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lefttoread's Reviews (532)
I love Octavia's writing, I feel like it's so simple and obvious but still hard hitting. I loved the journaling format to the book too, it felt like it moved fast but still packed a punch. The fact she wrote this in the 90s is incredible, there was stuff drawn from past events that can also show you how the future could be affected and somewhat go backwards too which I think a lot of the world, especially America is definitely experiencing right now, the timeline of this story made it rather jarring to read. I can only imagine reading this when it was released and having a totally different experience, I think it would make an interesting re-read in 4 or 5 years time.
I've struggled with poetry in the past and thought I had given up on it. Due to some recent changes in my life, I decided to give it another try. I even researched tips on how to read and enjoy poetry. I found an article that helped me along my way, the article mentioned a couple of poems the writer loved and why, so I tried those first, keeping in mind what the writer of the article had said about each one. The article also suggested that poems often need to be read more than once to fully understand them or at least take something away from them.
After reading the poems from the article and finding that I had a different experience with poetry this time around, I was open to finding more, and I wanted a collection I could dive into. That's when Turn Up the Ocean appeared in a Youtube video I was watching and I felt drawn to pick it up. I immediately sought it out and to my surprise, I ended up devouring this collection.
Turn Up the Ocean is beautiful, deep, sad and eye-opening. I would like to read more by Tony Hoagland as this collection resonated with me. As the article mentioned, there were a few poems that I noted down to go back to at a future date as I didn't quite understand them. But I found this was okay this time around, especially after reading the afterword by Kathleen Lee. She shared how the pieces she decided to put in the collection might never have been considered polished enough for a book by Tony himself, but how she enjoyed the roughness of them. I found this sentiment echoed in several of the poems, particularly 'Incompletion,' which reflects our ongoing search for something more or 'complete' and I think this is exactly how the collection was meant to be.
After reading the poems from the article and finding that I had a different experience with poetry this time around, I was open to finding more, and I wanted a collection I could dive into. That's when Turn Up the Ocean appeared in a Youtube video I was watching and I felt drawn to pick it up. I immediately sought it out and to my surprise, I ended up devouring this collection.
Turn Up the Ocean is beautiful, deep, sad and eye-opening. I would like to read more by Tony Hoagland as this collection resonated with me. As the article mentioned, there were a few poems that I noted down to go back to at a future date as I didn't quite understand them. But I found this was okay this time around, especially after reading the afterword by Kathleen Lee. She shared how the pieces she decided to put in the collection might never have been considered polished enough for a book by Tony himself, but how she enjoyed the roughness of them. I found this sentiment echoed in several of the poems, particularly 'Incompletion,' which reflects our ongoing search for something more or 'complete' and I think this is exactly how the collection was meant to be.
I get why this is a classic. I never expected to come out of this loving Charles Dickens, but here we are. His writing was like no other I've read before. He had me captivated by the whole story. I look forward to reading more of his work. I'm grateful for my English Literature degree as I probably wouldn't have ended up picking this up otherwise.
This is the first book I picked up by Brandon Sanderson and I was not disappointed. So many people have recommended Brandon's books to me when I've been trying to look for some new Fantasy books to dive into and I'm so glad I picked one up.
The Final Empire is typically described as a world after the bad guy won. Ash falls from the sky, the mists come out at night and there's evil lurking everywhere.
We follow Kelsier who is a criminal mastermind and he teaches Allomancy (the magic of metals) to Mistborn Vin, Vin wasn't aware of her abilities, what they were or how to control them until Kelsier and his crew came along.
The magic system and this world was absolutely perfect! As somebody who hasn't read a lot of Fantasy I found this book really easy to get into and to follow, mainly because of Sanderson's writing, I feel addicted to it and I just want to read everything he writes.
The characters were fantastic, the 'info dumping' was actually interesting as hell and the scene setting was epic. I couldn't recommend this book enough, so easy to follow and yet so complex and fun.
The Final Empire is typically described as a world after the bad guy won. Ash falls from the sky, the mists come out at night and there's evil lurking everywhere.
We follow Kelsier who is a criminal mastermind and he teaches Allomancy (the magic of metals) to Mistborn Vin, Vin wasn't aware of her abilities, what they were or how to control them until Kelsier and his crew came along.
The magic system and this world was absolutely perfect! As somebody who hasn't read a lot of Fantasy I found this book really easy to get into and to follow, mainly because of Sanderson's writing, I feel addicted to it and I just want to read everything he writes.
The characters were fantastic, the 'info dumping' was actually interesting as hell and the scene setting was epic. I couldn't recommend this book enough, so easy to follow and yet so complex and fun.