Harry Potter Book Tag

aquapages // eline3 Comments

I do not remember where I first saw this book tag, I’ve had it saved as a post idea for a while, but you’re welcome to do it if you want to! The Harry Potter Book Tag was created by Trang and Lashaan at Bookidote. 

A book you found the theme interesting, but you’d like to rewrite it.

This is most books I don’t like, because they usually had something special in their synopsis that made me read them.

The first book in a series that got you hooked.

A Living Nightmare by Darren Shan is the first book of a series called Cirque du Freak and absolutely got me hooked not only that series and the more gruesome Demonata series, but vampires, monsters and demons in general as a (way too young haha) kid. People ask me if X book is appropriate for their eight year old? I’m like “YES and also I’m not the right person to ask because I mostly say no to only game of thrones and lord of the rings (for different reasons)”

A book you wish you could have right now.

Like every collector’s edition. Six of crows collectors edition is even cheap, but I can’t bring myself to buy it because I move next year for uni and what then? I don’t need books that I’ve already read? But I want them all, so badly. A dedicated library is my dream in whatever apartment or house I live in as a “real adult”.

A killer book. Both senses. Take it as you like.

I Hunt Killers by Barry Lyga.

A book that you found really confusing.

Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami. I knew I liked it, but I didn’t understand it at once. I still don’t get all of it after one read through, but firstly I know who Kafka is now. I expect a tiny applause and lots of gasps at that, I know it’s weird. Murakami answered 1200 questions about it allegedly and I’m going to delve into it after some more readthroughs once because:

In an interview posted on his English language website, Murakami says that the secret to understanding the novel lies in reading it several times: “Kafka on the Shorecontains several riddles, but there aren’t any solutions provided. Instead, several of these riddles combine, and through their interaction the possibility of a solution takes shape. And the form this solution takes will be different for each reader. To put it another way, the riddles function as part of the solution. It’s hard to explain, but that’s the kind of novel I set out to write”.

A dark twisted book.

The tv series “You” on netflix. Book-wise is harder. The torture and physical and psychological conditions Kaladin is put under in The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson really struck me as so amazingly written and utterly terrifying because it’s such a cruel play on having to work together as a team, but everyone dying before trust can be built. 

Your spirit animal book.

I don’t know what this means, but the answer is “Graceling” by Kristin Cashore. I need to reread it and review it as an adult, but it was so precious to me growing up. Katsa is a really fierce, violent warrior who has emotions, but doesn’t let any hardships she’s put through stop her. I love her so much and would carry her in my mind like she could give me strength. 

A book that surprised you in a great way, reveals more than it is

The Library at Mount Char by Scott Hawkins seems like such an average title, cover and synopsis, but it went freaking MAD. It built up forever, both the world and the character with their interactions, and then ascended in chaos as worlds were torn down and Gods missing and the main character isn’t as unassuming as she’s been the whole book. It’s one of those books that sticks in your mind afterwards and has become one of my favourite, but I can’t promote it to people without SPOILING THE WHOLE DAMN THING. It’s just plot-twists!! But they’re not really plot-twists, they’re just a twisted plot. Led by twisted characters? I love it and I think a lot more would as well, if they picked it up. 

Why Audiobooks Are Great (I Changed My Mind) & Some Recommendations

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I’ve experimented with what kind of audiobooks I like, through different free trials of platforms, before eventually paying for one. I went through the whole summer on free trials, listening to the beginning of a lot of books. I didn’t like audiobooks until this summer because I really like to read books myself. I’ve read a lot and have become good at it, I don’t need to narrate voices in my head always, so info can go in and translate to pictures in my head – it’s a lot faster. Reading physically I can choose the pace myself, pausing at sections with beautiful writing. Physical books are easier to bookmark or take notes in.

But here’s why I changed my mind and now also like audiobooks:

  • Audiobooks can be enjoyed by people who don’t like to read for so many different and good reasons, like just not being able to sit down and focus for that long. It makes books more accessible.
  • There’s easier to find time for audiobooks and you can do other things while listening (the reason I love podcasts), like cleaning, training, sitting on the bus for hours or try to fall asleep
  • BUT MOST OF ALL – I was admitted to the hospital this summer and because of illness I could not focus enough to read. It’s so hard to read without concentration or your mind in the right place, in a way it isn’t so difficult to listen to small chunks of audiobooks. This really converted me, as I saw why audiobooks are better than physical ones in certain situations or for some people
  • It’s so much cooler to hear a memoir told by the author themselves! This is my favourite type of audiobook as you’ll see in my recommendations, it’s just so comforting or adds an extra layer of emotion and realness to the story.

Here’s the recommendations:

Memoirs narrated by the author

Born a Crime by Trevor Noah: IF YOU WANT TO PICK ONE, PICK THIS. It’s so damn good, as Trevor is already a driven comic and an amazing story-teller. It’s hilarious, it’s heart-warming, heart-wrenching, informative. Just 10/10 will listen to it a lot and one that many will love without knowing much about Trevor Noah.

Buffering by Hannah Hart: I wrote and then lost the review of this book, but it’s so heartwrenching, good and honest. She talks about being lesbian and how it was to realize that in a family where her dad later became jehovas witness and her mom was a schizofrenic. About having to make choices for the family and the best of her sister, of growing up to soon and trying to find herself afterwards. I cried, a lot.

My Fight / Your Fight by Ronda Rousey: Listen to this to get motivated to train your ass off or excell at anything really. It’s written before she lost and her popularity went downhill quick, but it really brings out the human sides of Ronda as well, in a sometimes natural way.

Secrets For the Mad by dodie: If you like dodie, her voice is really calming to listen to for so long and the audiobook itself is excellent. If you don’t know who she is, don’t pick it up, it doesn’t really tell a powerful stand-alone story like the others here.

I’ve Only Found One Fictional Audiobook I Loved? And A Lot of Okay Ones

The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo reads like a memoir/biography, only it’s fictional and not only is the story excellent, but it’s the only fictional audiobook I really fell into and embraced as possibly better than the physically reading it. The narrator is excellent.

If you just want to find audiobooks that have good narrators here’s a short list: If we were villains by M. L. Rio, The poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo, The price guide to the occult by Leslye Walton (didn’t like the story personally) and The power of habit.

PS: If you want more – here’s all my audiobook reviews tagged. And if you like poetry, poetry collections on audio are so great to listen to! I recommend Mary Oliver’s.

Do you like audiobooks or do you prefer ebooks/physical books? I’ll appreciate audiobook recommendations!

Girl Mans Up by M-E Girard | Audiobook Review

aquapages // eline5 Comments

Pages: 400

Time audiobook: 9 hours

Genre: young adult, lgbt

Synopsis

All Pen wants is to be the kind of girl she’s always been. So why does everyone have a problem with it? They think the way she looks and acts means she’s trying to be a boy—that she should quit trying to be something she’s not. If she dresses like a girl, and does what her folks want, it will show respect. If she takes orders and does what her friend Colby wants, it will show her loyalty. But respect and loyalty, Pen discovers, are empty words. Old-world parents, disintegrating friendships, and strong feelings for other girls drive Pen to see the truth–that in order to be who she truly wants to be, she’ll have to man up.

Audiobook review

The narrator is really good, during the dramatic scenes especially. Personally I would’ve chosen the physical book because I thought the writing of the plot dragged on and 30% in I was already listening on 1.5x speed to get through it. But I can recommend the audiobook to anyone who prefers that.

My thoughts

Rating out of five: three

The concept and plot is really important and good, it’s about the main character Penn’s struggle about gender and having to respond to a lot of unwelcome questions and harassment about it. Among friends, classmates, teachers and parents who insists that she should act and look more like a girl. Penn is a butch lesbian and the parts where she’s figuring out her attraction to girls and going into her first relationship are so cute. It very well balanced.

My problem with the book is the writing. This book doesn’t need to be 9 hours or 400 pages long. So many details are included, in the style of me walking into a room and describing what I see, instead of focusing on a couple things that give characteristics and letting the picture paint itself for the reader. The book is marketed as young adult, but it feels like it’s for a younger audience. The main character feels younger than 16 as well, the age isn’t mentioned before much later in the book. The conflicts show themselves to be much darker than first thought, but that disconnect between how Penn talks about her challenges in the beginning and the end was really confusing. She goes from talking about conflicts more suited among 13 year olds, to serious harassment. I get that it’s young adult for the darker parts and family conflicts, but then I think the author should’ve made Penn and the friend-group feel more grown up. It still has a lot of good examples and talks about loyalty, friendship, gender and the struggles of not being accepted by family.

I’ve seen readers complain on the “girl mans up” theme and actually complain about how horrific people are acting and bullying each other. That’s the only wrong opinion you can have about this book, as the book brings up bad to horrifying examples of friendships and manipulation and how the characters try to keep each other down. The conversations around that are the excellent parts of this book!

What I felt reading this book: really felt for Penn even though she continued to make wrong choices (she’s got heart though) and anger at everyone who has to deal with this bullying and constant harassment if they don’t clearly fit into “acceptable” gender or sexuality. and how bad unaccepting families make everything.

2019 TBR!

aquapages // eline10 Comments

I don’t usually follow TBR’s anyway, but I looked around and saw I already owned a lot of the books I want to read this year, which makes it much more likely I’ll stick to it. My biggest genre is fantasy, but I’m excited to also read more science books in preparation to hopefully go to university, along with poetry, about writing, new ya releases and some classics.

One of my big goals this year is also to read about physical pain, which needs some explanations. As someone who is chronically ill I’ve avoided books about pain or disability like the plague (or the flu, because that can really fuck me up also). Mental illnesses are fine for me to read about, because I can learn a lot (as long as I check it’s true to real people’s experience). But when it comes to physical illnesses, it’s been very difficult when authors get it wrong or if the character feels hopeless, because there’s no distance between me and the character all of a sudden. Still I love when for example there’s a character with a disability in fantasy books, if done right. I do also really want to find a good discription or a book I can show someone who asks about chronic illness or pain, which is what I’m trying to do this year, starting with “the body in pain”. I can’t find the right words to describe it, so I’m searching for people who are. Last year I found “when breath becomes air” which is one of my favourite all time books, and inspired me to do this.

January is nearly over already, but I’ve read like 9 other books. There’s around 46 books on this list, and I read 60-80 books a year, so I have good chances I think! We’ll see at the end of the year.

Let me know if you are going to read any of these books, at any point this year and if you want to read them around the same time and discuss them! Like a buddy-read with not strict times to finish it hahha

Books I already own:

2019 or recent releases:

Older releases:

Authors I’ve read and liked:

Other books:

20th Birthday, Mary Oliver and New Posts: Bi-Weekly Update

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New book posts:

Other books I’ve been reading:

  • The waste land and other poems by T. S. Eliot
  • Six easy pieces by Richard Feynman (currently)
  • At blackwater pond by Mary Oliver audiobook (currently)

Added to my TBR:

  • Artificial generation by A. H. Haga
  • City of thieves by David Benioff
  • Solitaire by Alice Oseman – great author
  • The past and other things that should stay buried by Shaun David Hutchinson – great author
  • We are displaced by Malala Yousafzai – so anticipating reading this
  • Wilder girls by Rory Power
  • soft magic by Upile Chisala
  • Wicked saints by Emily A. Duncan
  • Skin deep (Legion #2) by Brandon Sanderson – great author and first book
  • All the lonely people by David Owen – recommended by one of my fav authors Alice Oseman
  • Army of none by Paul Scharre – recommended by Bill Gates

Recent book buys:

Trying to save money ! But I did buy City of thieves by David Benioff, because the kindle version was on sale.

Three things on my mind:

  • RIP Mary Oliver. I cried a few tears when I realized she had passed, after seeing so many of her poems resurfacing on social media at once. She became 83 years old and really was my favourite poet, so talented and a goal in life, living in a small sea-town in Massachusetts with her wife Molly until she died fourteen years ago. I tried to describe her poetry to a few friends a couple days before her death as: criticizing humans through wonderful pictures of nature. I’ve always admired her perspective, but also how she put her thoughts out in the world.
  • I’ve been doing so much better the past three weeks health and mood-wise. I’m amazed at how good I’ve been feeling and the change it makes, like problems is still thrown at me daily, but I have the energy to deal with it. Then I started losing my voice and coughing today, so we’ll see how long that lasts. (I’m going to be mad if it doesn’t last longer, honestly, and I think that’s quite okay of a feeling this time).
  • With this input of energy (sidenote: I’m studying electric currents for physics test in a couple days and I can’t stop sliding in terminology in the most casual conversations, then catching myself doing it and groan. This is a light example, honestly). With this input of energy I’m also doing a lot more things. Lots of studying and actually being close to on top of things. Seeing friends! Enjoying myself! Celebrating my birthday for the first time in three years! I’m pretty proud and greatful for that, seeing as I’ve been too ill to want to the past years. It was my 20th and I chose to do things my introverted ass wouldn’t normally, like drinking the whole day and evening. I have a weirdly high tolerance for someone who doesn’t drink, but inevitably blacked out for the first time. Three hours gone. I mean – wouldn’t necessarily recommend, but it was great with good friends around me and lots of dancing.

Short reviews: sci-fi & poetry

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Legion #1 by Brandon Sanderson:

This short sci-fi mystery novella is about a guy who has multiple sidekicks in form of hallucinations, who give him specialization in skills like language, fighting or computers. With Sanderson’s funny dialogues, and an imaginative plot with a camera that can take pictures of the past, it comes together into one perfectly entertaining story.

5/5 stars and I’m excited to read the rest of the trilogy. I received a copy through NetGallet in exchange for an honest review.

The Year of the Femme by Cassie Donish:

I appreciated the themes of femininity and body, but the writing style was messy and disconnected in a way that worked against understanding the message. Also as Donish talks about gender she admits to using “a lot of generalizations”, which she says is not wholly untrue, but come from resentment and socialization. I feel if you want to write a book dissecting gender, do it completely and tear down why and how it hurts people. This feels more like snarky parody with a girl needing a dog because now she’s single and has no one to protect her. Maybe I didn’t get what this storytellers view of women are miserable and happy was supposed to be, but it was boring to read about and added little new. I received a copy through NetGalley in exchange for a honest reivew.

If We Were Villains by M. L. Rio

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Pages: 370

Genre: contemporary mystery, set in a college

Synopsis

On the day Oliver Marks is released from jail, the man who put him there is waiting at the door. Detective Colborne wants to know the truth, and after ten years, Oliver is finally ready to tell it.

Ten years ago: Oliver is one of seven young Shakespearean actors at Dellecher Classical Conservatory, a place of keen ambition and fierce competition. In this secluded world of firelight and leather-bound books, Oliver and his friends play the same roles onstage and off: hero, villain, tyrant, temptress, ingénue, extra. But in their fourth and final year, the balance of power begins to shift, good-natured rivalries turn ugly, and on opening night real violence invades the students’ world of make believe. In the morning, the fourth-years find themselves facing their very own tragedy, and their greatest acting challenge yet: convincing the police, each other, and themselves that they are innocent. 

Audiobook review

The narrator is good, except for how he’s trying to do the female voices. Every heard one narrator dub tv series? It’s hilariously bad. Also there’s a lot of characters in the friend-group to meet all at once at the beginning, so I actually picked up the text version the second chapter and went back to really understand who each of them is, because there’s no good separator in the audiobook (except for bad female voices). I would recommend physically reading this one, I was packing for a trip and wanted to get throught it.

My thoughts

Rating out of five: three

I picked this book up because of its college/university setting and saw it recommended for those who liked “The secret history” by Donna Tartt. That book is much better than this one, in a lot of ways. They both do have a “dark academia” vibe – which I recently learned was a thing and I love it. I wanted to give it an extra star for that alone, but then I saw that ending and thought hell no, I was bored through too many parts of this book.

I’m happy I read the book, because it had its entertaining points as the characters uncover dark things about the others and themselves. It’s very centered on the characters and who’s friends and enemies as they all attend the same class. So it’s dark and dramatic, which also comes through in the greek plays they perform. The theater parts were very nice details, going through the whole book and giving it more texture and depth. You can see how the characters are pushed to excell and that they know that themselves, before they start to unravel from guilt. Still, I didn’t feel the characters was given enough space to show how supposedly three-dimensional they was. Instead the author seemed to make them do things out of character, playing on “well, you don’t know when they’re acting or not” which sure is an explanation, but doesn’t help on feeling that connection for the reader.

I both loved and hated the writing at points. On one hand it has some really pretty lines, like “Dense forest surrounded it on all sides except one, the north shore, where the trees were thinner and a strip of sandy white beach shimmered like diamond dust in the moonlight.” On the other hand, so much annoyed me. Mostly the author’s choices, like the ending or having Richard be described as a person everyone hated, which then made us miss out on later feeling sorry for him. The characters in this book doesn’t feel like villains because there were no sense of feeling sorry for Richard, because his character was so violent. The bolder choice would’ve been to make him sympathic. I just felt like a lot of depth was missing, there were hilariously little moral dilemmas for the reader watching this play out. I get that it’s part thriller and part mystery, but as I didn’t think who killed him was such a big mystery, a more cohesive and focused history or plot would’ve been better.

What I felt reading this book: mostly entertained and intrigued, annoyed at writing choices. And I was laughing at myself for chosing to read this hours before a weekend of partying with classmates. It was a nice weeked, but I did think of this book as we were driving into the snow-filled forest.

It’s All Too Much by Peter Walsh

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An easy plan for living a richer life with less stuff

Pages: 230

Genre: organizing

Synopsis

When you think of what it will take to clean your house, are you so overwhelmed you throw up your hands and cry “It’s all too much”? Do you dream of having a closet where your clothes aren’t crammed in so tightly that you can actually get to them? Is your basement filled with boxes of precious family mementos you haven’t opened in ten years but are too afraid to toss? Are your kitchen counters overrun with appliances you’ve never used? Do your kids play in the living room because there’s no room left in their playroom? If somewhere along the way you’ve simply lost the ability to keep your home organized and clutter-free, then It’s All Too Much has the solution you’ve been searching for.

My thoughts

Rating out of five: three

I heard somewhere that this book was the more practical over “spiritual” approach to organizing in comparison to the popular tidying and organizing book by Marie Kondo. That sounded like what I needed, but I think I’ll pick up her book too, to see if there is more advice.

Because this book had some good tips, the problem is that it’s not 230 PAGES of it. It got quite boring, saying the same thing over and over. Also personally, considering I don’t have a family to take care of, what I needed from this book could’ve been summed up in an article.

So if you’re a single young person, without a household and family to consider, here’s probably all you need from this book:

  • Imagine the life you want, physically and emotionally, and consider if the items you own contribute to that future?
  • How do you feel and compare it to how you want to feel when entering your home. What function do you want each room to have? Organize from that perspective
  • “Ask yourself these questions as you encounter each piece of clutter: Do I use this? How long has it been since I’ve used it? Will I use it again? Is it worth the space it takes up in my house?
  • If you’re tempted to keep something because it’s expensive, remind yourself of the difference of value and cost – how much space and energy does it take up and is it worth it?
  • When trying to encourage another person to organize, change the questions to about their feeling attached to the object. Like “Why is this important to you? What does this item remind you of? What do you feel after spending time in this room?”

Short reviews: poetry

aquapages // eline1 Comment

Monument by Natasha Trethewey: a poetry collection consisting of serious stories of a mixed-race prostitute, historical struggles of people of colour, about hurricane Katrina, the poet’s own family stories of loss. Still, the writing doesn’t pull me in as a reader, there’s not a lot of emotion here. It doesn’t seem like a purposefully lack of emotion either, and it got better towards the end. She describes scenes, but doesn’t add much to most of them, the way I see it. 2/5 stars. I received this copy through Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Bright Dead Things by Ada Limon: now, this one is harder to give a review of because it’s really well-written the way I see it, but it didn’t grab my interest. There were a couple poems that I really liked, but overall it didn’t work for me. Won’t give it a rating because it’s confusing. It might be worth a try, if you’re looking for poetry collections.