I love Emily Henry, and I love June (aka Jack O'Donnell IV) and I love Saul and I love Hannah and I love Jack O'Donnell III and I lI LOVE EMILY HENRY.
I love Emily Henry, and I love June (aka Jack O'Donnell IV) and I love Saul and I love Hannah and I love Jack O'Donnell III and I love families and I love magical realism and I love this book.
I love it so, so, so so so so much.
Changing this to a five star because a) obviously and b) you should always five star books that are so pretty they make you tear up a little bit on a Greyhound bus.
Those of you who have followed me for a hot second know about my complex relationship with magical realism. Me and magical realism’s Facebook relationship status: it’s complicated. If the feelings between me and magical realism were a math equation, they’d be a super long one.
To sum up my relationship with magical realism: When it’s done right, I LOVE IT. Like, more than any other genre. My perfect book is probably really good magical realism. (Examples of lit magical realism: The Night Circus (!), The World to Come.) But that’s almost never what happens. I don’t know what it is, but I’m rarely content with the sh*t in this genre. And I tend to get way angrier when it’s bad. Like, YOU WERE SO CLOSE! You could have been so good. (Examples of magical realism that made me want to light a trash can on fire: The Darkest Part of the Forest, Miss Peregrine’s, Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore, Every Day, the first two Dorothy Must Die books...I could go on, but this paragraph is hella long.)
I think I’ve boiled down my equation for a good magical realism book to two things: first, it has to make you wonder if maybe there could be magic in our dumb, boring old reality, and second, it has to make you hope that there is, and that it’s the particular breed of magic outlined in the book.
I’m thrilled to inform you that A Million Junes, for the most part, checks those boxes.
So, in this book, we follow June, who lives in a magic house and is the heir apparent to one half of a small town Minnesota war between families. She’s still reeling from the decade-ago death of her dad, who she super loved, when the heir apparent to the OTHER family shows up in town. And is a total flippin’ babe. And then stuff gets very weird, and very magical, AND I CAN’T DO THIS BOOK JUSTICE BUT TRUST ME, IT’S WORTH READING.
I mean...this book wasn’t perfect. When is it ever? But let’s stick with the good stuff for now. In fact, let’s talk characters.
Ah, these characters. Well, specifically June, Saul, and Hannah. June is our protagonist, our narrator, the light of my life and joy of my soul. She’s shockingly funny (when are characters ever truly funny?) and so fun to follow. She makes not like other girls jokes! I was in love with her by the twenty page mark. She’s so not the typical YA narrator, for so many reasons. (And no, that wasn’t a not like other girls joke. Or was it?)
Saul is June’s perfect complement. Their banter is so great. He’s a lil cutie and I like him a lot. That’s all I have to say.
Also, the female friendship in this is AMAZING. June’s BFF Hannah is so wonderful and a tiny angel and I want the absolute best for her. My God. Just...the characters and relationships in this book, man! It gives me I’ll Give You the Sun vibes in terms of how totally fab both of those things are.
The setting is total magic. I don’t even want to talk about it - I want it to take you all blindly and by storm like it did me. It begins just reasonably enough and becomes perfectly wild (for a little while). In other words, the formula for MAKING YOU BELIEVE IN MAGIC.
And maybe most importantly, this book is sososo gorgeously written. I feel like in a lot of YA, the quality of writing after a certain point is sorta left by the wayside, but that's so untrue of this book. Emily Henry's style is achingly lovely, and I may have to pick up everything she ever writes forever for that reason.
But...now, unfortunately, we have to delve into the kinda-bad and the straight-up bad. This book starts off confusing, and it does NOT wait for you to get up and get your head on straight. Your shoes on the right feet. Your pants on not-backwards. It just goes. Eventually you catch up, and you have the first half of the book to enjoy before everything gets increasingly f*cked up and confusing until the last quarter, when, if you’re anything like me, you’ll be holding onto your hat and BEGGING FOR AN EXPLANATION. It’s like becoming the math lady, from that one meme. You know. This one:
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Anyways. That explanation does not come.
I consider myself a mind-bogginglyextremelygenius-level decently smart person, but I had no clue what was going on at some points. It doesn’t ruin the book or anything, since it’s supposed to be kinda magical and mysterious, but still. It loses the grounding in reality that magical realism has, or should have, and I was left with a metric f*ck ton of questions.
And it feels like the characters lose themselves in the second half, and that just sucks. First 200 pages: June-Saul-Hannah central. Remaining chunk: dismally characterization-free.
What I’m saying is the first half was better. The second half wasn’t terrible, but I just fondly reminisced on the beginning and thought:
The only other negative was that most other characters fell by the wayside, but WHO CARES? I probably would’ve just wanted more JuneSaulHannah if anyone else got characterization time anyway.
Honestly, I feel like this book could have been 100 or 200 pages longer. And I NEVER say that. (But I’m not asking for a sequel. I’ll shout it from the rooftops: NO SEQUEL FOR THIS BOOK!!! Trust me on that.)
Bottom line: Ohmygod, read this. We only get so many good magical realism books....more
Okay. Okay okay okay. So. This book, I would say, is the following mix: video games + ’80s culture + sci-fi + semi-dystopia + general nerdiness. Excluding the latter, I am not interested in any of those things.
BUT DAMN IF I DIDN’T LOVE THIS BOOK.
Okay. I’m sorry. I’m trying to calm myself down enough to write a review.
Was this book perfect? No. Sometimes it was dumb, or confusing, or slow, or overly complex, or not complex enough. But it still deserves five stars. MORE THAN FIVE STARS. Immediately after finishing this review, I’ll be penning a handwritten letter to Goodreads to ask for a sixth star. Like a super-like, or what I imagine a super-like is as someone who doesn’t use Tinder and never will. I’M GETTING VERY DISTRACTED.
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So in this book, it’s, like, fifty years in the future, or something. The world has gone to utter sh*t (not hard to believe, eh?) and in order to cope, the majority of people immerse themselves in a virtual-reality experience called the OASIS. It was invented by this guy, James Halliday, who just up and DIED and left the sickest technological scavenger hunt ever thought of behind. And the winner? Gets the company and TWO HUNDRED BILLION DOLLARS. It’s like the darkest, most futuristic version of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Though unfortunately fewer delicious descriptions of food. But still, I LOVED EVERY SECOND OF IT. I’ll try to cool it on the caps lock.
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So...y’all know I love a good setting, and this one is just amazing. There’s something about immersive video games as a setting that I just am obsessed with. I read some book in middle school that was kind of similar and it was SO GREAT. For someone who doesn’t game at all I am very into reading about it.
God, I wish I didn’t have to leave this worldddddd. Give me 11 more books in it. Wait, the author has another book, right?! IS IT SIMILAR?!!! Oh man. Okay. Sorry, I’m still just very hype.
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There was a lotttt of worldbuilding. Like, a LOT a lot. Pages and pages of it and a time. And the most information-heavy passages you can imagine. I didn’t mind it, because I was so flipping fascinated by this book that, if given some sort of magical opportunity I would have moved into it in a hot Texas minute, but still. It’s not exactly seamless.
So that could kind of slow down the plot a little, but again, I NEVER MINDED ONCE. It’s a little hard to settle in, because the book will be goddamn molasses for like 50 pages and then SUDDENLY BREAKNECK SPEED EVERYTHING IS HAPPENING PEOPLE COULD DIE YOU’D BETTER READ AS FAST AS YOUR EYES CAN SKITTER ACROSS THIS TEXT BABY and then that’d be over in a dozen pages and it’d be moreeee slownesssss. But I’d read Cline’s grocery lists if they were set in the OASIS, so IT’S ALL SUNSHINE OVER HERE.
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In terms of characters, we have a handful of main ones. I really, really, really, super-love our narrator, Wade. He’s wicked smart and super nerdy and knows so much about everything. I would like to curl up inside of his head for forever, please and thanks. (Especially since his life is so goddamn interesting.)
I do have some complaints, though. It’s still me.
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For example, Wade is the only character I really feel any sort of way about. Except for Halliday, who I love, but he doesn’t count. He’s dead. There’s also Aech (who is fine), Daito and Shoto, I think (who are also fine), and Art3mis, who sucks, but in a semi-harmless way.
Well, except for one thing. Yes, folks, you may have guessed it: This book includes a forced, uncomfortable, unnecessary, boring ROMANCE. (Boooooo! We hate you, unnecessary romance! shouts the crowd.)
This totally deducted from my enjoyment of the book - not enough to make me not love it, obviously, but significantly still - and I just was so MAD. Why did that have to be included? We get it, nerds deserve love too. Obviously. But does the odyssey of losing his V-card need to play such a big role in Wade’s story, when everything else going on is so goddamn interesting? Ugh. So vanilla, when everything about this book was the total opposite of that. Not chocolate, though. The analogy wouldn’t track, since vanilla > chocolate.
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Anyway. What else, what else...Oh yeah. One last thing. The ending lowkey sucked in comparison to the rest of the book. It was kind of choppy and rushed. A lot of loose ends were left, IMO. It makes sense, kinda, since there were SO many ends to be tied, but still. It didn’t feel concluded. I have no sense of what happened to the characters or the world.
Also, I expected more of a Moral. Like, an Aesop’s-fables type. Because this book follows a dystopian society attempting to escape from the repercussions of, well, our irresponsible actions through a video game. IMO again, but that doesn’t feel like the sickest possible solution. A few times characters will point out that the OASIS isn’t ~really life~, but no real impact is made by the end. I don’t know. I expected more.
BUT I STILL ABSOLUTELY LOVED THIS BOOK. No book can be perfect, and this wasn’t, but I loved it so much. I miss reading it already.
Bottom line: I don’t care WHO you are, this book is sosososo fun and great and you should read it right now. Now, I say!...more
Well, the answer for me is yes. I can’t comment on your answer. But like, if your answer is no...what is wrong with you? Read a damn Neil Gaiman book, you cretin. Allow yourself that happiness.
Anyway.
The fact that this is Neil Gaiman’s first novel makes me want to throw up and die. How do you write a first novel like this? It is beautiful, it is creative, it is magical, it has lovely prose. The world is clear and well-constructed. It is action-packed and well-characterized (seriously, all the characters are so lovable). Also, IT PULLED ME OUT OF A READING SLUMP. A READING SLUMP, I SAID.
It is, in short, an on-paper perfect book. (Paper pun intended.) (Directly stealing my own description of another Neil Gaiman book - Coraline - only semi-intended.) (But if Neil Gaiman would stop writing perfect books it’d be avoidable, so.)
That’s really all there is to say. This book is perfect and it’s a debut and there is absolutely no justice or sense in this world.
But fingers crossed there’s a little bit of Neil Gaiman-style magic in it.
Bottom line: Is Neil Gaiman well on his way to being on my favorite authors list?? Stay tuned!! (But yes. He is.)
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i goddamn love neil gaiman.
review to come
----------- currently-reading updates
no, i'm not just picking up an increasing number of books and marking them as currently reading in order to distract myself from the fact that i haven't finished a book in forever and i'm definitely in a reading slump. why do you ask?...more
Okay, that’s a little bit of a lie. I know the most important thing I have to say. First and foremost: I’M IN LOVE WITH HENRY TILNEY.
SO FUNNY, smart, handsome, owns a cute house, and dare I say...surprisingly non bigoted?! He’s the best. But let me backtrack a bit.
Northanger Abbey is Austen’s satire, and she pokes fun at gothic horror books by having her heroine, Catherine, believe she’s essentially in one. AND SO MUCH GOOD COMES OUT OF THIS. The satire is hilarious - there’s one moment, for example, when what Catherine believes is a ~spooky, ghastly scroll~ is really a list of the contents of a linen closet.
But right when it’s about to stop being funny, and you’re getting just the teensiest bit annoyed at Catherine’s naïveté, it ends! She confesses to Henry, whose father she believes is a murderer, and he gently shoots her down while still being all, “I love you, girl.” It’s really great. AUSTEN IS A TALENT.
That’s the wonderful bit about this satire, IMO. I don’t alwayssss love literary satire, because it gives me secondhand-embarrassment cringes. But this is satire within another narrative - a more typical Austen storyline. So it’s funny and biting, while also being cute and happy and having adorable characters and a lovely ending! Talk about a TOTAL win-win, amiright?
There are also even MORE plus sides to this. Austen makes a lot of sweeping generalizations about “heroines” and plots and books, and they are all hysterically funny and insanely accurate. She also writes a few amazing defenses of fiction - isn’t that wild? While we’re out here with people trying to make others feel bad for liking YA, our brethren in Austen’s lifetime couldn’t even read novels without judgment. Call me crazy, but I’d rather someone insult my intellect for having read Sarah J. Maas than have to read 19th century TEXTBOOKS in order to be considered ~marriage material~. Bleh. Total nightmare, no? Let’s count our blessings and chill the hell out for one freaking second.
But I digress. Let’s talk more about those characterssss. They are, in turn, perfectly hate-able and lovable. Hang on. I’ll explain.
When people are all, “She’s a villain I love to hate!” I seriously never understand. I don’t ever love hating characters. It makes reading unpleasant, usually, even villains. Like Levana from The Lunar Chronicles, or whatever. I just hated her. I didn’t enjoy hating her. She got on my nerves and I was displeased whenever she showed up.
But...Isabella and her brother in this book? Pretty hilarious. They’re super annoying - Isabella uses people, is self-obsessed, and lies all the time; her brother is a total self-serving asshole. But when sweet lil Catherine is utterly ignorant to their flaws? It’s really funny. The way Isabella’s dialogue is written in particular made me laugh a lot, genuinely. Do people actually laugh out loud while reading on the reg?
But also there are characters who are so intensely lovable! (Especially my husband.) Catherine, for one thing. She could be a little irritating, because she’s SO immature sometimes, but she’s just, like, a good person to her core who is so kind to those around her. You can’t hate her. At least I couldn’t, and I hate most characters.
But let’s talk more about bae. You can’t see me, but I actually just turned into a heart eyes emoji from the neck up. Henry Tilney is a charmer from the SECOND he shows up. The banter he has with Catherine...unreal. Austen outdoes herself. Now I wanna reread their meeting scene. Ugh.
And ultimately, this is just a bananas well-written book. A real masterpiece. Some of Austen’s most famous quotes are from this book, and it totally makes sense why. Here are a couple fresh examples:
“The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid.” “There is nothing I would not do for those who are really my friends. I have no notion of loving people by halves, it is not my nature.”
See what I mean? I just read this book and I already wanna pick it up again.
Bottom line: Charming characters, hilarity, biting satire, gorgeous quotes...It’s Austen at her best. But when isn’t she at her best?...more
we are BACK (and a week late) for Project Long Classics, in which elle and i tackle a long intimidating classic in small chunks for an entire month.
however, this book is not long, and it's not intimidating, and personally i will be reading this AND the sequel at a chapter-ish a day.
join our book club to join the project!! follow on instagram here or join the discussion here.
DAY 1: DOWN THE RABBIT-HOLE as we start things off, i'll include the cheesy declaration of love i wrote when announcing this pick in our book club discord:
this is my favorite book of all time. this teeny tiny children's classic is so dear to me - whether you want a light fairytaley read or a thematically rich toughie you can analyze all day long, you can find either experience in this.
filled with whimsy, imagination, and the bittersweet nostalgia of dreams and childhood, i never tire of this - and i get something new from it with every read. at one chapter a day, this and its sequel (THROUGH THE LOOKING-GLASS AND WHAT ALICE FOUND THERE), which i see as a continuation of the first more than a separate book, can be read in 24 days!
bleh. gross. look how sweet and earnest.
DAY 2: THE POOL OF TEARS it's actually day 8. i'm terribly slumped - the kind where it literally never occurs to you to read and then when it does you're like...am i physically capable of doing this? how did i ever make these words enter my head?
if anything can heal me it's this.
update: not yet, but we did get our first curiouser and curiouser...slay...
DAY 3: A CAUCUS-RACE AND A LONG TALE the titular mouse's tale / mouse tail pun here...one of the greatest of all time i dare say...
DAY 4: THE RABBIT SENDS IN A LITTLE BILL i don't know how the little EAT ME cakes manage to sound so good with virtually no description, but they do. maybe because these look so goddamn delicious?
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or maybe just because i like cake.
DAY 5: ADVICE FROM A CATERPILLAR folks...it's day 12.
i've never been slumped like this and at this point i am Frightened. my goodreads challenge is beginning to appear to stare back at me, like the void or one of those scary crusty small white dogs.
but this book is simply...everything.
DAY 6: PIG AND PEPPER the baby-turning-into-a-pig thing is honestly objectively terrifying. especially when alice is like "this baby is like a star-fish" and looks down and boom.
but! cheshire cat appearance. and "we're all mad here." huge quote for people with watercolor tattoos and hot topic graphic tees.
DAY 7: A MAD TEA-PARTY ICONS ALERT!!! a real heavy hitter. maybe my favorite chapter.
what can i say? not all my opinions are unpopular.
DAY 8: THE QUEEN'S CROQUET-GROUND monarchs, am i right.
DAY 9: THE MOCK TURTLE'S STORY well, it's actually day 14, so i might as well mess around and finish this book already. i wanted to relish it but my dumb suddenly-illiterate brain refuses to allow me to!
also: "Alice did not much like keeping so close to her: first, because the Duchess was very ugly." vibes.
DAY 10: THE LOBSTER QUADRILLE this one is a ton of fun but impossible to compete in a universe that contains the walrus and the carpenter.
DAY 11: WHO STOLE THE TARTS? let's go to court!!!!!
sooooo important to remember that even in a nonsense-world, nothing is more illogical and annoying than outdated monarchical structures and the incompetence of the judicial system.
DAY 12: ALICE'S EVIDENCE and it was all a dream!!!
or was it?
or does it even matter at all?
(no.)
perfect book.
OVERALL i have this wholeeeee five star review below, but i'll quickly say that nothing makes me happy and fulfilled and whimsical like this book does. and that's my ideal way to be.
my favorite forever! rating: 5
------------------------ original review
THIS IS MY FAVORITE BOOK.
No qualifier. No excuse. No “one of my favorites.” This one is it, y’all.
Well, also Through the Looking Glass. But THAT’S PRACTICALLY THE SECOND HALF OF THE SAME BOOK. (And other examples of my inability to make decisions or commit in any way to anything.)
I currently have 18 copies of this book. I’ve attempted to read it at least annually for the past three years. And by “annually,” I mean I last revisited this book about nine months ago.
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But hey, it was a different year then, technically speaking.
How do I even review this? I don’t know where to begin. (Just a heads up that my obsessive personality is going to become verrrrry clear as this review progresses. I’m not proud. This is who I am, you guys. I was a member of the fandoms of some teen pop sensation or other for nearly ten consecutive years. I’m no longer thirteen but I still need an outlet. Honestly I’m quite afraid that if I don’t have an obsession, I’ll become a drug addict. Lots of pent up energy.)
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Well, I’ll say that I always, always, always feel enveloped by this book. I have never picked this up without feeling instantly submersed in Wonderland. And it’s really my favorite place to be. It’s hard to feel unhappy when you’re in the greatest setting ever created.
And oh yeah, there’s that. I firmly believe this is the most amazing and beautiful and confusing and curious setting of all time. It’s immersive, and it’s strange, and it’s so unique and fantastic and creative and I love it so much. I can come up with even more loosely positive adjectives if that overwhelming number didn’t suffice.
Wonderland is my Hogwarts. While many readers pray their letters just got lost in the mail, I’m constantly hoping I’ll see a white rabbit in a waistcoat and fall down, down, down into what must be the center of the earth.
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I love Alice and her curiosity. She may also be my favorite character ever. She’s funny and sweet and childish and such a blast to read about. Her reactions to everything are so, so funny. Her curiosity always outweighs confusion and fear. I’d like to wake up one day and be Alice. I’ll likely become one of those creeps who pays millions for plastic surgery in order to “resemble” some celebrity or other.
On an unrelated note, anyone have millions of dollars they’re trying to get rid of?
I’m also fiercely protective of this book. I constantly pick up retellings only to be utterly disappointed. (Like Heartless. Get out of here with your shoddy Carroll-stealing.) DO NOT, DO NOT! GET ME STARTED ON THE TIM BURTON FILM ADAPTATION. Horrific. Alice, an adult? Alice, engaged? Alice FIGHTING THE GODDAMN JABBERWOCK?
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But I do love the original animated Disney adaptation. There’s a certain quality to the book that’s captured within that film, which I haven’t found recreated in any other retelling or use of the setting or adaptation.
Oh, and one more thing, while I’m here.
THIS BOOK ISN’T ABOUT DRUGS, YOU SURFACE-LEVEL INTERPRETERS OF SYMBOLISM. It’s not that easy, boo.
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In the words of BBC News, “[the drug] references may say more about the people making them than the author.”
Lewis Carroll isn’t thought to have been a user of drugs, the Caterpillar was smoking tobacco, and the mushroom is no more magic than the various cakes Alice eats.
Honestly, the drug reading is simple and boring. It’s such a stretch to attempt to read each character as a different substance. And scrolling through countless quasi-psychedelic GIFs to find the actual ones was irritating, too. Ah, yes, real art: taking images from a 1951 children’s film but messing with the colors and movement until it looks like nothing more than a trigger for epilepsy. Enough, Tumblr.
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Alice in Wonderland carries as much or as little significance as you want it to. It’s everything from a mindless romp in an imaginative land to a depiction of the effects of a ruthlessly authoritarian system of justice.
Just have fun with it.
And please, for the love of God, stop applying your weird psychedelic edits to a Disney movie.
Note on the audiobook: This time around, I listened to the audiobook, to switch things up. Scarlett Johansson read it. I loved her funny accents and hated her overly-acted narration. A mixed bag.
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Bottom line: This is my favoritest and I doubt it will be dethroned anytime soon. Come at me, every other book.
------------ reread updates
when I find myself in times of trouble Lewis Carroll comes to me speaking words of wisdom "just reread"...more
Do you ever love a book so much that it doesn’t feel like a book? You’re so immersed and reading is so effortless that you don’t feel like you’re reading at all? The characters are real enough to be people, and their problems and happinesses feel like they’re happening to you?
That was me with this book.
Which is all well and good until it comes down to reviewing it.
Basically what I’m saying is I’m at a loss for words. I’m saying I have nothing TO say. This is just too damn good.
I didn’t read this as a kid, or for many years after. I didn’t think I’d be interested. I had a copy for years with no intention of picking it up, because I am shallow as hell and only bought a copy in the first place because it’s pretty. (In my defense: look HOW pretty.) Honestly, I can’t remember why I decided to read it in the first place.
But I am very, very, VERY glad I did.
I love Anne so much. I love Green Gables. I love Diana, I love Matthew and Marilla, later on I love Gilbert (although I don’t really understand how people love him from this book alone. Not much to see).
After reading this, I was obligated to chase the high of the reading experience by picking up the next two installments as quickly as possible, and they were just as good. Mostly. But still an unparalleled level of good.
I guess what I’m trying to carry across here is that somehow this hundred year old children’s classic about an orphan girl moving to a rural island in Canada was one of the most unputdownable books I’ve ever read.
And also the writing is as pretty as the cover.
Bottom line: I want to live in this book, please and thank you.
----------- pre-review
fun fact: joy exists as a concrete object, and it's called Anne of Green Gables.
god, that was the worst attempt at a title/month pun yet. i'm so sorry. if it helps, i wish i never started this, but nowwelcome to...PERSUAS(JULY)ON?
god, that was the worst attempt at a title/month pun yet. i'm so sorry. if it helps, i wish i never started this, but now here we are, all of us in a sisyphus situation at the start of every new project. except worse. the guy who's getting his guts eaten on the daily by a big bird. prometheus.
(isn't that kind of the most torturous part of that punishment - that he clearly has it so much worse than sisyphus and yet in comparison, zero household name recognition? tough stuff.) (like, prometheus is obviously famous, but you don't throw his example around like my boy sisyphus. sad.)
ANYWAY. welcome back to Project Long Classics, the series in which elle and i read a long classic over the course of the month, too make it less scary!
some updates here: 1) we're rereading, 2) this isn't long, and 3) it's not coming from a place of fear. but otherwise, we're all set.
we're also reading this for our book club - join the discussion here follow on instagram here
let's go!!!
DAY 1: CHAPTER ONE we're immediately late (today is july 2), and yet that's fine, because i love this book and also i only have to read one chapter a day this time around. living the dream.
something i love about anne elliot is that she should be quite boring - a real fanny price, if you will - and yet she isn't.
and relatedly, i get why people are upset by what appears to be her fleabag-ification in the upcoming adaptation...but i am capable of separating the adaptation from the book (on rare and special occasions, like arbor day and half-birthdays) and i think it seems fun.
DAY 2: CHAPTER TWO look at us, catching up!
i love how in old times you could just call people "unsuitable." i wish we still had that. "i find that acquaintance to be one well below your standing, and altogether unsuitable" (or something like that) sounds so much better than "you are my friend, and i like hanging out with you, but i find your friend very annoying."
DAY 3: CHAPTER THREE WENTWORTH MENTION!!!!!!
genuinely...the yearning already...you gotta give it up for jane.
DAY 4: CHAPTER FOUR a day behind because i was drinking to make it through our nation's birthday. bleh. escapist reading time!
DAY 5: CHAPTER FIVE i just...left this blank yesterday.
read the chapter. added this to my update feed. didn't say a thing.
the first few chapters of this are (i think) even more uneventful than usual austen books. maybe because it's less funny? i don't know. it's a lot of past to establish, where we're usually picking up right in the swing of things relatively speaking.
DAY 6: CHAPTER SIX i don't like, also, the pity-party we have to throw anne every other paragraph at the beginning. yes she is lonely and her sisters are annoying. let's get to the romance part!! or give her a hobby at least.
but here is some drama! another slay for miscommunication, a trope that endures through the centuries.
wait why did jane go this hard: "The real circumstances of this pathetic piece of family history were, that the Musgroves had had the ill fortune of a very troublesome, hopeless son; and the good fortune to lose him before he reached his twentieth year; that he had been sent to sea because he was stupid and unmanageable on shore; that he had been very little cared for at any time by his family, though quite as much as he deserved; seldom heard of, and scarcely at all regretted, when the intelligence of his death abroad had worked its way to Uppercross, two years before." like jane he's dead! take mercy you have already killed him!
DAY 7: CHAPTER SEVEN wentworth!!! i'll kill you!!! poor anne. suddenly the pity party is working on me.
DAY 8: CHAPTER EIGHT "But I hate to hear you talking so like a fine gentleman, and as if women were all fine ladies, instead of rational creatures. We none of us expect to be in smooth water all our days." slay mrs croft.
poor anne again!
DAY 9: CHAPTER NINE well, folks. persuasion (2022) has debuted on rotten tomatoes with a score of 27%.
i can no longer pretend it's extremely likely that i'll watch it, but! onward.
all the best crushes come from one (1) completely inane moment.
DAY 10: CHAPTER TEN catching up! (took another day off to be drunk. this is a tradition, at this point.)
there are so many Charleses in this. it seems to be a personal affront.
DAY 11: CHAPTER ELEVEN lmao the whole gang is taking a road trip to visit wentworth's friend, who ol' captain thinks loved his dead wife more than any man has ever loved a woman, and anne NO JOKE thinks "he has not, perhaps, a more sorrowing heart than I have."
pull it together, girlfriend.
DAY 12: CHAPTER TWELVE action chapter!!! i love immersing myself in a 19th century understanding of medicine. when you jump up and down too many times, you almost die, and them's the breaks.
one of anne's most relatable characteristics is being like "hopefully i'm too old to blush now" and then blushing constantly.
DAY 13: CHAPTER THIRTEEN "Lady Russell had only to listen composedly, and wish them happy, but internally her heart revelled in angry pleasure, in pleased contempt, that the man who at twenty-three had seemed to understand somewhat of the value of an Anne Elliot, should, eight years afterwards, be charmed by a Louisa Musgrove." this rules. i cannot be a lady russell hater for this alone.
DAY 14: CHAPTER FOURTEEN at the i-look-forward-to-my-daily-chapter-every-day phase of this :)
goddamn. anne can PULL.
DAY 15: CHAPTER FIFTEEN "The worst of Bath was the number of its plain women. He did not mean to say that there were no pretty women, but the number of the plain was out of all proportion. He had frequently observed, as he walked, that one handsome face would be followed by thirty, or five-and-thirty frights; and once, as he had stood in a shop on Bond Street, he had counted eighty-seven women go by, one after another, without there being a tolerable face among them. It had been a frosty morning, to be sure, a sharp frost, which hardly one woman in a thousand could stand the test of. But still, there certainly were a dreadful multitude of ugly women in Bath; and as for the men! they were infinitely worse. Such scarecrows as the streets were full of!" this is the funniest and most relatable passage in the whole thing. as someone who has a rule that i should not be forced to view anyone ugly when watching television (a guideline continually broken by basketball coaches and the existence of most conservative politicians), i have to stan sir walter.
DAY 16: CHAPTER SIXTEEN anne's life really seems like such a snooze, from one girl who is always right to another. but at least i have indoor plumbing. and refrigerated cookie dough.
DAY 17: CHAPTER SEVENTEEN the thing about jane austen books that we can forget when it's adaptation time is that the love interest is often not the most handsome of the gang. wickham is probably handsomer than darcy. mr elliott is certainly more handsome than wentworth.
but still. how can we be expected, as a society, to root against henry golding??
anyway. a kinda boring Anne Is Perfect chapter.
DAY 18: CHAPTER EIGHTEEN come on, jane...give me some yearning today!
asked and answered.
DAY 19: CHAPTER NINETEEN every day has to be a yearning day at this point.
WOO!!! things are picking up!
i will say i feel like anne's family lacks nuance compared to, say, the bennets or the woodhouses, who are flawed characters but have their arcs and their positive traits. elizabeth and mary and sir nobility what's his name feel a little black and white by comparison.
and speaking of things i will say... "the handsomest and best hung of any in Bath" is a great description. should have been used somewhere besides curtains.
DAY 20: CHAPTER TWENTY "A man does not recover from such a devotion of the heart to such a woman. He ought not; he does not." AHHHH!!!!!!
oh boy. yearning city. this whole section is everything. and the letter soon!!!
DAY 21: CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE ahhhh!!! jane sure knows how to cancel a guy.
DAY 22: CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO the amount of drama in this chapter...my sister is watching below deck in the background as i write this and their screechy voices pale in comparison!!!
DAY 23: CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE the penultimate day!!! i'm going to miss this so much. should i do this all the time???
...no. the last thing i need is the excuse for yet another project.
THE LETTER!!!!!!!!!!! OH MY GOD.
not only is this the most romantic love letter of all time (and it's not close! i openly read this out loud to someone i was with on the STREET!!! not as a declaration but just because it's really good and everyone should know about it), but the FRAMING. the conversation anne has with harville! her confusion at wentworth's dismissal! the yearning! her reaction to his coming back! and her feelings after! AHHHH.
jane, no one does it like you. it'd be five stars for this alone.
DAY 24: CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR the end of an era. i have so enjoyed our time together.
this is a cute kind of epilogue-y chapter, like at the end of movies that were Based On A True Story when they tell you what happened to all the goofballs you've gotten to know. i love it. every book should either have a chapter like this or a sequel.
unless i didn't like the book. then it shouldn't have anything.
OVERALL this is still coming it at a close third in austen rankings for moi (after emma and pride & prejudice) but damn is it still good. that letter! that yearning! anne being a Nice Girl who isn't boring!
what a gift! rating: 5
--------------- general update
NETFLIX ADAPTATION STARRING DAKOTA JOHNSON AND HENRY GOLDING THIS IS NOT A DRILL!!!
--------------- reread update
if you ever have the opportunity to spend an hour or so rereading this in a park on an unseasonably warm fall day, i recommend you take it
DAY 1: CHAPTERS 1 & 2 hope someday to love anything as much as john steinbeck loved the land of california. anyone who gets a bit snoozy over in-depth nature descriptions, today's exposition central might be a little tough to get through, but this gets to be sooo worthwhile and scandalous!!
DAY 2: CHAPTERS 3 & 4 "She smiled at Adam, and he closed his eyes." there is truly more characterization and relationship development in that single sentence than there is in some entire books i've read this year.
in love with the exploration of adam's absence of a mother and charles' absence of a father and who it makes each of them. steinbeck is unbelievable when it comes to characterization and to relationship dynamics, and it's never clearer than in this, his family saga masterpiece. some really compelling chats going on in the east of eden channel - i'm having so much fun with this book and you guys already!
DAY 3: CHAPTERS 5 & 6 in this year of reading i've noticed myself really enjoying unlikable characters - which is good because they are so absurdly trendy right now. loving reading this book because it's slightly different - even with characters who Should be unlikable, like charles, i care about him a lot.
i think steinbeck's writing is just that good - he can indicate powerful emotions in just a few words or one action (i'm thinking in particular of charles and the clean versus unclean house). heart destroying!
DAY 4: CHAPTERS 7 & 8 cathy...in many ways the original girlboss. steinbeck's ability to explore the full spectrum of good and evil while managing to create not only Believable and Convincing characters but also characters you care about is truly one of a kind. many classic authors are unable to write a real-seeming depiction of a person with bad intentions (think about the brontës, for example), and johnny boy is managing not only to do this but to get me invested in what happens to each and every one of them. a master.
i apologize if this is less analytical than other entries (and elle's lovely one for today). i had to read this drunk because i couldn't watch my precious basketball team lose sober.
it's what steinbeck would have wanted.
DAY 5: CHAPTERS 9 & 10 my sister and i have a saying: "men are so tender with each other." it started when one day in a bagel shop a guy behind us in line looked at another guy who came in and went, "bro, i was JUST thinking about you!" and now we notice sweet stuff like that all the time. say what you will, but men love each other a lot.
relatedly, i loved this chapter about charles and adam and their complicated love for each other. and i loved more of cathy's villain origin story, and the line "No one who is young is ever going to be old."
i hope this month of reading never ends!
DAY 6: CHAPTERS 11 & 12 strawberries really DON'T taste as good as they used to.
(best way to describe how the passing of time feels that i've read.)
DAY 7: CHAPTERS 13 & 14 it is day 10. i am in a life slump i recently misdiagnosed as a reading slump, but now i am attempting to get myself back on this glorious biblical retelling bandwagon come, well, hell or high water.
i don't know how many ways there are to say that this is one of the great character books of all time, but i hope chapter 14 and its loving and wonderful depiction of olive is taught in creative writing classes. in the general east of eden channel we're having a fun talk about steinbeck's female characters - i find them compelling beyond reasonable expectation for a dude from old times!!
DAY 8: CHAPTERS 15 & 16 i know steinbeck isn't perfect, but i do find his attempts at subverting traditional bigoted stereotypes very compelling - blaming adam for his inability to see through cathy; creating full and complex female characters; and in these chapters, the character of lee.
these are flawed depictions, even still, and maybe i'm giving too much credit, but i appreciate the effort!!
DAY 9: CHAPTERS 17 & 18 so much to find interesting about cathy as a character, including how her role facilitates reflection on who is responsible for evil. not only is cathy not the only person expected to take accountability for her amorality - she almost isn't!
for whatever reason, we can blame adam for his blind devotion, liza for her lack of superstition, sam and lee for their self-doubt, the sheriff and deputy sheriff for their inability to recognize what's before them, all more easily than we can blame cathy for her own nature.
DAY 10: CHAPTERS 19 & 20 it's hard trying to do actual analysis for this book every day.
skipping that today because i have the kind of sinus headache that makes you empathize with the cartoon character-shaped balloons at grocery store checkout lines. just going to say cathy is crazy i could read about this wild gal forever.
DAY 11: CHAPTERS 21 & 22 it's day 15. this may seem like a disaster, but really i'm just so enjoying savoring this book!!! i can't make myself binge it.
the other book we're reading for our book club this month is conversations with friends, and while the two have almost nothing in common beyond the fact that they are part of the rare and mighty few i've five starred, there is something similar to me...perhaps just in the fact that both are as if the smartest and most interesting people you know sat and talked about the most important and fascinating topics in the world, and the best writer you could think of summarized it all.
not a bad setup. both i feel endlessly grateful for. both i could read forever.
DAY 12: CHAPTERS 23 & 24 there's something almost insulting about the death of a character. my favorite characters are like family members i can return to every time i open their book - a story that kills them ruins the perfection of that illusion. if the hamiltons of reality can't live forever, the hamiltons of fiction at least should.
anyway, here finally we have the pun reveal: TIMSHEL, BABY! thou mayest. in other words - MAYST OF EDEN.
tearing up and it's not even at my own joke.
DAY 13: CHAPTERS 25 & 26 don't mind me, just in a state of mourning.
fortunately i have approximately 89 other excellent characters to get me through.
DAY 14: CHAPTERS 27 & 28 doubling up today because of my most insane hobby: putting 6 or 7 books on my currently reading and reading them chapter by chapter, one at a time.
it is bliss for the focus-challenged nerd in your life.
it's odd - as i read this book i have this sense of foreboding, not only for having read it before, and not only because of that déjà vu knowledge that a retelling provides, but because there's this shakiness to everything in this story. fundamentally east of eden is about the tenacity of people and the precariousness of life.
anyway. even as i know what's to come, on so many levels and for so many reasons, i'm illogically crossing my fingers for the best for all of them.
DAY 15: CHAPTERS 29 & 30 the most wonderful part of this book (if you'll forgive that i've probably called a hundred parts the most wonderful) is the complexity and realism of the characters. none truly good, none truly evil.
sometimes you want to shake cal, and a lesser writer would let you hate him, but goddamn instead in chapter 30 he breaks your f*ckin' heart.
DAY 16: CHAPTERS 31 & 32 i love dessie and tom so much it hurts my heart.
what mental illness is it when you would literally trade your own happiness if made up fictional characters from 70 years ago could have a happy life?
DAY 17: CHAPTERS 33 & 34 possibly the only character i dislike in this entire book, which includes one of the most enduring depictions of pure evil in fiction, is will.
i can't bear a capitalist, and i adore tom. f*ck you, will. let the man have his acorns.
anyway, i'm crying again.
DAY 18: CHAPTERS 35 & 36 i think it'd be tempting to say that steinbeck is depicting a person of color who craves servitude, and there is evidence of that. but more so i don't think steinbeck sees lee as a servant, and in turn, adam and cal and aron don't either. they're a family. lee doesn't return saying starting a bookstore was too hard - he comes back because he was lonely.
obviously there's nuance to this and its own kind of problematic-ness, but it's nice to see the nice things.
DAY 19: CHAPTERS 37 & 38 i don't find adam to be a very compelling character, so it's odd to read two greats (cal and lee) discussing how he's the best man they know.
i'm like, out of this all star lineup?!
DAY 20: CHAPTERS 39 & 40 oh, i love sweet cal. to have a sibling you love can be such a complicated thing.
DAY 21: CHAPTERS 41 & 42 god damn it. steinbeck won't let me dislike even one character. coming out swinging making me like will goddamn hamilton too.
there are dozens of characters in this book, and every single one of them is a person. i mean, every single one has a history that made them who they are, has weaknesses that came from somewhere and dreams and disappointments. how do you even do that?
this book is miraculous.
DAY 22: CHAPTERS 43 & 44 i haven't met a man in my entire dating life (and i'll be honest with you, it's extensive), with a full awareness of the way in which men can create their idea of a woman and then cast it on to a real human, and call that falling in love.
but i just read john steinbeck do it.
DAY 23: CHAPTERS 45 & 46 i can suspend my disbelief as well as the next fiction reader, but kate getting taken down by some random dumb petty criminal man is not something i can get behind in terms of realism.
DAY 24: CHAPTERS 47 & 48 these short chapters are killing me. i'm used to 35 pages of this a day and now i'm having to catch up in order to get there. dire straits.
this also made me look up the etymology of the word "cupcake" - dates back to 1828! who knew. i just thought it was goofy to picture steinbeck at a pastel micro-bakery.
things'll get worse before they get better! (and by get better i mean they won't, really, and the book will end, and i miss the hamiltons.)
DAY 26: CHAPTERS 51 & 52 i do love dear abra. it's nice to know steinbeck was so capable of writing full female characters - he sure didn't in of mice and men. but then he hardly had the time, really.
DAY 27: CHAPTERS 53 & 54 the penultimate day. i'm going to miss this book so much it's embarrassing.
another theme i love in this book is an extension of the broader topic of good and evil - the idea of personal responsibility, and whether it's your right as a human being to be a truly good or truly evil person. adam and aron, who are sinless to the point of self-motivation, are marked by the sins of adam's father and of cathy. cal, despite his best efforts to be bad, is continually drawn toward good.
and then there's the cal and aron of it all.
what was really so bad about cal's and charles' gifts to their fathers? and was what cal did to aron really worse than his response to it? did cal kill aron, or did aron kill himself? or was it less personal than even that?
a real thinker. i'm not reading the last chapter today. i can't do it.
DAY 28: CHAPTER 55 all i can do to finish this, tear up a bit, reread the timshel passages, and stare at the wall for a while.
OVERALL this is one of the greatest: - retellings - family dramas - generational novels - testaments to the power of the character - books to build your life around of all time. i loved revisiting it very much. rating: 5...more
welcome to...ALICE'S ADVENTURES IN SEPTEMBERLAND, PART 2!
i know that seems like a copout, but to be fair, i've always considered this book a continuatwelcome to...ALICE'S ADVENTURES IN SEPTEMBERLAND, PART 2!
i know that seems like a copout, but to be fair, i've always considered this book a continuation of the first one, rather than a separate entity.
usually as, well, a copout so i can call both of them my favorite book of all time.
anyway! here we are for part two of a modified installment of Project Long Classics, in which elle and i tackle a long intimidating classic in small chunks for an entire month.
but because alice is not long to me, nor is it intimidating, and i consider both books to be like one thing, i'm reading both! welcome to that.
join our book club to join the project!! follow on instagram here or join the discussion here.
DAY 1: LOOKING-GLASS HOUSE immediately we're off to the races. man, this slays.
the thing about this book (and keep in mind i have said "the thing about [an alice book]" and followed up with about 97 different statements in the course of my life) is that there has never been a more curious, more interesting, more charming character than alice - and yet she is perfect believable. kids are like this. it rules.
DAY 2: THE GARDEN OF LIVE FLOWERS iconic!!!!!!
i love to think that if flowers could talk, they'd be pretty and mean and prone to puns.
DAY 3: THE LOOKING-GLASS INSECTS talking flowers would be a tough act to follow by any stretch, but goddamn. BUGS are the best we can do?!
but oh my god oh my god. speaking of all stars...tomorrow we head to the dweebs.
DAY 4: TWEEDLEDUM AND TWEEDLEDEE AYOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
mandela effect because "tweedledum and tweedledee" sounds so wrong. feels like it should be the other way around. but then again i typed wrong as "swonr" on the first try so what do i know.
is there any word better than contrariwise?
DAY 5: WOOL AND WATER alice is forever the one exception to my talking-animal rule (that they're boring and dumb and should be left out of everything).
cue paramore.
DAY 6: HUMPTY DUMPTY a children's classic crossover fav!
DAY 7: THE LION AND THE UNICORN wordplay city!!!! imagine how hard this would hit if 99% of these poems and riddles and songs and sh*t were still in pop culture. it's like the SNL of the 19th century. but like, a good era of SNL.
DAY 8: "IT'S MY OWN INVENTION" and suddenly.......an icon receives her crown..............
DAY 9: QUEEN ALICE queen of my heart alice!!! queen of all characters of all time alice!!! queen of being the best there ever was and it isn't close alice!!!
life should have more dinner parties. and they should always be written like this: "dinner-party." and they should contain altogether more nonsense.
DAY 10: SHAKING no...
DAY 11: WAKING don't. :(
it's all over now. what a real and literal awakening. like a wake-up call.
DAY 12: WHICH DREAMED IT? i'm no poetry girl. but possibly my favorite poem ever comes at the end of this chapter.
OVERALL this has a little less of the nonsensical whimsy of the first alice and a bit too much animal chatter even for my taste, but this exploration of dreaming and childhood and magic and nostalgia is so charming and dear to my heart. i will love it forever. rating: 5
---------------- full review
It’s not fair that I have to review this book.
I mean, no one is making me. Technically speaking, I am in no way obligated to review this. But also, in a much more real important way, because I am the one saying it: I absolutely must.
Because I love this book so goddamn much.
BUT HOW AM I POSSIBLY EXPECTED TO PUT THAT LOVE INTO WORDS.
There’s only one way to do it.
By cheating.
Read my review of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland so you understand the immensity of my love for these books (which I kind of count as one book, spiritually, and only don’t actually count as one book for reading challenge purposes).
But you still won’t really know how much I love these books, so you should probably read me scream more about it in my review of The Annotated Alice. And Alice's Adventures Under Ground, for good measure.
And also, you should read all of Shakespeare’s love sonnets, and the great love letters of history, and the collected works of Jane Austen. You should watch the bird scene from The Notebook, and the sad part from Titanic, and the scene in Say Anything when John Cusack holds the boombox over his head.
All of those viewings are just to have a good laugh, though. And also to jam the f*ck out to In Your Eyes, a musical treasure.
To reallyyyy understand, you should watch Booksmart and Safety Not Guaranteed and Mamma Mia 2: Here We Go Again!
Perhaps through all of these reviews and readings and viewings, you can gain a passing understanding of how much I love Alice.
Probably not, though.
Bottom line: I HAVE TOO MUCH LOVE IN MY HEART....more
I am not even talking about the cover - although actually, let’s take a second to talk about the cover. LOOK AT THIS COVER! This book is so beautiful.
I am not even talking about the cover - although actually, let’s take a second to talk about the cover. LOOK AT THIS COVER! Are you seeing it? So lovely. So so pretty. Looooook aaaaaaattttt itttttttt.
Okay, now that we’ve done that.
This book is so beautiful.
I don’t know what I expected. I honestly don’t really know why I picked this up, besides the aforementioned pretty-cover thing. I’m not a huge sci-fi person. I’m definitely not a huge post-apocalyptic dystopian person. (We all lived through the time when YA just seemed like different iterations of the exact same dystopian plotline. Like, were there not at least two years in which every YA book was the Hunger Games and Divergent under a different title, but somehow increasingly bland? Anyway.)
I don’t know what tempted me to pick this up, but good golly am I glad I did. (And good golly am I sorry I just used the term “good golly.”)
Because, again, this book is so, so beautiful.
It’s gorgeously written. Every time I stumble across a beautifully written book, I feel so lucky about it. It’s hard to stumble upon truly lovely prose, and I certainly never expected it from an Apocalypse Book, but holy sh*t is it what I received. The writing is enchanting.
It’s also gorgeously characterized. There are a lot of characters in this book, many of whom are introduced all at once, and many of whom get very little coverage in the book. But somehow……..none of them feel flat. They’re not easy to confuse with one another. Somehow, without your noticing, this book will get you to care about a dozen or so people. (And they really feel like people.)
And its themes are gorgeous, too. I can’t imagine anyone coming out of this story and not feeling newly in love with life and with the world. Civilization just seems so wondrous after this. I looked at so many commonplace things in a whole new light.
This book is sad, and lovely, and exciting, and slow, and true, and earnest, and caring, and sweet, and cruel, and real, and above all it is so, so beautiful.
Bottom line: Everything about this is an unexpected gift.
---------------- pre-review i am Overwhelmed by Beauty and Meaning and Good Things and there is simply no way i can really rate this at this time, let alone review it.
review (& final rating) to come, when i've redeveloped some semblance of personhood
---------------- tbr review
honestly can't believe i've waited so long to read a book with a cover this pretty...more
i love this book so much, it means the world to me, i would do anything for it, and i have the exact proof.
because one time a guy i was dating (who woi love this book so much, it means the world to me, i would do anything for it, and i have the exact proof.
because one time a guy i was dating (who would prove to be supervillain-level evil, for unrelated reasons that would later reveal themselves) ghosted me.
while borrowing my (SIGNED!) copy of this book.
and when i realized months later that he still had it (long after i had already removed him on everything and deleted his number and paid a witch to cast a spell on him, as all healthy grown-ups do when they get over someone), i re-followed him on instagram.
but he didn't follow me.
so i had to make a group chat with him and my roommate in order to send him this request.
and then i had to SEE HIS STUPID FACE in order to retrieve it.
i did all that for this book. and i'd do it again!
this is a compelling, important, and well-written story. it is my go-to recommendation for writing on race, on the justice system, on systemic bigotry, and on the death penalty. i read this when i was somewhat undecided on the latter, and it set me on a decidedly anti- path. i have never looked back or doubted it. the equal justice initiative is still my go-to charity.
this was also my first-ever college assignment, and it set the stage for my entire post-mandatory education, and it was a blessing and a treat.
if all that didn't convince you of this book's must-read status, i don't know what to tell you. WHAT DO I HAVE TO OFFER YOU BUT THE LAST OF MY DIGNITY.
part of a series i'm doing in which i review books i read a long time ago and embarrass myself on multiple levels in the process...more
I’m only, like, 17% joking. I have no idea how to review this book. I barely even knew how to read this book, due to the fact that it was so devastatingly cool and exciting and unique and addictive that it almost made me illiterate.
When I first read this book, I loved it. Absolutely aDORED it. I five-starred it and participated in the hype and probably googled fan art exactly one time, which is as far as I ever get in terms of joining a fandom.
However. That guaranteed absolutely nothing.
As I have said 3467824628 times, any opinion of mine older than approximately 18 months cannot be trusted. I am on a continual process of growth and I am very stupid. Here is where I always list a hot take younger me had (such as thinking the television program "Degrassi" was the apex of cinematic art), or something dumb younger me did (such as literally never eat a salad even once), in order to illustrate just how stupid that was.
This is the person who read and loved Six of Crows.
That version of me was also #new to the book-internet scene and, ahem, DESPERATE TO FIT IN. I think I initially four-starred A Court of Thorns and Roses despite not liking it at all just to seem Hip and Down With The Teens.
Obviously I went back and surreptitiously changed that rating.
Anyway, what it’s coming down to is that it’s absolutely possible that then-me could have tricked myself into liking this book just out of a desperate desire for popularity, and that even if I did actually like it it wouldn’t matter because I was (and continue to be) a fool.
Luckily, THAT WAS NOT THE CASE.
This book is fan-f*cking-tastic. It blows all other YA fantasy out of the water (okay except The Raven Cycle I see you Maggie Stiefvater I would never forget about you Gansey).
It’s everything the genre should be. It’s creative and immersive and unique. It’s stylistically great without being overly stylized. The plotline is nearly nonstop exciting. There is a MAP.
Nearly most importantly of all, there is a HEIST. Everyone who’s anyone knows that the best trope-y plotline is a heist. We get squads and excitement and scheming and risk and THEFT. And just yesterday someone asked me earnestly if I’m a kleptomaniac, to which, after a bit of reflection, I answered “Yes.”
But there is a lil thing I mentioned in there that I need to talk more about. And it’s not my potential kleptomania. (Although maybe I should talk more about that too. In a different format.)
That thing is: THE SQUAD!!!!
The characters in this book are so fantastic. Our gang is made up of six people, whom I will now list here as if it’s even slightly possible that anyone hasn’t read this book yet. They are: Kaz, Inej, Jesper, Wylan, Nina, Matthias.
Is that a ranking? I don’t know. You decide. (Yes it is a ranking.)
I LIKE THREE OF THOSE CHARACTERS. THREE!! OUT OF SIX!!! To anyone else that may sound like a fairly low number. You know. Fifty percent. A failing grade. But I’ve always been a glass-half-full kind of person, and by “always” I mean “exclusively in this exact scenario for the sake of my argument.”
What it comes down to is the fact that I rarely truly like even a single character in a book. So to like THREE!! IN ONE NOVEL! Unbelievable.
Kaz is a dark nightmare boy who threatens to be a Hot Boy With A Tragic Backstory And So He Is Allowed To Be Mean To Everyone Especially Girls He Likes And You Can’t Say Anything About It, but he subverts that trope gorgeously. (By which I mean: Leigh Bardugo is the queen of YA, and also literature and being a person in general.)
Inej is a spooky lil sneaky gal who climbs around stuff and is the single most powerful creature in all of fictional humankind. Also Inej is just a cool name. EVERYTHING ABOUT THIS BOOK AND ITS WORLDBUILDING IS COOL.
Jesper is a hilarious f*cked up lil monster who is trying his damn best and being a sarcastic sweetheart while he’s at it. Plus shooting at stuff, which adds some excitement and flair to the whole thing.
The other three...they’re just pretty boring. Wylan is Nice but that’s not enough to make me like a character. Nina is just like “Food!!! Yum!!! Love to eat, and also be sexy!!!” And if anyone could show me actual proof Matthias has one (1) trait besides liking Nina and being strong, I’d fall out of my chair. Because I’d be surprised. And also statistically speaking I’d probably be sitting.
BUT ANYWAY this is a five star review and that means I don’t have to complain!!! Who knew!! All new to me.
This book united stupid me and current me, which means that people who are dumb and have bad taste and people who are very very cool and like good things only can be united in liking this book.
It is literally so good that it’s impossible to not like it, even if you’re an idiot or picky. PICKY IDIOTS: UNITE!!!
Bottom line: Can anyone give me Leigh Bardugo’s mailing address? Not for anything creepy, I just want to blow a kiss into an envelope and ship it to her.
Oh, that is creepy? Got it. I would still like that address though.
-- PRE-REVIEW REREADING THIS BOOK WAS THE BEST DECISION I'VE MADE IN RECENT MEMORY.
and just last night, i decided to rewatch Fantastic Mr. Fox while eating peanut butter cup ice cream. so that's a high bar.
review to come!!
-- CURRENTLY-READING UPDATES
me: okay. school's amping up. extracurriculars are starting. the internship search is well under way. what should we do first?
also me: ...idk sounds like the perfect time to reread Six of Crows imo
--
this reread brought to you by the generosity of lily
was wondering why i felt sad and realized it's been way too long since i last read six of crows. so this'll probably solve it
i have been reading this book forever. and i realize that coming from me, that means a week or two. but this book has existed, albeit in the back of mi have been reading this book forever. and i realize that coming from me, that means a week or two. but this book has existed, albeit in the back of my mind and in some form or another, since december or january. normally that would be repulsive to me, but i don't think this book should be read in even a week. i think it should be read in snippets over time. it feels most like a voyage that way, at least for me.
i don't feel qualified to even rate this book. i honestly can't believe i finished it.
i love steinbeck--he's up there with fitzgerald for me: an author i adore, an author whose breadth of work i will likely never read, as i selected each as a favorite after a couple of novels. and yes, this work contained those classic steinbeck irritations: the old man superiority to change and to the young; the ignorance of women--somehow his characteristic flat female characters exist, or fail to, even in nonfiction; the quiet racism that refuses to recognize itself.
yet this was a book about travel, about America, in the sharp, simple, philosophical voice i love. i marked this up over and over with an orange highlighter and blue Post-It scraps. steinbeck may have come to know america like few--maybe no one--have, and i feel fortunate to have seen a changing country through his eyes.
i suppose i must give this 5 stars, though i'm tempted to give it 4. but reading this was as much a labor of love as writing it must have been, and it isn't a work i'll soon forget....more
“They were smiling at each other as if this was the beginning of the world.”
There are very few writers whose careers you can trace through their work “They were smiling at each other as if this was the beginning of the world.”
There are very few writers whose careers you can trace through their work like F. Scott Fitzgerald.
The kind of charming immaturity of This Side of Paradise; the polished, profound (if a little thematically evident), career-defining The Great Gatsby; Tender is the Night, a decade’s attempt to live up to Gatsby; and, finally, The Last Tycoon, the book that finally would’ve done so.
AND FITZGERALD JUST HAD TO GO AND DIE IN THE MIDDLE OF IT.
I do not know how to review this book. I am completely, truly, one hundred percent sure this would have been Fitzgerald’s greatest. Maybe not his most well-read (Gatsby is perfect for high school underclassmen reading lists - theme-filled AND obvious) but definitely his best.
“These lights, this brightness, these clusters of human hope, of wild desire—I shall take these lights in my fingers. I shall make them bright, and whether they shine or not, it is in these fingers that they shall succeed or fail.”
This book, even in its incompleteness, is so subtle and evocative and nuanced. The characters are what Gatsby’s could have been if they were more people than images. Fitzgerald treats his women better, even his minorities better.
1930s Hollywood is as glamorous and seedy and fascinating as one of Gatsby’s parties - and as Fitzgerald himself pointed out, a much needed escape from the war burgeoning as he wrote.
“People fall in and out of love all the time. I wonder how they manage it.”
Reading this is an experience. It’s kind of like if you were assigned a translated book for school, and you read two thirds of the wrong translation before giving it up and Sparknoting the rest. Thorough Sparknoting, but Sparknoting all the same.
It’s interesting, and it provides a unique look, but god the whole time I was just wishing that Fitzgerald lived to finish this work.
Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe he would have gotten too wrapped up in it - made it too much like Gatsby, rewritten the themes as too obvious, changed the ending or added more motifs. Maybe Kathleen would have gotten the treatment Daisy Buchanan did. Maybe it would have always been way too overshadowed by Gatsby to get any attention.
But we’ll never know. And it feels like the worst thing ever that we’ll never get the chance.
Bottom line: I loved this so, so, so much. Fitzgerald, man. If only you had another year.
“How different it all was from what you'd planned.” ...more
I try to seem “hip” and “cool” and “relatable” and “down with the teens” - and of course I totally am all of those thinI am a very pretentious person.
I try to seem “hip” and “cool” and “relatable” and “down with the teens” - and of course I totally am all of those things - but also I have my tendencies toward pretension. It’s who I am. Just last night I shuddered at the idea of popular music, like some kind of eight-hundred-year-old gremlin.
I am not proud of this side of me, but it’s who I am. And also it is important background information for you, dear Reader, going into this review. (That direct address to you as an audience member was me emulating this book, not an example of my pretension. Or was it???)
Anyway. It’s important that you know my capacity to be pretentious so that I can make this statement:
I don’t get how any reader can say they don’t like classics.
Oof. A doozy, right? Aren’t you glad I warned you? Now you know that that wasn’t just a one-off of self-serious condescension but rather a pattern of my personality and oh sh*t actually my explanation probably made the whole thing a million times worse. Now I’ve painted my insufferability as consistent.
Come back, everyone!!!! Let me explain!
What I need to explain is that this book is excellent, and also a classic. It is very very old but sometimes old stuff is still worth it! (I should know. I have the mannerisms of the type of grumpy old man that gets endearingly profiled in Scandinavian bestsellers.)
This is not the classic I would recommend that someone start with if they’re looking to get into the genre. It is very, very slow, and very wordy, and the language takes some settling in. But also this book is a literal gem.
It was published in 19th century England, which is no one’s idea of Progressive Central. But this book is jarringly feminist when the constraints it (and Jane) were working in are taken into account. Jane is an independent woman, and this book from eighteen freakin’ forty-seven tells her story.
Now, I love Jane Austen books as much as the next girl (if the next girl is pretty damn obsessed with Jane Austen), but that’s something not even all her books can say.
Here’s the thing about this book: I love nineteenth century fiction (or what I’ve read of it), but even if you didn’t you’d probably love this book. So much of this is unique, by the standards of then but also even the standards of today. It’s a romance, yes, which: extremely normal. But it’s a romance between two characters who are not conventionally beautiful, which is unbelievably rare.
It’s also not a romance that acts as basically the sole option for its female character. I love Pride & Prejudice, and I of course think Lizzie Bennet is a feminist (and awesome) character, but there’s no way for that book to end, really, that doesn’t include marriage for her. Three of the five Bennet sisters get married over the course of that book. It’s either that or old maid status, baby.
But not lil Jane Eyre. She does not allow marriage to be the only prospect for her!! She goes away and makes a life for herself and then decides whether she wants to follow that path. We don’t even see that in every 21st century romance.
Plus, Jane is an excellent character, and of a type we RARELY see. She’s serious and upstanding and smart and moral. She has a strong mind and she doesn’t shy away from that. She lacks the requisite features of today’s female subjects of romance: the quirkiness or the humor or the adorkable way she trips and falls/spills coffee/etc. She also lacks the nineteenth-century version of a lot of those traits. And it is so goddamn refreshing I can’t even tell you.
And on top of all that, the language in this book is so gorgeous I want the whole manuscript tattooed on me.
Which would be wild, because this is about a million pages long. And speaking of, yes, it is very slow and hard to get into and basically you have to adjust to a whole new reading experience. So I wouldn’t recommend starting off your nineteenth century fiction binge with this book.
But I would recommend getting into nineteenth century fiction solely for the purpose of reading this book.
Bottom line: IT’S JUST SO DAMN GOOD, YOU GUYS.
------------- pre-review
hey um...i love this book so stupid much???
if you've got a free few hours over the course of the next few months i HIGHLY recommend rereading this book at a snail's pace. worked out for me very well.
i should probably shout about my adoration of this book for several pages so. full review 2 come...more
On the third of June, at a minute past two, where once was a person, a flower now grew.
Five daisies arranged on a large outdoor stage in front ofFlowers
On the third of June, at a minute past two, where once was a person, a flower now grew.
Five daisies arranged on a large outdoor stage in front of a ten-acre pasture of sage.
In a changing room, a lily poses. At the DMV, rows of roses.
The world was much crueler an hour ago. I’m glad someone decided to give flowers a go.
If you aren’t interested in poems as lovely as that one bracketed by d*ck jokes, I just don’t know what to tell you. Except that you and I are not cut from the same cloth.
This is a dream.
I love Bo Burnham very dearly. (Or the idea of him, more accurately.) I always have. When I was a sh*tty preteen with a bad sense of humor, he made songs with offensive jokes. When I started getting into comedy a couple years later, he recorded his first standup special. When I was an edgy teen who felt better than everybody else, he made Zach Stone is Gonna Be Famous. More standup specials, these ones no-holds-barred brilliant, followed after. And then he made Eighth Grade, a movie so stunning and real and empathetic I could cry thinking about it, if I tried hard and also was possibly cutting an onion.
And somewhere in there he wrote this book, which, like everything else, I loved when I first found it and will love forever.
But unlike some of that early standup, this is actually objectively...wonderful.
Bottom line: I do not even like poetry. FIVE STARS....more
If you ever need a boost of serotonin, especially in the fall, this book is literally screaming at you to read it.
Plus then you unlock the ability to If you ever need a boost of serotonin, especially in the fall, this book is literally screaming at you to read it.
Plus then you unlock the ability to watch the Wes Anderson film version (because everyone knows you're not legally allowed to watch movies until you read the book), and that's just even more serotonin for you.
Endings are truly the worst part of human existence.
This is saying a lot, because "human existence" is a category that contains things like "stepping Endings are truly the worst part of human existence.
This is saying a lot, because "human existence" is a category that contains things like "stepping in water when you have socks on" and "bad haircuts" and other excruciatingly painful experiences.
But endings are the worst ones of all. And endings of long, unique series of books that happen to be your very favorites are especially heinous. (Dun-dun.)
I know a lot of people hate this book, and thus I am currently living out my curse of having unpopular opinions but on the more positive side, because I love it very much.
It doesn't contain many answers. The end of the end of The End is ambiguous and melancholy. People die and people cry and people are cruel and unjust.
But isn't that LIFE?
Bottom line: This, like everything else in this series, is painful and funny and wonderfully, truthfully real.
The end.
-------------
well, now i am sad.
send thoughts & prayers.
review to come / 5 stars who am i kidding
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please tell lemony snicket that i would prefer if this series went on forever and i never had to finish it, even in reread. endings are sad and i've decided to never be sad. thanks...more
Do any of you secretly know how to time travel? Have like a weird DIY crystal-/laser-based contraption that gets the ol' hanging-out-with-Cleopatra joDo any of you secretly know how to time travel? Have like a weird DIY crystal-/laser-based contraption that gets the ol' hanging-out-with-Cleopatra job done?
I promise I won’t tell anyone, I just have one favor to ask.
Please go back in time and tell ten-year-old me reading this series for the first time that she is peaking.
I will never find a book like this one. Ever. It’s time to give up. I’m going to force myself to forget how to read in order to avoid the disappointment. Time to start my new life as Jared, 19.
They just don’t make books like this anymore!!!
This series is funny, it is wrenching, it is well-characterized, it is exciting, it is unique, it is unforgettable, it is SHOW-STOPPING. It gave me, a child, a moral compass that included justice and kindness and generosity and realism and forgiveness.
(Well, I was a child then. Not now. Adult woman, moral compass in place, etc. etc. Okay yes maybe I eat cookies for meals and enjoy bubbles more than any grown-up has any right to but still. Legally I am an adult.
I’m not okay with this series being """over""" in any capacity. Even my reread of it.
This is my favorite book in my favorite series, and it has been for over a decade, and I am Voraciously, Fiercely Determined that that fact will never change.
whenever i feel i must ask the question "emma, why are you like this?" i now know i can simply answer: because of how many times i read this series in childhood.
"Justice is out. Injustice is in. That's why it's called injustice."
review to come / 5 stars
---------- currently-reading updates
i can FEEL the reading slump coming on...if my favorite book in my favorite series can't help me nothing can...more
This is your friendly reminder that I LOVE THIS SERIES SO MUCH.
This series ranks among cookies and coffee and Alice's Adventures in Wonderland for thiThis is your friendly reminder that I LOVE THIS SERIES SO MUCH.
This series ranks among cookies and coffee and Alice's Adventures in Wonderland for things in this world that I purely love, without complication or exception.
Also, I now understand why I am the way that I am. Clearly, nine-year-old me (who wasn't allowed to read Harry Potter past a certain point in the evening because if I did I'd get nightmares) was NOT equipped to handle this book, wherein a fourteen year old girl is drugged for the sake of surgical decapitation.
THEY TRY TO CHOP VIOLET BAUDELAIRE'S HEAD OFF.
Who can blame me for being slightly damaged? That sh*t is scarring - and not just for Violet. (Buh dum ch.)
This particular installment is amazing even among the thirteen amazing installments that make up the series it is in, for the following reasons: - the Snicket file, one of many mysterious mysteries to be researched - the Library of Records, which is one of the top places I'd want to visit if I were in this world (view spoiler)[too bad it burnt to the ground (hide spoiler)] - the continuing quest to discover what V.F.D. is - the Last Chance General Store, just a great setting - the character of Hal, a real misguided sweetheart (aren't they all) - Esmé Squalor's stiletto heels, the heels of which are ACTUAL STILETTOS - the internal quest in the Baudelaire orphans to decide just what makes a villain - is it the lying and stealing and tricking? Or is it what motivates that?
Okay. I'm done ranting. Maybe.
Bottom line: This book is dopedopedopedope....more
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