Aastha > Recent Status Updates

Half-way through Herland, and I get why this book is met with such hostile opinions across the positive to negative spectrum. It is a polarising book. It is radical. I defies and defiles.
But I do not hate this book. The story isn’t perfection, but I stand with the positive. I do believe there are a lot of wild exaggerations in this book, and they must be considered as such. Don’t take everything literally.

How does Sabahattin know so much about human nature?! This book is (not-an-exaggeration) enlightening. Sabahattin’s perceptiveness and acute awareness of human psychology is lighting up all the circuits in my brain.

These almost cartoonish characters are revealing their human sides gradually and I am loving it

This is certainly a very fast-paced and fun read!

Love and Kindness - I love the message of this book! Empathy, Sympathy.
To touch a human soul just as another human soul (Re: Carl Jung!). That’s it. Simple.

- life is difficult
- Margo + Jinx on OF is making very uncomfortable but also somehow hilariously comforted
- love and kindness are like sunshine for the soul
- Margo desperately clinging on to purpose via Bodhi. Bodhi makes her feel useful, needed, important and valuable.
- Jinx is one of weirdest male character I have ever read.

How can a book that was so interesting up to 90% through, get so boring suddenly?! Gahhhhhhh

At this point, Tom seems like a young Don Quixote -_-

You know what, I think this book isn’t as engaging as Tom Sawyer but it is just as insightful (if you’re perceptive enough).
There are sub-themes (ideas, radical ones too) playing beneath the many layers of the main plot. But they’re never spelt out. If you see them, you see them. If you don’t, it’s just a story.

[Referring to: Racism and (subtle) questioning of it in 1800s America]

- the accented writing style is good, but not for me
- Huck Finn is intelligent, in a practical-sort of way
- Huck’s father is a racist drunkard
- the extent Huck will go to feel the thrill of adventure, the freedom of the nomadic life away from civility and social norms
- Huck thinks very differently. His logic is a very different kind of logic than is known to me and most

Very Quixotic vibes

Ahh, in typical Tom Sawyer fashion, this book starts out extreme! Outrageously extreme to a point it is infuriating! These kids are not just a troublesome lot, they’re wicked. Just started this book, and the level and mischief in this book definitely seems way more intolerable and inexcusable than Tom Sawyer’s Adventures.

The boys’ time on the island was actually kinda fun. I enjoyed reading it. [not to say that I agree with a lot of what they did, but from a pure entertainment value,……. I get the point behind this book and the hype surrounding it].

This is giving me major You (Netflix series) vibes

I get it. Mark Twain knows how to write. What clever writing!

Ben Rogers impersonating a ship —- I have to say: masterful writing Mark Twain, masterful! That was fun!

Is this really a children’s book?!?!? Gahhhh, why would anyone want their kids reading about bratty rebellious boys picking up fights with strangers

Oh wow this book is picking up. The story is getting so much better and the musings are getting even more compelling! I feel like the enemies-to-lovers trope isn’t really spelled out here as much as the blurb suggests, but I am not complaining. This book is so much more than just a mere romance novel.

I get it now. It is not the story, it is the writing. The story is actually quite good (entertaining and strangely even enlightening in parts). The writing however, goes from very good to just good to too much pomp. Simple activities that must just be stated in 4 words are described in such convoluted 4 paras, it is bizarre! Not to say it is bad, the writing is just jarring. It requires and steals too much focus away

Annie Ernaux sure knows how to wrap a biography of Time and an autobiography of herself in a single book.

I am having a hard time getting into this book— reading just a few pages at a time. I don’t quite understand why. I am not even sure if it is the book that is at fault here. The book sure is funny and the main character seems quite well-rounded. Even the story is intriguing. Perhaps it is me. Maybe I am just not in the mood for a light romance read, right now? Lol, why am I craving denser books.

This is such a slow burn book and I love it. Just vibes and flow.

Wow, Tarana Burke is a philosopher. Loving every word she’s written so far. I love how honest she is. Brutally honest.

The way Annie Ernaux captures reality and the whole growing up experiences in a way that is both raw and ripe, devoid of gloss but full of retrospective contemplation, is brilliant.

I love how Annie Ernaux can make the most mundane, monotonous sound poetic!

Heroines that lose their sense of self-worth and pride anger me, when they meet a hot guy anger me.

Gahh this is just bad, normalising machoism and self-centrism to the point of making it attractive. i have no idea why am I still reading this cringe-y work (something in me prevents me from leaving books mid-way) but I just do not like Serena. Hunter, hot or not, does not deserve her 'Thank you's and 'Sorries'. He does not deserve to touch her. HE CANNOT.

Uhhh, I do not like the books where a seemingly sensible, smart girl goes delulu the moment she sees a hot guy.

I have to admit, I am not enjoying Serena. Just because Hunter "looks hot" does not mean she needs to abandon all sense of logic and self-worth. You don't let a stranger play with your hair without permission, even if he is as hot as the Sun! Your first instinct should be to slap his hand away dude.