aquamarinecadet's reviews
79 reviews

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!!

Homie: Poems by Danez Smith

challenging emotional funny hopeful inspiring reflective sad fast-paced

4.75

happy new year! i laughed AND i cried. will be revisiting frequently.

On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong

dark emotional funny hopeful inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

every time i think of beauty i think of ocean vương('s writing)

this was a wonderful re-read. a lot of the themes and motifs flew way above high-school me's little head, and now-literature-major university me is ecstatic to say that she enjoyed this book even more than the first time she read it. 

Is that what art is? To be touched thinking what we feel is ours when, in the end, it was someone else, in longing, who finds us? (p.189)

Paradise by Toni Morrison

challenging dark emotional inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

another colossal work by the legend herself >:') 

and the amazing grace motif? what a banger. 

fair warning: one definitely needs to read this with a pen in hand and many sticky notes to be able to make sense of things.

there is so much to this book that i cannot find the words for unless i set my mind to writing a 2000 word (min) essay, but know that is was harrowingly beautiful, and devastatingly violent

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Gun violence, Racism, Self harm, Sexism, Sexual violence, Violence, Abortion, Murder

Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West by Cormac McCarthy

adventurous challenging dark medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

holy fuck

Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel

adventurous inspiring mysterious reflective sad medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

boy did this age well :D this was my first st. john mandel and i think i will be reading more of her works in the future! 

shakespeare perseveres again as a post-apocalyptic literary reference though, and idk if i liked that or found it too kitsch. 

A Minor Chorus by Billy-Ray Belcourt

dark emotional funny hopeful inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

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

4.75

i was writing a review and exited it by accident >:(((( so now i am too lazy to type everything out again. but this book deserves all of the praise it gets, and i'm looking forward to talking about it in class.

THIS IS ART THAT MATTERS!!! (ref. p.32)

for good measure, one of my favorite lines from the book (p.34)

Death itself wasn't nearly as devastating as what the human drive to stay alive causes us to accumulate over time. We endure with quaking certainty; the world devastates us without end and still we are hungry and hungrier. What a dazzling logic.

definitely is a little adventurous in terms of form (as will be mentioned multiple times throughout the novel), and the intellectualization of every other action was a bit hard to get used to (but it somehow works 90% of the time, trust me)

The Turn of the Screw by Henry James

challenging dark funny mysterious tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.0

The Victorians were wild

Coule la Seine by Fred Vargas

funny lighthearted mysterious reflective fast-paced

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

3.0

C'était divertissant :D mais je crois que je préfère de loin les longs Vargas aux courts Vargas. Plus de temps pour apprendre à connaître les personnages, qui eux sont toujours (ou presque?) plus importants que l'intrigue en soi.

Bloodbath Nation by Paul Auster

challenging dark informative reflective sad fast-paced

3.75

Is that what we want from America today - the right to live in a society of permanent armed struggle? If the problem is too many bad men with guns, would it not be wiser to take those guns away from them rather than arm the so-called good men, who in many if not most instances are considerably less than good, and thereby eliminate the problem altogether, for if the bad men had no guns, why would the good men need them? 

America definitely needs a reckoning with its guns and "birthright of violence", but that reckoning will not come about by simply asking ourselves "tough" questions. They have been asked many times before, and engaging in a battle of what-if-isms to prove an ideological point isn't going to get us anywhere. Auster is a great writer though, and he made many other good observations and statements throughout this book so it's definitely still worth the read 🦔