this reminded me why i love them! it's a fun, fluffy, summery romance with lots of character development and quirky dmy first love: ya contemporaries.
this reminded me why i love them! it's a fun, fluffy, summery romance with lots of character development and quirky dialogue.Â
at the beginning, i wasn't sure i would like this book. it was an immediate lurch into a high-energy, inconsistency-riddled world of carnival-like birthday parties for rich and famous teenage influencers and strict families of prodigy children run like circuses by doctors with very hyphenated last names.
but then we went off to camp and everything chilled out.Â
i love seasonally immersive books, whether they be autumnal halloween-y stories or cozy christmassy tales or summery s'mores-y fluffballs like this one.
the natural conclusion of seeking out weird books is to end up reading about a girl who falls in love with a printer.
honestly, capitalism is so brutalthe natural conclusion of seeking out weird books is to end up reading about a girl who falls in love with a printer.
honestly, capitalism is so brutal and weird, it's like...who can blame her.
this is a book in 4 parts. 3 out of 4 of those are from the perspective of a very underpaid girl with a dark secret and a very thankless job. 1 is from the perspective of a printer.
anyone who has ever had to try to print something, in their home or at work or in a ups store for 18 cents a sheet, knows that attempting to make a document take physical form is likely a circle of hell. so of all the office products to fall in love with (gel pens? post-it notes? an ergonomic stapler?) i can't say i agree with the choice.
nor can i agree with the choice to tell even part of this story as a printer, which necessitates without exaggeration dozens of pages of quasi-explanation for how a hunk of plastic is god-like or at least omniscient.
but i really did like a lot about our depressing, scared protagonist's navigation through stupid dumb modern life.
bottom line: the anti-capitalist love letter to outdated office technology we didn't know we needed. (we probably don't.)
the surefire way to get me to read a book is to make it about sisters.
even better if the sisters in question are hot violent scary snake-women.
i had lthe surefire way to get me to read a book is to make it about sisters.
even better if the sisters in question are hot violent scary snake-women.
i had limited familiarity with the folk tale that inspired this retelling, but that didn't stop me from having a damn good time.
this book is over-the-top crazy, featuring hyperbolically beautiful and rich and charming women, and everything it does is wild. still, somehow, the core of it feels almost realistic: the way that your sister is the person you love the most who also deeply infuriates you, even if the infuriating thing is murder instead of stealing your clothes. complicated love stories. friendships and crushes. the singaporean nanny state.
it's an almost goofy book, and yet it holds itself back when it has to.Â
in other words, it's really fun.Â
bottom line: even if you're an immortal mythical creature your family gets on your nerves.
The hard part about old Hollywood is that it's so interesting in reality that it's hard to improve it in fiction.
Even with magic and monsters.
This doThe hard part about old Hollywood is that it's so interesting in reality that it's hard to improve it in fiction.
Even with magic and monsters.
This does a pretty damn good job, though.
The hard part about Nghi Vo books is that each one should be one of a kind because they are insane-sounding (either mythical made-up fantasy stories that make you cry and are like 13 pages long or old timey retelling type deals that are also sapphic and magic), but they exist in the same universe.
And in this case, if we're talking historical fiction meets queer retelling meets asian american race exploration meets magical realism, The Chosen and The Beautiful is better.
Where that one became more and more compelling, almost eerily, as it went on, and I fell under the enchantment of the characters, with this one I felt a bit of an enduring confusion that never let up, no matter how closely I read or long I waited.
And that was a bummer.
But mysteriousness is not too much of a bad thing, and if that's the trade for magic and Hollywood and girls and monsters, I will take it!
Bottom line: Nghi Vo forever.
------------ currently-reading updates
nghi vo is the real siren queen (could convince me to read anything)
The hard part about old Hollywood is that it's so interesting in reality that it's hard to improve it in fiction.
Even with magic and monsters.
This does a pretty damn good job, though.
The hard part about Nghi Vo books is that each one should be one of a kind because they are insane-sounding (either mythical made-up fantasy stories that make you cry and are like 13 pages long or old timey retelling type deals that are also sapphic and magic), but they exist in the same universe.
And in this case, if we're talking historical fiction meets queer retelling meets asian american race exploration meets magical realism, The Chosen and The Beautiful is better.
Where that one became more and more compelling, almost eerily, as it went on, and I fell under the enchantment of the characters, with this one I felt a bit of an enduring confusion that never let up, no matter how closely I read or long I waited.
And that was a bummer.
But mysteriousness is not too much of a bad thing, and if that's the trade for magic and Hollywood and girls and monsters, I will take it!
Bottom line: Nghi Vo forever.
------------ currently-reading updates
nghi vo is the real siren queen (could convince me to read anything)
this is an extremely funny, extremely interesting book. all you have to do to enjoy it is agree to ththis is the type of vibe i bring to the function.
this is an extremely funny, extremely interesting book. all you have to do to enjoy it is agree to the following terms: - youngmi mayer was the most brilliant first grader with the most potential in global history - every person you encounter in life looks "exactly" like a specific public figure - a lot of sweeping declarations and devastating tragedies will be disclosed without an.ounce of decorum.
this sort of former gifted kid rhetoric is fine by me, and i admire a dark sense of humor, so outside of some kinda wack coverage of breastfeeding i had a great time reading this.
the format rocked, i learned a bunch of things, i laughed, i cried (or the reading equivalent of both, so closer to puffing air out of my nose).
i'd never heard of the author before reading this (that's how diehard a memoir fan i am � i don't even need to be aware of the synopsis), but i'm an appreciator of hers now!
bottom line: another win for the only kind of nonfiction i read.
it's so important to see yourself represented on page
reading this book felt like itching a mosquito bite.
you know what's going to happen, and you're nit's so important to see yourself represented on page
reading this book felt like itching a mosquito bite.
you know what's going to happen, and you're not excited about that outcome, but at the same time it's the only thing that staves off the ever-present itching that would otherwise drive you insane.
in other words, it was annoying and predictable, but i enjoyed the process anyway.
bottom line: a good beach read type book for people who hate gwyneth paltrow.
(3.5 / rthanks to the publisher for the copy)...more
generational family drama about magical women yay!
while i didn't like the writing of this (please, for the love of god, use the word "said") or the regenerational family drama about magical women yay!
while i didn't like the writing of this (please, for the love of god, use the word "said") or the repetitiveness (we are forced into the same dialogue roughly 900 times), and it could've been 100 pages shorter, and there is some real bad interpersonal behavior on display here...
i enjoyed this!
i liked the story, and i liked the grumpy granddaughter / ghost grandma dynamic. and it made me hungry as hell.
bottom line: another win for food descriptions.
(3.5 / thanks to the publisher for the copy)...more
after another second of thought, i added that thus far it was kind of a coming of age story of a boy in britain, trying to determine what his gay and half-burmese identity means to him after a lifetime of learning what it means to others.
in truth, this is a very slow, very character-driven book. it was never very eventful, and i never felt particularly driven to pick it up, but i enjoyed it whenever i did.
eventually that changed a bit, as i realized i had spent weeks in the occasional company of david win and i was soon going to never do that again. that's something i love about long books: even if you don't notice, they grow on you, a sort of fondness built on extended company. i drew the last 50 pages out over a day.
good timing, too, as i tuned in fully just in time for the book to stick the landing on the growing moral failings of society lurking in the background. i think this is among the best inclusions of the pandemic i've seen in lit fic.
i was very kindly sent this book, and also a very cute that says CREATION LAKE on it.
so the whole time i read this was a high-stakes situatii was very kindly sent this book, and also a very cute that says CREATION LAKE on it.
so the whole time i read this was a high-stakes situation of really hoping i'd like the book so i could wear the hat.
my life is so hard.
fortunately, it's good news.
nothing much of anything happened in this book, which is a compliment. i plodded through it and felt immersed in a world of surveillance and clumsy dual motivations, unglamorous rural life and glamorous-on-paper jobs.
this is the kind of book that is full of things you google instead of action, which is my preference.
bottom line: my first rachel kushner but it won't be my last!
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