People I can’t keep staying awake till ungodly hours in the morning. It’s actually getting light outside, what a horrifying confrontation with the conPeople I can’t keep staying awake till ungodly hours in the morning. It’s actually getting light outside, what a horrifying confrontation with the consequences of my actions.
And for what??? To obsess, fangirl, swoon, faint, giggle, cry and blush over fictional characters and completely butcher any standard of a future partner with the most unrealistically high expectations?
For god’s sake Ali, leave a girl be.
So. After this second staying-up-all-night-finishing-Ali-Hazelwoods-books-in-one-sitting-experiencing-serious-heart-palpitations binge spree i feel inclined to say that the five star rating is based purely on the fact that this book wrecked me. Emotionally, physically, mentally, hopelessly, severely, unfairly. All the ways. This book made me giggle non stop, for gods sake? Actual, crazy, why-is-she-staring-at-her-ereader-at-5:30-am-and-laughing-uncontrollably, giggles. But I do want to point out that this book is not very good. There was a twist that I saw coming from the very first chapter which was resolved in the most hilariously unsatisfying and effortless way. Any of the conflict and tension were more minor inconveniences and bumps. The relationship was basically a much needed therapy session.
But ohmyfuckinggod I’d reread this book till my last dying breath and die the happiest person.
Anyway. Can I have some appreciation for the effort I’m putting into typing a review at 6:30 in the morning while running behind on multiple days of sleep and while rocking a sugar high that not even an eight year old at the fair after having eaten a sugar candy the size of its own body, can equal? Because I just know I’ll read this review when I wake up in probably three business days and slightly hate myself....more
I started this book a couple hours ago and suddenly it’s 4:30 in the morning and I’m crying and there are butterflies in my stomach and i’m slightly tI started this book a couple hours ago and suddenly it’s 4:30 in the morning and I’m crying and there are butterflies in my stomach and i’m slightly turned on by chess?...more
I was recommending this to my dad but saying ANYTHING about the book kind of spoils the whole amnesia experience so I just keep leaving my copy everywI was recommending this to my dad but saying ANYTHING about the book kind of spoils the whole amnesia experience so I just keep leaving my copy everywhere around the house for him to see. I hope the forced exposure helps pique his interest. I will not rest until he's read it.
Might be my new favourite of all time. I want to reread it already....more
This beautiful beautiful book. It’s so raw and gut-wrenching and haunting. The words stick to me, and choke me.
Can’t believe Warsan Shire has slippedThis beautiful beautiful book. It’s so raw and gut-wrenching and haunting. The words stick to me, and choke me.
Can’t believe Warsan Shire has slipped from my attention until now. Her words, she, is so powerful yet tender at the same time. She’s taken my breath away.
Bless the Daughter Raised by a Voice in Her Head is a poetry collection about girlhood, womanhood, grief, trauma, immigration, family. Warsan touches upon these topics in such an intimate and breathtaking way. Bless the author. Bless her words. Bless this bundle....more
Words, what are words. Also how do you write a review again?
Holy. Shit. This. Book.
Christian and Gianna have to be my favourite couple ever. They’re Words, what are words. Also how do you write a review again?
Holy. Shit. This. Book.
Christian and Gianna have to be my favourite couple ever. They’re both so fucking hot, my bisexual heart couldn’t take it. Christian’s sterness and rigour and Giannas i’m-not-putting-up-with-your-shit and humour and soft heartedness. I COULDNT.
Things about this book that nearly killed me: Christians jealousy, the man got ABSOLUTELY FERAL and I can’t with that. All my independence and self-worth are thrown out the window: you can take me right here. The strong independent female lead; GIANNA WAS SUCH A BADASS BITCH. She was given so much shit in her life but watch her still being the kind queen that the world doesn’t deserve. Also how Christian was all “you-dumb-fucking-whore-i’m-gonna-fuck-you-up” with everyone else but was DEFINITELY ONE HUNDRED PERCENT making best friend necklaces for him and Gianna and building a shrine to worship her???? WEAK.
This was so feverish and tipsy and unhinged. It tugged at all the right heartstrings. Nora has easily become myA dream a dream a nightmare of a book.
This was so feverish and tipsy and unhinged. It tugged at all the right heartstrings. Nora has easily become my most desperate favourite author through the way she so brilliantly brings mood and feeling into her work. The All For the Game series is one big scrambled egg of emotion and love and obsession for the characters and their struggles despite the series not being that good and despite the themes not being my jam at all. Nora’s writing makes sure you’re doomed, strapped in, unable to leave.
Elysium is quite different from her other books because those were confined by rules and a certain normality of life and this was just a rabbithole/feverdream where everything got hotter and weirder and more disturbed. It doesn’t follow a typical storyline. Characters melt in and out of frame. A lot is unclear and it’s jambled and rushed and chaotic and frantic. And it couldn’t have worked any other way.
This was absolutely brilliant and like her other books, it’s something I’ll come back to many times again....more
I can’t believe I’ve accidentally stumbled upon a series that will never leave me. I picked this book purely random because I had nothing to read AND I can’t believe I’ve accidentally stumbled upon a series that will never leave me. I picked this book purely random because I had nothing to read AND WHAT A DECISION.
*Floop* In my heart it goes, all snuggly and warm, right next to the foxhole court crew and everyone from the raven cycle and dreamer trilogy, I didn’t think I’d find another group of people I’d love as dearly as these aforementioned lunatics that live rent free in my head BUT WHAT A DAY TO BE ALIVE.
I couldn’t stop reading. Finished it in less than a day and my eyes were glued to the pages non stop. The slowness of the plot and the dialogue between the characters and the characterisation. It was PERFECT.
AND THE WRITING. OH MY GOD what a crafty craftness of words. It felt like poetry and I loved the use of colours and odd descriptions that kept being reused and started forming familiar patterns that the reader really felt connected to. It made me feel like I wasn't just reading this book, but like I was a little bit a part of it.
"Pinecones and candy canes?" I asked him. He smiled. "And epic and awesome."
This book is everything Twilight wanted to be but couldn’t, wasn’t, never will be. Nope nope nope here we don’t have shiny sparkly vampires and shirtless dogs. Here we have Ox and Joe and the BEST found family EVER and badass witches? And colour descriptions and everything is green green green after reading this book. (oh and okay yes here we do also have villains with questionable motives that seem a little too disney-villain-evil-incarnated-cookiecutter for my liking. But really, I can let that one slide because joeeeee and oxxxxxx and gordooooo)
A new favourite series maybe?
BOOK TWO I’M COMING FOR YOU and you better not disappoint me....more
This book is tugged away in a really special place in my heart. Thank you Alice for creating such a safe space and so much love and inclusivity and foThis book is tugged away in a really special place in my heart. Thank you Alice for creating such a safe space and so much love and inclusivity and for providing answers and for guiding people.
It was haunting. Actually, physically and emotionally haunting. This book drained me and I felt unable to put everything to words for quite some time.It was haunting. Actually, physically and emotionally haunting. This book drained me and I felt unable to put everything to words for quite some time.
What does this add to my life? Why do I find that question meaningful enough to ask myself? Why does the answer hold so much relevance to justifying this reading experience. Does purpose have relevance when talking about pain and death and trauma? It’s implying a greater good, a destination, a bigger picture. Fuck that shit. People don’t go through this shit for a greater good, a purpose, to make a life lesson out of it or whatever. Why am I expecting my own version of catharsis from a book?
“See? This is why it’s worth living. This is why I’ve been making him try – even though that one moment cannot compensate for all the other moments, the majority of moments. You think, as I had thought with Jacob, what is a child for? Is he to give me comfort? Is he for me to give comfort to? And if a child can no longer be comforted, is it my job to give him permission to leave? And then you think again: but that is abominable, you can’t.”
Our responsibility to other people; is it constructed by this selfish idea that we in fact have the ability to make a difference? The illusion that we control another person in their actions and desires? Or is it genuine care and empathy and the disability to accept the act of letting go? What is our duty to other people? Whether we’re fathers, mothers, sons, daughters, friends, husbands, wife’s, brothers, sisters. How far does our influence stretch?
Hopefulness is not a trait many people possess. It’s easy to get lost in the emptiness of life. It’s such a narrow slope between the self-made illusion of safety, love, hopefulness and the endless pit of hopelessness and regrets and guilt. And in this world where people are so excessively put on public trial for their actions/words, who am I to attribute to silencing voices? Writing is an act of freedom, of personal and creative liberties, of catharsis and poetry and meaning.
A book can’t save you. Nothing/nobody can except yourself. A book isn’t obligated to offer comfort, answers or solace but still this book feels wrong. I’ve bundled it all up and now I don’t know what to do with this sadness and grieve. I’m numbed. What is this book saying? What message does it carry?
A little life is in its essence a character study; a study of human capacity and kindness. It’s about the intricate workings of friendship and family and how pain and grief and trauma play a central role in those relationships. It’s about the behaviour of emotions in the face of so much sadness.
I don’t know what to think of this book, it’s mostly feelings. Lots of them. Anger, appreciation, sadness, anger again, grief. Surely feeling so much is in itself a homage to the cleverness of the books, but was it good? Did I enjoy it? No and no. Are those requirements of quality? Also no. But then what was this? How do you measure quality when you wish you never read it? When you wish you hadn’t allowed yourself to become attached and to continue hoping for an ending that would give me something back instead of taking things from me?
DEFINE GOOD. There was good in the moments Jude and Willem shared together in peace and love and unconditional friendship, but what about the pain and sharp cutting edge to those happy moments? The pain again and again and again. Does defining the ‘happy years’ as happy/good imply that goodness is inevitably entwined with badness? Because the happy years were happy, the happiest, but at the same time the saddest and how can it be the first without the contrast of the latter?
How do you define ‘good’ when it’s wrapped in bad? But also, hasn’t it always been like this? Both extremes depending on the presence/contrast of the other. And does hardship counterbalance happiness or to put it differently: are small moments of happiness enough?
Everyone interprets this story different and some find comfort in it, and I understand that and I think it’s good that Yanagihara doesn’t sugar-coat trauma and doesn’t shy away from heavy topics. Some people argue this book is trauma-porn, and I don’t know where I stand on that spectrum because I think creating space amongst other pieces of literature, for a broad range of trauma representation is not something that should be written off as “trauma porn” and writing it off as such feels in a way like a devaluation of people’s actual traumas? But on the other hand: is a person who (for as far as I could find online with some surface level googling and scanning) has no first-hand experience and feels like they can write about other people’s traumas without having done research, a good source for the representation we need in literature? And doesn’t the fact that this is written as an experiment for 'inevitability' (Yanagihara mentioned in an interview that she wanted to write a book in which the main character has no chances of getting better. She wanted to write his story as inevitable and doomed.) deny the exact representation people are looking for?
I ask many questions, most of them not really questions but more unsure assumptions. I’m unsure about a lot of things regarding this book and its message and my overall opinion. I would say I wish I hadn’t read it but that isn’t completely true. I ám happy I read it, I just wished I wasn’t so impatient and would have waited a little longer.
I’m still unable to move on from having read this. It’s constantly on my mind. I find myself gravitating towards new books but nothing I read lingers.
Nope I don’t recommend reading this, it's not something you'd "recommend" anyone to read, it's something you talk about and carefully consider and it's exactly those conversations that make this book worth having read it in my opinion.
I NEED TO TALK TO PEOPLE ABOUT THIS. THERE ARE SO MANY THOUGHTS IN MY HEAD HELP HOW DO YOU MOVE ON FROM READING THIS BOOK?...more
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