Read All I Can

“It was books that made me feel that perhaps I was not completely alone. They could be honest with me, and I with them.” -  Cassandra Clare, Clockwork Prince

The Infernal Devices: outstandingly better. One of the best love triangles I’ve read in a series. All characters are prominently featured throughout the books, they all care about each other, and the ending gave an unexpected but incredibly gratifying conclusion. They all had individual arcs, as well as relationship development and others should take note. 

The Mortal Instruments: disgustingly worse. I just … No. Just, no.

Caster Chronicles: kinda better. While I’m a fan of the main couple, Ethan and Lena, both of them get random love interests in book two and they are great characters but so random??? Like they make sense to the story but not the love triangle angle they go for, when they were never valid options in the first place. Illogical love triangle, but intriguing characters.

A Court of Thorns and Roses: significantly better. Well, both male leads start out as viable options and the story opens up conversation about abusive relationships, which is very satisfying. Also, I usually see an obvious choice in love triangles and there wasn’t, in book one. 

The Song of the Lioness: far superior. This love shape takes course over three books and like 10 years? Very well handled, the three main points of whatever the shape is are well fleshed out characters, not defined by their relationships to others. Also, the endgame couple is way super cute and there’s platonic love between the non endgame guy and Alanna. Well handled and realistic.

Harry Potter: THERE IS NO LOVE TRIANGLE IN THIS SERIES

this has been a psa. Thank you.

The Hunger Games: a little worse. Like, look Peeta and Gale are such interesting character on their own, but Katniss doesn’t really have much romantic attraction to them, esp with Gale and the way the fandom obsessed over it and the marketing for it made it even worse than the actual portrayal of it. 

Taking Chances: probably one of the worst ever. This book is so effing ridiculous and a HUGE part of that. Like, Harper, the main character is with one guy and sleeps with another because she needed to lose her virginity to the “right” person???? And she loves them both equally with all of her heart even though she met them like less than a year ago???? And then she gets pregnant and it just gets so freaking weird, I just needed to rant about this terrible love triangle. Oh and one is this stereotypical bad boy and the other is a cardboard cut up. 

House of Night: I just can’t. Look, this is like a love hexagon, where the main character has a human ex bf, a vampire bf, an affair with a teacher, a god, and another bad vampire turned good. I just… Speechless. And it’s like over the course of a year or something ridiculous. Not to mention So. Much. Slut shaming. 

Vampire Academy: interesting. I may have my quibbles with the age difference between the main couple and while there are technically two romantic leads in the series, Rose is never truly in love with Adrian. HOWEVER, her loyalty and devotion to her bff Lissa DOES interfere more with her relationship with Dmitri, therefore putting her platonic love vs her romantic love in competition. There are a few points where she has to choose one over the other and I think there was a good ending to how they resolved the conflict.

*However, in many ways Twilight is not a love triangle as Bella never expresses romantic feelings towards Jacob, so he just pines for her for the most part. Most love triangles involve the main character having Feelings ™ for two characters and has to choose one over the other.

Vampires • Werewolves • Aliens • Faeries • Portal Fantasies • Dystopias • Angels/Demons •  Animal Companions  • Mermaids

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The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin

This is the way the world ends. Again. Three terrible things happen in a single day. Essun, a woman living an ordinary life in a small town, comes home to find that her husband has brutally murdered their son and kidnapped their daughter. Meanwhile, mighty Sanze — the world-spanning empire whose innovations have been civilization’s bedrock for a thousand years — collapses as most of its citizens are murdered to serve a madman’s vengeance. And worst of all, across the heart of the vast continent known as the Stillness, a great red rift has been torn into the heart of the earth, spewing ash enough to darken the sky for years. Or centuries. Now Essun must pursue the wreckage of her family through a deadly, dying land. Without sunlight, clean water, or arable land, and with limited stockpiles of supplies, there will be war all across the Stillness: a battle royale of nations not for power or territory, but simply for the basic resources necessary to get through the long dark night. Essun does not care if the world falls apart around her. She’ll break it herself, if she must, to save her daughter.

Publication Date: August 4th, 2015

Date Started: May 15th, 2018

Date Finished: June 7th, 2018

Recommended By: Tessa Gratton, and my followers for Recommendation Day!

Acquired: Purchased in paperback

Content Warnings: Racism/slavery allegory, body horror, violence, child abuse

Rating: 5/5 Stars

Extended Review: Coming Soon

The Good: The craft of this book was stunning from cover to cover. The prose, both traditional and somewhat experimental, were out of this world good. Everything is constructed so exquisitely that the reader is fully along for the ride. I’m generally very good at guessing things, but I was unable to guess how the different subplots connected until right before they did. And I’ll tell you, it’s like nothing I’ve seen before. The allegory for slavery was so profound and heartbreaking, and when I reached that part of the story I knew that I was in for an incredible journey. The characters were remarkable, the world was compelling, and the magic system was unlike anything I’ve encountered before. It’s really easy to see why this one was a Hugo Award winner.

The Bad: I found it difficult to get started on this one. It was a lot to chew on right off the bat. I initially tried listening to the audiobook, but it became quickly apparent that there was no way I’d be able to follow, so I got a hard copy. As I said above, the prose is somewhat experimental and uses techniques that aren’t common (such as the use of the second person perspective), and this might throw some readers off and make it harder for them to read. The worldbuilding is dense, and while I consider this a plus, it might just be a bit overwhelming for some. Do mind the content warnings, because some passages were very intense.

Representation: This book was recommended to me at the Writing Cross-Culturally Retreat as an example of excellent representation in a fantasy setting, and it absolutely lived up to that claim. Most of the people in the world are people of color, except for those that live in the Antarctic or Arctic regions. These characters appear now and then but are not the focus. There is a trans supporting character who is never once misgendered, and there’s also a polyamorous relationship between a straight woman, a gay man, and a bisexual man. The only thing that I didn’t see represented in large measure was a disabled character, but there also wasn’t any blatant ableism that I could detect. Honestly, it was just a rich, well-rounded world that had fantastic representation.

Me:...

Audrey Rose Wadsworth: "I was determined to be both pretty and fierce, as Mother had said I could be. Just because I was interested in a man’s job didn’t mean I had to give up being girly. Who defined those roles anyhow?"

Claire Beauchamp: "One dictum I had learned on the battlefields of France in a far distant war: You cannot save the world, but you might save the man in front of you, if you work fast enough."

Juliette Ferrars: "Water that never moves." I say to him. "Its fine for a little while. You can drink from it and it'll sustain you. But if it sits too long it goes bad. It grows stale. It becomes toxic." I shake my head. "I need waves. I need waterfalls. I want rushing currents."

Inej Ghafa: "We meet fear. We greet the unexpected visitor and listen to what he has to tell us. When fear arrives, something is about to happen."

Feyre Archeron: "I was not a pet, not a doll, not an animal. I was a survivor, and I was strong. I would not be weak, or helpless again I would not, could not be broken. Tamed."

Aelin Galathynius: "She was Aelin Ashryver Galathynius—­and she would not be afraid."

Katy Swartz: "Words were the most powerful tool. Simple and so often underestimated. They could heal. They could destroy. And I needed to use my words now."

Jude: "What could I become if I stopped worrying about death, about pain, about anything? If I stopped trying to belong? Instead of being afraid, I could become something to fear."

Vasilisa: "All my life, I have been told ‘go’ and ‘come.’ I am told how I will live, and I am told how I must die. I must be a man’s servant and a mare for his pleasure, or I must hide myself behind walls and surrender my flesh to a cold, silent god. I would walk into the jaws of hell itself, if it were a path of my own choosing. I would rather die tomorrow in the forest than live a hundred years of the life appointed me."

Book recommendation please! Anything to ease the pain in my soul!

@akafanatic​ said:

What’s your 2017 book list??? Any recs for sci-fi? I’m trying to branch out from reading just YA, fantasy and drama.

Anonymous said:

Ooohhhhhhh, speaking of books, please make a book recommendation 😍 any genre is fine

Absolutely, with pleasure! Below are my favorites among what I’ve read in 2017, by genre:

FICTION: Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman. It is an amazingly well-written novel which tackles a complex, sad, traumatic issue, not to make light of it, but to make it warm and kind and funny in a gentle way. This year I also read Celeste Ng’s highly popular Little Fires Everywhere, which was another good read, but didn’t impress me as much as Everything I Never Told You, which I would highly recommend if you guys haven’t read already. Celeste Ng has a wonderful way of building characters less by exposing their thoughts but by putting them in harrowing yet completely believable situations which bring out their best (and worst) traits.

HISTORICAL FICTION: A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles. If I have to choose my most favorite fiction book of 2017, this would be it. Amor Towles writes historical fiction with a sophistication and sensitivity which make you wonder if he has a time machine. This novel of his is an exquisite narrative which has an almost theatrical quality as scenes after scenes unfold in vivid and absorbing details on what, at first, appeared to be a highly limited setting: the hotel which the main character, Count Alexander Rostov, was confined to, as his punishment for the crime of being an aristocrat in Bolshevik Russia. The story of this gentleman happened entirely inside this hotel, but the impact he had on the lives of people who knew him was unrestricted by any physical barrier. He will have an impact on your life too if you listen to his story, I promise.

FANTASY: The Broken Earth trilogy by N.K. Jemisin. If you read reviews of this series, the key word would be “extraordinary”, and I can’t find any other adjective which is at the same time most fitting and yet completely inadequate to describe Jemisin’s work. I am an avid reader of fantasy, to the point I once thought there’s really not much else any fantasy author can do with the genre which could surprise me. Boy, was I proven wrong when I picked up The Fifth Season. 

SCIENCE FICTION: I have rather neglected this genre in 2017, but among the very few sci-fi books I had on my shelf this year, one was easily one of the best sci-fi I’ve read, ever: Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang. It’s a collection of short stories, each successive one guaranteed to blow your mind apart further that the last. What makes Ted Chiang’s writing so powerful is his exceptional imagination, and equally important, his uncanny ability to lay out his imagination in a logical, rational, and human way which both keeps you engaged and demand you to expand your mind to embrace the unprecedented. The titular story was used as basis for the movie Arrival, of course. At the risk of echoing every other bibliophile out there, I do have to insist that if you like the movie, you are most obliged to read the book.

MYSTERY & THRILLER: The Likeness by Tana French, or anything in her Dublin Murder Squad series, really. These books artfully combine the thriller side with the human side in the story and leave the readers with not just the satisfaction of a suspense well-resolved but also questions about what happened next to the characters. What did they do after the event, how could their life survived the incident, where did they go from there? Tana French is amazingly good at making her readers care.

NON-FICTION: Hit Makers: The Science of Popularity in an Age of Distraction by Derek Thompson, in which “popularity” is finely dissected and scrutinized, myths are debunked, true geniuses credited, shadow influence unearthed, and everything in between. What I enjoy most about this book is, after examining an abundance of evidence, exploring a plethora of angles, and picking the brains of a great many respectable experts, the author, unapologetically, left us with more questions than he answered, brought our attention to more mysteries than he set out to solve, and made us wonder and wonder and hunger for more understanding. It is for me the hallmark of a great science book. 

As a bonus, Hit Makers also led me to reflect on the topic of popularity in the figure skating world. What makes a skater, a program, more or less popular? Why is it that popularity is never equal to being universally well-beloved? Why is it that a skater on the top of their game always seems to attract as many ardent lovers as vicious haters? I’m not saying that this book will help answer all of your questions, but it will provide you the tools to think.

HONORABLE MENTIONS:

The Rook by Daniel O’Malley. The Bourne Identity meets urban fantasy. A heroine that is everything I ever want to be if I were one day to be stuck in a fantasy world. She’s smart and deadly but entirely average in every other aspect. She’s bored most of the times with all the random curve balls life throws at her and she’s just trying her best to survive, why can’t people just leave her alone?

When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi. I promise it is not a sad book. It makes you think not about death but about what it means to be alive, what your life should be, and could be, if you give it a chance.

Magical Thinking by Augusten Burroughs. I plucked this from the bargain shelf at a local bookstore, with the author’s autograph and all, for 3 bucks. Best 3 bucks ever spent. Augusten Burroughs is witty, biting, sarcastic, and he obviously doesn’t care if you like him or not. The stories he told are bizarre, yet strangely familiar, sometimes uncomfortably so. 

“But I’m not really interested anymore in why Emotion didn’t sell a million copies, because I don’t care about how an album sells as much as I care about how an album lives. And if that sounds overwrought or too emotional then by all means keep your numbers, and I’ll keep my small escapes into a place a slight touch better than the actual place I’m in. Emotion is an album that still, even more than a year after its release, makes you feel good. 

….It might not be this one, but there is certainly a small and brief world in which Carly Rae Jepsen is the biggest pop star there is. And everyone there loves someone they can’t have, or has someone they can’t love. And everyone is all right nonetheless, because everything is fleeting. You can’t feel everything at once, until you can. And I can’t live in that world but for a few hours here and there, before I drive into another darkness with no one else in the car to get stuck in traffic with. Before I go back to weighing whether it is better to be liked or loved, but never weighing what it might be like to be both. And in Carly Rae Jepsen’s fleeting, brilliant world, it feels like there is nothing outside that might try to steal what joy you’ve managed to accumulate, in spite of the odds."