In August, I read my first Lucia Berlin story, after picking up her posthumous and by far bestselling collection in an airport bookstore in an act of In August, I read my first Lucia Berlin story, after picking up her posthumous and by far bestselling collection in an airport bookstore in an act of desperation.
(Typically a trip to a bookstore, even a terminal kiosk-sized one, is an hours-long affair for me, and anything shorter than that is a frantic, panicky spur of the moment decision in comparison.)
When I started it on the plane, I immediately pulled out a notebook and a pen, because I knew I'd want to take notes on every story. It was that good.
I made myself go as slowly as possible, which turned out to be less than a week, even though I was doing a project at the time that should've required it to take a day for every story. (Which would have been a month and a half.)
It was just too good.
After finishing, I bought a copy of every single Lucia Berlin collection I could find, which are varying levels of hard to track down, and had read all of them by the end of the year.
It's so sad to be done.
Coincidentally, this one, with its adieu-bidding title, was my last. By the time I got to it, there were just 4 stories I hadn't read yet, but all of them were good.
Is there any goodbye more painful than one to a favorite author?
Bottom line: So long, Lucia. Thanks for all of it.
--------------- pre-review
there were only four stories in this whole book i hadn't read yet, but they were good ones.
review to come / 4 stars
--------------- currently-reading updates
apt title for my last lucia berlin book :(
clear ur sh*t book 59 no quest, just seeing how many more i can finish...more
This is an excellent, maybe perfect book, and I will never recommend it to anyone.
The edition I read is 951 pages long, and I read it in 24 hours. My This is an excellent, maybe perfect book, and I will never recommend it to anyone.
The edition I read is 951 pages long, and I read it in 24 hours. My sister calculated that I read a page every waking minute, even as it was a workday. I have never in my life lived inside a story like I did this one.
I slept little. I couldn't focus on anything. When I tried to pick up books after this one they were pale imitations to what I had learned storytelling could be.
I have never loved characters like this, like I knew them. I have never gasped and cried and said "nonono" like I did with this.
This HURT.
So while it was an extraordinary experience, a one-of-a-kind story, maybe something I would otherwise have perceived as the type of book that keeps us reading...
Don't pick it up.
Because not only is this book so goddamn painful (and yes, everything you've heard about how sad this is is true tenfold), but it makes other stories feel less.
Consume at your own risk.
Bottom line: Damn you, Hanya Yanagihara, you evil sorcerer.
For me, it's a combination. It's a little bit how I felt about a book while I was reading it, but it's mostly how IHow do you give a five star rating?
For me, it's a combination. It's a little bit how I felt about a book while I was reading it, but it's mostly how I feel about it after. If I'm unable to stop thinking about it: five stars. If it leaves a mark on my brain I can't shake: five stars. If it changes the way I think, even if it's a subtle tone shift, even if it doesn't last very long: five stars.
This is why most of my five star ratings come out of books I initially four starred, or four-point-five starred, or refused to rate.
Because in the other case, I five star a book impulsively based on how much I liked reading it, but I don't come out of it thinking much at all.
Like in the case of this.
I couldn't put this book down. It's beautifully written, I connected with our protagonist hard, I adored the setting (BOSTON I LOVE YOU!), it ate me up while I read it. And for a day or so after, I did wish I was still reading it, because I am constantly in search of that feeling. It's why I read so much. (Too much, you could say, if you wanted to give my branding a boost. #emmareadstoomuch)
But now, a month later (exactly!), I'm left not feeling much. I remember this book, sure, but in the way you remember a conversation you had a few weeks ago or a mundane dream. In a surface-level, simple remembrance way. It didn't leave a mark.
So: dropping to four point five rounded down it is!
Bottom line: Reading is weird. But the best weird thing.
----------------- pre-review
oh, no. i couldn't stop reading this book and now i'm finished and it's 2 am.
review to come from a sleepy me / 5 stars i think (dropped to 4.5 upon reviewing)
----------------- tbr review
give me all the literary fiction with boston settings...more
A fun fact about this book is that it is the funniest, the most interesting, the unique-est, and the most underrated book of all time.
If I need to dedA fun fact about this book is that it is the funniest, the most interesting, the unique-est, and the most underrated book of all time.
If I need to dedicate my life to forming various legitimate-seeming committees and subcommittees and awards ceremonies and aliases in order to convince people of that fact, so be it. I am willing to make screaming from the rooftops on the subject of this my sole purpose.
This is just the best. I slumped so hard after reading it because I couldn't imagine finding any book that brought me the joy that this brought me - and then I remembered that there's a sequel, and I promptly bought it both in paperback and as an ebook - and then I remembered that Shirley Jackson, in a truly nonsensical and evil act, is no longer with us, and therefore once I read the sequel I will be plumb out of nonfiction memoirs about her demon children growing up in Vermont.
And I just am not prepared to live that lifestyle yet.
Bottom line: Subcommittee-forming it is.
----------------- pre-review
sometimes i go so long without truly enjoying a book from first page to last that i forget how to even rate them.
review to come / 4.5!!!!
----------------- tbr review
there's a distinct possibility i'm in love with shirley jackson...more
Give me a book I hate and I’ll write a full-on thesis on it. Prime example: Just yesterday I spent one huI do not know how to write five star reviews.
Give me a book I hate and I’ll write a full-on thesis on it. Prime example: Just yesterday I spent one human hour on a seven-page one star rant review. And honestly? Time well spent.
But when it comes to something I truly love? I’m illiterate. Can’t read. Can’t write. Call me Jared, 19. What am I doing on this book site? Couldn’t tell you.
I WANT to scream about this from the rooftops. I want each and every one of you to read it, because it is utterly one of a kind and it’s gripping from page one and the characters are fantastic and the writing is witty and beautiful and it is…
I tried to trick myself into stating all the ways in which it is amazing, but as always I got overwhelmed and ran out of words to describe it. (The one scenario in known human existence that can get me to shut up for even one second.)
Anytime I write a five star review, I struggle to render perfection onto the page, and I just make myself want to reread.
Damn...I really, really want to reread.
Bottom line: Don’t take my insufficient words for it!!! But read this book immediately.
The best things in the world are as follows: - when you perfectly toast a bagel. I mean we all know how easy it is to underdo that bad boy so it’s stilThe best things in the world are as follows: - when you perfectly toast a bagel. I mean we all know how easy it is to underdo that bad boy so it’s still a weird squishy bread circle or even more likely, burn that baby till it’s glorified charcoal but when you really find that sweet spot...(chef’s kiss) - baking cookies and then eating them while they’re still warm, and then you eat a whole tray because if you made them they don’t count as caloric - genuine, believable enemies to lovers where you really feel them fall in love and also it’s funny and also everything is perfect.
Aka this book.
Because I am extremely picky about books and am disappointed by most of what I read, I like to do this very adorable and charming thing where when I like one thing, I assume I will like everything that is similar to it.
I very much enjoyed The Hating Game (possibly to an extent in which I compared myself both to a jack o’lantern and a gif from Disney’s Tangled in my review, I don’t know, who’s to say), and so I assumed I would like every rom-com. Especially ones that were actually funny.
Especially-especially of the enemies to lovers.
And, like the new Star Wars movie and orange-flavored Skittles and every other disappointing thing, that was not to be.
But finally, FINALLY, my suffering has been rewarded.
Because...dare I say it…
This book is better than The Hating Game.
I KNOW.
Look at us. Hey! Look at us. Who would’ve thought?
Not me.
This is The Hating Game in terms of tropes and plot and the overall yay-falling-in-love feeling it gives off, but with better characters. And more humor.
GOD. This is so funny it doesn’t make sense. Since when are books funny? When was the last time I truly laughed at a book and I wasn’t laughing out of all the anger and hatred in my cold dark soul?
Not sure. Well before this, I’ll tell you that.
But it wasn’t just a barrel of laughs my friends. It also made my heart hurt, but in the good emotional way where you’re like, oh my god...fools...just love each other...kiss already...except also don’t because the drama and conflict and miscommunication and will-they-won’t-they (they will) is the fun part.
Basically what I’m saying is: I don’t know how to love anything without being obsessed with it, and I already want to read this eleven more times.
Bottom line: I didn’t play Animal Crossing for this! ANIMAL CROSSING!!!
-------------- project 5 star update
welcome back to PROJECT 5 STAR, a project in which i revisit all the books i've ever given five stars, mostly out of cynicism and masochism, but in this case just as an excuse to reread the most perfect romance novel of all time.
simply rereading this so i can write a kickass review and not because i've been searching for a reason
-------------- pre-review
please don't tell anyone i burst into tears at the gushy part of this book. it'll ruin my bad-boy image.
review to come / POSSIBLY FIVE STARS
-------------- tbr review
just saw this quote from this book: “I’m a miserable cynic (a newer development) and a dreamy romantic (always have been), and it’s such a terrible combination that I don’t know how to tolerate myself” and instantly started reading it because girl if that ain't me...more
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.
And once I am there, I will stay there for a very long time.
When I found this book, it was in the literary fiction section of a bookstore basement, where the used books were kept in winding rows.
Another thing about me: I keep a wish-list of books I mean to buy. When I want to buy one that isn’t on that list, I achieve a Bare Minimum Requirement of reading a few pages and seeing if I feel ordained to keep going. (I almost always do.)
So in this bookstore basement, on a Thursday night around 9:30 or 10 pm (yes, I know this is late. The coolest bookstores are open late), I found a chair in a corner under an unseemly pipe, plunked myself down, and started reading.
Over the next hour, a series of quirky college students had loud and performative first dates in a cycle so coordinated it was as if they scheduled it. First two girls yelled about how one of them had seen Panic! at the Disco at a rural gas station. Then a boy and a girl did an intentionally adorable thing where they pointed out the title of a book and tried to guess the plot (this was the girl’s idea, and the boy’s interest was never more than half-hearted). Then two older women shouted across the shelves about where the children’s section was before learning the answer: right f*cking in front of them.
That last one may not have been a date, but I promise it was equally annoying.
Through it all, I sat and read this book.
It wasn’t even a comfy chair, or a particularly pleasant room. It was just that good of a book.
My favorite TED talk (which is a very low bar) has been Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s “The Danger of a Single Story” since I watched it in a gender class a few years ago. In it, Adichie explains the pervasiveness of stereotypes and bigotry when only one story about a certain group is being told - she uses the story of Africa being a continent of poverty without technology, the only one told in America, as an example.
After I watched that talk in that class, and after I got home and watched it again, I should have gone right out and bought everything she’d ever written. But I didn’t. What a dummy.
This book is divine.
It is so, so beautifully written. I care about each and every character in a way that hurts my heart. It’s nearly 600 pages long, and character-driven to the point that there’s essentially no plot other than the daily progression of our protagonists’ lives, but if it were twice as long as I wouldn’t have minded.
It’s just that good.
I feel like it expanded my whole brain.
Everyone should get to have that feeling.
Bottom line: Everyone should read this book.
------------ pre-review
i missed reading this the second i finished it.
review to come / 5 stars
------------ currently-reading updates
could someone please inform the work i'm supposed to be doing that i won't be doing it due to suddenly being unable to put this down? k thanks
------------ tbr review
the best way to stay on track on your reading challenge is to read three books at once and also one of those books is 600 pages long...more
Hang on, I swear I’m about to write this review, but first I need to call up every real estate agent in the greater Philadelphia area and inquire abouHang on, I swear I’m about to write this review, but first I need to call up every real estate agent in the greater Philadelphia area and inquire about purchasing the Dutch House.
Okay, so yes, the Dutch House is fictional.
Plan B: I will make millions and millions of dollars and then become best friends with Ann Patchett and she and I will team up as co-architects to construct a real life version, and both of us will ignore the fact that we have no architecture experience and that I haven’t taken an actual math class in about 6 years (long story) and also that the Dutch House as a literary symbol brings only suffering and obsession.
I’m sure I’ll figure it out. I’m an English major, so according to my calculations, making millions of dollars will take me...476 years.
We’ve got time.
Until then, I will think about this book. To keep me motivated and inspired.
I will think about how it is beautifully written, and so real and emotive and human, and how I FELT everything that happened in this book. How it all felt real and painful and true.
I will think about how I love Maeve, and I love Danny, and I love May and Kevin and Celeste, and I love Sandy and Jocelyn, and how I even love Norma and Bright.
Mostly, I will think about the Dutch House, and the borderline grotesque beauty of the dining room, and the big portraits in the living room, and the windowseat in the best bedroom, and the seating area at the top of the stairs, and the warm kitchen, and the cold high-up beds.
And those 476 years will just fly by.
Bottom line: Immediately after finishing this book, I resolved to read everything by Ann Patchett.
---------------- pre-review
actually i grew up in the Dutch House and the characters from this book are my family and this is the story of my life.
review to come / 4.5 stars
---------------- tbr review
i promise eventually i'll move on from gazing lovingly at this cover and actually open this book...more
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
This book is now a Goodreads Choice Award Nominee for romance, and it's also MY Goodreads Choice for romance, meaning this is very good and I enjoyed This book is now a Goodreads Choice Award Nominee for romance, and it's also MY Goodreads Choice for romance, meaning this is very good and I enjoyed reading it and also Goodreads was involved.
When I first read the synopsis of this book, I thought: I think I'll like this very much.
Then I read a little bit of it and thought: Actually I do not think this is going to go very well. In fact I think this is going to go rather badly.
Then I finished it and thought: As I said and as I, a liar, always believed I would, I liked this very much.
When I saw this book about two people who don't know each other who share a flat (one has it in the day and one at night), and that they communicate via Post-It notes until they inevitably fall in love (I believe it is impossible to conduct epistolary interactions with someone over a long period of time and not fall in love with them), I believed this would be light and fluffy and adorable and just what I needed.
This was not very light. Nor was it very fluffy. Actually it was very stressful and angsty and emotional. But it was what I needed???
This is a very heartfelt and well-done story about supportive love and people healing from abuse and trauma and just all around character development joy. But a lot of suffering before we get to the joy part.
It is just so very good. SO much better than I expected.
Bottom line: LIKE I SAID. MY GOODREADS CHOICE.
---------------- pre-review
all right, i admit it! i'm swooning!!
review to come / 4 stars
---------------- currently-reading updates
i'm a simple girl. i read a scary book, then i immediately read a rom-com to soothe my cowardly soul...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
As someone who is a big fan of oral histories of pop culture things, and as someone who gives a rousing “sign me the hell up” to Taylor Jenkins Reid wAs someone who is a big fan of oral histories of pop culture things, and as someone who gives a rousing “sign me the hell up” to Taylor Jenkins Reid writing about historical Hollywood in any way: This book is a dream.
When I am not reading books, I spend a lot of my time reading in-depth articles. Sometimes these are on subjects I have little to no outside interest in: rich people bickering over preschool traditions, incels getting plastic surgery, whether Taylor Swift’s Fourth of July parties were a mainstay relic of her obsession (and fleeting brush) with the Kennedy family. (All of these are articles I read in the past week.) Alternatively, sometimes these articles are on things I care very much about, like certain comedy podcasts or cult-classic ’90s movies.
This book is like a combination of both of those, but written by Taylor Jenkins Reid, and also it is 368 pages long.
You have no idea of the joy its existence brings me.
And that’s even before I knew it contained sentences like THIS ONE: “I had absolutely no interest in being somebody else's muse. I am not a muse. I am the somebody. End of fucking story.”
I mean honestly, you guys, come on. What am I supposed to do with that other than love and cherish it and read it in a sitting?
I hope I wasn’t supposed to do anything else. Because all I did was those things.
Well, this book wasn’t perfect. Sure, maybe the oral history format is a little more used to being a lengthy Vulture article than a full-length historical novel, and yes, you could argue that those growing pains are evident more than a handful of times, but it more than makes up for it with the DRAMA.
Oh, man, you guys, the DRAMA. Another reason I read a lot of random articles is that I love gossip, but I don’t love it so much when it’s people I know, because then I have to do annoying things like “empathize” and “feel bad” and it ruins my fun. But when I get my drama from celebrities - and, even better, FICTIONAL celebrities - no guilt necessary.
It’s just so much fun.
That’s my bottom line!
(lowered to a 3.5 upon reread)
----------------- reread updates
the old "reread a book before the adaptation comes out so you feel like the best bookworm in the world" trick
------------------ pre-review
Reese Witherspoon: "I devoured Daisy Jones & The Six in a day, falling head over heels for it."
me: hmm...crazy that i AM reese witherspoon...that we are one and the same...
(this book was really good and i would like for the music in it to be real now, thank you please.)
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.
-------------
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.
It’s a rendition of life in its mundanities and monotony, a display of the fallacies and frustrations that make up our daily story, but one that refuses to flinch away from the breath-stealing beauty of it. The miraculousness and gorgeousness and fated magic of life.
And that type of story rarely wins awards. It is dismissed and mocked as treacly and feel-good. In all honesty I feel that if this book were written about or by a woman, it’d be relegated to a corner of by-rights-less-serious “women’s fiction,” called even a romantic comedy and never ever ever spoken of in the same sentence as the word Pulitzer.
But it is not overdone and tired to depict everyday life as wonderful and gorgeous. In fact, it’s the bravest story you can write.
That’s all I have to say.
Bottom line: How lovely.
---------- pre-review
reading this book was like: sitting in a brightly lit room when the lights are suddenly extinguished, and there is a moment of discomfited surprise before the realization that you are actually quite tired, and the reprieve from the fluorescence is a loveliness and a mercy, and you settle into it and shut your weary eyes and the light has returned as abruptly as it was sent away.
i didn't want the beautiful vacation that was this story to end.
review to come / 5 stars
---------- currently-reading updates
don't mind me, just jumping on a bandwagon two years late...more
It’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, plus Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There, plus a ton of critical analysiTHIS BOOK IS MY DREAM.
It’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, plus Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There, plus a ton of critical analysis and fun facts and biographical info and poetry and background and cultural and period information and bonus illustrations and basically all you need or could ever want to know, except if you’re me and your love for and curiosity about Alice and Lewis Carroll and Wonderland will never be satiated.
And also it’s about a square yard and the font is tiny and it weighs about 30 pounds and takes an eternity to read.
I loved this so much that it made my heart hurt to finish it. My version of paradise is probably something like this, where I’m alternating between reading the original text I love more than anything and eloquent, wise, humorous elaboration on things I had never known. The more I learned, the more I wanted to know.
I guess you could say I grew…curiouser and curiouser.
I love myself.
Anyway, my bookmark for this book was a folded-up sheet of lined paper on which I wrote down the titles and works of art and research queries I wanted to know more about as I read. I filled up both sides of that sheet.
Absolutely every aspect of this book is gorgeous and curated and fascinating. I don’t really know how to review this because it basically transcended reading for me.
It was just a perfect experience.
Bottom line: If you love Alice like I do, or really really like it, you need to read this book. It’s a gift. That’s all I can say.
----------- pre-review
i have never, in my entire life, cried in public over a book.
my skin is clear. my gpa is up. spring has come early. i'm hydrated. i have been cured of my nearsightedness.
i could not have d r e a m e d up a more my skin is clear. my gpa is up. spring has come early. i'm hydrated. i have been cured of my nearsightedness.
i could not have d r e a m e d up a more perfect book.
this book contains: trans women, gay women, bi women, straight women, pan women, black women, asian women, native american women, middle eastern women, white women, autistic women, disabled women. there are living women and dead women and women who are so dead that it's like, maybe she was born around the year 350? there are women i've heard of and women i've long obsessed over and women i'd never heard of because SOCIETY IS UNJUST.
the art is beautiful, whether it's the comic-style panels that make up most of the book or the two-page spreads at the end of every entry, all of which i want to Frame And Hang But Also Print On The Backs Of My Eyelids.
i've been struggling to read a bit this month — no book could catch my attention. i opened the package containing this yesterday, and must have kept it in the back of my mind since, because i picked it up today without thinking. and didn't put it down. through dinner or cleaning or cookie-baking or anything else.
i needed this book in childhood, and i needed it as a teenager, and i need it now and i'll continue to need it forever. i know absolutely that i'll return to this book always.
this is going on my all-time favorites list. this is a book that i will recommend to all women, and all men, and all people of all genders because it is so important and beautiful and necessary.
as i finished this book, i got choked up. because it's over, and because it is such a gift.
at the end, Pénélope Bagieu includes a list of 30 more badass women, and oh my god if this world is worthy of loving Bagieu will write a book for them, too.
bottom line: maybe i will come back and write more later, because i have the feeling i will never be done talking about this book.
thank you, thank you, thaaaaank you to fierce reads for the ARC...more
I don’t really know how to review this, or even rate it. I just know that everyone in the world should probably read this book.
My memory of it is not I don’t really know how to review this, or even rate it. I just know that everyone in the world should probably read this book.
My memory of it is not fresh (read it five months ago; shoutout to my renowned timely reviews), and even when it was I was rendered pretty speechless. Basically what I’m saying is that there are so many thoughtful reviews of this and mine will very much pale in comparison.
So what it comes down to is: you should read Elise’s review, or Melanie’s, and then if you want to watch someone struggle to write complex outdated faded emotions they didn’t even understand in the first place, journey on back over here!
Now that that’s out of the way: let’s do some sections.
SYNOPSIS
Mara’s best friend is her twin, Owen - until his girlfriend and her friend, Hannah, accuses him of rape. Faced with choosing between her own sense of morality and standing with her family, Mara struggles to do the right thing.
And also her ex-girlfriend is there.
THINGS ABOUT THIS BOOK THAT ARE BETTER THAN THEY HAVE ANY RIGHT TO BE
This book is approximately ninety-nine point nine percent five star ratings (and don’t @ me - I go to a college that doesn’t offer math). There’s a good reason for that. This book covers so many complexities of an unbelievably sensitive issue with deftness and wiseness and skill rarely seen in YA.
There is a “but,” but it’s coming later.
This story deconstructs the concept of “type of girl.” It covers means of healing that aren’t necessary quiet, or nonviolent, or quick or easy or simple but are unbearably, achingly real. It shows there is no such thing as a completely bad person, while steering clear of stating that people aren’t capable of completely bad actions.
Basically, this book realizes something that YA novels rarely do: that a complicated topic requires a complicated story. There are easier ways to cover sexual assault. None of them involve siblings or friendships or even intoxication or belief or morality. The simplest stories say “this is consent, and here we believe women.” And those stories are fine, and they bring awareness, but that’s not what’s real.
This book is mercilessly, unrelentingly real.
Which is why it sucks so bad that it didn’t click for me.
IT’S NOT YOU, PRETTY BOOK, IT’S ME
I stand by all the dramatic proclamations I’ve made about this so far. I think this is by far the best rendering of the complicated nature of sexual assault that I’ve read. However.
On a personal level, as a story with characters and a world, it didn’t work for me.
It’s mostly whatever, because everything that is so good about this book is capable of transcending normal book stuff. But I can’t really click with a book without clicking with the characters??? (Also: how many times can I use the word “book” in one paragraph. Book book book book book.)
Anyway. That’s the story for why this book didn’t make me feel much of anything, and I’m sticking to it.
Mara has a pretty wonderful development arc in this, but she’s just about the only character I feel like I halfway understand. And even she felt flat sometimes and it’s her!!! story!!!! From her perspective!!! And everyone else was even worse.
Also, I thought this book was trying to do too much. A lot of this was spent on Mara thinking about her relationship with her now ex-girlfriend, Charlie, and I just...didn’t care. It felt so much less meaningful than the main story, and every time we divulged into this B-plot I was just annoyed it was taking time away from the main focus.
Because, as mentioned, this book is overwhelmingly complicated. So trying to add more to that was unnecessary and, honestly, kind of annoying and distracting.
What it comes down to, really, is that as a book in the typical sense this didn’t work for me. Luckily, this is more than a book - and the more-than-a-book stuff worked.
Bottom line: Is this an unpopular opinion????
-------------------- pre-review
i haven't the FOGGIEST idea what to rate this book, which might be one of the most important ones i've ever read.
Loading...
