sometimes i worry i'm too stingy with my five stars. then i read a book where i can tell from the start i'm discovering a new favorite and i know i wasometimes i worry i'm too stingy with my five stars. then i read a book where i can tell from the start i'm discovering a new favorite and i know i was just waiting for that feeling.
(review to come)
--------------------- tbr review
a lily king release is coming. all is right with the world
this is another installment of project long classics, in which i make big old books seem more approachable by making horwelcome to...NATIVE(MBER) SON!
this is another installment of project long classics, in which i make big old books seem more approachable by making horrible month-based puns about them and reading them in little bits over the course of a month.
i'm excited for this one. even though it only has 3 sections so i'm going to have to divvy up by page count.
DAY ONE already i'm forgetting that this was published 85 years ago. i love a classic that never feels old.
DAY TWO the level of foreshadowing here...i'm like maybe if i just read fast enough everything will be fine.
DAY THREE the feelings of fear and helplessness and rage are so vivid as to be contagious.
DAY FOUR tempting to just stop right here when bigger is happy with his new job and pretend this is where it ends! but even this is dark.
DAY FIVE i have to confess i took a weekend off from reading. i am terrified of this book. it's written so perfectly that i can feel intensely things that are never hinted at other than between the lines.
DAY SIX we have concluded book one and i couldn't be more upset and invested and stunned. i picked a bad book for this project only because every day it's rendering me speechless.
DAY SEVEN the foreshadowed thing has occurred.
DAY EIGHT it's fascinating how this book built and built tension until the crime at its center happened, and it cut the horrible weight of it rather than the typical inverse.
DAY NINE never in my whole life of reading have i ever encountered a story in which an attempt at ransom goes well.
DAY TEN feeling so relieved every time these insane lies are bought as if i don't know that things are about to get worse than ever. that's the power of reading.
DAY ELEVEN i am living in the hunted trapped fearful feeling of this book.
DAY TWELVE i'm stewing in it. that's my update.
DAY THIRTEEN still stewing.
DAY FOURTEEN this is a really brutal way to read this story. i'd be consumed by it enough if i read it all at once — a bit every day is driving me to distraction.
DAY FIFTEEN now we're on the run, so it's just a more intense version of the last 5 days.
DAY SIXTEEN it's not the most important thing right now — that would be that we're still on the run and bigger has committed another murder — but it is kind of crazy just how often newspapers used to publish.
DAY SEVENTEEN another murder. he's caught. we're onto book three.
DAY EIGHTEEN bigger is in jail and we're doing some outright theme summaries as a reminder. which is kind of helpful at this point, to be honest.
DAY NINETEEN jail visit from bigger's family, bigger's friends, the victim's family, the falsely accused, the defense, the prosecution, and a reverend. all at once.
DAY TWENTY i do not know much about inquests but i didn't think they were large gatherings of people in a morgue with a judge looking on while a coroner interrogates people.
DAY TWENTY-ONE honestly really satisfying to read bigger's communist lawyer interrogating the victim's landlord dad about redlining.
DAY TWENTY-TWO there's a kind of relief to having all of the turbulent emotions of this book laid out and explained. but i still feel the same dread.
DAY TWENTY-THREE same kind of tension-easing dialogue.
DAY TWENTY-FOUR sixty people just testified against bigger. we're back to full tension.
DAY TWENTY-FIVE this lawyer is going full atticus finch.
DAY TWENTY-SIX the hope from atticus has been stamped out again by another racist monologue. this book is emotionally destroying me.
DAY TWENTY-SEVEN well, this got me.
OVERALL it is genuinely incomprehensible that this book, occupied as it is by the questions that feel so completely of today, was written so many decades ago. i could not escape this book: i thought of it constantly, i felt it utterly, i was consumed by it. it's stunning. it should be required reading. rating: 5...more
the rage and hope in these pages are such a balm right now, as are the personal stories that the author uses to build up into this story of asian americans and the absurdity of that term and the pervasive violence of whiteness and the racial hierarchy that seeps insidiously into everything we do.
i can't recommend it enough.
bottom line: officially becoming a nonfiction stan....more
for the past year, passages from it have peppered my feed between images of horrific violence, unforgettable stories of evil, and other evidence of the sheer depth of human suffering.
in the midst of all of it, these quotes were one of the only things that made sense, that stood the test of morality, that i could bear to read.
every day i find it harder to think of anything but what’s happening in palestine. i don’t want to live in this world, one where we can see everything and do nothing, where it seems so many can feel nothing.
there is so little action we can take in the face of so much hatred and cruelty and violence. it is hard to lift your head to another attack on families lining up for flour, another blown-apart hospital, the strike on a catholic church the pope called nearly every day. ruins, ribcages, a new term for injured children with murdered parents, an unsolvable hunger.
but we can speak up. we can join our voices with those in gaza. we can learn. we can stand together. we can refuse to look away. and we can let ourselves be heartbroken, we can remain unwilling to grow cold, we can keep our humanity and our love and our hope because what they want most is to take it away.
i will keep reading lit fic about weird lesbians finding themselves as long as emily austin keeps writing it.
so no surprise this is my first five stari will keep reading lit fic about weird lesbians finding themselves as long as emily austin keeps writing it.
so no surprise this is my first five star of the year! even better, it got my personal gold seal of approval: making me cry on an airplane.
i just think we're so lucky to have emily austin's wacky goofy funny cynical cutting loving brilliant brain helping us to navigate these unprecedented times. this book helped me make sense of so much in my own worldview: how i can love others and believe people are good, even while i am horrified to see the timeline we appear to be on.
being surrounded by strangers with so much love in my heart in this book that also manages to be funny...it was a treat beyond words.
bottom line: the book i needed when i needed it.
(thank you to the publisher for the copy!!!)...more
i'm scared of who i'll become when i don't have any more toni morrison to read.
there's no one like her on race, beauty, the cruelty of society, the wai'm scared of who i'll become when i don't have any more toni morrison to read.
there's no one like her on race, beauty, the cruelty of society, the way we carry past wounds with us, the attempt to love selflessly by people.
the fact that this is a debut is unbelievable. possibly the best first book i've ever read.
pecola is an unforgettable character, and the way this manages to tell her story even when it's through the perspective of others is masterful. everything in this book is thoughtful, everything down to the blue shirley temple cup contributing to the story of an unloved little girl, victim to the tragedy that befell her parents before her.
i feel at a loss for words. i desperately want to convince you to read this painful and upsetting and brilliant book — likely my favorite of the year.
bottom line: my 2000th read was a perfect one....more
every book i read this year that isn't by toni morrison is against my will.
it was a year in which i read my first toni morrison book, and then i read every book i read this year that isn't by toni morrison is against my will.
it was a year in which i read my first toni morrison book, and then i read 6 more of them.
there is nobody, absolutely nobody, like her.
morrison's writing is up in the clouds, filled with turns of phrase and plot that in any other narrative would be nonsensical, and yet it is unceasingly, unmercifully, constantly grounded in reality. the ways in which it moves toward the fantastical serve only to tell us in full detail of the pain of life — the selfish foolishness of people, the cruel machinations of an unequal society, the moving target of contentment.
i'm writing having finished her most canonical works, having 5 starred her four most read masterpieces all in a row. i have never in my life encountered an author i feel this way about. my lesson of 2024 is that toni morrison is the great american author.
bottom line: all i can say is do what i did: read everything....more
this is probably the most stunning exploration i've encountered of a fact of modern life that haunts me. inundated as we are with horrible news, we kethis is probably the most stunning exploration i've encountered of a fact of modern life that haunts me. inundated as we are with horrible news, we keep it all at a distance, our daily functioning relying on our shutting out that every murder, act of colonization, ongoing genocide is affecting or destroying or ending human lives as complicated and important as our own.
but the chance that a "minor detail" will strike us, as it strikes our protagonist when she encounters the story of the rape and murder of a palestinian woman by israeli soldiers that happened 25 years to the day before her birth, causes it all to collapse.
the connections it draws between our main character and the girl this violence happens to is also a disturbing, timely reminder of that same message. we are separated from those who are suffering only by minor details, in feeling and in chance.
this is a haunting and terrible story, and it's one whose twin in horror is occurring every day before our very eyes.
the least we can do is watch and feel and cry out no.
this book was the most exciting news of my year and i got engaged the week it was announced.
somehow, it still exceeded my life-altering, world-centerithis book was the most exciting news of my year and i got engaged the week it was announced.
somehow, it still exceeded my life-altering, world-centering, unrealistic-to-the-point-of-being-annoying expectations.
with every book, sally rooney seems to challenge herself in a new way, showing that in the years since her last release while we've all been pining and watching paul mescal fan edits she's been ever (somehow! still!) building on her craft. in beautiful world, where are you, for example, she displayed a totally new and mesmerizing use of visual language and natural motif that i fell in love with.
here, her use of perspective is stunning. i'm a multi-pov hater, but this manages to feel like something entirely different even as it follows the interiority of three characters. it seamlessly transitions between the three while still being vividly distinct: peter's staccato trains of thought, margaret's quiet self-reflection, ivan's anxious rambling. i've never read anything like it.
decisions like the little we see from within the two female characters in peter's orbit, and are immersed in the world of ivan's, feels so true to their characters and to their stories — and such an interesting facet to the characteristic sociopolitical explorations that are the true gem of rooney's writing.
rooney also challenges herself to create characters who are simultaneously unlikable and real, making decisions that threaten to get you to put the book down and sigh while being mercilessly relatable and easy to understand.
that's what we're working with here. a novel in which every choice is so thoughtful that you can spend a minute reading a page, then pause for five minutes just to consider it. which is basically what i did (read: make myself spend a month reading this because i so dreaded not having any more of it to draw out).
peter and ivan each represent a shade of misogyny, of straight-white-man-ism in modern society, that doesn't forgive itself even while it refuses to let you ignore their own humanity and histories.
peter's perspective, made up of brief ulyssean phrases and stunning descriptions, varies as much from ivan's terminally introspective one as the two brothers do from each other.
rooney's past books have focused on waxing and waning romantic (and semi-romantic) relationships; beautiful world also features a platonic one at its core. this one takes as its subject siblings, at first nearly estranged, as they struggle toward each other.
anyway. i often hate multiple perspectives because it always feels there's one the author is more comfortable with, that the choice to distinguish the two is because they have to be different because they're different characters. rooney's decision is deliberate, each perspective difference thought out, and because of that both are wildly impressive.
i loved this book.
bottom line: all the it girls love intermezzo and all the it girls are right.
(thank you from the bottom of my heart to the publisher for the arc) (buddy read of a lifetime with my favorite girl elle)...more
it has one of the best beginnings i've ever read, and it has one of the best endings i've ever read, and all of i need this book injected in my veins.
it has one of the best beginnings i've ever read, and it has one of the best endings i've ever read, and all of the middle parts are pretty damn good too.
its explorations of family, of naming, of the permanently unhealed wound of slavery, of gender and power, and of love are unforgettable.
i hate reviewing books i love at the best of times, and for this one in particular there is just no way i can do it justice.
bottom line: please, for the love of yourself, read it....more
this is the kind of book that is so enjoyable for every second it makes you want to go back and lower the rating of everything you've read of late.
it is so funny and so precise and so clever, and a page will have a random unshakable description that is so goddamn weird and right. i fell completely in love with these characters and with this book, and as the end of it approached i read slower and slower in the hopes i'd discover 100 or so pages had been stuck together and hiding.
we all have soulmates. mine is short literary fiction.
anyone can write a long book and make you care about characters when they have hundreds of pageswe all have soulmates. mine is short literary fiction.
anyone can write a long book and make you care about characters when they have hundreds of pages to do it. managing to make me love three people so much in 84 pages that i cry to say goodbye to them, when i've spent barely a magazine in their company, is magic.
this is a short book, but it is perfect. i loved every page of it in a year where i barely seem to find books i like.
i am a big fan of liz bruenig's writing and a huge opposer of the death penalty, so the existence of this book is enough to make me read nonfiction—ani am a big fan of liz bruenig's writing and a huge opposer of the death penalty, so the existence of this book is enough to make me read nonfiction—and adore it.
the entire system of punishment in this country is intended to dehumanize those that reside within it, and numb the emotions of those that witness it.
this book is the antidote to that.
it is incredibly painful and consuming. i felt such deep sorrow while reading this, and such helplessness, and such disgust for the world that we live within. i felt grief.
but i also felt incredible gratitude, that bruenig continues to bring these topics that so many would see buried to light. and i felt love for the people depicted here. and i felt forgiveness.
then i spent hours upon hours trying to pick it back up, my brain absolutely rejecting the concept that i had finished it. i had a series of work calls, and after each i wanted to continue reading. i had a series of tasks, and i without fail attempted to stop doing them in order to read.
i could not stop thinking about this book!!!
so boom. 5 stars it became.
part of me prickled at the conceit of this, which is that creating a human life is an act of creation that is radical and artistic and important, and that nothing is taken from the strength and passion motherhood takes by virtue of its being societal default. i didn't think that going in, and i didn't really want to think it through most of my reading experience.
but that's part of why i am a good reader for this book. because it convinced me.
and on top of that gorgeousness, this is funny and sharp and populated with unforgettable characters. it's two distinct stories, and i loved both, which feels like the rarest thing ever.
this is in many ways about how it is a huge act of generosity to love someone, and maybe the most valuable thing you can do in this life.
and i love women and this book loves women and i love this book.
bottom line: love! life! jokes about capitalism! what more could you want.
------------------- reread update
i love this book too much.
------------------- tbr review
literary fiction about what it means to be a woman...yeah this is up my alley
the other best thing a book can be is: - among the absolute fraction of things i read that magically, miraculously, divinely qualifies as 5 stars.
this is both.
i had no idea it was the great dream of my life to have three daughters and spend my days with them and my husband and a rescue dog picking cherries and telling stories in our orchard in michigan, but this was too damn dreamy for that not to be the case.
it's too auspicious, encountering my second beloved michigan cherry book. plus they're my favorite fruit. i will hereby be retiring from the review game in order to dedicate my life to google maps-ing "fruit trees accompanied by white farmhouses near lakes."
this book was strange and imperfect, kind of bumpy and (bizarrely) poorly edited and uncompelling in spots, but...i never stopped wanting to be reading it.
whenever i'm in my dear lovely favorite independent bookstore, i have a careful(ish) allowance. i can buy as many books from the on-sale rescue-these-books-from-remainder-table as my charitable heart desires, but i can only buy one full-price hardcover.
this was that one.
i chose really, really well.
bottom line: sometimes you think you'll love a book, and then you do. that feeling never gets old....more
once upon a time, i had a very long, very passionate review of this book uploaded, with very long, very passionate pages of comments, and generally itonce upon a time, i had a very long, very passionate review of this book uploaded, with very long, very passionate pages of comments, and generally it was one of my favorite reviews (and of one of my favorite books) with one of my favorite ensuing discussions.
i love ling ma and i want to kiss her on the face but that seems like a pretty major overstep so instead i'll just read everything she writes.
mini revi love ling ma and i want to kiss her on the face but that seems like a pretty major overstep so instead i'll just read everything she writes.
mini reviews for each story like i always do for collections when my weary brain allows me!
STORY 1: LOS ANGELES immediately i don't think i can review every one of these. this was too one of a kind, too striking, i'm speechless, and i have to do this EVERY TIME?!
about to give up already. rating: 4.25
STORY 2: ORANGES cover story. basically.
this doesn't have the same fervent originality as the first one but it's even more immersive and suffocating. rating: 4
STORY 3: G this allegory is so satisfying (if a little clichéd) it's like having a treat. rating: 4
STORY 4: YETI LOVEMAKING HELLO ANOTHER BEAUTIFUL METAPHOR THIS ONE NOT CLICHED AT ALL!!!!! rating: 4.25
STORY 5: RETURNING AHHHHHHHHHHH!!!
i don't want this book to end ever.
a story about books and the themes of books and it has the themes and also more themes and also also also... rating: 4.5
STORY 6: UNIVERSITY hmmmmmm.
fun recurring theme becoming apparent of the complexity of desire (i.e., a sense of dissatisfaction too elaborate to pin on any one thing) making happiness impossible in modern life. rating: 4
STORY 8: PEKING DUCK these are just so rich. rating: 4
STORY 9: TOMORROW whoa. rating: 4
OVERALL brilliant and incisive, more knowing and intuitive on the subject of being young and getting older in the 21st century than just about anything i've ever read. i know i'm going to return to this one, countless times mentally and more than once for a reread.
significantly better than the sum of its parts, and the parts are damn good. rating: 5
-------------------- tbr review
things i am willing to do in order to receive this book: - be nice (or try to be) - think about it a lot - ... - say please and thank you?
it worked. thanks to netgalley for the copy....more
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