#sylvia plath review

[loveelizabeths]

love elizabeth s.

[ivynightshade]

fatima aamer bilal, from being unwanted is a language.

[text id: the world is happening in a room that i can't enter, life is happening in a gathering i am not invited to. / being unwanted is a language i am fluent in.]

[stardustscripted]

[bookreviewcoffee]

as sylvia plath once said: i can never read all the books i want; i can never be all the people i want and live all the lives i want. i can never train myself in all the skills i want. and why do i want? i want to live and feel all the shades, tones and variations of mental and physical experience possible in my life. and i am horribly limited.

[violetsonnets]

my tbr pile for june! i got a concussion this weekend and haven’t been able to read the last couple of days so i’ve been cranky.

[fatimaamerbilal]

fatima aamer bilal, from how can i escape my mind?

[text id: i thought i had to be wounded to be loved. i can't be desired, but i can be pitied. / LOVE ME OUT OF PITY. please.]

[figtreeforever]

:(

[anelaxoxo]

October books :

The metamorphosis by franz kafka ☆☆☆☆☆ : first time reading a novel by kafka, not a fantasy novel (as i initially thought) or sci-fi or what not but it's depicting kafka's philosophy about humans & human relationships. As well as a dig on capitalism. A great short novel, a must read in my opinion.

The diary of a young girl ☆☆☆☆: she was such an intelligent & articulate girl, a loss that her life was tragically cut short. Despite this being one of the best selling books of the 20th century i was hesitant to read it for a while, one because it's 400+ pages long diary written by a 12~13 year old, two...it's a diary & three and most importantly, i knew it's gonna be heartbreaking & it was. But i'm glad i did read it, it's an important book about an important real life event and real people. It was very immersive, well written and i was eager(& anxious really) to flip the page every time to know what's gonna happen on the next day.(Also was all 13 yrs olds this articulate back then ??? )

The unabridged journals of sylvia plath ☆☆☆☆☆ : ever since i read the bell jar last year i been obsessed with anything sylvia plath so i decided to read these journals and truly understand her; i didn't expect this to be so vivid, raw and honestly relatable. I still didn't finish it, i'm taking my time with this one. She definitely inspired me to pick up my abandoned journal & write again with better journaling entries instead of the usual 'i woke up. I ate. I slept.' I'm enjoying journaling way more now. wish i could write like her though; what a fascinating woman.

La peste (the plague) by albert camus ☆☆☆: i started this book around mid october and with everything that's been happening in palestine, i wasn't in the mood to read anything tbh; it's why i haven't read as much as i planned to. I'm halfway through it and i don't think it's my favorite camus book but i need to finish it before making a definitive decision. So far it's a 3 star rating, it's not my fav but also not terrible either ( obviously i mean it's camus )

[beatrizonfilm]

Devotion (Why I Write) by Patti Smith

review because im sure the girl bloggers would love this book!

Patti Smith, a National Book Award-winning author, first presents an original and beautifully crafted tale of obsession—a young skater who lives for her art, a possessive collector who ruthlessly seeks his prize, a relationship forged of need both craven and exalted. She then takes us on a second journey, exploring the sources of her story. We travel through the South of France to Camus’s house, and visit the garden of the great publisher Gallimard where the ghosts of Mishima, Nabokov, and Genet mingle. Smith tracks down Simone Weil’s grave in a lonely cemetery, hours from London, and winds through the nameless Paris streets of Patrick Modiano’s novels. Whether writing in a café or a train, Smith generously opens her notebooks and lets us glimpse the alchemy of her art and craft in this arresting and original book on writing.

WHAT I THINK...

Patti's choice of words allowed me to transport myself to the exact location she describes, it's impeccable as if I were living it. Without comparison with the work of others but only with hers, I need to say that I don't know if any will be as special to me as Just Kids but Devotion definitely increases my love for her. | 4.5/5 ⭐️

MY GOODREADS <33

[echoesofenlightment]

The Bell Jar | Sylvia Plath

[lpsdiva]

“The box is only temporary” ( Line 36) -Sylvia Plath, Arrival of the Bee Box

[loveelizabeths]

love elizabeth s.

[ivynightshade]

fatima aamer bilal, from ‘being unwanted is a language’.

[text id: and it was never a surprise, / that in the deepest, darkest pits of hell, / as far as my gaze fell, / i was the only monster i could see.]

[stardustscripted]

[justforbooks]

Sylvia Plath’s Tomato Soup Cake

A fun but often unpalatable collection of recipes by authors including Robert Graves, Norman Mailer and Beryl Bainbridge should come with a trigger warning. Anyone for Instant Mince or Dutch Onion Crisps?

In most instances, the words “I can’t cook” are a lie: the person saying them is perfectly able in the kitchen, and just being needy, excessively modest or anxious (maybe their sauce split before you arrived). But sometimes, alas, the phrase is just a simple statement of fact. At the tail end of the 1970s, for instance, the editor of a book called Writers’ Favourite Recipes asked the novelist Beryl Bainbridge what she liked to make for supper after a long day at the typewriter. Bainbridge carefully prefaced what she had to tell him with the phrase (used by her children) “I am a very bad cooker”, but the editor was not – woe! – to be put off. Her recipe for Instant Mince was indeed included in the collection, for all that it was quite obviously a crime not only against mince, but also against potatoes, tinned tomatoes, vinegar, and any human beings who might end up having to eat it (in case you’re wondering, the four ingredients are combined and boiled vigorously until the pan is “almost dry”).

For a while, of course, Beryl’s Instant Mince was pretty much lost to posterity; cook books go out of print, and with them the culinary outrages of the past (“spoon the instant mince on to [buttered, white] bread and cover with HP sauce, also raw onion rings”). But now, like some horrible alien in a movie, it’s back, for another editor has seen fit to gather it into a new collection of author’s recipes titled Sylvia Plath’s Tomato Soup Cake, where it lurks next to several other equally unappetising confections: Robert Graves’s Mock Anchovy Pate, Norman Mailer’s Stuffed Mushrooms, Rebecca West’s Dutch Onion Crisps. As you may tell, this is not a book for the easily-made-queasy, and though I am usually implacably opposed to trigger warnings, I think it should have come with one: This Book Includes Scenes Featuring Large Quantities of Margarine and Fillet of Beef Served With Bananas. Some Readers May Find It Distressing.

The beef and bananas – how the stomach resists even the typing of this combination! – is the creation of Noel Streatfeild, the author of Ballet Shoes and another of those who baldly admits to being “a very bad cook”. Streatfeild insists that she has practised her “Filets de Boeuf aux Bananas” (NB the French here is a clever but ultimately ineffective smokescreen) and that she got the recipe from an acquaintance in whose house she was staying. But if I tell you that it comprises steak served with bananas that have been fried in breadcrumbs and an egg sauce that is seasoned with horseradish, you’ll understand immediately that Malcolm Gladwell’s principles of success do not apply here. You could spend 10,000 hours perfecting this dish, and it would still be fit only for the dustbin – though I would still be marginally more inclined to eat it than Graves’s Pate, which is made from minced fish, egg and steamed jellyfish. I believe him when he notes that “nobody at the table will know what they are eating”.

It’s not all bad. The book does include the odd recipe from the famously sybaritic and greedy, and even from a couple of writers noted for their abilities as cooks. You probably can’t go wrong with Ian Fleming’s scrambled eggs (whips to the ready), or Rosamond Lehmann’s extravagant variation on shepherd’s pie (the secret ingredient is orange peel). Kingsley Amis offers us his fromage à la crème, a perfect combination of egg whites, cream cheese, cream and sugar, though one knows perfectly well that he probably never actually made it for himself – and sure enough, a mere few pages later, up pops his longsuffering ex-wife, Elizabeth Jane Howard, whose devils on horseback come from the cookbook she wrote with the restaurant critic Fay Maschler (a brilliant volume that I own and use often).

Nora Ephron is here, and Laurie Colwin: two fabulous American novelist-cooks, neither one of whom, so far as I know, was inclined to make a cake using canned soup as Sylvia Plath did (she got the recipe from her mother, Aurelia). But in the end, we’re forced to conclude two things on closing this (OK, I’ll admit it) very fun little book. First, that famous writers are no better than the rest of us when it comes to cooking, and often a good deal worse; at present, I’m finding Rebecca West’s onion-crisp-things to be more indelible even than her journalism. Second, that distracted as they are by plot and character, they may be a danger both to themselves and to other people in the kitchen. Margery Allingham wrote some very fine detective stories, but her insistence that her salad cream will last for a year is suspicious-making to put it lightly.

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[rubireads]

sylvia plath’s short stories (book: johnny panic and the bible of dreams)

i feel this in my soul