Recent Reads
Nov. 13th, 2022 09:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sleepypapercrownsHello world!
This is my first dreamwidth post and it’s going to be a collection of my recent reads. I used to log my reading over on this thread, but found it tedious to upkeep and without enough space to talk about a particularly good (or, let’s be honest, bad) book. I hope you join me!
Love and Other Poems - Alex Dimitrov | poetry | 2021
Poetry is always a hit or miss for me, either I get it or I simply don’t. I had found his poem Poem Written In A Cab somewhere on the internet before and while that one continues to be my favorite, I have found a couple others I enjoyed too. On a completely superficial level this paperback has such a nice touch and size to it, that it just feels enjoyable to hold it in your hands.
My favorite line from aforementioned poem is: “And if you look away from / this page, to your right / there’s the world. / I am only trying to describe it.”
You Made a Fool of Death with Your Beauty by Akwaeke Emezi | romance | 2022
I went into this one completely blind and maybe that was a mistake. I often find that I have a certain notion about a book that turns out to be untrue, which is disappointing. When I fully understood that our main character had the hots for the main dude's dad, I was flabbergasted. This isn’t to say that this wasn’t well written or not an interesting read but I somehow couldn’t get past this revelation for the rest of my read.
The Year of Miracles by Ella Risbridger | cookbook, essays, memoir | 2022
Ella’s first cookbook, Midnight Chicken, made me tear up during the introduction. A cookbook! She has a beautiful way of writing and both of these books are not simple cookbooks with glossy pictures of styled food. Each recipe is introduced by an anecdote from her life and the only “picture” you get of the food is a watercolor illustration by Elisa Cunningham. Ella encourages you to taste as you go, she tells you to do what you want and says that it’s okay to mess up. For me, cooking is for the soul and even if I sometimes forget that, these books make me remember it again, and again, and again.
Seven Days in June by Tia Williams | romance | 2021
Seven Days in June made me laugh, warmed my heart, made me cringe and also emotional! It’s about a single mom, Eva, with chronic excruciating migraines getting to meet the one who got away again at a book panel. As a sufferer of frequent headaches I loved seeing this representation. The author didn’t spend a lot of time selling you the attraction between the two main leads and instead opted to spend time with all the people in Eva’s life. So we get time to see Eva’s relationship with her daughter in contrast to the one she has with her mother. What I really enjoyed too was how introducing the daughter to the love interest was handled. Please do check trigger warnings before reading this though, there are heavy themes of drug abuse and self harm.
The Magic Fish by Trung Le Ngyuen | graphic novel, magical realism | 2020
The Magic Fish is so, so, so delightful. It’s about Tiến who is reading fairy tales to his mom so that they can learn English together. Like first of all, how cute is that? But then add to that the art style and color palettes, the fairy tales telling us we’re good the way we are and Tiến wanting to tell his parents that he’s gay but not knowing how… and you get such a heartfelt, magical and joyful story.
A Prayer for the Crown–Shy by Becky Chambers | sci-fi | 2022
Look, I just love Mosscap and Sibling Dex, ok? If you wanted a sci-fi with huge world building, intricate politics and complicated space-ships you’d be wrong here. This one is just about feeling lost in life and trying to find meaning still. I loved seeing Dex flirting (Does that sound weird? haha), loved meeting their family and loved just spending time with these two again.
I just flipped through it again and a line that punched the knife right back into my heart was this: “It was always a strange thing, coming home. Coming home meant that you had, at one point, left it and, in doing so, irreversibly changed. How odd, then, to be able to return to a place that would always be anchored in your notion of the past. How could this place still be there, if the you that once lived there no longer existed?”
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin | fiction | 2022
In simplest words Tomorrow x3, as it’s affectionately called by the internet, is a book about two friends who start to create video games together. However, really it is about love in all its facets, about chronic pain, losing family and friends and sometimes even about finding each other again. All the video game talk might be alienating to someone unfamiliar, but to me it felt like coming home. The pressure of school to be the best, the hope that you might actually be able to get there, the naive idea to work with your best friend without your relationship changing in the process, the struggle to keep creating even when life is hard. All of these themes made me feel SO much with these characters in the first half of the book. When Zevin took [redacted] away from me, I completely lost it. I’m quite sad that the ending of the book fizzled out so much. There was a point where I felt the omniscient narrator bouncing between characters was actually hindering me from feeling deeply with them. All in all, this was still such an amazing book, so readable and fun, yet sad and devastating. I was impressed!
To find a nice quote, I just flipped through all of my dog-eared pages and god damn. Please, someone, anyone, who has read this book, come talk to me.
“Sam’s doctor said to him, “The good news is that the pain is in your head.” But I am in my head, Sam thought.”
Everything, Beautiful by Ella Frances Sanders | nonfiction | 2022
I cannot recall how I found Ella (I have a theme of Ella’s going on it seems) but I have been following her newsletter for a while. Her writing style in particular is what pulls me in every time, it’s so whimsical and beautiful. Besides her most recent projects, she often just talks about the birds she saw or the old man at the library. It reminds me to appreciate the simple things in life and that’s exactly what the message of this book is as well. On top of speaking about beautiful things, the book itself is extremely beautifully and intricately illustrated by Ella herself. It also includes little tasks throughout the book that I’ll surely come back to and when I just flipped through I found a leaf that I had left to press in there. It’s such a little gem!
Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkemann | nonfiction | 2021
This one got recommended to me, but I was skeptical so I acquired it in the easiest way I could: an audiobook from the library. There were some good ideas with a majority of normal stuff I already do, but if I’m being honest nothing stuck with me. That could also be because of the format, as I listened to it pretty quickly and didn’t pause to think about specific chapters or ideas.
Wintering by Katherine May | nonfiction, memoir | 2020
With this one I had similarly big and differing expectations compared to what the book turned out to be. I was expecting a well researched book on how the dark months affect people, how certain cultures learned to adapt and also a kind of pep talk on how it’s okay to slow down. What I got was a sort of memoir of her highly privileged life interspersed with facts that didn’t have sufficient evidence. She is very lucky to be able to take so much time off, try out different things and quit her job in order to improve her overall well being, but that’s just not how 90% of the world works.
Most of these books I have read quite a while ago and even if my memory is not the best, holding them in my hands again and flipping through while writing this post was such a nice experience. I have recently started underlining in my physical books (in pencil!) and, oh, how nice it is to read those lines again and get teleported back into reading them for the first time.
This is my first dreamwidth post and it’s going to be a collection of my recent reads. I used to log my reading over on this thread, but found it tedious to upkeep and without enough space to talk about a particularly good (or, let’s be honest, bad) book. I hope you join me!
Love and Other Poems - Alex Dimitrov | poetry | 2021
Poetry is always a hit or miss for me, either I get it or I simply don’t. I had found his poem Poem Written In A Cab somewhere on the internet before and while that one continues to be my favorite, I have found a couple others I enjoyed too. On a completely superficial level this paperback has such a nice touch and size to it, that it just feels enjoyable to hold it in your hands.
My favorite line from aforementioned poem is: “And if you look away from / this page, to your right / there’s the world. / I am only trying to describe it.”
You Made a Fool of Death with Your Beauty by Akwaeke Emezi | romance | 2022
I went into this one completely blind and maybe that was a mistake. I often find that I have a certain notion about a book that turns out to be untrue, which is disappointing. When I fully understood that our main character had the hots for the main dude's dad, I was flabbergasted. This isn’t to say that this wasn’t well written or not an interesting read but I somehow couldn’t get past this revelation for the rest of my read.
The Year of Miracles by Ella Risbridger | cookbook, essays, memoir | 2022
Ella’s first cookbook, Midnight Chicken, made me tear up during the introduction. A cookbook! She has a beautiful way of writing and both of these books are not simple cookbooks with glossy pictures of styled food. Each recipe is introduced by an anecdote from her life and the only “picture” you get of the food is a watercolor illustration by Elisa Cunningham. Ella encourages you to taste as you go, she tells you to do what you want and says that it’s okay to mess up. For me, cooking is for the soul and even if I sometimes forget that, these books make me remember it again, and again, and again.
Seven Days in June by Tia Williams | romance | 2021
Seven Days in June made me laugh, warmed my heart, made me cringe and also emotional! It’s about a single mom, Eva, with chronic excruciating migraines getting to meet the one who got away again at a book panel. As a sufferer of frequent headaches I loved seeing this representation. The author didn’t spend a lot of time selling you the attraction between the two main leads and instead opted to spend time with all the people in Eva’s life. So we get time to see Eva’s relationship with her daughter in contrast to the one she has with her mother. What I really enjoyed too was how introducing the daughter to the love interest was handled. Please do check trigger warnings before reading this though, there are heavy themes of drug abuse and self harm.
The Magic Fish by Trung Le Ngyuen | graphic novel, magical realism | 2020
The Magic Fish is so, so, so delightful. It’s about Tiến who is reading fairy tales to his mom so that they can learn English together. Like first of all, how cute is that? But then add to that the art style and color palettes, the fairy tales telling us we’re good the way we are and Tiến wanting to tell his parents that he’s gay but not knowing how… and you get such a heartfelt, magical and joyful story.
A Prayer for the Crown–Shy by Becky Chambers | sci-fi | 2022
Look, I just love Mosscap and Sibling Dex, ok? If you wanted a sci-fi with huge world building, intricate politics and complicated space-ships you’d be wrong here. This one is just about feeling lost in life and trying to find meaning still. I loved seeing Dex flirting (Does that sound weird? haha), loved meeting their family and loved just spending time with these two again.
I just flipped through it again and a line that punched the knife right back into my heart was this: “It was always a strange thing, coming home. Coming home meant that you had, at one point, left it and, in doing so, irreversibly changed. How odd, then, to be able to return to a place that would always be anchored in your notion of the past. How could this place still be there, if the you that once lived there no longer existed?”
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin | fiction | 2022
In simplest words Tomorrow x3, as it’s affectionately called by the internet, is a book about two friends who start to create video games together. However, really it is about love in all its facets, about chronic pain, losing family and friends and sometimes even about finding each other again. All the video game talk might be alienating to someone unfamiliar, but to me it felt like coming home. The pressure of school to be the best, the hope that you might actually be able to get there, the naive idea to work with your best friend without your relationship changing in the process, the struggle to keep creating even when life is hard. All of these themes made me feel SO much with these characters in the first half of the book. When Zevin took [redacted] away from me, I completely lost it. I’m quite sad that the ending of the book fizzled out so much. There was a point where I felt the omniscient narrator bouncing between characters was actually hindering me from feeling deeply with them. All in all, this was still such an amazing book, so readable and fun, yet sad and devastating. I was impressed!
To find a nice quote, I just flipped through all of my dog-eared pages and god damn. Please, someone, anyone, who has read this book, come talk to me.
“Sam’s doctor said to him, “The good news is that the pain is in your head.” But I am in my head, Sam thought.”
Everything, Beautiful by Ella Frances Sanders | nonfiction | 2022
I cannot recall how I found Ella (I have a theme of Ella’s going on it seems) but I have been following her newsletter for a while. Her writing style in particular is what pulls me in every time, it’s so whimsical and beautiful. Besides her most recent projects, she often just talks about the birds she saw or the old man at the library. It reminds me to appreciate the simple things in life and that’s exactly what the message of this book is as well. On top of speaking about beautiful things, the book itself is extremely beautifully and intricately illustrated by Ella herself. It also includes little tasks throughout the book that I’ll surely come back to and when I just flipped through I found a leaf that I had left to press in there. It’s such a little gem!
Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkemann | nonfiction | 2021
This one got recommended to me, but I was skeptical so I acquired it in the easiest way I could: an audiobook from the library. There were some good ideas with a majority of normal stuff I already do, but if I’m being honest nothing stuck with me. That could also be because of the format, as I listened to it pretty quickly and didn’t pause to think about specific chapters or ideas.
Wintering by Katherine May | nonfiction, memoir | 2020
With this one I had similarly big and differing expectations compared to what the book turned out to be. I was expecting a well researched book on how the dark months affect people, how certain cultures learned to adapt and also a kind of pep talk on how it’s okay to slow down. What I got was a sort of memoir of her highly privileged life interspersed with facts that didn’t have sufficient evidence. She is very lucky to be able to take so much time off, try out different things and quit her job in order to improve her overall well being, but that’s just not how 90% of the world works.
Most of these books I have read quite a while ago and even if my memory is not the best, holding them in my hands again and flipping through while writing this post was such a nice experience. I have recently started underlining in my physical books (in pencil!) and, oh, how nice it is to read those lines again and get teleported back into reading them for the first time.
