lauraleafromthelibrary's reviews
173 reviews

The Shape of Family by Shilpi Somaya Gowda

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

2.0

2 ⭐️
  • Trigger warning for extensive self-harm in the form of cutting.
  • The ending was too cookie-cutter for me.
    • Everything was neat and organized. That’s not life.
    • I’m happy they are healed but it was too perfect of an ending.

  • Set in 2015 — then jumps to the past.
  • Modern mixed family; Indian + White
  • Karina; daughter
  • Prem; son
  • Jaya; mother
  • Keith; father

  • June 2009; Prem drowns — he was 8 years old
    • How did we feel about chapter 6 — Prem’s perspective after he dies?
    • He blames the water.
    • What do you think?

  • Karina begins cutting herself.
  • Keith + Karina go to therapy.
  • Keith cooks.
  • Jumping into the mourning period — it’s tough for everyone. Jaya’s Indian mother comes to visit.
  • Karina is doing very well in high school; the cutting continues.

  • Jaya is pushing religion — page 71: “Now, Karina felt anger rise uncontrollably within her. She stood up and carried her plate to the sink. ‘God didn’t have anything to do with it.’ — What? said her mother. ‘I said, God didn’t have anything to do with my report card. And I don’t want to go to the temple. I have a big history project to work on.’ It was the last thing Karina wanted to be associated with, that nonsense that swept her mother away from their family for hours at a time.”

  • They fill in the pool — covering up the death?
  • Jaya also builds the temple. Destroys Prem’s room.
  • Page 79: “In the end, Karina lost both her brother and her parents. They divorced the summer she turned sixteen, two years after Prem’s death.”

  • Page 86: “Sometimes, she felt like one of his employees to be managed, or an investment to be returned. Karina had a different goal: instead of a university with the best ranking, she wanted one that would give her the largest scholarship — something they could give her true independence from her parents.”
    • Her parents are kinda a lot. 😳

  • Page 97 — sleazy Keith is talking about his condo and how he paid off the house mortgage; I can’t believe Jaya never sold it.

  • Jaya complains that Keith is obsessed with wealth and building his career but in the end, it’s his salary that pays off the mortgage. She could have sold and lived with less. I don’t like that she’s constantly giving the ‘holier than thou’ speech about religion (religion is so important to her) when she lives a pretty solid life. It’s judgemental of her; it feels slimy to me. You can’t criticize one way of life when your life is no better, in a different way. Religion is not going to pay the bills.

  • 2014 — Karina meets James in college. They start a relationship.

  • Page 128: Jaya — “In pursuit of simplicity over the past few years, Jaya had shed the things with power to hurt or distract her: her work, her husband, her friends. She could focus exclusively on connecting to the higher spiritual force guiding the universe when she sat in Prem’s ashram and find solace there.”
    • Is Jaya entering a cult?

  • The Prem chapters are kinda annoying me. The first one was okay but not the rest.

  • James — page 137: the cheater cheater pumpkin eater. They split.

  • Page 143: was Karina raped?
  • Karina gets a job at Natural Foods Market — meets Micah. Her grades and life are slipping.
  • January 2015 — Karina moves into the Sanctuary. Drops out of school.

  • Page 156: her name; conversation with Micah — “What does it mean, by the way? Karina. Not much to me, except being saddled with a name no one can spell.” 
    • Girl 😆 it’s not that strange.
  • Micah: page 169 — “We all have demons, Karina. Every one of us. We all have something that haunts us, that prevents us from reaching our true potential.”
    • Is this foreshadowing or is he a nice guy? I’m unsure. 🧐
  • The Sanctuary — is this also a cult?? 🧐
  • Page 175 — is Keith going to jail??
  • Karina can’t concentrate during meditation — sounds like me during yoga; not for everyone.

  • Page 209: “I worry this is getting to be too much, Jaya. It’s one thing to have daily prayer in your life, as we’ve always done. It’s another to dedicate your whole life to it like this. It’s not balanced.”
    • Truer words have never been spoken.
  • I obviously don’t like that Karina is lying to her parents about living at the sanctuary; it’s unsafe. Plus, it’s just wrong. Tell them the truth!!!!
  • She’s sleeping with Micah after that therapy session of sorts. 
    • He suggests a new name — Serotina. 👎🏻

  • Page 219: “She had mistakenly thought that if the people who knew and loved her best — Dad, Mom, Izzy (indeed, the same people who had known Prem best) — if they couldn’t help lessen her pain, then no one could, ever.”
    • Bleak but true.

  • Using an environmental engineering degree to grow weed — so classic. What an accomplishment. 👎🏻
    • Botany Lab gold medal.🥇 
  • I’m all for the environment and environmentally friendly things but fasting on a weekly basis? Sometimes two days a week? 😳
    • Is this necessary?? More cult vibes.

  • Page 253: Justin — “Nah, let’s do it now. In front of everyone. That’s the way it’s supposed to be, right? Everything out in the open. So, here’s what I think, Micah. You like bringing in more girls, especially your type of girls —“
    • Micah’s a real creep. 
    • I saw the signs long before this moment.
    • Charles Manson much??
    • They mostly side with Micah after this too; criticizing Justin. Brainwashed much!?? 🫣
    • Justin leaves — save yourself, man.

  • Page 291: Micah kills August; covers it up.
  • Karina has a breakdown; is saved by her parents.
  • Micah goes to jail — kills himself. We find out he was a big fat liar.
  • Page 316: everyone is going to therapy.

  • The ending:
    • Keith doesn’t go to jail; he cleans up his life. Pays off his debts.
    • Jaya is happy being a mother again.
    • Karina calls her friend Claire, who tells her Henry is a good guy, and essentially couldn’t have raped her. They cry. It’s confusing.
    • Karina makes up with James — like, not as a couple but still. 🤮
    • Karina doesn’t talk to her therapist about the rape???
    • But Karina’s therapist does talk her through how Micah manipulated her into joining the Sanctuary. She was vulnerable.
      • Justin survived. 👍🏻
    • Karina goes back to school.
Expand filter menu Content Warnings
The Last Delivery by Evan Dahm

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

4.0

I have feelings. I wanted to stop reading at so. many. points. but, I couldn’t. That’s the freaking point.
Heartless Hunter by Kristen Ciccarelli

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medium-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

2.0

A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles

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

2.0

2 ⭐️
  • Showing me v telling me problem
    • We see his memories; the linear track of the story gets lost.
  • I do love character driven books, which this is but, I feel like this was dragged down by a lot pointless plot.
  • I do love historical fiction so maybe this was just an author I don’t enjoy. Is the writing bad? I’m unsure. The author is American. That could be the problem. It doesn’t feel authentic to me.
  • The imperial problem. I hated it.
    • USSR officially adopted it in 1925.
    • It says it was introduced in Russia 1899 and by 1917 it was mandatory.
    • WTF was everything in this book in Fahrenheit. 😡😡
  • I don’t see how this book is so beloved; is it nostalgia for the past? A life lost? A time before communism? Before socialism? A time of gentlemen and ladies.
  • We’re attracted to things like Downton Abbey, Outlander, the Crown because they are unique historical stories with rich history. This could fall into this category but it just wasn’t conveyed well.
  • ALSO — I take issue with anyone that calls the movie Casablanca a “woman’s movie” (page 295). It’s sexist but there’s also kind of a love letter to Casablanca as well. A main theme.
  • The ending was better than the beginning.

  • Book One
    • Set in 1922
    • Count Alexander Ilyich Rostov
    • This is historical fiction.
    • Page 36: “The Count took pride in wearing a well-tailored jacket; but he took greater pride in knowing that a gentleman’s presence was best announced by his bearing, his remarks, and his manners. Not by the cut of his coat.”
    • Nina Kulikova — 9 years old
    • Page 52 — teaching Nina about being a princess: “A princess would be raised to say please when she asked for a cake, and thank you when she was offered one.”
      • He also teaches her about posture and respecting your elders.
    • Page 56: we find out he’s lived at the Metropol hotel for 4 years (previous to his imprisonment).
    • Mikhail Fyodorovich is Mishka; he is Rostov’s good friend. That meant at university.
    • It’s like watching a group chat come to life; so many people just watching things happen in the hotel.

  • Book Two
    • Now, 1923.
    • On the first anniversary of his imprisonment, he sleeps with Anna Urbanova; the movie star.
      • “As you go, be sure to draw the curtains.” 🥰
    • 1924 — feeling lost.
    • 1926 — mentions temperature is Fahrenheit: 34 degrees (page 147). 🧐
    • The German:
      • 3 things Russia contributed the West (other than Vodka):
      • 1. Chekhov + Tolstoy
      • 2. Tchaikovsky — the Nutcraker
      • 3. Caviar
    • The story to Charles Abernethy: he defends his sister’s honour; she dies without him. He’s now in exile.

  • Book Three:
    • 1930 — his nickname is Sasha? Just noticed this.
    • Nina has grown up into a scholarly type of socialist.
    • He starts a more regular relationship with Anna during this year. She’s no longer acting because of talking pictures.
    • Meets up with her in 1928; after she’s meeting a director who essentially blows her off.
    • We learn Rostov last left the country in 1914 to shoot Pulonov, the jerk.
      • Page 209: “why did you shoot the fellow? Wasn’t he an aristocrat like yourself? — “I shot him because he was an aristocrat.”
    • This whole conversation about being a gentleman — page 210: “What is it about me that makes you so sure that I am not a gentleman? “It isn’t one thing to — it is an assembly of small details. Yes. Like in a mosaic. So, give me an example of one of these smaller details. — As a host, it was perfectly appropriate for you to take up the serving tools. But a gentleman would have served his guest before he served himself. A gentleman wouldn’t gesture at another man with his fork, or speak with his mouth full. But perhaps most importantly, he would have introduced himself at the beginning of a conversation — particularly when he had the advantage over his guest… And I ordered the wrong wine.”
      • I hate this constant obsession with drinks; like who cares, you’re all alcoholics, we get it.
    • 1938 — Sofia; Nina’s daughter is introduced; 5 years old.
      • Page 271 — Nina never returns.
    • 1946 — Mishka visits. Says the 5th best contribution to the west was the burning of Moscow in 1812 in protest.
      • Is America also ready to do this as well??
    • Page 297-298: “As I’ve said to you before, we and the Americans will lead the rest of this century because we are the only nations who have learned to brush the past aside instead of bowing before it.” RIGHT 🫣
      • And in the 21st century, they are probably 2 of the worst countries in the world. Democratic, communist or otherwise.
    • Page 304: the Count leaves the hotel for the first time in 24 years to go to the hospital with Sofia (she is now 13 years old).

  • Book Four:
    • 1950
    • Page 333: Richard Vanderwhile, the American. Just happens to become his best friend. 🤮
    • 1952 — the buttons metaphor. Kinda cute. Nina + Sofia.
    • 1953 — Stalin dies.
    • Page 351: “You sound as if you dreamed of living in America. Everyone dreams of living in America.” NOT ME 👎🏻
    • The cake scene — I do love that they all care about Sofia.
    • Mishka dies. A part of Rostov dies too.
    • Thinking of Katerina — Mishka’s ex-wife: does he now wish for freedom too?

  • Book Five:
    • 1954
    • Page 387-388: “For what matters in life is not whether we receive a round of applause: what matters is whether we have the courage to venture forth despite the uncertainty of acclaim.” ♥️
      • Sofia needs to venture out into the world without the Count.
    • Sofia’s dress. Cute scene.
    • Page 421: “Well, since the day I born, Sofia, there was only one time when Life needed me to be in a particular place at a particular time, and that was when your mother brought you to the lobby of the Metropol. And I would not accept the Tsarship of all the Russias in exchange for being in this hotel at that hour.” 🥹
    • Page 447: Rostov’s big escape plan; Sofia escapes too.
    • It’s Nina at the end. ♥️


Iron Flame by Rebecca Yarros

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adventurous 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? Yes

4.0

The Muse of Maiden Lane by Mimi Matthews

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hopeful inspiring lighthearted 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? Yes

4.0

Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng

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

3.0

3 ⭐️
  • Chapter One: 
    • Present time: set in 1977.
    • Lydia is found drowned.

  • Chapter Two:
    • We jump to the past; 1950s
    • Marilyn (the mother) falling for the professor James (the father); 1957.
    • Their complex relationship.
  • Page 48: “He was afraid to tell Marilyn these things, afraid that once he admitted them, she would see him as he had always seen himself: a scrawny outcast, feeding on scraps, reciting his lines and trying to pass. An imposter. He was afraid she would never see him any other way.”
    • Being from an immigrant family; the outsider. His parents both dead.
    • The Marilyn’s mother is so racist, she never sees her again after her wedding day.

  • Chapter Three:
    • The funeral for Lydia.
    • James sleeps with Louisa, his graduate assistant. 😔

  • Chapter Four:
    • He tells Marilyn no to going back to work; she misses using her degree — major red flag. 🚩 
    • Marilyn’s mother dies in 1966; changes her whole perspective on life.
      • That Betty Crocker cookbook man. 🤬
    • Page 85-86: “It struck her then, as if someone had said it aloud: her mother was dead, and the only thing worth remembering about her, in the end, was that she had cooked. Marilyn thought uneasily of her own life, of hours spent making breakfasts, serving dinners, packing lunches into neat paper bags. How was it possible to spend so many hours spreading peanut butter across bread? How was it possible to spend so many hours cooking eggs? Sunny-side up for James. Hard-boiled for Nath. Scrambled for Lydia. It behooves a good wife to know how to make an egg behave in six basic ways. Was she sad? Yes. She was sad. About the eggs. About everything.” 
      • Page 86: “Never, she promised herself. I will never end up like that.”
    • Marilyn leaves.

  • Chapter Five:
    • Page 120: “She drops both, as if she has found a snake, and pushes the book bag out of her lap with a thud. They must belong to someone else, she thinks; they could not be Lydia’s. Her Lydia did not smoke. As for the condoms —“
      • I guess parents will remain naive forever. Every generation.
      • Her Lydia — like she ever asked her daughter how she really felt. I think the ily’s are genuine but she lives her own life too.

  • Chapter Six:
    • Page 136-137: “What mother doesn’t love to cook with her little girl? And what little girl doesn’t love learning with Mom?” 😳
      • Sadness + grief + horror wrapped into one.
    • Page 137: “If her mother ever came home and told her to finish her milk, she thought, the page wavering to a blur, she would finish her milk. She would brush her teeth without being asked and stop crying when the doctor gave her shots. She would go to sleep the second her mother turned out the light. She would never get sick again. She would do everything her mother told her. Everything her mother wanted.”
      • Parents fuck up their kids so hard. This is why some people should not have kids.
    • Marilyn becomes pregnant with Hannah; that’s why she gives up her dream.
    • Page 147: “She buried her nose in Lydia’s hair and made silent promises. Never to tell her to sit up straight, to find a husband, to keep a house. Never to suggest that there were jobs or lives or worlds not meant for her; never to let her hear doctor and think only man. To encourage her, for the rest of her life, to do more than her mother had.”
      • Her endeavour becomes obsession.
      • She pins all her hopes and dreams on her daughter instead of herself.
      • She completely ignores Nath.
        • He pushes Lydia into the water.
    • James becomes more and more abusive to Nath; not physically but verbally + mentally. It’s disgusting.

  • Chapter Seven:
    • 1976; we learn Lydia is friendless, isolated, failing her classes; Nath is her only true saving grace.
    • Th centre of her parents universe for all the wrong reasons.
    • Lydia finds solace in Jack.

  • Chapter Eight:
    • The police rule Lydia’s death a suicide; page 201: “They don’t know her. Someone must have taken her out there. Lured her. She wouldn’t have gone out there by herself. Do you think I don’t know my own daughter?” 
      • Yes, yes I do.
    • The sentence Children of Mixed Backgrounds Often Struggle to Find Their Place — I think in this case, the parents were the real problem; Lydia would have grown up much different if her life didn’t revolve around her parents wants + dreams.
    • OMG — Jack is gay; page 211: “But the moment flashed lightening-bright to Hannah. Years of yearning had made her sensitive, the way a starving dog twitches its nostrils at the faintest scent of food. She could not mistake it. She recognized it at once: love, one-way deep adoration that bounced off and did not bounce back; careful, quiet love that didn’t care and went on anyway.” 😳

  • Chapter Nine:
    • Page 219-220: “When she had her license, Lydia thought, she could go anywhere. She could drive across town, across Ohio, all the way to California, if she wanted to. Even with Nath gone — her mind shied from the thought — she would not be trapped alone with her parents; she could escape anytime she chose. Just thinking about it made her legs twitch, as if itching to run.”
      • Tell me her life isn’t a prison?
    • Her parents gaslighting her: “After you get your license,” her father said, “we’ll let you take the car out on Friday nights with your friends.” “If you keep your grades up,” her mother would add, if she was around.
      • I want to take people hostage. 🤬
    • This got me thinking too; page 225: “For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. One went up and the other went down. One gained and the other lost. One escaped, the other was trapped, forever.”
      • This idea could really sum up the entire novel.
    • James is always concerned with what everyone else wants, what everyone thinks.
      • He tells Lydia friendship + love are more important than school; having friends is the most important. Again, his traumatic childhood is being suffocated onto her.
    • On Lydia’s 16th birthday, she realizes her father is cheating with Louisa — or the suspicion of.

  • Chapter Ten:
    • Marilyn — she had longed for different: in her life, in herself.
      • James can’t comprehend how wrong he was; she wanted to embrace being different, she wanted things for her life; James wanted to be anything BUT different.

  • Chapter Eleven:
    • Page 260: “Every time you look at this, she heard her father say, just remember what really matters. Being sociable. Being popular. Blending in. You don’t feel like smiling? Then what? Force yourself to smile. Don’t criticize, condemn, or complain.”
      • Lydia’s response to Hannah wearing the necklace: rips it off; “You don’t want that” — “Don’t ever smile if you don’t want to.”

  • Chapter Twelve:
    • Page 290: “He can guess, but he won’t ever know, not really. What it was like, what she was thinking, everything she’d never told him. Whether she thought he’d failed her, or whether she wanted him to let her go. This, more than anything, makes him feel that she is gone.” 💔
Expand filter menu Content Warnings
Doppelganger: A Trip Into the Mirror World by Naomi Klein

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informative slow-paced

3.0

3 ⭐️
  • Girl, delete your twitter account.
  • There are a lot of ignorant Americans; disinformation is rampant. Absolute lack of education.
  • Social media is a dumpster fire; fuelling conspiracy theories.
  • Politics are frustrating: I really don’t care about political science; if you care about politics, maybe you’ll enjoy this book. I care about democracy and voting but I will not waste my time with ignorant people.
  • The ending of this book was much better than the beginning. It needed to be edited down — it felt like an academic paper; a very, very long academic paper.

  • Introduction: Off-Brand Me —
    • Page 4: “In June 2021, as this project began to truly spiral out of my control, a strange new weather event dubbed a ‘heat dome’ descended on the southern coast of British Columbia, the part of Canada where I now live with my family. The thick air felt like a snarling, invasive entity with malevolent intent.”

  • Part One: Double Life (Performance) —Chapter 1: Occupied —
    • Page 21: “I went back and took a closer look at the articles about her evening-wear arrest, and a line in The Guardian jumped out at me: ‘Her partner, the film producer Avram Ludwig, was also arrested.’ I read the sentence to my partner, the film director and producer Avram Lewis (who goes by Avi). ‘What the actual fuck?’ he asked. ‘I know,’ I said, ‘It’s a goddamned conspiracy.’ Then we both burst out laughing.’”

  • Page 27: October 2019 poem — “If the Naomi be Klein, you’re doing just fine. If the Naomi be Wolf, oh buddy. Oooooof.” 😆

  • Not Me
    • Page 30: “I instantly knew that Twitter was going to be bad for me — and yet, like so many of us, I could not stop looking. So perhaps if there is a message I should have taken from the destabilizing appearance of my doppelgänger, this is it: once and for all, stop eavesdropping on strangers talking about you in this crowded and filthy global toilet known as social media. I might have heeded the message, too. If COVID hadn’t intervened.”

  • Chapter 2: Enter COVID, the Threat Multiplier —
    • COVID vaccine shedding
    • Dear GOD
    • It’s in the Code:
      • Page 39: “Beyond what I consider to be our different approaches to facts and research, there are plenty of other differences between us. She grew up in the United States, I in Canada. She is a liberal who reverentially references the founding fathers, fetishizes a highly individualistic version of ‘liberty,’ and wrote an entire book addressed to a ‘young patriot’. I am a third-generation leftist who believes freedom is won collectively and gets itchy around flags. She went to private universities in the United States and the United Kingdom; I dropped out of a public one in Canada. Her eyes are blue; mine are brown.”
    • Klein is an associate professor at UBC — yet didn’t finish her degree? 

  • Chapter 3: My failed Brand, Or Call Me By Her Name —
    • The digital doppelgängers.
    • Personal branding on social media.
    • May 2019: Wolf gets a viral death for publishing a book without getting her facts straight.
      • Reminds me of the power of social media — a viral attack; Blake Lively v Justin Baldoni

  • Part Two: Mirror World (Projection):
    • Chapter 5: They Know About Cell Phones
      • Naomi Wolf attacking the COVID passport; this is why I don’t watch the news.
      • She is absolutely NUTS in this chapter.
      • FOX News should be taken off the air for misinformation.
      • Everything she says is literally conspiracy theory. Why do people even slightly believe it?? This makes me think that there are just a lot of ignorant ass North Americans.
      • Page 88: “Everyone who is online today knows at least some of this. Knows that where we go, who we love, what we believe, and how our bodies behave is out there in ether, beyond our control. And yet the response to this extraordinary reality has so far been strangely muted, with much of it sublimated into ironic humor, like ‘Wait until they hear about cell phones’”.
        • Digital surveillance; who actually cares about this.
        • Why does it matter?
        • Is this a generational worry?
        • Is Naomi Klein also a problem, by creating commentary on the digital age and how it makes us less anonymous: she talked about her friends growing up and writing graffiti in a bathroom stall that only they would know about.
          • Page 90: She says “the world was indifferent to us, and we had no idea how lucky we were.”
          • Nostalgia?
          • Why does it matter?
          • I hate it here.

  • Page 109: it’s mentioned that Elon Musk welcomes Wolf back to twitter in 2022; a crazy guy welcomes back the crazies.

  • The Mirror World — America. 😵‍💫
    • Chapter 9: the far right meets the far-out — maybe the Mirror World is creeping into Canada.
    • I enjoyed reading chapter 9; talked  about fitness.

  • Page 173: body doubling — “For the person dedicating themselves to transformation through diet and fitness, there is you as you are now, and — ever present — there is you as you imagine you could be, with enough self-denial and self-discipline, enough hunger and enough reps. A better, different you, always just out of reach.”
    • I liked this mini-chapter on fitness.
    • Fitness can get out-of-hand; to its extremes.
    • It was a little wild that gyms were forced to close but restaurants could stay open during COVID. What’s essential?

  • Page 190: “Vancouver is the third most expensive city in North America, ahead of San Francisco and Los Angeles, and is also at the epicentre of the poisoned drug crisis.”
    • Talking about how Vancouver is changing politically to the far right due to yoga money from people like Chip Wilson, the founder of Lululemon. 😔
      • Don’t support him or the far-right but I still like his clothes.

  • Page 241: the fantasy of justice — “There is the persistent liberal dream that Donald Trump will finally be held legally accountable for one or more of his crimes while in or out of office. But beyond that, who is actively calling for our living war criminals to be brought before the International Criminal Court? What is the plan for seizing the assets of the companies fuelling the climate crisis?” 🤬

  • The Fuck Trudeau trucker convoy — I almost forgot about them. I had no idea about the convoy for Every Child Matters either.

  • The two Naomi’s agree on the genocide in Palestine.
    • I enjoyed reading chapter 14: The Unshakeable Ethnic Double.

  • Page 336: “When I try to understand Other Naomi, I see something similar. She, too, is both that and this. As a young writer, she helped inspire countless women to become feminists. In middle age, she took stands that required real moral courage — as when she walked out of that synagogue or shared her platform with people being pounded by missiles. She has also, especially lately, done a great many things that are extremely harmful, and I think many of the reasons behind them are pretty uninteresting: a desire for attention, for ego gratification, for cash; perhaps a drive to prove that she was right and that every person who ever attacked her was wrong.”

  • Page 348: “If there is anything this journey has taught me, it’s that identity is not fixed. Not mine. Not Wolf’s. Not even the barrier between our two identities. It’s all fluid, shifting around and doubling constantly. Negotiating that doubling — between our younger selves and our older selves, between our public selves and our private selves, between our living selves and our dying selves — is a part of what it means to be human. A bigger part of being human, though, and certainly of living a good life, is not about how we make ourselves in those shifting sands of self. It’s about what we make together. ♥️
Servant of Earth by Sarah Hawley

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adventurous dark emotional fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

When the first book of the year is 5⭐️ — that’s got to be a good sign.
The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt

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challenging dark emotional funny inspiring reflective sad medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

4 ⭐️
  • A large part is set at Christmas (the last quarter) — not your typical Christmas story. 😆
  • “Disorder is the condition of the mind’s fertility.” — quote from Donna Tartt’s office wall; love this.
  • My favourite character is Boris.

  • Chapter 1: boy with a skull
    • Boy, 13 — Theodore Decker
    • Mom, Audrey — dies in NY, April 10 from a bomb explosion in a museum; 14 years ago.
      • Writing a memoir?
      • First person perspective.

  • Chapter 2: the anatomy lesson
    • We learn the father leaves them; he’s a total dumpster fire. He’s an alcoholic too.
    • The terror of being alone; the moments after the bomb felt so real. I loved the writing — it made me feel anxious.

  • Chapter 3: park avenue
    • The Barbour’s; their park avenue apartment is like a morgue, dark but also magnificent.
    • Page 88: “Everything was lost, I had fallen off the map: the disorientation of being in the wrong apartment, with the wrong family, was wearing me down, so I felt groggy and punch-drunk, weepy almost, like an interrogated prisoner prevented from sleeping for days. Over and over, I kept thinking I’ve got to go home and then, for the millionth time, I can’t.”
      • I’ve had this same feeling — it describes grief or loss so well.
    • The Decker grandparents are absolute trash.

  • Chapter 4: morphine lollipop
    • The ring; Hobie + Welty
    • Pippa; the beautiful girl
    • Page 146: “Are you done your hunger strike?” lol Toddy, what a menace
    • The morphine lollipop kiss.
    • I kinda love Andy.
    • Hobie’s workshop is chef’s kiss.
      • Theo likes old things.
      • He makes me see why.
    • Theo’s dad Larry + Xandra OMG 😳 what a nightmare; a perfect disaster.

  • Chapter 5: badr al-dine
    • They left a dog alone in the Vegas heat.
    • I hate that Theo has to deal with his father’s anger problem, like he’s responsible for his own parent.
    • Introduction of Boris; interesting guy.
    • The mention of Alberta + the CBC.
    • I thought Larry was bad but man, Boris’s dad takes the cake.

  • Chapter 6: wind, sand, and stars
    • The savings — his dad stealing from his own kid; getting a line of credit with his social security number. Dear GOD. 😳
    • Page 339: his dad dies from drunk driving.
    • I’m so glad he takes Popper with him; literally saved that dog’s life.
    • The whole time he wants to go back to the Barbour’s I’m literally screaming GO FIND HOBIE. I’m glad he had some sense.
    • Xandra’s parting words hit hard; I really hope Theo turns out better than his fucked up dad

  • Chapter 7: the-shop-behind-the-shop
    • Theo sick in bed and Pippa caring for him; its opposite. He’s still in love with her too.
    • Page 403: “‘Really disturbing, said Hobie — ‘Wounded people everywhere, people bleeding to death, and here’s this fellow snatching painting off the walls. Carrying them around outside in the rain.’”
      • We’ve never got the full story of why he took the painting at this point? He has SO much anxiety about it but he still keeps it.

  • Chapter 8: the-shop-behind-the-shop, continued
    • He gets into early college; starts acting like a normal human being again — despite the anxiety.
    • He’s lost contact with Boris at this point.
    • Finally puts the painting in storage.
    • His old apartment is torn down; another link to his past destroyed.

  • Chapter 9: everything of possibility
    • 8 years have passed.
    • Andy + his father have died; boating accident. Mr. Barbour was bipolar.
    • Theo sells furniture from the shop with Hobie.
    • Everett, the music librarian; Pippa’s new BF. The disgust.
    • And, Theo becomes addicted to pain medication during these years.
    • Page 473: “But at this point, in the spring of my twenty-sixth year, I had not been more than three days clean in a row in over three years.”
      • He’s become a bit of his father. Addictive tendencies.
    • Page 500: “All this time, I’d known it was a mistake, keeping the painting, and still I’d kept it. No good could come of keeping it. It wasn’t even as if it had done me any good or given me any pleasure. Back in Las Vegas, I’d been able to look at it whenever I wanted, when I was sick or sleepy or sad, early morning and the middle of the night, autumn, summer, changing with weather and sun. It was one thing to see a painting in a museum but to see it in all those lights and moods and seasons was to see it a thousand different ways and to keep it shut in the dark — a thing made of light, that only lived in light — was wrong in more ways than I knew how to explain. More than wrong: it was crazy.”

  • Chapter 10: the idiot
    • Kitsey + Theo are getting married.
      • Talk about opposites.
      • Page 515: “All the power and melancholy of wealth.”
    • Page 527: “Apparently I’d inherited it from him and, who knew, maybe Grandpa Decker as well, this violent procreative disgust buzzing loudly in my bloodstream; it felt inborn, wired-in, genetic.” 
      • Absolutely can relate. That’s me.
    • Boris is alive and still doing shady things.
      • Page 552: “‘I switched it. Yes. It was me. I thought you knew.’” OMGGGG
    • Page 559: “How could I have believed myself a better person, a wiser person, a more elevated and valuable and worthy-of-living person on the basis of my secret uptown? Yet I had. The painting had made me feel less mortal, less ordinary. It was support and vindication; it was sustenance and sum. It was the keystone that had held the whole cathedral up. And it was awful to learn, by having it so suddenly vanish from under me, that all my adult life I’d been privately sustained by that great, hidden, savage joy: the conviction that my whole life was balanced atop a secret that might at any moment blow it apart.”
      • THIS. Finally, an answer.
      • My favourite passage.
      • The answer and the curse.
    • Kitsey is cheating with Tom Cable; a boy who bullied Andy.
      • They’re still getting married? Yuck.

  • Chapter 11: the gentleman’s canal
    • Page 672: “‘Still wishing you had phoned the art cops, eh?’ he said, slinging his arm around my shoulder with his head close to mine, exactly as when we were boys. ‘We can still phone them,’ said Gyuri, with a shout of laughter, punching me on the other arm.”
      • This seems like foreshadowing.
      • All that work to get the painting back seems absurd.
      • He should have done the right thing from the start or let it go entirely.
    • Boris gets shot.
    • Theo kills Martin.
    • Some guy steals the painting.
    • Boris was actually so funny driving with the gunshot; babbling mess — I laughed out loud multiple times. I’m actually worried for that guy.

  • Chapter 12: the rendezvous point
    • Theo’s losses his passport.
    • The anxiety + paranoia are eating at him; the dark descent into madness + despair.
    • Being in a hotel room at Christmas; alone; feeling trapped.
    • Page 727: “Pippa wasn’t fooled by who I was. I had nothing to offer her. I was illness, instability, everything she wanted to get away from. Jail would only confirm what she knew. The best thing I could do was break off contact. If my father had really loved my mother — really loved her the way he said he had, once upon a time — wouldn’t he have done the same?”
      • We’ve come full circle.
    • Page 745: “‘Maybe sometimes — the wrong way is the right way? You can take the wrong path and it still comes out where you want to be? Or, spin it another way, sometimes you can do everything wrong and it still turns out to be right?’”
      • The painting is recovered; Boris is a genius.
      • Reward money + everything set to right. Sascha goes to jail.
    • Page 771: “That life — and whatever else it is — is short. That fate is cruel but maybe not random. That nature (meaning death) always wins but that doesn’t mean we have to bow and grovel to it. That maybe even if we’re not always so glad to be here, it’s our task to immerse ourselves anyway: wade straight through it, right through the cesspool, while keeping eyes and hearts open.” 🫶🏻