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dawndeydusk's reviews
207 reviews
Yellowface by R.F. Kuang
fast-paced
3.0
Others have expressed this more eloquently than I ever could, but I found this book read very much like a stream of consciousness. Normally, I appreciate that reflective style of writing, but this book wasn't really giving me anything new (not that everything has to be new, but at least something of a different angle). If anything, this novel showcases R. F. Kuang's range, because I read Babel earlier this year and adored it, but I feel lukewarm towards this one. I often struggle with books on more contemporary topics like social media because it all feels very observant but not particularly interesting to me. This is how I felt about my most recent read about fangirl culture, too. Social media can be bad, people can be trolls, etc. We know this. Another aspect I struggle with regarding this book is discerning who the target audience is. It's heavy-handed in its references to racism, the vitriol of the publishing industry, the credibility (or lack thereof) of storytelling, and so on, but it feels too blunt to be a memorable satire or a work to learn from. The narrator is meant to be insufferable and unreliable, sure, but overall the work felt lonely, and it's not just because of the narrator's isolation. Despite its conversational, reflective tone, I wasn't particularly invested in the trajectory. And of course, reading the first line of the Acknowledgements addresses the "horror" of the loneliness of the brutal publishing industry. It's not my place nor my business to be critiquing this work, and I hope at the very least this was a cathartic project or a welcome change of pace (admittedly, I haven't read The Poppy War). I'm still glad to have read this, but Babel will always be dearest to my heart.
Notes on Grief by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
4.0
Is this what shock means, that the air turns to glue?
Everything I Need I Get from You: How Fangirls Created the Internet as We Know It by Kaitlyn Tiffany
fast-paced
3.0
Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami
reflective
medium-paced
3.75
I enjoyed this, I really did, though it left me wanting more. I'm looking forward to reading more of Murakami's works, and I'm glad to have started with Norweigan Wood. Dripping with nostalgia and jarring jumps in time like lapses in memory, you know there's an inevitable doom from the beginning, like a deep, cavernous well in the middle of a field.
Murakami's protagonist asks, "What if somewhere inside me there is a dark limbo where all the truly important memories are heaped and slowly turning into mud?" (10). He asks, "How many Sundays—how many hundreds of Sundays like this—lay ahead of me? (199). The gist, I think, is that death anchors life. Grief reels us in and spits us back out like a wave: unprepared, though we've been walking the shore longer than we know.
Murakami's protagonist asks, "What if somewhere inside me there is a dark limbo where all the truly important memories are heaped and slowly turning into mud?" (10). He asks, "How many Sundays—how many hundreds of Sundays like this—lay ahead of me? (199). The gist, I think, is that death anchors life. Grief reels us in and spits us back out like a wave: unprepared, though we've been walking the shore longer than we know.
On Nobody Famous: Guesting, Gossiping, Gallivanting by Kaitlyn Tiffany, Lizzie Plaugic
funny
fast-paced
3.5
Fast and funny — read this when visiting New York for the first time. It felt like reading a podcast transcript. Niche but not too niche so that it excludes you as the reader.
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
fast-paced
3.75
Completely understand why it’s a classic! Certainly paved the way for many works following it, so I must give it credit where credit is due although some parts felt a bit tedious and repetitive to me.
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
adventurous
mysterious
medium-paced
4.5
It is wonderful how a novel from 1847 holds so many surprises. Masterful and eloquent, though it took me about a third of the way through to pique my curiosity beyond return.
Winter in Sokcho by Elisa Shua Dusapin
mysterious
fast-paced
3.75
A quick read that captivated me from the first few pages. Simple in its sentence structure and bluntness, you can absorb much despite how little is said. It’s devoid of romance but riddled with desire, or rather desire for desire itself.
Babel by R.F. Kuang
adventurous
challenging
emotional
slow-paced
4.75
An almost absurdly good, necessary feat of literature that critiques colonialism and its suffocation of language(s) in a dark academic setting. Pages riddled with footnotes invite the reader like an insider. It is magic until it is not, and then it becomes magic yet again.