melissa

I haven't read a Palahniuk book in so long i'd forgotten if i really liked them or just the hype from the adapted movie. Turns out i do really like the books, i'd forgotten how good the rants and the stream of consciousness are. Not much happens in his books yet it feels overwhelming, my brain is overstimulated and i love it. In his non-fiction book he speaks of how his time is divided in amassing information for 6 months then regurgitating them in the form of a book the next, and you feel the amount of research done prior to this book, and it made me want to write something of my own after all that i read.

Just epically emotionally brilliant, happy i took my time reading it ^_^

I find it weird to review a play that's over 2 millennia, but i do write these to remember my impression of a book. I had to read some context to understand what was going on, apparently there are 3 plays that follow that one, not much happened here it was just an intro (also some dialogue is missing and it's Eschyle's first), but looking forward to follow the Danaids.

I really did not get the point Camus was making, and why he cared so much to show us that life is absurd. Two hundred pages to speak of the meaning of life I'd understand that, but hundreds of pages to speak of its meaningless kinda defeats the point. The lady doth protest too much.

The 3 stars is for the sentence “il faut imaginer Sisyphe heureux”.

Lenin pretty much explains why WWI was inevitable with the world divvied up amongst 6 imperialist powers in 1900. With Capitalism having to endlessly grow, it will inevitably turn to imperialism, and reforming it instead of fighting imperialism is nonsensical and chauvinistic. Anyway, he says it better, read it.

This was really nice, love the illustrations.

If i could've imagined the perfect book to make Greek Mythology accessible to me that'd be it.

It's a five star book for the main reason that Dubois' witness account of post-abolition America is priceless, however, if I had to study that book in college and be told to agree with him I would've been quite incensed. According to Dubois, the ex-slave must work to be respected by the white man, he should be educated and “civilized” is the word used, and the main idea being, having been a main part in the construction of “America”, the black folk are as equally deserving of the stolen land as the white men. Of course Dubois never refers to America as stolen land, he never even mentions the presence of the natives who like the kidnapped people of Africa have experienced unbelievable sorrow on the hands of the pilgrims and white colonizers, and that to me makes his whole analysis baseless.

It's a fun one, slow paced but enjoyed the vibe. It felt like a horror movie from the 80s. It's all good just didn't give me the heartache the other books did.

This was a really fun and captivating read. The first started with a lot of answers and nothing to link them, this one by a lot of questions.
The first book was also stuck in the concept of writing about the 4 high school archetypes, i'm glad in this one we got more complex characters to follow. It was more personal and emotional, an interesting side to have while the mystery is unfolding. It was cut short tho, probably more answers in the sequel? Now i have a whole year to wait for it and i dnt enjoy that lol.

Something i think about whenever i'm reading an american teen novel, are america's kids' problems so big or are they dramatized and exaggerated for the sake of fiction. And if so, won't at some point life imitate art, and have teens juggling life's biggest challenges cz they believe they're supposed to. Seeing how many teens are driven to suicide or shootings, i guess many do believe the highschool experience is that important to perfect, when i have no idea how the social life in school as a concept started (might be another thing started in movies that life decided to imitate). Like couldn't all these films be made about college kids instead of highschool kids? Isn't worrying about getting good grades and accepted in colleges enough?
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I had started writing that review not knowing where the book is going, but it did give me that feeling of anxiety and suffocation, and not to spoil anything but it makes sense.
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It's a good book, the mystery part is intriguing, u can build ur own theories while reading the book, there's nothing the protagonists know that u don't, which is always more fun when reading a mystery. The reveal was good, made sense, and the book gave us enough time to say goodbye to the characters, also an important thing for me. Also it really made me hate cops, the book gets an extra point for that.

Not a stand alone book but a nice extra read after finishing the previous ones in the series.

It's more of a 3,5 then a 4/5 but basically it was exactly all i want from a YA novel. I will not elaborate cz spoilers, but definitely prefer Leah's POV to Simon's.

Here's my problem with this book, i watched the movie first, and that movie is BAD! Second, the way Simon is played in the movie is so totally obnoxious that it took me halfway through the book to stop rolling my eyes at everything he does, cause let's be honest he's not the smartest guy. I did very much enjoy the second half, it is a very cute book - will be reading the sequel cause i am very much intrigued by Leah.

I was skeptic about his, cause why would i read poems about Palestine in English, but some really do work beautifully. I'm also not a fan of the modernist scrambled syntax in poetry but if there's a place to use them to provoke a feeling of desiccated and attacked History, it's here. I still feel this book is more guided towards English speakers to learn the realities of the Palestinian struggle, than an Arab who grew up with its repercussions, still very much recommend.

It's just bad writing. You have an 80s novel trying to act Victorian, so it's just vague time wise, language wise and structure wise. It's just a bad imitation of the kings of the genre. Also nothing happens, and instead of spookiness you get the narrator repeating to us how scared and frightened he is over and over. I don't read a horror book to listen to some guy telling me he's scared, the point is to get spooked ourselves. Anyway, it's unending, the book could've been an interesting 20 page short story but it's 10 times that, and i will not spoil the ending, but let's say it angered me more than anything else.

Me reading the book:
“Looking forward to discussing this and what that concept means in society. Is it eugenics? How ethical was it? Is fixing someone's brain like fixing someone's eyesight with glasses, or is it despicable to even think about it? Are we giving people a chance or erasing who they are? Would be such a good book to have in a book club cz there a bunch of questions to think about”

Me after finishing book:
Stupid book made me cry

An interesting read, a good introduction to the unbalanced relation between the citizen and the state.

Finally finished it! This one took me a while, but mainly cause the edition i got had a tiny font and unending pages. Honestly this is an underrated book, every adaptation of it has been really lazy, the movies are mainly the first 10% of the book. Loved the interchangeable POVs, the diary entries, the epistolary parts, article cuttings, throughout the book we are trying to figure out the mysteries surrounding our characters and how they could be linked. And even though Dracula is the most popular vampire tale, i still got sucked into the mystery. I also really love reading the origin of popular tropes, and this one has a bunch, there's a whole storyline that most probably influenced the biggest reveal in the Harry Potter books (no spoilers) mainly i think, people think they know Dracula so much from the many homages and interpretations, that the original tale has been forgotten. Recommend reading if you're into some spooky vibes and a bit of mystery.

Definitely an interesting read. Had to fact check along the way, see what was proven and what was a theory. But even on cases that are complete conjecture, the official files are built on nonsense, so foulplay is very easily called in. Either way, we know cointelpro happened, so did MKultra and operation chaos, the fact that a similar thing influenced the fate of “unruly” musicians is not a stretch in my opinion. Until more files are declassified basically.

I really liked it, the last third was so beautiful, but it felt more like a novella than a novel. i wish it went more in depth, longer, more developed instead of a sort of just a metaphor.

lol sad idk.
It's not emotional, nothing over the top happens, just a constant feeling of sadness and fatality. It's a book that i loved reading very slowly on purpose.

It's mostly Hercule Poirot short stories, which I discovered I don't enjoy very much. Fun but nothing special.

Made me realize how similar the imperialistic strategies are in all corners of the world. We Are the Ocean emphasizes on how the pacific islands were divided and alienated from each other, instead of sharing the ocean, they are now each fitted on islands too small to be self-sufficient and forced to rely on foreign aid. Something very similar happened in the middle east with Sykes Picot, the same colonizers divided us and we're trying to find a solution from within when the problem came from without.

Also as one of the very few native anthropologists Hau`ofa showcases the “orientalism” this branch of studies is immersed in especially when its leading figures are our colonizers.

It's hard to rate a book that's actually an israeli study on how to destroy the region, but that five is cause it's a necessary read to understand what we've been going through since 2007 (when the study was written).

How they planned the sunni-shia schism, how they planned the excessive sanctions on iran, syria and now Lebanon, how they planned the war on Syria and rallying all western powers to call any anti-zionist movement a “terrorist org”, how they planned to use the destabilization of Lebanon to lead us to another civil war and the list goes on.

We live neighboring a power of absolute evil that cold bloodily writes a study with bulletpoints on the “steps to f*ck it all up”, must read to understand the depravity and how we've been foiling their plans even if rn, in the eye of the storm, it doesn't seem like it.