#mercurywave

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you are what you love, not who loves you.

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i love a good bingo card! the book i finished today already meets the criteria, so i'm gonna add it here:

2016: 13 Ways of Looking At A Fat Girl, by Mona Awad ★★★

i felt quite conflicted reading this - i don't believe that the author intended for this book to be representative of all plus-sized people's feelings and perspectives, and i recognize that the MC is intentionally very unlikeable - but while i enjoyed Awad's prose, the subject matter left a sinking feeling in my stomach.

The people have spoken! Backlogbooks 2025 Bingo Challenge will include the 60s, 70s, 80s, and 90s, and the years 2000-2019! More bingo cards under the cut, but here's how to play!

There are five cards to choose from--the first goes in order, and all the others are random. You mark off boxes by reading books that were published in that year (or decade, for those boxes). Aim for a five across bingo, get the four corners, make another cute design, or, if you're hardcore, go for a full blackout card!

The rest of your engagement is up to you! I'd love to see book photos, reviews, recommendations, and other discussion! Personally, I'm going to try to put out recommendations for books that'll fit the challenge, either by genre or by publication year, and to post about the books I'm reading. The tag for this challenge is #backlogbooks bingo challenge so I'll check that out periodically to see how people are doing!

You can also join the storygraph challenge here :-)

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18.01.2025

a skittle mani! i had to cut a few nails down last week because they were growing a bit wonky :( still don’t like the length difference but i did file down the others so the disparity isn’t as large

thumbs: opi cliffside karaoke

pointers: holo taco phantom call

middles: holo taco bring me the teal

rings: catrice liquid silver

pinkies: holo taco cats evasion

[mercurywave]

the storm we made, by vanessa chan ★★★★★

as it gets closer to time for me to leave my home country and start a new chapter of adulthood, i’ve felt so compelled to read more books about malaysia. i wonder if non-asians who read this book would romanticise the tropical weather the way i’ve always romanticised autumn and winter. growing up here, i’ve always hated the heat and humidity (but loved the torrential storms, floodings aside), but i wonder if it sounds enticing to others.

the story takes place through the pov of cecily and her three children, and it was a delight to experience four different perspectives of that time period, even though sometimes the voices of cecily and her eldest daughter melded a little - perhaps it was intentional, to illustrate how a child takes away certain lessons from their parents.

while neither i nor my parents were alive during the time, the nostalgia was so palpable. i still played some of the games described, i’ve seen my grandparents’ photos donning similar fashion, i’ve been to bintang in kuala lumpur.

spoilers under the cut:

i felt for all of the characters. i loved how they were all flawed, and took turns to be painfully unlikeable, and yet i rooted for them all.

self-important, judgmental, intelligent cecily, weighed down by the guilt of her terrible mistake that nobody could know about.

harsh, jealous, competent jujube, the eldest daughter who had to be the adult when her parents collapsed, who repressed her emotions so hard that she believed she was above it all (not unlike her mother).

charismatic, reckless, confident abel, reduced to a shell of his former self, needing alcohol to chase away the nightmares.

sweet, sheltered, young jasmin, experiencing her first brush with betrayal, trying to help her friend who is worse off than her.

rich, beautiful, sociable lina, who just needed a friend, who sought love from the wrong places, who placed her trust in the wrong people. my stomach turned for her.

brownnosing, faithful, loving gordon, who worshipped his colonizer, whose family was his entire happiness, who didn’t deserve what cecily did to him.

[mercurywave]