I attempt to rate every piece of art I experience on the same 11-point scale from 0 to 5 inclusive. This page collates all the ratings. The specification for the score numbers is given below.
Score number specification
- 0.0: Actively harmful and really really bad, with zero artistic merit or interest.
- 0.5: Uninteresting, poorly conceived and terribly executed, not enjoyable at all.
- 1.0: Some interest, but it’s hard to find the good parts.
- 1.5: Might have a few well-done elements, but still held back in many ways.
- 2.0: Below average.
- 2.5: Average and safe. Not fascinating and I probably won’t come back to it, but worth experiencing.
- 3.0: Some real merit, displaying creätivity, skill and originality.
- 3.5: A serious amount of merit. Executed cleanly and has excellent consistency. Thoroughly enjoyable.
- 4.0: In the realm of excellence. The artist has made something quite special.
- 4.5: Goes above and beyond anything else in the field. Every aspect is near perfect.
- 5.0: Perfect, not in that it can’t be improved upon, but in that it truly masters everything it possibly could.
All music ratings here are additionally kept in sync with my rateyourmusic page.
Title | Genres |
---|
1000 gecs
Album • 2019
The Joy of Motion
Album • 2014
Selected Ambient Works 85–92
Album • 1992
drukqs
Album • 2001
Funeral
Album • 2004
Favourite Worst Nightmare
Album • 2007
Excess
Album • 2022
Love’s Small Song
Album • 2002
Atomizer
Album • 1986
Songs About Fucking
Album • 1987
Homogenic
Album • 1997
For the First Time
Album • 2021
Black Midi, New Road
Bootleg album • 2020
Ants From Up There
Album • 2022
Live at Bush Hall
Live album • 2023
Crow’s Perch
Single • 2019
Talking Heads
Single • 2019
Schlagenheim
Album • 2019
ded sheeran (ed sheeran send) part 1
Single • 2020
Sweater
Single • 2020
Cavalcade
Album • 2021
Hellfire
Album • 2022
Fire of Unknown Origin
Album • 1981
Amplifier Worship
Album • 1998
Boris at Last -Feedbacker-
Album • 2003
Amo
Album • 2019
Clandestine
Album • 2009
Ege Bamyası
Album • 1972
Future Days
Album • 1973
Twin Fantasy (Face to Face)
Album • 2018
How to Leave Town
Album • 2014
Teens of Style
Album • 2015
Teens of Denial
Album • 2016
how i’m feeling now
Album • 2020
The Ape of Naples
Album • 2005
Thunder Perfect Mind
Album • 1992
Beauty Reaps the Blood of Solitude
Album • 1994
The Inmost Light
Compilation • 2007
I Have A Special Plan For This World
EP • 2000
Sleep Has His House
Album • 2000
Black Ships Eat the Sky
Album • 2006
The Light Is Leaving Us All
Album • 2018
You Won’t Get What You Want
Album • 2018
I pirated this album and I strongly recommend you do too.
Sunbather
Album • 2013
II
EP • 2019
Kintsugi
Album • 2015
Exmilitary
Mixtape • 2011
The Money Store
Album • 2012
No Love Deep Web
Album • 2012
****** on the Moon: The Powers That B Disc 1
Album • 2014
Jenny Death: The Powers That B Disc 2
Album • 2015
The Powers That B
Compilation • 2015
Bottomless Pit
Album • 2016
Year of the Snitch
Album • 2018
Gmail and the Restraining Orders
EP • 2021
Emergency & I
Album • 1999
Endtroducing…
Album • 1996
Morph the Cat
Album • 2006
Stratosphere
Album • 1998
Ende Neu
Album • 1996
Silence Is Sexy
Album • 2000
Alles wieder offen
Album • 2007
Either / Or
Album • 1997
Man Alive
Album • 2010
Arc
Album • 2013
Get to Heaven
Album • 2015
A Fever Dream
Album • 2017
RE-ANIMATOR
Album • 2020
Raw Data Feel
Album • 2022
My Teenage Dream Ended
Album • 2012
Chumpfrey
Album • 2012
Anatolia
EP • 2013
Ultra Ego
EP • 2016
LONG SEASON
Album • 1996
宇宙 日本 世田谷 (Uchu Nippon Setagaya)
Album • 1997
98.12.28 男達の別れ (98.12.28 Otokotachi no Wakare)
Live album • 1999
Lesson No. 1
EP • 1980
The Ascension
Album • 1981
Symphony Nos. 8 & 10 (the Mysteries)
Album • 1994
F♯ A♯ ∞
Album • 1997
Slow Riot for New Zerø Kanada
EP • 1999
Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven
Album • 2000
革命京劇 (Revolutionary Pekinese Opera) Ver.1.28
Album • 1996
Deathconsciousness
Album • 2008
III
Album • 2012
Horse Jumper of Love
Album • 2016
Understanding The Brobecks
Album • 2003
Happiest Nuclear Winter
Album • 2005
Goodnight, and Have a Pleasant Tomorrow
Album • 2006
Violent Things
Album • 2009
CHRISTMAS JAMBZ
EP • 2015
Modern Day Cain
Single • 2017
1981 Extended Play
EP • 2018
RAZZMATAZZ
Album • 2020
Joy as an Act of Resistance.
Album • 2018
Speak to Me
EP • 2008
Imagine Dragons
EP • 2009
Hell and Silence
EP • 2010
It’s Time
EP • 2011
Night Visions
Album • 2012
Smoke + Mirrors
Album • 2015
Evolve
Album • 2017
Unknown Pleasures
Album • 1979
Veteran
Album • 2018
All My Heroes Are Cornballs
Album • 2019
LP!
Album • 2021
Scaring the Hoes
Album • 2023
僕がCDを出したら (Boku ga CD wo dashitara)
EP • 2013
good kid, m.A.A.d city
Album • 2012
To Pimp a Butterfly
Album • 2015
In the Court of the Crimson King
Album • 1969
Lizard
Album • 1970
Islands
Album • 1971
Larks’ Tongues in Aspic
Album • 1973
Red
Album • 1974
Discipline
Album • 1981
Lunatic
Album • 2012
Egomaniac
Album • 2016
1929, Pt. 1
Album • 2019
Autobahn
Album • 1974
Radio-Activität
Album • 1975
Trans Europa Express
Album • 1977
Die Mensch-Maschine
Album • 1978
Computerwelt
Album • 1981
Tour de France Soundtracks
Album • 2003
Entre Poetas y Presos
Album • 2016
LCD Soundsystem
Album • 2005
45:33
Album • 2006
Sound of Silver
Album • 2007
This Is Happening
Album • 2010
View-Monster
Album • 2008
Nature Tapes
EP • 2014
Spirit Phone
Album • 2016
CALIGULA
Album • 2019
SINNER GET READY
Album • 2021
Blue Lines
Album • 1991
Protection
Album • 1994
Mezzanine
Album • 1998
Madvillainy
Album • 2004
California
Album • 1999
loveless
Album • 1991
The Black Parade
Album • 2006
Quiet World
Album • 2015
The Snowbringer Cult
Album • 2008
Daughter of Darkness
Album • 2009
Éons
Album • 2020
In the Aeroplane Over the Sea
Album • 1998
Pretty Hate Machine
Album • 1989
The Downward Spiral
Album • 1994
The Fragile
Album • 1999
Wide Awake!
Album • 2018
Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain
Album • 1994
Misadventures
Album • 2016
Doolittle
Album • 1989
Portrait
EP • 2013
Dummy
Album • 1994
Third
Album • 2008
ZyouK
Album • 2015
Qujaku
Album • 2018
The Bends
Album • 1995
OK Computer
Album • 1997
Kid A
Album • 2000
Amnesiac
Album • 2001
Hail to the Thief
Album • 2003
In Rainbows
Album • 2007
A Moon Shaped Pool
Album • 2016
Down Colorful Hill
Album • 1992
Red House Painters [Rollercoaster]
Album • 1993
Peasant
Album • 2017
Royal Blood
Album • 2014
How Did We Get So Dark?
Album • 2017
Typhoons
Album • 2021
Spiderland
Album • 1991
Slint
EP • 1994
We Like It Here
Live album • 2014
Sylva
Album • 2015
Immigrance
Album • 2019
Daydream Nation
Album • 1988
Deep Down Happy
Album • 2020
The Dial
Single • 2018
Houseplants
Single • 2019
Town Centre
EP • 2019
Sludge / Broadcaster
Single • 2020
Bright Green Field
Album • 2021
Suede
Album • 1993
Dog Man Star
Album • 1994
Coming Up
Album • 1996
Illinois
Album • 2005
The Age of Adz
Album • 2010
Carrie & Lowell
Album • 2015
Suicide
Album • 1977
Circus Mort
EP • 1981
Swans
EP • 1982
Filth
Album • 1983
Cop
Album • 1984
Young God
EP • 1984
Greed
Album • 1986
Time Is Money (Bastard) / Sealed in Skin
Single • 1986
Holy Money
Album • 1986
A Screw
Single • 1986
Body to Body, Job to Job
Compilation • 1991
Public Castration Is A Good Idea
Live album • 1986
Children of God
Album • 1987
The Burning World
Album • 1989
White Light from the Mouth of Infinity
Album • 1991
Love of Life
Album • 1992
The Great Annihilator
Album • 1995
Soundtracks for the Blind
Album • 1996
Die Tür ist zu
EP • 1996
Swans Are Dead
Album • 1998
The Body Lovers / The Body Haters
Compilation • 2005
New Mother
Album • 1999
How I Loved You
Album • 2001
Everything Is Good Here / Please Come Home
Album • 2003
We Are Him
Album • 2007
My Father Will Guide Me Up a Rope to the Sky
Album • 2010
We Rose From Your Bed With the Sun in Our Head
Live album • 2012
The Seer
Album • 2012
Not Here / Not Now
Live album • 2013
To Be Kind
Album • 2014
The Gate
Live album • 2015
The Glowing Man
Album • 2016
Deliquescence
Live album • 2017
leaving meaning.
Album • 2019
Is There Really a Mind?
Demo album • 2022
Talking Heads: ’77
Album • 1977
More Songs About Buildings and Food
Album • 1978
Fear of Music
Album • 1979
Remain in Light
Album • 1980
Speaking in Toungues
Album • 1983
Stop Making Sense
Live album • 1984
Pet Sounds
Album • 1966
Pornography
Album • 1982
Disintegration
Album • 1989
The Doors
Album • 1967
L.A. Woman
Album • 1971
OpaqueAge
Album • 2018
shape of raw to come
Album • 2022
Hot Fuss
Album • 2004
Wonderful Wonderful
Album • 2017
Pressure Machine
Album • 2021
69 Love Songs
Album • 1999
The Glow, Pt. 2
Album • 2001
To be honest, I don’t understand the hype around this album. It’s not bad, but I don’t really feel anything from it. It just feels sorta cold and has some alright melodies.
Sex
Album • 1989
Next
Album • 1990
Unfold
Album • 2017
Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness
Album • 1995
Is This It
Album • 2001
Deceit
Album • 1981
Lateralus
Album • 2001
TNT
Album • 1998
Twenty One Pilots
Album • 2009
Regional at Best
Album • 2011
Vessel
Album • 2013
Blurryface
Album • 2015
Trench
Album • 2018
Helter Seltzer
Album • 2016
Weezer [Blue Album]
Album • 1994
Pinkerton
Album • 1996
Wet Leg
Album • 2022
Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
Album • 2002
Phantom Pop
Album • 2014
Enter The Wu-Tang (36 Chambers)
Album • 1993
Knife Play
Album • 2002
A Promise
Album • 2003
Fabulous Muscles
Album • 2004
Dear God, I Hate Myself
Album • 2010
Girl With Basket of Fruit
Album • 2019
Ignore Grief
Album • 2023
あらためまして、はじめまして、ミドリです。 (Aratamemashite, hajimemashite, Midori desu.)
Album • 2008
She Gets the Girl
Novel • 2022
Book Review (spoiler-free)
She Gets the Girl tells the story of a college romance between Alex, a girl with an alcoholic single mother and abusive girlfriend Natalie, and Molly, a sheltered girl with extreme social anxiety and a crush on another girl called Cora. I’ve just summarized the information you can glean from the first two chapters (out of 37), but it basically tells you everything you need to know about the story.
And that’s my overall impression, as well as thesis of this review: For what it is, it’s executed pretty well, but it lacks much inspiration and spark that really makes a story excel. Let’s dive into some more details.
Writing Style
The writing style is safe and simple. It’s well-written enough to avoid any linguistic faux pas that interrupt the flow, making it a comfortable and easy experiënce to read; but at the same time the simplicity means it frequently lacks interest in many scenes, often not really doïng the scenes themselves justice. Of course one could argue this is just a product of the genre, but aside from my gripes with the genre’s very existence, the story simply doesn’t garner enough compelling elements in other areäs to make it work, leaving a general impression of weakness.
Aside from that, there are also the blatant factual errors. These ones were upsetting to read — they didn’t impact the overall rating of the story, but certainly made me question if the authors were bothering to put any effort at all into actually writing this. In particular, there are two passages that stand out:
Sure. And I’m going to solve pi and become the youngest president of the United States.
This doesn’t make sense. Pi, assuming the authors are referring to the mathematical concept, is a number, not a problem, and so it is meaningless to say it can be “solved”. And this is not pedantry either; there is basically no mathematical interpretation of this that makes sense.
The sound of screaming toddlers and gossiping high school freshmen could probably break the sound barrier.
The sound barrier is a metaphorical barrier reached when an object is travelling near the speed of sound. Sound itself cannot break the sound barrier, because it is not an object; even if it was, there would be nothing special about it travelling at the speed of sound, because, you know, it is sound. Unless these toddlers and freshmen are somehow travelling at the speed of sound in the room, which seems quite unlikely, there is absolutely nothing breaking the sound barrier here.
This one, at least, does have a favourable interpretation that makes sense: it seems the authors just got confused and meant to say that they were as loud as a sonic boom. I still find it disappointing that they didn’t take the five seconds it takes to look this one up.
Plot
The plot is pretty standard for this kind of story, following a textbook three-act structure. You can probably guess 99% of what happens given the introduction I told you earliër — as stated, this book is not particularly adventurous in that regard nor does it hide much information — but I won’t spoil it nevertheless.
The first act follows the main characters (initially strangers) entering the same college — the “new world” — and exhibiting their personality traits within it, which of course leads up to their fateful encounter and the inciting incident for the second and third acts. There is not much to say here, other than the repetitiveness of the “main character has personality trait → main character exhibits personality trait” cycle; there are a few attempts to diversify this but unlike usual those Chekhov’s guns don’t end up firing.
Act two kicks off after Alex and Molly’s encounter, and is easily the story’s strongest act, which is lucky since it’s the longest one. It follows a fairly episodic structure with convincingly-written continuous character development of the main characters throughout; as a result of this and genuinely creätive events in the story, it maintains interest throughout. My only issue is its neglect of development in the subplots — they do pick up pace later on but are pretty static for now.
The third and final act drastically shifts the story, leading up to a couple climaxes that close the subplots and ultimately the conclusion. Unfortunately, while it’s very able to neatly tie up all the subplots it severely lacks in its ability to tie them together; so the plots, while satisfying in and of themselves, end up ultimately irrelevant to the main story and not that relevant to the characters’ main character arcs either. Then we have the ending itself, which I was pretty disappointed in as it falls into the lazy romance trope of ending on the first kiss scene. Especially considering how well-done the second act was, the lack of any recall to it made it feel as a whole quite underwhelming.
Pacing
The pacing of this story was overall excellent and this is something I have to give it much credit for. The flow of the events from one to the other felt very natural in accordance with the character’s moods and events occurring, and it managed to easily fit everything it wanted to tell without dragging in its short runtime. It’s an “A” from me here.
Characters
And now we move onto the characters, which is definitely one of my biggest points of criticism for the book. The main two characters are very well done, fully fleshed-out and interesting to follow, and the abusive girlfriend Natalie seems also developed at points. But beyond that, the majority of the characters have little to no development beyond a basic one-dimensional character trait and it can really hurt the story at times. Usually, these side-characters play a small role anyway, but it sticks out quite a lot in the third act when one of these underdeveloped characters ends up playing a more major role in the plot, and any scene with them in ends up feeling wooden and unnatural in a way the rest of the book was very good at avoiding.
It builds up in the end to leave an impression of quite a closed-off world: we have the main stories that the authors wanted to tell, and then a few random details scattered about that to push the plot along. It’s a short novel so I can forgive it for not having incredibly developed world-building, but when the story begins to feel more like abstract ideäs with a thin layer of paint placed over than a real subuniverse with internal logic and driving forces, it detracts from getting invested in any of the characters themselves.
Conclusion
This book is not bad, not my any measure. It’s definitely worth reading if you like the genre, but don’t go in expecting something that will broaden your horizons or leave you astounded at its beauty. It’s easy and very accessible, overall giving an impression of two authors who know what they’re doïng deciding to write a lesbian YA romance and then just goïng ahead and writing it. Apparently some people cried — I can’t speak for them — but I found that most of the parts were definitely enjoyable or at least served the story in some way. It has its flaws but they don’t run too deep nor do they interfere casual reading, so I’m happy to place this at a solid 2.5.
2DK、Gペン、目覚まし時計。 [2DK, G-pen, Alarm clock]
Comic series • 2015–2018
獣王星 [Jyu-Oh-Sei]
TV show • 2006–2006
Parasite
Feature film • 2019
Possibly in Michigan
Short film • 1983
Nightcrawler
Feature film • 2014
Everything Everywhere All at Once
Feature film • 2022
She-Ra and the Princesses of Power
TV show • 2018–2020
Minions: The Rise of Gru
Feature film • 2022
Nope
Feature film • 2022
Thor: Love and Thunder
Feature film • 2022
American Psycho
Feature film • 2000
The Batman
Feature film • 2022
魔法少女まどか★マギカ [Puella Magi Madoka★Magica]
TV show • 2011–2011
キルラキル [Kill la Kill]
TV show • 2013–2014
Steins;Gate
TV show • 2011–2011
SeaBed
Visual novel • 2017