Scan barcode
ghostluvr2000's reviews
54 reviews
Don't Call Us Dead: Poems by Danez Smith
not all of it was 4 me but there were some ones that were so beautifully crafted it made me want to cry . dinosaurs in the hood :(
The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides
5.0
AMAZING. WOW. no one gets this book like me. maybe i should change my dissertation topic to the fetishisation of teenage girlhood ...
Serious Concerns by Wendy Cope
wooooo so GOOD cant wait to reread all the time <3 i love 'the orange' just as much as everyone else but that was def not the only stand-out in here would love for more to get some attention.
plus this collection is now double special considering how special of a time it was randomly finding it in a market stall with leona <3 peace and luv on planet earth
plus this collection is now double special considering how special of a time it was randomly finding it in a market stall with leona <3 peace and luv on planet earth
The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories by Angela Carter
5.0
star rating is based off the bloody chamber alone. i think it is by far the strongest of the collection and i want to focus on the positives so i'm going to be talking about that (i also don't have much to say about the others on first read) but WOWWW. what a good short story like fucking incredible. had me captivated the whole time and when i wasn't reading it i was thinking about it. gothic horror done to perfection <3 (although i would have had her have her head cut off lol)
'his wedding gift, clasped round my throat. a choker of rubies, two inches wide, like an extraordinarily precious slit throat.' 'the white dress; the frail child within it; and the flashing crimson jewels round her throat, bright as arterial blood.' 'and, for the first time in my innocent and confined life, i sensed in myself a potentiality for corruption that took my breath away.' 'i felt myself giddy as if i were on the edge of a precipice; i was afraid, not so much of him, of his monstrous presence, heavy as if he had been gifted at birth with more specific gravity than the rest of us, the presence that, even when i thought myself most in love with him, always subtly oppressed me... no. i was not afraid of him, but of myself. i seemed reborn in his unreflective eyes, reborn in unfamiliar shapes. i hardly recognised myself from his descriptions of me and yet, and yet -- might there not be a grain of beastly truth in them? and, in the red firelight, i blushed again, unnoticed, to think he might have chosen me because, in my innocence, he sensed a rare talent for corruption.' ''there is a striking resemblance between the act of love and the ministrations of a torturer'' 'if i loved him enough to follow him, i should have to die. the atrocious loneliness of that monster!'
also really like this bit from the intro:
'to be the /object/ of desire is to be defined in the passive case.
to exist in the passive case is to die in the passive case -- that is, to be killed.
this is the moral of the fairy tale about the perfect woman.'
'his wedding gift, clasped round my throat. a choker of rubies, two inches wide, like an extraordinarily precious slit throat.' 'the white dress; the frail child within it; and the flashing crimson jewels round her throat, bright as arterial blood.' 'and, for the first time in my innocent and confined life, i sensed in myself a potentiality for corruption that took my breath away.' 'i felt myself giddy as if i were on the edge of a precipice; i was afraid, not so much of him, of his monstrous presence, heavy as if he had been gifted at birth with more specific gravity than the rest of us, the presence that, even when i thought myself most in love with him, always subtly oppressed me... no. i was not afraid of him, but of myself. i seemed reborn in his unreflective eyes, reborn in unfamiliar shapes. i hardly recognised myself from his descriptions of me and yet, and yet -- might there not be a grain of beastly truth in them? and, in the red firelight, i blushed again, unnoticed, to think he might have chosen me because, in my innocence, he sensed a rare talent for corruption.' ''there is a striking resemblance between the act of love and the ministrations of a torturer'' 'if i loved him enough to follow him, i should have to die. the atrocious loneliness of that monster!'
also really like this bit from the intro:
'to be the /object/ of desire is to be defined in the passive case.
to exist in the passive case is to die in the passive case -- that is, to be killed.
this is the moral of the fairy tale about the perfect woman.'
Blud by Rachel McKibbens
not for me unfortunately :( sometimes i think when i read poetry that seems so beloved that i'm not understanding it because i am poetically INEPT !
'if you could / destroy the story before it started, would you-- / go back, before the unnamable thing? / if you could return to your father at the foot / of the bed, would you swallow your sisters whole to / save them?'
'if you could / destroy the story before it started, would you-- / go back, before the unnamable thing? / if you could return to your father at the foot / of the bed, would you swallow your sisters whole to / save them?'
The Terrible by Yrsa Daley-Ward
KILLING MYSELFFFFFFFFFF. thank you to this class for forcing me to read this it was soooooo much very cathartic i do NOT want to talk about this in class tomorrow it was a personal experience it was an odyssey.
'only a tiny amount of people will enter the kingdom of god, says the bible. only a small section will be saved from the fires of damnation; that is to say, those who take the narrow road and work hard and worship god are hard-working and modest. children of the lord who do everything right. each time we got on our knees to pray in church i began to cry, because i wasn't sure that i would ever make it to heaven. the bible said we come into the world as sinners. perhaps i just wasn't a good enough person to turn it around. i wanted to have long shiny hair and read magazines for girls and wear pink lipgloss and short skirts and be completely adored and wanted and loved; / i was sure of the heaven in that.' 'he gets it out right there and then / and slides on a yellow condom. yellow, she thinks. ha, / yellow, she thinks / my favourite colour as a kid / shit, i used to be a kid. / yellow; / am i still / / / / a' 'could it be love? jesus christ / can there be love?'
'only a tiny amount of people will enter the kingdom of god, says the bible. only a small section will be saved from the fires of damnation; that is to say, those who take the narrow road and work hard and worship god are hard-working and modest. children of the lord who do everything right. each time we got on our knees to pray in church i began to cry, because i wasn't sure that i would ever make it to heaven. the bible said we come into the world as sinners. perhaps i just wasn't a good enough person to turn it around. i wanted to have long shiny hair and read magazines for girls and wear pink lipgloss and short skirts and be completely adored and wanted and loved; / i was sure of the heaven in that.' 'he gets it out right there and then / and slides on a yellow condom. yellow, she thinks. ha, / yellow, she thinks / my favourite colour as a kid / shit, i used to be a kid. / yellow; / am i still / / / / a' 'could it be love? jesus christ / can there be love?'
The Dragon Republic by R.F. Kuang
'"let nezha come for us," she said. "i'm going to burn his heart out of his chest." woooooooo!!!!! book two down.
this book is so crazy i remember the first time i read it is was such a rapid shift from the first book esp in terms of pace but its still such a strong book. rin's internal struggle wrt to shamanism, altan (coming back to this dw), the south, vaisra. everything. so interesting and compelling. i do think the shift in the last few pages to realizing that the ultimate divide here was northerners vs southerners and that the war had to be fought on provincial terms was a bit out of left-field for someone who just said that she'd completely forgotten kesegi existed until he stood right in front of her and who had completely dismissed all the southern leaders a few chapters before, but. you know. that's where the plot had to go lol. also ok i'll get critiques out of the way quickly: the cike is completely underdeveloped and by the time theyre executed i barely remember whose who and even ramsa who we spend the most time with i barely have a connection to, same w. qara whose death was very obvious as soon as rin/kitay's soul bond was set up. also i hate all the nezha/altan parralels lol. its NOT the same
BUT. this book gives us sooooo much rin nezha content its crazy. they're crazy. pov: you have an ambiguous dream about maybe probably marrying him but you can't even take him seriously when he says you look nice and you need to kill him and he needs to kill you and LOVE him but you need to kill him more than you love him. 'she wanted him tortured, diminished, weakened, powerless, and begging on his knees'. and of course the classic: '"don't try to speak," nezha murmured, and he brushed his lips against her forehead as he drove the knife deeper into his back.'
more importantly though... my favourite topic :D :D ALTAN! he's sooo crazy living embodiment of 'the boy is dead stop killing him'. like ... 'of course it was altan. it was /always/ altan, lurking behind every corner of her mind, haunting every decision she made.' thesis statement for the book! 'altan was awful. altan was beautiful. and as she looked into his eyes she realized the feeling that overcame her was not love; this was a total, paralyizing fear. this was the terror of a moth drawn to the flame.' rin is so haunted by this ghost of altan she's manifested to prove her guilt and its genuinely HORRIFIC. the warping of his legacy when all he wants is to be left alone... '"does it ever bother you that all you'll ever be is a pale imitation of altan trengsin?"' / '"he did," feylen acknowledged, "but you're a far cry from altan trengsin'" STOP IT!!! leave his name ALONE.
this book is so crazy i remember the first time i read it is was such a rapid shift from the first book esp in terms of pace but its still such a strong book. rin's internal struggle wrt to shamanism, altan (coming back to this dw), the south, vaisra. everything. so interesting and compelling. i do think the shift in the last few pages to realizing that the ultimate divide here was northerners vs southerners and that the war had to be fought on provincial terms was a bit out of left-field for someone who just said that she'd completely forgotten kesegi existed until he stood right in front of her and who had completely dismissed all the southern leaders a few chapters before, but. you know. that's where the plot had to go lol. also ok i'll get critiques out of the way quickly: the cike is completely underdeveloped and by the time theyre executed i barely remember whose who and even ramsa who we spend the most time with i barely have a connection to, same w. qara whose death was very obvious as soon as rin/kitay's soul bond was set up. also i hate all the nezha/altan parralels lol. its NOT the same
BUT. this book gives us sooooo much rin nezha content its crazy. they're crazy. pov: you have an ambiguous dream about maybe probably marrying him but you can't even take him seriously when he says you look nice and you need to kill him and he needs to kill you and LOVE him but you need to kill him more than you love him. 'she wanted him tortured, diminished, weakened, powerless, and begging on his knees'. and of course the classic: '"don't try to speak," nezha murmured, and he brushed his lips against her forehead as he drove the knife deeper into his back.'
more importantly though... my favourite topic :D :D ALTAN! he's sooo crazy living embodiment of 'the boy is dead stop killing him'. like ... 'of course it was altan. it was /always/ altan, lurking behind every corner of her mind, haunting every decision she made.' thesis statement for the book! 'altan was awful. altan was beautiful. and as she looked into his eyes she realized the feeling that overcame her was not love; this was a total, paralyizing fear. this was the terror of a moth drawn to the flame.' rin is so haunted by this ghost of altan she's manifested to prove her guilt and its genuinely HORRIFIC. the warping of his legacy when all he wants is to be left alone... '"does it ever bother you that all you'll ever be is a pale imitation of altan trengsin?"' / '"he did," feylen acknowledged, "but you're a far cry from altan trengsin'" STOP IT!!! leave his name ALONE.
Decreation: Poetry, Essays, Opera by Anne Carson
maybe i shld have tried some other anne carsons before jumping into this lol
'this is the condition called ekstasis, literally "standing outside oneself", a condition regarded by the greeks as typical of mad persons, geniuses and lovers, and ascribed to by aristotle' 'as simone weil says longingly: if only i could see a landscape as it is when i am not there. but when i am in any place i disturb the silence of heaven by the beating of my heart.'
'this is the condition called ekstasis, literally "standing outside oneself", a condition regarded by the greeks as typical of mad persons, geniuses and lovers, and ascribed to by aristotle' 'as simone weil says longingly: if only i could see a landscape as it is when i am not there. but when i am in any place i disturb the silence of heaven by the beating of my heart.'
White is for Witching by Helen Oyeyemi
SOOO good still i wrote a commentary piece on this for uni but there's still so much i want to say because there's so many levels to this text and i think that the task was quite limiting. ore/miranda is sooooo so so so interesting and the same with ore/elliot and the text only gets more layered and interesting the more you read about it. really liked the idea of miranda taking on the role of the soucouyant as a continuation of the erasure and replacement of caribbean histories and how the house translates its violence to reflect its society's 'acceptable' levels of bigotry
'everyone thinks twin brothers and sisters grow up magnetized towards each other, the prince at the foot of repunzel's tower before the tower is even built, the love you can get at all the fucking time, the one who is you but a girl, or you but a boy, whose bed you know as well as your own. how could you ensure that without falling in love? the question is, were they born in love with each other, these twins, or did it blossom? at any rate it's already happened, the onlookers agree. it must have. ask them when they fell. the brother and sister say no, no, it's nothing like that, btu what they mean is they can't remember when.' '"please tell a story about a girl who gets away." i would, even if i had to adapt one, even if i had to make one up just for her. "gets away from what, though?" "from her fairy godmother. from the happy ending that isn't really happy at all. please have her get out and run off the page altogether, to somewhere secret where words like 'happy' and 'good' will never find her."' "it's not that. it's just that it seems to me that the dead only return for love or for revenge. who did you come back for?"'
'everyone thinks twin brothers and sisters grow up magnetized towards each other, the prince at the foot of repunzel's tower before the tower is even built, the love you can get at all the fucking time, the one who is you but a girl, or you but a boy, whose bed you know as well as your own. how could you ensure that without falling in love? the question is, were they born in love with each other, these twins, or did it blossom? at any rate it's already happened, the onlookers agree. it must have. ask them when they fell. the brother and sister say no, no, it's nothing like that, btu what they mean is they can't remember when.' '"please tell a story about a girl who gets away." i would, even if i had to adapt one, even if i had to make one up just for her. "gets away from what, though?" "from her fairy godmother. from the happy ending that isn't really happy at all. please have her get out and run off the page altogether, to somewhere secret where words like 'happy' and 'good' will never find her."' "it's not that. it's just that it seems to me that the dead only return for love or for revenge. who did you come back for?"'