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yun

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yun’s Bookshelves

to-read‎ (104)
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yun is Currently Reading

yun is currently reading

Where the World Ends

by Geraldine McCaughrean

bookshelves: want-physical-copy, audiobooks, currently-reading

Reading for the 2nd time

read in January 2023

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yun said: " This was an exploration of religion, power, identity, community, humanity, and gender in language a child could understand. This was amazing.

I came across this book on Libby while I was scrolling through to find an audiobook to listen to in my spare This was an exploration of religion, power, identity, community, humanity, and gender in language a child could understand. This was amazing.

I came across this book on Libby while I was scrolling through to find an audiobook to listen to in my spare time. I noticed it was by Geraldine McCaughrean and it had won the CILIP Carnegie Medal in 2018, so I borrowed and listened to it. Angus King, the narrator of the audiobook, did an amazing job bringing the story to life, btw! I really recommend the audiobook, though I would really like to read the print version now, too!

The story was inspired by the true story of a group of fowlers who got stranded on Warrior Stac, an island of rock in the St Kildan archipelago, for 9 months in the 1700s. I actually didn't know beforehand that the setting would be St Kilda and it was a pleasant surprise for me! I didn't actually go to St Kilda itself (not many boats go out), but I spent 3 weeks in the Outer Hebrides over the summer and got a sense of the remoteness and end-of-the-world feeling of the archipelago. Looking out onto the Atlantic Ocean with nothing in the way until America was really something else... I could imagine how totally forsaken I would feel were I to be stranded there.

It sounds from that like this would be a survivalist story, about how the boys and men scraped and struggled through the cold and hunger, etc., but, while the physical struggles were included in and contributed to the story, the main focus was the interpersonal and internal struggles they went through, particularly Quilliam. The party stranded on Warrior Stac came to represent a sort of microcosm of society, as it probably was back on Hirta in the 1700s and, in many ways, as it is now.

There are loads of resources (mostly for teachers) out there exploring the themes in the book which I think go way further than this review but I'll write out some of my thoughts here. The themes weren't too subtle, since this book was written for a younger readership, but they also weren't too on-the-nose either, nor were they watered down. It was an intense read with heavy content, but I wasn't left feeling bad or unhopeful.

(view spoiler) ...more "

progress:

(page 59 of 336)
"Rereading this one to see if it's as good as I remember" — Aug 23, 2025 02:21PM

Feb 06, 2023 09:56AM · see review

yun is currently reading

The Sword of Kaigen

by M.L. Wang (Goodreads Author)

bookshelves: currently-reading

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(page 123 of 651)
"What just happened 😭😭" — Apr 03, 2025 03:07AM

Apr 03, 2025 03:05AM

yun is currently reading

Pachinko

by Min Jin Lee

bookshelves: currently-reading

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(30%)
"This is taking me ages because I keep having to return it to the library and I'm not all that attached to the characters (and I'm too busy nowadays to maintain my old reading habits :'(( ) but I'll keep going" — Jan 16, 2025 07:32AM

Sep 20, 2024 06:01AM

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yun’s Quotes

“She was so happy that she had gone quiet all over. She felt like someone listening to great chords of music that were not to be interrupted by speaking. (p. 152)”
― Diana Wynne Jones, Fire and Hemlock

tags: chords-of-music, happy

2 likes

“Travel sounds fun until you realize what you really want is to stay at home with a cup of tea and a stack of books by a warm fire.”
― R.F. Kuang, Babel, or The Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution

22 likes

“But the future, vague as it was frightening, was easily ignored for now; it paled so against the brilliance of the present”
― R.F. Kuang, Babel

45 likes

“Being irretrievably damned had its advantages:”
― Geraldine McCaughrean, Where the World Ends

4 likes

“That's just what translation is, I think. That's all speaking is. Listening to the other and trying to see past your own biases to glimpse what they're trying to say. Showing yourself to the world, and hoping someone else understands.”
― R.F. Kuang, Babel

1003 likes

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