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nepheloma's reviews
103 reviews
On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.75
I expected that this book would shake me very much, but not this much. There is a very gently violent honesty coming with it. The story format, which is not exactly linear but mostly from the perspective of someone floating over the writer's life, serves this book very much, making it not so much a memoir of events but moreso of feelings. It feels like when you're riding the train, gazing out of the window and get an orderly disorganized recollection of your life flooding through your brain. Very sensitive topics are treated with a very kind perspective, that of a kid who has been hurt by the world they live in, yet choose to try to understand where the hurt comes from.
This book was definitely gorgeous, more than briefly because of my bad reading habits.
This book was definitely gorgeous, more than briefly because of my bad reading habits.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Drug abuse, War, Drug use, Sexual violence, and Death
I Want to Die but I Want to Eat Tteokbokki by Baek Se-hee
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
3.0
I think this book has been a bit over hyped. It is a very honest therapy journal, of course, and it definitely gave me insights also about my own mental health. I don't think one should see this as a self help book and I don't think it becomes as deeply introspective as it could.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Mental illness and Eating disorder
How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy by Jenny Odell
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
4.5
All the Lovers in the Night by Mieko Kawakami
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
4.25
Having fallen into the loneliness pit can't let a plot evolve :)
Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
All About Love: New Visions by bell hooks
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
4.75
bell hooks's insights resonated with my experience and hit some heartstrings I didn't know were there to be hit. made me feel surrounded by love. would recommend to anyone willing to transcend what we're taught to believe love is and who wants to redefine it for themselves
The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin
challenging
reflective
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
5.0
Shadow and Bone by Leigh Bardugo
adventurous
emotional
lighthearted
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.0
The Lying Life of Adults by Elena Ferrante
emotional
reflective
medium-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
4.25
This was a book that I think anyone who has been a teenager at some point could relate to. The teenage angst and rebellion is depicted very truthfully and without shying away to the bad parts of it, including how selfish one's rebellion can be at times. The breaking of a family, the estrangement with ones parents and the search for some kind of found family in other people are central to the plot and felt very well executed. There are some problematic aspects to the plot, especially how adult characters end up being romantically involved with teenagers, but I think that it is also clearly proven in the book that these relationships do more harm than good to the minors involved. I really liked the book's ending and I thought it was very fitting to everything that happened, and in general every plot point was very real and the characters were all flawed, but extremely well-written and multidimensional.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Sexual content
Minor: Pedophilia
The Great Chimera by M. Karagatsis, Panagiotis Stavropoulos, Patricia Felisa Barbeito
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
tense
medium-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
2.25
Let's start with the positives: This was an amazingly well written book that I couldn't stop reading. All images were vivid, feelings were intensely conveyed and the structure of the book is reminiscent of a Greek tragedy. The focus on Greek culture was also interesting, even though the comparisons with North European culture were at times arbitrary and pretty much indicative of the fact that the book is old.
Now let's move on to my main issue: the treatment of Marina. Now again, I want to mention that all characters were well fleshed and felt very intimate to me as the reader. Their feelings were conveyed through allegory, through a divine element at times as well, which made the presence of fate very obvious as the events of the book were taking place. Main characters were all tragic heroes, their storylines characterized by irony, sin and punishment. But I felt so sorry for Marina. Not just for the reasons one is supposed to feel sorry for her throughout the story, but for how she was treated by the writer. Marina is presented as someone who is ultimately doomed from the beginning. She grew up with her mother in sex work, which leaves her with sexual aversion. Initially, I appreciated that this concept was explored. But the thing is that when she starts needing sex, like any normal human would, she is depicted as this dirty person, one who is supposed to be shamed. And then she does the ultimate sin, for which she ultimately pays as well. Now I won't justify her or say that what she did was good. However, she is receiving a disproportionate amount of scrutiny not only from characters in the book, but, as it seems, from the gods that govern the fate of the world in this book too. I dont dislike her character ark, or the concepts that were explored through it. But I found myself constantly feeling like the writer himself was attacking Marina, that he wanted to focus on how dirty he thought she was because of the passion she felt. The death she "caused" wasn't only caused by her. The housemaid had a responsibility too. Minas had a responsibility too for which he supposedly paid but in a much more "honorable" way than marina was ever allowed to have. Marina is deemed devilish because of being an erotic woman, even her sin is not of her own volition, only payment for having passionate and sexual instincts. She is ultimately the foreign, dirty woman who ruins the steady greek family, as if it wasn't her husband's brother who wasn't visiting his family for years because he was infatuated with her, and then went on to a page long incel rant about how much of a dirty whore Marina was. Marina is also depicted as a narcissist, and her EXTREMELY HIGH education is almost ignored for most of the book. Maybe -just maybe- it's the Holy Greek Family that reduced her to an object of femininity, one whose main attribute is beauty? Or maybe her husband's friends and colleagues who treated her like another one of her husband's assets, doing business with him just because they found her pretty? Marina loses her content as a person page by page, not only because she does indeed lose her mind, but because she is reduced to only a small part of who she is by all those around her. She is doomed by her own mother, without any possible effort for redemption available, even when she changes her life, even when she tries to take a different route. The only redeeming part of the book's treatment of women was the final forgiveness of Marina's mother in law. A realistic moment of support and compassion amongst women. And again, it's not that the events themselves were sexist: only how the writer treated them.
Even though this book made me angry so many times, I came to appreciate it for what it is: a tragedy from a different era, exploring the limits of passion and the concepts of divine judgement and punishment that are everpresent in Greek literature. It was a book that transported me to a different time and place very vividly, but one that also treated women in a blatantly sexist way. It's a relic of its time. I would recommend this book to anyone interested in Greek culture and literature because it's ideal for this purpose. But it should be read critically. I don't regret reading it, and that's why I rated it relatively high: if anything, it reminded me of how women were treated in that era, how sex work has been always stigmatized, how men can't help but reduce even the most well formed of women to caricatures of themselves when they don't obey societal standards.
Now let's move on to my main issue: the treatment of Marina. Now again, I want to mention that all characters were well fleshed and felt very intimate to me as the reader. Their feelings were conveyed through allegory, through a divine element at times as well, which made the presence of fate very obvious as the events of the book were taking place. Main characters were all tragic heroes, their storylines characterized by irony, sin and punishment. But I felt so sorry for Marina. Not just for the reasons one is supposed to feel sorry for her throughout the story, but for how she was treated by the writer.
Even though this book made me angry so many times, I came to appreciate it for what it is: a tragedy from a different era, exploring the limits of passion and the concepts of divine judgement and punishment that are everpresent in Greek literature. It was a book that transported me to a different time and place very vividly, but one that also treated women in a blatantly sexist way. It's a relic of its time. I would recommend this book to anyone interested in Greek culture and literature because it's ideal for this purpose. But it should be read critically. I don't regret reading it, and that's why I rated it relatively high: if anything, it reminded me of how women were treated in that era, how sex work has been always stigmatized, how men can't help but reduce even the most well formed of women to caricatures of themselves when they don't obey societal standards.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Child death, Death, Domestic abuse, Physical abuse, Sexism, Sexual content, Sexual violence, and Suicide