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phlegmcel's reviews
89 reviews
Lucy by Jamaica Kincaid
4.5
the way Jamaica Kincaid explores complicated mother/daughter relationship dynamics and wanting to be separate from her only to realize you are a mirrored extension of her is soooo evil i am going to gouge my eyes out
Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi
5.0
“What I know now, my son: Evil begets evil. It grows. It transmutes, so that sometimes you cannot see that the evil in the world began as the evil in your own home.”
i am not sure what to say about this to adequately describe it. it is a complex and very disturbing but important family saga that follows seven generations as it details British colonialism and slavery in Ghana and how it was reflected in America from the 1760s to present day. this book is so good that i ordered my own copy of it while i was reading since i was borrowing a library copy. it is so powerfully and beautifully written and i think that everyone should read it.
i am not sure what to say about this to adequately describe it. it is a complex and very disturbing but important family saga that follows seven generations as it details British colonialism and slavery in Ghana and how it was reflected in America from the 1760s to present day. this book is so good that i ordered my own copy of it while i was reading since i was borrowing a library copy. it is so powerfully and beautifully written and i think that everyone should read it.
Notes on an Execution by Danya Kukafka
5.0
the ending was perfect and made me tear up. so gorgeously written and complex. i would not normally like a book with these elements but Kukafka turned what i thought it was going to be on its head. i will say that the homicide detective’s chapters felt a little tv crime drama-y at times, but overall did not detract from what i got out of this book. 10/10 no notes i am recommending it to all my friends
The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love by bell hooks
5.0
i enjoyed this much more than all about love, but it did have some of the same points. i found much more personal value in this book, and i wish i could make some of the men in my life and the people i know who are struggling in relationships with men read this book. especially the chapter about pornography and how certain facets of it negatively impact the psyche and the ability of men to love in a fulfilling way and have a self. very important and i feel like it fostered some internal growth on my part regarding my opinion of men and some unfair generalizations i made about them
Happy Place by Emily Henry
3.0
i’m not going to lie, i ate up the drama and character motivations in this book and it was definitely compulsively readable. that said, this was glaringly millennial in ways i couldn’t ignore: the humor, the banter, the way the characters talked and thought. i kept thinking wow this would be so funny if i were 34 years old right now. but i’m not 34 years old. so. take from that what you will. will i be reading her other books though? ….well… yes…
The Secret History by Donna Tartt
4.5
”And if beauty is terror,” said Julian, “then what is desire? We think we have many desires, but in fact we have only one. What is it?”
“To live,” said Camilla.
“To live forever,” said Bunny.
i don’t really know what to say about this book. or even what to actually rate it. it has a really good thing going up until chapter 6, where it begins to gradually slow down until it feels like a slog to get through, losing much of the momentum that made it so compulsively readable in my free time up to that point. this stretch was intensely devaluing my experience with the book until i hit the last 70ish pages or so where everything was picking up again and hitting so rapidly i felt like i was going to have a heart attack. things began to click and the characters began to really settle within their respective aftermaths, and so i developed a much more retrospectively reverent view for the story as a whole because of it. the point of it as that we, the readers, are blinded alongside richard by his unreciprocated obsession with this mysterious group of students who exude an aura of intellect and artfulness that keeps them more than an arm’s length away from everyone else. they are so entrenched within their lifestyles that they can’t see what we can see, which is that none of it is actually glamorous at all.
i see why it has so much hype but i can also acknowledge that it probably isn’t for everyone. this is one of those things where if a white girl aged 19-24 told me this was her favorite book i’d say oh i’m sure lmao. if i had read this quicker than the two months i managed to stretch it to, i do not think i would have enjoyed it as much. but donna tartt…the woman that you are…
“To live,” said Camilla.
“To live forever,” said Bunny.
i don’t really know what to say about this book. or even what to actually rate it. it has a really good thing going up until chapter 6, where it begins to gradually slow down until it feels like a slog to get through, losing much of the momentum that made it so compulsively readable in my free time up to that point. this stretch was intensely devaluing my experience with the book until i hit the last 70ish pages or so where everything was picking up again and hitting so rapidly i felt like i was going to have a heart attack. things began to click and the characters began to really settle within their respective aftermaths, and so i developed a much more retrospectively reverent view for the story as a whole because of it. the point of it as that we, the readers, are blinded alongside richard by his unreciprocated obsession with this mysterious group of students who exude an aura of intellect and artfulness that keeps them more than an arm’s length away from everyone else. they are so entrenched within their lifestyles that they can’t see what we can see, which is that none of it is actually glamorous at all.
i see why it has so much hype but i can also acknowledge that it probably isn’t for everyone. this is one of those things where if a white girl aged 19-24 told me this was her favorite book i’d say oh i’m sure lmao. if i had read this quicker than the two months i managed to stretch it to, i do not think i would have enjoyed it as much. but donna tartt…the woman that you are…