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[✎] Beautiful World, Where Are You

Salley Rooney

★★★★★

Forgot how mentally ill everyone is. This could've been a case of right book, wrong time. Looking forward for a literary lobotomy <3

01/11/2024 — 27/03/2025

Yea yea. Yea. Funny what two years do to you. Five star review because this book is sooooo,,, yea <3

On a more articulate and literary note, my notes are the same from two years ago: the writing, dialogue and storytelling are top-tier. Here is where we differ, however—the characters. I love the four of them. I get them so bad like yea diva so true.

Strangely, this altered my brain chemistry in a Renaissance slow-burn which is codeword for I don't know what I'm saying but I know what I'm feeling and it is this book.

I love the world. Wanna watch it burn but also wanna kiss it <3

Sally Rooney the woman that you are.

(We are not going to talk about why this took me almost 6 months to read MIND YOUR BUSINESS if you know, you know. If you don't, you'll know within a few years. Yea yea yea)

★★★☆☆

24/06/2023 — 26/06/2023

This is Sally's weakest work to date in my opinion. Let me backtrack. The writing and storytelling are the strongest I've ever read of hers, but the characters were extremely not engaging. Sally's books have this thing where they alter my brain chemistry and haunt me for months after completing them. CWF did that, NP did that (albeit slower than the former) but this doesn't.

Did it somehow by some strange force alter the timeline I was previously placed in prior to reading this book? Perhaps, yes. It did move me to a different headspace and therefore a new universe.

Did it irreversibly damage my brain and neural networks and destroy every fabric of my being I had previously known about my self? It has not, for the worst or for the better.

So, a three it is.

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[🗲] The Hunger Games (The Hunger Games, 1)

Suzanne Collins

★★★★☆

Gale pregnancy fetish: confirmed?

21/01/2024 — 26/12/2024

I have made it abundantly clear in past reviews that I have formed my personality partially from this book and from the media that accompanies it.

But past reviews might be future for you. What I wrote before now might be consumed after this text is digested. Such is the world. Such is time. What is present for me is future for you is past for both. Such is my belief.

This is the fifth — and final — installment of this saga, and although I do not like the number five (which is interesting to think of, remembering that I referenced the number and admitted my dislike in the first installment, I think. and that is beautiful — to me) I very much adore this book, and its characters, and the world it creates.

Well, not the world itself. Fuck oppression everywhere. But I meant the experience. I love the revolution. Even when it lives in books, in media, in film — it LIVES, baby. This is but a prophecy. God bless Suzanne Collins (unless she's a [redacted] then I will personally see to replacing her legacy with that of a true revolutionary.)

The thing about this book is that there is no need to talk about it. Like yes so true. I just noticed it took me a year to read this. I am now de-noticing.

yes. Whatever you just said. Yes.

Yea. That is all I have for you. I do not apologize if this version — this snapshot — of my biblically accurate aura disappointed you. You take what I give you. These are not scraps. This is a table.

And if you have ever experienced a feast, you would understand: not all dishes are the same. You are not meant to consistently re-live the same experience. That would be death. Death is constant, and promised! Do not ever forget that.

Death is the only thing you should not fear, because it is an oath. It cannot be broken. No amount of medicine can scoop you out of the hand of Hades. You cannot fool Thanatos. The Stys always remembers. It will swell upwards until it drowns you if need be. Do not cheat your death — it is yours. It is sacred. And that doesn't mean to DIY it you stupid bitch. Do not 5 Minute Crafts your way into the Underworld you cunt. Do not perform premarital sex with the perils of this planet. The world has plenty of pearls to give. OPEN YOUR HAND you are clenching your fists like a redneck. How do you expect it to hand you your blessings when you are too busy beating yourself up for getting bit by a shark when you were searching for oysters.

Well guess what. Sharks are not real !! The only real ones are cute. Shark attacks are a government conspiracy to keep you from swimming. The shark bite is actually a New Yorker. I'll be a New Yorker someday. In the sense that I will live there — briefly, because I am veracious and the world is as big as I desire and I intent to taste it all like a charcuterie board. It is an open buffet.

As I was saying, live, and do not wait for death. It is coming. In time. Like, girl. What are you worrying for it is COMING. But you know who's not coming? Your ex. That situationship. That friend that actually wasn't a diva. So why are you stranded on the shorelines of yourself waiting for their lifeboat to return. Babes they escaped your island. Your coconut was not to their likings. So what? You like coconut. I don't, that's why I planted mangos.

RETURN TO YOURSELF!! I love the beach but babes you're getting sunburnt. You know that's bad. Skin cancer and whatnot. Plus it makes you look republican.

Also, lifeboats sink. I think. That's what happened in the Titanic, no? So, if it's any comfort, that's it. They're dead. Perhaps not physically, but the version of them you loved, you laughed with and cried with and fought with — dead babes. Hermes told me himself.

Get up. Wash the sand off your ass. Come on. Go make a pineapple smoothie it's summer. And it's your island you can have goats. Of course you can.

I just had a coffee and it tasted great. I didn't just have it. I drank it an hour away. But I still feel it. Just because I experienced it does not mean it is over. No, of course not. It can still be traced within my body. My heart is singing faster because of it.

But it will elapse, eventually. And I will have the choice again, to drink it or not.

Do I like coffee? Does it make me feel more of myself or does it wedge itself between us like a bastard cop? The former of course, usually, but at times it is detrimental. Like two days ago, when I had too much and couldn't sleep for a day. Regardless, I used that time and that energy — even if I did not intend or ask for it — to read and be hopeful and journal and exist .

What I am trying to say that, the feelings you have now are temporary. You can always make the choice to recommit to them, or recommit to something new. But do not fool yourself into thinking it does not matter. It all matters.

The perfume you wear in the morning. How much sugar you put in your matcha. Oatmilk or cowsmilk or soymilk. Water, perhaps? I like an Iced Americano once in a season. What shoes you walk in and what shade of lipstick. The lip balm you put on, the label on it, the numbers on the barcode. The synchronicity on the clock, on the receipt, in your friend's phone number as they text you about your crush or their crush or your ex or their ex or your partner or their partner. Or perhaps they are just saying hi. Or telling you they just had breakfast. Perhaps it were just a meme.

Whatever it is, do not let this world rid you of this sentimentality. It is your life. Of course it matters. It is your folklore, your children's if you decide to have some, your cat's, your dog's. Your friends' and siblings' and parents'. If you choose to share it. And if not, remember that this is your experience, that you are here to witness it. You are the writer and director and actor and audience.

Live a story you'd like to watch.

I believe in you. I believe in us. We are coming and we are many.

Happy solar eclipse. May the last of your worries wear away. May they disintegrate into the summer, riding on the pollen of springflowers towards a new destination, a new growth, a new life. A gentler one. A life you like.

May the winter wind kiss them to rain, and may they soak the soil of your homeland. Do not forget it and do not waver.

May the rain, the sun, the darkness — may everything remind you of yourself. May everything return you to your roots. Sometimes we must depart to remember why we stay. Whatever you do, do not let it wait for too long.

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[✎] This Savage Song (Monsters of Verity, 1)

Victoria E. Schwab

★★☆☆☆

22/10/2024 — 25/10/2024

You think I wanna play fucking Boom Clap in a fucking college are you Joe King?

This book is interesting in the sense that it is very 2010s. I almost felt 13 and whole again. BUT I DIDN'T you know why? Because it's not the 2010s and there are forces in this world that I wish to squander and the guy was sooo boring okay violin boy don't wanna kill nobody I don't care like yea

Also girl was soo wannabe idon'tevenknowwhat

Like she wanted to be something. I don't know what she wanted to be though. And she is real for that, but just because it's real does not mean it's fun. Just because it's real for 2 sentences does not mean it's real for a whole book

Also brother turns out to be bad is so boring PLEASE for the love of God or for the love of science or for the love of whatever concept or deity you worship (and yes that is true for everyone because what you worship is what you live for and if you are alive then you are worshipping something, and if you are dead then you cannot read this — which directly contradicts what I said about Virginia Woolf in the first installment in this saga, whereas this is the fourth installment — however if you are dead and reading this, therefore you are not truly dead because I think therefore I am and some part of you whether it's consciousness or fame or even pure hatred — something is alive and therefore it is alive for a reason and therefore you are worshipping something yes yes so true Plato suck my cock you goodfornothing homo) (i am bi) anyway for the love of anything you love I do not to read regurgitated Wattpad plots because even then they were tiresome.

I have watched enough 100-episode 5-season Turkish dramas in my youth to hone my third eye into predicting a bad plot before the author even thinks to ask chatGPT about it. And yes AI did not exist at the time but if we assume Roko's Basilisk to be true (which it isn't) then a version of it did exist and it is not unique to our time for uninspired persons to repurpose uninspired ideas. AI is not at fault. It is, and will always be, the wrongs of man that cost us our lives.

What this nonsense means is that even without AI, there were methods to achieve ideation without cultivating authenticity in said ideations. Do I know what that means? No. But history will. History as in the future, because history to the current which references the future and now exists in the past is the future. This is a broadcast from the past. You are interacting with a ghost. Boo.

And therefore the presence — the aura of AI — it was present and persistent even before the algorithms and the servers and microplastics. That is the true Y2K aesthetic our ancestors warned us of. In a sense, 2012 was the end of the human civilisation. We are not a civilisation anymore. This is the great reset. The digital jungle. I am the big cat making ominous noises in the trees. This is the tree. Not the tree of life, but it is not a tree, either.

Which is funny, because four is an earth number. It is numerically and energetically aligned with the ancestors while still wielding a gateway to the future. Projecting the film reels on Stonehenge. Which will fall, by the way. Eventually, like all things do.

And it not fall, but spring, so let me spare you the hauntings. I did not like this book. But I was on vacation. I just remembered. It was October but it was summer. Just how, now, it is March and it is summer. Such is the weather in the homeland, but, additionally, such is the weather after our ozone has withered away to a blue sheen.

And it is always summer and winter at the same time. To my friends, in October, it was winter. It rained all week long. For me it was sun and heat and sea. I miss the sea.

For a woman in Brazil, it was spring, just as it is spring now, in March, to me. And it is almost April. To a man in Russia, it was winter. Even if it is assumption. Even if it is rude — to assume. Poetry lacks manners.

So do I.

Dear reader, thank you for reading. If you did. If you did not, you would not see this thanks. You would not receive my blessing nor my gratitude. You are beautiful, remember that. You are beautiful because you exist. Nothing in this world is ugly.

You may argue that the systems of oppression that plague us (and have plagued us) are not beautiful. I agree. They are not of this world. This world is beautiful. Hence why they hate it.

You and I — we are of this world. We are beautiful. I love you. Take care of yourself <3

[jinndibad-dot-library]

[🗲] Heartstopper, Volume Five (Heartstopper, 5)

Alice Oseman

★★★☆☆

This was so uneventful.

21/10/2024 — 22/10/2024

Will be tuning in to give my 2 cents about boring neo-colonialist boys being in love.

2.5 stars.

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[🗲] Heartstopper, Volume Four (Heartstopper, 4)

Alice Oseman

★★★☆☆

18 year old me did not care enough to review. Neither do I

21/10/2024

Reread.

★★★☆☆

04/05/2022

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[🗲] Heartstopper, Volume Three (Heartstopper, 3)

Alice Oseman

★★★☆☆

I don't think this is the right medium for the topics being discussed.

20/10/2024

Reread.

Updated rating to 3

★★★☆☆

04/05/2022

3.5 stars

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[🗲] Heartstopper, Volume Two (Heartstopper, 2)

Alice Oseman

★★★☆☆

This one is slightly better but mostly just kissing

14/10/2024

Reread.

★★★☆☆

03/05/2022

white boi smooches white boi yas

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[🗲] Heartstopper, Volume One (Heartstopper, 1)

Alice Oseman

★★★☆☆

What the hell, sure.

14/10/2024

Reread. No added value. Like 18 year old me said.

★★★☆☆

03/05/2022 it's cute. that's about it.

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[🗲] All American Boys

Jason Reynolds, Brendan Kiely

★★★☆☆

Authors talk to a teenager challenge. Also enough with the Black ex-military dad and the white boy who's learning that brutalizing Black people isn't the nicest thing to do. Come on now.

13/10/2024

White people are so boring. But what's worse is Black people writing white literature. Or white-centered literature. Or white-catered literature.

This is all three.

And you know what's also three? This. The third installment in our saga. What saga? I already answered that. And I made that joke before and I am an outfit repeater, yes, but not a joke repeater. No. I am not a trickster nor a comedian. I am an experience.

You are now experiencing a phenomenon. I am now experiencing babbling on the Internet. This is what brought Babel to its knees. I think.

But I'm not Babel so it's chill don't worry.

I want to drop this to 2 stars instead of 3 because I remember this book and I do not remember it. Like I remember it but the feeling? yea no none. Actually I remember cringing a lot.

I remember telling my friend (Hi, Hanaa) that despite being a recent novel (post 2020 i think), this reads like a late 2000s early 2010s novel. Which is codeword for millennial but also codeword for boring. I love the word "codeword" if you cannot tell. If you can, gold star for you. You are a true diva priva. Diva supreme if you will. If you don't will, then okay diva priva is fine.

I'm soooo over cop books. Maybe because I'm not American but it's like. We have The Hate You Give. An amazing book. A perfect book, may I say.

We don't need to keep begging white people for scraps pls pls pls this is NOT the revolution. It is not a protest in a YA book. And why do they all end in a protest. A peaceful protest, may I say.

You are not getting any nutrients by licking the boots of the white man. You're only getting E. coli.

Also I reject the idea that protagonists are always on the American Dream spectrum, but Black. I do not care. I do but I don't in the sense that it's done, and it's fucked up.

Granted the book is called American Boys. Like sure. Go off. Keep licking. Do it. I don't care. That is your experience.

My experience is very much staring at this and scoffing because i just remembered the DAD SERVED IN AFGHANISTAN OR SOMETHING.

So death to that. If the American Boy or the American Man is a military guy, yea. Death to that.

Fight me.

You can't. I'm right, you're wrong. And this has already been written and etched into the gold wires of this golden age. To erase me — to truly fight me — you must kill the Internet.

But you won't. Because you are a boot-licking good American. And a good American is always a dog xx

Long live the Internet, and long live the revolution, baby.

And remember — if you have something to say, no you don't. Suck my dick <3

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[ ♪ ] Anxious People

Fredrik Backman

★★☆☆☆

04/02/2024 — 11/10/2024

Second installment in the saga.

What saga you may ask? The answer will find you if you are worthy. You are in my digital space. This is not a conversation. You can treat this text as a bad poem. Or scripture, perhaps. You are as free as I am.

I absolutely despised this. You can ask me what happened and I will not tell you. Not because I read this half a year ago. No. Because genuinely what happened?

Hostage drama and a bank robbery. Sure. It was repeated so much to the point that I feared the author hid subliminal messaging in it. And he may have, in hindsight. Because I entered the WORST [redacted] of my life after finishing this novel.

Yes yes. Blaming Fredrik Backman. Whatever name that is. Assman. Whatever.

Yea no. Did not like. What was the point. So annoying. So long. And I was listening to it. Do you know how BAD a book must be for me to take 8 months to LISTEN to it? And before you claim that I have the attention span of a majestic butterfly reflecting the sun on a summer day as the trees whisper their wisdom and the pain of winter melts away into the abyss — no, I do not. My attention span is fine, thank you. You are just pissed because I do not agree with you. Have you considered therapy?

Have you, perhaps, contemplated the existence of other people outside your experience? That, fortunately, we are not all born to cater to you and your opinions and your desires and your discomforts and your likes and peeves and grey areas? Have you?

I hope this message finds you well. I hope you take it as an intermission, and an invitation to ponder, because no one else will do that for you. We are all busy shit-talking your favourite books on the Interweb. Also can this text editor understand that I fluctuate between American and British English based on the intricate dance of the stars and moon and that I am, of course, justified in doing so?

This book made me anxious. In the sense that I dreaded reading it, therefore I dreaded reading, therefore I dreaded living. May the Lord bring back the days where the Swedes made good pop music and not stupid books about toy guns. Not the days themselves actually. Just the music. I wish for the 2010s to remain buried and perhaps only unleashed a thousand years into the future like a pharaoh's curse.

And this here is the warning. Thank you so much <3

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[✎] A Room of One's Own

Virginia Woolf

★★★★☆

05/10/2024

Reviewing books I read months ago because I was too [redacted] to do so when I read them yalla let's go diva privas.

First installment in this saga is this banger of a novel. Who would have thought I would agree with a pre-WWI white BRITISH woman? Virginia mothered so that Beyonce could write Lemonade. Yea. Don't argue with me I am literally a floating HTML file on the internet, stored somewhere on a server in Area 51. What you are perceiving is, by definition, a past version of me.

Who knows. Perhaps when you read this, I would have changed my mind. Unlikely. Yea.

Let me FR myself up for a minute though, so future historians have enough content to milk not only for one biography, not two, but perhaps three. Or seven. Not five, though; I don't like that number.

The language was beautiful, and not in a 20th century nightmarish Instragrammable way, but rather subtle and accessible, if there is one way to put it. It remains extremely articulate and expressive, vivid and expansive, but those qualities do not render it an incoherent sluggish mess of foot-long sentences that mean nothing outside tumblr.

I may come off as a stupid know-nothing who cannot write or read anything beyond Internetspeak. Perhaps I am. To you. Again, this is your perception. Loser.

For what it's worth I am a writer. Like yea I am a novelist. Talk your shit. Yea.

I love this very much. Finally a dead author I can speak good of. Virginia Woolf, you are an absolute diva and you deserve the world and I know you'll see this (in your perception, dear reader, I might appear to be schizophrenic fool. Merely projection. I am what you are) but Virginia I want you to know that you did something. Like yes. I see what you meant. I see your vision. I hope you're happy seeing it was not impossible.

This got too sentimental but hey MIND YOUR BUSINESS this is between me and the author. I rebuke any negativity you send my way you fool. Damn. So mad and for what. Yea yea.

I love old book that are smart. Faith in classics: restored (selectively). Smart women only. Y'all's favorite dead white authors can choke on a primordial dick and DIE for all I care. But cool 19th/20th/etc century women who wrote books and poetry and letters, I love you <3.

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[✎] We Hunt the Flame (Sands of Arawiya, 1)

Hafsah Faizal

★★★☆☆

An attempt at Arabism — at best.

01/10/2024 — 04/10/2024

Most often than I would like, I have a problem with diaspora Arabs romanticizing the Arab aesthetic. Because, more often than I would like, their execution tends to be lackluster.

This isn't a bad book by most means. This was mildly entertaining, and therefore I would not place it on the same tier as Circe's generous 2-star rating.

With "most means" I mean mediocre fantasy YAs of the past decade. The extra star is earned out of sympathy, because we do need more Arab writers on the NYT Bestseller list. Expect tired tropes and predictable plots. I'm not a fantasy novice. This would have earned a 4-star were this my first or second read from the genre. But with poor worldbuilding and a commercial-grade standardized plot, my Arab ass cannot with good conscience give this anything above 3 stars.

A search for a magical item that somehow ends up being meant for our main character. Sure. I digress. I'll swallow my criticism down. An enemies to lovers that doesn't really work. For the love of God, this trope would not work if the lovers in question are the two main characters of this novel. I hate how people keep eating this shit up.

Heartless girl meets dark boy. Please. Chew a fucking rock or something I'm over this shit !!

Deen dies and we barely get any reaction from Zafira. Either she is an asshole or the author could not weave the grief into the narrative.

The core idea we started this novel with — woman vs. oppression — was abandoned less than halfway through the novel. And seriously, Zafira needing to "take off her hood" to liberate herself is a very strange notion, especially coming from a hijabi author.

Demenhur being a parallel to Persia does not make this look any cuter. The capital being called Thalj (snow in Arabic) makes no sense, historically, because Demenhur did not have constant snow before the death of magic.

The characters were flat and clean cut. Each inhabited a pre-assigned role and ran with it. No development, no contrast. Altair had some substance, but that's about it. Also, Altair isn't a name. It means "the bird." And just because we use the al (definite article) in Arabic, doesn't mean it is always pronounced as plain al. It depends entirely on the first letter of the first word. In this case, it is pronounced at, i.e. Altair should be at-Tair. Both versions are equally as stupid.

Ghameq just means dark in color in Arabic. It's not a given name. But sure, give it to the Sultan. Because that's such a witty way to hide an easily predictable reveal.

What threw me off was the improper gendering of certain words. Countlessly, Zafira (or other women) were called azizi, habibi, or other similar words, which are masculine.

The Old Tongue or whatever they called it being plain ass Arabic too was so funny to me. I don't know where the energy went with this book, truly.

Changing the aesthetic of a novel does not replace actual pillars of literature, like characters, plot, and message — which this book lacks.

I will be listening to the audiobook of the sequel, just to see where it goes. My expectations will definitely be lower.

[jinndibad-dot-library]

[✎] Alligator and Other Stories

Dima Alzayat

★★★★☆

Haunting, incessant, and ever-spiralling.

18/01/2024 — 30/09/2024

Took me the good part of a year, only to read the second half of this in two days. But I digress.

Very well-executed, with each story carrying a different voice and style. There was a lot of referencing and re-referencing and false referencing, which I enjoyed mainly, although Alligator (the short story) made my head spin a little.

A sense of haunting grew with each story; the feeling of a danger that relentlessly approaches but never realizes its victim. I braced for a gunshot to gut me, but eventually, all it left was a dull nameless yearning, and the unraveling of various wounds one thought were scars.

The loss of a homeland. Decay, but never death. Grieving the very thing you are running away from, musing on the memories you wish to forget. The pain stays even when remembering fails.