librarygraveyard

[librarygraveyard]

haha oops it's been. uh. hm.

so i read a book in an hour last night that deserves the attention an english essay would give it (it also deserves to be read in english classes. just sayin), and i knew i was never gonna take time to give it that attention in my own head, sooo theoretically! i will actually follow through on my blog ideas now! especially since like, i would like books to stick in my head + i would like to excavate the themes + have a space to process them the way i used to for school. the mandate that one spend dedicated time with the work they read...yeah they were on to somethin there lol

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love how Spinning Silver adds a Mirnatius POV because all his chapter sections are just like "everyone around me is an idiot. I'm the hottest person in the room. this demon that's possessing me is annoying. Irina is so smart she thinks of everything. I hate Irina. why does everyone like Irina so much. Irina is ugly. I'm going to draw 50 different sketches of her. to prove she's ugly. everyone in this palace wants me carnally. why won't people shut up about Irina."

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Can’t believe we got almost nothing about Chloe in the golden enclaves, WHERE’S MY ANXIOUS GIRL?

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JK Rowling never truly explained how the first horrocrux is made, while Novik really… went in there

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A Deadly Education + foreshadowing that makes me scream into the void

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It took me some good 5 chapters to understand why the you’re already dead spell worked without mana.

My first thought was that she was using the mana from the maw-mouth to kill it, because she can extract the mana so easily and all, and that’s why she ended with the same mana as before. But that sounded too much like I was just begging for El becoming a maleficer by accident to happen, so I discarded it.

And after 5 chapters I came to realize that it was because the maw-mouth was already dead. Magic is all about convincing reality to do something that it shouldn’t do, and El said it already, idk how I didn’t realized. The maw-mouth shouldn’t exist, and El is just reminding reality to do its work.

[librarygraveyard]

Anyway my favourite part of The Golden Enclaves is El's old classmates being absolutely ride-or-die for her, but she has no room in her internal narrative for being looked up to with admiration and respect so she just completely fails to process it even a tiny bit.

[librarygraveyard]

[me after that interview where naomi novik says the Scholomance is about climate change] hmmm, hadn't seen that. well, I guess there are some parallels...? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[me after The Golden Enclaves] oh. ok. *hyperventilating*

[librarygraveyard]

It's been several weeks since I read The Golden Enclaves and I occasionally still think about how Liesel looked at El and went "well, I have to seduce her, for the good of humanity, in case I need to use my wiles to pull her back from self-sacrifice and/or madness."

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"People are fundamentally good if you give them the chance" and "people would commit the worst of atrocities for the sake of their children" and "people would rather turn a blind eye to crimes" and "you have to give people a chance to be better" and "being good is making the right choice over and over again, not just one time" and "it's not easy making that right choice and you won't always recognize when it is the time" and "what is good for your children has a cost for other people's children" and "the choices our forefathers made still have repercussions to this day" and "it is our duty to stand up to oppression and ignorance and apathy" and and and

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is it so bad to want to kill everyone at all times

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shoutout to Galadriel Higgens most character of all time

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long fuckin update

wow. hi.

so, uh, updating as i read got away from me because i just started...tearing through books again. i have some backlogged notes that i wanted to make into posts, but a one-two combo of ADHD meds and rediscovering the many, many magics of the library, but particularly the “oh shit, that library book is actually due, i have to read it before that date even if i can renew it because if i dont read it NOW i never will” deadline-imposed executive functioning really knocked me straight into like, 10 books at once.

all that to say: 1) i finished My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She’s Sorry (Fredrich Backman) and it has perhaps become my favorite book of all time. definitely an oomph of a book in the best way. i wanted to write a more thorough post about it, but i was knocked out by COVID, so i went on to read 2) coraline (neil gaiman)! i’d never read it, and i think if i’d read it when i was a bit younger i’d have loved the adventure and suspense of it, but given that i read it a) after i saw the movie in college (adore the movie) b) as a 23 year old, it fell firmly in the category of “i’m glad i’ve read this. i am very glad this book exists. i am also very glad the movie exists, if only because i feel like the soundtrack adds and because coraline should forever have blue hair and a yellow raincoat.” 3) then i read As the Crow Flies (Melanie Gillman), which is a graphic novel about a teen kid at a church retreat, and while the art is stylistically lovely and the story tries to do some interesting things, it felt like it ended at least two chapters too early? There were a lot of unanswered questions despite the nuances, and the kids are supposed to be 13-14 and they read like 15-16yos, in my opinion. It was less than I thought it would be, given how critically acclaimed it is---but I often find anything intersecting religion and queerness in an interesting way seems to receive critical acclaim (and critical ire) if it’s executed decently, because that’s what’s “interesting” now. 4) Then The Graveyard Book (Neil Gaiman) --Another Gaiman I’d never read, and this one I found delightful; it’s slightly episodic as it tells a coming-of-age story, and yet also explores themes of loss in life: loss of community loss of family, change of family dynamic as a type of grief, and loss of home---even if as a temporary displacement---as its own grief, and how grief is in itself a form of longing, and how that longing can’t always be fulfilled with an exact replacement, but how life is yours for the living and as long as you are alive you are in motion and you have potential, and to die is to end that potential. you have completed all the changes you will make in yourself and in the world. i even named a spotify playlist around this theme, and captioned it with a quote from Silas, the main character’s guardian: “face your life; leave no path untaken”---“You're alive, Bod. That means you have infinite potential. You can do anything, make anything, dream anything. If you can change the world, the world will change. Potential. Once you're dead, it's gone. Over. You've made what you've made, dreamed your dream....That potential is finished." 5) by the time I finished TGB I had finally tested negative for COVID and recovered in full, so I was able to pick up Spinning Silver (Naomi Novik) from the library. And oh. Oh my fuck??? I want this book for Christmas. Someone please get me this for Christmas. I saw the first page posted on twitter, which is how I found out about it at all and got hooked in the first place, but to go from that to an incredibly intricate story that balances so many arcs??? I mean, does she do it perfectly? No. There are absolutely some questionable points where I wonder if the plates are going to fall. There are absolutely some dropped threads that, yes, the world is richer for them having been hinted at, but also, given the tightly-woven story with so many threads so carefully developed, dropped, and continued at later points, it is weird to get to the end and go “Wait, but what about...????” My friends and I had a long conversation about SS last night---like, two hours long, and this being a full month and three books on after I finished it (and they read it ages ago), so I’ll spare you the analysis. But, the aspects of magic in the book, the commentary on work as proof of magic and economics as power and opening the door to both self-power and social power and that itself being magic; the political commentary and EVERYTHING going on with Mirnatius and Irina individually and as an arranged, very political marriage; the mythology of the world...yeah. yeah. if there’s anything i would recommend you on this list wholesale not knowing you, it’s Spinning Silver. 6) then, Sensory: Life on the Spectrum (Rebecca Ollerton) had come out, so I worked my way through that---it’s a comic anthology entirely from autistic artists talking about various parts of their experiences. I found it mostly to be geared toward autistic acceptance/narratives surrounding “life sucked. then i got diagnosed with autism/learned autism exists and realized im Not shit, im just Neurodivergent,” which is a fantastic resource to have and i’m very glad it exists, but the comics that stood out to me the most in the anthology were the ones that deviated from that structure. The two most memorable comics in the anthology, to me, was one that used pocket watches (the artist’s special interest) as their central imagery, and one that had circulated around tumblr that discussed neurodivergence and non-negative self-injury using stylized fruit characters. I would mostly recommend this anthology to someone who is new to the autistic community, or to neurotypical people.

7) i hit a bit of a slump after this (because how the fuck do you follow Spinning Silver?), but I was literally like, 85% through a reread of Norse Mythology (Neil Gaiman) via audiobook from a road trip I went on in May, with only about an hour and a half left to listen. So I wrapped that up. I had never listened to the audiobook---the first (and only) time I read Norse Mythology i began it just before my flight home from college......and then I devoured it across my two flights home and two flights back, despite my return flights being at like, 6AM. Hearing it in Neil Gaiman’s voice and cadence definitely brought the stories he was telling to life, whether on the winding back roads of Tennessee or in my living room while I finished an art project for a friend’s very, very belated birthday. 8) the last and latest book I’ve finished is Turtles All the Way Down (John Green), which was good, and then the last two pages absolutely knocked me flat on my ass. it was like, “oh, this is a good YA book about mental health, and there’s nuance without losing sight of the fact that Mental Illness Is Fucking Hard To Live With, and everybody feels 16, and---oh my fuck WHAT” so anyway. no spoilers, because to spoil it would be to ruin your chance to get knocked flat, but Turtles All The Way Down for YA book about living with mental illness of all time.

--- in December, I set a goal for myself to read 12 books in 2022.

...I read eight of the ten books I’ve completed this year since September. 

Four of those I read in one (1) month with COVID.

I was prescribed ADHD medication at the end of August. 

this isn’t the blog where I yell about all that, but... i cannot imagine how different college could have been for me. how different my life could be.

anyway, meds are an access need.

[librarygraveyard]

I sincerely do not judge people for only reading one or two genres for pleasure. Looking for books you like outside of a familiar genre actually takes some skill, and lots of people have limits on their time/energy that make setting aside any time for reading an accomplishment. However, if you do only read one or two genres, don't act like you know what other genres are like or pretend that you don't read them because they're worthless! It's much better to say "reading literary fiction isn't high on my priority list" than to say "it's all about English professors cheating on their wives."

[librarygraveyard]

i know i have a sideblog to contain my warrior cats insanity but LOOK AT THIS SHIT what a downgrade

[librarygraveyard]

my grandmother asked me to tell you she’s sorry (fredrik backman)

started: 09.01.22 status: never read before! progress: 140/372 pages! I bought this book years ago based on the blurb on the back + a review claiming it was “firmly in the league with Roald Dahl and Neil Gaiman,” the latter of whom is one of my favorite authors. As I’m reading the prose I can absolutely see why the reviewer made the comparison: it’s whimsical, immersive, and reminiscent of a child telling a story even though it’s told 3rd person limited---it feels like you’re watching Elsa through a glass pane, and yet it’s still written as if she herself were narrating, even though I don’t think she is.

mixed feelings about Elsa’s hp obsession---it was equally comforting to me as a child, and precisely because of that it’s become painful and also somewhat ludicrous. (but this book was written in ~2014 and even if it were written more recently, it’s of course realistic that a child would love harry potter. i mean, i did, despite apparently being everything its author hates)

So, i LOVE how Elsa’s written, i love the allusions to her being neurodivergent being just vague enough that you can’t pin an exact diagnosis on her; i think the worldbuilding is insanely clever + am extremely curious to see how the unfolding links between the Land-of-Almost-Awake and the Elsa’s flatmates + family play out---i have some ideas, but for the most part I’m just blazing through these chapters in a way I haven’t gotten hooked on a book in a long time.

needless to say, I’m adoring it so far. i’m so excited

[librarygraveyard]

everything everywhere all at once thoughts (NOT spoiler free)

i’m not a movie-goer. i think i’ve seen 3 total movies since 2020, including pre-pandemic, in theaters. before that, i only went if my friends wanted to go.

i went to see everything everywhere all at once due to a random retweet of a neil gaiman tweet from april 17 about how you should absolutely see this movie in theaters if at all possible, knowing nothing about it if given the chance. it leaves theaters near me on thursday, and there was a late-night showing yesterday, which is my favorite kind of showing to attend, so, hey. why not? um. 

bruh.

the core of everything everywhere all at once being, simultaneously: 1. one of the best visualizations of a queer kid’s mental health (the freaking bagel being built to hold the weight of everything she saw in the world so she could see if she “could finally die?” because she wanted the pain to stop?? her masking that pain constantly under a colorfully nihilistic exterior when it’s profoundly miserable to bear and she desperately hopes, in part, that someone [her mom] will face this “absolute truth” with her and show her a different way to view it/live it/bear it?) 2. one of my favorite depictions of the complex relationship between a child + their parents ive seen in visual media (”i love them, i want them to love me,they  hurt me trying to love and i hurt them back on purpose and i don’t know how to compromise to make this possible [because i haven’t realized compromise is even necessary]” going both ways); the fact that evelyn sincerely fucked up not just her relationships, but also the lives of her daughter + husband, and that despite that the consistent narrative thread through the whole of the movie is “im taking drastic action because you arent listening to anything else, but i just want us to talk“ 3. honestly the interwoven-ness of it all is part of what gives it its brilliance, that the evelyn we follow needs the perspectives of all these fragmented could-have-beens to broaden her own internal perspective, which allows her to reach out to her family and make the best of all of those paths for the life that she has. i also adore how well they portrayed the seductiveness of joy’s nihilism + depression bc!! yeah! that’s what it’s like! and how waymond’s core philosophy: yes, life is cruel, but i choose the beauty and the small joys and kindness anyway, because this world won’t make me hard, is consistently seen as weak and silly until, like…

honestly, i think that’s the hardest thing to do in this life. i think it’s a quiet resilience, but perhaps the strongest. + i adored that this movie seemed to agree. 4. the fact that even in her most “successful” lives, where if she’d done just one or two things differently the evelyn we follow knows she could have had all this—the fact that the movie takes the time to break down the difficulties that she has in these lives, or the joys in the ridiculous small lives; the fact that it’s always, no matter the measure of success, about the few glimpses where everything makes sense, and you’re never robbed of that no matter the size of the life you live if you’re willing to let those moments in…yeah. yeah. of course there’s so much more. the construction of the rock universe being voiceless, spoken in dialogue tags on the screen? i loved it. i also loved the font choice. the leitmotif in the fight scenes + the freaking hot dog universe with deirdre + at other junctures just. 

+++

after i saw the movie, i went to burger king because it was one of the few places open at 1am near me. i ordered, and as i pulled forward, i realized (panicking), that i…had completely left my wallet at home. so i don’t peel out of line, because, i dunno, that feels rude…there’s only one car in front of me, anyway. i pull forward, and sheepishly, apologetically explain that i don’t have my wallet, have a good night, i’m very sorry. “oh, hey, you just had the large fries and the chicken sandwich, right?” the manager gives me a kind smile. “here ya go. have a good night.”

alpha wang says he’s trying to bring the world back to Before, “how do we get back?” <to before all this mess, before we didn’t trust our neighbors, before we were so cruel to each other, before before before> and the answer, the dorky, clueless, lost wang provides: be kind first. even if you doubt there will be kindness given back.