shay-the-reader

[shay-the-reader]

🎧: second tide’s the charm x chandra blumberg

rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️.5

genre(s): romance

review in one sentence: perfect if you want something cutesy, low stakes, and full of shark/ocean puns

⛴️🦈💭💙🌊

“Friends will never be enough for me Hope,” he moves closer, his hands still caught in my unsteady grip, “but if that’s all you have to give, I’ll take it.”

[shay-the-reader]

💙⚔️❤️⚔️💜

we’re sorry. the number you’re trying to dial cannot be reached. please try again when shay is done reading and recovering from oathbound.

[shay-the-reader]

📖: if beale street could talk x james baldwin (1974)

genres: classic, romance

rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

review in one sentence: a timeless story of love and community under threat of mass incarceration.

“And I understand that the growth of the baby is connected with his determination to be free… The baby wants out. Fonny wants out. And we are going to make it: in time.”

[shay-the-reader]

bookshelf tour ✨

🫧🧸📖🧋☁️

finally got one of my bookshelves organized! i’ve never been the best at keeping my shelves together, but ever since starting this account my books have been all over the place.

i still have two carts and two white cubes with books and three rogue stacks on the floor that still need order just that’s a problem for future me.

how do you organize your books? 📚

[shay-the-reader]

📖: 1984 x george orwell (1949)

genre(s): dystopian, classic

rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️

review in one sentence: ummm, what?

“If he were allowed contact with foreigners he would discover that they are creatures similar to himself and that most of what he has been told about them is lies.”

👁️

cw//misogyny & gendered violence

it’s took me a bit longer than usual to string the right words together for this book so bear with me.

i had high expectations for 1984 after reading and loving animal farm a few months back. george orwell is known to write dystopian fiction that pointedly warns against totalitarian governments and political leaders, which is literature i always enjoy. i willingly admit that 1984 does exactly that, so much so that i had at least 2 anxiety attacks reading the third chapter/part of this book. it also didn’t help that i read it right after the change in the presidential administration in the u.s.

where this book fell flat for me was the blatant misogyny. winston smith had no problem admitting how much he hates women, particularly “the young and pretty ones”, and how he fantasizes about enacting violence on them — he even says it to his “love” interest julia (i’m using love extremely loosely here).

a major theme that comes up is doublethink — a form of indoctrination that convinces people to believe two contradictory things are true. i’m not sure if orwell intentionally creates this relationship between julia and winston to showcase that even an emotion like love can be distorted by doublethink. that despite julia knowing nothing about winston and winston admitting he wants to harm her, they could still convince themselves that they are in love.

and while i’m put off by winston the character and how julia is written, by the end i still needed to contend with the big brother of it all. if anything, 1984 reminded me that no matter how much i despise someone or how much they participate and perpetuate oppression, it still doesn’t warrant being gaslit and abused by a carceral state.

i didn’t love this book but it did give me much to think about 💭

[shay-the-reader]

just a girl and her kobo

[shay-the-reader]

📖: frankenstein x mary shelley (1818)

rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

review in one sentence: this is a reframing of the story of creation & the fall of lucifer showing how the pursuit of knowledge leads to an unyielding descent into madness.

🛠️🕯️🧟💭

“A human being in perfection ought always to preserve a calm and peaceful mind and never to allow passion or a transitory desire to disturb his tranquility. I don’t think that the pursuit of knowledge is an exception to this rule.”

[shay-the-reader]

"But every freedom dream shares a common desire to find better ways of being together without hierarchy and exclusion, without violence and domination, but with love compassion, care, and friendship.” from Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination by Robin D.G. Kelley

[shay-the-reader]

📖: isaac’s song x daniel black (2025)

rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

genres: queer fiction, historical fiction

review in one sentence: a heart-warming story of a son healing his relationship with his father through grief and memory.

“And that’s the role of the writer—to force the reader’s freedom—even when bondage is the preference.”

✍🏾🐦‍⬛✨

if you like this, you might also enjoy…

📖 fire shut up in my bones x charles m. blow (2014)

📖 all boys aren’t blue x george m. johnson (2020)

🎧 fire shut up in my bones, recorded live at the met opera x terence blanchard (2022)

[shay-the-reader]

📖: the fifth season x n.k. jemisin (2015)

rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

review in one sentence: my bar for fantasy has officially been raised 🙂‍↕️

“This is what you must remember: the ending of one story is just the beginning of another. this has happened before, after all. People die. Old orders pass. New societies are born. When we say ‘the world has ended,’ it’s usually a lie, because the planet is just fine.”

[shay-the-reader]

📖: ring shout x p. djèlí clark (2020)

genres: historical fiction, horror, fantasy

rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️.75

review in one sentence: i loved the overall concept but thought aspects of the plot and characters could benefit from this being a longer book and not a novella.

“For a moment it seems the two are battling: my songs and his uneven chorus. But it was never a real fight. What I have is beautiful music inspired by struggle and fierce love. What he got ain’t nothing but hateful noise.”

🗡️👻🪘

if you like this, you might also enjoy…

📺 lovecraft country (2020)

🎬 us (2019)

📖 kindred x octavia butler (1979)

[shay-the-reader]

hi 👋🏾

i’m shay (she/they). i’m 25 located in the chicagoland area.

i’m here to yap mainly about books and occasionally (grandma) hobbies i have. making a semi-official return to tumblr after being on and off the app the last few years.

a little about my reading habits…

i read across many genres, both fiction and nonfiction. some of my favorite genres are fantasy, dystopian, romance, and literary fiction. i also enjoy reading memoirs, critical theory, and marginalized histories!

other hobbies i like are crocheting, watching reality tv, and listening to music!

in the next few days/weeks i’ll do a content dump of stuff i’ve already been posting on ig (@shay.thereader) — reviews, bookish challenges, reading lists, etc. — and post whatever else going forward.

can’t wait to yap about books with y’all!

[shay-the-reader]

📖: babel x r.f. kuang (2022)

rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

genres: historical fantasy

review in one sentence: i won’t be accepting any critiques of this book -thnx, management

“’I don’t want to be their tragic, lovely lacquer figure. I want to live… I want to live,’ she repeated, ‘and live, and thrive, and survive them. I want a future. I don’t think death is a reprieve. I think it’s — it’s just the end. It forecloses everything — a future where I might be happy, and free.’”

🏛️🕯️🗣️📜

i never fully understood the desire to rate a book 6 stars until this moment. here are some reasons why i LOVED this book…

🕯️ history & portrayal of colonialism • this must be the year of historical fiction for me! my knowledge of the british empire is very minimal but those footnotes gave me so much context. post-read, i really want to find out which parts were truly fiction and which were historically accurate. there were a few characters i had to look up to see if they were real.. there are some really terrible people in history. even though i didn’t know much about the british empire, the characteristics of colonialism were fairly easy to spot based on what i know about it as a whole. i truly love a story that can teach me history and simultaneously keep me invested in the story!

🕯️ character evolution of robin • i was so nervous about the length of this book but it was absolutely necessary to show robin evolve as a person, especially since he was raised and trained to be a tool of british colonialism. it was cathartic to seeing him slowly unlearn the logics that he was taught to believe about himself, his heritage and the english. from beginning to end, robin is a character whose story i may never forget.

🕯️ academic setting • before 💩 really hit the fan, the portrayal of robin and his cohort as students was spot on. it didn’t surprise me to find out that r.f. kuang has both a masters and a phd bc at certain moments, i felt like i was back in grad school while reading this. the cyclical nature of the academic school year. the naiveté of being a first year. the transformation into a shell of a human by second year. the temporary reprieve of the summer months. it all felt too close to home.

🕯️ language & etymology • growing up, i swore i would be a polyglot and this fueled part of those delusions. it’s interesting having read this book right around a lot of tiktok users flocking to xhs/red note and learning mandarin. don’t be surprised if you see me with a mandarin language notebook

⏳🖋️✨🕰️

if you like this, you might also enjoy…

📖 discourse on colonialism (1950)

📖 the wretched of the earth x frantz fanon (1961)

📖 freedom dreams: the black radical imagination x robin d.g. kelley (2002)

📖 third world studies x gary y. okihiro (2016)

📖 decolonization and afro-feminism x sylvia tamale (2020)