If Bravery Is The Wind That Makes Us Soar Like Kites, Fear Is The String That Keeps Us From Going Too

An updated graphic for my 25 for 2025! My progress so far: 10/25 ☐ How High We Go In The Dark ☐ Vita Nostra ☐ Smila's Sense of Snow ☐ Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell ☐ House of Leaves ☐ Possession ☑ Pandora's Box ☑ A Dark and Drowning Tide ☐ Katabasis ☑ The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi ☐ Kürk Mantolu Madonna ☑ Mina's Matchbox ☑ Autobiography of Red ☑ We - A Novel ☑ Anxious People ☑ Yumi and the Nightmare Painter ☐ Out ☑ Анна Ин в Гробниците на Света ☑ Small Things Like These ☐ The Third Policeman ☐ The Snow Child ☐ Your Utopia ☐ The Book That Wouldn't Burn ☐ Mrs. Death Misses Death ☐ N.P.

Autobiography of Red || Anne Carson ★★★★★ Started: 25.01.2025 Finished: 22.02.2025 “There is no person without a world.” And, it turns out, there is no monster without a world. An immensely rich, if, by his own admission, somewhat monochromatic inner world. "Autobiography of Red" is not so much a typical contemporary mythological retelling, and more a tale of self discovery, painful love, and, inevitably, acceptance, set against a relatively modern backdrop (read: not the Ancient Greece the namesakes of these characters inhabited). More than anything else, it's the writing itself that elevates this work into a true masterpiece: concise, evocative, at times heart-wrenching, unfailingly exquisite. It is no easy task to fit so much meaning into so few pages, most authors veer into empty purple prose in attempts to justify their retellings, but not Anne Carson - therein lies her strength as an author. She doesn't simply rehash the myth as we know it, but reinvents it, brings it into the new age, makes it speak to the modern audience. In her novel "A Short History of Myth", Karen Armstrong argues the following: “A myth, therefore, is true because it is effective, not because it gives us factual information. If, however, it does not give us new insight into the deeper meaning of life, it has failed.” Following this logic, it wouldn't be unfair to say that, where most contemporary retellings fail "Autobiography of Red" achieves a roaring, resounding success.

“Who she is makes no sense to her. How she became. What she will become still.”

— David Vann, Bright Air Black

The Bell Jar || Sylvia Plath ★★★★★ Started: 03.05.2025 Finished: 06.05.2025 Working as an intern for a New York fashion magazine in the summer of 1953, Esther Greenwood is on the brink of her future. Yet she is also on the edge of a darkness that makes her world increasingly unreal. Esther's vision of the world shimmers and shifts: day-to-day living in the sultry city, her crazed men-friends, the hot dinner dances... The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath's only novel, is partially based on Plath's own life. It has been celebrated for its darkly funny and razor-sharp portrait of 1950's society and has sold millions of copies worldwide. The Bell Jar was simply sensational - I'd been interested in reading it for ages, but I never thought I'd enjoy it so much! The writing is sublime, and Esther is a little too relatable for comfort...

Mina's Matchbox || Yōko Ogawa ★★★★★ Started: 12.02.2025 Finished: 23.02.2025 In the spring of 1972, twelve-year-old Tomoko leaves her mother behind in Tokyo and boards a train alone for Ashiya, a coastal town in Japan, to stay with her aunt’s family. Tomoko’s aunt is an enigma and an outlier in her working-class family, and her magnificent home—and handsome, foreign husband, the president of a soft drink company—are symbols of that status. The seventeen rooms are filled with German-made furnishings; there are sprawling gardens, and even an old zoo where the family’s pygmy hippopotamus resides. The family is just as beguiling as their mansion—Tomoko’s dignified and devoted aunt, her German grandmother, and her dashing, charming uncle who confidently sits as the family’s patriarch. At the center of the family is Tomoko’s cousin Mina, a precocious, asthmatic girl of thirteen who draws Tomoko into an intoxicating world full of secret crushes and elaborate storytelling. Having read and loved two of Yoko Ogawa's other novels - "The Memory Police" and "The Professor and the Housekeeper", I was very excited about Mina's Matchbox, but I just couldn't get to it in 2024, when the translation came out. I do regret not reading this beautifully haunting book earlier, but you know what they say - better late than never! I really enjoy Ogawa's character studies, and Mina's Matchbox definitely doesn't disappoint with it's ensemble cast of characters, none brighter than the titular Mina - a sickly young girl that collects matchboxes and lives vicariously through the stories she writes about the illustrations on their covers. A quiet, understated, yet powerful coming of age story, Mina's Matchbox was an absolute pleasure to read!

Men often described the girl as having hair the colour of wheat. Others called it the colour of caramel or honey. The girl wondered why men so often used food to describe women's features. There was a hunger to such men that was best avoided.

- Brandon Sanderson: Tress of the Emerald Sea

Lessons in Chemistry || Bonnie Garmus ★★★★★ Started: 14.03.2025 Finished: 04.04.2025 Set in 1960s California; Lessons In Chemistry is the brilliant, idiosyncratic and uplifting story of a female scientist whose career is derailed by the idea that a woman's place is in the home - something she most definitely does not believe - only to find herself the star of America's best-loved TV cooking show. Admittedly, I was a bit hesitant about picking up Lessons in Chemistry - mostly because of the quite unhelpful, quite pink, quite romance-coded US cover (nothing against romance, of course, just not what I'm looking for, most of the time). But then I came across the US edition with the periodic table cover and I simply had to know more - and I was not disappointed. Elizabeth Zott is such an incredible character, it was a true pleasure following her trials and tribulations along the pages of this book, and the family she found along the way was portrayed masterfully as well, no character flat or forgettable - it all made for a novel that was virtually impossible to put down. Definitely a strong start to April!

A Certain Hunger || Chelsea G. Summers ★★★★☆ Started: 21.12.2024 Finished: 28.12.2024 Food critic Dorothy Daniels loves what she does. Discerning, meticulous, and very, very smart, Dorothy’s clear mastery of the culinary arts make it likely that she could, on any given night, whip up a more inspired dish than any one of the chefs she writes about. Dorothy loves sex as much as she loves food, and while she has struggled to find a long-term partner that can keep up with her, she makes the best of her single life, frequently traveling from Manhattan to Italy for a taste of both. But there is something within Dorothy that’s different from everyone else, and having suppressed it long enough, she starts to embrace what makes Dorothy uniquely, terrifyingly herself. Recounting her life from a seemingly idyllic farm-to-table childhood, the heights of her career, to the moment she plunges an ice pick into a man's neck on Fire Island, Dorothy Daniels show us what happens when a woman finally embraces her superiority. A satire of early foodieism, a critique of how gender is defined, and a showcase of virtuoso storytelling, Chelsea G. Summers’s A Certain Hunger introduces us to the food world’s most charming psychopath and an exciting new voice in fiction.