i love books about women having mental breakdowns.
and this was kind of that, but what it mostly was was very, very good.
it's a brilliant exploration oi love books about women having mental breakdowns.
and this was kind of that, but what it mostly was was very, very good.
it's a brilliant exploration of womanhood, of what it means to mother and to work and to try to do your moral best and look around at everyone else and be unconvinced they're doing any of it — and for that worry to extend so far you wonder if you're actually doing any of it yourself.
this encapsulation of a few days in one ordinary life totally riveted me. i loved the protagonist's children, and while i wish a few more things were fleshed out — the husband, the babysitter, the ending — all in all this felt like drinking a cool glass of water.
i expected to enjoy this book, because i love translated literature by women and i never tire of reading aboi wish that were my life in three stories.
i expected to enjoy this book, because i love translated literature by women and i never tire of reading about france.
i didn't expect to be so impressed by it!
the author's self awareness, the way she writes emotionally but cleanly and sparsely, her rendering of her life through such clear and simple prose...all of it blew me away. i was enraptured by the last novella in particular, gobbling up the pages, my heart hurting, hoping for a happily ever after.
so who cares about the weaker moments.
bottom line: i am so pleasantly surprised. by a book i expected to like! what a treat.
(review to come / thanks to the publisher for the e-arc)...more
i so appreciate that her stories were published and we get to read from an incredible voice, even if she was gone far may diane oliver rest in peace.
i so appreciate that her stories were published and we get to read from an incredible voice, even if she was gone far too soon. these stories brilliantly explore race in america, and capture a searing image of a bygone era that is not in the distant past.
bottom line: i'm grateful these stories are finally being shared.
just a few pages into this i already felt like i couldn't catch my breath.
i read two jesmyn ward books in one month, and this one was so excellent i fjust a few pages into this i already felt like i couldn't catch my breath.
i read two jesmyn ward books in one month, and this one was so excellent i felt like i had to go back and lower the rating of the other one. the evocative, emotional, propulsive way she writes is so one of a kind.
this book doesn't have the magic aspect of the others i've read by her, and i think it's stronger for it. in its place is an unforgettable love and bond between the characters, who are full and rich. this book is hard to read and even harder not to.
at a time when palestinians are being dehumanized by so many, i am grateful for the release of this book, which beautifully shows the opposite to be tat a time when palestinians are being dehumanized by so many, i am grateful for the release of this book, which beautifully shows the opposite to be true.
this is a book about complicated people, neither good nor evil, those who are doing their best and those are not and those who may be beginning to try to. it would be apt at any time, but it is especially timely today.
selecting the romance novel i will pin my hopes, my dreams, my next comfort read, my choice to be literate, my happiness, and all my chances at likingselecting the romance novel i will pin my hopes, my dreams, my next comfort read, my choice to be literate, my happiness, and all my chances at liking anything on
and this time...it worked???
this was so cute and fun and unique. i really fell for these characters and more importantly, for this apartment...
this book should be jailed for convincing my city-mouse self i need a spare bedroom for my busts of dead poets and my ivy and my shelves of travel books and my robin's egg blue chair.
the romance in this was sweet, but like all romance books, i liked the character arc and the details even more: the food, the journey, the banter. to be fair, that's not a bad problem to have.
bottom line: this was such an unexpected good time....more
the best way i can describe this book is it's as if foolish hearts, which is perhaps my all time favorite YAthis might have been made for me in a lab.
the best way i can describe this book is it's as if foolish hearts, which is perhaps my all time favorite YA contemporary, were transformed into a quest-based goofy middle grade fantasy, perhaps my favorite made up hyperspecific subgenre.
the actual Plot part is a lil weak but who cares. i'm in it for the banter and the crusty bread and cheese.
more authors should write the same narrow niche for ages and then just be like "f*ck it we ball" and write a totally different, equally specific book. it worked for taylor jenkins reid, it worked for emily henry, and i'm ready to declare it works for emma mills!
bottom line: huge win for the me community.
----------------- tbr review
trying YA fantasy for the first time in years just to feel something
(thanks to netgalley for the e-arc)
Merged review:
this might have been made for me in a lab.
the best way i can describe this book is it's as if foolish hearts, which is perhaps my all time favorite YA contemporary, were transformed into a quest-based goofy middle grade fantasy, perhaps my favorite made up hyperspecific subgenre.
the actual Plot part is a lil weak but who cares. i'm in it for the banter and the crusty bread and cheese.
more authors should write the same narrow niche for ages and then just be like "f*ck it we ball" and write a totally different, equally specific book. it worked for taylor jenkins reid, it worked for emily henry, and i'm ready to declare it works for emma mills!
bottom line: huge win for the me community.
----------------- tbr review
trying YA fantasy for the first time in years just to feel something
i read approximately 1 actual work of real, heavy nonfiction annually. i'm happy about my choice this year!
in truth, this book had so many commas—as ii read approximately 1 actual work of real, heavy nonfiction annually. i'm happy about my choice this year!
in truth, this book had so many commas—as in an unsettling, horror film-esque, simply unbelievable number of purely decorative commas—and it was significantly more about aoc than the actual squad, but it was made up of really detailed and interesting political writing that manages to convey what's happened on the left in the last 8 years without making all sense of hope and optimism die.
the background: i have decided to become a genius.
to accomplish this, i'm going to work my way through the collecmy becoming-a-genius project, part 28!
the background: 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 comes from taking phoebe bridgers' book recommendations, so. it better be good.
DAY 1: VICTORY LAP well, we are off to a really good start. rating: 4
DAY 2: STICKS the really good start is continuing.
you can tell i am really appreciating these stories because i'm scared to make jokes. it's like how in youth you fear your elementary school teacher out of respect but the second a substitute arrives it's free range. rating: 4
DAY 3: PUPPY this one was brutal and, guess what, also good.
still no substitute teacher here. rating: 4
DAY 4: ESCAPE FROM SPIDERHEAD i feel like there is no way that a story with this title can be good. but at this point i'm ready for the unthinkable: being wrong.
oh. it's a sci-fi story about how humans are inherently worthy of forgiveness, and the death penalty is therefore inhumane, and how big pharma is evil. in other words it's great. rating: 4
DAY 5: EXHORTATION finally, a moment's break from brilliance. (this was a pretty good story but i would have found it better had it come before yesterday's, which is a more impressive version-ish of this.) rating: 3.5
DAY 6: AL ROOSTEN this was a very educational look inside the mind of the worst kind of guy: the nice guy. rating: 4
DAY 7: THE SEMPLICA GIRL DIARIES this was very, very weird, and very, very long, and made 1 or 2 very interesting points in the meantime. rating: 3.5
DAY 8: HOME i'm going to be honest: i didn't really so super much get this one.
that one's on me. rating: 3
DAY 9: MY CHIVALRIC FIASCO pro: this was a mostly funny story about a guy who gets promoted at some kind of medieval times situation and takes a pill that makes him think he's a knight.
con: it kept explaining to us that that is why it was funny.
other con: feels like sexual assault probably didn't need to be the main event. rating: 3
DAY 10: TENTH OF DECEMBER the title story / best for last combo. i have high hopes.
and my god were they met. rating: 4.5
OVERALL i can't believe this was my first saunders.
this was so weird and so funny and so clever and so one of a kind, even though one one of a kind story after another is not exactly SO one of a kind.
anyone can make a point with hundreds of pages to do it. in less than 200, tokyo ueno station is as thoughtful and effective, and si love short books.
anyone can make a point with hundreds of pages to do it. in less than 200, tokyo ueno station is as thoughtful and effective, and significantly more striking.
we follow kazu, a recently dead homeless man who, as a ghost, is only as unseen and ignored as any other homeless person in the villages that make up the park he spent his life and death in. kazu's life is tied to the olympics, where his roots as a laborer led him to the path of poverty and struggle life cruelly put him on, and to the japanese imperial family, whose opulence is always near and yet so far away.
within just these parameters, miri's exploration of global imperialism, wealth, and greed is unforgettable. each choice is purposeful and powerful, and it's a tiny book i'll remember for a long time.
bottom line: much more than the sum of its pages....more
i will read anything sally rooney-y. and this is that!!!
well, in that it's a book about two artsy, good-looking young people with undiagnosed mental ii will read anything sally rooney-y. and this is that!!!
well, in that it's a book about two artsy, good-looking young people with undiagnosed mental illnesses trying to reckon with love in a european city.
which is officially my favorite niche subgenre.
otherwise, it's rather different. the style takes some adjusting to, being very stream of consciousness, and it is the kind of literary fiction about millennials that you read with your shoulders up by your ears (like PLEASE CARE FOR YOURSELF AND OTHERS BEFORE I DIE CRINGING), but neither of those are even bad things.
this is so incredibly established by a debut, and i felt impressed by it nearly from the first page.
plus jenny mustard is the coolest name ever.
bottom line: every book i spot in a cool bookstore in ireland should be good, and this was.
this is a really lovely and melancholy rambling musing on what it is to love and have lost, and how the endurinostalgic girls unite. this one's for us
this is a really lovely and melancholy rambling musing on what it is to love and have lost, and how the enduring nature of love means we never really have lost — even when we really, really wish we could. even when we know it's impossible.
it's very, very romantic, in the more complex and bittersweet meaning i prefer. this both is and isn't a love story, but what it is is really quite good.
claire keegan seemed to me to only write short, perfect books, and i found most of this little collection to be no exception.
i loved the first two stclaire keegan seemed to me to only write short, perfect books, and i found most of this little collection to be no exception.
i loved the first two stories, which were subtle and lovely and excruciating in their depiction of how men and women feel, and make each other feel.
the last one i loved moments of, but i felt it lost much of the nuance and quietness that made the first two so powerful for me. still, claire keegan is among my favorite authors writing today.
i read my first glück on the day of her passing, having picked it up in my favorite bookstore weeks before—primarily because it was on sale, i love shi read my first glück on the day of her passing, having picked it up in my favorite bookstore weeks before—primarily because it was on sale, i love short literary fiction, and this cover is striking. (i judge books by their covers. so do you. be honest.)
i wasn't sure what to expect, but i found it a marvelous and real glimpse into the wonder and magic of childhood.
on top of that gift from the universe, i found this to be so thoughtful and inteme and this book have the same birthday :)
and that's not the only pro!
on top of that gift from the universe, i found this to be so thoughtful and internal. i love the pleasant surprise of spending a couple of hundred pages inside the head of a protagonist i find clever and interesting. there is almost nothing i enjoy more than reading fictional thoughts and pausing occasionally to google the art that passes through them!
this does a weird thing with perspective, spends time switching POVs without warning or explanation for a couple paragraphs at a time, that i could have done without, but otherwise i had a great time.
bottom line: i predict more teju cole in my future.
here is my post-single-glass-of-wine-stream-of-consciousness review:
the writing is clean and striking and its setting in the world of undergraduate achere is my post-single-glass-of-wine-stream-of-consciousness review:
the writing is clean and striking and its setting in the world of undergraduate academia in stockholm glows, but for a book called the trio this is stunningly one-sided. two of the titular group have alternating first person control over this storyline, and yet it feels like only one (thora) actually has any thoughts or feelings we can follow. though presented as the most mysterious one, she is the clearest in her needs and wants. hugo (the other narrator) is largely inexplicable, apart from a few forays into the exploration of what it means to fit in, how we change for each person we know and how impossible it feels to have an overarching "identity" in the face of that—each one startling in being both skillful and out of place. the third, august, gets very little page time and deserves even less.
this is not as major of a criticism as it sounds, because thora is an interesting enough character with sufficiently developed insights and moments of eloquently rendered wise internal monologue that she could carry this book on her own. so my real criticism is that we weren't given that.
i am being very mean because i had a glass of wine and, as i always do after one glass of wine, have discovered myself to be the smartest person in the world, but the truth is i enjoyed this immensely, and though it was not very close to the seeing-god feeling i get when i read sally rooney, it scratched the itch.
which, to be honest, is maybe the nicest thing i can say about any book right now.
on top of that, this had a lot to say about what we are to each other and what that means to ourselves, and was one of the most thematically self-aware books i've read in a while. and that's a treat!
bottom line: i had a good time.
----------------------- tbr review
unfortunately for all of us, i have decided this is going to scratch the sally rooney itch for me
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