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 ⚗️⚛️🧪 *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: 10/10 🤯 *reader discretion advised* BATB does not like fiction and rarely rate the work of fiction fairly but wow oh wow boy oh boy goodie 💙 Best as: a page turner thriller, suspense, cringey, twisties and turns book 🔑 Best to: oh thank god that it does not end on a cliffhanger but is complete on it’s own - good night 💤 sweet dreams Best for: who is Freida McFadden? why have I not heard of you? where have I been? BATB lingering thought: Freida McFadden has wri

BATB Score: 6/10 🫥 Freida McFadden, girl, this one.. wasn’t great - but but, I still believe in you and will continue to read your other older pieces! Best as: it is never easy to nail a trilogy and this volume iii wasn’t giving Best to: if you have never read any of Freida McFadden’s work and if you are going to only read one and one only, please read “Never Lie” 💯 Best for: well, if you have read volume i and ii, you might as well finish volume iii and have some closure i

BATB score: 3/10 🫥 Best as: okay. I am done with Matt Haig fiction. Best to: good storyline about a alien on a mission on earth; earth’s stranger’s point of view of humans; yet, very wordy and slow narration Best for: the chapter “Advice for a Human” concluding 97 advices for humans was sweet Best quotes: “Make sure, as often as possible, you are doing something you’d be happy to die doing.” “Dark matter is needed to hold galaxies together. Your mind is a galaxy. More dark t

BATB Score: 10/10 👏 Freida McFadden, girlfriend, you did it again! Best as: wow what a come back International Thriller Writers Award; book published Oct 2024, ending on a high note 🎵 that perfectly concludes 2024 👏 Best to: know that Freida McFadden is a pen name; the real author is a physician specializing in brain injury; this serial murder mystery with all the details of the human anatomy is truly juicy Best for: if you are in to fiction, thriller, psychopaths, murders

BATB score: 6/10 👩‍⚕️ 🩸 Freida McFadden, girlfriend, this book wasn’t it Best to: a re-edit of her book Suicide Med 2014 with 20% plot optimizations and cutdowns; Dead Med 2024 was still 450+ pages long and was sorta kinda almost but not a hit Best for: if you haven’t read anything Frieda McFadden, check out The Housemaid, The Boyfriend, or Never Lie first and foremost Best as: oiii so many characters and intertwined stories, readers must try to keep up BATB lingering thoug

BATB score: 3/10 📝 *reader discretion advised* BATB doesn’t think BATB has enough patience for Japanese authors - may we never meet again Best to: seriously 20+ pages just for the stationary shop owner to greet the first arriving customer hello 🫠 Best as: introduction to a stationary store: the pen, the different pens, the paper, the different paper, the ink, the seal 🖋️🔖💌 Best for: heartfelt short stories they say, heart burn slowest burn short but long stories I say

BATB score: 5/10 😴 I am too young to be part of Oprah’s Book Club; took me a year to finish this slow burn book 🫠 Best as: was curious to know what kind of book makes it into Oprah’s Book Club 2023 Best to: ahh… long novels, slow narrations, a lot of character build up, sisterhood, family dynamics, inter-generations relationships, death of family members Best for: 50+ years old, early retired, slow and mellow lifestyle, read on the backyard patio, hard cover, hot tea, autum

BATB Score: 8.5/10 🤯 BATB wanted to know what kind of masterpiece writing does it take to win 2024 Nobel Prize in Literature (also congratulations Han Kang well-deserved 👏 ) Best to: eloquence in narration - word choice, sentence structure, convey character emotions, graphic narration, oddest plot, open-ended confusing ending Best as: imagine being award with the utmost prize of 2024 for something you wrote in 2007, which was only translated in 2015, to someone like me just

BATB score: 7/10 👠 okay but not wow Best for: McFans - Freida McFadden’s fan club to might as well read everything that she has ever written (all 27 books and counting) because why not 🤷‍♀️ Best as: a blueprint on plotting against your coworker; I never liked my coworkers anyways - office bullying is a real deal Beat to: okay, I hate some of my coworkers and do wish them the very worst Best quote: “never give other people the satisfaction of seeing you cry.”

BATB score: 9/10 ❤️ page-turner, unable to put down, impossible to predict what’s next, full of surprises and suspense, a plot twist with every chapter, bravo read Best to: ahh, so this kind of book gets selected by Netflix; a novel written by John Marrs, adapted into a Netflix Series in 2021; IMDb 6.6/10 British science fiction television series Best as: how far does one go to find the one? and when you are told he/she is the one for you (scientifically proven) would we forc

BATB score: 6/10 🫠 Best as: a very long suspense, thriller, murder, crime scene investigation novel; with all those pages and words yet character love wasn’t established #bummer Best to: great interesting and rewarding ending just took a long time to get there; like how there’s a direct route but you took the scenic route which wasn’t that scenic anyways Best for: retired avid readers with a lot of time on your hands and enjoys the reading journey not necessarily the end; ho

BATB score: 7/10 🔥📚👨‍🚒 true classic piece of art, an oldie from 1953 Best to: dystopia novel - if books are illegal and if conformity without question is the norm; where firemen burn books and everyone has ADHD and is dumb Best as: a political book - censorship, no freedom for imagination, government brutal crackdowns, witch-hunt of intellectual outliers, mass tabloid groupthink Best for: 72 years later, BATB 2025 has just came across this book?! BATB lingering thought: h

BATB score: 6/10 🥴 *reader discretion advised* side back story, after watching “Poor Things” the movie featuring Emma Stone IMDb 8.3, BATB wants to understand what kind of novel [1992] gets selected for film-adaption [2023] Best as: oh shit, the original novel by Alasdair Gray vs the academy award film by Yorgos Lanthimos is two different individually unique masterpiece 👀 Best to: the novel structure is split based on the characters point of view, written in a memoir first-

BATB score: 8/10 😎 *feel good vibes* Best as: a novella about soulmates finding each other after generations of rebirths Best to: a casual read, best read under the palm trees 🌴 on a beach 🏖️ with an aperol spritz 🍹 Best for: anyone on holiday on italian amalfi beaches Best quote: “It’s life that is impermanent, not love.”

BATB score: 6/10 🙃 Best to: a pastime read to accompany your slow life upon retirement BATB lingering thought: maybe we leave the long novels for later Best as: oldest / original daughter dilemma, mother’s disappointment in daughter, sisters passive aggressive rivalry, so who takes care of mother when she’s on her deathbed? Best for: only if you are an oldest daughter in an asian family Best quotes: “There was considerable freedom to be had in knowing and accepting that I wa

BATB score: 8/10 Best as: a short bedtime story but thriller Freida McFadden signature epilogue twist Best to: 60-minutes quick casual fun read to give you a small sense of accomplishment - yay, I finished a book today Best for: Frieda McFadden’s loyal fanclub Best quotes: “And I feel lighter - happier - all of a sudden.” “Sometimes it’s better to let go than to drag it out.”

BATB score: 7/10 🐴 Best as: a series of random short stories about everything and anything Best for: written with the same satire as BoJack Horseman blunt witty humor Best to: a good story / bad story roulette; hit-or-miss rate 7:3 Best quotes: “There are two kinds of people, he thought: the people you don’t want to touch because you’re afraid you’re going to break them and the people you don’t want to touch because you’re afraid they’ll break you.” “What happened to our soc