lispectorsexual's reviews
68 reviews

The Ice Palace by Tarjei Vesaas

adventurous emotional sad slow-paced

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

3.5

The only thing I found lacking or didn’t seem to be fond of, was it’s prose and lyricism. The story itself was quite beautiful and dealt with real concepts such as death, solitude and how these things affect us and the people around us.

Emanon Volume 4: Emanon Wanderer Part Three by Shinji Kajio

adventurous emotional inspiring reflective sad tense 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

4.25

Emanon Volume 3: Emanon Wanderer Part Two by Shinji Kajio

emotional lighthearted reflective sad tense 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

Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett

challenging dark funny reflective sad slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.5

The absurd meaninglessness of existence and the inevitability of suffering that arises from it. There's nothing capable of saving humanity aside from humanity itself, even if Godot comes, who is to say that he will surely save us?

The Trouble with Being Born by E.M. Cioran

dark informative reflective tense slow-paced

5.0

Mesmerising aphoristic writing style filled with raw and intense emotions. Despair, suffering, death, and nihilism - led by the ability to express these feelings rather than to reach a fundamental truth.

The thing about being an anti philosopher is that it’s a philosophy in and of itself, and a nihilist at that would be contrary to its meaning - you still proceed to write. Beautiful work all together!

The Inferno by Dante Alighieri

adventurous dark reflective tense slow-paced

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

3.5

Água viva by Clarice Lispector

challenging emotional mysterious reflective tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? N/A
• Diverse cast of characters? N/A
• Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A

5.0

When you first go into this book, the whole “no plot” or “story” to follow might throw you off a bit, but when you start reading more into it you forget all about its abstract nature. You first start to feel, her words bring forth life to your perceptions. She has now bewitched you. A breath of life. This is written almost like a confession or something directed/intended for a specific person, you, the reader. It was meant for you. You don’t necessarily have to understand but feel, you have to feel her words. Sometimes resonance can appear in a “meaningless” sense or a way you can’t comprehend but the way it touches you, the way the arrangement of these words make you feel is enough. 

She goes into freedom, death, birth, time, creation and destruction. Every sentence is independent but as a paragraph they all seem to be chained together. She goes into her own philosophical concepts such as formless thinking - freedom. Thoughts that appear of their own volition, especially during creativity such as painting or writing, when your hand seems to be moving on its own, writing whatever it wants or painting whatever it wants. “The true thought seems to have no author”. And that’s how I think she was able to write this masterpiece.

The writing style is flawless as always and you can never predict where her sentences could lead you to. Her unique punctuations are always the highlight of it all. The book is short but powerful, as expected of her. Will definitely be rereading this in the months to follow. 5/5.

Favourite Quotes : 

We desperately try to find an identity of our own and the identity of the real. And if we understand ourselves through the symbol that is because we have the same symbols and the same experience of the thing itself: but reality has no synonyms.

Dying must be a mute internal explosion. The body can no longer stand being a body.

No, I was never modern. And this happens: when I think a painting is strange that’s when it’s a painting. And when I think a word is strange that’s where it achieves the meaning. And when I think life is strange that’s where life begins. I take care not to surpass myself.

But I know that I shall have peace before death and that one day I shall taste the delicateness of life.

Please tell me what time it is so I can know that I am living in that time. I am finding myself: it’s deadly because only death concludes me. But I bear it until the end. I’ll tell you a secret: life is deadly. I’ll have to interrupt everything to tell you this: death is the impossible and intangible. Death is just future to such an extent that there are those who cannot bear it and commit suicide. It’s as if life said the following: and there simply was no following.

The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka

emotional sad tense slow-paced

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

5.0

Blood and Guts in High School: A Novel by Kathy Acker

challenging dark mysterious medium-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

3.75

The writing style is very unique, it’s fragmented, it doesn’t follow a linear pattern, just as Janey’s psyche. It isn’t solely constricted to internal monologues which makes it an even more interesting read of how messy her life is.

The anger which is felt through the writing/Janey towards the world and its male fascist leaders and misogynistic tendencies and how women are viewed as nothing but objects of sex and the only way they can even hope to get a step on this ladder made by capitalism is through them spreading their legs. A strange but not bad read.

The Besieged City by Clarice Lispector

challenging mysterious reflective tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

Her usual mystic lyricism, never disappointing nonetheless. 
Having reached the end I think the main theme or at least one of them was about perception, regardless of the materials used to make up or create the things around us, our perception is also essential for their construction.
I’ll definitely do a reread in the near future.