2020 reading wrap-up
Wednesday, 9 December 2020 03:02![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
braintransplantthe dark dark by samantha hunt
rating: 4 stars
summary: short stories that have the same energy as that mushroom guy on hannibal
comments: stunning writing style!!
highlight: People cheat because they are no longer running away from saber toothed tigers. I get that.
the bluest eye by toni morrison
rating: 4 stars
summary: the ultimate meditation on beauty, conformity, and love.
comments: this is the first toni morrison book i’ve ever read and she lived up to my expectations for sure. her writing is straightforward and sparse but never at the cost of elegance. sula and song of solomon are on my 2021 tbr!
highlight: We were so beautiful when we stood astride her ugliness.
don’t sleep, there are snakes by daniel everett
rating: 2.5 stars
summary: ethnographic/linguistic novel in which the author ultimately abandons christianity/the mission he was sent to the piraha village on.
comments: this book doesn’t rein in its slightly exoticizing narrative as well as it thinks it does, but it wasn’t as egregious as others i have read. the writing was dense and mostly boring.
highlight: N/A
the opposite of loneliness by marina keegan
rating: 2 stars
summary: short stories by a yale graduate.
comments: this book was published posthumously after the author died in a card crash 5 days after graduating, and unfortunately i think that contributed to this book’s success more than marina keegan’s writing. its not bad by any means, but this collection is middle-of-the-road average straight through, save for an essay about celiac disease.
highlight: N/A
mating in captivity by esther perel
rating: 5 stars
summary: an interrogation of the most tightly held beliefs about marriage, sex, and love.
comments: i read this entire book in one day 11 months ago and i am still not ready to read esther perel’s other book. i think about shit esther perel said in this book every day of my life, and i dont even want to get married or like being romanced. i had trouble choosing a single quote for the highlight!!! this book is also the source of We often confuse love with surveillance.
highlight: “You can’t choose between inhaling and exhaling; you have to do both. It’s the same thing with intimacy and passion.” I explain to Ben that the tension between security and adventure is a paradox to manage, not a problem to solve. It is a puzzle. “Can you hold the awareness of each polarity? You need each at different times, but you can’t have both at the same time. Can you accept that?”
the oracle year by charles soule
rating: 2 stars
summary: book about a guy who wakes up with the ability to predict random, bizarre, hyper-specific events in the future that doesn’t deliver on its epic premise satisfyingly at all
comments: the first 30 pages of this? cool as hell. the rest? major drag.
highlights: N/A
salt by nayyirah waheed
rating: 1 star
summary: i do not remember anything about this poetry collection
commentary: this had an insanely good rating on goodreads (4.3 stars), but i just didn't connect with it at all. there were one or two poems i thought were above fairly good, but otherwise, this just wasnt for me!
highlight: she asked, ‘you are in love, what does love look like?’ to which i replied ‘like everything i’ve ever lost come back to me.’
fieldnotes on ordinary love by keith s wilson
rating: 3 stars
summary: another poetry collection i don’t remember anything about…
comments: didn’t love this, didn’t hate it. picked it up because i knew it contained the poem ‘cincinnati windy grays’ which has this stanza i love: i dreamed of you. it was loud and bright / and moving. fast. it was moving too fast. / i was lying in the grass. / breathing.
highlight: Who could love you like this? Who else will sew you in the stars?
teaching my mother how to give birth by warsan shire
rating: 2 stars
summary: don't remember…
comments: ANOTHER poetry collection i just didn’t connect with. i’ve read warsan shire and loved her before, but this just didn’t do it for me. i get why people love this collection though
highlight: N/A
a storm of swords by george r r martin
rating: 5 stars
summary: everything in the asoiaf universe collides in an enormous, beautiful disaster.
comments: this is the best book in asoiaf, easily. i tore through all 1,177 pages at warp speed. jon snow’s character arc in this is phenomenal, we get the red wedding, stannis supremacy takes root, sansa makes it to the vale, arya and the hound meet up...its perfect. perfect!!!!
highlight: "Your Grace," said Davos, "the cost..." / "I know the cost!" The king moved, so his shadow fell upon King's Landing. "If Joffrey should die...what is the life of one bastard boy against a kingdom?"
dune by frank herbert
rating: 4 stars
summary: its about sand, and committing war crimes
comments: the world building/lore in this book is crazy to the point of being almost excessive. i was definitely entertained, and will be reading the sequels! paul is indeed a very interesting protag, and watching him take advantage of religion, basically lying to himself/everyone who follows him about being the messiah as he takes over arrakis is a wild ride. a compelling story about the dangers of charismatic leaders that can easily go over your head if you eventually buy into paul’s bullshit.
highlight: You cannot back into the future.
sputnik sweetheart by haruki murakami
rating: 1 star
summary: the cut-and-paste murakami male protag is in love with a girl who is cool, but disappears.
comments: i haaaaaated this. all the characters were so boring. reconfirmed my murakami haterism.
highlight: N/A
impossible owls by brian phillips
rating: 5 stars
summary: essay collection that is all narrative non-fiction. sled dog racing, tigers, sumo wrestling, russian animators…
comments: i love this essay collection, and brian phillips is the kind of writer who had me staring slack jawed at the page after reading certain lines. the iditarod dog race piece and the sumo piece are the strongest imo, but the others were wonderful as well, and i think there is at least one essay in this book that will strike everyone.
highlight: When everything can vanish, you make a sport out of not vanishing.
the terror by dan simmons
rating: 5 stars
summary: two sea-faring vessels get frozen in the arctic ice in 1845, and their crews are terrorized by an inuit folk creature until they eventually succumb to cannibalism and murder as they try to reach rescue while dying of scurvy, botulism, and lead poisoning.
comments: i enjoyed the hell out of this, but i will never recommend it to another human being. the writing is dense, tough, esoteric and bordering on unfeeling. to me, that just made the few glimpses of tenderness between the crewmates even more pain inducing. i read this in tandem with watching the tv adaptation, and i honestly think the show is better, because it does diverge from the book in theme, tone and story a bit. also, the handling of indigenous characters in this novel has questionable moments for sure.
highlight: We are all eaters of souls.
the poppy war by rfk
rating: 2 stars?
summary: i can't
comments: i can't
highlights: N/A
the dragon republic by rfk
rating: 3 stars?
summary: i promise i wont blindly follow random bitches *blindly follows random bitches*
comments: i liked this more than tpw, and this book is the reason i love chaghan. the most interesting shit in this to me was the interax with the naimads! and the beautiful chaghan/rin haterism. everything else made my eyes roll back into my head for the most part.
highlight: You would be stunned. You have no idea how many men are like Altan Trengsin.
pride and prejudice by jane austen
rating: 4 stars
summary: the haters to love blueprint, but make it regency
comments: this really tugged at my heart, even when i knew pretty much everything that was going to happen. darcy and elizabeth are genuinely delightful characters. the final love confession did disappoint me a bit, the last third of the book dragged slightly, and those two factors knocked off that fifth star i was going to give it.
highlight: I cannot fix on the hour, or the spot, or the look or the words, which laid the foundation. It is too long ago. I was in the middle before I knew that I had begun.
gone by michael grant
rating: N/A
summary: i promise i wont mutate children, sever arms, torture classmates, trap kids’ hands in cinderblock, make out at a gravesite, be an evil twin, perform diy amputations, create a preschool hostage situation or cause a nuclear meltdown.
comments: sometimes you have to revisit crazy ya series you loved when you were 13. this was exactly as i remembered it, meaning it was unhinged as hell. i think this seeded my taste for dark body horror psychological thriller garbage. no rating because i cant be objective through my own nostalgia!
highlights: Ninth graders with machine guns: it's hard to make that a happy story.
fieldnotes on ordinary love by randy lundy
rating: N/A
summary: poems that feel like they fell out of the dust bowl, somehow. plain, patient, dripping with humility...something about raising dogs.
comments: no rating because i still don't know how to feel about this collection! randy lundy is a writer i will be revisiting in 2021.
highlight: Death is a horse that runs constantly toward or away from what you think you know. / Another and another.word after word. And the sky. And the wind. / And mind. A fist opening into a hand, / opening like an eye.
the winged histories by sofia samatar
rating: 5 stars
summary: war ends. nothing else does.
comments: this book made me feel like i was dying in a fire. it was like looking at a painting from afar, and then very close. compelling, varied characters, a confused, real world, and an intelligent story that interrogates its own themes to the bitter end. i love this book to death. sofia samatar’s writing is stunning!!!!
highlight: Delicious motto of the traitorous dead. Sometimes I could not sleep, thinking of how I would say those words to him. Kestenya rukebnar.
the left hand of darkness by ursula k le guin
rating: 5 stars
summary: what if there was no gender and you were a political refugee on a planet covered in ice and there is only one person in the world who loves you?
comments: this book makes me feel like someone is peeling apart the double helix in my DNA. miss le guin killed me dead and was decades ahead of her time. i cried on roughly 5 different occasions reading this. and, this book stands all by itself...it reminds me of nothing else, and nothing else reminds me of it. i love the world building, the narrative, the characters, and the format that rotates between genly’s POV, old reports by other ekumen, and copies of in-universe folklore. its basically my job to make people read this now. im an employee
highlight: If you ever lied to me, it was long ago, and in another country.
braided worlds by philip and alma gottleib
rating: 4 stars
summary: some anthropologists live in a village among the beng in cote d’ivoir, exploring race, global inequity, death, life, and post-colonialism.
comments: normally i dont rate books i read for school, but i actually enjoyed this one. the authors did not fall into exotifying tropes/the usual pitfalls of anthropological/ethnographic writing, and have done a lot to try and help the people they studied. i love the chapter about the death of phillip’s father and the funeral the beng people held for him. first time i cried during assigned reading LOL
highlight: N/A
the fifth season by n.k. jemison
rating: 3 stars
summary: in-process apocalypse, inventive fantasy races/lore, and earth magic.
comments: i love the premise of this, and the fact that the 3 different point of views all converge into being the same person, but something kept me from loving this. mostly the writing style, now that i think about it. jemison broke into italics and repetition a lot but it just wasnt working. one POV was written in 2nd person which i did not like. there were also in-universe curse words that were just cringey and put me off. i started the next in the series because im still curious about the plot though!
highlight: N/A
the immortal life of henrietta lacks by rebecca skloot
rating: N/A
summary: an investigative journalism style piece that is basically a love letter to henrietta lacks (and her family), the origin of the HeLa cells that are a part of every medical advancement we’ve made since the fifties.
comments: second time i cried reading something for school! i dont know what to say about this...i just think it was well done and appropriately sympathetic for the lacks family + critical of the shoddy ethics behind henrietta’s death. for a long time, nobody knew who HeLa was, but now they can.
highlight: Heaven looks just like Clover, Virginia.
the scorpio races by maggie stiefvater
rating: 5 stars
summary: horse, but water
comments: yes, the annual scorpio races reread. i love this book and i love this universe and nobody can make me think otherwise. sean/puck is a god tier het romanze...TO ME! i noticed some interesting new things this reread, though i was more aware of this book’s flaws than last year. another book that reminds me of nothing, and nothing reminds me of it.
highlight: "I don't need another horse. I just––" / Holly follows me, and though I don't turn around, I hear his voice clearly. "It's just that he's not yours." / I'm not certain I want to have this conversation. "It's not that he's not mine. It's that he's Benjamin Malvern's."
the burning god by rfk
rating: 1 star
summary: no
comments: you already know. not. enough. chaghan.
highlights: N/A
til we have faces by c.s. lewis
rating: 4 stars
summary: retelling of cupid/psyche myth from the POV of her sister, orual
comments: c.s. lewis will take a perfectly good book and make it about christianity. i really enjoyed this book up until the last 50 pages, where i dont think it earned the theme of its ending (our lord and savior is jesus christ or whatever). bardia is my fav character, and the arc of oural becoming queen and winning a trial by combat is sooo righteous.
highlight: Sometimes I would say to myself, she has lain in his bed. She has borne his children. But has she ever crouched beside him in the ambush? Ever ridden knee to knee with him in the charge? I have known, I have had, so much of him that she could never dream of.
red dragon by thomas harris
rating: 3 stars
summary: mentally unstable guy catches a slightly more mentally unstable guy
comments: though i enjoyed this, i do not like thomas harris writing style for the most part. also i set myself up for disappointment by only caring about will and hannibal interax when this book barely has hannibal in it...this book made me love will graham even more though. and his wife molly. and his step son.
highlight: I wish you a speedy convalescence and hope you won’t be very ugly. I think of you often. Hannibal Lecter.
the chimp and the river by david quammen
rating: N/A
summary: hunting down the origins of HIV/AIDS
comments: read this for school, it was good, though it had some odd moments. this book is basically an excerpt from quammen’s other book, spillover.
highlight: N/A
the lifecycle of software objects by ted chiang
rating: 2 stars
summary: the development of AI quickly devolves into hypercapitalist sex torture exploitation hell
comments: noura told me to read this because she also did not like it and it gave me a new mental illness briefly. it was thought provoking but not prolific. and weird and dark. i didnt feel attached to the characters and wasn’t emotionally invested though. love you noura
highlights: N/A
currently reading:
the golden compass by phillip pullman
the crown aint worth much by hanif abdurraqib
alice and bob meet the wall of fire by thomas lin
the power of myth by joseph campbell
the fire next time by james baldwin
to sleep in a sea of stars by christopher paolini
no subject
2020-12-09 08:23 (UTC)2. i didn't know you actually read mating in captivity... have you listened to esther perel's podcasts? i'm not sure if you're actually a Podcast Person though
3. impossible owls looks interesting. thank you.
4. i too am a hater of murakami
5. [record scratch] [double take] charles soule!? i know that guy from comix... though all i can remember is that he's serviceable but hasn't done anything i particularly liked
6. put ancillary justice on your currently reading list dammit!!!!!!!!!
no subject
2020-12-09 08:34 (UTC)2. i sometimes listen to her podcast 'where should we begin' when i'm mega bored but i'm really bad at purely listening comprehension so its a rare occurrence
3. i really love impossible owls...i think each essay gets slightly weaker as you progress through the book but the first 3 have been stuck in my brain for months!!
4. [handshake moji]
5. i feel like him having a comix background makes the oracle year make way more sense...it weirdly became like an action adventure when i was expecting a bizarre cerebral novel. the premise still rocks though
6. I PROMISE I WILL READ ANCILLARY JUSTICE AFTER FINALS
no subject
2020-12-09 08:48 (UTC)2. ok that's about what i thought. i like where should we begin a lot!!! how's work is less entertaining imo
3. well, impossible owls has just joined my massive collection of ebooks that i have no idea when i'll ever get to, but i will let you know if i do i guess
4. no further comment
5. might just fuck around and read the first 30 pages just to experience the vibes
6. THANK YOU.
no subject
2020-12-09 09:06 (UTC)no subject
2020-12-09 14:59 (UTC)