misireads

[misireads]

Empuzjon (The Empusium) by Olga Tokarczuk

[ physical book, read in finnish ]

a polish engineering student travels west to receive treatment for tuberculosis in a health resort in early 1900s. he lives in a men-only guesthouse and listens to the other guests' longwinded conversations and debates all day long, the topics mostly circling around politics, philosophy, and supremely misogynistic takes on women. he befriends one of the less argumentative (and more sick) guests who also happens to be gay. the main character is rather dainty himself, as well as socially anxious from having lived all his life controlled by his cruel father.

from the other men, the main character hears superstitious tales about women who were banished into the mountainous woods years ago and still haunt the place, as well as stories about one person dying in the woods every year around november, his body found torn violently to pieces. all the while he keeps hearing strange noises coming from the attic above his room, and the guests keep jugging down a strange liquour made of shrooms.

🦠⛰️🍷

➕ what a book! that was a wild experience. i knew not to expect very conventional horror (because this was recommended by a friend who said so), but i'd call this a horror novel all the same. the horror comes from the atmosphere, the constant ominous mood and the feeling of something being a bit amiss, something lurking in the shadows in the wilderness, and all the other guests and their conversations being rather strange. the true horror of course is the misogynistic horseshit that the men keep confidently spouting because it's all based on reality

➕ i knew i'd love the way this is written the moment i read the first sentence on the first page: it starts with (my freeform translation from finnish) "Now the scenery is obstructed by the clouds of steam from the train." i know i'm gonna love a book when the very first sentence starts with the word "now". also the way the main guys as a group are described for the first time by introducing what their feet and shoes look under a table. it's brilliant.

➕ the occasional use of "we" in the narration is unique, and at first i thought it was just a gimmick to break the fourth wall and make the story seem like we, the readers, are watching it through a lense, for a cool little added effect… well, (spoiler) turns out there's an actual reason for this PoV, and also for why it comes and goes instead of being a consistent thing. because women just come and go in this narrative

➕ mieczysław! (spoiler) at first i was like, is he gay? is he gay? then i was like, oh we got an ace king here yessss! AND then turns out not just that, but an intersex king?! who, at the end of the novel, puts on the dress of a dead woman and fucks off from the health resort. wow! my mind was blown a little

➕ this made me so cultured about europe, the historical borders of countries from this era are kinda fuzzy to me. the main character is said to be from "lemberg", and for a good long while i was like, that's a town in poland? that's a very german name for a polish town but well, maybe it's next to germany somewhere. well, turns out that's the german name of lviv actually! in ukraine in other words! that's crazy

➖ now, i didn't rate this more than three stars on goodreads and i'm having a bit of a hard time articulating why to myself, but it's like, a vibes thing. this was interesting, it's well written, it's thought-provoking… but it's not really the kind of book that particularly excites me. it was more interesting than likable per se for me. nothing wrong with that, but my personal scoring system is just such. the pace of the story is really really slow, and the conversations between the male characters drag and go on tangents i could have lived without. i felt no sense of culmination or reward from reading it all, but apparently it's a reference to thomas mann's der zauberberg, actually this whole novel is a reference to it but i'd never heard of it before so that was obviously lost on me, so. i can appreciate that retrospectively but while reading it gave me nothing

➖ i'll be the simpleton that i am and admit i didn't fully understand what happened at the end. and there were some things that i just felt didn't get any closure and it bothered me. not sure what the significance of them jugging down schwärmerei was either

➖ kinda just wanted all the cishet men to die tbh. no matter how excellently it works within the narrative, i hated reading about these arrogant assholes

⭐ score: 4- -- a bit on the fence about whether this is a 3½ or a 4-, but i decided on the latter when i looked at other books i've scored so on this blog, the vibe is pretty much the same. i'll end this with a totally fucking raw quote from the doctor character (my translation again): "Once a person considers themselves excellent and thinks they've found their fulfillment, they should kill themselves"

[misireads]

Hildur by Satu Rämö

[ audiobook, listened in finnish ]

a police novel set in the westfjords of iceland. the titular character is a police offer working at a small, rural station together with one other female officer and a new police trainee, a man from finland who likes knitting shirts. one day there's an avalanche in the village, and they discover that a man who's found dead in the rubble was murdered before the avalanche even happened. soon there's another victim, and they realise they're dealing with a serial killer.

🇮🇸❄️🧶

➕ i don't think i've read anything set in iceland before. rare locations and learning more about them is always a plus. this is set in the harsh rural yet oceanic landscape where distances are long and the winter is brutal. very distinctive environmentally.

➕ the characters are sympathetic enough. especially the finnish man with a shitty ex wife in norway and who doesn't speak a word of icelandic but is just trying to get by in a new environment. hildur is alright. it was nice that there are two female officers and one (kind of unconventional) male.

➖ wow! this was a remarkably uninteresting book. i don't like police novels to begin with because they're too formulaic for me -- the saving grace of this is that it's not hardboiled, which is the absolute worst scheisse genre IMO. but… this feels like it's confusing itself to be a cozy crime. but police officers hunting a serial killer is not cozy crime, ever, like, you can not make it be. there's a really weird dissonance in the tone of this book, where the cozy icelandic town and the main characters' personal lives seem to be more important than anything in the murder case, and the book also consciously treats them as the more interesting things. and that's what they pretty much are. because the case itself is uninspiring as fuck. a crime novel where the mystery is hardly even compelling to follow, come on now. early on there are some elements sprinkled in that spark some mild interest, but none of them were used -- this in fact got more boring the further it went along with solving the case. there's no climax whatsoever, there's no hunting the perpetrator, the case just sort of solves itself, there is. nothing. honestly i'm kind of speechless by how uneventful a crime novel this was??? i don't know what to say.

➖ this is somehow one of the most popular contemporary finnish novel series now. i'm not trying to like roast rämö here or call her a bad writer but just. i guess i'm really out of the loop with the world because even writing-wise i found this boring, the language is uninspiring, it's on a "she did this, then she did that" level of expression. very straightforward, everything is readily processed for the reader. i don't know, i've been ass deep in whimsically written beautiful prose lately, this kind of thing feels like trying to eat sand now. am i ruined? did the locked tomb ruin me??? i'm having such a hard time reading anything else now. edit: actually i looked at the finnish reviews on goodreads and many people have given this one star because the language is so poor, so apparently it's not just me. this book is just not well written, period. so this is what the big audience likes to read these days?? it makes me want to cry a little actually

➖ this also felt like a guidebook of icelandic trivia more than anything. like the author just wanted to talk about the things she's learned about iceland actually and the story is a bit secondary. regarding this, the PoVs in this book are also all over the place. you can have a chapter that mains hildur the woman who's lived in iceland all her life, and for some reason the narration sidetracks to explaining something that's clearly just exposition about iceland to the reader and completely out of place to be so deliberately spelled out in the narrative of an icelandic woman. it works better in chapters about the finnish man, because it makes sense that the new culture is explained to him through the text. but. in the end it's kind of an omniscient narrator anyway that doesn't care about such things, it's not the characters telling us the story, it's the author who gives us iceland trivia. and i am a bit beyond that as a reader at this point? i don't want omnicient narrators with horseshit loads of exposition in the middle, it feels clumsy and is super fucking "tell, don't show". we are told what things are like, not shown through the emotions or actions of the characters.

⭐ score: 2 -- i was leaning more towards 3 at some point, but the more i think about it the less i like this, and the finale was such a faceplant it sucked the rest of my goodwill away for good. it's also written to be a series and not an independent book that works on its own, the author says as much in the final words. so there's a lot of stuff introduced about the main characters that clearly will be elaborated on later. again, feels like the author was more interested in establishing them (and writing iceland trivia) than telling a murder mystery.

[misireads]

Herr der Diebe (The Thief Lord) by Cornelia Funke

[ physical book, read in finnish ]

set in venice, where a group of orphaned children live on their own in an abandoned movie theatre and get by thanks to a mysterious benefactor who calls himself the thief lord -- who also happens to be a child. the newest additions to the group are two german brothers who are on the run from their horrendous stepmother, thinking that she'll never track them all the way down to italy. but she has, and the starting point of the book is her hiring a private detective to catch the boys for her.

unaware of this, the children keep doing business with a shady merchant in the city who often buys stolen goods from them, and the merchant proposes that they accept a deal with a mysterious and supposedly rich man named conte, who wants them to steal something for him. the thief lord accepts the deal.

🎭🎠🛶

➕ i was very enamored by the premise of this book! not only does it sound like something i absolutely could have wanted to write as a 12-year-old (in fact, i almost feel like i DID have an idea for a story about children living in a theatre?! it felt so familiar), i just adore stories like this about very smart little children who almost act like adults, living in a world of their own where kids are the wise ones and adults are stupid ass bitches, except for some unusual adults who understand how the children function. it's really really entertaining to me and panders to my inner child. for some reason my rec lists have a lot of books for children or teenagers, and i can sincerely say this is just about the only one i have actually wanted to read.

➕ this is very silly but in a heartfelt way. the adults are all such strange characters, and this is making a very animated point of adults actually just being larger children but just as (or more!) selfish, childish, impulsive, and greedy.

➕ venice in winter was a nice and unique setting. the aesthetics of this novel are great in general.

➕ prosper is a very very good boi.

➖ i liked this up until maybe 3/4s of the book. then it got.. weird. the only really unrealistic aspect until then was the whole "children are smart, adults are stupid" setting (and whether that is unrealistic is debatable) but then this suddenly introduced a magic carousel that turns children into adults and vice versa. the sudden introduction of an unexplained magic element in the realistic city of venice, and the subsequent fact that nobody questions it in any way…?!?!? it tore the whole thing apart at the end imo. it basically reduced this into nonsense geared for children after having been so enjoyable for an adult reader until then. nope didn't like that at all. i have so many questions about the logistics of this age shifting nonsense

➖ the thief lord himself, scipio, supposed titular character, is left sort of unlikable and vague. he doesn't get any sort of hero moment in the story. rather he's just pathetic from start to finish. very difficult to like and i don't think the book should be named after him at all because he's so negligible compared to prosper and bo and even the only girl character. what a strange choice for an mc. by the way this book has a much more epic name in finnish imo, rosvoruhtinas. that's a banger

➖ what's not so banger is that the finnish translation is rife with typos. like almost one on every page and especially in names

➖ just in general there... kinda was no arching storyline here to speak of? things just happen. there's a weird focus shift to the merchant guy towards the end. not only was it weird and kind of uninteresting because there was no incentive whatsoever to care about this guy, the concept of his character also changed in a weird way that was just off-putting, wtf did i just read tbh.

⭐ score: 3+ -- i thought this was on a trajectory to a strong 4 buuuuut no it wasn't. how about i read books for adults instead

[misireads]

The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas

[ physical book, read in english ]

the story of a sixteen-year-old girl who lives in a black neighbourhood but goes to a white kids' school, arduously switching between the two identities every day because she doesn't want her white friends to think of her as a ghetto girl. one night after a party, a white police officer shoots one of her childhood friends right before her eyes for being black. being the only witness, she has to decide who and what to tell about the incident, all the while deeply traumatised by that night.

🌆🏀✊🏿

➕ i'm not american nor from a country of much police violence in general (i think?! like how would a sheltered white girl know about that let's be real) but this felt like a substantial read and an important one. that's mainly why i wanted to finish it, despite not exactly enjoying reading it. there were some fun moments but mostly this was a kind of painful read. the african american culture feels pretty distant to little ol' me in northern europe, but learning about the popular culture through texts like this can be fun.

➕ i don't know if it's just me high on het fluff right now (the locked tomb did a number on me. help) but i just so adored starr and chris's relationship. i've tried reading a bit too many YA/teen books with the most shallow ass romance tropes, and these two actually felt warm and meaningful and i dunno, i just really enjoyed all the scenes of them.

➖ i wouldn't have kept reading this if it weren't for a bit of white guilt, i guess. mostly i didn't find myself super interested in what was happening (and feel kind of bad about that). especially all the gang stuff had me yawning, like really, adult men messing up children? come on. this book is the sort of ultra realism that i truthfully don't read novels for.

➖ this book has too many references to tumblr. don't do this to us angie

⭐ score: 3+ -- i wasn't sure how to score this, and i don't even know if i liked it?? i just felt like it was important to read whether i liked it or not. things be messed up.

[misireads]

Nona the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir

[ physical book, read in english ]

nona is the sweetest, funniest, most pure-hearted girl who loves life and (almost) everyone she meets despite living in a very violent, very dangerous city. she lives with three people whom she loves very much, and every day she goes to the near-by school to work as a teacher's aide and to spend time with her group of friends. nona is very happy as is -- but the people she lives with are insistent on trying to figure out who the hell she actually is.

(again, nothing but insufferable spoilers for this as well as the previous locked tomb books for the rest of this post)

❤️💤🧽

➕ nona! what a sweetheart. impossible not to love. i thoroughly enjoyed her character in its entirety, but i think my number one favourite trait (well, after the fact that she repeatedly tells the others she loves them, and gives them hugs, which melted my heart into a warm puddle every time) was her refusing to eat food and happily eating everything that's not food.

➕ nice to get confirmation that this series is indeed post-apocalyptic and set in our galaxy… well, sort of, at least. i guess the nuclear apocalypse started from australia in this case. kinda fucked up to read about places like australia in a locked tomb book

➕ wow. damn these fucking books. i said in my harrow the ninth post that i had no idea how the story would continue from there, well what i sure as fuck didn't see coming was a domestic found family story with a babyfied harrowhark('s body) being taken care of by the woman living in the body of the man who tried to kill harrow throughout the previous book, and camilla who now also contains palamedes's soul in her and they keep switching, and they all live together in a little apartment, and nobody in this family is just one whole person who belongs in the body they occupy. my brain was SO fried for the first couple of chapters, especially because we met pyrrha for like, five seconds at the end of the previous book and why exactly she's now in charge of gideon the first's body kinda escaped me there. i still don't really understand it tbh nor why palamedes and camilla switched eyes. so palamedes's beautiful grey eyes are now camilla's eyes but that's okay because

➕ HOOOOOLYY SHIIIIIIT I WAS EXPECTING MORE OF THE SIXTH BUT MY SOUL WAS NOOOTT PREPARED FOR A WHOLE NOVEL WITH THEM IN THE MAIN CAAASSSTTT ougghh guhggghhh i died so many deaths in a violent fit of love. i -- so -- [insert gurgling noises] -- yes i liked palamedes and camilla as a set from the start but this book? oh fuck. i am now ferally shipping them like my life depended on it. like i have not had a new OTP i'd be this crazy about in ages (and it's an m/f ship?!?! what the fuuuuuck who am i) this was just, wow, i really had to take a moment to get myself back together over the little scenes about their relationship sprinkled throughout. the fact that they aren't romantic canonically (and seem to be second cousins. according to the little short story about them, which i of course immediately rushed to read, and it was adorable) just makes me even more feral about shipping them because that's exactly how i am, i love it. so much. showing affection through forehead touches and kisses anywhere except the mouth? i. am. so. fucking. gone. like. seriously. call an ambulance im having a seizure as i write this. and throughout the book i was in a grand state of panic over whether muir would fuck me over again and separate them but thankfully she keeps dodging my expectations spectacularly and they instead become the perfect lyctor i guess? i have no idea what they really did there at the end, but it sure seemed like they fused perfectly and became a, well. they became a paul. which…. i mean i'm confused but can't say i'd ever before had a ship where the characters are so seamlessly perfect for each other that they literally just melt into a new person so that they can be as Together With Capital T as possible. so i guess i'm happy about that. wow. i need to keep digesting this for a bit. in the meanwhile i hope people have written a hundred college AUs about them

➕ since the first two books have all been necromancer&lyctor stuff and epic adventures in space like it's the most normal thing in the world, it was pretty fun having a story where we have ordinary non-magical people's point of view where they find necromancers pretty fucking freaky actually. it makes sense but feels bad because you love those necromancers.

➖ now, if i thought the previous book's plot was confusing, then i don't know what this is. i really really couldn't follow the blood of eden stuff so a lot went over my head. i had to go read a plot summary after finishing and some things hadn't clicked at all, including the resurrection beast speaking through judith and nona speaking back to it, and the dream parts with john i didn't even try to understand because i couldn't (his character continues being a fucking enigma to me but that's likely the intention, but i mean, this really truly didn't explain how he suddenly got magic powers, at all). so… it was a bit hard to enjoy the story on any deeper level.

➖ the ending scene on the ninth alleviated this a little but i massively missed the gothic horror aesthetic of the earlier books. this one was like… guns and political factions fighting in a filty ghetto. not really my favourite thing in the world. i mean space travel sci-fi isn't my thing either but it was easy to let slide in harrow the ninth because there's so much everything else. but here -- well, the city environment had its charm and set a very vivid and distinctive scene, but still, i just missed the locked tomb trademark gothic corridors with skeletons popping out i guess.

➖ ianthe was such an ass here, and even gideon was so… well i missed her being the nice, hot gideon that i love. because the story was so hard for me to understand, i continue being confused about why ianthe is such a villain towards other characters. shouldn't the necromancers and cavaliers all be on the same side?? idk man i still have things to figure out.

⭐ score: 4½ -- five for nona and me catching the palcam rabies, but this was harder for me to enjoy for those minus reasons for sure. a bit of a mixed bag, this reading experience. i have to admit i also horribly missed harrowhark. the fourth book ought to fix that, i figure. i also figure i'm not going to have camilla and palamedes ever again because we now have. um. paul. but WHATEVER IT'S OKAY THEY ARE TOGETHER NOW (I THINK)

[misireads]

Punaisten kyynelten talo ("The house of red tears") by Terhi Rannela

[ audiobook, listened in finnish ]

a fictional story based on real experiences from pol pot's dictatorship in cambodia that turned the whole country into one big concentration camp. the first part of the book jumps between the points of view of a mother and a daughter in 1975 who have already been separated before the narrative begins; the parents and their newest infant are taken to a notoriously cruel prison for torture, while the 9yo daughter is forced to live in labour camps under increasingly dismal conditions.

the second part takes places in the 2000s and switches between the PoVs of the daughter who is now a grown woman and a mother herself, her husband, and their daughter as they deal with the trauma and aftermath of everything that happened in the past.

🩸🇰🇭

➕ this was so fascinating from an educational standpoint, i vaguely knew of pol pot before from having listened to podcasts about dictatorships but there are so many everywhere in the world that the details hadn't stuck before. i also didn't know a whole lot about cambodia as a country in general. (i think geoguessr once tossed me in angkor wat and i had no idea what it was) i love learning about cultural stuff, though this one focused on a very negative era of this country. but it was interesting in the morbid way that dictatorships are.

➕ the first half was extremely gruesome and interesting, with both the mother and daughter's PoVs being gripping and engaging…

➖ …the second part, not so much. only the daughter's (now mother's) PoV was necessary there, really. the father, eh, maybe just barely, he's dealing with the trauma of having been one of the officers taking part in torturing and killing people but at least i didn't catch whether he was one of the guys actually present in the first part or not, probably not, so i was like, why would i care about this random guy now tho. and their daughter's PoV was completely pointless, about her school life and dancing outfits and liking some boy, i guess the point was to illustrate how children in 2005 don't even really know much about the pol pot era but, i was just waiting for her parts to be over tbh

��� score: 3½ -- i really enjoy historical novels based on real hardships that people have experienced and my baseline for them is maybe 4, this was good but just mildly below the average because of that less engaging second part. also idk what's wrong with me when i've been like "i have read so much dark stuff, i want something feel-good for a change" and then i listen to a book about people dying under communist dictatorship. i guess i just can't stop being pulled in by the darkness

[misireads]

Harrow the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir

[ physical book, read in english ]

well this post is just going to be one big spoiler of both gideon the ninth and this book so. here's the spoiler-free review:

oh my ghod. oh my go my hod oh my god oh my gofd oh my

and here's the rest:

💀🚀🌊

after the bombastic finale of the first locked tomb book, harrowhark has become a lyctor and been taken to god's VIP space station with ianthe, the only other lyctor from their canaan house adventure. with the mentorship of two (or three, if attempted murder is mentorship) remaining older lyctors, they begin to prepare for joining the cosmic battle against "resurrection beasts" that roam the space. but something's not right with harrowhark; she's weak, sickly, and doesn't remember gideon having ever existed.

parallel to this, there's another timeline that's an alternate re-telling of the events in canaan house, except that nothing's the same. cavaliers and heirs begin to die in different order from the original, and the murders seem to be committed by a single gun-wielding, mysterious entity they call "the sleeper". also, harrow's cavalier is ortus, the man who was originally meant to be her cav but refused and was quickly killed off in the first book.

➕ you. never. know. what you get. in the locked tomb

➕ i love love love love muir's writing on so many levels. first and foremost i'm a lover of words and her words continue to be delightful. the writing also manages to be confusing as fuck but in a way that you parse together in the end anyway, at least eventually. usually. like this book really established what lyctors even are because that wasn't super clear in the first book. and even when you don't understand, it doesn't matter all that much because the words themselves are so good anyway. i'm thoroughly duped by her writing tbh

➕ how genius are the PoV changes here. at first i was like, ehhh a second person PoV? not sure how i feel about that… then i was like, oh it's to differentiate it jumping between this AU version of the first book events and the so-called present! okay i see now, pretty clever. then i got fucking annihilated by the chapter ending with the line about palamedes seeing "me" i have never ever ever been so

➕ DEVASTATED AND SIMULTANEOUSLY EXCITED ABOUT A FUCKING BOOK CHAPTER IN MY LIFE THAN I WAS BY THAT ONE!!!! gosh. just thinking about it makes me tingle. in all the places. jesus fucking christ i have not been into a fictional character like this in so long, this book was a horrible terrible lovely rollercoaster ride for a devout palamedes sextus fangirl. when i realised there's a re-telling of the first book i was like, and the sixth were there? :) the sixth were there right?? and then they were and it was to say their faces had been blown out and they died. and i was like oh. okay. well. and then in the jungle planet chapter camilla appears and i was like YEESS HEERRR IT'S HER YEEES SHE'S HERE because half a six is still good. and then just ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh auyughhghhhhhhhh himmmmmmmm i WAS DECIMATED!!!!!!!!! in a good way. and the scene about palamedes and camilla was also sooo good because it really paved the way for there obviously being more of them later. and because that "later" wasn't in this book, it has to be the third. which already WAS MADE IMMINENT IN THE EPILOGUE!!!! YOU GIVE ME A FUCKING NUCLEAR BOMB OF A BOOK AND THEN END IT WITH AN EPILOGUE THAT ENDS WITH A MENTION ABOUT PALAMEDES' BEAUTIFUL EYEESSS??????? OUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

➕ okay. alright. umm. absolutely hilarious how in the first book we had gideon's voice which was full of ass and whimsy (which i kind of forgot, until she kicked in here and it was a blast) and harrowhark was kind of mysterious and really strong and just. like. kinda cool. and in this one? we have harrow's point of view and she is such a pathetic little meow meow. can't fight, kisses a girl, likes to be hugged. learns to make soup (even if it is murder soup, but anyway). not to mention that the whole premise of this book is that she loves gideon so much that she refused to live an existence without her and preferred tampering with her brain over that. what a fucking gigantic gay tsundere ass bitch i can't believe it, in my gideon the ninth post i said i didn't quite ship-ship them but appreciated them but you can't just read a story like this and not be like oooookay guys here we are. they are married. and the little sort-of triangle with ianthe? even that i love. especially ianthe calling her harry

➕ i also really enjoyed abigail and magnus being alive more because i adoooore these hets. and obviously dulcinea, the REAL dulcinea. can't be a pal fangirl without loving dulcie like he does

➕ a grande finale battle being fought by an ancient figure who's brought to life by harrow chiming in to ortus' slowburn fanfiction about the guy? bro. but also, it was so funny that the characters have all sorts of cool necromancy magic powers and fight with fancy swords and then an enemy walks in with a gun like, you fucking stupid idiots. and shoots them

➕ we have a canon coffee shop AU here, somehow.

➖ now. honestly…. i didn't really understand what happened in the story. and that sounds diabolical when i loved the book so much. but i truly kind of dropped the ball, especially with all the soap opera-ing at the end there. but i'm not even mad because it means i can re-read and understand better in the future (or read summaries online. either works) plus i'm pretty sure the third book will explain this all about gideon's parents better. much like i truly didn't understand rat's ass about lyctors and god in the first.

⭐ score: 5 -- i give up, i'll go for the full five, because i can't justify anything less for myself after having to put a book away for a minute just to kind of squeal and squirm in my chair over a chapter, i loved it soooooo much. and there's still one more book?! i have NO idea how the story of gideon and harrowhark can continue from here but i assume it does. somehow. these books man, you just have no idea what happens. either way i'll be there for palamedes' beautiful eyes.

[misireads]

Mistä maailmat alkavat ("Where worlds start from") by Joel Haahtela

[ physical book, read in finnish ]

the life story of a young man (and later, not so young) who, after seeing a movie about vincent van gogh, is deeply inspired to become an artist and suddenly views the world around him through art. he starts taking art classes and meets other likeminded people, such as befriending another young man and his sister who becomes his girlfriend. he does a study trip to italy, and eventually gains great success with his first personal exhibition. he learns more and more about both art and humanity throughout his life.

🎨🖌️🖼️

➕ i'm so so so pleased with this little gem of a book that i randomly picked up!! it's like a little piece of art itself. this is a fairly short book, and it's not super grand or anything, but rather what made this for me was that it's a collection of scenes and moments that just hit somewhere deep.

➕ i really could relate to the way the main character sees everything through beauty and art. it's difficult to explain and i don't even have haahtela's ability to put the feeling into words anyway.

➕ very essentially a helsinki novel! set in the historical parts of the town centre. and this also included real historical people from the finnish art scene, visa studies in a real art school that actually still exists in helsinki, so that was a nice touch.

➕ my favourite part was the beginning when visa is still a teenager and realises he's beginning to drift away from his past life but that's okay because what lies ahead is so beautiful.

➖ this lost a bit of the magic touch towards the end, but then again that makes sense. visa grows up and becomes an adult and lives through more tumultuous decades, more socially aware. i didn't love the latter half but it fit the overall arc.

➖ that said i didn't hugely like how we linger in visa's 18~late 20s for the majority of the story, then it gallops forward like crazy over the last few pages and covers like, 50 years suddenly.

⭐ score: 4- -- a strong little book, and i'm sure many of its magical moments will remain in some corner of my heart.

[misireads]

Howl's Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones

[ audiobook, listened in english ]

the eldest of three sisters is on the path to inherit their mother's hat-making shop when a local evil witch turns her into a 90yo granny. she runs away and ends up jumping aboard the bewitched moving castle (which is actually just two rooms) of a local "evil" wizard who turns out to just be a womanising young man from wales who likes to be beautiful. she tags along to places the castle and its inhabitants go, meets people, learns more about howl the wizard and the fire demon powering the moving castle, and also figures out that the witch who's spell she's under is after howl as well.

🏰✨🔥

➕ now let's be real, the meat and bones of this book is the magic stuff. that's the part i found enjoyable, i got some inspiration and ideas for my d&d character's magic things actually lol.

➕ howl is such an amusing little bitch. and calcifer is cute, probably my favourite character.

➖ i didn't much like anything else. i mostly kept listening because i was feeling a bit lazy to start yet another story for the moment so it was a "could as well" kind of thing. i didn't care about any characters other than howl and sophie, maybe calcifer, and truthfully the image i had from the ghibli movie (which i've only seen when it came out 20 years ago) was that this is mostly about them, but it wasn't. this is also a lot about howl's apprentice who i have no idea why he was here, sophie's sisters who i kind of couldn't even follow which was which, and a dozen other side characters who i immediately forgot and didn't recognise who's who when they came back, including sophie's mother who's mentioned by name when she re-appears towards the end and i was like WHO? christ i'm aware this is probably because i just couldn't focus on this for the life of me but i was so lost most of the time, no idea what's going on and why at any given time.

➖ and then so much happened within the last 40 minutes that i could follow even less

➖ i understand this is for children and written in the 80s but what the fuck is this premise of "sophie is the eldest daughter so she has no prospects in life whatsoever and is doomed to fail" literally never heard of this kind of line of thought anywhere ever. if anything, eldest children get the most fortune?? what

➖ i hated hated hated the ending. all throughout the book sophie is talking about howl like he's insanely vain, disorderly, shitty with girls, unfriendly to other people and refusing to do things he's asked to do. then the moment sophie turns back to a beautiful 20yo howl is all over her and she's like ok let's be together! WHAT

➖ it fucks me up that howl is just a random dude from wales. he drives a car.

➖ and how come sophie just randomly turned out to be a witch somewhere in the middle and her reaction is just "oh ok well that makes sense!" and life continues as normal. WHAT!!!

➖ i'm sure there were lots of other nitpicky things i could complain about but whatever

⭐ score: 3- -- the things i remember from the ghibli film: howl and sophie on the sky, calcifer being cute, slimy howl, the scarecrow. might rewatch it now just for the funsies and comparison.

[misireads]

Year in books 2024

just some random statistics for myself.

number of books finished: 39 of which 22 were physical and 17 audiobooks.

best score of the year: 5- (gideon the ninth -- and i have contemplated since if it should be full 5 since i enjoyed it immensely)

worst score of the year: 1 (pussikaljaromaani -- i'd prefer to forget this exists)

top 3 genres:

non-fiction 10

drama 8 -- but "drama" is basically a genre i slap on books that don't really have distinctive genres outside from character relationships lol. i'm aware basically all novels ever are drama

adventure & scifi 7.

reading objectives for 2025:

more fantasy, preferably of various types

finish my current to-read lists

read more books from a variety of countries, i'm kind of done with lists of finnish "must-reads" because most are bad, boring, and/or depressing.

finally, some books that i started but dropped this year. most were either too boring or incomprehensible to me, sorry bout that guys

Autumn by Ali Smith

Enkelten verta by Johanna Sinisalo

Final Girls by Riley Sager

Greedy Sweden by Andreas Cervenka

Guds barmhärtighet by Kerstin Ekman

Hytti nro 6 by Rosa Liksom

Is by Ulla-Lena Lundberg

Joenjoen laulu by Päivi Alasalmi

Kun kyyhkyset katosivat by Sofi Oksanen

Kutsumus by Kreetta Onkeli

Siipien kantamat by Jussi Valtonen

Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury

The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler

The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey

The Therapist by B.A. Paris

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy by John le Carré

William N. päiväkirja by Kristina Carlson

Yakuzan kosto by Heikki Valkama

Ylösnousemus by Ilkka Remes.

[misireads]

To Be Taught, If Fortunate by Becky Chambers

[ physical book, read in english ]

an astronaut reciting the events of a research spaceflight mission that she went on with three other crew members, to explore four different planets (or one moon and three planets. something like that) that researchers had discovered to be habitable. each visit on a different planet is like its own story, but there's also an over-arching narrative about the characters that starts from earth and carries throughout the book.

👩‍🚀🪐🌪️

➕ a really short and fast read. i mean really. read it in three days

➕ despite the shortness, the four-person crew and their relationships are really fleshed out. i think the length also gives this book a sense of urgency that makes you keep reading.

➕ i liked the way each planet was like its own story, with a totally different mood from the others and such.

➕ the thing here that most stuck with me was the idea that scientists on earth work for decades to research life in outer space, and when it's finally time (and scientifically possible) to send an astronaut crew to those planets, you load them into a space craft and are like, okay, goodbye because we'll never see you again. because it's going to take them like 100 earth years to go there and come back. so none of the scientists who made it possible will ever see or hear about the results. this kinda fucked me up. i like it

➖ space sci-fi has never been my thing… i don't have an explanation why. maybe space stuff just doesn't resonate with me personally because i don't have an interest in it? this genre always makes me feel like i don't quite get it. i don't have enough experience to really know what the base line is, so i can't tell what's original or unique and what's typical about this novel, for example. i can judge it in the vacuum of my own experience though, which is that i found it interesting but nothing special… and i wasn't really a fan of the narrative device here, which was the main character narrating the story to an imaginary audience but not really in a way you would realistically recite the events of something that happened to you, but by using cliffhangers to derail the topic and go from the events to something like "so anyway, when i was a child…" i've noticed while keeping this blog that this is a recurring thing for me, i don't like books that are formatted to be a person telling a story but the actual book is not written at all to sound like a story told by a person lol. i seem to be anal like this.

➖ i borrowed this from my sister because i was visiting her and looked at her bookshelf like "can i borrow a short book, preferably something feel-good" and she gave me this like "this author is known for writing feel-good sci-fi!". well i don't know where that feel-good part is tbh, this ended kind of abruptly and i can't say i was very satisfied by the ending.

⭐ score: 3½ -- it was… nice? not really my thing, but perfect for the purpose i borrowed this for, which was to have a short book i could start and finish during the christmas holiday week. so, yay.

[misireads]

Non-fiction books i read in 2024

i don't write about non-fiction on this blog, for several reasons really, but simply put i don't feel the need to do so. i rarely score them on goodreads since there's no need to judge the things i typically evaluate in fiction. but the purpose of this blog is to document and shortly describe things i've read, for myself so i'd remember their contents better, so here's a simplified list of non-fiction books i have read this year.

I'm Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy [ audiobook, listened in finnish ] the life story of an ex child actress who only started acting because her narcissist mother made her. she eventually broke through in a popular kids' show and suffered from bulimia and other illnesses throughout the experience. i didn't know jennette from before, i don't know if icarly was ever a thing in my country at all (or then i'm just too old to know it), but by the end of the book i felt like i thoroughly knew her. read in january.

Pienin yhteinen jaettava ("The smallest common dividend") by Pirkko Saisio [ physical book, read in finnish ] the author's memoirs about her childhood. a collection of small moments from her life. i don't recall liking anything about this much but it was a fast read. read in january/february.

In Cold Blood by Truman Capote [ physical book, read in finnish ] a work of true crime about a murder case from 1959 when two men murdered a 4-member family in kansas. i had no idea this was true crime when i went in, i thought i was reading fiction. only realised the truth at the end lol. read in february.

Luonto pakastimessa ("Nature in a freezer") by Anu Silfverberg [ physical book, read in finnish ] a collection of the author's columns. i think she's an activist and has a provocative tone on purpose and i'm not really into that. some articles i agreed with (mostly criticism of religions), some i didn't. there was an especially dumb text about how all zoos are evil when in reality they do nature reservation work in my country. read in february/march.

Afghanerne ("The Afghans") by Åsne Seierstad [ audiobook, listened in finnish ] a deep dive into the contemporary history of afghanistan, including the birth of taliban and the events of 9/11 from the other side, through the lives of a selection of afghan people. this was very story-like, sometimes i wasn't even sure if we're still going non-fiction. i learned a lot about afghans and the history of afghanistan. read in march.

Solkattens år ("A sun cat's year") by Merete Mazzarella [ physical book, read in finnish ] a collection of the author's thoughts on aging and finding a new romantic partner in her later years. most of the book is short memoirs about things that have happened to the author, or her thoughts on books she's read, or other such things. it was pretty mundane, a fast little read, but just a bit bleak for someone in their 30s like me. read in june/july.

Ruumiin ylittävä ääni ("A voice that surpasses the body") by Tuomas Aitonurmi [ audiobook, listened in finnish ] a collection of essays about different topics: bullying and self-esteem, masculinity, music, writing, horses. the only thing they all had in common, apart from the author himself, was that there's a ton of references to other people's works. another fast little book, but all the vague referencing of the randomest things seemingly for the joy of referencing kinda reminded me of house of leaves tbh which made it unintentionally comical. but this made me realise i rather enjoy non-fiction where you just get to learn the author and their thoughts and life. kinda feels like getting a new friend. read in september.

Ulkopuolisuudesta ("About being an outsider") by Elina Kujala [ audiobook, listened in finnish ] several different angles to the experience of feeling like an outsider, mostly through examples from the author's own life, but she has also interviewed other people for variety. the topics vary from social anxiety and general introversion to being LGBT, being disabled, being a woman, being neurodivergent and such. i relate to a lot in here but it was also just a decently interesting, short listen that i picked up from a magazine article. the interview parts feel very brief, and sometimes she goes a bit off-topic with her diary entries. also this is a storytel original i.e. made for the subscribers of an audiobook app, probably as a direct commission from the app to the author, so… well, i don't know if that means anything really, but yeah. read in september.

Sex substanser som förändrar ditt liv / High on Life by David JP Phillips [ audiobook, listened in finnish ] a swedish cishet family man tells me i can get more oxytocin by stopping at the door when returning from work every day and listening to a nice song before i go home so i can feel the hugs of my children and hear the loving words of my wife better. it's a self-help book about how to have more dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin and all the other good stuff in your life. though the majority of the examples are unrelatable to me, this was quite informative for being a short little self help, to be fair. this also made me realise i'm actually doing pretty great and don't need to deliberately cook up "angel cocktails" to feel good. read in november.

Kaksipäinen koira ja muita eläimiä Neuvostoliiton tieteessä ("A two-headed dog and other animals in Soviet science") by Iina Kohonen [ audiobook, listened in finnish ] the title is misleading, there are no other animals. just dogs. about 2/3 of this was about the russian surgeon who experimented with dogs, the rest was about soviet space dogs. morbidly fascinating in a way and i'm always here for more reasons to hate russia, but i wanted more animals and less trivia about old russian scientists or meta about the writing process and the author talking about her own thoughts. read in november/december.

[misireads]

Konbini ningen (Convenience Store Woman) by Sayaka Murata

[ audiobook, listened in finnish ]

the story of a japanese woman in her late 30s who has worked part-time in a convenience store for eighteen years. she's perfectly happy with the job being her entire life and she's become basically the perfect worker, but literally everyone else, who all live according to the strict conservative japanese societal norms, seems to have a problem with it. they keep asking when she plans to "get better" and finally find herself a husband, stop working in a store, and become a more valuable contributor to the society.

🏪👩🏻🌸

➕ there's a really solid message here about what's "normal" and what isn't -- because the answer is that there is no such thing. the main character here is very much established as being "not normal" ever since she was a child, she's very autism-coded in that she navigates the world not understanding what the "appropriate" emotional response to anything is, and even as an adult she keeps copying how her coworkers at the store dress and talk and carry themselves because she doesn't seem to know what being a regular person is. and yet, it's her who seems like the only sane person out of everyone featured in the story. why is everyone so obsessed with heteronormativity and marriage and sex? and why are they jumping into crazy conclusions based on nothing but what they expect the other person to be saying? especially considering i myself am a forever-single, forever-student queer with a job that hardly makes me any money, all the "normal people" in this book were not only annoying and idiotic but also seriously delusional. how do keiko's life choices affect them at all? they don't, but they act like they do.

➕ a very short book so fast to read.

➖ for the same aforementioned reasons, this made me rather uncomfortable. i wished keiko would have been a bit more self aware of her situation and defended herself against everyone else's delusions, but she never does, she's very robotic and takes everything by self value. it's especially bad with shiraha, an incel character who abuses her lack of agency and basically becomes a bum living in her apartment and eating her food (while complaining about it), and she never even seems to realise any of this. it's uncomfortable that there's no voice of reason anywhere in the story.

➖ i'm ultimately not really sure what this book is about, tbh. there's a bit too much of the incel and his nonsense. keiko's friends and family never accept her way of life, the book just ends.

⭐ score: 3 -- thought-provoking, and i liked the parts of her working in the store. they were comfortable. everything else i could have skipped.

[misireads]

Sang by Elina Pitkäkangas

[ physical book, read in finnish ]

a story set in a fictional rendition of east asia that follows an orphan boy who, together with his brother, works as a bianfu -- a sort of black market ninja courier who's also able to use qi powers to create a "bridge", a psychic connection with other living creatures.

in the relentless post-apocalyptic world they live in, every person gets a smartwatch permanently attached to their wrist at young age, and the watch not only embodies a person's value as a human being but also records their every movement to the government internet (or skynet, literally) plus comes with the delightful feature of burdening every citizen with a national debt that they have to pay off before turning 20 or they'll be sent to this world's equivalent of gulags.

unable to pay his debt, the story starts off with the main character's brother going into hiding and forcing the little brother to partner with a stranger for some work errand instead. the stranger ends up taking him on a personal vengeance trip where she murders some merchant guy, then gets caught and proceeds to rat him out as a partner in crime almost immediately. for punishment, he's sold to be trained as an elite soldier to protect the royal family of a foreign country, led by a cruel matriarch who doesn't give a shit about human lives and loves torturing the soldiers for entertainment.

the main character decides to endure the training in order to eventually reunite with his brother, who has at this point been sent off to the slave camp. he ends up befriending one of the princesses and gets caught up in crazy court drama.

🦅🐯🌩️

➕ SIGHS what a difficult book to assess again. i'll go with the obvious pluses: it's fantasy with a lot of worldbuilding, love that. and a lot of the fantasy worldbuilding draws from the real world mixed with mythology, fantastic. it includes several fictional countries with their own cultures and languages, wow tell me more. and though the main influence is china, the main character is clearly from a fictional version of tibet (edit: actually in the acknowledgments the author mentions nepal so maybe it wasn't tibet like i thought.), and other characters are from other east asian countries if you pay enough attention. though i would have preferred if the story were a bit more explicit about whether this is like a post-apocalyptic version of our world far in the future, or if it's just an alternate fantasy version altogether. it seems to hint that a world war and an environmental disaster in the past destroyed the old version of the world, but then there aren't enough references to a place named china ever having existed instead of fusang, so.

➕ there's queer romance. or more like just queer drama but anyway, i respect any fantasy story where things other than heteronormativity exist

➕ i guess i'll give this a plus for being unpredictable. truly i never could tell where the fuck any of the events were leading me

➖ aaand now i'm gonna be a sack of pessimistic shit for a bit again. i have two main reasons for not liking this book very much; one is 100% petty, one is more sensible i think. starting with the petty thing: this fucking book reminds me way too much of my 4kingdoms and renders it impossible for me to like, because i don't in fact enjoy reading something that feels like it's been copied from my fic even though i don't actually think it's copied because that's frankly impossible. the PoV is obviously different, but this takes place in a world ruled by four royal families named and designed after the four symbols of chinese mythology. i'm aware it's not that rare a source to draw inspiration from in any fiction related to china but that doesn't make me like it any more. there's just no way for me to look at this objectively and in any way feel good about it. i'm aware i maybe should? like yaay a real ass finnish fantasy novel that uses all these elements i like so much that i use them in my own fanfic!!! but i'm not that kind of good-hearted person. i'm an annoyed kind of petty person who hated reading it all. also by the way, in addition to this being a shounen-ass story in general, the main characer's name is kong dawei and he has thunder magic powers. like. you know. a certain kon rei i know

➖ second reason i don't like this: it's just not written very well. even though this book is heavy on visceral violence, the writing is flat and straightforward enough to give it a juvenile sound fitting a book for teens. it's not bad or anything, just that it reads like a script for a television show, it's not exactly a work of finnish word art. the writing is also extremely exposition-heavy, very light on the "show, don't tell" department. but in addition to all that, it took me almost the whole book to put my finger on why exactly the story wasn't resonating with me -- i mean apart from the aforementioned 4kingdoms reason because there are many good things in here too, and it is entirely possible for me to also look at it while ignoring the fic-related discomfort, and yet i still didn't like it. the plot meanders a lot and with it comes the problem of there really being no story arc to speak of. starting from the beginning, it was really difficult for me to think of a summary of what this is exactly about. because it's about the main character ending up in situations against his will and. ending up in some more situations. a lot is happening, but i think too MUCH is happening, actually. something is happening too much, all the time, without the main character having much agency over it. there are points in the story that you think will be the pivotal moment that spurs the rest of the story in motion… and then another moment comes that you again think is the pivotal moment, and another. and ultimately most turn out to be inconsequential, because these things just happen and you could take probably half of them out and it wouldn't affect the progression of the story all that much, except that the MC maybe wouldn't end up in the next situation where he has no agency again. it's just a whumping fest where we break break break the character so that he can angst and angst some more. it's exhausting and makes the story difficult to wrap your head around. the author is probably a shounen anime fan and packed the book full of those tropes, because shounen is so full of hard battles that leave the characters gravely injured but then they just heal like it's nothing and continue on to the next fight and stuff. i'm probably being too harsh here but that's how i felt reading this honestly

➖ what in turn was TOO "show, don't tell" was the system of magic powers in this world. dawei can go on and on describing some detail in the universe but how and why exactly he and some other people here have supernatural powers is just "and then i channeled my qi and it flowed in my meridians". or he sees a god in his dream and is suddenly able to summon thunder. dude WHAT? what is the framework for this??? bro.

➖ actually i have a third major problem and that's the main character. it's not that he's unlikable, but he's just a bit too perfect in that shounen protag way where he can be hurt and hurt and hurt and yet he comes out being this perfect warrior who again out-does himself in the next scene, and all the good guys like him and all the bad guys dislike him. also, the author has given him way too many people to care about/be his main motivation in the story. there's the brother who's like super duper important, but then there's the boyfriend (and later, a new crush) who is super duper important. but then there's the orphanage that's super duper important, but oh there's the hawk that's super duper uber important to him. when you have too many of those things fighting for the character's attention, you end up with me not resonating with any of it much. absolutely the author should have stuck to just one thing, two things max that are most important to him. also^2, unlike most shounen heroes, dawei is already skilled at the beginning of the story. there's no real sense of payoff in his soldier training at the royal castle because he's just great at fighting already. i think this story would have benefited if it started earlier on the timeline and introduced us to how dawei learned to fight, how he worked as a bianfu, his everyday life with his brother (but the book is already 500 pages long so clearly it's already stretching it as is). oh also he randomly gets even more powerful because some fucking god randomly connects with him for no real reason other than that he's just somehow special for suffering so much and so very talented and good without doing anything for it as far as i know

➖ way too many drops of random chinese words all the time. extremely weeaboo and leaves most readers scratching their heads

⭐ score: 3½ -- i thought i would like this more than i did, but it's still a three and a half because i did go on a 500-page journey with this book and it rewarded me with a rich world full of interesting details, and i liked that the main character returned to his home at the end because i really love stories that close a loop like that. the end is a cliffhanger because there's a sequel. i don't think i want to bully myself more by reading it

[misireads]

Vilpittömästi sinun (Cold Courage) by Pekka Hiltunen

[ physical book, read in finnish ]

the story of lia, a finnish woman living a sterile career woman's life in london. one day she has a chance meeting with another finnish woman, mari, who seems to have a borderline supernatural sherlock holmes-like skill to read people and their thoughts and intentions. mari introduces a whole new world of excitement to lia by showing off her company, a troupe of four super talented people who pretty much do whatever mari wants, usually stunts that are just barely legal (or not at all).

at the same time, there's a grotesque case of someone having brutally murdered a woman and left the mushed remains in the middle of london, and lia becomes obsessed with the case. lia wants to solve the murder and proposes the case to mari, and mari agrees with one condition: lia in turn needs to help with their on-going case of trying to bring down a trump-esque right wing character who's trying to take his white supremacist party to the parliament.

🇬🇧🏢🔎

➕ there's a lot of layers here, it's a hard one to summarise concisely. this is a very Female Empowerment kind of novel, the two main characters are women and everything they do throughout the story is for other women, there are a couple of male characters helping them out but it's the women who are in charge, and all the bad guys are men. i can't say i've read many crime novels with this big of a female focus -- and it's written by a man, actually.

➕ i thought the premise of finns living in london was fun. this author clearly really really loves london and flexing with london trivia.

➕ i also like novels where the premise is laypeople solving crimes.

➕ i like lia… mostly. there are aspects of her that i relate to in uncanny ways, specifically when she gets so obsessed with the country of latvia that she immediately wants to google everything about it for knowledge lol. she was not a believable character in the slightest otherwise, the whole story relies on her accidentally stumbling on the right information and everyone loving and respecting her on sight, except the evil latvian gangster men of course

➕ i like the way hiltunen writes, it's straightforward and pleasant to read without being too simplistic or anything, and he's very good at creating these small moments that stick with you. when i started reading this, i was momentarily super excited about the writing and how it took off with the mushed remains of the murdered person and all, so initially i was thinking this is the kind of novel where i can just immediately tell i like it. or that i like how it's written, at least. because a lot of time i don't get that feeling

➖ well… that feeling didn't exactly last. the plot is alright, and i wasn't thinking of dropping the book out of boredom at any point, but i kind of lost that initial spark of interest when mari's company the studio was introduced. it felt really… like, a band of super talented superhumans working under this superhuman lady in an office building in london and doing whatever they want.. it feels like something i would have come up with when i was 15, except the characters would have all been teenagers then but anyway. something about the premise is a bit childish. then later on i found myself less and less interested with all the latvians introduced and whatever, i truly just didn't care about them and all the detail put into lia befriending them. some parts of the plot also had gaping holes, which doesn't help with the credibility exactly. for example, [spoiler] you're telling me that these perfect studio superpeople would screw up with such an elementary thing as not checking they have all the latvian women with them when they did the rescue mission?? lol? so stupid. and why did lia not start screaming or smth when fried hit her and she was lying on the floor in the hotel room, the guard would have come catch his ass immediately. in both cases it feels like it just needed to go this way for the plot to work. bad bad plotting.

➖ mari is my worst nightmare, i don't think i like her. or in a way i do, because she's a boss lady with grey morals and gets shit done in her own unique ways. but she first of all has a horribly tiny part in the plot for being supposedly such a crucial element of it, AND i would absolutely fucking hate someone like her existing in real life because i do not want to be perceived. her miraculous riches are a huge deus ex machina for every single plot point of the story, like, the reason anything can even happen here is that mari has endless pockets. again not very credible.

➖ a big part of the plot deals with mafia gangsters and their prostitutes from latvia. i'm not a big fan of this kind of rep for eastern europe. ESPECIALLY because the two main women are from finland and there's this kind of perverted comparison of finnish women being super independent, super talented, fantastic and beautiful, need no man superhumans, while eastern european women don't have any other prospectives than becoming whores for a living. i vomited a little in my mouth when i read the back cover and its title is "DO NOT MESS WITH FINNISH WOMEN". uugh…. yeah.

➖ this is more just my queer ass reading a very heteronormie not-queer book but this would have been so much better if there was romantic and/or sexual tension between lia and mari. instead this does this very Man Writing Women kind of thing where it's unnecessarily dropped here and there how both have one night stands with men like the Independent Strong Wumyn they are. if i'm asked, the only practical reason to have those sex scenes (AND them both pining for the same man, apparently) implied is because lia is trying to fill the lesbian yearning for mari in her heart by sleeping around with men, ugh GET A CLUE! what wasted potential

⭐ score: 3+ -- this is neither plus nor minus, but this book is from 2011 and feels like a relic from the past. it's pre-brexit and pre-2016 and among other things relies heavily on the idea that it would be ludicrous for a white supremacist rightwinger who's been charged for sexual assault to ever have a successful political career. haha. hahahahaha. hehhe! i guess on one hand i could give this credit for predicting the political scene so accurately.

[misireads]

The House in the Cerulean Sea by T.J. Klune

[ physical book, read in finnish & english ]

the story of a man who starts off as stale as if the colour beige was a human. he's a diligent office worker in a government department that evaluates orphanages for magical children. he's so good at making bland, objective reports that the stuck-up management of the department decides to send him to an orphanage for particularly troublesome monster children, hidden away on a remote island in the middle of nowhere. the man takes a train there, fearing for his life because he's pre-emptively so scared of these children.

on the island, after a rough start, he befriends the children and begins to learn how he's been living a stupid, prejudiced, boring life with no colour in it whatsoever all this time. also he falls for the leader of the orphanage and they have a gay little romance.

👨‍💼🌊🧚‍♀️

➕ obvious first things first. this is a gay love story, i'm all for it. a really soft and sort of mundane one about two middle-aged men too, where them being gay isn't a big deal, actually it's probably the smallest deal of them all. lol the romance was incredibly cheesy but you never see THAT in literature

➕ it's a hearty story about prejudice and acceptance. magical beings in this world are so viscerally hated that nobody cares about your sexual orientation or skin colour, but if you're a dragon or some shit then YUCK! EW! STAY AWAY FROM THE CHILDREN YOU HEATHEN! it's kind of amazing. this is also completely void of any mention of religion which i enjoyed. all the bigoted hate and prejudice in the entire universe is truly just packed into there existing magical people in this book. i personally felt it first and foremost symbolised the lack of empathy for people with disabilities (both physical and mental) because there are so many nudges towards that, but it's probably just in general also. angry goodreads reviews are saying it's a very poorly executed nudge towards native americans actually but i'll run with my own interpretation anyway

➕ hands down my favourite thing in the entire book is lucy. he's the reason i originally kept reading at all because i was so enamored by a little 6yo satan. i could have read a whole book just about him really.

➖ well this is a tough one to review. basically what happened was that i took the finnish translation from the library. and i kind of fucking hated it. it's a very literal-feeling translation, a lot of the dialogue is so stiff you barely understand what the characters are sometimes talking about, the language felt very infantile. i don't think the magical creature translations really work. they turned talia into a goblin instead of a gnome, that's a whole fucking different creature? there are just many many things i don't like about it. then i suddenly had to return the book to the library so i put a reservation on the original english one, thinking if i'm gonna finish this, it has to be in english. so i got that one and had no issues with the language or anything else whatsoever. i should definitely have read in english from the beginning. i didn't return it to the library yet so i might go back to the beginning and revisit some of the scenes in english to actually understand what happened

➖ this is like.. well it's not a very small children's book, and not exactly for teenagers either because the contents are so softcore, i feel. it's either for rather childish adults or for pre-teen children, maybe. edit: actually i don't see anyone call this a children's book online, just "YA" which it fucking isn't. much confusion. are you telling me this nonsense is a book for adults. either way, although the message is very good and all, the whole book is hopelessly childish in a way that made me feel like it didn't need to be. it's just a bit too simplistic at times, like helen's character, she does a 360 in a matter of a couple of lines with very little basis. idk how to well put it, maybe that it felt like there's ingredients for more here and that the characters are built in such a way that they could have been so much more if only the book took itself more seriously and went deeper at all instead of staying so surface level and turning everything into a joke. the entire plotline was also very predictable, basically you can tell what happens as soon as linus it sent to the island and that doesn't make a very exciting book to get through.

➖ i hated linus so fucking much in the early chapters lmao i get it that it's all about his growth but man. the premise of his character is that he's excellent at his job, very good at being objective, does his background work super well. then he goes to this island job and is immediately mad prejudiced (although working with magical kids is literally his job, this job he's supposedly so good at, but now he suddenly can't take them anymore), proceeds to not even read the files of the children. he goes to this orphanage that HE KNOWS from THE INFORMATION HE GOT has been as it is for some time, and the first thing he does is hate all the children on sight and decides that lucy will kill everyone in the house any minute now and he's the only force stopping him. although he knows perfectly well from the beginning that lucy has been living with the other kids all this time already without anyone dying. the only difference is that he's there now so why would lucy suddenly blow the place up (other than to kill linus because he's so insufferable, which would have been 100% fair). it was so nonsensical, it felt like the story was just made up on the go without any thought put into if it makes any sense how linus is reacting to things. actually i just hate reactionary characters in general like stop being a fuckign buffoon imbecile and use that brain of yours that's so big. he's literally even complaining about his fucking cat all the time, jesus christ let her be a cat. is it supposed to be funny? then mark down the humour as another minus because it's not

➖ i seem to be the only person on earth who thinks this (edit: goodreads says i am not, in fact) but i wasn't that big a fan of how hard this kept hammering in the EVERYONE!!SHOULD!!BE!!ACCEPTED!!! message, i prefer subtler ways of storytelling tbh not every single scene needs to be about this.

➖ the world building could have had a bit more substance. not much was said about the system of magic existing in this universe so it was all a bit vague.

⭐ score: 3 -- a lot of negative thoughts again but overall i rather liked this, despite my ranting (and being shocked that this isn't for children). i guess something about this touched me deeper than i realised because i was AGAIN crying at the end. what's with me crying at the end of books these days??? what's happened to me. i don't cry at things. i'm probably ill and should call in sick to work

[misireads]

Misery by Stephen King

[ audiobook, listened in finnish ]

a writer gets in a car accident while drunk driving in the middle of nowhere and finds himself both legs broken at the mercy of a woman who has taken him to her house in the remote countryside. she's an ex nurse, the NUMBER ONE FAN of his best-selling book series (named misery), and, as he very soon realises, crazy mentally……. challenged. the woman is beyond mad that he kills off the main character of misery in the final novel of the series, makes him burn the manuscript of his newest novel which he was on his way to get published before the accident, and forces him to start instead writing another sequel to the misery series where she comes back to life.

this turns into a psychological game of the author knowing she'll keep him alive for as long as the new misery novel is still in the makings, all the while knowing that he needs to find a way to get out of the house eventually.

💊📖👨‍🦽

➕ misery is one of my favourite king movie adaptations, so i went in knowing this is a story i like. this kind of despaired slow burn setting with complete helplessness involved is one of my favourite psychological horror tropes. (and i mean actual helplessness. like physically unable to get out of it. i guess there's also a body horror aspect there that i enjoy)

➕ i don't remember the film version super well, mostly just that it's the setting i liked about it. in this book version, it's A Lot about all the quirks of the main character's inner monologue, i realised while reading that that's the thing giving so much life to this story. this may be my favourite king novel for the prose, honestly. i don't remember any other giving me this kind of entertainment with words.

➕ the first novel in a long time that made me genuinely queasy

➖ how should i even put this thought. this is a long book, the audiobook is twelve hours long. that's a lot of hours about a man being stuck in a room. i realised kinda early on that this is going to drag, and that the setting actually kind of.. bores me…. or it doesn't but it does, at times. maybe five hours in i felt like i was really tired of listening to the story already and there's so much left still. definitely The most boring part were the new misery novel chapters. it's only a few short-ish(too long if i'm asked) segments of the whole book but it just… went on for too long anyway. and somehow managed to get racist later also, the finnish translation makes the african man speak totally incomprehensibly, my god. then when at some point i was like, alright clearly all the story points have now been handled and this is about to come to an end, i noticed there's still 5 hours left. and after the storyline really was over, it's STILL way too much left. it was one of those.

➖ this iiiiiiis… well it was published in 1987 so in many ways it's a work of its era and this is VERY pervasive in the genre anyway. but it's very definitively the "mental illness = evil" type of horror. annie never has any motive for anything she does, she's simply "crazy" so she's "evil" and therefore does bad things to people. yeaah…. i didn't feel super great about that.

⭐ score: 3+ -- i went to read the movie synopsis after i finished listening and while i don't remember the film super well, i feel like that one was more about the horror of annie in a trimmed-down package, while this book is like, at heart, about writing books, and in a very drawn-out way at that. it's a LOT more about, well, words. i think i like the more condensed movie edition better in this case. it just seems like i can't make myself like stephen king novels no matter how much i try. also i kind of picked this up at the wrong moment, this was my october halloweeny season read (one of them), and i realised at some point that this really isn't a halloweeny spooky book so i was feeling kinda meh but also like i needed to keep going. fgdklgmkdfmgf