Beautiful World, Where Are You || Sally Rooney ★★☆☆☆ Started: 12.05.2025 Finished: 24.05.2025
Beautiful World, Where Are You || Sally Rooney ★★☆☆☆ Started: 12.05.2025 Finished: 24.05.2025 This was, unfortunately, not a very pleasant experience overall… I think I might have enjoyed "Beautiful World, Where Are You" if I had already been a fan of Sally Rooney, what with Alice's letters being essentially letters the author could have written in real life, but given that this was the first book of hers I read, the musings just felt like being lectured at by a person you barely know and don't particularly like. The remaining three main characters, whose lives we'd follow in every other chapter, likewise, were hard to root for - I'm no stranger to a flawed character, but maybe 30 chapters of Unpeasant characters being actively Unpleasant to each other and, despite that, ending up in what I'm sure will be ultimately Unpleasant relationships with each other is a tad bit much.
More Posts from Embracing-the-shortness and Others
Pandora's Box || Osamu Dazai ★★★★☆ Started: 24.02.2025 Finished: 13.03.2025 The war is over. Japan is defeated. Together with his country, a young man must rebuild his life. He will begin at a sanatorium, where everyone gets a nickname, surrounded by an interesting ensemble of patients and caregivers.
Shoutout to Charlie single handedly ruing the 'all arranged marriages work out in Brandon Sanderson works' statistic
Arranged marriage ruiner Georg
(...) but the skin remembers, the body holds everything inside itself, the bones can stiffen to claws.
Sophie Mackintosh, excerpt from Cursed Bread
More sketches from The Will of the Many! I loveeeee these two and I want to see more of them ofc.
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!
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!
Indigo || Chi-Ho Kwong, Chi-Kit Kwong ★★★☆☆ Started: 19.02.2025 Finished: 19.02.2025 Thank you to NetGalley, Mad Cave Studios and Nakama Press for providing me with an ARC and giving me the opportunity to share my honest review. "Indigo" follows the story of Ella Summer, a reporter at a magazine that chases urban legends and conspiracy theories; with the suspicious death of her university professor, Ella's life is suddenly turned upside down, as things she thought were outlandish turn out to be very real after all. If you're interested in conspiracy theories, this graphic novel is perfect for you. The story is very fast-paced and action-packed, occasionally bordering on being a bit confusing. There is some build-up towards the big reveal, however I think it would have been better if we had been kept in suspense a little while longer. Ultimately, the plot felt rushed, and it's because of that that I can't give "Indigo" a higher rating. That, and the fact that it leans quite heavily into a particularly outlandish conspiracy theory that I personally don't buy. On the flip side, the art is magnificent. The first few pages are in full color, and the artwork is simply dreamy, and the art style translates really well into the black-and-white pages of the story proper.
Working 9 to 5, reading 5 to 9. I do occasionally post in Bulgarian.
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