i wanted to love this so badly because i love colson whitehead and like...this man has two pulitzers? is one of the best authors to exist on this plani wanted to love this so badly because i love colson whitehead and like...this man has two pulitzers? is one of the best authors to exist on this planet right now? but i just couldn't get into it! couldn't get into the plot and worse, i couldn't stop falling asleep while reading it.
i really wish it worked for me because i really do love love love his other works so much....more
if you know anything about me, it is that i could very possibly eat sally rooney books for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and still want more for dessert.
normal people was my first read of hers back in 2019. i remember texting my friends who had already read it, saying, “i have no idea how to rate it”. because reading it was such a humanizing experience and i had no idea how to feel. the book, centered around marianne and connell and their lives from adolescence to adulthood, is wrought with misunderstanding after misunderstanding. they struggle together, they struggle apart.
while this is not my favorite of hers and the only one i rated 4 stars, rooney’s signature sharp prose and acuity in examining human relationships are abundantly evident in this book. like her other books, normal people is not a romance, but it is a character study that has a love story as its scaffolding.
unlike her other two novels, however, normal people is insular to marianne and connell, hyper-focused on the examination into their characters and relationship. she is the only author who can be simultaneously profound and clinically detached in her writing at the same time and still make it feel like magic.
the two main characters have nothing in common from the start. marianne is an outcast in school and from a wealthy family. connell is one of the most popular boys in their grade from a working class background. their paths had never really crossed before they talked; they were acquaintances at best. this made the connection that they had even more jarring, because they created their own little world. they shine the best when they are with each other.
while they attempt to find happiness and their own place in the world when they’re apart (what it means to be ‘normal people), they are two poles of a magnet when they are together. i’m careful not to romanticize their relationship, but there is something that feels electric about them. at one point, connell tells marianne, “i’m not a religious person but i do sometimes think god made you for me”, and i think that’s exactly how i would describe them.
what i actually enjoyed (that many people didn’t) was how rudimentary the side characters and side plots felt. i liked that side characters felt two dimensional and had no real significance to the plot. it got rid of any potential drama or conflict that wouldn’t have amounted to anything at the end apart from it being plot fillers.
in the same vein, i know there are a lot of mixed reviews about the very open ending, but it was one of the things i loved most about this book. making it an open ending marks a fresh start for marianne and connell, hopefully free of miscommunication and full of possibilities....more
liked the romance in this book more than i probably should have but some parts were so cringey and also like… elle kennedy writes like a teenager on wliked the romance in this book more than i probably should have but some parts were so cringey and also like… elle kennedy writes like a teenager on wattpad. also at this point i don’t think it’s the characters that are problematic, it’s just her :-)...more
posted my annotations & annotation guide for the secret history on my bookstagram! also my review.
i will probably be posting chapter by chapter readinposted my annotations & annotation guide for the secret history on my bookstagram! also my review.
i will probably be posting chapter by chapter reading guides on my instagram so stay tuned!
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here is the very long awaited review of one of my favorite books.
i first read the secret history for class in high school, then two times after that. it is, without a doubt, always in my top 5 list of books. i’m sure i’m not special in that case, because this book is a true testament to the genius and beauty of english literature.
i can say a thousand and one things about this book, post my many essays i’ve written on it, and it still would not be enough. every flick of a page in this book makes me feel like i’m slowly unravelling layers of something huge, something so very intricate. this took donna tartt 10 years to write, and everyone who reads it can absolutely tell why.
the secret history centers around richard, a transfer student to hamden college, a liberal arts college in new england. it centers around a group of students and their classics professor and the murder of one of their classmates. it explores themes of beauty, hedonism, moral corruption, and the very slow descent into madness.
i don’t want to say anything about the plot because the best way to go into this book is to go into it blind. instead, i want to talk about the writing. the writing!!! i will never be able to shut up about how fantastic it is. with the goldfinch but more so the secret history, it is easy to tell that this isn’t just a book, it is an art form waiting to be consumed.
it’s insane just how much love this book has gotten, especially in the last year because of the ‘dark academia’ vibe it gives off. but this book is so much more than that, and sometimes i wish people wouldn’t get wholly swept away in the vibe of the book that they lose track of the attention to detail and expert character/world building.
i have read this three times, and in the times that i did, i was living, breathing, and eating the secret history 24/7. i was living inside of these pages, and i never wanted to leave. tartt has the brilliant capability to immerse and entrap you into her narrative to the point where when you finish reading, you enter a sort of fugue state for a bit because readjusting to reality is hard.
that’s my favorite part of reading a book that is genuinely so perfect. the part where, when you finish, you wonder just how you’re supposed to go back to living your day to day life.
⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻ pre-reread
rereading because why live if you're not going to reread the secret history annually? my chronic rereading disease persists into 2022.
also entertaining because i'm looking at annotations i made at 17 as an almost 22 year old and my thoughts are largely the same. have i just not matured? stay tuned to find out.
at one point in chapter one where richard wrote that he was vaguely marxist, i wrote "materialistic king seems pretty capitalist to me!" and i stand by that.
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can you believe that i have read this book three times and i still cannot come up with a good enough review to describe how much i love this book?
“in fact, she was both my first and second words: umma, then mom. i called to her in two languages. even then i must have known that no one wo
“in fact, she was both my first and second words: umma, then mom. i called to her in two languages. even then i must have known that no one would ever love me as much as she would.”
sometimes, a book just hits you.
and when it does, it’s both a blessing and also a curse because you can’t stop thinking about it. for this book, i couldn’t stop thinking about it due to how hauntingly beautiful it was. i also couldn’t stop thinking about it because of how heavily i related to some parts.
this took me two months to write, because there is no way i can write this without getting very personal.
crying in h-mart, at its core, is a beautiful and unflinchingly candid portrayal of zauner’s relationship with her mother. usually i love memoirs because they are interspersed with universal and relatable themes throughout the profoundly personal ones. i love that although their lives are vastly different to mine, but i can still find ways to relate.
for crying in h-mart, i related on a much deeper level. i related to her korean-but-not-quite identity. i related to her struggles in fitting in a school as a minority (having grown up in england and the US, i related too much to this). i related to wanting to be somebody else, but wanting to cling on as hard as i could to a culture i wasn’t sure if i could call mine because of how distanced i was from it (could i call korean my native language if english was my first?)
there is something about reading korean words and food (especially things i say/eat on a daily basis with my parents) in a book. there was something so moving about seeing korean culture intricately woven through the sentences. things that feel so natural to me being explained made me feel proud. it brought me to tears.
i have never, ever felt so seen in a book. and the fact that it was in a memoir is a testament to how brilliant zauner is.
as a korean girl who grew up and absorbed cultures without knowing if she could call her own, whether her own or others, thank you. this book made me feel seen and heard.
this book filled me with love then ripped me apart all at the same time. it devastated me. i think about this daily and it has been two months.
the bottom line is this: it is a book i will carry with me for a very long time.
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mini review i am an absolute wreck. i knew this was going to devastate me but i didn't know how much. my not quite american not quite korean self has also never felt so seen. easily top 5 books i've read this year.
will be back to write a full review in 2-5 business days.
(it actually ended up taking me three months)...more
"youth is the only thing worth having. when i find that i am growing old, i shall kill myself."
a classic that has stood the test of time,
"youth is the only thing worth having. when i find that i am growing old, i shall kill myself."
a classic that has stood the test of time, and for good reason. this is dark academic perfection. in this book, oscar wilde explores beauty, hedonism, vanity, and the complexities of the human soul through dorian gray and other morally gray characters.
this is an extraordinary faustian tale of the extents a man will go to achieve an aesthetic ideal.
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