BATB score: 7/10 💙 Alice Oseman is a hands-down writer prodigy - signing her first publishing deal at 17 for Solitaire and signing with Netflix at 26 for HeartStopper which was written at 22! That’s a lot of accomplishment at such a young age my friend. #isaluteyou Best to: digital age / modern day “The Catcher in the Rye” - the struggles of a teen figuring out the world: gender identity, friendship, parental influences, oxbridge academic success, online trolls, YouTube fame

BATB score: 6/10 💰💰💰 Historical literary art piece, written in 1925 (for sure there would be a 100th year anniversary for this book), four movie adaptions include 2013 iMDb 7.2 featuring Leonardo DiCaprio Best to: have a keen curiosity of what the hype was really about for F. Scott Fitzgerald’s book Best for: aren’t we all chasing richness and fame for someone to acknowledge and praise our golden accomplishments? aren’t the big mansion for hosting the big parties to show-o

BATB score: 8/10 🍋🍋🍋 Literary art at its best. Touching on the arrays of grief. Yet, the ending was extremely cliffhanger. Best to: read this in one sitting - each chapter is written through different literary styles from different POVs; narration, presentation, characters, dialogues, and plot at its best at the highest suspense (so much details like peeling an onion 🧅) Best for: Netflix would need to make a movie adaption of this urgently Best as: engaging crime suspense

BATB score: 4/10 🧍‍♀️🧍‍♂️🧍‍♀️🧍‍♂️ You either love Sally Rooney or you don’t. I don’t. I admire you that you wrote so many novel pieces at on 31 y/o. Yet, I just wasted my day reading this one of yours. Best to: the characters had explicitly detailed intercourse for roughly 8 times throughout the book; Sally Rooney is modern day Murakami - equally perverted in writing but respectfully more of female-POV “make love” Best for: 30+ years old love, lust, and friendship; a very

BATB score: 8/10 🧢 Modern day ‘Catcher in the Rye’ 🌟 Best as: literature art appreciation class required reading; it sure does sucks to always be compared to other people’s honorary literature Best for: literature enthusiast - an epistolary novel about the coming of age of a teen, great character build, touching the topics of friends, family, gender, intercourse, love, PTSD, and suicide in the most eloquent and serene manner Best to: watch the movie adaptation of “The Perks

BATB score: 1/10 It’s a bad mystery book about a ‘Virgin Mary birth’, a bad rom-com about 40s love, a bad and slow novel in general. Urgh meh. Best to: the book tried to link to two real life incidents -1955 virgin mother and 1957 Lewisham train crash; or were you trying to be a really bad historical book? Best as: nothing really, oh the book cover was of a nice design - wait a minute, the title has nothing to do with the book! Best for: nobody, just skip it Best quote: “Neve

BATB score: 7/10 🧧🥡🥢 Jenny Tinghui Zhang’s first debut novel 2022 - wow, not bad at all! Best as: a historical novel about a horrendous life of an immigrant in relation to Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 Best to: if you ever wondered where Asian hate all originated from; I loved the first 200 pages, I disliked pages 200-300, and I liked pages 300-400 - this book was so close to being a 9/10 Best for: novel enthusiast covering topics of illegal immigration, back alley brothel

BATB score: 5/10 💔 You either love it or you don’t. Best to: it’s a slow burn book about a powerful Catholic family in Nigeria vs the rest of the family Best for: novel appreciation Best as: the book’s content can be summarized in <5 minutes but it can be overly analyzed for hours; it’s about religion, revolution, corruption, discipline, coming of age, Nigeria, the author’s voice; I didn’t like it Best quotes: “We did that often, asking each other questions whose answers we

BATB score: 10/10 🌷 Wow. What a classic! Definitely Amy Tan’s literary masterpiece 🌟🤩💫 Best to: prepare pen and paper to map out which grandmother, mother, daughter are related and what tragedy happened to who resulting with what in which chronological order 4 grandmothers, 4 mothers, 4 daughters, 2 granddaughters and many men in between Best as: a reminder of how we can not walk in anybody else’s shoes 👠, how each generation has their own challenges, and why miscommunic

BATB score: 8/10 👩‍❤️‍👨 likeas 9 mini-episodes of Love, Sex, and Robots on Netflix but more like 9 short novels of Love, Marriage, and Life Best to: know that the book title is an extremely poor indicator of what the book is really about; the book encompass 9 types of mature marriages and ties each of the 9 stories to Calcutta India 🇮🇳 Best as: a nice literary take on arranged marriage, affairs, divorces, lust, and falling out of love; and ending every piece on a cliffhan

BATB score: 8/10 🍋 As the media only covers the political parties and the hard facts, it reduces - the casualties, the victims, the orphans, the displaced - to mere numbers. Some time we forgot that they are people. Best as: this book is a chance for Syrians to have their stories told about longing to the life before, belonging to Syria amidst war, and hope for the future of Syria. Best to: Syrian civil war from March 2011 to present. we will never fully know the true effect

BATB score: 2/10 🙈 It’s like Murakami is trying to cash out the very last few squeezes of his writing career. And what does this book title even mean?!? Best as: a buy-bait for Murakami readers; a collection piece and evidence for you to rightfully claim that you have read most of Murakami’s works; 2020s Murakami work that demonstrates how he no longer is the hyped author Best to: okay one thing that is interesting is I never thought that Murakami would be able to write shor

BATB score: 6/10 okay but not wow 🙄 a collection of 9 sci-fi futuristic short stories covering time travel, metaverse, global warming, digital twin, god, and prism everything everywhere all at once Best to: check out “AI 2041: Ten Visions for Our Future” by Chen Qiufan and Kai-Fu Lee a BATB 10/10 instead Best as: other than the first and last story that was good, the rest of the stories were very meh; the plot, the twist, the dystopia concept, the sci-fi imagination, the cha

BATB score: 4/10 👾 not a page turner Best for: honestly, good effort to write a novel about a parallel universe of game lovers, game players, and game makers Best to: the problem I have is the fact that there is so climax / highlight to this novel - like seriously, what was significant? It just went on and on, game after game after game. Or maybe ‘life’ is that way? Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow? With nothing significant, just day after day? Best as: if you are a critic

BATB score: 7/10 🧐 hmm, interesting classic indeed 💯 Best to: written way back in 1926 (almost 100 years ago!) covering personal financial advices (disguised in easy-to-digest parables) that are still relevant and valid today Best for: the “thy, thee, speaketh, wisheth, hath, doth, herein, lieth” took a bit of time to adjust but is manageable; it’s about savings, passive income, repaying debts like any noble man should, retirement funds, hire a financial advisor, and when t

BATB score: 1/10 🔪 🩸 💀 “Everyone In My Family Has Killed Someone” and I will be that Someone who will kill Benjamin Stevenson for all the time I’ve wasted trying to give this book a chance; I can not read another page more Best as: if you can’t captivate the readers within the first 100 pages of your book, I don’t think it’s a good book Best to: burn it; in all due respect, trying to read this book can actually make you hate reading as a hobby Best for: no one - just look

BATB score: 3/10 🐋 Best to: a PG13 introduction to the impact of global warming on nature’s marine life ; a reminder on how nature heals souls BATB lingering thought: I love the book’s cover, it’s sho prettay; and whales are sho elegantly beautiful 🐋 Best as: a children’s book but the child/parent must have the patience to read 300 pages est. 2 hours to complete the narrative Best for: if Mother Nature could talk, this book is her cry for help 🥹💔 Best quote: “Dear ocean f

BATB score: 6/10 ⚗️⚛️🧪 *reader discretion advised* maybe BATB really doesn’t like novels Best for: you must like novels esp long and slow novels; I believe there were 20+ micro-incidences Best to: well, the book talks about the struggle of being a smart and aspirational female scientist vs societal expectations and gender discrimination back in the 1950s (which most of it is still true today) BATB linger thought: throughout reading this book, I just wanted the book to end. I

BATB score: 10/10 🥹 wow, Mitch Albom, you did it again! 👏 Best to: wow what a story, a little bit of fiction, a lot of non-fiction, written gracefully, emotionally narrated, engaging storytelling structure, happy closure ending, oh so beautiful 🫠 Best as: “It was a time in human history where the world was cleaved in two, those doing nothing about the horror and those trying to stop it. A world of light and dark.” and unfortunately, this is what is happening today in Gaza

BATB score: 7/10 💛 Oprah's Book Club July 2023 pick - love the start, meh the middle, okay with the ending Best as: a sneak peak into the life of an author in the publishing industry battling conversations on truthful representation, cultural appropriation, plagiarism, fan clubs and hateful comments, sales/PR, and how far one will go for success (and then the next success) Best to: ethical dilemma lovers; how far is taking it too far? Best for: very relatable novel esp love