Pandora's Box || Osamu Dazai ★★★★☆ Started: 24.02.2025 Finished: 13.03.2025 The War Is Over.

“She can’t take the same path back . All her life she’s avoided that, always making a circle, afraid to return for what she might find waiting along the way. The sense always of being followed.”

From Bright Air Black by David Vann

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

— David Vann, Bright Air Black

halloween turtle 🎃

Divine Might: Goddesses in Greek Myth || Natalie Haynes ★★☆☆☆ Started: 03.03.2025 Finished: 09.03.2025 Curiositas vincit omnia After being left thoroughly underwhelmed by Haynes's previous book, "Stone Blind", I wasn't all too willing to pick up "Divine Might". Unfortunately, my curiosity won, and I cracked it open, and had it not been for the flicker of hope this book gave me at the end of the first chapter with the paragraph about Sappho, I would not have finished it - I was hoping for similar insights about the other characters discussed in the book, and I got none. The narrative is very disjointed - Haynes has inundated her chapters with jokes that more often miss than hit, and with semi-fitting but ultimately uninteresting and dragging references to movies that are at best tangentially connected to the goddesses she writes about. There is a marked downgrade from "Pandora's Jar" - the discussion is nowhere near in depth or engaging. It's unfortunate to see an author's writing get worse and worse with every published book - I'm afraid this is the case with Natalie Haynes. It's hard to believe she was intrinsically motivated or inspired to write this book at all. In the chapter about Hestia (one of the weakest in the book, that tells very little, if anything, about the goddess), she admits to the following: "There comes a time in every author's life when she has to accept that she may not have made the absolute best possible decision. And the day when I blithely promised 10,000 words on a goddess who is barely mentioned in any ancient source, who makes no dent on the Renaissance? That may turn out to have been just such a time." Then why choose this particular goddess? Greek Mythology isn't lacking in goddesses, so why allocate that much literary real estate to a goddess you don't have much at all to say about? "Divine Might", while nowhere near as egregiously bad as "Stone Blind", was a frustrating read nonetheless - there are interesting points in there, but they are far too few and far in between to make this novel worth your time.

★★★★☆ “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.

January 2025 reads!

The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi || S.A. Chakraborty ★★★★☆ Started reading: 01.01.2025 Finished reading: 07.01.2025 This was a lot more fun than I thought it would be! I can't wait to see what the sequel has in store for us!

All the Lovers in the Night || Mieko Kawakami ★★★☆☆ Started: 28.12.2024 Finished: 18.01.2025 Hmmm, given how popular Kawakami is, I expected more from this book… not that it was bad, per se, just that it wasn't particularly remarkable or even memorable. Maybe I should have tried "Breast and Eggs" first

Anxious People || Frederik Backman ★★★★★ Started: 24.01.2025 Finished: 30.01.2025 Buddy read Trust Frederik Backman to make you cry with his heartwarming novels about found family.

The Will of the Many || James Islington ★★★★★ Started: 25.12.2024 Finished: 31.01.2025 Favourite read of January 2025 ♥ Where do I even begin with this incredible book? I loved the worldbuilding, I loved the characters, I loved the writing - it could not have been much better, and I had some pretty high expectations going in. James Islington managed to surpass them all. Safe to say I'm impatiently waiting for "Strength of the Few"!

Tress of the Emerald Sea

Trail therapy

dgsc