#i mean he's one of my faves anyway but i specifically remember the audiobook for middlesex was great (again: check warnings first)

[searidings]

Wow 108 books, that's amazing!!! I definitely need to check out the bold/italicized ones on your list at least

My goal for this year was 52 and I'm trying to make it in these last couple days lol do you have any specific recs that are shorter? Or maybe good audiobooks for variety? I just listened to This Is How You Lose the Time War in a sitting from like 8 pm to 2am and it was so good and visceral I felt like I was going insane

hmmm idk if you like sci-fi and/or if you've ever tried becky chambers (who i would recommend regardless) but to be taught, if fortunate is a charming little sci-fi novella that restored my faith in humanity in the most touchingly beautiful way

for great audiobooks i will NOT stop screaming about the locked tomb series by tamsyn muir, the narration is EXQUISITE like these are not short books nor are they straightforward but i'm not a big re-reader yet as you can see from my list, i read/listened to that series 3 times in one year (twice in a month) because they're just That Good

[deathvsthemaiden]

ok wait after u sent me that ask i have to know ur top books!!! dw if u don't feel like it but i would love to hear them 🌷

This is so sweet and considerate! Thank you Eva, you gave me 5 so I’ll try to keep it to that # as well 💖🐰 off the top of my head:

🌷 The Stormlight Archive series, especially the second book, Words of Radiance. Stormlight is like 4 books + 2 novellas right now, and is projected to be 10 books and ???novellas eventually. And on top of that each main book is 1000+ pages and while you can read Stormlight on its own, most of the other books by the author, Brandon Sanderson, are part of this larger fictional universe called the cosmere. Each series takes place on a different planet, and if you are invested in the whole cosmere, there’s Easter egg references to other series in other series. So like! While I rec these books often, most people understandably don’t take me up on it wgshshh 🤭 Sanderson’s non-Stormlight books are all MUCH shorter but also much more flawed imo. Like I wouldn’t count him among my favorite authors were it not for Stormlight. anyway I’m a die hard fantasy fan so the length didn’t deter me, and I picked these up because a friend told me the world building in these books was genuinely unique instead of the typical very lazy maps composed of like. Fantasy Russia and its hostile mysterious neighbors Fantasy General East Asia and Fantasy Africa lol. and she was right! The world building is exquisite and refreshing and almost every character is canonically of color. They live in a society with an eye color based caste system and it’s.., so hard to sum up this massive series with four main characters and a ridiculous(ly fun) amount of plot lines, so I’ll cut this short and say 1) the first book, The Way of Kings, is highly expository but the ending is so so worth it, and if you enjoy the ending you’ll find merit in continuing with the series 2) Words of Radiance is my favorite book so far partially because I haven’t read the newest, Rhythm of War, yet, and also because it’s the book with the most scenes that solidified Kaladin Stormblessed (one of the main characters) as one of my favorites of all time. Another one of the best things about this series is how Brandon Sanderson portrays mental health in very natural ways, and it makes Kaladin’s growth so incredibly soothing to follow (I MEAN. He has low points that sometimes hit too close to home, but it makes you root for him harder) he really is just. Truly my definition of a hero, if we wanna get cheesy about it, and I had to pick one solid example. I love him so much this isn’t even the tip of the iceberg as to why 😭!

🌷Jane Eyre. Silly frivolous teenaged girl that I am this book swept me off my feet when I first read it and I condone every problematic aspect of it❤️ (I DONT ofc but like! I love drama and being played like a fiddle by narratives and the book delivered on both fronts! And it couldn’t have without its unsavory plot twist soooo 😙💖) (the hate this book and especially one specific character gets is funny to me just because like. Hate for the former (imo) usually stems from people taking the book too seriously while simultaneously missing the point (JE and du Maurier’s Rebecca (highly influenced by the former) are oft considered loose Bluebeard retellings for a reasonnnn!) and hate for the latter is usually just like. Warranted and then taken over the top like... he’s just a fake funny little man you guys :( and the book would’ve been boring if he wasn’t so twisted and out of touch and passionate ): not to mention I do personally in a mean ish way think it’s funny how for some people this character is one of the worst examples of men they can imagine. Like good for Them! I don’t want them to have lower standards for horribleness in people But also omg 🤭 it just reminds me of how... irony of all ironies, I’m semi frequently told I’m too harsh on real life men and then when I love twisted ones in books (for being funny and entertaining and good solid characters) I like. get the most interesting side eyes (whether figurative or literal) bwjswnhshe anyway I have nothing against Austen, I definitely enjoy her, but from what I’ve read so far, I prefer the Brontës a lot more... I need adventure! Show me horror show me rot etc etc❤️ also I’m. A stupid sucker so the fact that the book was Charlotte Brontë’s attempt to write a plain looking lady protagonist and to make her praiseworthy and virtuous and worthy of spellbinding romance makes me... ���💓💕

🌷Keturah and Lord Death — Martine Leavitt. I haven’t seen it officially stated anywhere but to me it’s p clear this book is a retelling of/highly inspired by Godfather Death (the Grimm tale) Very simple, predictable but effective plot, and the characters are just. So much fun. From my url you can probably tell I love stories in which women (or anyone but you know. Death and the Maiden is its own trope for a reason) outsmart/face off against death. If they also k*ss, when done right, I think that’s swell as well.

🌷A Thousand Splendid Suns — Khalid Hosseini. By far the heaviest book I will mention in this ask, and I don’t rec it willy nilly for that and a few other reasons. It’s a forever fave to me because I read it at the exact right time in my life, where I was like... noticing a ton of things irl and things at home were tumultuous, and when I saw very similar things unfold in this book while I was being silenced and made to feel crazy by the adults around me, it meant so much to me to see reality as I was experiencing it in real time reflected back at me via this novel. The context of the story is wildly different from my own life and the stakes the characters face are far higher, and it is if I remember right mostly a novel about the horrors of war, which isn’t something I pretend to have any firsthand experience with, but! It was legitimately cathartic to read when I read it, and it especially meant a lot to me at the time that the author was a grown man. Not to mention how my mother is not and never has been a reader, and somehow the one and only book I ever managed to get her to read was this. Hilariously she got mad at me for only (“only”) reading depressing things (there’s... a grain of truth to that but she doesn’t need to know! 🤫) but also... she was hooked I could tell! (I got all tmi explaining this one gag I’m so sorry)

🌷A Slight Trick of the Mind — Mitch Cullin. Retirement-era Holmes! Holmes as an old man! A sad old man who keeps bees!! It’s the novel the movie Mr. Holmes was based off of (haven’t seen it yet) and I was not expecting it to get me all sentimental like it did 🤨😪 but anyway it’s like. A prolonged character study and explores some of the most interesting (to me, anyway) parts of Holmes that are only lightly touched upon in canon, like his occasionally huge follies when navigating his few close relationships and how he copes with them afterwards, his fatigue at the random injustice of the world, how he’s often mistaken both by characters that surround him and people irl as a man without feelings, etc etc. like there’s no Dr. Watson or Mrs. Hudson in this book, and the people he interacts with are almost entirely original characters, but as I listened to the audiobook it barely occurred to me to miss Watson and Hudson (I know! 😦) and the author’s original characters interacted with Holmes so believably that I sometimes forgot they weren’t ever Doyle’s. Def recommend to any flexible Holmes fan that’s not a total stickler for canon (though you don’t actually have to know much about Holmes to read this book and enjoy it! 🐝)

🌷Sleepless — Sarah Vaughn + Leila del Luca. I began with the longest book, so let me end with the shortest. It’s a 2 volume long graphic novel series and that it’s so short is the only long standing, legitimate complaint I have of it! Gorgeous art, really effectively written romance, a dark skinned girl who gets to be the proactive, lively protagonist and stunning, pined after love interest at the same time, a cast of characters that is majority of color, the perfect %-age of drama and angst etc etc. if you can find it via your library or online or smth, you can knock it out in one sitting and leave the experience eternally altered in the funnest way 👁👄👁

Honorable mentions: The Botany of Desire — Michael Pollan, Troubling Love — Elena Ferrante, The Girl from the Garden — Parnaz Foroutan

[rigelmejo]

Read 9 guardian print pages in an hour. It’s not much but it’s honest work lol ToT

Next chapter is 10 pages so enough reading tonight lol.

It’s funny cause I can read it out loud but it’s that feeling you have where it sounds right and natural but I can’t consciously remember the tones when I speak that fast so like I suspect there’s a shit ton of incorrect tones I just am not noticing when reading to myself. Although it would... possibly be an interesting experiment to record myself reading aloud just to like, be able to listen to it later when I’ve made the progress to know how it actually is sounding lol.

It’s very fun that I’m in a place where adjectives and idioms I can often figure out from the Hanzi I know and the radicals I know, and I only run into a couple Hanzi a page I can’t remember the pronunciation of but my mind just supplies a quick guess as I’m reading (not trustworthy!! Lol) because it refuses to slow down reading. However There is an upside to this - since my brain refuses to read slower I realize I do instinctively know a pretty high amount of the pronunciations. (Although again I suspect tones wrong galore). Just in the sense of like... I’ve read so many of these Hanzi and looked them up before, Listen Read to guardian enough, that my brain has an inner voice for them. The way the phrases are supposed to come out (I feel the 4th tone words are probably coming out right since I know I follow them easy in listening). The way my brain just can suddenly remember the pinyin (ish - it remembers the pronunciation) of Hanzi I thought I couldn’t remember the pronunciation of. But because there’s literally no dictionary to click on for help in print books, my brain proves it did actually store the pronunciation better than I thought. Which is kinda cool (and a good reason for extensive reading I think - just one reason being I think making the brain recall all the info of meaning and pronunciation from memory without help can help you both review what you’ve studied and help your brain decide these words are worth storing in long term memory since their recall is necessary).

But yeah, my guardian reading is in a fun place.

Today I also just listened to the SVSSS while reading the text. Fast pace but I am very happy the writing is not very hard to follow especially since I know the plot already since I read it in English. I don’t think I plan to full Listen Read to SVSSS (at least not right now) so I was skipping any English-translations/definitions step. I could follow enough just listening and reading to the Chinese so that’s fine. I might do that some more some time. Would be fun to try this with mdzs some time. (Fun fact I have one volume of mdzs it’s in traditional Hanzi and I don’t know why I tried to read it 5 months into study way back then but I did and the notes I made were chaos as I tried to recognize traditional equivalents while barely knowing any words in GENERAL).

Also it is. So brutally clear to me I learned so many words specifically tailored to reading priest novels lol ToT. Specifically I think it’s the L R Method being why sheer percentage wise I know so many of the words now (compared to 寒舍 where I just learned vocab over time from word lookup and only read new chapters - versus guardian where the print chapters I read are mostly vocab similar to what I already L R Method). Like.. just the fact I can read aloud all Hanzi a page except 1-2? Yes I’m sure I’m making errors but the fact I even have rough pronunciation picked up for nearly all of them already is surprising to me and it’s gotta be all the Listening in L R Method helping my brain store the pronunciations/meanings together easier idk. Basically just guardian has so few unknown Hanzi right now despite I Know it being higher in unknown words than 猫城记. It’s just cause guardian is specifically very closely aligned with Words I Prioritized Learning lol. Well I hope if nothing else this means future priest novels will also be “easier than their expected difficulty level.” Except, it’s a weird balance rn. Because like vocab level/grammar usage yes guardian has gotten muchhh easier to read (vocab wise even easier than SVSSS for me). But like actual writing complexity it is STILL dense ass text (it’s smaller font than SVSSS and way longer), while it’s not hard to read in the sense of words known it very much like 猫城记 requires much more active focus from me to catch the hints about Shen weis identity, to interpret guo changchengs biased perspective and thoughts, to catch the unique characterization bias of each POV the narration switches to, to catch foreshadowing and story hints about the cases/character arcs. It’s both dense text so it simply takes longer to read, and it’s detail important/rich so I can’t really skim parts of it if I’m tired. Which Poyun is like this too - detail rich at least the first chapter, characterization built with the whole narrative not just clear explanatory words, so I had to pay attention to more than just the words.

Anyway knowing a lot of priest specific author words will probably help me later. (And again I think L R Method is a good way to intensively study short term to learn authors fave words, it seemed to work well after about 10 chapters the audiobook on its own or book on its own got easier to follow). I wanna read tian ya ke and qi ye so that will probably help. I also got... another priest novel help me ToT. I also own MoDu and want to read it after guardian. Man I really do be putting myself thru it..

Mmm other things. Not gonna lie it feels really cool to be understanding enough to learn words in context like I recognized funeral, “kick her down the road like a ball” (family trying to pass off Li qian when Shen Wei called them), the funeral word also used to describe guo so like “stiff like death” I imagine was similar to the imagery that descriptive phrase was going for, a word I didn’t know but realized meant Shen wei was dividing up the food he brought to give to everyone. Guo mentioning foods and school related words. Just in general all the descriptors i figured out.

[lizziebennet]

Hi Aurora okay first tysm for your blog It's so lovely to have another person so passionate about my fave things (i.e hp and period dramas) Anyway, i recently read the HP series (again) and found myself feeling SO MUCH. I genuinely teared up at so many different touching parts and I was just wondering what are your favorite most heart-wrenching/emotional parts from the books? I realize this is a lengthy quesition so feel free to never answer this or take a year.

ye S SS i love being passionate ab things and sharing that passion w my followers!!!!! i love yall esp when u ask me questions like this where i get to talk ab my fave things everrrrrrrrr (ps thank u so much for letting me take forever to answer this ur so cute to say that ilysm)

ok so literally i will cry my way thru the entire series when i reread bc harry potter has so much emotional weight for me and so many memories that go along with it. but i decided to limit myself to just 10 bc otherwise id be sitting here typing all day. so w/o further ado: 

AURORA’S TOP 10 MOST TEARFUL HARRY POTTER MOMENTS: 

((in no particular order)) 

HARRY READS LILY’S LETTER IN DH: listen harry doesnt actually spend a lot of the books angsting over the fact that he doesnt have parents but in moments like this u remember he IS AN ORPHAN AND IT GETS ME SO HARD. fuk like just picturing harry crouched on the floor of sirius’s bedroom reading that letter… rereading it… crying… wow.gif!!!!! the line that makes me cry eveRY TIME is “She had made her g’s the same way he did : he searched through the letter for every one of them, and each felt like a friendly little wave glimpsed from behind a veil.“ LIKE RIP RIP RIP ABORT ABORT ABORT ITS TOO SAD!!!!!

THE LOST PROPHECY IN OOTP: JESSESCREAMING.JPEG!!!!!!!!!!!! listen ,,, i talk ab this chapter so much on my blog. it is my #1 favorite moment in my #1 favorite harry potter book which is my #1 favorite series of all time. SO ITS A PRETTY BIG DEAL. harry’s reaction to sirius’s death… his anger at dumbledore… his grief… his discovery of his fate… its beautiful writing and its so painful but so amazing to read. LIKE!!!!! MY BABY!!! HE’S LOST SO MANY PEOPLE!!!!!!!! MY SWEET SUMMER CHILD!!!!!!!!!! “I DON’T CARE!“ Harry yelled at them, snatching up a lunascope and throwing it into the fireplace. “I’VE HAD ENOUGH, I’VE SEEN ENOUGH, I WANT OUT, I WANT IT TO END, I DON’T CARE ANYMORE!” “You do care,” said Dumbledore. He had not flinched or made a single move to stop Harry demolishing his office. His expression was calm, almost detached. “You care so much you feel as though you will bleed to death with the pain of it.”” LIKE LITERALLY WHEN I GET TO THIS POINT I HAVE TO TAKE A BREAK BC IM CRYING SO MUCH I CANT MAKE OUT THE WORDS!!!!!!!!!!!! also fun story: one time i was listening to ootp on audiobook while on vacation and we were in the car waiting to taxi on to a ferry boat and we were listening to this chapter when the ferry guy came by to take our tickets and i had like TEARS STREAMING DOWN MY FACE and jim dale is yelling as harry in the background…. the guy was like ‘is this bitch ok??’ lmaOOOOo 

HARRY AND THE MIRROR OF ERISED IN SS:  this is another one of those moments where you remember that harry is an orphan and its /so/ painful. thinking about this teeny 11 year old baby harry sneaking out every night just to sit in front of this mirror so he can see his parents………my darling baby sweetheart i love him So Much. it just makes me so sad like hes /so young/ AND HE JUST WANTS TO SEE HIS PARENTS!!!!!!!!!!!!! AHHH!! it also gives way to one of my all time favorite hp quotes: “It does not do well to dwell on dreams and forget to live.” 

HARRY STOPS SIRIUS AND LUPIN FROM KILLING PETER IN POA: me reading this part is literally ISAYTHATSMYBABYANDIMREALLYPROUD.GIF!!!!!! like!! my boy!! he finds out this man literally caused the death of his parents and he MAKES THE GROWN ASS ADULTS SPARE HIS LIFE… LIKE… he literally acts twice his age and is so mature and is just…….so amazing. it shows such strength and wisdom and it makes me SO PROUD. the way he references james also makes me cry because you see the relationship harry has with james even though he’s literally never met him and its so beautiful. i love harry so much. 

HARRY AFTER SECTUMSEMPER-ING MALFOY IN HBP: this is literally the opposite of that last one where im so proud of harry this is def… not one of his best moments lol. he rly rly fucks up and his guilt is so raw and it makes me so emotional because i feel SO bad for him. its def an important harry moment in the books because it shows his flaws and the consequences of his rage, but it also shows how GOOD he is because he feels so bad about what happens and like willingly takes his punishment even though it means that he cant play in the quidditch match. he really like… atones and even tho its rough to read i def love that its a part of the series bc its a really like watershed moment for harry and i think it really reminds him of the wizard he wants to be. this part also leads to i think a more satisfying harry/ginny first kiss bc ginny defends harry and then him not going to the game leads to “several sunlit days” AKA ONE OF MY FAVE HP MOMENTS EVER!!!!!!!!!!!

HARRY AND HERMIONE VISIT JAMES AND LILY’S GRAVE IN DH: “But they were not living, thought Harry: They were gone. The empty words could not disguise the fact that his parents’ moldering remains lay beneath snow and stone, indifferent, unknowing.And tears came before he could stop them, boiling hot then instantly freezing on his face, and what was the point in wiping them off or pretending? He let them fall, his lips pressed hard together, looking down at the thick snow hiding from his eyes the place where the last of Lily and James lay, bones now, surely, or dust, not knowing or caring that their living son stood so near, his heart still beating, alive because of their sacrifice and close to wishing, at this moment, that he was sleeping under the snow with them.”  THIS IS ANOTHER ONE OF THOSE MOMENTS THAT I HAVE TO STOP READING BC IM CRYING SO MUCH I CANT MAKE OUT THE WORDS ANYMORE. I CRIED TYPING THIS. IM SO SAD. 

THE FOREST AGAIN IN DH: hoo boy. hoooooo boy this is a Big One. this one is really…. wow. just. wow. [deep breath]. there is So Much in this chapter that makes me cry where do i even START. harry realizing that he has to die and ACCEPTING IT BRAVELY LIKE THE HERO HE IS. “Why had he never appreciate what a miracle he was,  brain and nerve and bounding heart?” im crying….. hes so good. HARRY NEARLY STOPPING WHEN HE SEES GINNY and ginny’s crying and comforting some girl and im crying too. JAMES. SIRIUS. LILY. REMUS. WHEN HARRY ASKS IF IT HURTS TO DIE LIKE LITEARLLY I HAVE TO PUT THE BOOK DOWN AND GET UP  AND WLAK AROUND THE ROOM BECAUSE I GET SO EMOTIONAL LIKE. AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!! when harry sees harry and screams at him ……………… rip in pieces me!!!!!!!! ALSO ONE OF HIS LAST THOUGHTS BEFORE THE AVADA KEDAVRA IS OF GINNY AND KISSING HER……….. [GUNSHOTS] [SCREAMING]

BELLATRIX TORTURES HERMIONE IN DH: fuk this scene is no joke scary like it took harry potter to another level of real darkness. hermione being tortured was so chilling like beautiufl amazing smart snarky hermione it was so painful to read like my heart rate goes up when i read it bc im worried for my girl :/ and ron is sHAKING and like screaming and literally throwing himself at the walls to try to get to her and its SO upsetting like. they are still CHILDREN like theyre all so young and they dont deserve this like. hearing her plead and stuff … its just…. too much. these are my CHILDREN i have to PROTECT them. 

HARRY DIGS DOBBYS GRAVE IN DH: this is another one of those harry moments where i just want to give him a huge hug. like he insists on digging dobby’s grave by hand which is just ..... [gets choked up] its fine. and his thoughts while he dig make me so sad. he so /tired/. hes so frustrated with dumbledore and he the hallows and the horcruxes and he feels responsible for what happened. and ron coming out and helping him dig silently makes me so happy and its one of those times u really see how much rons friendship means to harry. and harry comes out of this like ... older and more mature? his wisdom and knowledge is rly apparent when he talks with griphook and olivander right after this like. he knows what hes going to do. hes made his choice. hes not going to race voldemort for the wand. i love him so much for that choice. hes such a grown man in this part like accepting responsibility, taking care of hermione and everyone like getting things in order. i love him. 

MRS WEALSEY HUGS HARRY IN THE HOSPITAL WING IN GOF: “’It wasn’t your fault, Harry,’ Mrs. Weasley whispered. ‘I told him to take the cup with me,’ said Harry. Now the burning feeling was in his throat too. He wished Ron would look away. Mrs. Weasley set the potion down on the bedside cabinet, bent down, and put her arms around Harry. He had no memory of ever being hugged like this, as though by a mother. The full weight of everything he had seen that night seemed to fall in upon him as Mrs. Weasley held him to her. His mothers face, his father’s voice, the sight of Cedric, dead on the ground all started spinning in his head until he could hardly bear it, until he was screwing up his face against the howl of misery fighting to get out of him.” HARRY POTTER DESERVES MORE HUGS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! he feels so guilty about cedric and god bless mrs weasley for telling him it wasnt his fault because it WASNT!!! he did so amazing in the graveyard like.. .he saw voldemort return and he fought him and he survived and he saw his paretns and hE TOOK CEDRICS BODY BACK SO IT COULD BE WITH HIS FAMILY!!!!!!!! HE TOOK IT BACK FOR THEM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  i would die a thousand deaths if it meant that harry didnt have to experience this pain!!!!

whew so there we go!!!!! the bottom line is obviously that i love the harry potter series more than anything and specifically i love the boy harry potter so so SO much and his suffering is agonizing to read and he didnt deserve any of it!!! i can litearlly think of SO many more heartbreaking moments in the series but here are just a handful. happy birthday to harry!!!