Kundan > Recent Status Updates

Wow so eye opening regarding how bills are made and laws passed on the United States. So disgusting!

The disgusting exhausting hoops the Massachusetts American (in)justice system made her go through! Wow!

Probably going to DNF this because it reads like a Greek myth. If I wanted to read a Greek myth, I will read a Greek myth, not this. So tired of reading the same old Imperialist colonial stories in Blackface Brownface Queerface Womanface.

Very predictable "plot twist" reveal. Especially if you have read "Blood over Bright Haven" by M L Wang. Both authors even use the same word "blight". Lol. And both are biracial Wasians or Hapa. The only difference is that they're in different genres. But the villain's evil is the same. Except Blood over Bright Haven was actually a much better story. This is also basically the same plot twist in every cli fi.

It's finally getting stimulating and dramatic but still doesn't read like Sci Fi to me but more like a mystery adventure story with a bit of suspense. I guess I just don't enjoy the cli-fi genre. Lol

Now there's a bit of action, drama and intrigue finally but still very unoriginal. I'd say it's disappointing but I don't expect better from this author... it's just more lazy writing to capitalize off "diversity " even though she's half white and so she's basically sucking up the energy and space from fully racialized people and Indigenous people who could have written a better story.

I'd DNF it but at this point I am only finishing it to be an informed critic. It doesn't even feel like science fiction at all. And while the Story is interesting, it doesn't feel original because it could be any other dystopian cli-fi! And I don't even understand the point of the story. It just seems like someone half White Capitalizing off the new interest in "diversity" by taking advantage of her Japanese side

Currently one third of the way through Saltcrop, and it doesn't even feel like "science fiction" to me. It feels like literary dystopian fiction with a climate crisis backdrop. The only "science" part of it is that it's set in the future (or alternate present), and the villains have developed a super pesticide to "solve" a problem they themselves probably created. I'd DNF it but I want to be an informed critic.

I almost DNFed it after the first 6 chapters because those extensive chemistry descriptions were so boring. But I am glad I stuck through because now it's actually getting interesting. I don't hate this book so far but don't particularly like it either. Can't quite put a finger on it except for its contribution to rugged individualism and American exceptionallsm propaganda maybe?

I am really loving the ecological metaphor and allegory in the chapters on the royal menagerie and the silver lake.

The entire previous chapter was pretty amusing actually. 🤣🤣🤣

So far, I really like that the potential lovers the protagonists don't even meet each other until a quarter of the way into the story. That shows they have their own lives to live and have their own concerns and are fully whole people with their own independent interests and motivations even though they do have common interests and overlapping motivations for being in each other's presence.

"Beyond the families of the gentry, there might be someone who saw the world as he did. Someone who would view his heart as a powerful home for love and not a haven for the love of power. Someone who would not just extend the days of his life, but expand the meaning of it." Awww so sweet and beautiful!

I am surprised I am actually enjoying this one too. It's definitely a page Turner Because I definitely want to know what happens next! 🤣 I guess Chokshi has finally graduated from being all vibes and pretty prose but no real plot! 🤣

I have been warned that most of her books are all vibes and flowery prose but hardly any plot but this does have a plot so far, and it's actually clever, witty and even a little funny 🤣

The chapter on India is very Hinduphobic unfortunately. Because all the good things people do are framed as "Indian" but all the bad things are framed as "Hindu" even though almost all the activists he has highlighted are fighting the anti-Hindu ecologically destructive practices of the Hinduphobic government are actually themselves Hindu and using Hindu philosophy to fight except for the his Hinduphobic guide

The history of the Indigenous people in Ecuador are so similar to us Indigenous Hindus. Their beliefs are also so similar. I wanted to cry when I was reading about them because I felt so much solidarity. They are us too. We are them.. Vasudev Kutumbh.

Finally on page 165, we get to the predictable pedo propaganda I had been expecting. And not even any "Lampshading" here. No rebuttals. Just the male narrator's voice admitting to pedo stuff and trying to justify it. No rebuttals earlier and I don't expect one later either. Just disgusting!

Ah! As expected, we get to the usual desensitizing & normalizing of mind control/mass hypnosis aspects of the story, as expected because it's a story about Hollywood! Lol so predictable. The only reason why I keep reading it is because a local book club picked it, and so I need to call out and disrupt the mind control as it's happening.

It's almost a quarter into the book. And it's so painfully boring I am only reading it just to finish it because it's mercifully shirt with only 5 hours Total..Only 2 hours left at 2.4 speed. The Imperialist propaganda is not so much in the plot itself but in the messages the author drops between conversations and narrations, such as MPD/DID normalization and Good Evil False Binary.

Only on page 4, and it already enraged me so much I took a break for 2 days..lol..but I will finish it nevertheless because now that the American billionaire class Oprah picked it up for their NATIONAL book club, this will be a NATIONAL conversation.. this is your reminder that all the famines she mentioned on page 4 were engineered by the British Christian Colonizers, a fact she conveniently left out ...

After so many disappointing stories that claimed to be "feminist", "Decolonial" but kept centering the oppressor, always written from the colonial gaze, or always "fixing the bigot", I am finally reading something that actually removes the oppressor altogether, and centers the oppressed, and is written about a world completely run by Black people without Christianity, Islam nor Abrahamic Supremacy.

Only finished the first 3 chapters, and already very eye-opening!

Almost two thirds of the way through. I am already learning a lot. Very eye-opening and Mind-blowing!

Only 9 pages in, and it's already both confirming what I have deeply felt for so long (just didn't have the words before) AND blowing my mind! Wow!

Only 8%, and already so good! So excited for this short book!

I finally finished! I have so much to say about it! Mostly negative. A few things I liked but generally, truly one of the most disgusting frustrating and infuriating books I have EVER read. Smh.

Creepy vibes now. Forced proximity trope. Unexplored power imbalance, barely acknowledged and with zero accountability: essentially "lampshading". Gender swapped "born sexy yesterday" trope.
And also typical Hollywood propaganda of always having inter-racial Romance with a White person, essentially "White centering".