Sofia > Recent Status Updates

I love it but HOW are they eating noddles underwater without them presumably floating around?

I didn’t need the rules of time travel repeated in the second chapter tbh

Three chapters in and I’m horrified

Their chemistry should be illegal

This one is fun, though like “To Have and To Hoax” gives me a feeling of “rich people having nothing better to do when people were probably dying.” vibes.

Marcus de Sautoy is who I wished was my math teacher at school cause then it’d probably be my favourite subject.

A book set in my hometown of Thessaloniki is bound to catch my interest

I’m loving this book but I have a bit of a pet peeve that Cassie, who has a history degree, is so oblivious about what life was like in Ukraine during Stalin’s rule.

“If she couldn’t read the journal on her own, maybe researching what life was like in Ukraine back then would give her some insight.”

I understand the need to keep grandmas past a mystery, but no way she wouldn’t know of the famine.

This book is SO GOOD and the romance is raising my romantic standards, istg

It is so refreshing reading a book where the main characters are in their 40s - when even in the 21st century we view women in their 30s and beyond past their prime.

I also love the attention to detail about the time period. I’m learning so much about Regency society.

I’m loving this book so far - it’s got great writing and very relatable characters. As a child of immigrants myself (though mine were Bulgarians in Greece instead of Chinese in the USA) I found some very relatable themes in this book.

I know this book will probably break me and I’m ready for this 🥲

The book is very easy to read and entertaining which makes me forgive the following:

• the main character, Lila, gives strong “not-like-other-girls” energy
• I love enemies to lovers but in this instance it’s kinda too forced so far

But I’m loving all the parts about the character’s back story and her relationship with her family.

“however, like all lovers who have stumbled upon the glory of their emotions for the first time she was also bursting with the knowledge and longing to share it.”

I get living zero waste but looking through a dumpster when you can just buy a sandwich is too much.

“The excitement of the newness tightened her chest—the kind of constriction that happens when some beauty and some novelty collide.”

I’m engaged in the story and like the writing style, but I find the main protagonist a bit insufferable in her Thrifting Vegan Communist brand of Manic Pixiness

For a journalist who wants to write about serious issues like race, Nina is REALLY bad at debate and actually articulating her points. She constantly has her words twisted and puts her foot in her mouth CONSTENTLY. It's kind of cringey tbh.

She sounds more like a 18 year old who just moved out of home for uni and started forming their political opinions and writing about them, not a 39 year old woman with a degree.

Nina is kind of an unlikeable character but I enjoy that she gets consequences for that.

Context: the MC, on her quest to love herself, goes dining alone. The waiter asks if she wants a 2nd plate and she responds: "Society just can't handle the thought of a single woman with a healthy appetite dining alone. You really don't need to assume someone is joining me. It's kind of sexist."

I'd be okay with her thinking that, but saying it out loud? Relax, no need to be all Simone de Bouvoir on the poor waiter

This book is SO GOOD. It's an experience. I love the not quite chronological narrative. The story unfolds in "order", we see the two main characters as children and how they get to meet, but then you'll get these time jumps sorta where you'll learn about them 20 years into the future and that makes me both nostalgic for them but also super curious as to how they got to that point from where I was in the story.

I actually picked this up in May-ish but as with all non-fiction books I don't feel compelled to read them in a one sitting, linear fashion.

It's a really interesting book about trauma and how it is processed.

I'm loving the writing style:

"Lucy commits to the rhetoric; she describes it as a business and tenses up whenever anyone says that specific word. So out of respect, I won't use it. I'll just say the Egyptians built them."

I picked this up as my next non fiction to feel better about myself for not being a math prodigy as a child.

It has some of the themes of A Mind for Numbers which I also loved.

The guy who made the IQ test was an asshole.

I'm in Chapter 5, when they've just gotten to Auschwitz and there's this bit:
"Irena had never mentioned the Gestapo sending resistance members to a place like this. Maybe she had no idea a place like this existed."

This is such a great detail because death camps weren't actually something known during the war and the horrors of them were discovered only after they were liberated.

It reminds me of The Marvelous Mrs Maisel and The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo so I'm really enjoying it.

I love all of Delon's POVs. Kinda wish this book was about him entirely.

The publishing house had a sale on their website so I picked this up.

So far, it has the qualities that make me snub Greek books. It's kinda purple prose-y, people don't talk like how normal, real life people would.