Madison
I never thought I would love this book so much, but it's utterly phenomenal. It's so deceptively well-crafted. I am in aw.
I think reading this in January, though still winter, was the wrong move. I'll see if I fare better with it leading up to Christmas next year while I'm at home. Still, I don't really like the blasé and frequently ignorant feeling attitude toward Catholicism.
This book has got to be one of my new favorite books. It's beautifully written and I recommend it to everyone.
This is the kind of book that is properly read through the haze of a migraine. I find that that just might be the best way to try and put oneself in Richard's shoes. This was a truly captivating story, and as per usual, certain tragedies caught me completely by surprise. I'm just trying to process it now, I suppose.
I like the idea of this book, and I do try my best to enjoy magical realism (I did, after all, love One Hundred Years of Solitude), but this just didn't do it for me. Tita makes stupid decisions, and I don't think that the book has any moral message at all. Far be it from me to claim that any and all books need a moral message, as they really don't, but I think this one is dangerous in its lack of such a thing. It depicts this “relationship” that is almost entirely based on lust, with no emotional development at all, and then the both of them die at the end from their mutual passion. It's ridiculous, and sets a dangerous standard for women. It's just that Tita and Pedro's relationship is so utterly milquetoast it's repulsive. John at least genuinely cares for and admires Tita, while Pedro really only cares for her body. I can't say anything against the theme of liberation in this book, but it bugs me that that might be the only thing some readers get out of it. I think (and maybe hope) that the way Esquivel writes John is to send readers a message about what real love and companionship should be, to set a standard for how a real man should behave (instead of keeling over after doing the deed, loser), but that hope is rather dashed by calling Pedro's forcing himself on Tita “true love”. It disgusts me. The only hope I can gather from this story is that part of its point is for readers like me to have the same reaction to it that I do, in order to get across less blatant themes, such as having standards and whatnot. Maybe I'm angry because I'm Catholic, but that doesn't change the fact that I'm angry. Maybe it's a story that portrays the negative effects of generational trauma, the hatred and hideous idiocy that can be born of loveless familial relationships. I just think that a lot of scenes in this book are of women being “liberated” by being swept off their feet by rapey, womanizing men. I think someday I'll have to read it it Spanish or perhaps write an essay about it to really get out my frustration at the way that it ends and the way the characters handle themselves. I think, if I looked long enough, this book could wash a waterfall of themes over me, but I don't want to. Obviously there is romance etc etc, but coupled with that is the idea of the liberation of women from traditional roles, the breaking of generational trauma (sort of), and the pursuit of one's own life. Depending on what kind of reader you are, you might romanticize the drama and thrill of it all, or you might hate the lesson it seems to convey, like I do. I think, if the book maybe lasted longer or cared less about the drama and more about the intricacy of characters rather than plot, I would like it better.
This book was a very good read. Sure, it took me a whole lot longer than I thought it would, but I definitely enjoyed reading it. I feel as if a lot of the people who left one star reviews are the types who can't understand what empathy means. These types of people found “white devil” too offensive to them so they stopped reading before they could get to see the growth of a regular man who realized the error of his ways and set about trying to change other's lives for the better. Malcolm X may not have been a perfect man, but who is?
Above all, this book made me pretty sad throughout when Malcolm X would talk about what he thought the future would be like or how the system might change in the future. It's not fun to realize how little the core issues of the US or the system that produced these issues has changed over 60 years.
I'd recommend this book to anyone who wants to understand more about Malcolm X or racism in general.
I never thought I'd read an Ali Hazelwood novel (being prejudiced against Reylo and having the eyes to see the cover of Love Hypothesis, as well as not finding any particular appeal to Adam Driver), but this really surprised me and I thoroughly enjoyed it. It might be the chess, since I don't really have an interest in the STEM subjects of her other works, but either way I loved it. I think maybe the really casual and blatant approach to sex would make me hope there's no younger teenagers reading this, but for my own age range there was nothing explicit. This novel isn't a masterpiece of modern literature by any means, but I really liked it and would definitely read it again. It's also managed to make me feel like getting even more into improving myself in chess, so thanks to this book, my next literary purchase will probably be chess related.