Mikaela > Recent Status Updates

picked this back up after extended hiatus.... considering putting it down again...

midway thru my mother visiting my italy apartment for the first time (hi mama) the line “I went through the rooms rearranging according to my taste everything she had arranged according to hers” made the whole family giggle

stephen greenblatt epigraph lets goo

yes i’m going very slow on this one yes it’s very fun so far yes i tried the butter on rice thing and it tasted amazing yes i want to work my way thru all the recipes

so maybe this is on me and my reading expectations, but i’ve somehow been on a streak of books finished/in progress that abruptly & unexpectedly include sexual assault and intimate partner violence, and i was really not expecting the video game friendship saga to be one of those books, but maybe that’s on me?? absolutely can’t stand dov and any scene he’s in :(

just hit a passage so breathtaking and ominous that i know i’ll a) come back and copy it into my notebook so i can keep savoring the syntactic flow & escalation and b) probably love this book a lot

swarthmore mention 😄😄😄

in the context of nepotism 😔😔😔

can’t tell if the worldbuilding is ultra dense (too dense?) or if i’m just out of practice at reading fantasy

Robin Wall Kimmerer referencing my college environmental justice org???? campus coalition concerning chester world takeover coming soon

i know this is a Convention of the Genre but after 400 pages and 400 years how has sabine never left western europe. why are we in paris again. what happened to the other 50 countries. can we at least try albania

this is gonna be a hit with the sally rooney girls methinks

epigraph is two mega Hume quotes and one from Orwell on propaganda….. alright suzanne let’s do this thing

narrative tension generated by dangling a secret in front of the reader and then refusing to let them in on it is, imo, the laziest kind—mechanical and withholding instead of organic and taut. HOWEVER i did not see that plot twist coming at all so props for sticking the landing on the reveal at least

rereading the first book, i was surprised how spare and functional the prose was, well suited for katniss’s voice but unremarkable otherwise.

this one, i’m floored by how much collins’ writing grew between books. the prose is much more subtle and evocative without sacrificing accessibility or clarity—very fitting as her themes, characters, and world-building deepen in complexity. very impressive stuff!

this book is so batshit insane i’m kinda obsessed with

simultaneously devastating to hear the litany of genocide and grief contextualized by the hypocrisies of vacuous liberalism, but also incredibly refreshing to hear someone call it like he sees it—to call it like it is, like it’s been since oct 7, like it’s been since 9/11, like it’s been since 1776. i can’t believe this actually got published but i’m so glad it did.

i hate when people say a book “redefines our understanding of how a novel should work” however this book’s “hinge” is absolutely redefining my understanding of how a novel *can* work. really neat narrative structure at play!

incredibly impressed by the canny, stylish sci fi writing. somewhat bamboozled by the crazy turn at the end of act 1. assuming it only gets crazier from here !

i have mixed feelings about trigger warnings HOWEVER i do wish i had a heads up that there is a graphic snake rape scene in the second chapter??? what was that???

This book is interesting but so stressful omfg

i’m finally reading this and i’m already cackling out loud on the train. “i’m a grown man, i can buy my own bigfoot erotica” pshhhh