i read most of this stone-faced, face unchanged even as i was recalling repressed traumas with needle-like stabs, even as my heart ached for carmen mai read most of this stone-faced, face unchanged even as i was recalling repressed traumas with needle-like stabs, even as my heart ached for carmen maria machado, even as the pained gorgeousness of the writing took my breath away.
and then i got to the part where things are allowed to be happy again. and i burst into tears.
this is a beautifully written, brilliant researched, painful and raw and horrific and wonderful nightmarish fairytale of a book. it's 5 stars and i will never read it again but i will think about it all the time.
bottom line: sometimes, you read a masterpiece. sometimes, a book hits you at exactly the right time. finding both in one tome is once in a lifetime.
----------------- tbr review
do you ever put off reading a book because you know it'll hit you too hard?
file "one of the best writers i can think of writing about the thing that is closest possible to home" under that....more
i can recall many in my life. when i was 13, for example, and i thought that the height of fashion was a graphic twe all have our periods of delusion.
i can recall many in my life. when i was 13, for example, and i thought that the height of fashion was a graphic tee that said AEROPOSTALE in huge letters on the front, paired with a simple and understated pair of black fake uggs.
or most of my childhood, which i spent convinced i was destined to marry either joe jonas (the obvious best of the brothers) or my neighbor who once threw a snowball directly at my face — whoever showed up first.
or when i read this book, which i recalled as being cute and fluffy and one of the only romances i have ever given five stars, and lent to my mom.
this book IS cute and fluffy, in many ways, and talia hibbert Does It Again.
BUT THIS BOOK ALSO CONTAINS MANY, MANY MENTIONS OF A GIANT, COLORFUL, VERY ACTIVE DILDO.
AND I LENT IT TO MY MOTHER.
in fact, i generally misremembered this book, which is no longer 1 of 2 romances i've ever given five stars. it is funny, and it is fun, but it isn't the things i require in my perfect love stories (namely, mostly yearning and suffering). it is mostly silly and sexy.
and there is nothing wrong with that.
unless, and i can't stress this enough, you are thinking of book recommendations to give your poor, sweet, innocent mother.
bottom line: sorry mom.
(sidenote: this has been another installment of PROJECT 5 STAR)
---------------- original review
(view spoiler)[Do you ever have the food you've been craving at exactly the moment you're craving it?
That fasting-for-Thanksgiving feeling of finally sitting at the table, except for if turkey and canned cranberry sauce were ever everything it's cracked up to be. So more like pizza by the slice in the salt air and setting sun of the boardwalk after a day on the beach, or takeout-dim-sum pork buns and scallion pancakes when you've forgotten to eat and are suddenly hollow-stomached, or FINALLY experiencing the toothachey sugar of a warm cinnamon roll, which always take like eight times longer to make than expected.
That's what reading a good romance feels like after dozens of mediocre ones.
This is a perfect romance, for me.
I loved the brash kind protagonist. I loved the shy rough around the edges sweet love interest. I loved the fun dialogue, I loved (for once in my life!) the steamy scenes, I loved the complicated loving family, and I loved watching these two miscommunicate and yell and fall in love.
I blushed, I smiled, I heart-hurted, I winced. It's everything I want.
I thought the first book in this series was good. I thought the second was not. This was something else altogether.
I hope this holds up on reread.
Bottom line: Enemies to lovers wins again! (hide spoiler)]
if you've had the misfortune of digitally encountering me before, you probably know what that means: i pick up the collected works (almost no entries have actually met this parameter) of various Respected Authors (a category that apparently depends on my mood) and read a story a day (except most saturdays, or when i'm slumping, or when i forget, or when i read more than one like the teacher's pet suckup i am) until i become a genius (which is funny because it will never happen).
anyway, this triumphantly fails to meet all guidelines. this is a selection of lucia berlin's stories, berlin is a recent entrant into the canon if she's there at all, i already accidentally read the first 17 stories, and i am dumber than ever.
so i'm not sure this can count as a genius project even if i'm being nice to myself. but i just remembered i make the rules so. f*ck it.
STORY 1: ANGEL'S LAUNDROMAT sheesh. you can immediately tell lucia berlin was That Bitch. i kept rereading paragraphs but it could have either been due to lack of focus on my part or because i really wanted them to sink in, like when you replay your favorite song because you weren't appreciating it enough. let's err on the side of positivity for once. rating: 3.5
STORY 2: DR. H.A. MOYNIHAN this made me dearly miss my grandpa, who - while not a maniacal and disturbing dentist indulging in raging alcoholism - was a kind of ornery old guy with a penchant for jack daniels. or maybe it was just that phoebe bridgers' cover of summer's end came on shuffle while i was reading this. either/or. rating: 4
STORY 3: STARS AND SAINTS i have spent, as i write these little notes in my little notebook that i will later transfer to my little goodreads, most of the past 48 hours in public. as someone with untreated (but diagnosed!) anxiety that is rapidly devolving into agoraphobia, that means i have spent most of the same period believing myself so horrifically awkward it warrants execution. this made me feel better. rating: 4
STORY 4: A MANUAL FOR CLEANING WOMEN i always expect a lot from title stories. here, i was right to. rating: 5
STORY 5: MY JOCKEY a one pager. bold. update: i later learned this was one of the only stories lucia berlin wrote to be recognized in her lifetime, so i feel stupid for not liking it as much as some of the others...but i don't. so. speaking my truth. rating: 3.75
STORY 6: EL TIM i hated reading this but that was maybe the point? this felt like ottessa moshfegh, and surrounded by the other stories in this collection it made me like ottessa moshfegh less. rating: none
STORY 7: POINT OF VIEW i just fell in love. i'm in love with this story. it'll be an autumn wedding and you're all invited. rating: 5
STORY 8: HER FIRST DETOX i'm like 1/8 of the way through this collection and already dreading finishing it. rating: 5
STORY 9: PHANTOM PAIN it do be like that. that's all i can say. rating: 4.5
STORY 10: TIGER BITES all of these stories are: - excellent - semi-autobiographical - in an endlessly confusing way. rating: 4.5
STORY 11: EMERGENCY ROOM NOTEBOOK, 1977 very grateful for a year to ground me. i have no f*cking idea when most of these take place. rating: 3.5
STORY 12: TEMPS PERDU too gross for me. i'm sensitive. rating: 3
STORY 13: CARPE DIEM i am getting some anxiety rep with devastating accuracy here. rating: 4.5
STORY 14: TODA LUNA, TODO ANO well f*ck. this was nice. this book is giving me so precisely what i need that it feels like a prescription. i read this on a plane fleeing the same goddamn place the protagonist of this story is fleeing. rating: 4.5
STORY 15: GOOD AND BAD i love when i feel kind of meh about a story and then i come back here to write that and see the title i noted down earlier and go "OH! well that changes things." rating: 3.5
STORY 16: MELINA this one is kind of basic and silly, but with the same stunning writing, and it made me remember the others are truly brilliant. rating: 3
STORY 17: FRIENDS like the last one, but improving from the cliché and trite. rating: 4
STORY 18: UNMANAGEABLE addiction is very scary. the least hot take of all time, but this story knocked the sense out of me. rating: 4
STORY 19: ELECTRIC CAR, EL PASO allow me to reflect on what the hell this one means. rating: none
STORY 20: SEX APPEAL in a shocking twist, it turns out the men of hollywood have ALWAYS used their power and charisma to be f*cking disgusting. rating: 3.75
STORY 21: TEENAGE PUNK i am such a d*ck. here i am adoring this book for like 18 consecutive stories and then have two i like but don't love and nearly pitch a fit. thanks for winning me over anyway, lucia. rating: 4.5
STORY 22: STEP good song. one of vampire weekend's best. lucia berlin published three volumes of stories in her time, none of which garnered much attention, and then this little number was published a decade after her death and near-inexplicably sold more than all three of them combined in a matter of weeks. this may include most of the stories in those three, but i don't care. this is good enough that i'm tracking down all of them. rating: 4.5
STORY 23: STRAYS it's a metaphor, see. you put the double meaning right in the title but you don't give it the power till the ending. rating: 4.5
STORY 24: GRIEF well now i am just petrified of having my relationship with my sisters turn out like this. more importantly, people just don't go on holiday like they used to. that's something i've learned from this project. rating: 4
STORY 25: BLUEBONNETS people are scary. in multitudinous ways for countless reasons. men especially. rating: 3.5
STORY 26: LA VIE EN ROSE a few days ago, i was fleeing a place i hate and had run out of reading material just before my flight. the universe smiled upon me because there was an outpost of one of my favorite indie bookstores in the terminal (and when is there ever anything but hudson news anymore), and then full on grinned because there was exactly one copy of this book left - which had been on my to-read list since i saw it in the non-airport location of said bookstore. so i grabbed it, spent the remaining time before my flight walking around, boarded, sat in my seat, hit shuffle on my spotify (in which i only have, like, 2 playlists named variations of "songs i like" with hundreds of entries), and thought my thoughts. for some reason, i was turning the phrase "la vie en rose" around in my head, thinking of lucy dacus's cover of that song, wondering if it was still in my playlist because i hadn't heard it in a while, when boom - the song ends, the next song plays, and it's "la vie en rose." out of hundreds. right at the moment i considered it. i was so stunned i wanted to take my earbuds out and tell someone, but i am not that person, so i did a :o face to myself and picked this book up. skimmed the table of contents, which i don't usually do but for occasions with short stories. and then - no f*cking way. a story, midway down the list's second page: "la vie en rose." life is quite fantastic, from time to time. this is pretty wonderful too. rating: 4.5
STORY 27: MACADAM little and lovely. rating: 4
STORY 28: DEAR CONCHI even lucia berlin's love stories are so realistic it hurts my feelings. reading this story at the same time as a rom-com felt like a moment to moment reality check. rating: 4
STORY 29: FOOL TO CRY lucia has so many self-insert names for herself. lou, lu, carlotta, dolores...but at the same time there's like 5 stories about each one. are they the same character? are they not? am i supposed to put two and two together or would that make seven? ARGH. anyway, any protagonist who says things like "I decided to use the word dear instead of expensive from now on" and answers the question what do you find boring with "Nothing, actually. I've never been bored" is a special favorite to me. AND a great last line? lucia, you spoil me. rating: 5
STORY 30: MOURNING reminds me of that sally rooney quote: “If people appeared to behave pointlessly in grief, it was only because human life was pointless, and this was the truth that grief revealed.” but this is prettier and subtler. rating: 5
STORY 31: PANTEON DE DOLORES these stories are so good i want to mansplain them. the reversal of the traditional definitions of "lonely" versus "alone"... rating: 5
STORY 32: SO LONG i paused this story halfway to buy every lucia berlin book i could find. rating: 5
STORY 33: A LOVE AFFAIR i can't keep adoring multiple characters per story like this. i'm a hater. i'm not built to hold so much in my heart. rating: 5
STORY 34: LET ME SEE YOU SMILE so it turns out a story about an adult sleeping with a minor is never going to work for me. not if the genders are reversed, not if it's written by sally rooney, not if it's written by lucia berlin. f*cking grossos. i will say it's funny how lucia wrote a self-insert character and then had every other character compliment her at length. rating: 2.5
STORY 35: MAMA killer of an ending. rating: 4.5
STORY 36: CARMEN carmen, from the latin, name of the roman goddess of childbirth. god f*cking damn, lucia. rating: 5
STORY 37: SILENCE these perfect stories oh my god. i feel like i'm going insane. too much five star content at once, it's hurting my brain functioning, i'm destroyed, i'm melting, it's the wicked witch of the west without the flying monkeys over here. rating: 5
STORY 38: MIJITO the empathy here. i can't even review these beyond exclamations anymore. rating: 5
STORY 39: 502 another new name for lucia's fictional versions of herself: lucille. far out. rating: 4
STORY 40: HERE IT IS SATURDAY oh god. this time lucia wrote a character that is herself so that every other character can compliment her, but this time it's a freedom writers / finding forrester / white savior goes to school situation. the character's last name is even six letters beginning BE. thanks for making it a slight bit easier to say bye, lu. great ending, though. rating: 3
STORY 41: B.F. AND ME silly and little and nice. rating: 4
STORY 42: WAIT A MINUTE this was so beautiful and real that i spent the whole story trying to keep it at a distance. i knew if it clicked into place for me it would be too, too much. f*ck. it still was anyway. rating: 5 but more if i could
STORY 43: HOMING the last one. i'm sorry for what i said about you making it easier to say bye, lucia. i didn't mean it. oh, no. of course this one would be extraordinary. i want to cry. rating: 5 and still more if i could
OVERALL this book knocked me out. i don't know what to tell you. never in my life has a collection of stories done anything like this to me. i'll be thinking about this forever, in a million different ways. rating: 5...more
My limited and rarely tested abilities to write a five star review, ever decaying and decreasing from laWell, well, well.
Look what the cat dragged in.
My limited and rarely tested abilities to write a five star review, ever decaying and decreasing from lack of use. We meet again.
I will continue to make my own lack of skill the audience for this review, just for a moment, because this is a special occasion. This isn't just any five star book, although that would be a fairly once in a blue moon event as well.
You and I - you, of course, being my minimal talents - need to get it together.
This is a SALLY ROONEY book. And not just any Sally Rooney book, but possibly my FAVORITE Sally Rooney book. Could very well be my favorite book by who is likely my favorite author, in other words. Rooney has published one excerpt, one essay, three novels, and four short stories, and I have read her work 22 times, in total.
Also notably, there is a book I have called the following: - my Bible - the book of my heart - my literal and figurative self, distilled into pages - my most recommended book - my favorite book of the last 150 years - nearly my favorite book of all time, second only to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland - my comfort book - the closest thing I have to a religion
It's a book called Conversations with Friends, it's also written by Sally Rooney, and it seems to have been dethroned by this one.
There's a reason I've put off writing this review for two and a half months. The stakes are f*cking high.
So where do I go from here?
I can tell you that, so long as I live, I expect never to encounter writing like this again. Writing so clear and lovely, writing that summons new images and thoughts and emotions you've never considered and acts as a kind acknowledgment of the scariest and deepest and truest ones you quietly have.
I can say that this book begins with a launch, a tossing into the pool, an unceremonious jumping in that's more like a continuation, an assumption you've been there all along. That though it begins suddenly it feels like coming home.
I can note that these are some of Rooney's best and worst love stories, the ones you root for the most with the most complicated and "bad" and problematic people populating them, and that it's so beautiful to have those two things coexist.
I can attempt to work out my feelings about these characters, that while I feel for them and am fascinated by them and may adore them, it's almost beside the point of everything else. That for me, a person who reads for characters, the characters are wonderfully done and the realest yet, and the least important part, for me.
I can add that this is also an incredible act of bravery by Rooney, that it serves a huge leap in scope and in style and in intention from her previous books, that she has been criticized for much of her still-nascent career in a way that feels mean-spirited by the aging totems of Literature, and that instead of ducking her head and conceding to the characterization of her work as vapid and millennial, she filled her third book with so much heart it's hard to fathom.
I can try to describe what this book means to me, what it's like to spend most of your life trying on cynicism like a Halloween costume, scratchy and seamy and not quite right, to indulge in pithy "I hate everyone" negativity when people seem to be the only real reason life is worth living, and then have your very favorite author - who, it may have been mentioned, holds a fairly outsize role in your heart and mind - tell you she thinks so, too.
I want you to know, and I can try to convey, that love and friendship are all that matters, and that this book is the loveliest way of giving yourself the gift of letting yourself believe that.
I will try to tell you so many things if they get you to read this book.
Bottom line: This is a once in a lifetime one, for me.
----------------- note
as if i needed more reasons to find this book completely perfect: free palestine
----------------- reread pre-review
the first time i read this, i finished it in a sitting.
the second time, i savored every word.
review to come / 5 stars / more if i could
----------------- reread updates
i don't know how long i can go without rereading a sally rooney book. but i'm not willing to find out
-----------
i wish i could say this was as good the third time...but i can't.
in case you missed the first one, here's the description: 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.
and yes, i chose this one due in no small part to miss phoebe bridgers.
DAY 1: THE HUSBAND STITCH this is truly one of the raddest pieces of writing i have ever read. i don't even know what to say. lovely writing, gorgeous allusions, wonderful style, brilliant structure, fantastic ending, genius title. a pitch-perfect retelling. i can't even deal. rating: 5
DAY 2: INVENTORY a story about sexual encounters during a pandemic quarantine is hitting a bit too close to home for me right now. rating: 3.75
DAY 3: MOTHERS you know that feeling when you start a short story and you're working at full attention to figure out where you are and who you're with and what's going on because you'll only have a few pages to both know and appreciate it? that feeling stuck around until the very last with this one. in a good way. rating: 4.5
DAY 4: ESPECIALLY HEINOUS hey so Carmen Maria Machado is f*cking amazing. this is brilliant. rating: 5
DAY 5: REAL WOMEN HAVE BODIES i keep waiting for a dud of a story and it just...won't come. genius end to end. rating: 4.5
DAY 6: EIGHT BITES okay ouch, carmen!!!!! this is starting to hurt!!!! rating: 4.5
DAY 7: THE RESIDENT so maybe this one actually scared me!!! what about it???? rating: 4.5
DAY 8: DIFFICULT AT PARTIES not my favorite. actually probably my least favorite. rating: 3.5
OVERALL this is a brilliant work by a brilliant author, and it's greater than the sum of its parts. i didn't miss a single day (despite having work and holidays and cross-country flights in that time), and not only that, but i looked forward to my time with this every day.
I read 200+ books a year. This month, I’ve read almost a book a day. When I’m reading that much, it can just be becauSometimes, a book just hits you.
I read 200+ books a year. This month, I’ve read almost a book a day. When I’m reading that much, it can just be because the stars aligned and gave me an insane amount of free time and I chose to spend it all on Bettering Myself Through Literature, but more often, it’s because I’m trying to escape from my snoozefest daily life and my annoying brain.
Currently, it’s the latter.
When I read that much, it can put the stories at a distance. Or really I want to immerse myself so much that I remove myself from the equation altogether and it’s all story, no impact on me.
But sometimes you get a good book at the perfect time and it cuts all that away, whether you want it to or not.
(I did not.)
This book is so, well, gorgeous. The writing and the story, the characters, the setting - none of it gives you a moment’s mercy. It’s unrelenting in its pain and its reality and its loveliness. I kept thinking this was a memoir, because fiction that feels like this is so rare, an incredible feat.
For the last 25% of this book, I kept thinking it had to be over at the next page, or the next - every sentence felt like another paper cut, every paragraph break a scrape, chapter endings f*cking road rash. It was unbearable. I had tears in my eyes through a third of it and I pride myself on being the coolest and least emotional person alive.
Jeez louise.
Bottom line: A book so good it makes me talk like an elderly person.
------------ pre-review
oh, worth the wait.
review to come / 5 stars easily, obviously, painfully
------------ currently-reading updates
i saw this for the first time in a bookstore two years ago and have wanted to read it ever since.
I love her so much that I knew if this book even made me think about her, I’d be a fan, but it did way more than that. I felt like I love Jenny Slate.
I love her so much that I knew if this book even made me think about her, I’d be a fan, but it did way more than that. I felt like I was in what appears to be the single most magical non-fictional place in all the world: inside Jenny Slate’s brain.
If you have so much as watched an interview of hers, it’s immediately clear that she sees the world in a way that is totally unique to her. It is such a gift to be able to see that perspective for 304 pages.
She uses language differently. Words are lovely and flowerlike and carefully selected. Images are clear and breathtaking. This is an extraordinary thing.
Now, for a small request.
I would like every book I read to be written by Jenny Slate, thanks very much.
Okay, fine, compromise. I at least would like her to write 100 more books.
I got one dose of the beautiful starlike lens through which she perceives everything and just one look through her perception is not going to cover it please and thank you.
This was so gorgeous that when I finished it I immediately wanted to restart.
Also now I want to again.
Bottom line: This is a perfect little book.
---------------- project 5 star
welcome back to PROJECT 5 STAR, an event in which i revisit books i used to love and see if i still do out of masochism or completionism or...something.
i feel (gag) hopeful about this one.
update: not to worry. STILL FIVE
---------------- pre-review
while i was reading this, i had to stop for a moment, close it, put it down, take a breath, and whisper to myself: oh, my gosh. i love this so much.
review to come / 5 stars
---------------- currently-reading updates
i am 11 pages into this book and i already know i've never read anything like it in all my life.
---------------- tbr review
i love jenny slate and i can't wait to have this book in my brain....more
Can you believe that of all the eras we could have been born in, we are all blessed to live in the one in which TOTO, WE’RE NOT IN YA FANTASY ANYMORE.
Can you believe that of all the eras we could have been born in, we are all blessed to live in the one in which Leigh Bardugo is publishing books?!
I have often felt like Leigh is able to sneak into my brain and write exactly what I need. (I am calling her by her first name because if she is, in fact, a presence inside my mind then it’s a given that we’d be on that level of familiarity.)
For example: I love heists and ragtag groups of friends and slow burn romance and did I mention I love heists.
And I love fantasy stories and darkness and twists and magic and New England, but I’ve been feeling dismal about young adult books lately, like maybe I’ve grown out of them.
Boom. This book.
I am one happy camper.
This took me a whileeee to get into. I’m talking 100 to 200 pages, even. But once I was in, I WAS IN. I could not put it down and also I wanted to climb inside the pages and live there and give Alex a kiss on the face and also do her homework for her because oh my god she was not doing it and it stressed me out.
This rivals the later Harry Potter books for repeated mentions of homework that the main characters simply are not doing.
I love Alex and her thorniness and her fierceness. I love Dawes and her loyalty and her secret goofiness and her sweaters. I love Yale and its secrets and its grounds and its impenetrability.
I love Darlington because obviously.
(view spoiler)[I had a feeling Bardugo didn’t REALLY kill Darlington...he’s just too good of a character. I knew she would’ve had an affection for him. I guess you don’t kill your darling(ton)s after all…and yes, it’s official, I am the funniest person alive. (hide spoiler)]
I even love teeny-tiny characters who shouldn’t have enough characterization but in fact do and are fantastic (Lauren, Mercy, even Tripp and Hellie and people with like single lines of dialogue).
God damn it I need the next book NOW. Leigh, if I didn’t have all the respect in the world for you, I would scream because you are writing 82 books and 300 TV and film adaptations and I just want you to let me back into this world right now, please and thank you.
Honestly...I am profoundly impressed by the fact that this book felt N O T H I N G like anything else I’ve read by Leigh Bardugo. She is just such a good writer.
Also, speaking of the fact that this is very un-Bardugo.
This IS NOT a young adult book. In young adult books, things can be relatively happy-happy-joy-joy. General fiction has no such obligation.
There is a lot of violence and gore and intense imagery in this story. It is not a comfy read. You can say that this is not your cup of tea for those reasons, and you are well within your rights to say so.
But it’s not fair to say this is a *bad book* because it has those things.
There is not a cap on the upsetting content that a story can contain before it’s gone overboard. A book is not bad because it dares to address multiple difficult topics.
This is a book where awful and disturbing things happen, yes, but it isn’t a book where awful and disturbing things happen for no reason. They don’t happen in a vacuum without cause or results. The characters are affected by them.
It handles multiple tough topics with care and with sensitivity. It is a well written and well handled book. Trying to “cancel” it because it does so is equivalent to banning books.
Anyway. Censorship rant over.
Back to the important stuff.
GIVE ME THE SEQUEL.
I HAVE NEVER BEEN SO INVESTED IN THE PLOTLINE OF A BOOK THAT HASN’T COME OUT YET.
Logically, it seems that maybe shorter books would be harder to love. You spend less time with the characters, the narrative complexity must be limited, you live in the world for a minimal amount of time.
But for the past few years, I’ve found that I’m more likely to adore short books. Maybe it has something to do with the incomprehensible length of so many young adult fantasy books I’ve read, which have no need or right to stretch so far past the four hundred page mark.
Or maybe I’m endlessly impressed by the power of some authors to touch me with the strength of their voices, their prose, their characters, their stories, in less than three hundred pages.
I had fallen in love with this book, for example, within a few dozen pages.
Salinger’s writing is glorious, Franny and Zooey and the Glass family leap off the page, I could spend unlimited volumes sprawled in the overcrowded living room of their glamorous unusual apartment. The ending hits like a physical strike. I was reading of both feelings I’d always had and never put into words and emotions I had never imagined.
I need a modern day Frankenstein - someone to wake Salinger up and tell him I need enough of the Glass family’s words to spend the rest of my life with.
I don’t care about the ethics.
Bottom line: Literally no one needs me to tell them this book is amazing, but it is and I’m saying it anyway.
---------- reread updates
welcome back to another installment of PROJECT 5 STAR, an excuse for me to revisit all my favorite books and feel joy again.
for once.
update: it worked!!!
---------- pre-review
this book feels like it was made for me in a lab.
review to come / 5 stars
---------- currently-reading updates
30 pages in and i am already absolutely in love with franny...more
It’s reached a concerning point -- seemingly 1 in 3 or 4 books I read is actually a reread. Previously I was wI have a debilitating rereading problem.
It’s reached a concerning point -- seemingly 1 in 3 or 4 books I read is actually a reread. Previously I was way too picky about adding books to my to-read list to suffer a massive TBR issue, but now that I’m barely reading new books, the pile (which is a physical one in the corner of my room, stacked by color because a) rainbow shelves forever and b) I am out of shelf space) is looming. Concerningly.
If I die mysteriously, I was probably crushed by the blue stack. (I also seem to have a problem with buying blue books, specifically.)
Anyway. My sole limit has always been that I must wait at least one year after my initial read before reading it again. This is my last shred of rereading-related logic and sanity.
This book smashed that sh*t to pieces. Less than five months after I read it for the first time, I was rereading.
I could make excuses. “My flight was delayed and I only brought one book, ” I could say, and it would be true (and a fatal mistake and a shame upon my bookworm title). “I happened to have this one because the person I lent it to gave it back.” But it was a nighttime flight, and I finished my first book on board, and I had to go out of my way to turn on that reading light that is really more of a goddamn chandelier considering how well it illuminates everything in an eight-foot radius. (Sorry, everyone around me.)
Also, it was a short flight and I only got 50 or so pages into it. I easily could have put it down.
This is where it’s the book’s fault.
This story is not action-packed, nor particularly suspenseful. Neither is it jam full of what you’d call Exciting Events or even a traditional love story that gets you rooting for your couple in any familiar way.
In spite of all that, it is absolutely unputdownable.
Conversations with Friends, if you are one of the few who somehow haven’t read it yet, is about Frances and, less so, her best friend and ex-girlfriend Bobbi. Frances is thoughtful and cool (in the less-used definition of the word, according to my lexicon), Bobbi is effervescent and charming. They encounter a married couple, Melissa and Nick, and much of the novel is devoted to the changing ways in which the four interact with each other.
The writing is beautiful. Sally Rooney’s style is clean and sharp and true. Each word is thoughtfully chosen. Each image feels real and complex. Her New Yorker profile (which I read in a fit of desperately needing to get my hands on everything Rooney has written, in the wake of my first encounter with this book) highlights a description of a party at Melissa’s home as “full of music and people wearing long necklaces.” Conversations is teeming with terse, evocative descriptions like that, and if you’re anything like me once you start reading writing like that you’ll never want to stop.
Being forced to stop by the dearth of Sally Rooney material has been very difficult for me.
Like the writing, the characterization is somehow spare and complete at once. Frances and Bobbi, Melissa and Nick, even the background actors and extras of their lives are stunningly real. I think about Frances and Nick especially all the time. I can identify statements in life as “very Bobbi” or “exactly Melissa” or “totally something Frances would say.”
Above all, this book crawled inside my head and stayed there. It ever-so-slightly changed the way my brain works, but mostly it made me feel noticed and heard. It seems a way of looking at the world I hadn’t realized I ascribed to is captured in these pages. It’s surprising and kind of spooky and I’m truly grateful I encountered this book at all.
Lastly, it wouldn’t be a review of mine if I didn’t confidently write about something I’m likely not qualified to. And I want to say f*ck everybody who acts like Sally Rooney is some kind of lesser writer because she’s young and a woman. There’s a difference between saying “this writer is not for me” and “I didn’t like this book, and therefore everyone who calls her brilliant or talented is actually wrong.”
You don’t spew that sh*t about the bajillion dead white male writers. Your internalized misogyny and ageism is showing.
Bottom line: Sally Rooney is brilliant and talented. The end. ❤️
----------- reread 9 updates
starting the year as i mean to go on: reading this book for the 9th time and buddy reading with elle
----------- reread 8 updates
my 8th time reading this book begins...now.
this time i'm doing it for a book club - follow along / join the fun on instagram or discord!!!
----------- reread 7 updates
it's been almost a year since i last read this, which is unthinkable. time to fix that
have been truly dealt a series of death blows this week from the heartless chaos of the universe, so i will once again be rereading the book that simultaneously makes me feel better and so, so much worse
----------- reread 5 updates
when you see me and lily rereading this every month in 2021, mind your business
----------- reread 4 updates
reread this in its entirety on a plane to be on my main character sh*t
----------- reread 3 updates
what has to be wrong with a person for Conversations with Friends to be a comfort reread for them? asking for myself
----------- reread 2 updates
just as just as just as good
----------- reread 1 updates
there's never a wrong time to read sally rooney.
even if that means a reread less than 5 months after the first time you read it.
----------- pre-review
upping this to 5 stars because i can't stop thinking about it, and also in all that thinking i can't remember a single flaw
----------- currently-reading updates
i bought this book 2 days ago and have not really put it down since...more
Someone PLEASE procure me a striking, modern, big-city apartment with lots of windows, where I can hold a glass of expensive wine and gaze unseeing ovSomeone PLEASE procure me a striking, modern, big-city apartment with lots of windows, where I can hold a glass of expensive wine and gaze unseeing over the skyline at night, because apparently I’m going to feel melancholy for the rest of my life over never again being able to read this for the first time and if I’m going to do so I at least want to be glamorous about it.
Or, at the very least, I need to locate the sort of old-fashioned library described in 1920s mystery novels with a bar cart stocked with aged scotch and shelves filled with leather-bound tomes, except their antique spines will be a façade for the kinds of things I actually enjoy reading, rather than being 800 different copies of the Bible or whatever, and I will never drink the scotch because everything about the process of drinking scotch is like the scotch is asking you not to drink it. (Scotch is the poison-dart frog of beverages.)
Basically what I’m saying here is - Ever since I read the last page of this book three months ago, I have felt a small, unrelenting sadness, which I believe will only be solved by one of the following methods: a) I dedicate my life to tracking down a door to the Starless Sea, and either I find one or it turns out the real reward was the friends I made along the way; b) I experience repeated memory loss, allowing myself to read this book over and over again for the first time, re-beginning every time I finish it; or c) I live the rest of my days in homage to this story.
All options will require funds that I will never have (I’m an English major, after all), so please kindly Venmo me at your convenience. Thanks.
This is the most gorgeous ode to stories and literature. It’s a thank-you gift to anyone who has ever been a Reader, with a capital R - not just someone who reads but someone WHO READS, as an identity, as a life-force, as a passion, as the meaning of life.
I dare any true bookworm to read this book with an open heart and a ready mind and not feel grateful that their life overlapped with its publication date.
Erin Morgenstern’s ability to create divine settings you can see and smell and lust after and yearn to experience is unparalleled.
My favorite book ever is, as anyone who has so much as made the online equivalent of eye contact me knows, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. I love it with enough passion that everything about it is my favorite of that thing: my favorite characters, my favorite prose, and, naturally, my favorite setting.
Before I read this book, my unrivaled first runner-up was the setting of the Night Circus.
Now, I think both Wonderland and the circus may have been bumped down a slot. Never has a setting known me, seen my soul, like that of the magical underground great world of stories in these pages.
Plus, I didn’t have to slog through a Night Circus-level instalove romance to get there.
This was a perfect book. Mysterious, confusing, strange, magical. Beautifully written and populated with characters you love hard and immediately. I read this so slowly because I SAVORED it. I, a compulsive speed-reader whose simultaneous highest compliment and M.O. is reading a book in a day or so, knew that my finishing this book would be a small heartbreak, and so I tried to postpone it as long as I could.
So instead, I’ll pay the highest compliment to this that any reader can pay to any story -
Bottom line: It was hard to pick up another book after reading this one.
------------- rereading updates
THIS IS THE BEST DAY OF MY LIFE!!!
all month long, i'll be rereading this fav as part of my book club with my lovely elle! follow on instagram here or join the discussion here.
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Yes, I teared up upon finishing my reread of this book like a starlet in an old movie. No, I don't want to talk about it. I JUST WANT THIS TO NEVER END.
HOW DO YOU WRITE A REVIEW OF A BOOK THAT YOU LOVED SO MUCH IT MAKES YOUR HEART WARM AND IT RESTORED YOUR FAITH IN YA AND EVERYTHING IS GOOD IN THE WORHOW DO YOU WRITE A REVIEW OF A BOOK THAT YOU LOVED SO MUCH IT MAKES YOUR HEART WARM AND IT RESTORED YOUR FAITH IN YA AND EVERYTHING IS GOOD IN THE WORLD WHEN YOU THINK ABOUT IT AND FLOWERS BLOOM AND BIRDS FLOAT AROUND YOUR HEAD AND SING OR TWEET OR WHATEVER IT IS THEY DO.
No, seriously, please tell me how. Because I read this book a month ago and I got nothin.
I suppose I will begin with what I know to be true, and what I know to be true is that Richard Gansey III is my husband. I have said this now in three (3) consecutive reviews of each of the three (3) books in this series I have read, and yet it only grows to be more true. Because he only gets better. (What does it say about me that I'm now one hundred percent convinced I just jinxed myself and will hate him by the next book? In other words what is wrong with me. This is a cry for help.)
I love Gansey. It’s an all-consuming love. It’s above analysis, so I can’t even tell you why I do. But I do. And I’m claiming him. He is THE book boyfriend for me now. (Goodbye, Étienne St. Clair from Anna and the French Kiss. It’s been a good three years, but I’ve grown. I've matured. I’ve moved on. And also, you’re short, and that’s just never been a viable option for me.)
Excluding Gansey (because I could talk about my love for that elegant man-boy for pages and nobody wants that)...things tend a lot more toward the "eh" end of the spectrum. As in, Ronan is still incredibly blah. Who caaaaaares. We get it. You're edgy. You can stop now. Also, Adam, still sooooooo eh. But I willllll say...a certain relationship begins to blossom and bloom and beautifully pop up from the soil...and that shindig is not eh at all. (Insert the smolder emoji here.)
But, quelle surprise, nothing is perfect because nothing is ever good or easy, and there is a relationship that is so incredibly eh it's almost like it's too eh for the world eh. Like, they tried to put a picture of this relationship in the dictionary next to the word eh, but they were like one, this is a fictional couple so that's impossible, two, is the word eh even in the dictionary, and three, THIS IS TOO EH EVEN FOR THIS.
That's the dictionary people, angrily shouting NEXT, as in "next person proposing an image to be added next to a definition." I bet you didn't consider how much time dealing with those queries takes for the employees of dictionaries.
ANYWAY. That horribly boring and blah relationship is...sigh...Blue and Gansey. That pairing can die, really. Brutally. That budding duo can get run over by a steamroller and come out all Flat Stanley'd and non-viable on the other side. Also, to clarify, I mean the relationship itself can die. I would never endorse the murder of Gansey.
ANYWAY AGAIN. When did Blue/Gansey happen? One second they're just a pair of pals and the next second they are SMASHING their FACES together PRETENDING they're KISSING. Horrible! Gross! For so many reasons! On so many levels!
Also, I am not saying this due to any repressed jealousy. That would be insane. And while I may be at a level of insanity that I would call dibs on the hand in marriage of a fictional character, I am not yet at a level of insanity wherein I am jealous of the fictional beaux of that fictional character. That would be, in case anyone is wondering just when this whole thing will officially have gone too far, the moment when help should be contacted.
But back to the characters. I literally did not even finish that section. God help me. ANYWAY. Blue is pretty cool in this book, because she always is. Noah is still my small spooky son, and I love him and he should’ve been in this book more, but that’s just because he should be in everything. In order for me to attain true happiness I need to reach a point where Noah is popping up even in content not created by Maggie Stiefvater. He’s a goddamn prince and he deserves it.
The Gray Man sticks around for this book, which is a thrill because I love him. (I do not know why this is true, because his literal defining characteristic is that he is gray, but I love him anyway.) AND PLUS, NEW PEOPLE COME. AND GUESS WHAT? THEY'RE ALSO GREAT.
Piper is a queen. A literal queen, because I am crowning her queen of all villains. This is legitimate and legal in the eyes of the law, because I crowned myself ruler of all books.
Piper's husband what's his name is also pretty sick. Which is really surprising, because one, male villains are so boring, and two, Evil Teacher Guy has also been done. Like, within this very series. Two books ago.
Hahahahaha oh my god. Whoa. I almost forgot about that horrendous bore. What a snoozefest that guy was. The improvement to this series just by this book alone is WILD my friends. WILD.
But there are even more new people! These include: - a woman who is cool (both the least spoilery AND least interesting way I could possibly put that) - a guy named Jesse who is pretty cute and lovable
Maggie Stiefvater can really crank out characters I care about. (A feat matched by, guess what, literally no other authors. I am semi-incapable of even fictional love and affection.)
The setting remains sick, because it always has been. The magic is even amazing-er than ever. (How does it keep getting better?!)
This book is just...a more action-packed version of the other two. More of the stuff ya like, less of the same filler sh*t from the first two. You know. Less “Adam is poor and insecure about it, Blue eats yogurt and let’s talk more about the whole amplifier thing, Ronan is angsty, Gansey chews a mint leaf and plays with toys and has a journal and is somehow very rich throughout, Ronan is angsty, Noah is blurry and also, oh yeah, (view spoiler)[dead (hide spoiler)], and of course, Ronan, in case you forgot, is extraordinarily, next-level angsty.”
Seriously, that's a spot on encapsulation of the first two books. I am honestly proud of myself. You could definitely just skip the first two books and cut to what matters based on that paragraph alone. (Please don't do that.)
I'm quite pleased I didn't give The Raven Boys or The Dream Thieves five stars, because this sh*t is on a whole other level baby. They aren't even in the same REALM OF EXISTENCE. If those two are books this one straight up has to be called something else. We have to make up a new word based on how much better this one is than those garbage monsters.
Ugh! I am filled with love. And also excitement. And also immense fear and trepidation and regret because oh my god the next one just cannot be as good there is no way it's impossible life is just an endless feast of disappointment with countless courses of sadness casserole, which is also known as just "casserole."
Um.
Just realized I'm not going to ever ever read the last book.
Bottom line: WHATEVER LITERALLY JUST READ THE SERIES FOR THIS BOOK IT IS LIFE-CHANGING AND I KNOW I DID A BAD JOB OF EXPLAINING HOW GREAT IT IS BUT JUST TRUST ME, OK? I'm not used to five star reviews.
------------------- PRE-REVIEW
my skin is clear. my bank account is full. my bookshelves aren't messy and my crops survived the winter.
ok well none of that is true BUT THIS BOOK CHANGED MY STUPID LIFE!!!!!!
review to come once i resurrect my laptop (even my keyboard died of shock at a five star rating)
------------------- CURRENTLY-READING UPDATE
ho
ly
shit.
IS THIS GOING TO BE A FIVE STAR READ?????????...more
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:
[image]
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
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.
[image]
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.)
[image]
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.
[image]
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?
[image]
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.
[image]
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.
[image]
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.
[image]
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
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 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
“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
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
I’LL GIVE THIS BOOK THE SUN. FIVE SUNS. More than that, if Goodreads had ever answered my impassioned plea to add a sixth star (which I sent by pony eI’LL GIVE THIS BOOK THE SUN. FIVE SUNS. More than that, if Goodreads had ever answered my impassioned plea to add a sixth star (which I sent by pony express after one too many perfect books). (Pony express means mail, right? I’m a fan of that.)
How do I love thee, book? Let me count the ways. (That’s both a reference to this book and an illustration of how difficult it will be to put my intense adoration of it into, like, a semi-coherent review.) (Sidenote: I’ve never strived for anything higher than semi-coherent.)
Let’s start with the characters. God, do I love the people in this book. They are so, so, so imperfect - imperfect doesn’t even begin to cover it. They should suck, honestly. I should hate them. In fact, I should hate this whole shindig for the things that happen in it. In any other context, they’d give me second-hand embarrassment cringes so hard it’d shoot this book down to two stars. But NOT HERE. This sh*t is different.
These characters are so human. They’re so lovable and deeply good that you’d forgive them for anything. Seriously. All of them do at least one thing (and mostly more than one) that should be, like, narrative-shatteringly awful, and instead manages to make them even better. I can’t explain it. YOU JUST HAVE TO READ THIS BOOK.
This book has alternating perspectives between 2 twins: Noah when he was 13, and Jude when she’s 16 (which is the present). Noah is so creative and talented and amazing, and Jude is such a badass and so interesting and equally amazing. Their mom’s a whirlwind, which has its ups and downs, and their dad starts off not great but becomes the best. There’s Brian, who loves space, and Guillermo, one of the greatest sculptors ever, and Oscar, who I’m not going to try to put into words. (Hands down the most inherently confusing character.) They’re all so wonderful and I wish I knew them in real life and could join their lil ragtag group of pals.
The character development is just unreal.
Also, the depiction of family is pretty amazing. (I’m going to use the words “great” and “amazing” a bajillion times in this review, AND I’M NOT GOING TO APOLOGIZE.) They can mistreat each other and fight and generally seem toxic, but they all love each other and they’re all good people. SCRATCH THAT - MAGNIFICENT people. (You thought I was done talking about how much I love these characters? Ya burnt. I’m going to spend the rest of my life talking about them. Every review from now on? Name-dropping Noah and Jude. Get used to it.)
What else, what else...the writing was just really beautiful. I’m always really happy to see that in YA. It’s pretty rare for a young adult contemporary to just be genuinely, no-holds-barred gorgeous.
And y’all know I love when my books are filled with fun facts. I wish every book had some character just inserting cool information in every once in awhile. This book? EVERY CHARACTER IS DOING THAT. There’s so much fun sh*t about superstition and art and sculpting and space in this book. Ugh. God, it’s perfect. It’s like Jandy Nelson read my mind and made this book to check all my boxes. WHAT A DREAM.
I thought there’d be one major downside. That’s the discussion of fate and ~true love~ in this book, neither of which I believe in and both of which I pretty consistently find dumb in like, every YA contemporary ever. But this book, no surprise at this point, IS DIFFERENT. It’s so well done and just makes you feel all warm inside and root for the characters. Hurray, hurray. I miss this book already.
The cherry on top, you ask? The best fictional encapsulation of and response to slut-shaming I’ve ever seen is contained within THESE VERY PAGES. When thirteen/fourteen-year-old Jude and her mom are fighting about everything, including Jude’s clothing and makeup choices, mommy dearest always asks if she reallyyyyyy wants to be “that girl.” Pretty yuck, right? The only blemish on the perfect record of this masterpiece.
But then. But then! Blemish surgically removed, or whatever. (That was really gross. I’m so sorry.) Jude has a realization. A great, perfect, better-than-cherry-on-top epiphany. I like cherries, but this is more like the lottery ticket on top, or the Zac Efron in Baywatch (a bad movie) on top. Jude realizes: “Maybe Mom was wrong about that girl after all. Because that girl spits on guys who treat her badly. Maybe it’s that girl who’s been missing. [...] I didn’t bring the bad luck to us, no matter how much it felt that way. It brought itself. It brings itself. And maybe it’s that girl who’s now brave enough to admit [it].”
A little bit of editing to remove minor spoilers, but how amazing is that?
Your clothing or your makeup don’t change who you are. They don’t prevent you from being a badass, or a good person, or brave.
God, I love this book. Read it in a couple days, and miss it already.
Can you believe how genuine this review was? That’s a testament to my loveeee for this book.
Bottom line: This is going on the all-time favorites list. EVERYONE: READ THIS PLEASE. Amazing, amazing, amazing. Even better the second time around.
* because if i don't enjoy it i might finally lose my marbles once and for all
(those invested in my mental health will be delighted to know that this is still 5 stars. less delighted to know that it made me tear up and threatened to send me spiraling anyway, but you can't win them all.)...more
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