sure, i don't really read YA fantasy anymore, but i DO read french books with pretty coverssure, i don't really read YA fantasy anymore, but i DO read french books with pretty covers...more
the truth is that judging books by their covers WORKS.
i 100% picked this up for the gorgeous cover, and i got not just prettiness but also: - a great rthe truth is that judging books by their covers WORKS.
i 100% picked this up for the gorgeous cover, and i got not just prettiness but also: - a great read for fans of jacqueline woodson (i am a fan of jacqueline woodson) - a powerful story - a brilliant and real capturing of childhood
another win for the shallow girls!
this story was written in a hindsight perspective and sometimes switched, and as everyone knows i hate any kind of changing perspective, but i liked this anyway.
Here is a small list of perfect things in life: - fairytales - scary weird mean beautiful girls - unsolved mysteries - flowers and generally pretty thingsHere is a small list of perfect things in life: - fairytales - scary weird mean beautiful girls - unsolved mysteries - flowers and generally pretty things - magical worlds just outside of ours - creepy stories - sisters
There are probably eleven perfect things in life, and I just listed seven of them. (Shoutout to 7 Eleven.) (Now I want a slushie.)
And guess the hell what.
THEY'RE ALL IN THIS BOOK.
I 100% added this book because of its cover, but then I did something unthinkably brave and even more rare: I read the synopsis. And when I did, I only got...more excited??
This is a story of three spooky sisters who had something Mysterious happen in childhood: they disappeared completely for a month, then came back with pure white hair, black eyes, sharp teeth, and ravenous appetites, and no memory of where they had been.
DOESN'T THAT SOUND AMAZING.
Also, their names are Grey, Vivi, and Iris. I mean...come on.
A decade or so later, each sister is leading a very different (but always superlative) life, when the eldest goes missing. Cue a bunch of ethereal gore, model-on-model violence, and bug descriptions that will burn themselves into your head.
This is my favorite thing for YA to be: completely ridiculous, high on itself, and one of a kind.
Yes, that has its drawbacks: The plot dragged at times (under the weight of some truly try-hard writing), and our protagonist is less compelling than her sisters (this is the curse of most young adult fiction), and it has that extremely goofy thing of when YA authors try to make their characters rich and/or famous (in this case both) but they have literally no idea how and it ends up completely past the point of parody...
But when I let myself ignore all of that, this was fun. Much the dark spooky fairytale situation I wanted.
Undecided on whether to round up or down but 3.5 for sure!
Bottom line: dreams do come true.
----------------- pre-review
accidentally read 100 pages of this in a sitting. either it's that good or it's a cursed object
update: probably a cursed object.
review to come / 3.5 stars
----------------- tbr review
i know i've said many times that i judge books by their covers.
you know what time it is — it's a title / month pun, i'm picking up an ill-advised classic, and i'm going to be as attentiwelcome to...MADAME BOVUARY!
you know what time it is — it's a title / month pun, i'm picking up an ill-advised classic, and i'm going to be as attention seeking about it as possible. IT'S ANOTHER PROJECT LONG CLASSIC INSTALLMENT.
except this time i'm doing it at the end of one month into the start of another, the book is not that long, and i'm kind of proud of the terrible pun. because it works with both months. inasmuch as it works with anything.
let's get into it!
PART 1, CHAPTER 1 i primarily bought this book because i'm addicted to penguin clothbound classics, and secondarily bought it because the description is "Emma is beautiful and bored" and that's my life story.
this book is not long, but there are 35 chapters and i'm trying to be More Chill about my reading, so a chapter a day it is!
PART 1, CHAPTER 2 so far, so weird.
PART 1, CHAPTER 3 thus far it's been a lot of exposition-y chapters, which makes sense, but they are so oddly written as to be more confusing than enlightening. whatever! onto the actual story.
PART 1, CHAPTER 4 wedding scene!!!! this sounded fun. good chapter. i approve.
i don't have a lot to say about this book thus far, if you couldn't tell.
PART 1, CHAPTER 5 i do actually love the description in this. so pretty and clear.
PART 1, CHAPTER 6 hello and welcome to our first catch-up day. a three-chapter situation. everyone say thank you, gustave for making these chapters so short.
emma is addicted to novels...once again she is just like me fr.
PART 1, CHAPTER 7 in a twist that will surprise absolutely no one, i like the unlikable pretty protagonist who hates her life and charms everyone.
PART 1, CHAPTER 8 i do feel bad for charles, though.
PART 1, CHAPTER 9 she's sooooo difficult...i stan
PART 2, CHAPTER 1 a fun lil Get To Know The Villagers chapter.
PART 2, CHAPTER 2 suddenly, just as i settled into the comfort of the idea that this would be a Description Book, here we are in Dialogue City. what a change!
PART 2, CHAPTER 3 i really do feel like classics will cover the local politics of a small village for 75 pages, and marriage / birth / death are fully covered in a paragraph or two.
PART 2, CHAPTER 4 happy three chapter day to all who celebrate.
my copy of this is used (part of my How To Afford Collecting Penguin Clothbounds strategy) and there has been nary a mark inside until now. the last line of this chapter is underlined, and i agree: it rules.
PART 2, CHAPTER 5 accidentally got enraptured and forgot to write about individual chapters. this is the REAL problem with three chapter days.
PART 2, CHAPTER 6 yearning!!!
PART 2, CHAPTER 7 emma has to stop reading novels??? good god...a fate worse than death....
PART 2, CHAPTER 8 something fun that this chapter did is make me feel the same existential boredom, but for the sweet relief of bantery dialogue, that our dear emma suffers from every day.
because it was very boring.
CONTROVERSY ARRIVES.
PART 2, CHAPTER 9 a recipe for disaster is unfolding before us.
PART 2, CHAPTER 10 emma, girl...stand up...
PART 2, CHAPTER 11 HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY!
let's spend it reading four chapters of existential ennui. and apparently extensive descriptions of club foot.
PART 2, CHAPTER 12 i do love that being a hater and a trickster is making emma turn hot again. that's my entire skincare routine and life philosophy summed up.
PART 2, CHAPTER 13 you hate to see a man win a situation...women are so much better at deception and deviousness...it looks odd on a man.
PART 2, CHAPTER 14 2-14 on 2/14...pretty cute.
there is no romantic connection or eternal tie quite like the correlation between something bad happening and life-altering illness in classic books. if you had a bad day as a protagonist in 1809...welcome to a life of Consumption.
PART 2, CHAPTER 15 emma has a ROSTER. what an achievement.
PART 3, CHAPTER 1 there is a 5 chapter day in my future...and today is not that day.
i do love the drama of it all. everything emma does seems to be for maximum theatricality and that is a life's purpose i can get behind.
PART 3, CHAPTER 2 hi mtv and welcome to my attempt at a catch-up day.
honestly i would love to be charles bovary. no thoughts, head empty, zero suspicions, getting through life on vibes alone.
PART 3, CHAPTER 3 it's remarkable — this book has no tension at all. one of the most tense things in the world is happening (repeated marital affairs! will someone discover it? will they be able to love openly? none of these questions come to mind) and it's like. no stakes. crazy. this chapter appears to be attempting a cliffhanger and the crowd went silent.
PART 3, CHAPTER 4 these chapters are so wonderfully short. it's like they were written with me being days behind on a made-up project in mind.
PART 3, CHAPTER 5 "From that moment her existence was but one long tissue of lies, in which she enveloped her love as in veils to hide it. It was a want, a mania, a pleasure carried to such an extent that if she said she had the day before walked on the right side of a road, one might know she had taken the left." this duplicitous little devil...i love her.
PART 3, CHAPTER 6 too much math in the last chapter. debt is boring. give me something more interesting.
jinxed myself. this was even longer and even mathier.
PART 3, CHAPTER 7 super jarring to have a passage of dialogue here from two women just...witnessing emma emma-ing it up. you forget how Improper all this sh*t is until suddenly some lady is like "whip her in the streets."
PART 3, CHAPTER 8 WHAT.
but we have three chapters left!
PART 3, CHAPTER 9 who cares anymore...what's even the point...if i weren't so goddamn close to finishing this i'd take a day off and catch up later...
this is the coolest charles has ever been. low bar, but still.
PART 3, CHAPTER 10 you hate to see an adult mom / overly fond son duo...
PART 3, CHAPTER 11 well, today is the final day and i have literally no idea what i think about this book, so...pretty high stakes for this single chapter here.
OVERALL generally, i think if you have the free time, the patience, and the refined taste, you can skip this completely, go for anna karenina, and pretend you read both.
but if you're pressed for time or into melodrama, this one is good too. rating: 3.5...more
I am not what anyone would refer to as "the sharpest tool in the shed."
I haven't so much as done mental math in the last four and a half years. If an I am not what anyone would refer to as "the sharpest tool in the shed."
I haven't so much as done mental math in the last four and a half years. If an article is filled with jargon or technical terms, I leave the tab open on my computer for at least a day (and then usually give up on even pretending I don't want to read it). I judge books by their covers.
And if a book has a great ending, or if the final story in a collection is the best one, it melts my brain and suddenly I can't remember anything except loving the whole thing.
Case in point: This book.
I fell in love with that title / cover combo, and was very rapidly disillusioned and out of love when confronted with some kind of outdated and repetitive stories with a simple writing style that didn't work for me.
But then, boom. The last story. A new story, about an elderly woman living with her husband of many years, navigating a pandemic, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and ultimately the loss of her husband to COVID-19. Written by an author who did and does the same.
2021 was, in my personal records, the year of Lucia Berlin (as I read everything she ever wrote in the last few months), and seeing the decades-later success of her 20th century semi-autobiographical short stories must have inspired this collection, at least in small part.
For me, Hilma Wolitzer is no Lucia Berlin. But I would have given a lot to read Berlin's take on the last few years, and this is the closest I'll get.
Bottom line: Read the first story. If it doesn't work for you, skip to the last one and pretend you read the whole thing.
------------------ pre-review
read two books that made me sad in one day. my version of a superhero origin story
review to come / 3.5 stars
------------------ currently-reading updates
i hope i, too, can one day be so lucky as to be the woman going mad in the supermarket
clear ur shit prompt 12: free space follow my progress here
------------------ tbr review
clear my plans for the day. i'm going to be staring lovingly at this cover
I wish I could tell you this book lives up to its cover.
I wish I could tell you that I was struck by that image, and then I couldn't stop thinking aboI wish I could tell you this book lives up to its cover.
I wish I could tell you that I was struck by that image, and then I couldn't stop thinking about it until I read it, and then I continued to not be able to stop thinking about it because the work itself was also good.
I wish the words behind that picture had the same skin-crawling creepiness, the same deftness of skill, the same unforgettable quality.
It doesn't. The book itself, to me, was just fine.
But holy god that cover.
Bottom line: I also wish I could say this will teach me to judge books by their covers, but it won't! I will never learn! That's the Emma guarantee!...more
The thing about depression is that it is very boring and aesthetically unappealing. Sleeping all day? Feeling either no emotions or an immense sadnessThe thing about depression is that it is very boring and aesthetically unappealing. Sleeping all day? Feeling either no emotions or an immense sadness? Never leaving your room or even turning the lights on? No thanks!
Usually any content created about depression is doomed to be similar, because the source material is...challenging.
But this book??? Is so pretty. Is so lovely and little and interesting.
Depression isn't, but this is!
Bottom line: I love arbitrarily picking up a book and then being rewarded for my adventurousness by really enjoying it!
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sooooo this is the prettiest book i've ever read in my life.
review to come / 4ish stars
------------------ tbr review
my library just added a bunch of graphic novels. relatedly, i think i know how to fix my reading slump now...more
This is the worst Lucia Berlin book, but it also has the best cover. This is probably a lesson to me, specifically, from the universe, about being vaiThis is the worst Lucia Berlin book, but it also has the best cover. This is probably a lesson to me, specifically, from the universe, about being vain, or about how every rose has its thorns, or something like that.
But I wouldn't know, because I refuse to hear it.
Anyway. Enough about me. It is all about Lucia Berlin, both because I am reviewing a book of hers currently and because all of her stories have one subject: herself.
Truly, the #1 thing you learn if you, like me, read every story Lucia Berlin ever published within the span of a few months is that 95% of her work is self-insert short stories about how hot she is.
And while that is something you have to respect, and in fact sounds like something I would do, it does grate after a while.
This, when it was first published in 1981 (and, presumably, today), was a collection of the previously uncompiled Berlin stories, which is a nice way of saying "the worse stuff."
And it shows.
It's still the same brilliant and sharp writer, but all of the times when she wasn't at her best.
Bottom line: Still worth the read, if only to say you're a completionist and to have a pretty book on the shelf.
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well, it's wintertime, we're a week away from the holidays, and i'm sharing a bedroom only a generous and kindhearted person would describe as "average-sized" with my two sisters.
in other words, i could use an evening in paradise.
Here is a description of one of the best kinds of books, which is also among the best reading experiences:
When you wake up on a weekend morning duringHere is a description of one of the best kinds of books, which is also among the best reading experiences:
When you wake up on a weekend morning during which you don't have to really do anything, so you get your cup of coffee and get back in bed with your book, intending to read for only a little while, and instead you fall totally into the story and before you know it it's the afternoon and you've finished an excellent story and you're still in your pajamas and your coffee is cold.
This is an incredibly specific type of read to me, and one I only have probably once a year. I cherish it.
It requires the following: - lovely writing - characters I care about - a story that grabs me but is also comforting
Obviously, since my finding even one of these traits in a book is a rare feat that requires a parade and/or block party to properly commemorate its triannual accomplishment, all three in the span of a few hundred pages takes the kind of specific magic called for in old-timey witches' potions. A protagonist I truly like is approximately as fantastical and hard to come by as newts' eyes, or powdered sea urchin, or whatever.
I did kind of have to manually stay in this, from time to time - ideally I look at a page at around 11 am and look up upon shutting the book what feels like a moment later to discover it's hours later, and in this case I had to choose to stay with this, not consistently carried away by it.
So it's a four star miracle. But a miracle all the same.
Bottom line: I already feel nostalgic for this reading experience. In case that wasn't abundantly clear.
----------------- pre-review
holy moley.
i'm glad i waited to read a print copy. the audiobook could not do this story justice.
review to come / 4 stars
----------------- currently-reading updates
learning my lesson
--------
taking this off my currently reading because i just realized the audiobook was playing for approximately one hour and i was not even slightly listening.
There are a lot of bad things in life. Stepping in a wet spot while wearing socks. Pouring a bowl of cereal or a cup of coffee and THEN realizing you'There are a lot of bad things in life. Stepping in a wet spot while wearing socks. Pouring a bowl of cereal or a cup of coffee and THEN realizing you're out of milk. When cookies go stale and they get all weird and tough.
There are even more just-okay things. Pretzels (of the non-soft variety). The new Star Wars movies (don't yell at me). BuzzFeed quizzes (I don't have a parenthetical for this one).
But, blessedly, there are a few excellent, wonderful things too. Two of them are ghosts and books with pretty covers.
WELCOME TO THE MEETING OF THOSE TWO THINGS.
I've been saying for ages (or like 6 months since I finally forced myself to the point of devastating epiphany and later acceptance) that I think I've finally outgrown YA.
Here's the complicating factor, baby.
This was so fun! Ghosts are the best! I love a mean teenager!
Mean girls in general are my favorite demographic. One time my friend introduced me to their roommates and was like, they're all great, except Maya. Maya is really mean. And I met all of them and was like :) okay cool and then Maya came home unexpectedly and was, true to hype, a b*tch, and I was like I LOVE YOU. CAN WE GET MARRIED? DO YOU LIKE ME? DO YOU WANT TO HOLD HANDS?
Maya might be her real name. I don't know. Oops.
Moving on.
There is kind of no explanation for the whole (view spoiler)[The Cop Takes On The Darkness To Kill Teenagers (hide spoiler)] big reveal aspect but ok, whatever.
Generally the whole conclusion really was pretty anticlimactic. It felt like someone told the author that she'd only paid for 368 pages at, like, page 331 and she was like oh sh*t! Let's wrap things up. Here's who the bad guy is, now we defeated the spooky thing, let's all go home.
Like, if I were a nonhuman entity bent on like eating the spirits of kids known only as The Dark, personally I would be harder to destroy. But that's just me.
That's all I got.
Bottom line: Rules are made to be broken!!!
---------------- pre-review
GHOSTS RULE!!!
review to come / 3.5 stars
---------------- currently-reading updates
engaging in one of my favorite hobbies (judging books by their covers)
---------------- tbr review
i don't remember having added this to my tbr so i'm going to assume this beautiful magical cover cast a spell on me and move on...more
How do you write a post-apocalyptic novel when the world is on fire?
Everybody else had it easy. Philip K. Dick could write books about authoritarian gHow do you write a post-apocalyptic novel when the world is on fire?
Everybody else had it easy. Philip K. Dick could write books about authoritarian governments and robots taking over and have them still be fun because his audience didn't have little rectangles with human names in their homes, CONSTANTLY LISTENING. George Orwell could write about...also authoritarian governments because Edward Snowden was not yet a twinkle in his parents' eye, and the NSA (or whatever its British equivalent) was not yet a twinkle in an evil gross bureuacrat's.
And also, none of them were writing about climate change.
I'll read about crazy governments making children kill each other for national entertainment, because that's obviously cool and interesting. I'll read about crazy governments making children join castes based on a singular personality trait, because that's relatively cool and interesting. I'll read PKD and Orwell, because even when they aren't cool and interesting I'm a sucker for someone saying something is a must read.
But I'm at a point where I don't want to read about global pandemics from flu-like illnesses, and I DEFINITELY don't want to read about global warming. Because both are real and both are everyone's day to day life and no one can forget about them for a second anyway.
There's something escapist about reading about POST-apocalyptic books. We're in the apocalypse now (I haven't seen that movie or else I'd make a cool reference), so reading about things being worse casts things into a kind of sharp relief sometimes.
But this was not escapist, because I was reading it when it was 100 degrees outside and wildfire smoke was making everything fuzzy, and now I'm reviewing it days after flooding shut my city down.
If I'm going to read about climate change, it turns out, I don't want to read a fictionalized look at how everything is terrible and it will never get better, only worse. I want to read long essays in esteemed publications, or I want to read books like Sally Rooney's latest, which fill me with even a little bit of hope.
This was well done, and everything. I just hated every second of reading it.
Bottom line: Everything is terrible! I don't read to be reminded of that.
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no thoughts head empty just "pretty girls on cover"
update: probably no book could live up to that cover. but this one certainly did not.
Magical realism is the best genre on earth and it's been way too long since I last read it and I love it so much and I will never make this mistake agMagical realism is the best genre on earth and it's been way too long since I last read it and I love it so much and I will never make this mistake again, until probably immediately when I will once again forget, or be lazy because literary-adjacent magical realism with beautiful writing and stunning themes is hard to find and I don't like exerting energy.
File this under "hard to find," because it's beautifully written and magical and gave me that throat-hurting sad feeling when usually I feel very little at all, either in reading or in life.
The only reason, really, that this isn't an even higher rating is that I need to have that certain something for a five star and I'm not sure if I did.
Maybe will decide upon reread.
Either way, it's incredible stuff.
Bottom line: I'm in heaven! Except then I remember I read this already and therefore can't have the experience of reading it again and then I'm sad.
-------------- pre-review
i need to find the nearest ocean, stat.
and then also it needs to be 70 degrees warmer.
review to come / 4.5 stars
-------------- currently-reading updates
last year, i made a rule for myself that i can only buy myself books i've already read and liked.
this results in very normal things like seeing a book in a bookstore almost 2 years ago, adding it to my to-read list immediately based on cover alone, and then not even thinking about picking it up until i remember how pretty it is and immediately read it so i can justify buying it.
let's see how this goes
-------------- tbr review
received a Medal of Valor for my actions on this book (saw it in a bookstore, almost bought it immediately for the cover alone, then just added it to my tbr for the cover alone instead)...more
if you are in the sweet spot where you have somehow not seen 1 through 5 and therefore are not yet sick enough ofmy becoming-a-genius project, part 6!
if you are in the sweet spot where you have somehow not seen 1 through 5 and therefore are not yet sick enough of this to unfollow me, here's the situation: i have decided to become a genius.
to accomplish this, i'm going to work my way through the collected stories of various authors, reading + reviewing 1 story every day until i get bored / lose every single follower / am struck down by a vengeful deity.
this one is a little different because these bois are LOOOONG. and you can tell i picked up this version for the cover alone because damn that font is small. word per page count is hefty. but i've been meaning to read some Wilde forever and i am very brave, so onward we go.
DAY 1: LORD ARTHUR SAVILE'S CRIME hoo boy i can tell i am going to be skipping days like nobody's business. also, i forgot how much i love annotated editions - it's the next best thing to being in a lit class, and yes i am an absolute total full-on nerd. lady windermere is my girlfriend, this story is both funnily and beautifully written, the critiques of society and rich people are clever (and awesome), and in short we are off to a kickass start, my friends! rating: 4.5
DAY 2: LADY ALROY sticking with the nobility theme. i'm down. and a short one today woohoo! (i don't know why i'm excited considering the last one was fairly long and pure bliss. i can't explain my own actions, beyond saying old habits die hard, i guess. and boy did i dread the long ones in the poe section of this project - part 3.) anyway, is there anything better than a short story that still is textually rich and begs for analysis??? i'm not sure. rating: 4
DAY 3: THE MODEL MILLIONAIRE Hello My Name Is Oscar Wilde And You Can Tell By Title Alone That All Of My Stories Point Out The Fallacy Of Wealth And Nobility. personally i'm very into it. also realizing that none of these stories are actually very long - this book just has an incredibly lengthy introduction and appendix. i will obviously partake in neither. the commentary on charity from the rich in this story rules. the writing is comparatively lame, but that message though. i'm loving this. rating: 4
DAY 4: THE HAPPY PRINCE actually day 6 because Valentine's Day is for getting drunk with your friend and watching movies in an alternating divorce / romcom order, and because yesterday was busy. not sure if i'm planning on catching up or not. this is basically a fairytale written more beautifully than your average one, and for that reason i love it. plus i love a fairytale with a socialist bent. rating: 4.5
DAY 5: THE SELFISH GIANT actually day 7, but you get it by now. this is the first of these stories where the title doesn't immediately tell me we're about to make fun of rich people, so i'm ready for disappointment. turns out this is a critique of the concept of private property disguised as a children's fairytale, so i'm back on board. honestly i should have assumed "selfish" was indication enough. lost me with the part where Jesus is one of the children playing in the garden, but brought me back again a little with the fact that Wilde wrote this because he also hoped that the love of a child would allow God to forgive his sins (cough the gay affair he was having cough). that part is good. rating: 3.5
DAY 6: THE NIGHTINGALE AND THE ROSE it's still day 7! i'm catching up. mainly because birds and flowers are two of my favorite things so i can't pass this one up. turns out the bird and the flower are the losers of this story, so the true loss is mine. this read like a fairly typical fairytale. rating: 3
DAY 7: THE BIRTHDAY OF THE LITTLE PRINCESS i also love birthdays and small monarchs, so i am fully catching up today! it is now day 7 in every way. very into the subtext in one paragraph that indicates the willingness of nobility to marginalize, persecute, and murder certain populations, but to bemoan that storytelling for entertainment should ever be sad. this is thematically satisfying to me all around. rating: 4.25
DAY 8: THE PORTRAIT OF MR W.H. actually day 10 but you know the drill at this point. this story and the last one were loooooong so i made myself sit down and read them like a homework assignment. which is always a good sign when you're reading for pleasure. this one then also FELT like a homework assignment, because it should have been an essay. i think if anyone could enjoy flowery, homoerotic literary analysis posing as a work of fiction, i'd be in the top likelihood rankings, but this was a crime. rating: 2
DAY 9: THE FISHERMAN AND HIS SOUL still day 10, because i am powerful and brave. i was predisposed to like this one under the Anything Would Be Better Than Mr. W. H. Theory, and there was a quote from it i liked enough to write down - "Let me be as they are, I beseech thee, for their days are as the days of flowers" - but... maybe it was the fault of the migraine i started getting while i read this story that i didn't like it much. or maybe the story caused the migraine. a true chicken or the egg. rating: 3
OVERALL while i finished this collection with a bad taste in my mouth, ultimately it was very lovely and very anti-rich and -nobility and reminded me of two very important things: 1) i need to read more Oscar Wilde. 2) i am a nerd and i love annotations and analysis. rating: 4...more
Call me crazy, but when I'm reading about a millennia-long game between Love personified The concept of this book: <3
The execution of this book: < / 3
Call me crazy, but when I'm reading about a millennia-long game between Love personified and Death personified, in which they repeatedly pick one side of a star-crossed duo and if they choose to love each other, Love wins, and if they choose to die, Death wins, and historic examples include Antony and Cleopatra and Helen and Paris and Romeo and Juliet (and the last two are, yes, apparently historically real)...
I don't want to read about some personality-less curly-haired musician eboy who would definitely achieve viral TikTok fame if alive today as he instantly falls in love with a girl he does not know, with no functioning understanding of racism despite it being the mid-twentieth century and said girl being Black.
I feel cheated. We were given three (THREE!) examples in the synopsis of doomed love stories so action-packed, so dramatic and devastating, that they have lasted in the culture for HUNDREDS, sometimes THOUSANDS of years.
And instead, on the page, we got insta-love and wannabe Amelia Earhart and (view spoiler)[death of old age (hide spoiler)].
The most interesting part of this occurred in the background, as the aforementioned eboy's teenage best friend / brother on a technicality discovers he is gay by repeatedly hooking up with Love, who is older than time itself.
Give me that next time.
Bottom line: As the poet Sharpay Evans once said, this is not what I want. This is not what I planned.
And I just gotta say...I do NOT understand.
----------------- currently-reading updates
please don't ask me if i unhauled this book and then rehauled it because of the cover alone
clear ur sh*t book 41 quest 19: a book you forgot you owned...more
maybe that shouldn't be surprising, considering it's basically just a collection of quotes from my favorite bthis, surprisingly, really did it for me.
maybe that shouldn't be surprising, considering it's basically just a collection of quotes from my favorite book under clever headings that allow me to call it self-improvement, in a pretty little volume with some of my favorite illustrations in it...
but i choose to be pleasantly surprised every time i like something.
Well, okay, I don't LOVE it. Nobody loves pain and anguish and sorrow except Disney movie villains and peoSomething about me is that I love to suffer.
Well, okay, I don't LOVE it. Nobody loves pain and anguish and sorrow except Disney movie villains and people who work at the airport. But it is my sweet spot, my comfort place, what I know.
So this book, which is both a) so sad, so filled with suffering, and b) a source of deep and profound confusion to me in terms of what I think about it (and I am someone who cannot feel confused without feeling dumb, and immediately feel angry whenever I feel dumb, in a vicious cycle that makes me seem like an eleven year old boy with a Fortnite addiction and a tendency toward tantrum-throwing)...well, it checks the suffering requirement twice over.
That's probably why I love Mary HK Choi's Emergency Contact so much. There are no two characters in a contemporary YA romance with a cover that sweet and lovely that suffer so much.
This book made me go back and forth a lot. While Emergency Contact is a hard yes from page 1 to page 347, or whatever, this was a yes/no/maybe so constantly and it never changed.
But I love sisters. And I love food descriptions. And I love books set in New York. And as established, I am capable of loving Mary HK Choi and equally inclined to appreciate suffering.
So we'll be kind in our rating this time.
Bottom line: Who knows anything! But I think I liked this.
----------------- pre-review
lily: i just finished yolk and it could be anywhere between 2.5 and 4.5 me: WHAT that makes no sense (4 hours pass) me: i just finished yolk and it could be anywhere between 2.5 and 4.5
review & rating to come! (i ended up on 3.5)
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doing my favorite thing (judging books by their covers)
spontaneous buddy read because i never read anything without lily if it can be helped...more
to accomplish this, i'm going to work my way through the complete stories of various authors, reading + reviewing 1 i have decided to become a genius.
to accomplish this, i'm going to work my way through the complete stories of various authors, reading + reviewing 1 story every day until i get bored / lose every single follower / am struck down by a vengeful deity.
PROJECT 1: THE COMPLETE STORIES BY FLANNERY O'CONNOR
DAY 1: THE GERANIUM it must be a real nightmare to be an old racist white guy. imagine what an unpleasant experience having that brain would be. good story though. go off, flannery. (anyone also who can't separate the narrator from the author - by page 1 it's clear this is not the book for you.) rating: 3.5ish
DAY 2: THE BARBER in a way it's reassuring to know that elections have been this horrible for decades. rating: 3
DAY 3: WILDCAT well, i skipped two days, because saturday was my birthday and sunday i was quite busy nursing the hangover of a lifetime, but we're back in business. this was not my favorite. also if every story contains this many n-words we might be going back out of business. rating: 2
DAY 4: THE CROP this one just simply rules. loved it from the first sentence. can't even explain it, but i love Willie and i would die for her. rating: 4.5 stars
DAY 5: THE TURKEY in my head this kid is played by Macaulay Culkin. also, it takes a f*cking good writer to make you feel a tension and unease about a kid walking down the street with a turkey. go off, flannery. rating: 4
DAY 6: THE TRAIN i have once again forgotten i was doing this. i'm going to be honest, this story did not do it for me. i saw what it was trying to do, the writing was good, i had moments of sympathy, but the overall conflict / backstory just didn't hit. rating: 2.5
DAY 7: THE PEELER this is one where i want to spend the day thinking about it and let it sink in a little before i decide. also, ain't religion confusing. rating: 2
DAY 8: THE HEART OF THE CITY yesterday i said i wanted to think more about the story i read before rating it, and flannery o'connor complied by giving me another story about the same characters that allowed me to realize i hated both. rating: 2
DAY 9: A STROKE OF GOOD FORTUNE i really liked this one. i don't want to say why i really liked it, because it spoils the whole thing, but i really liked it. rating: 4 or 4.5
DAY 10: ENOCH AND THE GORILLA remember how earlier i was like, all confident that i was going to hate every story about this specific group of characters? sorry flannery. i was wrong. first time for everything, and all that. rating: 4
DAY 11: A GOOD MAN IS HARD TO FIND YESSSSSS. this story made me miss being in college lit classes with such an intense, sharp nostalgia that it's probably going to be my cause of death. rating: 5
DAY 12: A LATE ENCOUNTER WITH THE ENEMY will i ever manage to get to this project on a saturday? no. anyway the careful and complex feelings that flan gets you to have for each character in this story...masterful. rating: 4.5
DAY 13: THE LIFE YOU SAVE MAY BE YOUR OWN "The old woman's three mountains were black against the dark blue sky and were visited off and on by various planets and by the moon after it had left the chickens." flannery please write my internal monologue. great title too. rating: 3.5
DAY 14: THE RIVER jesus christ, flannery! rating: 4.5
DAY 15: A CIRCLE IN THE FIRE you really do start to get a sense of how these stories are going to go. rating: 3
DAY 16: THE DISPLACED PERSON some super interesting race and xenophobia commentary in here, but also this was way too long for its purpose. rating: 3.5
DAY 17: A TEMPLE OF THE HOLY GHOST i am liking the freak show motif for what it does, but not actually liking reading any of instances of it. am liking the voice of this one though. also the title and what it means. rating: 4
DAY 18: THE ARTIFICIAL N***** i have to tell you i am really losing my ability to deal with these race exploration stories, teeming as they are with uses of the n-word. rating: 2
DAY 19: GOOD COUNTRY PEOPLE what the hell and amazing, in equal parts. rating: 4.5
DAY 20: YOU CAN'T BE POORER THAN DEAD for the first time in this whole reading experience, as soon as i started this i felt the urge to skip it. and i should have run with that feeling. rating: 2
DAY 21: GREENLEAF they had me in the first half not going to lie!!! (aka the first half of this did nothing for me but it won me over by the end.) rating: 4
DAY 22: A VIEW OF THE WOODS oh my god i love this. what is wrong with flannery o'connor and can every story have an ending like this one. rating: 4.5
DAY 23: THE ENDURING CHILL reading 3 stories today because i missed 2 days and also i don't want to lug this tome home for thanksgiving. this is like if flannery o'connor wrote a salinger story and therefore i love it more than anything. rating: 5
DAY 24: THE COMFORTS OF HOME i mean, like...okay? the villain of this story is The Concept Of Getting Laid, so determine whether that choice does it for you before reading, i guess. rating: 3
DAY 25: EVERYTHING THAT RISES MUST CONVERGE this would be more interesting if it weren't the 346728346738th deeply similar race story in this book. i like it more than some of the others, though. rating: 3.5
DAY 26: THE PARTRIDGE FESTIVAL intellectuals do be silly, it's true. rating: 4
DAY 27: THE LAME SHALL ENTER FIRST not going to lie, this was way too long. rating: 3
DAY 28: WHY DO THE HEATHEN RAGE? short and sweet. well, not that sweet, but veryveryvery short. rating: 3
DAY 29: REVELATION this was an interesting one. a thinker. hm. rating: 4
DAY 30: PARKER'S BACK no thanks. rating: 2.5
DAY 31: JUDGEMENT DAY at first i thought this was the same set of characters as The Geranium, but it wasn't, and then i thought maybe it was the same ones as in The Train, but it wasn't, and then overall i just felt like A Late Encounter with the Enemy should have been the closer instead of this one. rating: 2.5
OVERALL these stories could feel a little bit repetitive reading them one after the other, but really flannery o'connor is a one of a kind, fantastic writer. 4 stars....more
That's the only conclusion I can come to. That's why I waited a month to write this review, and I still don't know what Yaa Gyasi makes me speechless.
That's the only conclusion I can come to. That's why I waited a month to write this review, and I still don't know what to say. That's why I took forever to review Homegoing and ended up only writing about how I had no words.
She's just that good. That's all I've got.
Bottom line: Why read what I'm writing when you can skip ahead to the good stuff?
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impossible to believe this is the same author as Homegoing. in the best way. how does one brain contain so many kinds of brilliance?
review to come / 4ish stars
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and i needed 6 months to get around to picking this up, apparently
-------------------- tbr review
clear my schedule for the rest of the week. i need at least 3 business days to stare lovingly at this cover...more
Try as I might to rebrand to an Intellectual Adult, whose favorite genre is Literary Fiction and whose to-read list is filled wiI just can't quit YA.
Try as I might to rebrand to an Intellectual Adult, whose favorite genre is Literary Fiction and whose to-read list is filled with international award-winners and dusty classics, I can never quite fully get there.
Because, in an example of great tragedy and unfairness, only YA has books like this one.
Books with effortless diversity and effortful representation and casts of characters that reflect what people really look like and are. And also, yes, really pretty covers with flowers on them.
So until general fiction can catch up to the work of authors like Kacen Callender...
Catch me reading like a fifteen year old for the foreseeable future.
Bottom line: This book is wrenching and difficult and 100% worth the read.
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um. ouch.
review to come / 4 stars (like 4.25?? i don't know)
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do NOT be fooled by the pretty cover: this book is sad and stressful.
but in a good way. probably.
---------------- tbr review
look at me. look me in the eyes.
ALL OF THE BOOKS WITH BEAUTIFUL FLOWER PEOPLE ON THE COVER.
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