Mina's Matchbox || Yōko Ogawa ★★★★★ Started: 12.02.2025 Finished: 23.02.2025 In The Spring

Анна Ин в гробниците на света || Олга Токарчук ★★★★★ Started: 27.04.2025 Finished: 01.05.2025 "Анна Ин в гробниците на света" е единствената книга от поредицата "Myths" на издателство "Cannongate", която не е преведена на английски, но за огромен мой късмет съществува това прекрасно издание на български. За пореден път се уверявам, че кураторът на поредицата Джейми Бинг е имал изключителен усет към адаптациите на митове - на фона на множеството посредствени преразкази на дневни митове, всяка една книга, избрана от него, е изключителна - и творбата на Олга Токарчук не е изключение. Тя не е просто преразказ на мита за слизането на Инана в Подземния свят: в думите на преводача Крум Крумов, "Олга Токарчук разглобява древния мит за богинята Инана, след което го нанизва наново върху конците на съвремието." - самата аз не бих могла да опиша творбата по по-добър начин.

Experimenting with a different kind of graphic for the April wrap-up! Finished up the Goodreads Community Favorites Challenge and made a little progress with my 25 for 2025!

★★★★☆ “She gazes at Agamemnon and says, “I do not forget.” As far as post-Madeline Miller myth retellings go, this is fairly good. Sure, Helen is still a frail waif, but this novel isn't about her, per se, so I can't take much issue with that, not with how Clytemnestra is written - brutal, unforgetting, unforgiving. Testament to how much a story is set to gain if authors choose to give their mythical heroines a spine, truly. Much like in Daughters of Sparta, I would have loved for the story to cover her death, especially since I have a feeling Casati would do the scene justice, but nevertheless, Clytemnestra was a worthwhile experience.

halloween turtle 🎃

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.

We || Yevgeny Zamyatin ★★★★★ Started: 22.02.2025 Finished: 23.02.2025 Set in the twenty-sixth century AD, We is the classic dystopian novel. In the totalitarian society of the OneState of the great Benefactor, in a glass-enclosed city of absolute straight lines, is a world where people are numbers, there are no individuals, only numbers. Life has been reduced to a mathematical perfectly balanced equation, an ongoing process of mathematical precision. Free will is a disease. Primitive passions, instincts, and creativity have been subdued. Even nature has been defeated, banished behind the Green Wall. But one frontier remains: outer space. Now, with the creation of the spaceship Integral, that frontier, and whatever alien species are to be found there, will be subjugated to the beneficent yoke of reason. One number, D-503, chief architect of the Integral, decides to record his thoughts in the final days before the launch for the benefit of less advanced societies. But a chance meeting with the beautiful 1-330 results in an unexpected discovery that threatens everything D-503 believes about himself and the One State… the discovery, or rediscovery, of inner space, and that disease the ancients called the soul, and Love. If you are interested in dystopian literature in the vein of Orwell's 1984 and Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, We is a must read!

I Who Have Never Known Men || Jacqueline Harpman ★★★★★ Started: 11.12.2024 Finished: 25.12.2024 Deep underground, thirty-nine women live imprisoned in a cage. Watched over by guards, the women have no memory of how they got there, no notion of time, and only a vague recollection of their lives before. As the burn of electric light merges day into night and numberless years pass, a young girl—the fortieth prisoner—sits alone and outcast in the corner. Soon she will show herself to be the key to the others' escape and survival in the strange world that awaits them above ground. A hauntingly beautiful novel that is seeped in a profound, hopeless sadness, that is undoubtedly worth your time.

[2023|46] Clytemnestra (2023) written by Costanza Casati

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

— David Vann, Bright Air Black