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| 0765386585
| 9780765386588
| B01B1KP9W6
| 3.72
| 822
| Mar 02, 2016
| Mar 02, 2016
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liked it
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None
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Notes are private!
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2
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Feb 12, 2017
not set
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Feb 12, 2017
not set
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Sep 28, 2024
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Kindle Edition
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| 4.15
| 59,340
| Feb 05, 2019
| Feb 05, 2019
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Notes are private!
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0
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not set
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not set
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Jan 29, 2019
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Hardcover
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| 000735634X
| 9780007356348
| 000735634X
| 4.32
| 395,179
| May 14, 2013
| Feb 23, 2017
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really liked it
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[image]
“Why did people ask “What is it about?” as if a novel had to be about only one thing.” It's this opening quote that raised my intrigue b [image] “Why did people ask “What is it about?” as if a novel had to be about only one thing.” It's this opening quote that raised my intrigue by a tenfold on Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Americanah. I've read (and reviewed in praise) her previous Nonfiction works (Dear Ijeawele & We Should All Be Feminists) so I knew Adichie to be an author with a compelling way of words, but all that paled in comparison to the character building she excels at exploring in this fictional work of art. As teenagers in Lagos, Ifemelu and Obinze fall in love. Their Nigeria is under military dictatorship, and people are fleeing the country if they can. The self-assured Ifemelu departs for America. There she suffers defeats and triumphs, finds and loses relationships, all the while feeling the weight of something she never thought of back home: race. Obinze had hoped to join her, but post-9/11 America will not let him in, and he plunges into a dangerous, undocumented life in London. So, now comes the difficult part of trying to sum up my reading experience of this grandiose book. Which is also, coincidentally, the first lengthy book I’ve read in awhile, so I took my sweet time savoring its pages over the course of a week. And I’m glad I did because it gave me the chance to mull over my thoughts and feelings regarding Americanah. “This was love, to be eager for tomorrow.” First and foremost, how does the author succeed so seamlessly at fleshing out a side character even if they come to show only one time??? Time and again, I was dumbfounded at Adichie’s success in cultivating characters so full of life with a single page or two, sometimes needing only one paragraph. This is raw talent right here. By introducing a new character that says something particular, she then gives background on why they would act that way. Like, Ifem meeting someone she catches keen on another’s affection: “He was an impresario, well oiled and well practiced, the sort of man who did a good American accent and a good British accent, who knew what to say to foreigners, how to make foreigners comfortable, and who could easily get foreign grants for dubious projects. She wondered what he was like beneath that practiced layer.” Or, Obinze’s catching Amara’s quick fix reminding everyone how she was wronged: “Maybe he should go and find a Jamaican woman,” Amara said. Her husband had left her for a Jamaican woman, with whom it turned out he had a secret four-year-old child, and she somehow managed to veer every conversation towards the subject of Jamaicans.” I’m a sucker for books full of eccentric and subtle quips on life, so Americanah fell prey to my immediate affection. However, this is also where my later issues with the book stem from since I came to depend on those familiar, detailed intimacies on everyday life to propel the book forward more than the actual storyline. My mind was on a never-ending wait for more noteworthy remarks to drop, instead of caring for any actual development in the plot. It was also a bit of a bummer to learn that the most important person in Ifemelu’s life could not have made me feel more numb. Sitting through whole chapters from Obinze’s viewpoint left those parts of the book marred for me, as a result. His grown persona, lacking that quiet strength that made up the arc of his youth, didn’t work in his favor, as well. It’s the stark contrast between the joy and quickness Ifem’s chapters provided, in comparison to the snail-paced reading I experienced with Obinze that staggered me. There’s also a comment in here that rubbed me the wrong way, regarding antisemitism: “Don’t say it’s just like antisemitism. It’s not. In the hatred of Jews, there is also the possibility of envy—they are so clever, these Jews, they control everything, these Jews—and one must concede that a certain respect, however grudging, accompanies envy.” Why is she essentially telling me to be grateful for antisemitism?? Opting for the wrong approach where they teach hundreds of little girls to take it like a compliment when boys use abuse to get attention??? I listened to a lecture recently on antisemitism and seeing a comment like the above to excuse this systematic form of oppression made me livid. But I’ll hit a bit of a pause on the negatives to highlight my more cherished moments from the carefully-crafted story that is Americanah. I noted down so many quotes from this book that I had to open up a separate document in my notes for lines I highly wanted to include in my review so they wouldn’t be lost amid scouring my never-ending pages. I looked something like this writing everything down from excitement: [image] [image] My favorite of those include: • When this book expertly offers us an intimate look into Ifemelu’s young love with Obinze by including us in their private inside jokes that only those two get. Like, referring to him as “Ceiling” in public and making everyone wonder about the story behind it. “Why do you call him Ceiling anyway?” his friend Okwudiba once asked her, on one of those languorous days after first semester exams. She had joined a group of his friends sitting around a filthy plastic table in a beer parlor off campus. She drank from her bottle of Maltina, swallowed, glanced at Obinze, and said, “Because he is so tall his head touches the ceiling, can’t you see?” Her deliberate slowness, the small smile that stretched her lips, made it clear that she wanted them to know that this was not why she called him Ceiling. And he was not tall. ” • The amount of specificity the author offers to her characters astonished me time and again. To quote Ifem’s blog, she offers “Lagos from an Insider,” and there’s an unequivocal honesty to it. “You lied.” It was said with a kind of horror that baffled her, as though he had never considered it possible that she could lie. She wanted to say, “Blaine, people lie.” But she said, “I’m sorry.” “Why?” He was looking at her as though she had reached in and torn away his innocence, and for a moment she hated him, this man who ate her apple cores and turned even that into something of a moral act.” I can’t get over that last line. Blaine was one of the more interesting boyfriends of Ifem’s past. I liked, in particular, their initial encounter on the train the very same day Ifemelu drops her efforts at assimilating with faking an American accent. “It was not in her nature to talk to strangers on public transportation—she would do it more often when she started her blog a few years later—but she talked and talked, perhaps because of the newness of her own voice. The more they talked, the more she told herself that this was no coincidence; there was a significance to her meeting this man on the day that she returned her voice to herself.” Theirs was a fascinating dynamic that I loved seeing chronicled. “So when are you going to have the next salon, Shan? I was telling Ifemelu about them.” When Blaine had told Ifemelu about Shan calling her gatherings “salons,” he had underlined the word with mockery, but now he said it with an earnestly French pronunciation: sa-lon.” The peak of intimacy arrives through these details that expand on domestic life; sharing a life together means you know their true, intimate thoughts, so that in outside situations you’re like, ummm, that’s not what you told me in private… • On feeling stuck and unresolved in her relationship: “But she had not had a bold epiphany and there was no cause; it was simply that layer after layer of discontent had settled in her, and formed a mass that now propelled her. She did not tell him this, because it would hurt him to know she had felt that way for a while, that her relationship with him was like being content in a house but always sitting by the window and looking out.” I read that last part twice to let its magnificent power sink in “How was it possible to miss something you no longer wanted? Blaine needed what she was unable to give and she needed what he was unable to give, and she grieved this, the loss of what could have been.” • Sifting through Ifemelu’s past and playing this game of catch-up, there hits a certain moment when things start to feel exhausting and previous plot lines are forgotten (like, Ifem getting her hair braided in present day, which we keep returning to) in the process of reading this richly told story spanning three continents and numerous lives. And circling back to the present after being so caught up in the past is when my enthralment for the story usually goes down by a notch… That is until another noteworthy line gets dropped on us. • Such as, the clapback delivered to Obinze at the hands of his wife, Kosi, after he confesses to his immature desires, left me feeling more empowered than the “cool girl” speech from Gone Girl: “It’s not about another woman, Obinze,” Kosi said, rising to her feet, her voice steeling, her eyes hardening. “It’s about keeping this family together! You took a vow before God. I took a vow before God. I am a good wife. We have a marriage. Do you think you can just destroy this family because your old girlfriend came into town? Do you know what it means to be a responsible father? You have a responsibility to that child downstairs! What you do today can ruin her life and make her damaged until the day she dies! And all because your old girlfriend came back from America? Because you have had acrobatic sex that reminded you of your time in university?” I couldn’t have been more grateful to Kosi for saying what I always yell at men who want to leave their wives and families to satisfy some impulse. Also: “acrobatic sex.” I C O N I C [image] I’ll leave this list of favorites on one last priceless moment because I’m this close to sharing the whole novel with you… I smiled at the below: “It’s a cowardly, dishonest book. Have you read it?” Shan asked. “I read a review,” Mirabelle said. “That’s the problem. You read more about books than you read actual books.” That is to say, I’m more than eager to discover the power of Adichie’s words in exploring her other books. [image][image][image][image][image] Note: I’m an Amazon Affiliate. If you’re interested in buying Americanah, just click on the image below to go through my link. I’ll make a small commission! [image] [image] Support creators you love. Buy a Coffee for nat (bookspoils) with Ko-fi.com/bookspoils [image] This review and more can be found on my blog. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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May 25, 2018
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Jun 02, 2018
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Jun 03, 2018
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Paperback
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| 1534408967
| 9781534408968
| 1534408967
| 3.63
| 45,369
| Mar 27, 2018
| Mar 27, 2018
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liked it
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[image]
Angst, Love, Texts, and Tattoos When I read through the excerpt for Emergency Contact back in February, I had a slight inkling indicatin [image] Angst, Love, Texts, and Tattoos When I read through the excerpt for Emergency Contact back in February, I had a slight inkling indicating it would be well worth the wait. I was hooked, in particular, when I highlighted the opening line that really gets those of us living in the more warmer areas: When it came to perspiration, Penny had a problem. Not that she stank of BO or anything. It’s that from March to around October she was invariably damp. I do have to say, though, that upon starting the full book and realizing the aforementioned excerpt wasn't from the first chapter was quite disappointing for me... I definitely had to rearrange my expectations for the following, as the shared excerpt is set way down the road from the opening storyline. While readjusting, I also became agonizingly aware of how much time we spent on the many, many arbitrary scenes before Penny finally heads off to college: buying a new iPhone, arguing with her mother for flirting at the Apple store, packing up and heading on her drive to the University of Texas at Austin, actually arriving on campus, entering her shared dorm room, going into the bathroom, rearranging her toiletry bag... SO MANY DETAILS that I shouldn't have to know; pages upon pages of description make my mind wander. In my eyes, all the aforementioned could have been summarized in a couple of pages, instead of dedicating four whole chapters to it. There's literally a scene at House Coffee that starts from Sam's viewpoint, where Penny enters with her roommate and her roommate's best friend, and then follows up exactly where we left off in Penny's following chapter... Like, *silent-scream* having time jumps of over an hour is allowed... [image] But I'm glad I pushed through the longish introduction (low-key because I had already prepared the header image for my review out of excitement and wasn't gonna let it go to waste) because what unfolds is a coming-of-age tale that chronicles the intersecting lives of Penny Lee and Sam Becker, both not to be trifled with. When Sam and Penny cross paths it’s less meet-cute and more a collision of unbearable awkwardness. Still, they swap numbers and stay in touch—via text—and soon become digitally inseparable, sharing their deepest anxieties and secret dreams without the humiliating weirdness of having to see each other. But it's the precise commentary invoked in this book that made me want to stick around. Penny's character had the best lines, as well. • Sam is the essence of the tweet that goes "when i see a skinny white boy that looks like he hasn’t slept in years," courtesy of Penny's many favorable descriptions for his looks: “Sam could have been in a band. A dreamy, brooding band. Penny thought cigarettes were pointless and smelled awful, but she imagined that Sam smoked and that he looked cool doing it.” And this priceless line: “Sam had resting bitch face until he laughed.” Also, her appreciation for his many tattoos (sixteen in all) was beyond infectious: “Sam had somehow found the Perfect Shirt with the Perfect Collar, which was stretched out just enough to create this enticing peekaboo effect.” I was practically craning my neck to get a better look. • Things only went up from here when Penny gets some much-needed characterization by introducing her love of writing. Similar to Fangirl, we get to sit in on her Fiction-Writing course, and it was fascinating through the various topics discussed. Her professor, J.A., really channeled in this quote: [image] “Penny had been writing all the time, for years now. She’d never stopped even if she showed no one. Stories, lists of ideas, and strange chunks of amusing dialogue that came to her while she ignored whatever else was going on in her actual life. She knew she was decent. Only she wanted more.” • The impeccable humor in here takes it to a whole other level. The messages exchanged between Sam and Penny that had me stifling a laugh more than once. Including the most memorable from Sam's POV after he shoots Penny a mirror selfie, debating if he's overdressed: (His responses are on the right) [image] "Yah" This is that more comical when you know the insider's scoop on Penny's stance with nudes (*shudders @Mark*) and her spot-on "Calm down," poking fun at Sam's earlier use of it, and him lightening the air by making a jab at his earlier panic attack. They're catching feelings as they text, and I'm nothing if not here for it. “It wasn’t a romance; it was too perfect for that. With texts there were only the words and none of the awkwardness. They could get to know each other completely and get comfortable before they had to do anything unnecessarily overwhelming like look at each other’s eyeballs with their eyeballs.” [image][image] And I nearly CHOKED on this conversation between Uncle Sam and Jude: “The thing is,” she continued, “I’m also very perceptive. And I get now why you guys did what you did. Speaking of which, you’re both so lucky you have unlimited texting. You know she couldn’t even pee without taking her phone into the bathroom? I could hear her laughing in there.” Jude smiled then. “News flash,” she said. “At some point, your girlfriend might have been taking a dump while you were flirting with her.” This book is TOO REAL. [image] • On another note: Sam and Penny getting caught up in one another was entrancing and intoxicating to witness. “Sam wanted to tell Penny everything. He wanted a record of his thoughts and feelings and stories to exist with her. Like a time capsule for this strange period of his life. With her, he felt less lonely. He hadn’t even realized he was lonely. He hadn’t let himself.” • More notable observations:< “Penny never looked the way she thought she did in her head, like how your recorded voice sounds positively vile when you hear it out loud.” “Wow,” he said. “Sometimes talking to you is like accidentally clicking on a pop-up with autoplay video.” Celeste's (aka Penny's mom) take on the signs of love: “I know I love someone when I can’t remember what they look like in any real way. I can never seem to recall whether they’re handsome or ugly or if other people think they’re cute. All I know is that when I’m not with them and I think about them, where their face should be is this big cloud of good feelings and affection.” [image] Although I did have minor hindrances to my reading experience, overall I'd conclude by saying that Emergency Contact features a realistic story that has emotional depth and ends on a hopeful note. (But I'm mad at myself for thinking the last chapter wasn't the last and being once again shocked at seeing Acknowledgments at the head of the page...) Lastly, I couldn't have listened to a more fitting song than this one, since Penny and Sam coincidentally share the same pair of beat-up black sneakers. If you're not sleepin' with me, then I'll get no sleep at all. [image] [image] [image] [image] [image] Note: I’m an Amazon Affiliate. If you’re interested in buying Emergency Contact , just click on the image below to go through my link. I’ll make a small commission! [image] [image] Support creators you love. Buy a Coffee for nat (bookspoils) with Ko-fi.com/bookspoils [image] This review and more can be found on my blog. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Mar 27, 2018
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Mar 28, 2018
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Feb 07, 2018
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Hardcover
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| 0763694258
| 9780763694258
| 0763694258
| 3.76
| 1,023
| Mar 13, 2018
| Mar 13, 2018
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[image] I recently answered the PARKS AND REC book tag (and had THE MOST FUN doing so), wherein I featured this collection for Tom Haverford's A charac [image] I recently answered the PARKS AND REC book tag (and had THE MOST FUN doing so), wherein I featured this collection for Tom Haverford's A character who likes to dream big. Here is what I wrote taken directly from the tag:  January was also the month where I received the opportunity to read an incredible short story written by Dahlia Adler in The Radical Element anthology. Daughter of the Book was the introducing story to the collection, and my immediate first thought upon completing it went, "I don’t know how any following tale will top that one." (And as you can tell, since I'm not writing a full review for the anthology, I had to put the book down because I couldn't continue reading without comparing each following tale to the phenomenal opening one.) Set in 1838, Savannah, Georgia, Daughter of the Book follows Rebekah's fight and journey to receive a more fulfilling Jewish education. "Tell them I'm Jewish first." Dahlia Adler created one of the most memorable protagonists I've encountered in my reading with Rebekah Wolf. And it is the first time that I’m actually aching for a short story to be expanded into a full novel. [image] I’ve read a whole lot of short stories in anthologies these past few years, but I’ve truly never felt so seen before. There are talks of Hebrew, Torah, the Prophets, our history, language, and people. To paraphrase this article, it was how I talked, how my mom talked, how my sister talked. This was the writer of our experience. And as someone who does listen avidly to Torah lessons, I couldn’t have asked for a better story to capture the essence of my appreciation. Also, having watched the Israeli show Shababnikim, which is about four young Orthodox yeshiva students, made the characters in this short story stand out that more. Speaking of which, I would highly recommend giving the show a try if you enjoyed Dahlia Adler’s story because it showcases formidable female characters challenging the norm, as well as featuring situations with outstanding humor and precise commentary that makes everything shift in your point of view. If you're interested, the first episode is available to check out with English subtitles on the official Youtube page here. Note: I'm an Amazon Affiliate. If you're interested in buying Rookie on Love, just click on the image below to go through my link. I'll make a small commission! [image] Support creators you love. Buy a Coffee for nat (bookspoils) with Ko-fi.com/bookspoils [image] ...more |
Notes are private!
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0
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not set
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not set
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Jan 09, 2018
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Hardcover
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| 1328759873
| 9781328759870
| 1328759873
| 3.57
| 14,340
| Jan 02, 2018
| Jan 02, 2018
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really liked it
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Sometimes I just need to get sucked into a feel-good story and stay there until I'm finished. Thankfully, I accomplished just that with this anthology
Sometimes I just need to get sucked into a feel-good story and stay there until I'm finished. Thankfully, I accomplished just that with this anthology full of short bursts of sweetness with meet-cutes, butterflies, first impressions, and so much more. [image] [image] [image] Source Just some of my personal memorable stories from the book: • Nina LaCour's Print Shop: Funnily enough, this story opens with our main character, Evie, receiving her first job where she's set to develop an online presence for a print shop she chose mainly for its lack of computers. I loved how we got such a solid grip on the atmosphere of the shop and the people working there, like, I could smell the air engulfing Evie the minute she walked in, similar to what I mentioned in my review for LaCour's We Are Okay. I especially cherished Neve, who's eight months pregnant and doesn't care to overshare: “But then Neve leaned forward and said, “We’ve been basking in a seemingly eternal youth, and now, shit, I’m thirty-seven. I told Eduardo now or never and threw the condoms away.” She leaned back and laughed. “Okay, thanks for tolerating my overshare. I like you. You’re hired.” “Oh,” I said. “Thanks!” I shook my head to rid it of the image of the two of them having sex, and stood up to shake her hand.” Weirdly relieved when I read that last sentence and realized how everyone desperately tries to erase that image in their head. But things really get going when Evie receives a cranky customers service tweet, demanding justice be served to Principal Hope not principle hope. [image] • Dhonielle Clayton's The Way We Love Here: “None of us know when our time is up. The gods gave us one gift—to know when our loves would come. The best part of life. It would be greedy to ask for more.” The blurb describing this as a predestined tale of love had me thinking it would lead to a bunch of sappy one-liners about the greatness of romance, but in all actuality, I was surprised for the better thanks to the characters' self-deprecating humor and eerily relatable overthinking thoughts. “I’ve never held hands with anyone outside of Momma, my sister, and Papa. The elders of Meridien say that this type of intimacy is reserved for blood relatives and beloveds. They warn us about the dangers that could happen: falling in love with the wrong person, ending up alone, altering the will of the gods, confusing the senses, and losing our fingers. The newspapers print cautionary tales about young teens who disregard the warning. They make sure to include their sad pictures. I’ve never done it. Then again, I’ve never had a boy with whom to try.” We then receive this rare opportunity to look into Vio and Sebastien's future lives together, which reminded me of another similar short story from a #LoveOzYA Anthology that I absolutely adored last year: I Can See the Ending by Will Kostakis. “It’s different, when you know its ending.” • Jennifer L. Armentrout's The Dictionary Of You And Me: Following Moss's ongoing mission at the library to retrieve the way-overdue dictionary from a certain H. Smith. Interestingly enough, the ongoing flirting and bantering that took place between the two over the phone was put a little on the back burner for me as I had a magical time living vicariously through her to see what a job at the library would entail. Swoon. But that's not to say that I wasn't left with a megawatt smile on my face upon reading their amusing conversations as well. “I’ve missed you,” he said, surprising me. Even without a mirror, I knew my pink skin was getting even pinker. Clearing my throat, I focused on the task at hand. “There is no way you could’ve missed me.” “And why not?” he replied, sounding amused. “We don’t even know each other.” “I don’t think that’s true. I mean, at least I feel like I know you.” There was a pause. “Just the other day, you told me you hated turkey.” I had told him that, though I couldn’t remember how that topic of convo had come up. “Yeah, and just the other day you told me the reason you’d been unable to return the dictionary was because you were touring the back roads of France.” He chuckled. “That’s not a lie.” “Oh, really?” “I’ve been checking them out on Google Maps.” My lips twitched.” I'm a sucker for smooth talkers in books. • The Unlikely Likelihood Of Falling In Love by Jocelyn Davies: “I may or may not have fallen in love at first sight with a boy on the B train. I’m doing my final project on the likelihood of seeing him again.” I wasn't expecting to like this one as much as I did because I rarely if ever appreciate "love at first sight" stories. But Jocelyn Davies took an interesting spin on this trope. The reason I cherished this tale was mainly that I saw so much of myself exposed within the main character. As I once read somewhere (and I'm desperately wishing I remembered the source here): There's something completely indescribable about reading someone's story and being able to see some of yours in it. Like, her calculating the chances of meeting the cute boy she randomly passed on her morning route is all too relatable to me. “Alex’s right,” she said, dipping her brush into a blob of hunter-green paint. “It’s fate.” “It’s not fate,” I countered. “It’s math.” “Why do you think you keep seeing him? Why do you think both of your trains stopped at the exact same time? It’s fate, I’m telling you.” “I’ll tell you why I keep seeing him. He goes to school in Brooklyn. I go to school in Manhattan. School starts at pretty much the same time every day no matter what school you go to. There are only a limited number of ways to cross between Brooklyn and Manhattan, and one of them is the Manhattan Bridge. See? The pool of variables keeps getting smaller and smaller. If you think about it, how could I not see him?” This right here is my two inner voices arguing on paper. And this next passage then captures that moment of trying to comfort yourself that it's for the best if you never see him again: “If we did ever meet IRL, then he would become real. And all this perfect stuff I sort of knew about him would be all mixed up with imperfect stuff, the real stuff, the stuff no one wants to know. The stuff that would take him out of the early morning haze of my dreams and into the cold hard daylight of reality.” But once in a blue moon, the universe (or the author of a story) has something bigger in store and all we can do is wait. I wasn't expecting to feel this seen with this anthology but I'm glad I was. • Julie Murphy's Something Real: Entertaining reality TV told through short fiction? Yes, please! Something Real follows our main character, June Smith, as she's going through the trials of entering a reality dating show contest with her favorite singer Dylan as the "prize." At the heart of it all, though, is a story of fandom, girls supporting girls, and connection. “Those lyrics, they were, like, immediately seared into my brain. It was almost like all the words in that song existed inside of me, but Dylan had somehow grouped them all together and sorted them out. And not only that, but he could freaking sing. That video of him in his dad’s basement. Just acoustic. Nothing fancy. I would turn that song on and close all the curtains in my room and just lie there in the dark. I should’ve felt so alone, but I didn’t. And I wanted that feeling all the time. But Dylan’s one person.” I laugh a little. “I’m not some psycho who’s going to stalk him at his house, so I decided to find people who felt just as alone as I did. I guess I just thought we could be alone together, or maybe—just maybe—we’d find that we weren’t all that alone to begin with.” It was also just dizzyingly and irresistibly enjoying to read.This is reality TV at its peak. The author said it best when she talked about June's competitor, Martha: “I’m hanging on her every word. I know this has nothing to do with Dylan or his music or this stupid date we’re competing for, but if Jill is out to make good TV, she knows how to get it done.” I'm glad that what I was feeling was conveyed on paper, but it made me laugh when I remembered this post: Whenever a character congratulates another character in a book for being clever,it basically means the author is congratulating himself for being smart. On that note, I have one last story I want to mention which is Nicola Yoon's The Department Of Dead Love. There's a question she posed in it that I found radically important to know the answer to. It goes as follows: “What do you think the difference between wanting to be friends and wanting to be more than friends is?” And Yoon did not disappoint in her theory: “Some people you want to get to know and some people you want to know you. I think that’s the difference.” Overall, upon completing each story, I had an insurmountable amount of fun revisiting the words of some of my favorite YA authors. As well as trying to guess which couple was being featured on the cover. [image] Lastly, I'd like to feature the theme song playing in the back of mind throughout this anthology performed by the one and only Adele. [image][image][image][image] Note: I'm an Amazon Affiliate. If you're interested in buying Meet Cute, just click on the image below to go through my link. I'll make a small commission! [image] This review and more can be found on my blog. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Jan 02, 2018
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Jan 03, 2018
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Jan 03, 2018
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Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||
| 159420571X
| 9781594205712
| 159420571X
| 3.84
| 589,738
| Jun 26, 2014
| Jun 26, 2014
|
really liked it
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UPDATE 2022: Everything I Never Told You is a love letter to older siblings making your life easier by just existing near you. It meant even more to me UPDATE 2022: Everything I Never Told You is a love letter to older siblings making your life easier by just existing near you. It meant even more to me on this reread. ----- Lydia is dead. But they don’t know this yet. So begins this exquisite novel about a Chinese American family living in 1970s small-town Ohio. Lydia is the favorite child of Marilyn and James Lee, and her parents are determined that she will fulfill the dreams they were unable to pursue. But when Lydia’s body is found in the local lake, the delicate balancing act that has been keeping the Lee family together is destroyed, tumbling them into chaos. I'm pleased with my decision to put a few weeks of distance between me starting this book and having finished Celeste Ng's Little Fires Everywhere. The latter left such a lasting and unwavering impression on me, as I mentioned in my raving review, that I was unsure whether I'd get to experience such emotions again in the near future. Thankfully, though, after two weeks of longing, I was more than ready to dive back into the author's wonderful world of stories within stories. And upon having completed the second chapter of Everything I Never Told You, where we get a better sense of the ongoing character dynamics, I knew I was in for a treat. My personal highlights from the book include: ✓ The smaller the details, the more swept up I am in the story. “But Nath’s seen Lydia at school, how in the cafeteria she sits silent while the others chatter; how, when they’ve finished copying her homework, she quietly slides her notebook back into her bookbag. After school, she walks to the bus alone and settles into the seat beside him in silence. Once, he had stayed on the phone line after Lydia picked up and heard not gossip, but his sister’s voice duly rattling off assignments—read Act I of Othello, do the odd-numbered problems in Section 5—then quiet after the hang-up click. The next day, while Lydia was curled on the window seat, phone pressed to her ear, he’d picked up the extension in the kitchen and heard only the low drone of the dial tone. Lydia has never really had friends, but their parents have never known. If their father says, “Lydia, how’s Pam doing?” Lydia says, “Oh, she’s great, she just made the pep squad,” and Nath doesn’t contradict her. He’s amazed at the stillness in her face, the way she can lie without even a raised eyebrow to give her away.” *Sings like Jean-Ralphio* SPECIFIC. [image] ✓ The familiar atmosphere and making every family member more well-rounded by going back to their adolescence is something I always enjoy from the author. “He spent twelve years at Lloyd and never felt at home. At Lloyd, everyone seemed to be descended from a Pilgrim or a senator or a Rockefeller, but when they did family tree projects in class, he pretended to forget the assignment rather than draw his own complicated diagram. Don’t ask any questions, he prayed silently as the teacher marked a small red zero beside his name. He set himself a curriculum of studying American culture—listening to the radio, reading comics, saving his pocket money for double features, learning the rules of the new board games—in case anyone ever said, Hey, didya hear Red Skelton yesterday? or Wanna play Monopoly? though no one ever did.” The above passage really nails down his feeling out of place in a predominately white school. “And James? What had he thought of her? He would never tell her this, would never admit it to himself: he had not noticed her at all, that first lecture. He had looked right at her, over and over, as he held forth on Roy Rogers and Gene Autry and John Wayne, but when she came to his office he had not even recognized her. Hers had been just one of the pale, pretty faces, indistinguishable from the next, and though he would never fully realize it, this was the first reason he came to love her: because she had blended in so perfectly, because she had seemed so completely and utterly at home.” He got together with Marilyn to blend in, while she chose him to stand out, like the author pointed out before: “Because more than anything, her mother had wanted to stand out; because more than anything, her father had wanted to blend in.” And now bringing home the point by showing and not just telling… The Shadow of the Wind is shook. While reading Everything I Never Told You I had only one repeating thought that cemented the fact that Celeste Ng's knows how create stories within stories. There is such a somber mood that is perfectly captured throughout the book. The story slowly develops but is never boring. Like trying to piece together the missing pieces of a puzzle. Inevitably, if I compare this read with Little Fires Everywhere, I'd say it was a bit subsided in its complexity because it didn't feature as many perspectives. Our main focus throughout the book is the Lee family and the aftermath of their stricken tragedy. So I was missing that sprawling look at different characters and point of views that we had in LFE. Where that one was so loud and tumultuous in my head with trying to pierce together ever thread of detail, this one offered something more quiet and introspective. But that's not to say that Everything I Never Told You wasn't a sharp, refreshing look at family-driven dramas. Celeste Ng excels once again at make everything fall into place, from the tiniest detail to the bigger plot twists. And not twists, really, because her books all start with the mystery uncovered in the first sentence: "Lydia is dead." "...Isabelle, the last of the Richardson children, had finally gone around the bend and burned the house down." We instead follow the unfolding of their lives that brought the end results, which grew tremendously important to me. “How had this all gone so wrong?” The author also highlights the daring notion for these parents that their child might desire “something she wanted, not something they wanted for her.” Too many times did it feel like they weren't seeing their daughter, “the reluctant center of their universe,” rather just a younger version of themselves; trying to fix all their past mistakes by having her avoid making her own set of choices. I was stunned watching this very pivotal moment unfold. “The door creaks open, and Marilyn slowly raises her head, as if Lydia might somehow, impossibly, appear. For a second the impossible happens: a small blurred ghost of little-girl Lydia, dark-haired, big-eyed. Hesitating in the doorway, clinging to the jamb. Please, Marilyn thinks. In this word is all she cannot phrase, even to herself. Please come back, please let me start over, please stay. Please.” The desperate "please" haunted me for hours. All this and more shines so brightly with Ng's rigorous writing style. And I personally cannot wait for all her future works. [image][image][image][image] Note: I'm an Amazon Affiliate. If you're interested in buying Everything I Never Told You, just click on the image below to go through my link. I'll make a small commission! [image] Support creators you love. Buy a Coffee for nat (bookspoils) with Ko-fi.com/bookspoils [image] This review and more can be found on my blog. ...more |
Notes are private!
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2
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Oct 05, 2022
Dec 22, 2017
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Oct 05, 2022
Dec 23, 2017
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Dec 23, 2017
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Hardcover
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| 0735224293
| 9780735224292
| 0735224293
| 4.07
| 1,261,994
| Sep 12, 2017
| Sep 12, 2017
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it was amazing
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“...her mother was there, which meant that everything was all right. ” Reread October 2019: Still as powerful as the first read. Having forgotten the m “...her mother was there, which meant that everything was all right. ” Reread October 2019: Still as powerful as the first read. Having forgotten the many threads that web through this story only to connect pages later, I was just as engrossed as the first time. Question such as what made the house burn down, and what happens to Bebe still persisted. Mia is forever an enigma I want to know more about. Her reasoning behind her decision to not give away her child. It’s her parents that were disappointed in her even thinking of giving it away, and so she disconnects from them. But then she agrees with them. So why not talk to them? Why did she agree with them, but still keep her distance? And Bebe of course. I feel so much for her. Especially when the court was underway and hearing her life being put under a microscope it was scrutinising. Her quote on rent, groceries or electricity hit hard: .“what a thing, to choose between hunger and darkness.” I would love to read more about this community in a sequel. Everyone in Shaker Heights was talking about it that summer: how Isabelle, the last of the Richardson children, had finally gone around the bend and burned the house down. WHY DID I WAIT SO LONG TO READ THIS BOOK??? Fun story: I finally caved into the hype for Little Fires Everywhere when my fries nearly burned down the oven this past Tuesday. I was, needless to say, scared shitless when I saw smoke covering the kitchen... “Most of the smoke had gone, but a mugginess still hung everywhere, like the air in the bathroom after a long, hot shower.” But, the day after, when I randomly decided to read the first chapter of this book, which has its premise set around a fire, I was swept into the world of these lively characters in Shaker Heights. (I'm still mad at myself for having to go through the above, in order for me to get fully into the storyline.) Little Fires Everywhere explores the weight of secrets, the nature of art and identity, and the ferocious pull of motherhood – and the danger of believing that following the rules can avert disaster. Celeste Ng breathes such livelihood into each and every one of her characters that I can clearly imagine them in my head, so much so that I have to remind myself that they only exist in this fictional piece of work. And it works so well because the author pays close attention to the tiniest of details that I wouldn't have thought to notice at first, but then it's those features that make the story feel that more tangible. Take for example this introducing passage to the last (and the wildest) of the Richardson children: “Izzy, at ten, had been apprehended sneaking into the Humane Society in an attempt to free all the stray cats. “They’re like prisoners on death row,” she’d said. At eleven, her mother—convinced that Izzy was overly clumsy—had enrolled her in dance classes to improve her coordination. Her father insisted she try it for one term before she could quit. Every class, Izzy sat down on the floor and refused to move. For the recital—with the aid of a mirror and a Sharpie—Izzy had written NOT YOUR PUPPET across her forehead and cheeks just before taking the stage, where she stood stock-still while the others, disconcerted, danced around her.” I... love her. [image] I haven't fallen under the spell of a family so entirely since I read Young Jane Young by Gabrielle Zevin. Speaking of, if you liked the characterization in YJY, you'll most likely enjoy this worthwhile read just as much. Also, A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara is a prime example of exploring the dynamics of main and side characters and the threads connecting them all, just as this novel does so brilliantly. Celeste Ng breathes so much humanity into her characters that the everyday becomes compelling. And with each coming chapter, I became that more bewitched with these strangely compelling families. “The truth was that she wanted to study the Richardsons both when they were there and when they weren’t. Every day, it seemed, Pearl absorbed something new from the Richardson family: a turn of phrase (“I was literally dying”), a gesture (a flick of the hair, an eye roll). She was a teen, Mia told herself over and over; she was trying on new skins, like all teenagers did, but privately she stayed wary of the changes she saw.” I love how the author can capture such specific and private moments with a particular turn of phrase. These careful observations of her characters are enthralling. There's so much I want to discuss, everything from the enigmatic Mia Warren, “who seemed to make her own rules with no apologies”, to the complex and deeply intricate adoption case surrounding Mirabelle McCullough (“or, depending which side you were on, May Ling Chow”). I'll just say on the latter that the heated debate that lasted for months in their community, continued on in my head (and out loud to anyone who was willing to listen) without pause. “It came, over and over, down to this: What made someone a mother? Was it biology alone, or was it love?” The case really got my blood boiling and my head spinning, and I was so invested in the outcome of the court, that their final decision would have quite the impact on whether this introspective book was a 5 star read* or lower for me. And I see that as an immense success in my eyes because it's rare that I get this overly invested and absorbed in a storyline. The author knows how to spin a web, and I would encourage you to experience it firsthand from the book. “Something about the case had lit a spark in her, though she could not yet put her finger on it, and would not be able to articulate it for a long while.” [image] I still can't fully wrap my head around all the intricate details Celeste Ng planted along the way. I truly applaud her for creating such distinct voices in each character. She played to her strength by giving the time and place to expand a character's arc to fit into the overarching theme. And thanks to their extensive background presented without any bias, even those I came to disagree with, I still understood their point of view, their raison d'être, and their vehement fight to get people on their side. “Here, she found, everything had nuance; everything had an unrevealed side or unexplored depths. Everything was worth looking at more closely.” This novel is a prime example of succeeding at creating plot and tone through its multifaceted characterization. Which is why I’m also impressed that even though the main storyline didn’t appear until halfway through the book, the author kept up our interest with expertise on all accounts. It was a pure pleasure, watching her click everything into place. All I wanted was to devour this oddly endearing book in all its glory, and in the same beat cherish it so it would last me forever. Plus, I can't stop thinking about how consumingly evocative and vivid the writing style is. The specificity behind each sentence was very well woven together both by the storyline and the character development. It was bold, it had a purpose, and it didn't feel aimless. Like this passage that paints a clear of picture how close the siblings are: “You’d think she was the mother,” their mother had said once, half in tones of complaint, half in admiration. They had their own words for things, a jargon of obscure origin: for reasons even they had forgotten, they referred to butter as cheese; they called the grackles that perched in the treetops icklebirds. It was a circle they drew around the two of them like a canopy. “Don’t tell anyone from France,” Mia would begin, before whispering a secret, and Warren’s reply was always, “Wild giraffes couldn’t drag it out of me.” I wish I could explain in words how much I love Celeste Ng's skill for capturing something so specific and addictively relatable. [image] And another utterly enchanted passage on mother/daughter bonds that's worth the lenghty read: “It had been a long time since her daughter had let her be so close. Parents, she thought, learned to survive touching their children less and less. As a baby Pearl had clung to her; she’d worn Pearl in a sling because whenever she’d set her down, Pearl would cry. There’d scarcely been a moment in the day when they had not been pressed together. As she got older, Pearl would still cling to her mother’s leg, then her waist, then her hand, as if there were something in her mother she needed to absorb through the skin. Even when she had her own bed, she would often crawl into Mia’s in the middle of the night and burrow under the old patchwork quilt, and in the morning they would wake up tangled, Mia’s arm pinned beneath Pearl’s head, or Pearl’s legs thrown across Mia’s belly. Now, as a teenager, Pearl’s caresses had become rare—a peck on the cheek, a one-armed, half-hearted hug—and all the more precious because of that. It was the way of things, Mia thought to herself, but how hard it was. The occasional embrace, a head leaned for just a moment on your shoulder, when what you really wanted more than anything was to press them to you and hold them so tight you fused together and could never be taken apart. It was like training yourself to live on the smell of an apple alone, when what you really wanted was to devour it, to sink your teeth into it and consume it, seeds, core, and all.” I feel the truth of these words echoing inside me. And it goes to show how parts of Little Fires Everywhere made me emotional to the point of crying and they weren't even sad, just so absolutely stunning. It's been so long since a book evoked such a wide range of reactions out of me. But this multigenerational tale of family bonds, youthful romance, generational conflicts and hidden secrets had me compulsively turning page after page. I haven't felt this strongly about a book in nearly half a year (back when I read The Beauty Queen of Jerusalem by Sarit Yishai-Levi). This thought-provoking read in all its messy complexity will stay with me for a long time to come. And in the meantime, I'll be devouring all the other books the author has released so far. [image][image][image][image][image] *Oh, who am I kidding? This book deserves all the stars in the sky. Note: I'm an Amazon Affiliate. If you're interested in buying Little Fires Everywhere, just click on the image below to go through my link. I'll make a small commission! [image] Visit bookspoils.com for more book discussions and reviews. ...more |
Notes are private!
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2
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Oct 14, 2019
Dec 06, 2017
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Oct 19, 2019
Dec 09, 2017
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Dec 07, 2017
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Hardcover
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| 1506704735
| 9781506704739
| 1506704735
| 3.62
| 741
| Feb 15, 2018
| Feb 13, 2018
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really liked it
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Starting out the last month of the year on the right foot with this follow-up to 2016 best-seller The Secret Loves of Geek Girls. It's no secret by no
Starting out the last month of the year on the right foot with this follow-up to 2016 best-seller The Secret Loves of Geek Girls. It's no secret by now that I absolutely adored said anthology when I picked it up last year. I even went back to reread my review recently and got to experience all those feelings of fun rush back in, like when I had first read them. So I was more than ready to dive into this new world, where cartoonists and professional geeks tell their intimate, heartbreaking, and inspiring stories about love, sex and, dating in this comics and prose anthology. But the one thing I came to notice were how few illustrated stories there were compared to The Secret Loves of Geek Girls. This follow-up paves the way for more essays and short stories to be included. That's not to say that I enjoyed the written tales less, as my favorites below will testify. Still, I wish we would've gotten a couple more comics thrown in the mix. On a brighter note, The Secret Loves of Geeks had me wrapped in the storyline from page one. Starting with Cecil Castellucci’s piece about finding love while camped out for six weeks (!) in line for The Phantom Menace, reminiscent of Rainbow Rowell’s Kindred Spirits. “We were creating our own microsociety and it was all centered around this thing that we loved.” [image] And then moving on to the next story by Saadia Muzaffar on online (Tinder) dating and doing things different this time. It had me enthralled from start to finish. I was entirely invested to see if the whole “get to know me in a way only I knew me,” without disclosing any Google-identifiable details, would work. [image] I also came to notice how “The [isolating] feeling of otherness... of never quite fitting in, and of not knowing how to act, or how to be interacted with...” was ever present in this anthology, and I felt the core of it. The last written piece I want to highlight was Hope Larson's story: “I wanted to be seen, and yet remain unknown.” She had me eating out of the palm of her hand while recalling her meeting someone “who lights up the night and slows down time.” Finally, I'd like to highlight some of my favorite illustrated pieces: [image] The art style and colors are dreamy in the above. Also, this panel from Bear With by Terry Blas: [image] I wasn't expecting to find a piece bringing me back to my days of loving Miranda, but I'm so here for this. Also, I cherish the tiny detailed shout-out to the iconic “What have you done today to make you feel proud.” And last but not least, to quote from the introduction, Cara Ellison and Maddie Chaffer rage against the hypocrisy of controlling women’s sexual fantasies in “Women Love Jerks.” [image] [image] Overall, it was validating and so incredibly affirming to read through all the different stories presented in The Secret Loves of Geeks. I'm rooting for more anthologies like this to come out in the near future. ARC kindly provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest review. Publication Date: February 13th 2018 [image][image][image][image] Note: I'm an Amazon Affiliate. If you're interested in buying The Secret Loves of Geeks, just click on the image below to go through my link. I'll make a small commission! [image] Support creators you love. Buy a Coffee for nat (bookspoils) with Ko-fi.com/bookspoils [image] ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Dec 2017
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Dec 02, 2017
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Dec 04, 2017
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Paperback
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| 1594206279
| 9781594206276
| 1594206279
| 3.80
| 188,866
| Jun 16, 2015
| Jun 16, 2015
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liked it
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In Modern Romance, Ansari combines his irreverent humor with cutting-edge social science to give us an unforgettable tour of our new romantic world. “T In Modern Romance, Ansari combines his irreverent humor with cutting-edge social science to give us an unforgettable tour of our new romantic world. “The world is available to us, but that may be the problem.” Fun fact: I actually started 2017 with this read, but at the time it didn't feel relevant enough for me to get the most out of it, so I put the book down. Fast forward to November, when I discovered the wonder that is the Hidden Brain podcast, where it featured an episode with Aziz Ansari sharing laugh-out-loud funny excerpts from Modern Romance. After having a genuinely good time listening to his voice on the podcast, I was convinced to take another shot with the audiobook. And having watched and completely loved Ansari's Netflix show Master of None back in May when the second season was released (check out my May 2017 Reading Wrap Up to read more of my ravings on that), I was more than ready to dive back into his world. Plus, I'm glad I got to read the book a while after having watched the show because the many parallels of my favorite scenes from the show being present in here were beyond gratifying to experience again. [image] [image] [image] [image] Source Modern Romance interweaves stream of consciousness storytelling with scientific research that will ultimately make you see your own life through a different lens. Thankfully, though, the book has a generous mix of absurdity and depth. Aziz Ansari tackles head-on the subject of culture and technology and the ways they've shaken romance, and he provides us with “a much richer understanding of the new romantic landscape.” But Ansari never fails to include a much-needed comical anecdote or food reference to lighten up the text. Speaking of which, here's a passage from the first chapter that sealed the deal for me: “To be honest, I tend to romanticize the past, and though I appreciate all the conveniences of modern life, sometimes I yearn for simpler times. Wouldn’t it be cool to be single in a bygone era? I take a girl to a drive-in movie, we go have a cheeseburger and a malt at the diner, and then we make out under the stars in my old-timey convertible. Granted, this might have been tough in the fifties given my brown skin tone and racial tensions at the time, but in my fantasy, racial harmony is also part of the deal.” That’s my exact thought process with people who tend to romanticize the past. The only downfall to this book was that, though it highlights a vast set of issues related to modern romance and emerging adulthood, it does so in a very narrowed down look, specifically centered around American middle-class straight couples. But to give credit where credit is due, there are a couple of chapters dedicated to exploring romance in other parts of the world, such as Buenos Aires, Tokyo, Paris, and Doha. All in all: I'm just glad I finally got around to reading Aziz Ansari's Modern Romance with the end of the year in sight. [image][image][image] Note: I'm an Amazon Affiliate. If you're interested in buying Modern Romance, just click on the image below to go through my link. I'll make a small commission! [image] This review and more can be found on my blog. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Dec 05, 2017
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Dec 07, 2017
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Dec 02, 2017
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Hardcover
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| 1250155509
| 9781250155504
| 1250155509
| 4.11
| 2,007
| Oct 03, 2017
| Oct 03, 2017
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really liked it
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Feminist collections are truly not letting me down this month. With The Little Book of Feminist Saints by Julia Pierpont and now this empowering book,
Feminist collections are truly not letting me down this month. With The Little Book of Feminist Saints by Julia Pierpont and now this empowering book, I’m pretty much settled for the year. Speaking of which, I began 2017 with Nasty Women by 404 Ink, and with the end in sight, I finished it with another Nasty Women. But whereas 404 Ink's Nasty Women is a call-to-action for feminists to share their experiences and accounts on what it is to be a woman in the 21st century, Samhita Mukhopadhyay's collection features discussions on feminism in Trump's America, as the title conveys. When 53 percent of white women voted for Donald Trump and 94 percent of black women voted for Hillary Clinton, how can women unite in Trump's America? Nasty Women includes inspiring essays from a diverse group of talented women writers who seek to provide a broad look at how we got here and what we need to do to move forward. “In the chapters ahead we have curated some of the strongest voices writing at the intersection of feminism, identity, and personal experience with their own identity to meditate on what we lost that fateful night in November 2016 and what lessons we can take from it. ” With over twenty essays in this collection, some were inevitably going to make the same arguments and present the same cases from the election (“telling the same story with different adjectives”). So I took more in from the personal essays that introduced the discussed topic by giving us that irreplaceable connection with an individual's experience, rather than the pieces that focused solely on conveying information about X and Y. My favorite essay by far, though, was one that came circling repeatedly into my mind over the course of the book: "As Long As It's Healthy" by Sarah Michael Hollenbeck. It even started out with a bang for me: “Nearly every thirtysomething woman I knew had a number in her head—a number she’d had since childhood—of how many kids she wanted and when—two, three, four for me! I couldn’t help thinking, Shouldn’t you wait and see how the first one goes? Even the first time I scheduled a bikini wax I only scheduled one. I wanted to monitor the repercussions before I made any long-term commitments, and I’d like to think that living children are more high-stakes than ingrown pubic hairs.” Now that's a guaranteed way to get my attention. But on a more serious note, I cherish essays that discuss how giving birth is not the only way to have children. And also that having kids is not a must. “Instead of making a new human, I feel a responsibility to be a better caretaker for the humans who are already here.” But what made this piece in particular stay with me is the fact that the author talked about being diagnosed with Moebius syndrome. “My experience of being a disabled woman is discovering in small, sharp explosions what I look like through the feedback of strangers.” ... “When I was growing up, our family never talked about Annie’s face or my own, and in the few times that I broached the topic with friends, I was told “No one notices” or “It doesn’t matter.” In my experience of disability, the people closest to me have always expressed their love by telling me that they, almost magically, cannot see it—that this thing that has both directly and indirectly shaped so much of my life doesn’t matter. Instead, it has been the callous strangers and the bullies who have been the ones to say, I notice. It matters.” I'm going be thinking about this exceptional piece of writing for months to come. Another essay that caught my attention with its opening paragraph was Kera Bolonik's “Is There Ever a Right Time to Talk to Your Children About Fascism?” It goes as following: “There's a sort of joke I used to tell my friends—a joke that’s not such an exaggeration—to succinctly describe my mother, about how she taught my younger sister and me European geography by recounting the way each country persecuted the Jews during World War II. (Austria? Birthplace of Hitler. Germany? The home of the Nazi Party, and the country he led—anti-Semitism central. Poland? Place of the extermination camps that helped to annihilate most of the Jewish population. And on.)” Her mother gets me at my core. There's more where that came from with the many outstanding feminist essays in Nasty Women. And I feel alive with power because of them. ARC kindly provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest review. Publication Date: October 3rd 2017 [image][image][image][image] Note: I'm an Amazon Affiliate. If you're interested in buying Nasty Women, just click on the image below to go through my link. I'll make a small commission! [image] [image] Support creators you love. Buy a Coffee for nat (bookspoils) with Ko-fi.com/bookspoils [image] ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Nov 25, 2017
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Nov 29, 2017
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Nov 29, 2017
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Paperback
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| 0399592741
| 9780399592744
| 0399592741
| 4.10
| 1,756
| Mar 06, 2018
| Mar 06, 2018
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really liked it
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This is EXACTLY what I’ve been looking for in terms of feminist collections. I mentioned before in my reviews for equally striking books (Bad Girls Th
This is EXACTLY what I’ve been looking for in terms of feminist collections. I mentioned before in my reviews for equally striking books (Bad Girls Throughout History & Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls) how I’m not keen on Wikipedia-esque entries, instead, I prefer anecdotes that bring the women back to life through words. And oh, how Julia Pierpont delivered with The Little Book of Feminist Saints. “These entries are not meant to serve as short biographies, summaries of each woman’s life that could just as easily be found online. I tried, instead, in my daily research, to zero in on the colorful, the anecdotes I would find myself repeating to a friend that night.” My most important thing with these collections is that I want to educated myself on something new in an engaging way, without feeling like I'm reading a textbook. And because The Little Book of Feminist Saints focused on telling witty stories that captured the spirit of each woman, there wasn’t ever a case of reading the same repeated history lesson, especially with the more well-known personalities. I got enlightened on so many phenomenal sheroes over the course of the book, and I had the most fun doing so. This read also managed to pack many experiences into a short amount of pages. Ranging from leading ladies, philosophers, readers, dreamers, travelers, athletes, students, and rebels. Speaking of which, here were some of the noteworthy women I was very in tune with that I'd like to highlight: 1. Oprah: Matron Saint of Every Home. [image] “She connected with audiences because she knew people, and she let them know her.” 2. Yayoi Kusama: Matron Saint of Visionaries [image] “The visions started in childhood—flowers would talk to her; the floor would disappear.” 3. Gloria Steinem: Matron Saint of Sisterhood [image] “There was something,” she remarked, “about seeing women tell the truth about their lives in public, and seeing women take seriously something that only happens to women. In my experience, things were only taken seriously if they also happened to men.” 4. Maya Angelou: Matron Saint of Storytellers [image] “In times of strife and extreme stress, I was likely to retreat to mutism. Mutism is so addictive. And I don’t think its powers ever go away.” 5. Rachel Carson: Matron Saint of Future Generations [image] “The threat is infinitely greater to the generations unborn; to those who have no voice in the decisions of today, and that fact alone makes our responsibility a heavy one.” 6. Katharine Hepburn: Matron Saint of Leading Ladies [image] “As one goes through life,” she wrote in her memoirs, “one learns that if you don’t paddle your own canoe, you don’t move.” 7. Anne Frank: Matron Saint of Diariest [image] 8. Frida Kahlo: Matron Saint of Color [image] [image] The Little Book of Feminist Saints exceeded all my expectations, thanks to both the striking illustrations by Manjit Thapp that set the tone for what to expect, and the accompanying anecdotes written to the strengths of our leading ladies. ARC kindly provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest review. Publication Date: March 6th 2018 [image][image][image][image] Note: I'm an Amazon Affiliate. If you're interested in buying The Little Book of Feminist Saints, just click on the image below to go through my link. I'll make a small commission! [image] Support creators you love. Buy a Coffee for nat (bookspoils) with Ko-fi.com/bookspoils [image] ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Nov 24, 2017
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Nov 25, 2017
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Nov 23, 2017
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Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||
| B0763KT524
| 3.75
| 53
| unknown
| Oct 16, 2017
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really liked it
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I've been patiently biding my time for this companion to Keeping the Distance to release out into the world ever since I finished the first book that
I've been patiently biding my time for this companion to Keeping the Distance to release out into the world ever since I finished the first book that fateful night in February. After nine faithful months, it finally came to my notice today that the sequel was already out, so I hurried on to catch up with these beloved characters. Nineteen-year-old Cam has a metric ton of emotional baggage and is in no mood to unload them on anyone. After her parents' marriage imploded, stress-free is the only way she wants her life to be. And what could be more freeing than spending the summer on Boracay? Absolutely nothing...until she bumps heads with Hunter, the hot drummer who screams incoming heartbreak from a mile away. Though I'm a bit mad at myself for reading this book a whole month after its publication, Making It Complicated still presented itself at exactly the right time in my life. It's interesting how just the day before I'd been in the mood for a quick and fun-filled romance to sweep me off my feet, and the universe delivered just right with this book. The events of this book are set a year after Keeping the Distance: Camille Velasco, Melissa Ortiz's best friend, is set for her summer before college, full of bright and hopeful opportunities. “It was a great night to be nineteen.” Side note: I'm thankful I got my wish fulfilled of having Cam as the main in the sequel, as I mentioned in my review for #1. Her carefree youth encompassed me at the start of the book. Speaking of which, here are some of the main points from the book I'd like to highlight (mild spoilers ahead): • The main issue occurring between Cam and Mel, “the best friend I didn’t quite know how to deal with anymore,” of how they'd outgrown each other. “I wanted to be happy for her. Truly, I did. But a huge part of me didn’t believe in the same things she did anymore, in finding such utter bliss with another person and trusting they weren’t going to rip you apart. I didn’t have the energy for that.” We follow Cam's journey of going out into the world on her own to try to find who she is a person, especially after the whole ordeal that happened in her family. I'm a sucker for a classic coming-of-age tale. • There's a lot more angst and resentment than I anticipated going into this, but nonetheless grew to appreciate as an important trait of Cam's strong-willed character growth. “I was broken, and I had to stop hoping other people would fix things. Not Mel. Not Hunter. I had to put the pieces back together myself.” Her anger was palpable, understandable, and not just swept away over the course of the book, which I appreciated a tenfold. • But circling back to Mel and Cam, the continuous miscommunication happening between them brought to mind my favorite quote from my favorite duo in Broad City: [image] • I was relieved to see less of her best friend because truth to be told, Mel and Lance were so uncomfortable to watch from an outsider’s perspective. In their POV in Keeping the Distance, I could put aside my discomfort and chalk it up to nothing serious... But seeing them acting all lovey-dovey in front of Cam, I couldn't help but think of this eerily fitting vine. So I was low-key relieved to see less and less of them over the span of the book. • Instead, I welcomed the new group dynamics with Hunter Alvarez and his bandmates Cal, Eddie, and Keith. The teasing was merciless. And the laughs endless. • Plus, I have to pay attention to a tiny detail from one of the members that had me enraptured for the rest of the book: “Do you want to listen to this podcast with me?” Keith offered one of his earphones to me.” This offer is the one true key to my heart. • But out of all the members, I'd love to know more about my silent mystery man, Cal. “It was obvious Hunter made most of the major decisions, but Cal could control the rest of them with a single sentence. All that quiet power was amazing to watch in action.” • Finally, moving on to the main couple of the book... The rising sexual tension between Cam and Hunter was deliciously satisfying. “Did I dare step inside his house when I knew very well we were going to be alone? A thousand thoughts—about the feel of his lips on mine, how hard his abs were underneath my fingertips—demanded entry into my brain. I refused to let them in. “Is there anyone else inside?” I trusted Hunter, just not my hormones. I watched as a light bulb seemed to go off in his head. His eyes moved from my black camisole down to my distressed denim shorts. The look he gave me made me want to pull my shirt collar away from my neck and fan myself with one hand. Voice low, he said, “No, it’s just us.” This infinitely patient boy had me sitting at the edge of my seat with the drop of his voice. And one more for the road: “Every inch of my side connected with his, our shoulders and knees sliding against each other every time the jeepney stopped. When the wind burst inside and whipped my hair around my shoulders, Hunter reached out and gathered the strands in his fist, pulling them over my shoulder for me. When his fingers brushed against my neck, I forgot how to breathe. “You look a little…weird,” Hunter sounded a little too happy. He knew very well what he was doing to me. The bastard.” [image] Overall, this sequel full of antics from youthful summers exceeded all my expectations. I'm giddy for what's next in store. [image][image][image][image] Note: I'm an Amazon Affiliate. If you're interested in buying Making It Complicated, just click on the image below to go through my link. I'll make a small commission! [image] Support creators you love. Buy a Coffee for nat (bookspoils) with Ko-fi.com/bookspoils [image] ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Nov 18, 2017
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Nov 18, 2017
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Nov 18, 2017
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Kindle Edition
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| 0888997531
| 9780888997531
| 0888997531
| 3.77
| 16,975
| Feb 28, 2008
| Feb 28, 2008
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liked it
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When I started down the wonderful path that is reading graphic novels last year, This One Summer by Mariko & Jillian Tamaki was one of the first works
When I started down the wonderful path that is reading graphic novels last year, This One Summer by Mariko & Jillian Tamaki was one of the first works I checked out. So to have now finally read through Skim from cover to cover is beyond gratifying for me. "Skim" is Kimberly Keiko Cameron, a not-slim, would-be Wiccan goth who goes to a private girls' school. When Skim's classmate Katie Matthews is dumped by her boyfriend, who then kills himself, the entire school goes into mourning overdrive. As concerned guidance counselors provide lectures on the "cycle of grief," and the popular clique starts a new club (Girls Celebrate Life!) to bolster school spirit, Skim sinks into an ever-deepening depression. And falling in love only makes things worse... Suicide, depression, love, being gay or not, crushes, cliques, and finding a way to be your own fully human self--are all explored in this brilliant collaboration by cousins Mariko and Jillian Tamaki. An edgy, keenly observed and poignant glimpse into the heartache of being young. [image] Side note: I love it when the blurb really gets the core of the book right. Skim's quick glimpse into an angst-ridden, strong-willed and intense young adult made me reminisce and feel grateful for making it through those years unscathed. But I also feel like the main themes that are prevalent in Skim, like the ever-present arc of mortality that's circling the girls at school, were (somewhat fittingly) skimmed over. I didn't feel like I had a solid grip on what the creators were trying to convey. So I was disappointed that this graphic novel didn't manage to leave a lasting impression, or hit any particular right notes for me, save for a page here and there. I didn't feel invested because, as I mentioned, the topics that intrigued me the most, such as girlhood, coming-of-age, and depression weren't explored to the fullest; we remained on the surface of things without budging. Though I was left me unmoved for the most, I'll end my review on a brighter note by sharing some of the pages that managed to spark something inside me: [image] [image] [image] [image] [image] [image][image][image] Note: I'm an Amazon Affiliate. If you're interested in buying Skim, just click on the image below to go through my link. I'll make a small commission! [image] Support creators you love. Buy a Coffee for nat (bookspoils) with http://Ko-fi.com/bookspoils [image] ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Nov 15, 2017
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Nov 17, 2017
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Nov 17, 2017
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Hardcover
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| 0448493993
| 9780448493992
| 0448493993
| 3.71
| 618
| Jan 02, 2018
| Jan 02, 2018
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liked it
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“My memory of men is never lit up and illuminated like my memory of women.”― Marguerite Duras A single-subject anthology about the heart's most powerfu “My memory of men is never lit up and illuminated like my memory of women.”― Marguerite Duras A single-subject anthology about the heart's most powerful emotion, edited by Tavi Gevinson. Touching upon love in all its different variations, from “a devotional to dogs” (Durga Chew-Bose) to unrequited love to accepting your self-worth to experiencing intimate friendships with women. “Love is all around, but its holding place is not always another person. Sometimes you find the best companion in yourself, or the fun of worshipping a teen idol, or the challenge of trying to understand love in its various forms. ” Before starting, I casually browsed through the table of contents and saw a stellar piece titled “Do Sisters Actually Love Each Other?” by Jazmine Hughes, which I hurried on to read because it was something I really needed. And it was just as spectacular as the title conveys, featuring a group text between a bunch of sisters. “JAVONNE I came back to, like, eighty messages to read and I will not. Someone fill me in if you want an answer from me.” When I then saw that Tavi Gevinson had shared a live reading of this hilarious and touching piece, I was over-the-moon. All I need now is the return of the Rookie podcast, which I raved about back in April of 2017. Rookie on Love, however, didn't quite embody the expectations I had in mind before starting. More than once I experienced the feeling of really enjoying how a story builds up but then, almost without fail, it would veer off downhill, destroying what it had created in its small space, and end on a completely unsatisfying note. And because of the short length, there wasn't even a redeeming moment that could've saved the narrative. It also didn't help the collection of hitting a rough patch in the middle, where none of the essays held my attention and consequently failed to raise any emotion out of me (I mean, other than bitter rage at a certain line in Collier Meyerson's piece I landed upon while randomly flipping through the collection)... Thankfully though, when I finally reached Victoria Chiu's written piece, which came in to save the day, as she touches upon her choice to abstain from "(penetrative) sex." As well as other standout pieces in here that I'd like to feature, such as: • Fwd: Letter to Leyb by Tova Benjamin, talking about relationships in the digital age: “Sometimes I think, I will never forget that I felt this way. And then I do. It seems horribly scary to invest so much time and energy and emotion into something that will eventually wind down to the end of its life, be it 44 days or two years and nine months. And then what?” • The Most Exciting Moment of Alma’s Life by Etgar Keret. A quick story on life after experiencing your highest high. “Though for Alma, it’s not really just a question. Sometimes she actually dreams about what happened at the Biblical Zoo. She with her braids and the lion standing so close to her that she could feel his warm breath on her face. In some of the dreams, the lion rubs up against her in a friendly way, in others, he opens his mouth and roars, and then she usually wakes up terrified. So one can say that as long as she keeps dreaming, that moment hasn’t completely passed. But dreaming, with all due respect, is not exactly living.” [image] • Beyond Self-Respect by Jenny Zhang. One of the most important pieces, talking about how love and respect need to go hand in hand, which I also heard a lecture on a few months back and it completely changed my viewpoint. “The way we talk about respect and teenage girls needs to change. I want girls to learn how to disrespect the men in their lives who cause them harm and violence, I want them to learn how to disrespect patriarchal values that bind and demean. Looking back on my past relationships, I can pinpoint the very moment when I lost respect for the person I was dating. Often, it happened early on—a casually offensive remark that betrayed deeper levels of racism, an unfunny joke that revealed how much he feared and hated women, or even just a delusional comment that showed zero self-awareness—but always, when I was younger, I would continue to date that person, doubling down on my commitment, all the while losing respect for him. That’s the most disturbing part, that I thought I could love someone I didn’t even respect.” • Super Into a Person’s Person-ness a conversation between Rainbow Rowell and John Green, “YA powerhouses on writing epic—yet real—teen love.” I can listen to Rainbow Rowell for eternity, as you can tell by my extensive review of my all-time favorite book of hers, Fangirl. “RAINBOW When I’m writing love stories (which I can’t help but do, it’s always a love story for me), I really don’t want to be writing a story that makes it worse for the people reading it. That perpetuates all the lies about love and attraction. JOHN Right. RAINBOW But also, if I’m writing about teenagers, I don’t want them to be somehow magically above this bullshit. They can’t be wizened 40-year-olds who know from experience that it’s garbage. JOHN Well, but also, I don’t think you ever get magically above this bullshit. We’re talking like this is all in our past, but of course inherited ideas about beauty and attractiveness affect adult life, too. RAINBOW Yes. JOHN Hopefully over time you develop an awareness that, e.g., your obsession with the perfect nose is completely ludicrous, but it’s not like it all goes away. RAINBOW You’re still a nose man? JOHN God, no. I am a PERSON MAN. I am super into a person’s person-ness.” • Before I Started Writing These Things Directly to You by Tavi Gevinson, on trying to capture the feelings as they occur. “I just don’t trust words a whole lot, and wonder if writing this, too, takes the air out of the whole thing, like in the Chekhov story “The Kiss,” where the sad loner shares the story of an improbable romantic encounter with his male colleagues and, upon hearing it out loud, experiences the whole thing as woefully insignificant.” I wholeheartedly enjoyed this piece by Tavi, wherein she managed to create a solid grip on her relationship with this goofy grinning guy in just one page. [image] [image] Overall, I'd say I came to appreciate most of all the pieces that exposed my innermost feelings so successfully that it made me reflect a lot. So even though the collection as a whole was mainly a hit or miss with its forty-something stories, I still came to cherish a handful of pieces. [image][image][image] Note: I'm an Amazon Affiliate. If you're interested in buying Rookie on Love, just click on the image below to go through my link. I'll make a small commission! [image] [image] Support creators you love. Buy a Coffee for nat (bookspoils) with Ko-fi.com/bookspoils [image] ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Jan 24, 2018
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Jan 25, 2018
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Oct 26, 2017
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Paperback
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| B0735T7NJ5
| 3.93
| 130
| Oct 04, 2017
| Oct 04, 2017
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None
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Notes are private!
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1
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Oct 04, 2017
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Oct 04, 2017
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Oct 04, 2017
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Kindle Edition
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| 191039517X
| 9781910395172
| 191039517X
| 3.86
| 4,677
| Nov 13, 2015
| Nov 13, 2015
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None
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Notes are private!
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1
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Sep 28, 2017
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Sep 28, 2017
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Sep 27, 2017
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Paperback
| |||||||||||||||
| 1943735247
| 9781943735242
| 1943735247
| 4.11
| 2,049
| Sep 07, 2017
| Sep 26, 2017
|
liked it
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Humorous and biting, personal and communal, self-deprecating and unapologetically self-loving, peluda (meaning “hairy” or “hairy beast”) is the poet a
Humorous and biting, personal and communal, self-deprecating and unapologetically self-loving, peluda (meaning “hairy” or “hairy beast”) is the poet at her best. The book explores the relationship between femininity and body hair as well as the intersections of family, class, the immigrant experience, Latina identity, and much more, all through Lozada-Oliva’s unique lens and striking voice. peluda is a powerful testimony on body image and the triumph over taboo. “the loser of the war: has the best memory. the winner: gets to forget.” What originally caught my attention with this collection was the vibrantly powerful book cover: [image] Then, as always, I looked the author up online to see if any memorable quotes of hers were shared. And was taken back by quite a gripping one: [image] [image] [image] [image] Source I continued on with raised expectations that were mostly met with the occasional poem here and there in the collection. Such as: [image] The highlighted responses made my mouth drop with surprise. An utterly strong poem from start to finish. [image] [image] This one poem cemented my decision to check out the first season of Jessica Jones. [image] This collection full of creativity, feminism, love, bodies would be recommend for anyone looking to spruce up their poetry shelf. ARC kindly provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest review. Expected publication: September 26th, 2017 Note: I'm an Amazon Affiliate. If you're interested in buying Peluda, just click on the image below to go through my link. I'll make a small commission! [image] This review and more can be found on my blog. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Sep 15, 2017
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Sep 15, 2017
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Sep 15, 2017
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Paperback
| ||||||||||||||
| 147210689X
| 9781472106896
| 147210689X
| 4.02
| 16,462
| Nov 06, 2012
| Aug 15, 2013
|
really liked it
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[image]
I've had my eye on this particular graphic memoir before, but decide just this past week to finally give it a go. I was beyond grateful to [image] I've had my eye on this particular graphic memoir before, but decide just this past week to finally give it a go. I was beyond grateful to see myself so easily immerse into the intensely personal world presented in Marbles. Darkly funny and intensely personal, Forney's memoir provides a humorous but authentic glimpse into the effects of a mood disorder on an artist's work, as she shares her own story through black-and-white graphic images and prose. [image] I went into this expecting a similar kind of storytelling presented in Fun Home by Alison Bechdel, but this graphic novel ended up differing for me in its achingly honest representation of living with a mental illness, along with exploring the author's bisexuality. It also raises to light the significance of answering questions through a mix of research, storytelling, and honesty. From exploring the stereotype behind the “crazy artist” to questioning if bipolar disorder & creativity are actually linked, and answering the big one of: “If I take meds to prevent my mood swings, am I choosing to be less creative?”. This is a deeply complex, dark, personal, raw, fully fleshed graphic memoir unlike anything I've read in the past. Towards the end, in particular, when the issues raised were part medical, part philosophical was when the memoir left me most grounded. “It was a relief to discover that aiming for a balanced life doesn't mean succumbing to a boring one.” And I think now is a good place to let the work speak for itself by sharing some of my favorite pieces: [image] [image] [image] [image] [image] [image] [image] [image] [image] I'll cherish this educational, eye-opening, and personal read for a long time to come. By the end of it, Ellen Forney even shares an accurate visual of reaching that dreaded ending in your favorite books: [image] Note: I'm an Amazon Affiliate. If you're interested in buying Marbles, just click on the image below to go through my link. I'll make a small commission! [image] Support creators you love. Buy a Coffee for nat (bookspoils) with Ko-fi.com/bookspoils [image] ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Sep 13, 2017
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Sep 14, 2017
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Sep 14, 2017
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Paperback
| ||||||||||||||
| 1613989326
| 9781613989326
| B071GDHGSB
| 3.97
| 1,458
| Aug 23, 2017
| Aug 23, 2017
|
liked it
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I found this girl-power comic at the back of Misfit City #2 nearly two months ago and was immediately intrigued by the beautiful cover and premise of
I found this girl-power comic at the back of Misfit City #2 nearly two months ago and was immediately intrigued by the beautiful cover and premise of “a music-infused, action-adventure series that takes rock ’n’ roll fandom out of the record store and into the streets.” [image] New Jersey, 1998. Chris has just started the teen dream job: working at Vinyl Mayhem, the local record store. She's prepared to deal with anything-misogynistic metalheads, grunge wannabes, even a crush on her wicked cute co-worker, Maggie. But when Rory Gory, the staff's favorite singer, mysteriously vanishes the night before her band's show in town, Chris finds out her co-workers are doing more than just sorting vinyl...her local indie record store is also a front for a teen girl vigilante fight club! So my expectations were set pretty high for this first issue, just because Hi-Fi Fight Club had such a unique and promising setting. [image] But this introducing piece felt more like a setting-everything-up-for-future-issues than something of its own where we get to see the girls together just talking and hanging out. But since it’s only issue #1 and I know that my expectations are way too high, I’m going easy on it. I am excited, however, to see what the follow-up pieces will entail for our group of strong female individuals. I'm just hoping we'll get to see some character building between the girls. (I'm pretty stoked about Irene, Kennedy, and Dolores.) 3.5/5 stars Note: I'm an Amazon Affiliate. If you're interested in buying Hi-Fi Fight Club #1, just click on the image below to go through my link. I'll make a small commission! [image] This review and more can be found on my blog. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Aug 24, 2017
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Aug 24, 2017
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Aug 25, 2017
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Kindle Edition
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my rating |
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|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
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| 3.72
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liked it
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Feb 12, 2017
not set
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Sep 28, 2024
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| 4.15
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not set
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Jan 29, 2019
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||||||
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| 4.32
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really liked it
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Jun 02, 2018
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Jun 03, 2018
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| 3.63
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liked it
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Mar 28, 2018
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Feb 07, 2018
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| 3.76
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not set
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Jan 09, 2018
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||||||
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| 3.57
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really liked it
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Jan 03, 2018
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Jan 03, 2018
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| 3.84
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really liked it
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Oct 05, 2022
Dec 23, 2017
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Dec 23, 2017
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| 4.07
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it was amazing
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Oct 19, 2019
Dec 09, 2017
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Dec 07, 2017
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| 3.62
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really liked it
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Dec 02, 2017
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Dec 04, 2017
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| 3.80
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liked it
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Dec 07, 2017
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Dec 02, 2017
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| 4.11
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really liked it
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Nov 29, 2017
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Nov 29, 2017
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| 4.10
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really liked it
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Nov 25, 2017
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Nov 23, 2017
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| 3.75
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really liked it
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Nov 18, 2017
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Nov 18, 2017
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| 3.77
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liked it
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Nov 17, 2017
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Nov 17, 2017
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| 3.71
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liked it
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Jan 25, 2018
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Oct 26, 2017
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| 3.93
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Oct 04, 2017
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Oct 04, 2017
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| 3.86
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Sep 28, 2017
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Sep 27, 2017
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| 4.11
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liked it
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Sep 15, 2017
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Sep 15, 2017
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| 4.02
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really liked it
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Sep 14, 2017
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Sep 14, 2017
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| 3.97
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liked it
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Aug 24, 2017
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Aug 25, 2017
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