Raven

Katabasis by Kuang, R.F. 

Piranesi by Clarke, Susanna

Bat Eater and Other Names for Cora Zeng by Baker, Kylie Lee 

House of Leaves by Danielewski, Mark Z. 

Phantasma (Wicked Games, #1) by Smith, Kaylie 

The Bread We Eat in Dreams by Valente, Catherynne M. 

The Republic by Plato

Meditations by Marcus Aurelius

Thus Spoke Zarathustra by Nietzsche, Friedrich

The Ethics of Ambiguity by Beauvoir, Simone de

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George Orwell Collection: Politics & The English Language, Shooting an Elephant, A Hanging - George Orwell's Political Insights: Exploring Politics & The ... Shooting an Elephant, and A Hanging by Orwell, George

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Against Interpretation and Other Essays by Sontag, Susan

A Poetry Handbook by Oliver, Mary

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Stevenson, Robert Louis

What Moves the Dead (Sworn Soldier, #1) by Kingfisher, T.

Hunger Artist by Kafka, Franz

The Phantom of the Opera by Leroux, Gaston

The Iliad by Homer

A Room of One's Own by Woolf, Virginia

Six of Crows (Six of Crows, #1) by Bardugo, Leigh 

The Veldt by Bradbury, Ray

What You Are Looking for is in the Library by Aoyama, Michiko

Beowulf by Unknown

Letters to a Young Poet by Rilke, Rainer Maria

Chasing the Wild (Crimson Ridge, #1) by Rose, Elliott *

Mask of the Deer Woman by Dove, Laurie L. *

The Naturals (The Naturals, #1) by Barnes, Jennifer Lynn *

Never Whistle at Night: An Indigenous Dark Fiction Anthology by Hawk, Shane *

Funeral Songs for Dying Girls by Dimaline, Cherie

Calling for a Blanket Dance by Hokeah, Oscar *

A Steady Brightness of Being: Truths, Wisdom, and Love from Celebrated Indigenous Voices by Sinclair, Sara

Making Love with the Land: Essays by Whitehead, Joshua

Our Wives Under the Sea by Armfield, Julia

The Raven Scholar (Eternal Path Trilogy, #1) by Hodgson, Antonia *

Jade City (The Green Bone Saga, #1) by Lee, Fonda *

Blood Over Bright Haven by Wang, M.L. *

Seven Days in June by Williams, Tia *

The Secret History by Tartt, Donna

Powerless (The Powerless Trilogy, #1) by Roberts, Lauren *

Circe by Miller, Madeline *

The Crane Husband by Barnhill, Kelly *

"That seems the likely ending to this love story: me dropping everything and doing anything, devoted as a dog, as he takes and takes and takes." (My Dark Vanessa, Kate Elizabeth Russell)

A novel that understands that admitting abuse is not always healing, sometimes it is the most destabilizing thing a survivor can do. - Raven's thoughts

“I just really need it to be a love story. You know? I really, really need it to be that.” “I know,” she says. “Because if it isn’t a love story, then what is it?”

Goodreads Summary:

Exploring the psychological dynamics of the relationship between a precocious yet naïve teenage girl and her magnetic and manipulative teacher, a brilliant, all-consuming read that marks the explosive debut of an extraordinary new writer.

2000. Bright, ambitious, and yearning for adulthood, fifteen-year-old Vanessa Wye becomes entangled in an affair with Jacob Strane, her magnetic and guileful forty-two-year-old English teacher.

2017. Amid the rising wave of allegations against powerful men, a reckoning is coming due. Strane has been accused of sexual abuse by a former student, who reaches out to Vanessa, and now Vanessa suddenly finds herself facing an impossible remain silent, firm in the belief that her teenage self willingly engaged in this relationship, or redefine herself and the events of her past. But how can Vanessa reject her first love, the man who fundamentally transformed her and has been a persistent presence in her life? Is it possible that the man she loved as a teenager—and who professed to worship only her—may be far different from what she has always believed?

Alternating between Vanessa’s present and her past, My Dark Vanessa juxtaposes memory and trauma with the breathless excitement of a teenage girl discovering the power her own body can wield. Thought-provoking and impossible to put down, this is a masterful portrayal of troubled adolescence and its repercussions that raises vital questions about agency, consent, complicity, and victimhood. Written with the haunting intimacy of The Girls and the creeping intensity of Room, My Dark Vanessa is an era-defining novel that brilliantly captures and reflects the shifting cultural mores transforming our relationships and society itself.

Babel frustrated me. It lectured me, it condescended to me, it made me laugh at the wrong places and then it destroyed me in the end. Flawed? Absolutely. But unforgettable.

When I first started, I was hooked. The premise, the magic system, the atmosphere it was so interesting! But by around the 28% mark, it started feeling exhausting, like academic fanfiction. Kuang often talks down to the reader, overexplaining as if we couldn’t connect the dots ourselves.

The early racist rhetoric was jarring, almost to the point of trauma porn. I couldn’t imagine creating a fantasy world where my people were so disrespected. I understand needing to set the tone and the time period but it felt a little unnecessary at times.

And Letty? From the beginning, she felt like the author’s punching bag. We’re told to hate her, rather than shown why. As the only white woman in the cohort, she could have been written with so much more presence (Like she was a rare women in a male dominated field!) but she wasn’t.

By the middle, my feelings were so mixed up. There’s a line about Anthony’s death being “performatively righteous” that annoyed me because I didn’t need it spelled out. Robin’s supposed internal battle over his “betrayal” of Babel felt overdramatic. (Since he had already betrayed it before! Been betraying it actually.) And when Letty burst into tears when they returned from their voyage I think I was supposed to be angry at her? Instead, I found it comical and giggled. Like the white woman tears were a little over done there, but again I suppose I get it considering the time period.

And then there was the footnote! A single footnote about Native peoples, where our existence in the book begins and ends. As an Indigenous reader, that pissed me off. Thanks for the mention, I guess but if you’re going to invoke us, you could have given us an actual presence. Or like not mentioned it at all because honestly it felt insulting our trauma was a brief footnote used to further your colonization is bad statement.

Still, I won’t deny the power of some passages. Griffin’s insistence that decolonization is a violent process was one of my favorite moments. And Robin’s confession that he ignored suffering until it touched him directly felt damning, because it was so human. That choice to look away, to embrace comfort instead of horror, rang painfully true because like even myself I've chosen to look away from the news and all the people suffering. It's really makes you think about yourself and how you view the world when something isn't directly affecting yourself.

And then the ending hit like a landslide. Somehow, that tragedy reframed everything. I don't want to go further into that because I don't want to spoil the book.

So here I am, giving Babel five stars. Not because it was flawless... it wasn’t. It lectured, it condescended, it sidelined voices. But it made me feel.

So... This was a really short fun read.

It's about a women who is confined to a room by her doctor husband whose treating her, so like right off the bat you know that her husband is kind of a not-so-great husband because there is a huge ethics problem in her husband diagnosing her as hysterical nervous disorder and depression.

"If a physician of high standing, and one's own husband, assures friends and relatives that there is really nothing the matter with one but temporary nervous depression—a slight hysterical tendency—what is one to do?"

It was published in 1892, mind you, so women obviously experienced a vastly different reality with women's rights than we do today. Anyway so her husband basically prescribes her a "rest cure" so she's confined to her bedroom, not to go outside. Kind of the exact opposite someone with depression and anxiety needs, but you know the time period.

So that's where the horror begins.

At first, the narrator is convinced her situation is temporary, her confinement, her treatment, the room. But trapped in that space, with only the ugly yellow wallpaper to stare at, her mind starts to unravel. She keeps a secret journal, and slowly the wallpaper starts taking over her thoughts. She’s tracing patterns, seeing movement, convinced there’s something behind it.

There’s a terrible logic to it, the less she’s allowed to live her life, the more her life shrinks into the wallpaper.

She starts seeing a woman trapped inside it. And in the most chilling way, she’s not wrong. The woman behind the paper is herself. The wallpaper becomes the only place she can be free.

In the end **spoiler her husband faints when he finally sees what she’s become. And she crawls over him, triumphant and broken. She escaped... Or has she left herself behind, caught forever in those patterns?

It’s not exactly a ghost story. It’s not just a feminist story. It’s a horror story. It makes you feel the despair, the claustrophobia, the slow, terrible descent into madness and maybe even complicit in it, because by the end, you’re staring at the wallpaper too. It's such a short, but captivating, read.

Like look at how messed up and sad a couple of her thought are:

“I am glad my case is not serious! But these nervous troubles are dreadfully depressing. John does not know how much I really suffer. He knows there is no reason to suffer, and that satisfies him.”