Reviews and Comments

nerd teacher [books]

whatanerd@bookwyrm.social

Joined 4 years, 4 months ago

Exhausted anarchist and school abolitionist who can be found at nerdteacher.com where I muse about school and education-related things, and all my links are here. My non-book posts are mostly at @whatanerd@treehouse.systems, occasionally I hide on @whatanerd@eldritch.cafe, or you can email me at n@nerdteacher.com. [they/them]

I was a secondary literature and humanities teacher who has swapped to being a tutor, so it's best to expect a ridiculously huge range of books.

And yes, I do spend a lot of time making sure book entries are as complete as I can make them. Please send help.

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Murder on the Ballarat Train (2013, C & R Press) 3 stars

When the roaring 1920s' most glamorous lady detective, the Honourable Miss Phryne Fisher, arranges to …

Hard Not to Compare

3 stars

Content warning Some spoilers for the story, mentions of childhood death and adoption.

Murder on the Ballarat Train (2013, C & R Press) 3 stars

When the roaring 1920s' most glamorous lady detective, the Honourable Miss Phryne Fisher, arranges to …

One of the things I'm noticing as differences between the books and the TV series is the number of women. WPC Jones features in at least two books, and she's removed entirely from the show; Mrs Butler comes with Mr Butler as a set in the books, but she's written out of the show. Sasha's sister (in the first book) is written out and collapsed into being their dead mother (so the mother's story is kept but it's his sister instead).

That latter one, with the sister, is peculiar because it actually includes a queer-ish storyline that is more interesting! Even if Phryne is still very straight in preference of Sasha, there is no admonishment of his sister being interested in Phryne (and even Phryne admitting that she's quite an attractive woman)... Which is still awkwardly refreshing because most books do this weird heavy-handed thing around someone being interested rather …

Flying Too High (2013, Constable & Robinson) 3 stars

Walking the wings of a Tiger Moth plane in full flight would be more than …

Enjoyable Story but Not Without Some Issues

3 stars

Content warning Mentions of a child abuse and CSA; discussion of racism present. Also spoilers for the story.

Too Much Glue (Hardcover, Flashlight Press) 2 stars

Extremely Awkward

2 stars

This is probably not a good book for anyone who struggles with any form of second-hand embarrassment, regardless of age. It's also the kind of book that I think simultaneously has a lesson I enjoy (encouraging children to engage in creativity) but also a lesson that I find frustrating (using all of something that others might want to use in their own creativity and also causing a range of inconveniences for others). The latter lesson is, admittedly, not the focus, but it is something that I know reading it with kids would often prompt them to respond to it over the encouragement for being creative.

I think it's also worth recognising that these kinds of stories usually feature boys taking the protagonist role and behaving in what appears to be reckless manners (and being praised for it), while girls and women typically are shown to be looking on in degrees …

Waiting 3 stars

Five friends sit happily on a windowsill, waiting for something amazing to happen. The owl …

Cute and Slow

3 stars

Something that I think is underappreciated in children's books is slowness. Not a sort of slowness to cause boredom but a kind of slowness that allows for pause and to engage in what's on the page. This book provides that, especially as the story is really just about some toys who are always 'waiting' for something and enjoying the company of those around them.

Miss Phryne Fisher Investigates (2013, Constable and Robinson) 4 stars

First in a series of delightful and adventurous cosy crime tales featuring the glamorous and …

Even Knowing the Story, It's Still a Good Time

4 stars

I already quite enjoyed the show Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries, so when I started seeing some of the books that it was based on being sold in the secondhand shop, I had to get them and see how different they are.

In terms of differences, while I understand why certain changes were made within the TV adaptation, I absolutely loved how certain characters were presented within the book over their show counterparts. I really like both presentations, but the book actually lets us get to know Mac a lot more (and she was always one of my favourite side characters in the show). I also feel like, while the show isn't totally disrespectful to them (other than the understandable antagonism between the police and the communists), Bert and Cec's role in the book is more clear and they don't get sidelined nearly as much.

Something I really like in …

A Dog with Nice Ears (2018, Hachette Children's Group) 3 stars

At the moment, all Lola can talk about is dogs. She says she would like …

A Good Concept

3 stars

I like the idea of a child who, though their parents won't let them have a dog, is able to be a bit resilient about not getting the kind of pet they wanted but is able to still get a pet. In this case, Lola wants a dog but ends up with a rabbit. Though she knows it's a rabbit, she does imaginatively console herself by saying that it is a 'kind' of dog. She's not really upset about it, and she does like the rabbit; this makes sense because she's effectively been describing a rabbit throughout the whole book despite "wanting a dog."

It's a bit silly, but it's still sweet in its own way.

Battle Bunny (2013, Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers) 1 star

Alex, whose birthday it is, hijacks a story about Birthday Bunny on his special day …

Not Something I'd Recommend

1 star

The concept of this book is at least interesting (a boy whose birthday it is 'hijacks' a story about a birthday bunny, changing it to a story of a battle bunny), but that's about it.

In terms of legibility, this book is way too hard to follow. Because it's written with scratching out lines (and still seeing them), it makes it very distracting and hard to know where you're supposed to look. The whole book is written in the style of a kid writing on top of an already published children's story. That's kind of cool, but the messiness makes it confusing; as an adult with dyslexia, I occasionally got lost figuring out which line to focus on. I can only imagine how a child with a reading disorder (or even a new reader) might get confused. (I do like the style, but I think it needs to be revamped …

The BBC (Hardcover, 2016, Verso) No rating

The amount of people whose careers have weaved between MI5, MI6, GCHQ, the propaganda units, BBC Monitoring, the BBC Board, and the military is...

It's fucking astounding, honestly. It's not surprising, but the fact that the BBC has managed to be so trusted (until recently) across the globe and has achieved such success as British soft power (and this is knowingly part of the strategy they employ)... Is just amazing.

Miss Phryne Fisher Investigates (2013, Constable and Robinson) 4 stars

First in a series of delightful and adventurous cosy crime tales featuring the glamorous and …

There are some aspects of the book that I like more than the TV show (such as Dot's personality and how she was found by Phryne and also how much more of Mac we get and that Mac is actually a bigger part of the story).

I like both, but I can definitely see some strengths here that went amiss in the show (but I can also see some of the strengths the show has over the book, too).

As Red As Blood (2014, Hot Key Books) 3 stars

Seventeen-year-old Lumikki Andersson is hardly your average teenager. She lives by herself in the city …

Not What I Expected

3 stars

I am going to preface this with a few things: I'm not a fan of the weird pro-police and pro-justice sentiment toward the end (particularly with the inclusion of a dirty cop as one of the antagonists); I feel like the stance on drugs is a bit archaic and fails to really reckon with something one of the characters mentions (recreation vs. addiction, among other aspects like how some people will prey on the poor); and I sort of have this mixed feeling on the presentation of the teenagers in the story (for the record, I know it's not super uncommon for teenagers to live alone and near their schools, especially for those who are older and have to travel long distances; it's more just... their behaviour in this situation because it felt like they didn't need to be teenagers).

That said, I don't think it's bad. I think there …

The Labyrinth House Murders (2024, Pushkin Press, Limited) 4 stars

Definitely a Good Story, but...

4 stars

Content warning I have to spoil it to talk about the aspect that annoys me.

The Tumbling Girl (Paperback, Pushkin Vertigo) 5 stars

1876, Victorian London.

The feisty Minnie Ward is scraping a living as a scriptwriter for …

Absolutely Enjoyable

5 stars

It's been a while since I really found a book that I just gelled with. Like, really gelled with because of its sense of humour (when it's called for), structure, style, and characters. It's also a bit more distant from the police (though they still exist), including some actual critique of the police and how connections corrupt. It's still pretty minimal, but it's so much nicer in that regard than a lot of other mystery/detective fiction where they highlight how police do so little and then are promptly running to the cops to fix things, while this is more of a tenuous situation of people both using the tools they have (individual cops) and recognising that the whole thing sucks.

Again, it's not full-on anti-police, but it at least recognises aspects that other detective fiction often glosses over... And I appreciate that.

It also indicated that there'd be a romance …

Orientalism (Penguin Modern Classics) (2003, Penguin Books Ltd) 3 stars

Orientalism is a 1978 book by Edward W. Said, in which the author discusses Orientalism, …

There are two things that I'm not liking about this book.

First, I hate how many clauses within clauses Said uses. It makes it really hard to follow a sentence and understand what it's trying to say, which is already difficult as a dyslexic reader. For him being the "accessible" option to learning about Orientalism, it makes me wonder how inaccessible other works are seen to be. Even upon re-reading sentences, I often find myself lost in trying to figure out what is even meant by it. This is more than likely a me-thing, but it's just frustrating (and this is coming from someone who often gets accused of not being straightforward enough in English and using clauses within clauses).

Second, there is a ridiculous amount of untranslated text. For a book written in English, I never thought I'd need to be proficient in either German (which I'm okay with) …

Orientalism (Penguin Modern Classics) (2003, Penguin Books Ltd) 3 stars

Orientalism is a 1978 book by Edward W. Said, in which the author discusses Orientalism, …

There are two things that I'm not liking about this book, though one is something that I can find roughly forgivable even if it's infuriating.

First, I hate how many clauses within clauses Said uses. It makes it really hard to follow a sentence and understand what it's trying to say, which is already difficult as a dyslexic user. For him being the "accessible" option to learning about Orientalism, it makes me wonder how inaccessible other works seen to be. Even upon re-reading sentences, I often find myself lost in trying to figure out what is even meant by it. This is more than likely a me-thing, but it's just frustrating (and this is coming from someone who often gets accused of not being straightforward enough in English and using clauses within clauses).

Second, there is a ridiculous amount of untranslated text. For a book written in English, I never …