R. O. Kwon

So much I didn't like about the book--the preciousness toward Phoebe, her piano playing (and many other elements) as a device more than anything else, a story set at college with almost no academics, the writing getting a little self-conscious at times. BUT sometimes the language was just beautiful, and the central questions about faith are dealt with in a way I have rarely seen. I like the ambiguity of what Leal is doing and how--that Will almost gets sucked in but doesn't while Phoebe does. I appreciate the level of difficulty Kwon goes for here, as well as her portrayal of multiple Korean Americans.… (meer)

Tedious. Almost all of the characters in this anthology are miserable or unlikable, which really only serves to give kink a bad name.

Suffers from the same self-aggrandising introspective misery-porn levels of wank that a lot of ‘erotic literature’ does. But with the added bonus of outright rape scenes (no, not ‘consensual non consent’ or ‘dubious consent’ we’re talking grimdark torture and rape followed by crying and trauma. Happy kink anthology!)

You’ll get more thoughtful kink on AO3 for free. It’s almost like most of the authors took this as a challenge to misrepresent the subject and write a world where most people don’t enjoy kink, or may even be rapists if they do. Wouldn’t recommend this to a single person in the scene. Or anyone else for that matter.… (meer)

Having sex with someone who does not want to have sex with you at that moment, regardless of how many times they've wanted to have sex with you in the past, is NOT OKAY.
Very amazed at how that was just glossed over.

I think this was trying to be literary and I only like literary things when they're literary because they're just darn gorgeous. I could feel the trying here. I likely would not have finished this if it hadn't been the only physical book I had with me at an outdoor concert. Like okay, having no quotation marks can be a really intriguing literary device, but in this it was just really gosh darn annoying.

Also, someone asked me what I was reading and thought this was David Foster Wallace. Am amused.… (meer)