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the age of discretion sunk my heart. it took me a while to finish this section. to me, the ending reflected the ebb & flow of my moments- an innate pull for a future carved by my visions, and a dread for events that threaten these dreams. the buildup to this conclusion was just as dreadful, bearing witness to the narrator’s acceptance of her decaying passion.

changing of documents to make the present everlasting, to fit the party’s narrative to control the civilians through words/ideas. the comparison of war from the past to now. the inability to express without suspicion from the overseer’s. this book is hopefully NOT coming to fruition, let’s keep sci-fi strictly fictional man. where will 2026 lead us? i hope unity.

please do NOT ask Dracula about the superstitions, Jonathan. badbadbad idea.

•”He’d watch that kind of light suffuse the car like syrup...” (31)
•”…he had recently had to accept that it was what he was: he loved paint, and he loved portraiture, and that was what he was going to do.” (37)
•”…a Thom Gunn poem: ‘Their relationship consisted/In discussing if it existed.” (44)

🤌🤌

the unraveling of her ultimate break is so tedious, so dragging, I don’t want it to end but im waiting and waiting and waiting and waiting and waiting and

19: “As the hike commenced in the shadowed cool beneath the tittering canopy…”

im actually crying this is so funny n such a beautiful way to describe walking in a forest lmfao

At this point, convinced everyone is against Noelle and uhm, pushed her or somethin lol.

For myself, just want to comment on themes:
- red
- vanity
- skin
- ocean
- italicized convos…in her head? perspective of narrator making it more dreamlike, showing her haziness? gonna analyze more.

+ is she in a dream at this point?? so excited to see where this is going 🥀🍷🍒💄🩸

“Choose your leaders with wisdom and forethought. To be led by a coward is to be controlled by all that the coward fears. To be led by a fool is to be led by the opportunists who control the fool. To be led by a thief is to offer up your most precious treasures to be stolen. To be led by a liar is to ask to be told lies. To be led by a tyrant is to sell yourself and those you love into slavery.”

2025 book resolutions:
- Continue exploring mom’s Stephen King bookshelf
- Reread at least 1 book from teenage hood
- Reread Dracula & Jekyll and Hyde starting in July
- Continue with The Vampire Chronicles
- Continue with The Twilight Saga
- Practice analyzing and reviewing, annotate and journal more often!

note to self: update TBR

The Théâtre de Vampires is morbidly genius on Rice’s part

needing to listen to merry ever after on audiobook. these reviews kill me 😂

this is one of my many assigned books for my culture class, hence why it’s taking forever to finish my initial reads. Tambu’s rural lifestyle shifts once her educated brother dies, and she takes his place at a mission school. this seems like a coming-of-age, where her dichotomous realities of home vs the mission conflict with her identity. it’s very sexist, lots of expectations, but nevertheless informative.

so im taking my sweet time with this one(: lestat is mysterious. but he’s also self-centered and a narcissist- why’s this a common theme with vampires tho, always so degrading, like i get it but still we need some alice’s in this lol. I like Louis, maybe because of his clean narrative & hesitation to attack humans. he’s so caring to babette, and to his first victim’s family.

the friendship of bella & jacob is so genuine. edward’s always been a creep, i disliked him in the first book and he continues to haunt her mind. lowkey romanticizing something VERY toxic, but such a guilty pleasure so i cant simply stop + this is a reread so it’s interesting to see how different this experience is (barely remember the first tho 💀).

just as the first book, relieved the scenes were written by a woman. i feel like it would add an extra element of fucked up-ped-ness #onlywomencancreatesuccessfulmisogynisticmalecharacters #imkiddingleavemealone

Humbert’s paranoia is building and im desperately anticipating his capture “in flagrante delicto” (yes learned the term just for this post so idk if it’s worded correctly lmao). i must have missed it in past pages, but i always assumed he was harming her within his mind but as the book proceeds there’s talk about the actual abuse…& they’ve been on the run for 2 years but it seems she’s so much older?

lil note, boiling mind: humbert is a dangerous idealist. fanatical intimacy with his primal guilty pleasures exposes his objectification of the opposite sex- there seems to be recognition but no way for him to move on, so he must commit the act or forever be cursed with his images. he eroticizes youth, and wants to diminish the mature. he’s so stuck in his past he dreams of harming all kind. mindfulness is key, man

quick note: various sentences where humbert claims he’s young. to sum it up, he’s apparently mentally young and the only thing he owns that’s old is his body and, specific to page 57, his bedroom slippers. i like how nabokov keeps reminding the reader the wrongness of lusting for youth, how sinister humbert truly is.

…as I understand (from google) the unreliable narration evokes critical thinking and reading, but also it’s not hard to understand- right off the bat- that Sir Humbert is in need of psychiatric help.

…as a physically older man, his mental state is that of a tween (says him) as he’s stuck over lust from a past sexual experience. the girl he shared this with eventually died, and his lack of actual processing has lead to projections of sexual admiration of little girls (tbc…).

…As someone who’s been cat-called and blatantly sexualized since elementary school, I can only imagine that these are the thoughts that provoke real people to act as they do, scarring the world of us little girls who soon grow into adults with real lives from our past experiences. Humbert’s desires seem to be set on delicate French girls, no more than 17 but preferably below double digits (tbc…).

Nabokov beautifully expresses the deep darkness that is perversion, as we go within the mind of Humbert and his fetish for dainty french girls, girls that are no more than 17. From sitting on a park bench to be surrounded by children, to his fantasies of his past sexual encounter with someone his age when he was a kid, this man clearly needs psychiatric help to say the least (to be continued…).

Intense, I love reading through the perspective of Lauren’s daughter. This book has been really inspirational for the past few months (im taking forever bc school lol but also I don’t want it to end and I keep rereading pages and chapters so I can fully emerge into the characters and plot(s)) & im excited to reread the first after I finish this 🤍🪽