★ 2024 ★
*=reread
| date | title | thoughts |
|---|---|---|
| 05/01 | Gone Girl | this book makes me want to read mysteries again. it's soooo compelling, just believable enough to give you a sense/fear of the stakes. i'm not gonna spoil anymore, just go read it. |
| 16/01 | Mo Dao Zu Shi: Volume 2 | it's been slow getting into this series because a billion people always have it on hold before me at the library, but i'm really enjoying it. i think a basic component of what makes anathema-v anathema-v is a love of cool guys with swords (especially if they have unresolved romantic tension lmao). uhh yeah xianxia fun, mo xiang tong xiu good writer <3. |
| 02/02 | The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity | i don't really know much about anthropology, but this book was sooooo good. graeber and wengrow have a really easily understandable writing style that still manages to get so much information across. i like their idea that the purpose of history/archeology/anthropology is to better understand the present. also all the indigenous america societies/states that they talk about are really interesting. |
| 05/02 | The Open Veins of Latin America | god we're so fucked. death to the west for real. |
| 08/02 | Mo Dao Zu Shi: Volume 3 | yayyy more xian xia. are we not gonna talk about the blindfolded wei wuxian scene. like is he never gonna bring that up again. guess i'm gonna have to read the next book haha |
| 19/02 | Mo Dao Zu Shi: Volume 4 | lan wangji you need to learn how to be more expressive. wei wuxian is sooooo fucked up over what he did, and you, having the communication skills of a log, are not helping. still love and cherish you though <3 |
| 02/03 | Mo Dao Zu Shi: Volume 5 | a well written conclusion to the series. the extras needed more of teen wangji being cringe and relatable, and less of the incense burner chapter. |
| 05/03 | The Goldfinch* | i was highkey obsessed with this book in the eighth grade (read it twice over the course of many recesses spent in the girls' bathroom), and i felt like microdosing on the feeling of being in middle school (aka being miserable and having no friends). anyways, it's still a good fucking book. |
| 10/03 | Ren Zha Fanpai Zijiu Xitong: Volume 1 | what's up everyone, it's your girl ana back at it again, "it" being reading xianxia danmei novels of questionable literary merit. they're fun though + cringe is dead. |
| 10/03 | Amulet: Books 1-8* | i looooved amulet in the 3rd-5th grades, and the last book came out so i decided to reread the rest of the series. it was pretty good; i can understand why child me liked it. trellis is still very gender. i really think that kibuishi could have cut down on some of the characters at the end. like we did not need those alien medics in book 8, they did jack dick besides look weird and crack unfunny jokes. *sigh*. also that entire space plotline could have been cut down a lot; it made this really weird difference between the space resistance program tech and the rest-of-alledia tech. whatever i guess. |
| 10/03 | Amulet: Book 9 | i'm gonna be real, this was a bad ending. there's so many plotlines and characters introduced that mean absolutely nothing to readers because they have less than 250 pages to do anything. and emily doesn't even resolve anything either, like even after her final confrontation with [spoiler], [spoiler] is later shown to still be doing stuff?? like actively continuing to be malicious??? and god trying to tie everything back to silas was a disaster, considering that no motivation is explained for silas wanting to carry out all these actions. and i might just be dumb but the shadows didn't really get resolved either. *SIGH* whatever it totally, definitely doesn't matter that my childhood fave kinda sucked in the end. i won't be salty about it (i will). |
| 12/03 | Dracula | two saturdays ago, i went to the library in chinatown to look for a book (rzfzx), and it straight up wasn't there, so i checked this out to not seem suspicious or whatever. i understand why it's a classic. |
| 14/03 | Ren Zha Fanpai Zijiu Xitong: Volume 2 | more xianxia/danmei. definitely less of a slow burn than mdzs. idk but luo binghe is looking kinda scummy rn. |
| 20/03 | The Secret History | i've wanted to read more of tartt's work since i first read the goldfinch, and there was finally a copy not checked out at the library! it was a pretty messed up book, but messed up in just the right way. i liked it a lot. haunting |
| 22/03 | Ren Zha Fanpai Zijiu Xitong: Volume 3 | goddamn a lot of stuff happened in this one. luo binghe's such a weirdo i love him. |
| 27/03 | Annihilation | sooo fucking good...i kinda wanna study biology now ngl. |
| 04/04 | Ren Zha Fanpai Zijiu Xitong: Volume 4 | the series as a whole was kinda meh. i did think the airplane extras were fun |
| 11/04 | Gideon the Ninth | okay gang, i'm off my danmei addiction and on to my... tragic yuri funtime!!! literally so good; i love me a good mystery. |
| 17/04 | Fight Club | i saw the movie a few weeks ago, so i had to read the book too. incredibly fucking good. palahniuk does good stuff with prose + punctuation. also the whole reason i even ended up looking in to fight club was b/c i saw this fanart of it on tumblr (in like 2022/23?), and i've been going crazy over finding it for like 30 mins lmao. i am joe's blue light-induced eyestrain. |
| 19/04 | Doorways in the Sand | good scifi adventure. i liked the weird structure + style that zelanzy used. also someone on wikipedia in 2011 was incredibly passionate about it... like insanely so; the article is unnecessarily huge. |
| 03/05 | Harrow the Ninth | soooooo plot twisty, you could not imagine. very solid overall. |
| 03/05 | The Summer Hikaru Died: Volume 3 | i am never not enjoying a new hgsn volume. so good for real... good enough that i read it in the span of one train ride haha. |
| 08/05 | Ways of the World with Sources | apwh textbook. taught me more than my teacher did :/ |
| 13/05 | Twelfth Night, or What You Will | we took forever (like a month) to read this in english. still good though. poor antonio :'( |
| 13/05 | The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark | i saw r&g with my dad in april and was quite confused because i didn't really know the plot of hamlet. so i decided to go and read r&g, but first hamlet to actually have some frame of reference. horatio was pretty cool. it was also wayyy funnier than i had expected (hamlet and ophelia making dirty jokes &c). |
| 17/05 | Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead | see above entry for context. bizarre and funny and sad and just generally good. i can always enjoy some confused guys trying to make it through. |
| 24/05 | Nona the Ninth | that was wild i didn't understand much lmao. john gaius is a horrible little man; he's fascinating... |
| 28/05 | The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys | read in the span of a bus ride because traffic is just that bad. it was fine i guess. writing was kinda mid and rushed. |
| 05/06 | One Punch Man, Volume 1 | checked out some manga from the library to kill time. this one was decently funny, which i expected after watching mp100 |
| 05/06 | Again!!, Volume 1 | also pretty fun. good character drama. |
| 05/06 | Blue Period, Volume 1 | i read some of this on mangareader before, but it's much nicer with a physical copy. very pretty. |
| 08/06 | Internet Love! | i generally don't put whatever trashy yaoi/yuri shit i read on mangafire out of self consciousness, but this one weirdly resonated with me, and i'd like to remember it. uno is so me for real it's honestly insaaaaane. |
| 10/06 | RASL | ooooo i love jeff smith. also the title acronym is so good. |
| 10/06 | Blue Period, Volume 2 | oh yuka my beloved |
| 12/06 | Blue Period, Volume 3 | yotasuke!!! we would get along so well i feel. |
| 14/06 | In Utero | short and spooky and sweet. maybe i should go to abandoned malls to make weird friends some time. |
| 15/06 | Blue Period, Volume 4 | yayy my local library branch has blue period, not just the main branch!! |
| 16/06 | Blue Period, Volume 5 | yuka-chan... :'( |
| 16/06 | Naruto 3-in-1 Volume 1 | i tried watching naruto when i was like 11 or 12, but the filler was too much so i stopped. but now i'm trying it again (but reading so i don't get all the filler). it's fun! oh and getting this from the library took forever, despite the fact that they had a bunch of copies available. and the bus there and back was a nightmare because of all the reroutes. |
| 17/06 | Naruto 3-in-1 Volume 2 | read on the plane. haku... :( |
| 19/06 | Naruto 3-in-1 Volume 3 | i loved all the sakura slays in this one. she deserves the world. and ino too i adore her. |
| 19//06 | Freshman Year | i've been doing a ton of college planning, despite the fact that i'm nowhere close to going to uni yet lmao. nice to see that i can still have a good uni life without getting into a super prestegious school. |
| 20/06 | Be More Chill | so i hung out a lot at the library in my grandparents' town because it was hot af and there was no ac at their home. anyways i went to the ya section for a trashy read and saw this next to the book that devestated me at age 12 (It's Kind of a Funny Story). i thought it would be bad because a lot of the early/mid 2010's tumblr musical faves are bad, but it was actually decent. yay |
| 24/06 | Naruto Volumes 10-18 | discovered that the library there also has a bunch of naruto (but not the 3-in-1s), so i read a lot of naruto. the part where neji starts leaking state secrets to the entire crowd watching the chunin exams was insane. and also everything about gaara. oh and i love tsunade and shizune. |
| 24/06 | Cat's Cradle | this one was really hard to get into, but i liked it after ~100 pages. it also helped that i had nothing else to do when i read it in the airport. |
| 26/06 | Naruto 3-in-1 Volume 7 | sasuke no!!! good dramatic development, but i have some criticisms:
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| 29/06 | Bratsk Station and Other New Poems | so beautiful and also so marxist. my faves were nushka, and so piaf left us..., and his poems about the sea. |
| 30/06 | Naruto 3-in-1 Volume 8 | oooo the fights in here were so good. my personal fave was shikamaru and tayuya. whoever previously borrowed the copy i got from the library had been ripping out some of the chapter title pages, which was really so fun and lovely of them (it's fine i just went on mangafire. but still man...). |
| 03/07 | Naruto 3-in-1 Volume 9 | the big confrontation was really good. the obito thing needed to be more fleshed out to make a decent emotional impact like kishimoto seemed to want. also discovered that screamo makes a really good soundtrack for this series. |
| 09/07 | Solaris | this was a lot different from how i remember tarkovsky's film. mostly a lot easier to follow. there was some absolutely beautiful prose, but i also got bored as hell during that chapter where kris drones on and on about the environmental processes on solaris. but overall very good; i love me an ambiguious ending. |
| 13/07 | The Tatami Galaxy | i love love love the anime adaptation of this book, so i was super psyched to see that my library had a translation. morimi has such an iconic writing voice... he's so good at being funny and formal and genuine to his characters. the ending was so sweet ahhh!! |
| 14/07 | Naruto 3-in-1 Volume 10 | yayy sakura finally has a major role in the plot again. |
| 14/07 | Naruto 3-in-1 Volume 11 | gaara and naruto are literally so great together for an emotional plotline. and also i like sai a lot, despite, y'know... |
| 16/07 | Naruto 3-in-1 Volume 12 | ahhh sasuke my boy!! ahh sai my boy!!! the first two volumes in this set were very fun, the last one not so much. kishimoto needs to have a proper buildup in character info to make us care about deaths. that does not mean dump a bunch of flashbacks we never saw previously as they are on their deathbed. spread out doomed character apperances for a good chuck of time beforehand. who am i kidding this is shonen manga; 10 year old boys won't understand the nuances of fine storycraft. |
| 22/07 | Blue Period Volume 6 | the library branch that i usually get my holds from, which isn't close to my home but is close to my commute route, is undergoing construction, so i can't get copies of naruto etc brought there from far away branches that i can't/don't wanna go to. so instead i've been walking the mile to my "local" branch, where they don't have naruto but they do have blue period! this volume was really tense, but great. yayyy yatora!! |
| 23/07 | Blue Period Volume 7 | i'm a big fan of yatora's art school cohort. just hoping that he doesn't get too depressed in school. |
| 24/07 | Blue Period Volume 8 | okayy art students, that's a crazy way to spend summer vacation. also the bonus was hilarious. |