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enteka's reviews
280 reviews
The Hours by Michael Cunningham
5.0
- as if laughter were something sharp that had caught in this throat
- whose mind seems to have passed beyond any sort of repair other than the conferring of good days among the bad
- she is full of a love so strong, so unambiguous, it resembles hunger
- she has worked so long, so hard, in such good faith, and now she's gotten the knack of living happily, as herself, the way a child learns at a particular moment to balance on a two-wheel bicycle. it seems she will be fine. she will not lose hope. she will not mourn her lost possibilities, her unexplored talents (what if she has no talents, after all?)
- she has learned over the years that sanity involves a certain measure of impersonation, not simply for the benefit of husband and servants but the sake, first and foremost, of one's own convictions.
- they are only choices, one thing and then another, yes or no, and she sees how easily she could slip out of this life--these empty and arbitrary comforts.
- she could have had a life as potent and dangerous as literature itself.
- photographs of young soldiers, firm-featured boys serene in their uniforms; boys who died before the age of twenty and who live on as the embodiment of wasted promise, in photo albums or on side tables, beautiful and confident, unfazed by their doom, as the living survive jobs and errands, disappointing holidays
- she seems as sad and innocent and invincible as the dead do in photographs.
- take me with you. i want a doomed love. i want streets at night, wind and rain, no one wondering where i am.
- the sun explodes like a flashbulb in his face. [reminded me of tbj, sp]
- how much more space a being occupies in life than it does in death; how much illusion of size is contained in gestures and movements, in breathing. dead, we are revealed in our true dimensions, and they are surprisingly modest.
- better to put a stop to that right now. / still, there is this terrible desire to be loved by oliver st. ives. / still, there is hit horror at being left behind.
- if they both survive long enough, if they stay together (and how, after all this, could they part?), they will watch each other fade.
- but there are still the hours, aren't there? one and then another, and you get through that one and then, my god, there's another. i'm so sick.
- i'm not looking for sympathy. not really. i just feel so sad. what i wanted to do seemed simple. i wanted to create something alive and shocking enough that it could stand beside a morning in somebody's life. the most ordinary morning. imagine, trying to do that. what foolishness.
- hell is a stale yellow box of room, with no exit, shaded by an artificial tree, lined with scarred metal doors (one bears a grateful dead decal, a skull crowned with roses), [reminded me of no exit, jps]
notes
- bunyanesque
- intimation
- inchoate
- giacometti
- kudzu
- whose mind seems to have passed beyond any sort of repair other than the conferring of good days among the bad
- she is full of a love so strong, so unambiguous, it resembles hunger
- she has worked so long, so hard, in such good faith, and now she's gotten the knack of living happily, as herself, the way a child learns at a particular moment to balance on a two-wheel bicycle. it seems she will be fine. she will not lose hope. she will not mourn her lost possibilities, her unexplored talents (what if she has no talents, after all?)
- she has learned over the years that sanity involves a certain measure of impersonation, not simply for the benefit of husband and servants but the sake, first and foremost, of one's own convictions.
- they are only choices, one thing and then another, yes or no, and she sees how easily she could slip out of this life--these empty and arbitrary comforts.
- she could have had a life as potent and dangerous as literature itself.
- photographs of young soldiers, firm-featured boys serene in their uniforms; boys who died before the age of twenty and who live on as the embodiment of wasted promise, in photo albums or on side tables, beautiful and confident, unfazed by their doom, as the living survive jobs and errands, disappointing holidays
- she seems as sad and innocent and invincible as the dead do in photographs.
- take me with you. i want a doomed love. i want streets at night, wind and rain, no one wondering where i am.
- the sun explodes like a flashbulb in his face. [reminded me of tbj, sp]
- how much more space a being occupies in life than it does in death; how much illusion of size is contained in gestures and movements, in breathing. dead, we are revealed in our true dimensions, and they are surprisingly modest.
- better to put a stop to that right now. / still, there is this terrible desire to be loved by oliver st. ives. / still, there is hit horror at being left behind.
- if they both survive long enough, if they stay together (and how, after all this, could they part?), they will watch each other fade.
- but there are still the hours, aren't there? one and then another, and you get through that one and then, my god, there's another. i'm so sick.
- i'm not looking for sympathy. not really. i just feel so sad. what i wanted to do seemed simple. i wanted to create something alive and shocking enough that it could stand beside a morning in somebody's life. the most ordinary morning. imagine, trying to do that. what foolishness.
- hell is a stale yellow box of room, with no exit, shaded by an artificial tree, lined with scarred metal doors (one bears a grateful dead decal, a skull crowned with roses), [reminded me of no exit, jps]
notes
- bunyanesque
- intimation
- inchoate
- giacometti
- kudzu
Between Two Fires by Christopher Buehlman
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
5.0
felt like it was written for me, this rocks.
The False Prince by Jennifer A. Nielsen
4.0
reading a few books i read as a kid. this is pretty nice, actually. i love sage.
The Brides of High Hill by Nghi Vo
4.0
a rounded-up rating. i love nghi vo as usual but ngl i was a little confused at points. haven't read English stuff in a while, maybe my brain is jammed. will reread it eventually. still, it's awesome. nghi vo never misses.
Rules for Rule Breaking by Talia Tucker
funny
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
made me smile and laugh! on the train! without a mask! bad for me. good book.
nice character development and the main couple's rlsp progressed really well. this is a new era for me (reading romance!?!?!?!) so idk if my review is well-researched!
nice character development and the main couple's rlsp progressed really well. this is a new era for me (reading romance!?!?!?!) so idk if my review is well-researched!
My Life Had Stood a Loaded Gun by Emily Dickinson
4.0
- The reticent volcano keeps
- I felt a cleavage in my mind
- I took my power in my hand
- I know that he exists
- Today or this noon
- It sounded as if the streets were running
- Where ships of purple gently toss
- I dreaded that first robin so
Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead by Emily Austin
MAN
MAN
MAN
MAN
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
she's just like me frfr and somehow it's such a kind book
I remember feeling sixteen and feeling eleven. I remember thinking, how could i be a teenager I remember finishing high school and thinking, am I grown now? Is this what it feels like? I feel the same as I did before.
MAN
I am a life force contained in the deformed bodyof a baby. Of course I'm a fraud. The fact that I'm able to carry myself through life without being crushed beneath the psychological weight of being alive proves that I'm a con artist. Aren't we all con artists?
MAN
I liked to daydream about what I might do, where I might go, and what might happen to me. I don't do that anymore. I can't see myself older.
MAN
The image of Eleanor committing something I said offhand to her memory, spending her money, and gifting me this makes me feel, for some reason, heartbroken. [...] I find it so bizarre that I occupy space, and that I am seen by other people. I feel like I am falling through space and Eleanor just thew me a rose. It's such a sweet, pointless gesture. It would be less devastating to fall through space alone, without someone else falling next to me. Whenever someone does something nice for me, I feel intensely aware of how strange and sad it is to know someone.
MAN
Everything matters so much and so little; it is disgusting.
Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? by Jeanette Winterson
5.0
my first winterson book was the passion, because i'd been trying to find historical fiction. so then i fell in love with her prose there and i read written on the body. i live in singapore but for some reason the library had e-copies of the former but not the latter book. i did not like written on the body, or more accurately that was too much winterson. i think i still like her writing, though maybe it has to be taken in small doses; she writes obsessively, and so... i wanted to say, that people with good writing can make the mundane interesting to read. but what's the mundane, anyway? well, even if you're not bothering with all this semantics, winterson's life here is explosive. so, it reads well in that wintersonian way and it's explosive. english literature from A to Z.
Some quotes I liked:
Some quotes I liked:
- It has taken me a long time to learn how to love - both the giving and the receiving. I have written about love obsessively, forensically, and I know/knew it as the highest value. I loved God of course, in the early days, and God loved me. That was something. And I loved animals and nature. And poetry. People were the problem. How do you love another person? How do you trust another person to love you? I had no idea.
- Truth for anyone is a very complex thing. For a writer, what you leave out says as much as those things you include. What lies beyond the margin of the text? The photographer frames the shot; writes frame their world.
- There's a lot of talk about social breakdown and alienation, but how can it be otherwise when our ideas of progress remove the centres that did so much to keep people together?
- I was thinking about suicide because it had to be an option. I had to be able to think about it and on good days I did so because it gave me back a sense of control - for one last time I would be in control.
- I had a sense of myself as a haunted house. I never knew when the invisible thing would strike - and it was like a blow, a kind of winding in the chest or stomach. When I felt it I would cry out at the force of it.
- Probably we are less tolerant of madness now than at any period in history. There is no place for it. Crucially, there is no time for it.
- Nobody can feel too much, though many of us work very hard at feeling too little. / Feeling is frightening. / Well, I find it so.
Normal People by Sally Rooney
- 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
4.0
2024 is my year indeed. a sally rooney book, wow. it didn't feel like a 5 star read but it's really nice, introspective. connell are you me? is that a bad thing? should i get help? well i won't. rooney writes scenes like how one'd dream them. it's beautiful and yet it's mundane. wonderful.