paigeweb's reviews
98 reviews

Maurice by E.M. Forster

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4.0

It's crazy to think that simply allowing a gay character to have a happy ending was considered so revolutionary. It was beautifully done, and one of the best parts of the book: Maurice wins his freedom from the oppression of normality while Clive will always remain trapped by a prison of his own making. The way society betrays us and we betray ourselves in turn.
Poems & Fragments by Sappho

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and when I die I shall never be forgotten.
Ghost Passage by Josephine Balmer

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3.0

I love the premise of this collection, but few individual poems stood out to me and overall it didn't quite meet expectations.


We are sinking back into History,
dark earth, the detritus of worn empires.
All we are. All we've been. All that matters.
We sow words in wood, through clay, on stone walls.
We know if we stay silent, darkness falls.


Those they had loved. All those who had loved them.
The Lost Daughter by Elena Ferrante

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  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Are we destined to become our mothers?
The Paths of Survival by Josephine Balmer

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emotional hopeful informative reflective sad

5.0

This book is equal parts excavation and resurrection.
 
Through her own poetry, classicist Josephine Balmer explores both the material and immemorial qualities of the written word. At the book's heart lies a lost play composed by the father of Greek tragedy (Aeschylus' The Myrmidons) which explicitly depicted Achilles and Patroclus as lovers. Around the tragedy of its gradual erasure and the miraculous accident of its partial preservation, Balmer weaves a tale of the historical characters who acted upon the text - distributing, censoring, and salvaging - while also imagining the ways the text acted upon its readers across millennia. Forgotten words that bubble up through the centuries.

"I am absolved because I loved him."

Perfect, devastating, changed my world, never ever going to forget this.
The Winner's Curse by Marie Rutkoski

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4.75

They're insane for this. (Kestrel telling Arin that he is the god of lies and in the last line Arin says that the god of lies loves her) Nobody gets it like I do!!
Dune by Frank Herbert

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3.75

I want an apology from all the pretentious film bros who made me believe this book was wayyy too difficult for the casual reader and put me off it for so long.

Denis Villeneuve, I love you for what you've done for Chani.