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2019

I read 15,609 pages across 50 books! My average rating has dropped to 3.5. I read some books I really hated but also several good ones. Here are my top ten books of the year!

1 / Ninth House

2 / How We Fight For Our Lives

3 / Severance 

4 / King of Scars

5 / No One Writes Back

6 / If We Were Villains

7 / Aurora Rising

8 / Permanent Record

9 / The Bell Jar

10 / Educated

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book review: permanent record

Life isn't a destination. It's the continual practice of things that make you wiser and happier.

This book really surprised me. I loved the cover and the blurb sounded like some fun, light read. One of those cliche plots where ordinary person meets superstar and then they fall in love. I was wrong: the romance is not the focus of this book. If anything, it is a sweet distraction for our protagonist, a college drop out named Pablo. We get to see Pablo try to run away from his problems and his strained relationship with his mother. I even cried because somehow I could really relate to Pablo. Give this book a try because it’s more than it seems!

There are so many things I don't know how to do. Countless flaws. Configurations of words that elude me all the time. But id give my entire life if only to know what to say in this moment. I feel her gaze. I fail me as I always do. Trying to get better at the thing you want to be the best at is humiliating.

[46-notes]

book review: we the animals

Even later, I will come to doubt whether I ever really believed such a book would not be found--maybe my words were for all of them, that they might discover themselves, and discover me.

The language was beautiful in this one and there were some haunting scenes that I think I will remember for awhile. It almost felt cinematic, this story. However, it felt too short and I didn't have enough time to connect with the story or the characters.

We wanted more. We knocked the butt ends of our forks against the table, tapped our spoons against our empty bowls; we were hungry. We wanted more volume, more riots. We turned up the knob on the TV until our ears ached with the shouts of angry men. We wanted more music on the radio; we wanted beats; we wanted rock. We wanted muscles on our skinny arms. We had bird bones, hollow and light, and we wanted more density, more weight. We were six snatching hands, six stomping feet; we were brothers, boys, three little kings locked in a feud for more.

[46-notes]

book review: ninth house

Mors irrumat omnia. Death fucks us all.

I’m so happy that this lived up to my expectations and more. As usual, I loved Bardugo’s writing. This time, we are introduced to another world, much like ours, but with ghosts and secret societies in Yale up to no good. Alex Stern was the perfect protagonist: a strong woman who has a vulnerable past. Darlington was so charming and he reminded me a lot of Nikolai. The different secret societies and the type of magic they deal in was so interesting too! 

Overall this was a wild ride and it did get really dark at times. It did get me a while to understand what was going on at first because of the alternating timelines but it was so worth it. I need the sequel now.

The resemblance was superficial, at least on the outside. But underneath? In the cut-open places, they were all the same. Girls like Hello, girls like Alex, girls like this one, had to keep running or eventually trouble caught up. This girl just hadn't run fast enough, 

Here lies the boy with all the answers. Except there would be no grave.

[46-notes]

book review: how we fight for our lives

Just as some cultures have a hundred words for “snow”, there should be. A hundred words in our language for all the ways a black boy can lie awake at night.

Real, gripping memoir that had me in tears. I absolutely love the writing as well!! I wash highlighting so many lines. This book might be a little short but I think it was perfect. 

People don’t just happen. We sacrifice former versions of ourselves. We sacrifice the people who dared to raise us. The “I” it seems doesn’t exist until we are able to say, “I am no longer yours.” My grandmother and I, without knowing it, were faithfully following a script that had already been written for us. A woman raises a boy into a man, loving him so intensely that her commitment finally repulses him.

It was as if I wanted credit for rescuing my mother from a fire that I had set and couldn’t put out. I wasn’t the man of the house; I was the kid who’d finally lit his first match.

A joke I used to repeat in those days was: Why be happy when you can be interesting? I knew how to be interesting. There was power in being a spectacle, even a miserable spectacle. The punch and the line. Interesting: sentences like serrated blades, laughter like machine gun rounds, a drink none hand, a borrowed cigarette in the other. If you could draw enough glances, any room could orbit around you.

Boys like us never really got away, it seemed. We just bought ourselves time. A few more gasps of air, a few more poems, a few more years.

[46-notes]

poetry review: the mermaid’s voice returns in this one

Be victorious in everything you do, disturb the gods, if that what it takes, & maybe especially then

The thing about Amanda Lovelace’s poetry collections is that they are always so thematically coherent and full of anger and feeling. I love that.

I watched you watching me wane, now, you have no fucking choice other than to watch me-become full.

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poetry review: I wrote this for you: 2007-2017

I’d leave the memory of you at the station, if it didn’t already know the way home.

Gets a little too repetitive at times, but there are some lines that really resonated with me.

The Shedding of Skin

If you’re not who you used to be, you still have time to become who you could be.

If you blur your eyes, the streetlights become hundreds of ghosts going home.

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poetry review: please don’t go before I get better

I forgot how to look at the world through my rose coloured glasses; lost them in my mother’s house and settled for grey.

This was a pretty generic collection of poems. Nice to read through quickly if you have free time. 

rough draft 

you make so much sense amidst the tangled vines of learning and unlearning please don’t go before I get better

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book review: the merciless

pending

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book review: kids of appetite

pending

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book review: the bluest eye

pending

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book review: all the bright places

pending

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book review: the perks of being a wallflower

pending 

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book review: no one writes back

Instead, a desire for words swelled up in me around that time.

This was emotional and really good. No absolute plot as our narrator wanders around and meets new people with his dog, Wajo. He is always waiting for a reply but no one writes back. He meets 751, a pushy woman who sells her books in public places. An unlikely friendship starts. The ending made me cry. This should be a film.

True loneliness comes not from being alone, but from being with someone else.

I write letters because I want to convey to someone the stories of these people, but also because I want to let someone know that a day had existed for me as well. Letters, in other words, are like journal entries to me. The only difference is that the day does not stay with me, but is sent to someone else.

[46-notes]

book review: slow burn

Every instant, he became something new again, a stranger. The only constant was change.

This one was aptly named because it was really a super slow burn. Not as exciting as the first one, in my opinion. I didn't even buy the romance between Gemma and Athene. It was more like Stockholm Syndrome. 

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poetry review: poetry magazine april 2019

It’s hard to review this one because it’s a compilation of poems but I think I’ll just share the ones I really liked!

Personal thing is all I care about, she said. He wouldn't be personal. Thats why I changed hearts. Parts of me ache. But when Our legs touch I know what WE have in common. We loving two. And pancakes, the joy they bring, is what I wanted to tell most. We made a crack in the wall to whisper through. That’s personal. Or the dream, his skin full of blood. You’ve been crying, I said. I gave him sympathy because I wanted sympathy from him.  I thought I was good. But it was lonesome. I woke up full of lonesome. I wanted to be personal. So I lit the oven. She said. —Kathleen Fraser

Shelter Island

frigid are the branches of black trees cutting through a blacker night. missing are the lampposts that adorn every few feet of New York. cold is your hand in my hand  & yes, I am a man, & you are a woman. my wilderness is not unlike the woods that surround us. the sky in my wild lit by lanterns in the faces of animals. my own flammable face. my father’s temperament. my thrifted excuse. yes, it’s the night before 45 is sworn in as president,  & yes, we leave the city, & we would leave the planet, too.  you hold my hand & we walk into the teeth of the hour armed with each other. bitter cold I the world we leave behind. when we hold hands, we invent a space ship.

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book review: because you love to hate me: 13 tales of villainy

“But even an angel has to put her halo down from time to time.”

So this book is an anthology with a format of an actual author’s story—followed by a booktuber’s commentary/analysis/uneeded words which I found really unnecessary and a waste of time. Concept and theme wise, I love it, but only some stories stood out in my opinion.

The Blood of Imuriv

Okay yes sibling rivalry also intriguing world where there is a matriarchy. Quite a lot of tension built up, kind of like a backstory of how the main character became evil. The ending where his sister gets killed(?) was too abrupt though. Slightly boring for my tastes. Needed to be longer aka not a short story.

2.5

Jack

I liked this one a lot. Although I was expecting a twist of some kind, after the whole story was seemingly so wholesome. Friendship between a giantess and a human boy? I thought of the whole "get the animals to trust you first" line and half expected the giantess to do something evil. Although earlier I thought Jack was gonna push her off the clouds or something. A clever story. 3.5

Gwen and Art and Lance It felt lazy to do the whole story through texts only and although the theme of Gwen being a manipulator was kinda interesting, the way the story was executed just left a lot to be desired. Just..no. 0.5

Shirley and Jim I was so confused the whole time. What was this. 0.5 The Blessing of Little Wants Interesting! A female character who is ruthless and will do whatever it takes to become powerful. 3 The Sea Witch Ah, the little mermaid if she was shunned by her own kind. She becomes a sea witch after killing a human who betrayed her. 3.5 Beautiful Venom The chinese twist on Medusa is awesome. We feel sympathy for her because she was once beautiful and is a victim of rape. 3.5 Death Knell That ending! Doesn’t feel very villain-y though. 3 Marigold Liked the twist. 3 You, You, It’s All About You My favorite!! So good. 4.5 Julian Breaks Every Rule Really entertaining. I wanted more. 4 Indigo and Shade It was promising but eh…I don’t like the ending. 3

Sera Nicola Yoon can do no wrong. Really enjoyed this a lot. 4.5