aquamarinecadet's reviews
78 reviews

L'étoile de Mo by Yeonju Choi

4.5

cute 😭😭😭

Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates

4.5

this book is going to stick with me for a while.

read if you want to get a startlingly lifelike story about what 1950s suburban Americana is like, and if you can stomach getting frustrated at the characters every other sentence (and I mean that in the best way, because Richard Yates is a phenomenal writer in my book) 

La place du Diamant by Mercè Rodoreda

emotional reflective sad slow-paced

4.25

la densité des symboles dans ce livre...oh wow. lumières bleues, colombes, taches de couleur, boules, poupées, rues, maisons, rubans, enfants, guerre. 

you have to get used to le style d'écriture (long sentences that spill into each other and barely any quotation marks for dialogue) but then once you're there, you're t h e r e.

would not want to be une femme en catalogne in the 1920s-1940s- i would totally also have gone insane 🎀 - but loved l'immersion littéraire

Filer la ligne by Gabrielle Piquet

dark funny lighthearted reflective fast-paced

4.0

banger doodles 

Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn

adventurous dark funny mysterious reflective medium-paced

4.75

nearly everyone in this book is batshit crazy and slightly allegorical, but somehow none of them feel like straight face-value moral (gendered) stand-ins. an impressive feat imo. 

crazy good and still relevant Internet™️ commentary: 

It's a very difficult era in which to be a person, just a real, actual person, instead of a collection of personality traits selected from an endless Au-tomat of characters.
And if all of us are play-acting, there can be no such thing as a soul mate, because we don't have genuine souls.

there were also so, so many astute and seethingly witty observations of how men/women view each other. for such a vu-et-revu binary, it felt so...fresh and personable? which is an odd thing to say (read the book! you'll get why) but i stand by it. 

example: 

She knows how to handle me. As if a woman's primary duty was to use all her brains and empathy to manage a man, as if she were some plumber of the psyche. Or how about this one, which men often say when praising a relationship: It's just easy. Would a man say this about his job? Certainly not. But the key relationship in his life? He shouldn't have to work at it. That's because the woman is spending all her time trying to figure him out, trying to handle him.

hundreds of pages of two people who gradually realize that they know each other so well they are the only ones who could really fuck each other up. FANTASTIC (if you ask me)

so. gillian flynn? i will be seeing you again soon. i have now made it a mission to read all your other books because damn did i enjoy this one 🤓 

just missed the 5 star mark because i didnt like the ending 🧍🏻‍♀️ ik it makes sense and is meant to be ambivalent, but ionlikeit

Rappaccini's Daughter by Nathaniel Hawthorne

dark funny mysterious fast-paced

4.0

dude ik you've been saying her dad's crazy and she's literally poison but i love her :( 

ok jokes aside, this novella was a banger. imagine getting roasted like this:

Thou! Dost thou pray? [...] Thy very prayers, as they come from thy lips, taint the atmosphere with death.

and to that one other review that said the story would've been cooler in modern english, i must disagree. 
LOOK AT THIS:

By all appreciable signs, they loved; they had looked love [...] they had even spoken love [...] and yet there had been no seal of lips, no clasp of hands, nor any slightest caress, such as love claims and hallows.

or maybe i just like archaisms

Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi

medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No

1.5

For a story that's supposed to be emotional and heartwarming, the prose was so frustratingly insipid and lifeless. DUDE I HAD SUCH HIGH HOPES FOR YOU

Words were often repeated within one same paragraph, the sentences that made those paragraphs were nearly all of the same length or structure all the time, the whole "time traveling is serious business and you really really need to drink the coffee before it gets cold" chant was reiterated at least twice per chapter, and the golden rule of show don't tell? who even is she 🧍🏻‍♀️

The characters were also very trope-y and seemingly incapable of proper conversation or discernment, and all of this is written off under the guise of. coziness?? When really, it's just bad writing. (and probably also lax translating)

This story had so much potential, but imo did not live up to the hype.

Almond by Won-pyung Sohn

dark emotional funny inspiring reflective sad fast-paced

• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes

4.5

beauty, love, violence, and butterflies... i might have a BA thesis paper idea in mind now. 

dear sandy joosun lee, tysm for translating this work with so much tenderness and care so people like me could get the chance to read it :D ❤️

Of course, labels can often be clear and useful. But the human brain is rather a strange thing. And I still truly believe that the heart can prevail over the brain.

Et La Lumière Fut by Jacques Lusseyran

dark emotional hopeful inspiring reflective sad slow-paced

3.0

comme j'aurais aimé aimer ce livre (🤓☝🏻cette autobiographie, à vrai dire) un peu plus tant certains passages étaient brillants. 

exhibit a (en parlant de la volonté des gens à s'engager dans la résistance active contre le nazisme):

Quant aux autres, ils ne considéraient même pas le problème. Les uns par paresse morale; d'autres à cause de cette maladie qui accompagne si souvent le développement excessif de l'intelligence: l'impuissance à choisir; d'autres par égoïsme bourgeois (à dix-neuf ans, déjà !) ; d'autres à cause de la Sainte-Frousse (une grande déesse, celle-là). D'autres enfin, et c'était le plus déchirant, parce qu'ils avaient opté pour le parti contraire.

SIR YOU WERE SO REAL FOR THIS

mais il y avait un nombre de passages qui au contraire m'ont laissé un goût trèeeees amer en bouche. 

#il y a de la lumière et de l'humanité en chacun, et oui 🥰 même chez les aveugles et les sourds 🙂‍↕️ mais ah! chacun* pas chacune, parce que les femmes ne sont pas capables des mêmes exploits de bravoure, d'intellecte, ni de fraternité même si elles sont super jolies et rêver d'elles quand t'es stuck en prison ça fait du bien quand même 💀 DPMO

bilan: très joli message sur l'espérance, la joie, et la lumière venant de l'intérieur de soi dans des temps sombres!!! mais malheureusement misogyne, + il aurait facilement pu faire 50 pages de moins

Bà ơi by

dark emotional hopeful reflective sad medium-paced

5.0

j'arrive toujours pas à croire qu'on soit amies (hương ily even if you won't see this), quel honneur et quel bonheur d'avoir pu lire et recevoir une œuvre d'une beauté et intimité émotionnelle pareille >:') 
si quelqu'un veut la lire je vous la prête volontiers!!