beabaptistaa's reviews
153 reviews

António Variações Fora de Tom by Inês Fonseca Santos

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informative inspiring lighthearted fast-paced

4.0

texto: 3.5/5 ⭐️
ilustrações: 5/5 ⭐️

uma leitura agradável e super rápida, acompanhada de ilustrações cheias de personalidade, do artista português mantraste. 

apesar de ser óbvio que esta coleção não pretende ser mais que um simples resumo da vida de cada uma destas pessoas, acho que estava à espera de mais qualquer coisa. o texto já é tão pouco e, mesmo assim, divagou demasiado, quando podia ter apresentado mais alguns factos sobre a vida e a obra do cantor.

no final, continuo a recomendar porque acho o conceito super interessante e mal posso esperar por ler mais livros desta coleção!
We Do Not Part by Han Kang

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4.0

obrigada à netgalley e à editora penguin uk, por me darem acesso ao ARC deste livro em troca da minha opinião sincera!

tal como em Human Acts, han kang volta a misturar realidade e ficção, para não deixar cair no esquecimento outro período trágico, na história da coreia. neste livro, acompanhamos a relação de duas amigas, através de uma narrativa bastante fragmentada e confusa, no presente, assombrada pelo massacre na ilha de jeju, do passado. este facto histórico, que levou à separação da coreia do norte e do sul, após a ocupação japonesa, mistura-se com as vidas de kyungha e inseon, num tom ora de sonho, ora de pesadelo que, por vezes, é bastante difícil de acompanhar. 

“Sometimes, with some dreams, you awake and sense that the dream is ongoing elsewhere. This dream is like that.”

“I placed my hand over the photo of the bones. Over people who no longer had eyes or tongues. Over people whose organs and muscles had rotted away! Over what was no longer human - no. Over what remained human even now.”

apesar da capacidade única de kang equilibrar tão bem brutalidade e fragilidade (que a tornou numa das minhas autoras preferidas), não consigo dar 5 estrelas a We Do Not Part. infelizmente, os elementos surrealistas tornaram a narrativa bastante caótica, ao ponto de nem sempre perceber que personagem é que estava a falar, o que é que estava mesmo a acontecer, se era sobre o presente ou o passado… desta forma, sinto que se criou uma barreira entre mim e o texto, que não me permitiu sentir o nível de empatia suposto, ainda por cima sobre temas tão sensíveis, que costumam emocionar-me. 

independentemente destas críticas, acho uma leitura obrigatória para aqueles que já leram outras obras de kang. um estudo sobre a condição humana, que mesmo depois de testemunhar eventos tão traumáticos, de toda a dor, sofrimento e desespero, da nossa vulnerabilidade, das tempestades de inverno desta vida, das sombras profundas do passado, é possível ter esperança — é possível não só sobreviver, como viver. 

“I had not reconciled with life, but I had to resume living.”

“I knew that was where my mum had also found herself. Waking from a nightmare, splashing water on my face and gazing at the mirror, I saw the same persistent quality in my features that had branded hers. What astounded me was the sun's rays, that they returned each day. Steeped in the afterimage of my dreams, I would walk to the woods and find their brutally beautiful light penetrating the foliage and creating thousands upon thousands of light drops.”

quotes: ─────── ☽ •

“If, as various ancient faiths say, there exists in a celestial realm or a netherworld an immense mirror that observes and logs everyone's movements, I'm sure the last three to four years of my life as recorded there must resemble a snail coming out of its shell to push along a knife's edge. A body desiring to live. A body pricked and nicked. A body spurning, embracing, clinging. A body kneeling. A body entreating. A body seeping blood or pus or tears.”

“The summer sun flooded the west-facing corridor; the afternoon light was a revelation. I rode the lift down, passed by the guard's room, crossed the compound square - and felt, all the while, that I was witnessing something. The lived-in world. The day's weather. The humidity in the air and the pull of gravity.”

“(…) as I did, people walked past the window in bodies that looked fragile enough to shatter. Life was exceedingly vulnerable, I realized. The flesh, organs, bones, breaths passing before my eyes all held within them the potential to snap, to cease - so easily, and by a single decision.”

“That is how death avoided me. Like an asteroid thought to be on a collision course avoids Earth by a hair's breadth, hurtling past at a furious velocity that knows neither regret nor hesitation.”

“I had not reconciled with life, but I had to resume living.”

“The nightmares, unsurprisingly, continued regard-less. In retrospect it baffles me. Having decided to write about mass killings and torture, how could I have so naively - brazenly - hoped to soon shirk off the agony of it, to so easily be bereft of its traces?”

“Sometimes, with some dreams, you awake and sense that the dream is ongoing elsewhere. This dream is like that.”

“There are people who actively change the course of their own life. They make daring choices that others seldom dream of, then do their utmost to be accountable for their actions and the consequences of those actions. So that in time, no matter what life path they strike out on, people around them cease to be surprised.”

“When I turned and looked around me, patients and guardians alike were silently gazing out at the snowfall, their blank faces suggesting a familiarity with pain and endurance.”

“At some point I started hating my mum. She just sickened me, like every other nauseating thing. I despised her the way I despised myself.”

“My hatred grew until I could hardly breathe. It was like I had this red-hot ball of rage seething endlessly in my gut.”

“I finally walked out be lse I wanted to live. I felt like if I didn't leave, that rage would kill me.”

“I swore then that I wouldn't regret leaving, that I would never come back. I wouldn't let that person darken my life any longer.”

“Strange, the sensation of contact with a living thing, how it can remain imprinted on the skin. As if touch alone can singe and break flesh.”

“How does one endure it?
Without a fire raging in one's chest.
Without a you to return to and embrace."

"My every pain and joy, all my deep-rooted sorrows and loves, shine, not as an amalgam but as a whole comprised of distinct singularities, glowing together as one giant nebula."

“As I look down, I get the sense that this severed life is pecking at my chest, trying to tear its way in. I feel its desire to burrow inside my heart, to dwell there for as long as that organ goes on beating.”

“Can saw blades ward off nightmares? Do dreams keep well away from their serrated edges?”

“As in we refuse to part by refusing to say goodbye, or as in we actually don't part ways? (…) Is it somehow incomplete, the parting? (…) Is it deferred? The goodbye — or the closure? Indefinitely?”

“Or could it be that we never actually commu-nicated? Was he only ever a bird? Was I only ever a human in the end?”

“What was the bird trying to see? Was there such a thing as wanting to see when all that remained of you was your shadow?”

“At first I thought they were clothes floating on the water, but it turned out they were all people, dead people.”

“In the sudden lull, I feel as if I've opened the door to a dream within a dream and stepped inside.”

“I say quietly, Dreams are terrifying things. No - they're humiliating. They reveal things about you that you weren't even aware of.”

“I sense something oozing from the page, something viscous that trickles out caked and thick like red-bean juk, and blood-metallic, following the candle's trajectory.”

“How much further into these depths can we go? Is this the silence that lies below the ocean in my dream?”

“(…) I understand why Inseon denied any intentions of making a film about these events. The smell of blood-soaked clothes and flesh rotting together, the phosphorescence of bones that have been decaying for decades will be erased. Nightmares will slip through fingers. Excessive violence will be removed. Like what was omitted from the book I wrote four years ago. The flamethrowers that soldiers deployed on unarmed citizens in the streets. The people rushed to emergency rooms on improvised stretchers, burn blisters on their faces, their bodies doused in white paint from head to toe to prevent identification.”

“As if the firmness of this cool wall might yield to me the secrets of this strange night. As if there are questions I can only ask the vanished shadow, not Inseon, who watches me silently from behind.”

“After surviving that hell, would he still have been the kind of person who made choices we could understand?”

“I placed my hand over the photo of the bones. Over people who no longer had eyes or tongues. Over people whose organs and muscles had rotted away! Over what was no longer human - no. Over what remained human even now.”

“In the suffocating stillness, I wondered: Is this it?
The brink of a gaping trench opening up below the abyssal plain,
the very bottom of the deep sea where nothing emits light?”

“She stroked the back of my head, my shoulders, my back. I remember the feeling of aching love, how it seeped into my skin. Clogging the marrow in my bones and shrivelling my heart ... That was when I realized. That love was a terrible agony.”

“Then she stopped saying even yes or no in response, and with that her desires and requests seemed to vanish too. Still, when I placed a peeled mandarin in her hand, she would split it and give me back the bigger half out of lifelong habit, and smile. At which my heart would fall open.”

“At some point, as the naterials piled up and began to take on a clearer form, I could feel myself changing. To the point where it seemed nothing one human being did to another could ever shock me again... Something deep within my heart had dislodged and the blood that drenched then spilled from that emptied hollow was no longer red or surging. There was only an intermittent ache, a welling at its jagged surface that only resignation could still.”

“I knew that was where my mum had also found herself. Waking from a nightmare, splashing water on my face and gazing at the mirror, I saw the same persistent quality in my features that had branded hers. What astounded me was the sun's rays, that they returned each day. Steeped in the afterimage of my dreams, I would walk to the woods and find their brutally beautiful light penetrating the foliage and creating thousands upon thousands of light drops.”

“Is someone really here with me? I wondered. In the way that light in two different places becomes pinned to a single spot the moment one tries to observe it?”

“Is that someone you? was my next thought. Are you connected to me now through faintly pulsing threads? Are you peering inside the dark tank, as you try to revive in your hospital room?”

“Up leaped a flame. Like a blooming heart. Like a pulsing flower bud. Like the wingbeat of an immeasurably small bird.”

boas leituras! ─────── ☽ •


Caruncho by Layla Martínez

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challenging dark emotional mysterious sad tense fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

a começar bem o ano! uma leitura rápida e bastante visual sobre diferença de classes, machismo e o sangue ruim que carregamos dos nossos antepassados. 

aconselho a toda a gente porque é muito pequeno contudo, já me apercebi que não amo o surrealismo latino. o detalhe nas descrições surpreendeu-me no início mas no final tornou-se um pouco cansativo (para mim). prefiro o realismo mágico asiático onde nos dão algum espaço para processarmos o q está a acontecer em vez de nos darem descrições super contretas e literais. 

apesar disso recomendo esta saga familiar bem carunchosa e ruim e pegajosa e gordurosa com muito rancor e inveja e desdém e nojo e santinhos e sombras à mistura, numa casa bem claustrofóbica.
As Intermitências da Morte by José Saramago

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

3.5

"No dia seguinte ninguém morreu."

assim começa mais uma aventura com o nosso amigo saramago... depois do "ensaio sobre a cegueira",  que explora o que aconteceria se um dia toda a gente ficasse cega, e o "ensaio sobre a lucidez", se quase toda a gente votasse em branco, no "intermitências" descobrimos o que aconteceria se, de repente, as pessoas deixassem de morrer. 

dos quatro livros que li do autor (não falamos do memorial), esta é capaz de ser a minha premissa preferida contudo, acho que não esteve à altura. não se deixem enganar, comparando com outras obras no geral, esta continua a ter uma genialidade acima da média mas, para mim, ficou muito atrás do "ensaio sobre a cegueira", que tem o equilíbrio perfeito entre ação e divagação saramagueira. 

depois de nos colocar este cenário na linha de abertura, levamos com cerca de 120 páginas de comentário político e social, muito típico de saramago (e que eu até aprecio), mais umas interrupções na narrativa, bem meta e bastante cómicas, onde nos esclarece que o que está a contar nem é assim tão relevante para o final, antes da história arrancar a sério. de seguida, acompanhamos a personificação da morte que quase me fez perdoar tudo o que estava para trás, se não fosse pelo final super clichê romântico, que me fez rolar um pouco os olhos mas, como não estava à espera que saramago seguisse esse rumo, até achei piada.

dito isto, para mim o livro foi um bocado desequilibrado, contudo, continua a ser uma leitura fascinante que confirmou a minha admiração por saramago, mesmo no meio deste caos todo. uma leitura obrigatória para quem quiser ler a sua obra (ao contrário do "ensaio sobre a lucidez", na minha opinião), mas que não chegou aos pés do "ensaio sobre a cegueira".
Kindred by Octavia E. Butler

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challenging dark emotional reflective sad tense fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

o meu primeiro livro da octavia e. butler e sem dúvida que não será o último! mencionar que ouvi o audiobook que, na minha opinião, tem sempre um impacto diferente de ler o livro. 

dito isto, adorei a forma como butler misturou ficção científica, com ficção histórica, relacionada com a escravatura americana. é uma leitura pesada mas que, sem dúvida, deveria ser obrigatória! para quem for mais sensível como eu, recomendo imenso ouvir a versão áudio. quando descreviam uma cena de violência, eu tentava ocupar-me com alguma tarefa para me distrair um pouco, e penso que isso ajudou-me bastante a digerir o que estava a acontecer. sei que já li descrições mais violentas noutros livros de ficção, contudo, saber que tantas pessoas tiveram que lidar com esta situação extremamente injusta na vida real, ou talvez ainda pior, afetou-me imenso….

para além da violência física inerente à escravatura, também são exploradas todas as relações complexas presentes nestas dinâmicas de poder. butler mostra-nos o quão fácil é confundir amor ou afeto, numa situação de abuso, que na verdade, apenas revelam interesses ocultos, por parte do agressor. para mim este foi dos pontos mais fortes do livro, que me deixou bastante desconfortável ao questionar o que pensaria no lugar das vítimas …

apesar de não ser uma leitura fácil recomendo a todos!!

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The Days of Abandonment by Elena Ferrante

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challenging dark emotional reflective sad tense fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

”I loved the writers who made you look through every line, to gaze downward and feel the vertigo of the depths, the blackness of inferno.”

o meu primeiro livro da elena ferrante e superou todas as expetativas! eu estava a ler e a sentir a minha sanidade a perder-se entre as palavras, houve momentos em que tive que parar porque os acontecimentos começavam a provocar-me tanta ansiedade…. AMEI E RECOMENDO

ELENA YOU WERE INSANE FOR THIS não admira que a pessoa não queira revelar a sua identidade

TRIGGER WARNING: morte de um animal de estimação

quotes preferidas : ─────── ☽ •

And to keep under control the anxieties of change I had, finally, taught myself to wait patiently until every emotion imploded and could come out in a tone of calm, my voice held back in my throat so that I would not make a spectacle of myself.

If I am exposed to ants, I will fight the ants. If I am exposed to thieves, I will fight the thieves. If I am exposed to myself, I will fight myself.

A woman can easily kill on the street, in the middle of a crowd, she can do it more easily than a man. Her violence seems a game, a parody, an improper and slightly ridiculous use of the male intent to do harm.

We are occasions. We consummate life and lose it because in some long ago time someone, in the desire to unload his cock inside us, was nice, chose us among women.

I was not the woman who breaks into pieces under the blows of abandonment and absence, who goes mad, who dies. Only a few fragments had splintered off, for the rest I was well. I was whole, whole I would remain. To those who hurt me, I react giving back in kind. I am the queen of spades, I am the wasp that stings, I am the dark serpent. I am the invulnerable animal who passes through fire and is not burned.

We don't know anything about people, even those with whom we share everything.

I felt something move inside me, a jolt of grief so intense that the tears seemed to me fragments of a crystal object stored for a long time in a secret place and now, because of that movement, shattered into a thousand stabbing shards.

I was like a lump of food that my children chewed without stopping; a cud made of a living material that continually amalgamated and softened its living substance to allow greedy bloodsuckers to nourish themselves, leaving on me the odor and taste of their gastric juices.

I didn't want to run, if I ran I would break, every step left behind disintegrated immediately afterward, even in memory,(…).

His desire had been to skate far away from us on an infinite surface; mine, it seemed to me now, was to go to the bottom, abandon myself, sink deaf and mute into my own veins, into my intestine, my bladder.

I had arrived at the edge of some precipice and now I was falling, as in a dream, slowly, even as I continued to hold the thermometer in my hand, even as I stood with the soles of my slippers on the floor, even as I felt myself solidly contained by the expectant looks of my children.

I had to tear the pain from memory, I had to sandpaper away the scratches that were damaging my brain.

"Stop or I'll cut off your hands," she would say when I touched her dressmaking things. And those words were a pair of long, burnished steel scissors that came out of her mouth, jawlike blades that closed over the wrists, leaving stumps sewed up with a needle and thread from her spools.

How heavy a body that has been traversed by death is, life is light, there's no need to let anyone make it heavy for us. 

How could I scrape them definitively off of my body, my mind, without finding that I had in the process scraped away myself?

boas leituras! ─────── ☽ •

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This Thing Between Us by Gus Moreno

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challenging dark emotional mysterious sad tense fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

lovecraft tecnológico? episódio de black mirror mas com horror cósmico? um absoluto A24 fever dream com um toque de folklore mexicano?

this thing between us foi bastante diferente de tudo o que li e, apesar de não ter percebido o que aconteceu no final, valeu bastante a pena. através dos acontecimentos, moreno fala em temas como o amor, perda e luto, misturando surrealismo, horror e misticismo, de uma forma bastante contemporânea. sendo completamente diferente, fez-me lembrar o livro monstrilio de gerardo sámano córdova.

antes de recomendar esta leitura, só quero deixar um enorme trigger warning para violência contra animais, especificamente um cão. contudo, mini spoiler,
talvez não seja bem um cão
mas não deixa de ser pesado.

sem dúvida que vou ficar atenta aos próximos lançamentos deste autor e gostava muito de arranjar a cópia física com esta capa que é mesmo perfeita e faz tanto sentido no final!!!

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Piranesi by Susanna Clarke

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adventurous dark mysterious reflective sad fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.5

foi um bom livro para desenjoar de leituras mais pesadas, fácil e rápido de ler. o conceito é diferente do que costumo ler, muito à volta de um mistério, cheio de misticismo, que se vai revelando aos poucos, até chegarmos ao final, onde nos é explicado praticamente tudo.

infelizmente o final estragou-me um pouco a experiência !!!spoiler!!! mas o facto de ter sido um polícia no final a descobrí-lo para mim não fez absolutamente sentido nenhum ….. podia ter sido a Casa a mostrar o caminho, um amigo, um familiar, um amor, ex-amor, a natureza, a energia do universo, o poder da amizade, fé, as marés, as estrelas, uma bola de cristal, a voz interior dentro de cada um de nós, os antepassados, QUALQUER OUTRA COISA FAZIA MAIS SENTIDO QUE UM POLÍCIA!!! PELO AMOR DE DEUS !!

tirando isso recomendo na mesma porque é muito pequeno, a leitura é fácil e no final temos quase todas as respostas.
Just Kids by Patti Smith

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dark emotional funny hopeful inspiring reflective sad fast-paced

4.5

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