emilymknight's reviews
146 reviews

Iago - the ultimate shit stirrer.

This play I struggled to get into. From the start, I found it considerably harder to understand and grasp. I couldn’t quite work out Iago’s intentions and so I had to use online notes to understand what was going on better - and I had to continue using the online notes when reading the rest of the play. I did of course read it alongside watching the 2007 Shakespeare’s Globe on Screen stage play, which I always find very helpful. When I got to around Act 2, I was really struggling to find the motivation to pick this play up - it felt considerably longer than some of the other Shakespeare plays I have read, and I lost momentum a bit. However, by Act 3, it started to pick up a bit and it got much more interesting. And so, by Act 4 and 5, I was enjoying the play A LOT. 

There was this whole web of lies that Iago had crafted and I came to really appreciate his unique character - even if his ulterior motives were vague.

Emilia’s death was probably the saddest one of them all. And the tragedy and heaviness of Othello and Desdemona’s death, in my opinion, somewhat mirrored that of Romeo and Juliet’s - nothing says Shakespeare quite like the death of the main couple.

Overall, not my favourite, but I can 100% see its importance with the themes of racism, deception, jealousy, and manipulation.

Second book in the series down. Yay! A significantly longer book this time, but not the longest in the series. I'm probably going to hide most of this review as I really don't want to spoil any of it for anyone, even just the small details. All I'll say for those who haven't read it yet is, in my opinion I thought it was once again a super easy read - new locations to explore, more characters to meet. I felt it was a little hard to get into at first, I think because in the first book everything was all new and exciting and then with this book, I was a little skeptical as to where the story could possibly go, but now I've finished the this second book, though I have no idea how the series is going to unfold, I do at least know the general direction now, and feel as though the end has set up the third book perfectly. I thought the plot developed really well, slow in certain aspects, fast in others. But all around a book you can easily get swept away with, rich in character development and locations.

Okay so to go into the details...

RHYSAND. Yes. Thank you very much. "Welcome to the Night Court." Oh YES please. Velaris. YUP. Take me there thank you very much. House of Wind. YUP. Illyrian Mountains. YUPP. Secluded cabin spelled to give you anything you want. YUPPP. Take. Me. There.

Okay, all that aside, I really loved seeing everything slowly come together. Feyre and Rhysand's relationship was not rushed. And Rhys turning out to be the good guy, with his whole life being explained, like his motivations and the fact that he was not cruel but rather wanted to protect his court and did everything he could to keep up a scary facade, that was so interesting. It made you look at the first book differently. And also his realisation of the mating bond during the first book - it all made sense. When things click and you go, "oh my god". And the ending?????? Suddenly everyone's got a mate??? Tamlin and Lucien working for the King of Hybern and then him turning Nesta and Elain into Fae's was NOT where I thought it would go. But I'm not mad. I love books with a good shock factor.

I do wish it was all a little darker though maybe? I feel like it wasn't that dark and could have perhaps been elevated if it just went that step further.

I heard a TV series adaptation has been rumoured too? Not sure if it's true. But there were definitely some parts, in this book particularly, where I could totally see it's potential for a series, if done right.

I've got to see this series through now. And I'm excited to finish it, onto the third let's gooooooooo.

I was really pleasantly surprised by this play. Once again, I read it alongside watching Shakespeare's Globe on Screen stage play. 

At first, it took me a little bit to get into the play, it didn't click straight away and I got a little confused, but with a little help from some notes online, by Act 2 I started to really enjoy it. I think the split between fantasy and realism was well done and neither was overdone. It was an easy light-hearted play where the things that 'went wrong' weren't dark or heavy and the comedy aspect was perfect, Peter Quince and Nick Bottom absolutely carried this play. This is probably the first play where I have actually gasped and laughed out loud, especially at juice of the flower incidents - it was silly but in an enjoyable way. There wasn't loads of characters and the plot moved at a good pace too.

Simple. Funny. Interesting. Light-hearted. And I would love to see this performed live on stage one day.

This novel had the chance to be really good, but just didn't quite get there for me. I understand the themes and ideas that Pavese was trying to convey, but instead it was a little too repetitive and didn't leave much opportunity for readers to form a deeper connection with the characters and their struggles. I wish there was more time spent on setting the scene of Italy properly but I understand that the focus is more on the characters and a fleeting summer. Overall good but not great.

All I saw last year on tiktok was ACOTAR this ACOTAR that and I didn't think it would be my thing but this year I have really gotten into more fantasy books so I caved and decided to give it a try - I mean it does have 2.8 million ratings on GoodReads.

Okay, I actually really enjoyed this - it was so nice to start a book knowing that it's a series, getting immersed in the world, and also with it being totally brand new (like most of the fantasy series I have read are ones that have film adaptations i.e Harry Potter, Twilight, Divergent etc), I really had no idea where it was all going to go. It was cringey at times, like laugh out loud, hand to forehead kinda stupid but nevertheless the book as a whole was good enough for me. It was such an easy read, it just flew by, so I'm excited to continue the series and meet new characters + explore some of the different courts hopefully!

I've done so well not to see any spoilers so I'm hoping I can keep it that way until I finish the series!

Nice to spend a few summer days in the Northern countryside. 

Relaxing, calm, reflective. An easy read, not my favourite but can totally see why some people would love this and be able to easily read it in one sitting.

Time. The passage of time and all that it brings. Is there such a thing as too much time, or is there never enough?

Circe. I enjoyed this book way more than The Song of Achilles. It was only at the last two pages that I understood where the ending was going to go, but apart from that, it stayed interesting and while there was a lot of characters (most just mentioned rather than recurring), it wasn't overwhelming., but actually very very interesting. There was no big thing that it was all leading up to, but just lots of different happenings that created such a rich picture of Circe and the greek world. I love Greek mythology, I am a classics student after all, but for me that doesn't mean I am easily impressed at greek mythology inspired books.

Circe, for me however, was yes informative but Madeline Miller crafts these stories so well and gave the myths, some we have perhaps heard of, such depth and allowed us to see the complex feelings and emotions surrounding them.

I found the relationship between immortals and mortals was so well done. Circe as a character was perfect; she acted out, she was spontaneous, she was wise, she found her strengths, she loved, she nurtured, she was cruel, she was kind, but in the end,

she just wanted her story to have an end. An immortal god, after everything, truly just wanted to be mortal

- I feel like you could really dive into that and unpick a lot. 

Aiaia was her punishment after all, solitude and eternity together. Was it confinement or freedom?

The way everyone went in and out of her life, she saw thousands of summers, thousands of winters, everything was fleeting, even fellow immortals

like Hermes, he would tell her of the fate of others like Daedalus, Icarus and Ariadne, but then he never returned except as messenger for Athena. Her brother Aeëtes also, from her confidant to a stranger.

 

I think just the way this book encapsulated the passage of time and with that, the development of people, good and bad, was just what sold it for me.

Oh and also the beautiful language, I haven't had a quote strike me as much as this one has in a long time...

Probably my favourite play of Shakespeare's so far.

I read this back in school maybe 8 or 9 years ago? I didn't remember much apart from the general vibe and feeling, some scenes and locations of how I had interpreted it all those years ago. This time I read it alongside watching Shakespeare's Globe on Screen stage performance and here are my thoughts of the play:

Now I have read The Tempest, Twelfth Night and Romeo and Juliet, all are good but this one, Macbeth, is just what I wanted, it was darker and a lot more tense - way more my style. The atmosphere of the castles, the battlefields, the witches, the dark nights, the screams in the wind, blood, terrors under candlelight, ghosts, murder. Yes YEs YES.

Lady Macbeth being the one who drove Macbeth, the witches and their prophecies that spurred Macbeth on - his craving for power and what it made him do, one murder after another, not all at his hands, but at his command. He sunk deeper and deeper into the murderer mindset until he was 'in blood, Stepped in so far'. The dark and gloomy atmosphere of Wuthering Heights meets the character and plot of Crime and Punishment.

While Macbeth is one of Shakespeare's shortest plays, for me it was packed and packed with action. Loved it, and all these years later after having studied it at school, only now can I truthfully say that I'm glad this play is taught in schools.

Don't be fooled by the punctuation, this novel is basically a story told in one continuous breath. 

This novel has been on be TBR list for a while now, and when I saw that there was gonna be a Netflix series adaptation, I knew I needed to make sure I had read it before it came out.

So this novel was NOT what I expected. There is very little dialogue and it is slowwwwww, like so slow. It did pick up a bit about halfway through but for the most part, it was a bit of a slog, by the end I was struggling. I'd heard the family tree was very confusing with a lot of characters having the same names but honestly I didn't think it was that bad - my edition did have a family tree diagram at the start (I'm sure all editions probably do) but I also had a piece of paper that I made notes on, in a way that I understood, it did get very cramped and had a lot of arrows (thanks to the alarmingly high amount of incest) but overall this helped me make sense of it all!

For me, Colonel Aureliano Buendia's generation was the most interesting, then the twin's generation. When it got to Aureliano Segundo's kid's generation, I was losing it a bit. Though it is a slow-paced book, for me the writing flowed with quite a quick pace, so when it got to the last Aureliano, I had to remind myself that well over 100 years (duh, the title) had passed since the start. 

The general impression I got, was that through all the generations, it seemed so hectic and chaotic, wars and murder, marital affairs and babies, incest and magic! A woman eats dirt and buries herself, a girl flies to heaven on laundry in the wind, a man shoots himself in the chest and survives, a man is tied up to a chesnut tree for decades, oh and did I mention, INCEST. But when a character died, it all just seemed to slow right down, it was more reflective and there was a common theme of the characters thinking of the ones they loved right before death. And at the very end of the novel too, when it all kind of tied up together, it just seemed so... quiet, almost like a fever dream, like wow, that all just happened, and here we are, at the end.

3rd book of the series! Not the best book, definitely not as interesting as the first two but the last few chapters did redeem it slightly.