reading journal

currently reading: american gods

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2022 christmas haul🍄

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i just finished ‘conversations with friends’ and find myself once again in awe of sally rooney’s prose.

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i’m currently reading “these violent delights” and i feel that the best way to describe it is as a cross between “the secret history”, “if we were villains”, and the movie kill your darlings.

the story is centered on the obsessive friendship formed between two teenage boys, paul and julian. having just finished the second part of the book (which lies just shy of the halfway point), i can say that while i have no set predictions on how the events will unfold, i am sure that it will end poorly for both young men. the violence that draws paul in and subsequently arouses julian will be their downfall in one way, shape, or form.

the writing is exquisite and enrapturing, and i can predict this book contending for the title of “my favorite book of the year”.

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spotted reading sylvia plath in a coffee shop

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more thoughts from my carry on reread

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i don’t think we talk about how much of a simp baz is enough.

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i got a diy version of mirabel’s necklace from the starless sea

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i’ve decided that a good way to cap off the first summer i’ve actually spent reading in about five years would be to reread fangirl and the carry on trilogy.

i finished fangirl yesterday and am about 100 pages into carry on. side note: i forgot how long it took for baz to show up. don’t get me wrong; i love simon, but 100 pages of him obsessing over baz and what he may or may not be up too is a bit excessive. i have no idea how cath and the rest of the gemma t leslie simon snow fans put up with it.

reading carry on, knowing there are two more books to look forward to and seeing things i’d overlooked, not realizing how important they would become, has been really exciting.

i just got to the part where simon is exploring the catacombs, looking for baz, and sees the painting of the crying lady. when i first read the book, going on five years ago, the couple of lines dedicated to her and simon’s thoughts about unraveling her mystery meant very little to me. now, after having ready any way the wind blows, after having it be confirmed that the mysterious crying woman was his mother, i feel the need to once again applaud rainbow rowell.

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i absolutely adore rainbow rowell’s writing. it makes me so emotional and i find myself nearly holding back tears at scenes that usually don’t effect me.

for example, i always tear up when wren mocks cath for her simon and baz obsession. i always close the book when cath shows up at levi’s party and she and reagan see him kissing the nameless girls. my stomach clenches when cath tell’s levi why she’s mad at him and that it’s never “just a kiss” for her.

and don’t even get me started on the scenes where cath feels broken and strange and alienated in the world. those ones hit particularly hard for me.

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one thing i absolutely adore is the ambiguous ending. i cant stand when books or movies attempt to tie everything up into a neat little bow at the end of the story. epilogues that span decades, that box characters into picture perfect lives are especially irritating.

so, on the subject of ambiguous endings, i have to talk about ‘the miseducation of cameron post’. danforth leaving off where she did, after saying goodbye to her parents and embracing her friends, was perfect. i like not knowing how the great escape ends. i think it was the best way to end such an incredible book.

ambiguous endings are great ways to keep the reader or viewer thinking about the media well after they’ve finished reading or watching it. i have no doubt that as time goes on my thoughts will wonder back to cameron and jane and adam, wondering how their lives progressed. thinking about coley and irene, wondering if they ever acknowledged the sides of themselves that cameron brought out. i’ll think about them the same way i continue to think about oliver and james from ‘if we were villains’. the same way i think about cadence sinclair eastman from ‘we were liars’.

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i just finished part two of “the miseducation of cameron post” and… wow. i knew this book was going to be good but i had no idea how good.

side note: i am absolutely obsessed with cameron’s friendships with lindsey and jaime. they’re both so developed and feel real in a way that many ya books lack.

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i feel like i would have liked ‘ziggy stardust and me’ better if it had been adult fiction, and not ya. there was a lot of really heavy subject matter that could’ve been delved into in greater detail had it not been marketed towards teen audiences.

that being said, i don’t think it would’ve worked as adult fiction because of how juvenile the writing style felt at times. it was jarring and there were several occasions where i simply put down the book or read lines aloud, incredulous at how they made it past an editor.

the antagonists felt like caricatures of antagonists. scotty, jonathon’s former best friend and primary tormentor being gay was no surprise, because the secretly gay bully has been done a million and one times.

i don’t know, there were definitely good moments, but at the end of the day i just was not able to connect with this book.

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spoilers for all the light we cannot see after the cut

my major critique of all the light we cannot see has to be jutta’s rape. it felt so out of place and vile. going from werner’s death, the shock and quickness of it, to frau elena, jutta, and the other orphan girls getting assaulted by the invading russians was jarring and left a bad taste in my mouth. 

every other time we left marie-laure and warner, the reader was given information that added to the plot in some way. whether it be telling the reader about von rumpel or the arrests of marie-laure’s papa and great-uncle. the rape however offered nothing off the sort.

violence for the sake of violence. 

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i’m about halfway done with ‘all the light we cannot see’ and here are my thoughts/predictions:

-i don’t know when our protagonists will meet, from the 1944 viewpoints we’ve gotten i don’t think they’ve interacted

-frederick is undoubtedly my favorite character, i absolutely adore him. i worry that something will happen to him, something worse than the horrible treatment he’s been subject to since refusing to torture the prisoner with the other boys

-i believe that madame manec and her resistance club will be found out and that is the reason for her absence in the 1944 chapters

-the diamond has ended up playing a much larger part than i had originally anticipated and i cant say i mind, especially because von rumpel’s pov has been especially captivating.

well that’s what i have so far, i’ll reboot this as my theories get debunked or proven correct

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so i’ve finished the book (which was a much more painful endeavor than i had expected) and here are how my thoughts and predictions measured up:

-i was correct that marie-laure and warner had not directly interacted, though the revelation that warner had heard and even seen marie-laure was unexpected

-i was also, unfortunately, correct in my prediction that something horrible would befall the boy who loved the birds.

-madame manec’s untimely demise and etienne joining the resistance was a bit of a surprise to me, but i was happy to be wrong about her friends being found out.

honestly the last hundred or so pages were absolutely unexpected.

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i’m about halfway done with ‘all the light we cannot see’ and here are my thoughts/predictions:

-i don’t know when our protagonists will meet, from the 1944 viewpoints we’ve gotten i don’t think they’ve interacted

-frederick is undoubtedly my favorite character, i absolutely adore him. i worry that something will happen to him, something worse than the horrible treatment he’s been subject to since refusing to torture the prisoner with the other boys

-i believe that madame manec and her resistance club will be found out and that is the reason for her absence in the 1944 chapters

-the diamond has ended up playing a much larger part than i had originally anticipated and i cant say i mind, especially because von rumpel’s pov has been especially captivating.

well that’s what i have so far, i’ll reboot this as my theories get debunked or proven correct

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i love how interconnected everything was in “the starless sea”. you have time and fate’s love story as a major backbone of the plot and entire world in which it takes place. simon and eleanor would have never met had people not been attempting to give fate an immortal vessel. and zachary would have never found sweet sorrows (or dorian or mirabel or the starless sea) had eleanor never met simon in the place between time where fate was conceived. it’s magnificent storytelling. nothing felt accidental of half thought out. it was meticulously planned and erin morgenstern deserves all of the credit for writing such a masterpiece.