lukewarmacid's reviews
69 reviews

for you, a thousand times over.

i have not felt this viscerally ill in a long time with a book!!!! literally such a fantastic book, i will be thinking abt this book for a good while

** sort of vague spoilers, doesnt explicitly say stuff but id still be cautious haha **

this little 102 pgs long book was actually quite fantastic. i took quite a bit of notes in comparison to its length haha

this book essentially details this irrevocable love that consumes, an experience that situates deep within your soul. this is a novella where a man details his first love experience to a group of other people, showing his perspective of when he first fell in love with the princess next door at the age of 16.

my initial notes of this novella is comical to read back on considering the twist we find out later on, that i correctly predicted at around 70 pgs in.

anyways, what i enjoyed was the experience of trying to gauge whether this instance of love is good for the guy, woldemar. he’s just 16 yrs old, but hes so deeply enamored with the princess, zinaida, knowing deep down in his gut that this treatment isn’t proper but he willfully allows himself to remain stagnant in this negative atmosphere nonetheless because the blissful love is soooo addictive. 

i think this novella served me well because i can relate to how deeply love roots into my soul!!!! but this is also a tale of figuring out love and passion at a young age but also identifying abuse and mistreatment. a little key message i picked up on was “know when to leave.” 

but it was lowkey an insane book, where this princess plays around and has games with all these men who are obsessed with her, yet she doesn’t prioritize love, more so prioritizing herself above all but then she does. she does love. i remember feeling surreal about one of the nights where she played a bunch of games with the men (including our woldemar); i genuinely felt like i should’ve been high n it vaguely reminded me of the drugged up midsommar scene. 

i also was in awe with some of woldemar’s thoughts, this idea of doing anything for zinaida, but for some reason he wouldn’t imagine himself a happily ever after with her? i think he knew it was a fleeting experience… trust ur gut…

quite a fantastic piece of literature! now here are some quotes i enjoyed: 

“i never wish to experience [the feelings with which i left her] again, but i should count it a misfortune never to have had them at all.”

“evidently to sacrifice oneself is the height of bliss — for some people.” 
- honestly, there was more to this quote, but this portion made me think of how one maintains the illusion of seeing and finding more within a person to justify the self sacrifice. 

“take what you can yourself, and don’t let others get you into their hands; to belong to oneself, that is the whole thing in life…”

eh… idk. just a bit confused. really sick art though!!! i wish it touched on more of the conflicts + didn’t reference too much to current day or to the readers i guess …

tbf ppl compare this  to ihnmaims which is one of my favorites ever , so all tomorrows didn’t stand a chance haha

i really quite liked this because it reminded me of a book where it was devastatingly bleak. obviously it holds a lot of significance within this time of trump's inauguration and presidency with a community of willfully ignorant supporters. 
in 1984, there are continuous (almost) attempts/efforts to think of a better future but there's a constant reminder that the situation will never change. this book never tries to fool you, it is a bleak potential reality. it's a very common sentiment that this book serves as a reminder.  

my only singular gripe was that the exposition dump in ch 9 of part two was SO terrible to read through. the worldbuilding was so difficult to grasp in this sense, but i think i do better with dense development rather than a dump of info. good book nonetheless. 

What an utterly beautiful book. I seriously am enamored, and I think my further reflection will be much more developed. But in short, allow yourself solitude to assume the truth of yourself. I can take my time and to allow life to be an experience. Lovely, lovely, and just lovely.

My favorite quote was, “… love then is what my hands attempt to grasp because I want to say a prayer whose sounds my burning mouth, my lips, cannot bring forth…”

One note I had in response to the quote: “The demands that the hard work of love makes on our development are larger than life, and as beginners we are not a match for them.”
was -
“Don’t make love harder than it is with all the trivial extra things that seem to plague you so deeply. You don’t feel loved because you do not love yourself. It’s a haunting thought.” 

i’m a little bit sad. and also frustrated at the message. very unsure.
- more comprehensive:
what i did feel was a lot of sadness. i related to some quotes very heavily, so i think a 3.75 serves it well. i enjoyed it in the sense its message was clear, but it’s a novella and that was obviously the intent. i think I just like novels in general that are longer, more developed with the characters, etc. But a good read, good palate cleanser amidst reading such dense literature (the idiot by fyodor dostoevsky LOL). i read this a long time ago so this was a reread but i didn’t recall the ending whatsoever. it had me devastated. 

pretentious and weird
like sorry i’m not rooting for the grown adult wallowing about his 15 yr old love affair who he also views as his child, leaving him 

the familial aspects were okay though and the prose was well written to an extent. had lots of good lines but overall terrible narrative