zilver
???Tell me how all this, and love too, will ruin us. These, our bodies, possessed by light. Tell me we'll never get used to it.???
i know this book took me a long time for how few pages it has but that was mainly because was cherishing every line and i didn't want to rush any moment of it.
i'd read short bits of richard siken before but honestly this was such an experience. this book tells a story and i'll probably read it again all in one sitting to feel what that's like. but this, this is the kind of poetry that really gets to me. siken's poetry tells me a story and it hits me with its metaphors and sensations in every line. i'm not sure how weird this is to say but his poetry is very sensory? i can feel and taste and smell it while reading it, every poem like a small (or large) multidimensional film experience. it makes me want to try to catch it in images even though i know i won't be able to.
i'm sure i did not understand parts of this and i'm sure i can go back a hundred times and find new things and change my interpretations and just knowing that that's what's ahead? amazing.
some of my favourite lines (emphasis on some because i can't possibly name all of them):
??? ???I want more seats reserved for heroes.?????? ???The light is no mystery, the mystery is that there is something to keep the light from passing through.?????? ???In these dreams it's always you: the boy in the sweatshirt, the boy on the bridge, the boy who always keeps me from jumping off the bridge. Oh, the things we invent when we are scared and want to be rescued.?????? ???Here is my hand, my heart, my throat, my wrist. Here are the illuminated cities at the center of me, and here is the center of me, which is a lake, which is a well that we can drink from, but I can't go through with it. I just don't want to die anymore.???
you know what, disney's peter pan is way shittier than book peter pan except for the fact that book peter pan like... kills the lost boys when they start wanting to grow up. but that's like. a minor thing.
really enjoyed the lowkey sassy narrator that kept saying everyone was stupid. jm barrie was not fucking around.
i love this book. i love smartass eliza, i love socially awkward darcy, i love mr bennet sassing everyone since 1813. i still love it the second time around, probably even more than i did when i read it back in secondary school. jane austen is a badass and deserves all the recognition for showing the world how you write women and how you do character development and giving us a great unreliable narrator.
kay gotta go rewatch the lizzie bennet diaries now. in the meantime, have some lizzie doing darcy costume theatre.
funnily enough i think i started to progressively like this book less and less the more my teacher told me what a genius james joyce was for breathing the air on this earthly plane
[little bit of spoilers but not really tbh no worries you're not missing out]
listen. i can find thought-provoking themes in this book. it's not badly written. there's a lot going on sub textually when it comes to culture and racism and misogyny. but i cannot get over the fact that this main character is one of the least sympathetic people ever. i'm not even trying to be dramatic but nothing he did or thought in this entire book made me like him even a teeny tiny bit. he was a creepy, 50-year-old rapist who got turned on by the fact that his student's hips were “narrow as those of a 12-year-old's” and literally said that he did not value women who did not try to look good for men. honestly go die in a fire. safe to say it did not make this a pleasant read. the most awful thing might be that this guy is a personification of probably a fuckload of real men walking around every day.
i'm sort of curious what our lectures will have to say about it. i'm more than ready to go fume about it with my english lit group. bring it on.
On the Road is what happens if the world tells men that everything they have to say is interesting and worthy of a larger readership.
-
“The truth of the matter is, you die, all you do is die, and yet you live, yes you live, and that's no Harvard lie.”
key words: i don't care about ur male struggles leave me alone
2.5 stars. I'm going to give what I previously wrote a little more substance even though I 203% stand by what I said.
This book was an absolute drag. I gave it three stars but writing this review a week or so later I can't remember why so we're downgrading a bit. The thing that redeemed it was the language, at times. At times it's the kind of poetics you expect from a beat generation poet. Most of the time, however, it's rambly at best and racist & sexist gibberish at worst. It probably didn't help that I read the original scroll, meaning there were no paragraphs, it was just one big blob of letters.
None of the people were really interesting (though they seemed to believe they were). The men were excuse-my-French fucking disgusting most of the time, treating everyone around them terribly without a care in the world. Honestly, I don't give much about this “fresh vision” if it means I have to read about shitty, annoying, boring people for almost 400 pages. Also, nothing happened. People drove that way and fucked up their lives and then hitchhiked the other way and fucked up their lives some more. Cool.
third read this book is a marvel from start to end and i love it to bits, and with every reread i think it probably won't hold up entirely but then it does, and i keep finding new things that expand on this dreamy bubble of a world that donna created. and i had my heart in my THROAT for multiple scenes even though i knew exactly what would happen, it's a masterful work at tension and buildup and delivery. also i forget how FUNNY it is every time. when richard asks henry to get him a magazine while he's on bed rest and henry, distraught, gets him a MEDICAL JOURNAL. god bless. second read beautiful amazing wonderful showstopping incredible
3-3.5 (rewrote this a little bc my english was trash the first time ‘round)
okay, so. this book wasn't boring, but it really wasn't very fast-paced either. the book is set to play out in 24 hours, so i knew going in that it was likely going to be lots of contemplation and Thoughts. i like getting into character's heads, and maybe this is where the whole i'm an eighteen-year-old girl and this is about a fifty-year-old guy comes into play again, because while i really didn't mind being in perowne's head all the time i was also wishing i could get a bit of distance from his old man thoughts after 20 pages.
in general, my thoughts about henry perowne ranged from dude really? to just don't care one single bit to sort of an okay guy throughout the book (not specifically in that order). he thought his kids were great and supported them and so did i so we bonded over that.
the way the last 60(?) pages were handled saved this book imo. it didn't get trope-y, which is what i was sort of afraid of. well done book.
all in all not my fav but also no Disgrace so that's always a plus.
TINY SPOILER but that moment??? when he suddenly becomes sherlock holmes and in literally a split second deduces that this guy that's about to punch him in the freaking face has huntington's disease? .... right.
3.5 (rounded up) at times cheesy and desperately trying to invoke millennial humor - though that is to be expected, i suppose, considering the subject matter - and at times warm and heartfelt and comforting. since on many levels i don???t relate to dolly???s teenage years and early twenties, the first half of the book especially could cross into the contrived for me. the email interludes in particular fell flat and didn???t add much. over the course of the second part this book really opened up to me more. i guess because i like the idea of character growth even in real people and i like watching it happen (or reading about it) because it makes me feel a bit more hopeful about my own person. the fact that maybe it isn???t so crazy insane desperate lost to not know who you are or what you want when you???re 24. the searing importance of friendship felt like a solid, reassuring cornerstone. the focus drawing solace out of simple things felt less forced, more genuine. a good read for when you feel like you???re existing in between time for a bit (like, perhaps, while you???re on holiday)
???Sometimes you can do everything right and things wil still go wrong. The key is to never stop doing right.???
This book should be the top priority on the entire world's reading list.
As heavy and intense as this was it also felt like a huge relief to read a story without any unnecessary drama. With healthy and loving family dynamics and relationships. With teenage characters that (get to) have a clear voice.
funny, thoughtful, quick, and i think overall pretty unique in its focal point, especially in ya. also would like to point out im a massive sucker for parents admitting to their children that they???ve made mistakes, so kudos for that.
So this is what people mean when the talk about a tour de force. I???m writing this review fresh off of finishing the book so it???s likely not as encompassing as it could be, but here we go.
Robin Swift is taken from his home in Canton by the British professor Lovell, and gets dropped in a life that will prepare him to become a translator at Babel, the Oxfordian translation institute, where masters of language use their words to inscribe silver bars with magic. Magic used to help run the country smoothly, to guide its machinery and strengthen its roads and safeguard its people. So they are told. So they believe. Until Robin becomes involved with an underground group of ex-students, among which Lovell???s former ward, who are trying to expose and unmake Babel???s full influence on the country and the world.
“Translation, from time immemorial, has been the
facilitator of peace. Translation makes possible
communication, which in turn makes possible the
kind of diplomacy, trade, and cooperation between foreign peoples that brings wealth and prosperity to all.”
It took me a while to get into this one. It???s a big book. It unfolds slowly. But over the course of its 500+ pages it becomes clear how masterfully Kuang broadens the scope - or shows you how big it???s always been - shifting from intimate to earth-shattering (and back).
The shape this took is wonderfully executed too. It is a history of a period that did not actually happen, but completely woven into the world that did so the two blend easily and without question. The use of (translator???s) footnotes works well and never takes you out of the story, instead becomes an integrated part of the narrative. I love etymology and translation and the puzzles it presents, so naturally the heavy focus on both the depth and the width of languages were a delight.
“Betrayal. Translation means doing violence upon the original, means warping and distorting it for foreign, unintended eyes. So then where does that leave us? How can we conclude, except by acknowledging that an act of translation is then necessarily always an act of betrayal?”
And this book is difficult to read. It is dark academia turned inside out, exposing its innards to you. It deals with (among others) colonialism, abuse, grief, revolution, violence, and the cost of knowledge, and does so in detail and with the weight these things demand. It makes this a book to dig your teeth into. It deserves your full attention.
A high recommendation. An immediate favourite of 2022.
I was lucky enough to receive an ARC of this book after wishing for it on Netgalley. All opinions are my own.
am absolute delight. vibrant, beautiful artwork and a story that, while it???s nothing ???new???, is wonderfully heartwarming.
i received an arc from netgalley in exchange for an honest review.
4-4.5*
???Stay with me, Kate.???
???Do they stay with you????
honestly i was enjoying this book but i wasn???t super invested until suddenly the last 50-100 pages really freakin got to me. tears in my eyes got to me.
4.5 i feel like i immediately want to read this again to fully grasp every little bit about it