit that the synopsis of this book is intriguing. Even so, I mostly picked up this book because the library I work at is doing it for a book club and my coworker asked me if I would participate in the podcast discussion for If Cats Disappeared from the World. I won’t be posting this review until after we’ve done the podcast so that I can link it down below if anyone is interested in listening. But I wanted to write my personal review for it before the discussion so that I can get down all of my own thoughts fresh from reading the book. This is not usually the kind of book I would read. Deals with el diablo? No thank you. I am a Christian and that sort of thing really doesn’t appeal to me. I don’t know if it’s because of how I was raised or just common sense, but I’ve never understood why fictional characters agree to anything the devil offers. I mean, c’mon guys, he’s literally called the ruler of darkness, the evil one, the tempter, the slanderer, destruction, the ruler of the bottomless pit, etc. Does that sound like someone who is going to offer you a deal where you come out on top? Ever? No! In media, whenever characters make a deal with the devil, something bad always happens to them and they generally regret their decision. So it is hard for me to want to read something where characters are making arrangements with Satan because it always leaves me with the feeling of “you brought this on yourself, dude, this could have easily been avoided”. This book was a bit different though. The character of the devil, who the narrator calls Aloha because he’s always wearing Hawaiian tourist shirts, presents the situation to the narrator as something that is “God-approved”. He claims that the humans have made too much junk and that God has given His approval for Aloha to offer this deal with humans where they can gain an extra day of life in exchange for getting rid of one thing across the whole earth. The idea of this situation having God’s stamp of approval is completely ludicrous, but it did make me remember that, hey, I’m reading a fictional novel, that means that the relationship between God, Satan, and humans is going to be fictionalized too. So, once I put that behind me and stopped trying to consider this book with the eyes of a theologian, I was able to get into it a bit better. Now, if you go into this expecting an interesting sci-fi/fantasy exploration of “what things can I get rid of before it seriously starts to affect quality of life for everyone?” that is not what this is. Going into this book, I was under the impression that the narrator would get to choose each thing that disappears from the earth. I assumed the title was his last resort after having gotten rid of nearly everything else in the world. I was expecting the Twilight Zone level of plot. I kept trying to think of things that you could get rid of without hurting too many people or anyone (if you were curious, my mind decided I would start with super specific things that are pretty much useless, like hamburger shaped Christmas tree ornaments or already buried traditionally embalmed corpses or the top button on polo shirts or stickers featuring Nicholas Cage). However, this book isn’t really a sci-fi novel. Instead of the narrator getting to choose what vanishes, the devil gets to decide. And instead random useless items, they are all things that link the narrator to his loved ones and his personal experiences in life. An item disappears in each chapter and in each chapter the narrator explores his memories and emotions regarding that item. For example, the first thing to vanish was the phone. And the book doesn’t get into the nitty gritty of how exactly this works or how the world at large is affected or if other people even realize that phones have vanished (the narrator comes to the conclusion that no one else really remembers the things, but it isn’t really delved into). Instead the story focuses on how the narrator used to use phones to communicate with the girl he was dating several years previous and how his relationship with that girl changed him and shaped him. And that is the way with all of the items that vanish. Objectively, I know this was a really good and thought provoking book. It uses the fantastical to convey real feelings and emotions. It is sad because of the themes regarding death, but joyful because of the life that was lived and the lessons learned along the way. It is peacefully mundane, while also being gripping with wondering what the next loss will reveal about the narrator and the human experience. It’s a lovely work of literary fiction. That being said… I’m really more of a sci-fi girl myself. I could not stop thinking about the havoc that losing these things would wreak upon the rest of the humans on the planet. And I know that was not the point. The point was much deeper than that, but you can’t put a book like this in front of me and expect me not to think about all of the people who no longer have phones and the absolute chaos that would cause. I spent the whole time thinking about how people would no longer be able to communicate with loved ones or make emergency calls. Like, I get the point that the narrator’s cell phone was distracting him from his life and creating a barrier between himself and real people and if there was a “moral of the story” it would be about ignoring the set in stone norm with our focus on structure and organization. But also… people in this day and age need phones. They are very important devices that can save lives. And I don’t think the book was even trying to put out a “boomer” message of “technology bad!”, I think it genuinely had something important to say. However, I could not personally take away as much as I should have from the book because my brain was focused on the repercussions for the entire earth and not the individual. I guess, I’m trying to say that, maybe if you go into this book knowing that you aren’t supposed to read it with the eyes of a sci-fi reader, you should read it with the eyes and heart of a poet, then maybe you will get more out of it than I did. And maybe someday I will try to re-read it in that way. Podcast recording: Click on the green button below to listen to the podcast (Last Tuesday of the Month Book Club). Listening to it myself, a few weeks after recording it, I just want to apologize to my coworker and to anyone else who listens to it for all of the times I used the word “like”. In my defense, I was very nervous. If you do decide to listen to it, I hope you enjoy my senseless rambling and Amy’s very professional and engaging thoughts! Thanks for reading and/or listening! I’m off to give my beloved cat some more cuddles. Image source: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/37901571-if-cats-disappeared-from-the-world
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Personal Rating: 2 stars Goodreads rating at time of review: 3.62 stars Content Rating: R (for violence, sex, abuse, and language) TW: Domestic abuse, animal abuse, rape, addiction, mental health, violence, stalking, and probably some other things I’m forgetting. In the late seventeenth century, famed teenage pirate Emer Morrisey was on the cusp of escaping the pirate life with her one true love and unfathomable riches when she was slain and cursed with "the dust of one hundred dogs," dooming her to one hundred lives as a dog before returning to a human body-with her memories intact. Now she's a contemporary American teenager and all she needs to escape her no-good family and establish a luxurious life of her own is a shovel and a ride to Jamaica… (goodreads.com) Believe it or not, this is actually a book my cat selected for me to read. I saw a person on TikTok do a video where they put some books they wanted to read in a circle and then put their pet snake in the middle of the circle to see which book the snake wanted them to read next. I decided to copy this with my cat Elinor in the TikTok you can find here. Now you’re probably looking at this video and then looking at my rating of this book and thinking “sheesh, your cat is terrible at picking out books”. And… well, you may be right, but how can we know for sure unless she picks more? This was only her first try. Besides, I think Elinor picked out this book because it’s been on my TBR for quite some time and she sensed it was not good, but knew I wouldn’t ever get rid of it without reading it. So she prompted me to read it so I could see that it was bad and then pass it on to someone else out in the world. At least, that’s the theory I’m going with. Anyway! Moving on. I thought this book was going to be great or at least decent because the premise sounded so interesting and I love a good pirate story. I also thought it was going to be a book for teens, and while it is tagged as being YA/Teen on Goodreads, I definitely felt that it was more for adults. Putting this book in YA feels similar to putting the A Court of Thorns and Roses series by Sarah J. Maas in YA. Like yeah, okay, I guess it could technically be for “young adults” but young adults and teens are lumped together and you have to remember that “teen” starts at 13. And younger kids than that browse the teen section. I’m just saying. I feel like that’s my biggest bone to pick with this book. If it had been presented as an adult book then I would have been less shocked at the mature content. Well, probably not because you know at heart I’m secretly an old, eternally scandalized church lady clutching her pearls. But I at least would have had an inkling! Apart from all of the dark and troublesome themes in this book, the plot was actually pretty interesting. (If it hadn’t been, I wouldn’t have finished it and this review wouldn’t exist.) The story is broken down into chapters of Saffron Adams in the 1980s and 90s, backstory for Emer Morrisey from the late 1600s, and sections that are one part dog training advice and one part more back story. Saffron Adams is the human reincarnation of Emer Morrisey, a pirate who was cursed to live many lives as dogs before turning back into a human. She also retains all of Emer’s memories, including the memory of where she buried her treasure and of all the time she spent as dogs. As far as characters go: they were okay. Most of them were horrible people, but the only one we get much development for is Emer/Saffron. She was a decent main character. She went through a lot of terrible stuff and changed a lot from the beginning of the book to the end. One thing I couldn’t stand about her was how she was such a I’m-not-like-other-girls-girl and how little she cared for other women when she was a pirate and when she was a highschooler. Like, I get the book was published in 2009 when that was the thing, but it really is so irksome. I did wish there were more piratical adventures. The chapters that took place in the 1600s were really just backstory for how Emer became a pirate until the book gets to chapter 20 or so, which is pretty late in the book. And after that, there were plenty of pirate shenanigans from Emer, but they were told in broad strokes, just giving the reader an overview of the things she did. I had hoped that Saffron would also get up to pirate business, but her chapters were mainly about her time spent with her struggling family. She mainly dealt with her mother’s high expectations for her and her brother’s drug addiction until she graduated high school and was free to go look for treasure, which was, again, late in the book. Still, there was enough going on and enough intrigue that it kept me interested. I feel like the pace really began to pick up after the halfway point and from there on out it was pretty exciting. However, despite the attention keeping writing and the plot, if I had known about all of the rape, addiction, and abuse that were going to be in this book, I probably would have never read it and I do not recommend it. I’m going to do a spoiler section/rant below, so feel free to keep reading if you don’t care about spoilers. Otherwise, thanks for stopping by, best of luck in all of your treasure hunting adventures. Image source: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/33931132-the-dust-of-100-dogs |
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