mint_renegade's reviews
169 reviews

Pulitzer my ass. 

When you don't feel it, you probably aren't going to feel it. If it didn't click at page 200, it wasn't going to at 400. 

70% of thr way through and key characters remained indistinguishable

I was looking for something in the realm of steppenwolf, this wasn't it. 

missives and ramblings, here and there alluding to winter; window panes that seek to make the outside visible inside, manhole covers that when uncovered lead to more questions than answers - what this has to do with winter, i don't know. i enjoyed it for what it was. a capsule for the season, a compilation of missives to read during the commute. it made for a soothing balm when read in conjunction with austen, byron and ovid. 

enjoyed, but not memorable  

it was fine

language - i think this is a  regency era classic. having read it, i am convinced this is a period i will not be readily seeking in any future reading. not a style of writing i enjoyed; it felt excessively indulgent; the language constrained to the period in which it was written. i am glad to be able to say "i read pride and prejudice" but can say that it is a story that will pass very quickly from my remembrance (at least as it was depicted in the source material - luckily  i have the 2005 screen adaptation to refer to at any time). i read some 80 pages physically, and the rest in audiobook format, the latter for which i am grateful. i don't think i would have been able to finish it otherwise. 

characters - darcy felt stiff almost to the point of being one-dimensional. mrs bennet's ignorance and lack of self-awareness was  abhorrent and jane, in her bid for impartiality appeared excessively naïve. the unending politeness of english society, which i so greatly loathe in my own time, was so concentrated in these characters as to make the reading experience annoying. 

that being said, darcy's peevishness may have been his way of rebuffing fake bitches; mrs bennet's eagerness is directed towards the security of her children; and jane, being the eldest of five, was forced into a role of temperance to counter a neurotic mother, an inattentive father, a strong willed confidante in eliza, and an excitable brood of younger sisters. 

plot - nothing happened, and i liked it. although it was jarring just how quick darcy was to change his manner, but i suppose for true love (or plot advancement) vices are easily shucked.

23.04 - someone on insta said darcy has social anxiety/is autistic. i felt that

lestat took his mortal life; claudia broke his heart; armand severed the tethers to his soul

Viktor, David

i read a book, i liked the book, and now all that's left to do is record my thoughts about said book. how tedious. who cares, in the end, this will serve but a headstone on a cloud too intangible for nature to comprehend. 

i read war and peace and whilst i could grasp that much of the fiction was based on fact, the distance between now and then, seemed immesurable, the history unknown to me, the aggressor's motives elusive; facts, figures, waylaid for the fantasy. with life and fate, it was more difficult to discard reality, 80 years' separation, victims and perpetrators still living; history lessons, movies, books, psychological experiments all of them intent on dissecting this phenomena, all of them asking why and how could the whole world sit by whilst millions were herded to the slaughter. knowledgeable as i was in the history of the holocaust, in all these classes, in all these readings, it never occurred to me to imagine all the minute details; all the little steps taken towards the chambers, the sign-postings. i knew of the leaders of course, but it never occurred to me, quite so viscerally, that there were people on the ground, paving the way. it never occurred to me that there were people tasked to disperse the gas, people responsible for the clean up, people looting for gold in dentures. people, people, people. 

it occurred to me to look to russia , seeking to find a protagonist state to root for, but there i found only the same state of affairs. russians struggling against  the shackles of a fascist regime only to rebind themselves to the shackles of a totalitarian government.

this book is timeless. how could a whole world sit by whilst millions were herded to the slaughter? for the same reason you are sitting there whilst millions are being herded to their slaughter. they sat there because they had jobs to go to, bills to pay,  petty grievances to nurse, colleagues to out-do; they sat there because they had depressive states to contend with, smiles to feign, managers to impress, they sat there while history repeated itself, and you sit there, all the while history repeats itself. it doesn't matter what year it is, somewhere out there people are killing each other, for oil, for sovereignty, for supremacy, for a few more kilometres of land to call their own. 

character - my main gripe with this books is the characters, and the relationships they had with each other. from the synopsis, i would be reading about he lives of the Shaposhnikov's, but right up until the end, i  had trouble figuring out who was who in relation to who. at some point i stopped trying to figure it out, instead choosing to focus on the characters' whose arcs hooked me the most - lyda and her profound grief, viktor and his isolation, david, dear god david. if i were to judge this book just on these characters' chapters, it would be a 5 stars. alas, there were many other characters, i wish their interconnectedness to the main family line had been more fleshed out - 4/5

writing - lyrical at some points, straightforward in most and easy to digest - 3/5

plot - this is history, what greater plot could there be? 5/5

4.5/5

I read "Well-Loved Tales: Cinderella" god damn it. 50 fucking pages in total and the app refuses to import it *rage*. Depressed and swimming in guilt over a lack of motivation, I reached for a short read, with *🖼 🎨 🖌 *. 

List of grievances:
- In the edition I read, not this substitute, the father lived with Cinders, he was there, loitering in the background as his child was made a servant, only making a front and center appearance when it came time to parcel the child off;

- she's described as a little girl, but this chic has bust and a receding hairline; 

- the prince's dialogue is confined to "this is my partner" and "this is the true bride". I mean fuck, he's even more familiar with her foot than he is with her face fam; 

- I read it in the dark because *mood* so the illustrations colour didn't pop, under torchlight the pallate is really quite beautiful;

- I'm obsessed with tracking number of pages read, it seems to be a chief motivator in my current readership, I hate it. Then again, perhaps it is to do with the monotony of the current main focus? Life and Fate is a banger, but much like war and peace, it is not devoid of slow chapters - fuck, I know there was a war, but please don't talk me through it. Take me back to Viktor, I want to read about Viktor. 

What a strange, underwhelming, little story.