ari > Recent Status Updates

rllyyyy liking this, love the writing + the premise (confusing) is so great - def a bit of a slow-burner which is a shame cuz i have until the 28th to read this

sorry this is just incredibly dull i have to be honest. going into it i did know that this was mostly just descriptions of food so maybe it's on me for expecting more but??? did it win the international booker prize just for the metanarrative concept?? (which is admittedly rlly cool) i'm committed to getting to the end tho just hope something happens

idk how I feel about this man, I’m not hating it but the meta fictional nature of it + the abundance of footnotes make this a semi-tedious read for my
taste personally and the biggest problem I’m facing atm is just how annoying aoyama is as a main character obviously meant to connote the role of the “polite and curious coloniser”.

lowkey i'm too stupid to read most meta media so curious to see how i'll go with this

old white male writers r winning this month with what i'm reading ig damn...also hilarious that i've helped write 2 essays on this text but haven't read it until now. also this is a gay mentally ill bildungsroman right???

- whispers of immortality (9/10)
- mr. eliot's sunday morning service (5/10), cool but wtf does any of this really mean
- sweeney among the nightingales (4/10) t.s. eliot ur incel is leaking out
- wasteland 1. burial of the dead (7/10)

ok I was unsure of the retrospective narrative style but I am engrossed in it now- reminds me of ‘train dream’ (which funnily enough I thought was v average)

fonda lee is so fucking good at writing such deeply compelling, vicious, brutal but overwhelmingly human characters that she's making me think that maybe i like sci-fi as a genre rather than this and dune being an exception....like what a goddess i would snort her grocery lists atp

ok so I did guess both of the massive plot twists early on but that doesn’t mean it’s bad obviously- this book is v engrossing when you get into it but it is also slow paced, the reveals and the build ups are absolutelyyyy fucking worth it even if it’s predictable in the way the green bone saga wasn’t.

finance bros are genuinely nightmare levels of terrifying

alrightttt this is immediately quite miserable and plain (just like me) let's get this party started

copying my sister’s reading list 😁😁😁

more on b) heavily reliant on how much you engage in action and/or world building but there’s no political world or rlly other main characters to interact with.. ..this - is vvvvv much reliant on your interest on characters literally levelling up or upgrading and i kind of already just wanted to skim all that.

soft DNF for now - probably not the right audience for this
a) audiobook > book I think
b) not a gamer in the slightest & this has loads to do with action world building like literally levelling up as opposed to chain all gang stars or hunger games
c) female rep(sexual object, fat monster, cheater)

ok so far it's mostly been exposition- i'm liking it but not loving it. considering its an 8 book series and continuing- if i get to the approx 30% mark and i'm not vibing with it i will probably DNF it. but i'm curious to see what all the hype's about!

ik athena is protecting ulysses and bla blah but it is kind of sending me just how courteous each island's royalty is to ulysses JUSTTTT bcs they fear he MIGHT be a god in disguise, like he lands and they're all immediately like "GIVE HIM WINE AND FOOD LET HIM CRY". also it is confusing to me that the audiobook i am reading has all the names listed in roman e.g. minerva instead of athena but whatever

ok so i am officially DNF'ing it at 68% bcs i started it on may 18 and i've just completely lost interest in it! no fault of the book, actually deffo liked it more than others in the genre! but romance is hard to keep my attention, they also v quickly got together and the romance was sweet to the point of being saccharine. also it doesn't help that both leads r boring and white :/

rlly guessing on the progress here since i'm audiobooking this but book 4 just completed

somehow never knew this classic was incredibly gay- HAPPY PRIDE MONTH INDEED

this series is actually so funny time and time again it’s just freak 4 freak 4 freak in the most wholesome way possible- not even just the throuple of it all but also everyone in the found family group like these people r impulsive strong IDIOTTTT FREAKS

ok I’m very glad the tattoo thing will be (maybe?) explained bcs I rlly have been wondering about the logistics/ethicality of it all… like is it purely for the aesthetics of oooh Merlin sorcery and the emo sexy vibes or does it genuinely help with aether conjuring, or is it mandatory the order branding (fucked up since sel was a kid) like let’s discuss it’s been 3 books

I forgot just how much of this book consists of Bree being an absolute HOTTTT MESSSSS a whole ass train wreck like 😭😭

daddy issues my bread and butter

re-reading this bcs i said i would read it before i read the 2nd book and then i didn't and proceeded to again say the same for the 3rd so now i'm sticking to my promise bcs legendborn is far too peak to not appreciate it fully and tracy deonn takes her TIMEEE publishing for a reason

i def liked the first part of this (the best friend) in this more than i remember liking the first book as a whole so that's a positive sign! reading this as i found all the books from a community library a while ago:)

no no no no no oh god no no no no no no

I could cry and cry and cry. I won’t. But. Devastating. Just when you think happiness is in sight - it escapes you. Heartbreaking book man

john steinbeck u r sick in the head
“No. If you are well and if you are free, I would like to have my little bookshop at last. I would like to die there” … “Funny. I found myself wishing you were a slave so I could refuse you.”.. “we’re controlled, we Chinese.” he said “We show no emotion.. I want to scatter devil papers,” Lee said. “I want to put a little roast pig on the grave of my father.”

genuinely what am I reading

“They smoke their two pipes of opium in the afternoon and it rests and sharpens them, and they sit through the night and their minds are
wonderful. I guess no other people have been able to use opium well.” … “I went along with them, marvelling at the beauty of their proud clean brains. I began to love my race, and for the first time I wanted to be Chinese.

incredibly funny and god I rlly do love and hold near to me books about odd friendships above all else

laughing v hard “for the three months before the wedding, I got to witness how shitty it was for a man and a woman in Korean society to unite as one family, which made me cease resenting the fact I couldn’t even dream of marriage.”