#which is on my goodreads

[persephonesprose]

films and literature and nonsensical thoughts of 2024

the year was full of demons. art was not one of them.

literature that made me understand being human

On Keeping a Notebook by Joan Didion ★★★★★

"We forget all too soon the things we thought we could never forget. We forget the loves and the betrayals alike, forget what we whispered and what we screamed, forget who we were." No one will understand why I need a journal, why I can't go a day without putting my thoughts down on paper, better than Joan herself. I fear forgetting, but I think I fear never having that piece of myself somewhere in the physical world more.

Everything Everything by Nicola Yoon ★★★

Every now and then, reading a YA novel becomes something magical. I don't know why fifteen year old me didn't read this when I was gifted it. But I'm sort of glad to read it as an adult, because of how it views life and risk taking and the act of living.

films to watch at three a.m.

Frances Ha: ★★★★1/2

I watched this and was sent into an existential crisis at 5am. In a good way. The love I have for something so simple to say "it's okay to be where you're at even if life sucks." is unmatched. I'm terrified of growing up because I think I'll do it wrong, but this film taught me to love the mistakes just as much if not more. I could write an essay about this and I probably will.

This Beautiful Fantastic: ★★★1/2

I ended the film in tears. Good ones, but still tears. If there was ever something to show me that love and change are all things that make you so human it's beautiful, then this would be it. But I mainly loved it because it reminded me of my grandpa.

The Greatest Hits: ★★★★

If a movie could devour a heart, this one did exactly that to mine. Grief is that one human emotion I've never allowed myself to feel. And music is the escape that gets me away from it. Until they looped them together. Grief is love and I understand that a lot more now.

Colette: ★★★★

I spent the whole movie rooting for her to murder her husband. And in all honesty she should have been allowed. I knew very little about Claudine, yet after this I want to feast on her works as if they were fine dining. They probably are.

On the Basis of Sex: ★★★1/2

Now more than ever we have to remember what women fought for, the equality and liberation we deserve. The film made a fire burn in my chest. Rage at why we're still fighting the same exact fight decades later.

Good Will Hunting: ★★★★1/2

This film has haunted me for years now, but I've never actually sat down to watch it. I'm glad I did when I was in my twenties. Because this is a film to rewatch when I'm thirty and forty and fifty. I think as time goes on I'll see a different way each time.

The Jane Austen Book Club: ★★★★

Oh the joys of getting to sit and yap about Jane Austen with wine and good friends. Not to mention falling in love. I think films that feel like revisiting a worn out novel instantly hold such an appeal.

Moulin Rouge: ★★★★★

If we didn't have tragedies, how would we understand being human? I've cried to lots of films, have found comfort in the layers of grief. But this one took my breath away. I'm ashamed to say it's taken me too long to finally watch it in full, but I'll never see life the same way after.

albums to play in the kitchen at midnight

On The Inside: Gotts Street Park

Special love to the song Got To Be Good. Would recommend dancing by the fridge light to this.

Songs For No One Vol. 1 & 2: Victoria Bigelow

It's soft and lyrical and invades your soul without even trying. I recommend to be listened to with wine.

The Death of Summer & Other Promises: Etta Marcus

Every song of hers opens me up like I'm getting prepped for an autopsy. She picks at my heart and expects me to be okay afterwards. Definitely 2am existential crisis songs.

[blueskittlesart]

hey so this is an insane thing to write unsolicited under someone's personal art piece

[aroaceleovaldez]

Something something Jason feeling like he doesn't quite fit as "Greek" or "Roman" as a metaphor for bisexuality, particularly the semi-canonical bi-coding in his half of experiences during the Cupid scene and how Favonius and Cupid speak to him in parallel to the scenes confirming Nico is gay.

Something something the camps as metaphors for traditionally acceptable forms of relationships and Nico living as a rogue outside of them, rejecting expectation (ergo in himself representing a metaphor of queer identity and living outside of boxes and defined/usually hetero-allonormative/binary ideas of what love/relationships should look like) versus Jason struggling with the expectation to conform to a label and even discussing with Nico both of them remaining at CHB together.

Something something the inverse of Jason shifting away from the camps after he breaks up with Piper, feeling lost and unable to find a place between the camps as he begins to explore his queer identity properly for the first time versus Nico only remaining at CHB because he has entered a relationship. In this essay I will-

[rochellehassan]

The Spell for Unraveling (book 3 of The Buried and the Bound trilogy) has a cover! behold!

i think this is my favorite one yet! i love the stained glass background so much <3 the artist is helen mask, who's done an amazing job on all three covers for this trilogy.

[widebrimmedhatsblog]

First Third of 2025 reads! I wanted to do this quarterly but March was a major dud, so have January through April! Feel free to let me know what you enjoyed, what you didn’t, and what you recommend!!

[stick-ball]

My takes on some of this fandoms most controversial issues lately:

• you can criticize and dislike whatever but you should never be rude and threatening about it??? This is going both to nora haters and to other fans haters

• Omfg sometimes characters don't get development because the narrator who's pov we are reading couldn't care less about their issues? Rings any bells? Seriously

• I get it you come from the anime trenches but just because there's a lot of fetishism of gay boys by women there, doesn't mean women can't enjoy queer books with men protagonists anymore wtf. Kinda sexist. Live and let live.

• yeah Kevin uses alcohol as an escape but that doesn't yet qualify as alcoholism. Alcoholism is a severe condition, seriously. That's like saying someone who's in a bad mood is suicidal immediately.

• I saw several complaints on goodreads that TSC should have had sensitivity readers bcs they dont like how Jean's trauma has been approached. 1. How do you know it didn't have sensitivity readers? 2. You complain when it's not even something you're sensitive to, so let me assure you as someone with shared trauma. It's accurate as heck get lost seriously.

• I'm worried we are glorifying Jean as gentle when in fact half of it is him trying to behave in a way that means he won't be punished for breaking any written or non written rules.

• I do not accept papasan chair slander. Meet me behind Waffle House at the witching hour.

Anyway, Have a winning day! 🌞🥰

[libertyreads]

Came back to Tulsa for a couple of days and decided to hit up Magic City Books.

[lyssq]

Actually it should be illegal for authors to write book series whose title is one normal english word and have it be extremely good but not very popular. Do you want to curse me to struggle with tags???

[shawcl]

today during lunch break my coworkers been talking abt books and i sat there like 🙂

[oleworm]

Review to “Glorious Exploits” by Ferdia Lennon

Thucydides for size.

This has to be the best book that I’ve read in several years, or the one who scratches the greatest number of itches among various interests. It begins as a comedy of war, drawing on Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War and Plutarch’s accounts of Athenian prisoners of war who survived the aftermath of the failed Sicilian expedition by reciting lines from Euripides but also—in more recent memory—recreates the emotional weight of episodes described by survivors of 20th century wars. The darkness is viewed, at the start, obliquely, but if the reader does not see it, it is because they choose not to, because it is always present.

As time passes, and the Athenians in the quarry continue to starve, the option will be taken away from them. It is a lot of fun, and I think a certain kind of reader needs to be tricked this way into acknowledging certain realities. You laugh along with one character, an unemployed potter helping his friend to stage a play, while another, right next to him, is experiencing the horrors of starvation—and two minutes ago he witnessed his loved one clubbed to death by a man who lost his son to the invading army. They are experiencing, in simultaneous, two completely different stories. The reader holds these contradictions within themselves for a great part of the story.

Another episode, from close to beginning of the book, as not to spoil the tale: a drunken evening at the pub, described with great accuracy to those settings where such things as pubs exist. An insecure man negs a woman who happens to be a slave, captured in war.

It is effective at what it does, and I commend the author for finishing it, for not giving up—I listened to an interview with him where he said that it took him seven years, on and off. It was worth it not only for the recognition he received for his efforts but because it is a contribution to the human culture. More and more we need to find ways for people to face certain topics that they would shelter themselves from, now when they are most important, even something as basic as recognising the humanity of others. It is a well-researched story set in Classical Greece, but it could not be successful if it weren’t also actual. I have seen some criticisms about how you cannot joke about some of the topics covered in the book, but perhaps it is not for those people, who already understand what they refer to. They can move on to more serious matters, but there are others who understand only through jokes, through lightness, or they feel threatened and cease to pay attention.

I’ll not ruin the ending, but it was the piece that completed the puzzle, in more than one way. I laughed, I cried, I cared a lot. And it made me want to reread The History of the Peloponnesian War.

[boycritter]

gonna see if i can finish my book tonight and then maybe either finish my audiobook by tomorrow night OR read war of the foxes bc i keep forgetting i OWN THAT BOOK !!!!

[bennetsbonnet]

I'm off to see the new Bridget Jones film and I should be really excited because it's one of my comfort film series forever, but given the big plot point that I already know about, I can't look forward to seeing that onscreen😭!!

My sentiments towards it are essentially like when you drive past a car crash... you know you shouldn't really look because you might see something horrific that you can't unsee, but the curiosity is too strong and gets the better of you and you need to have a gawk...

(Basically if I don't see it I'll forever wonder what it was like but I'm not happy this film or book exists, because I liked the ending very much... just as it was... 🥲)

[ishikawayukis]

pals what app or site do you use to keep track of the books you've read

[queenerdloser]

i feel like media reviews have gotten more and more useless to me. rotten tomatoes and letterboxed ratings have nothing to do with whether i'll enjoy a movie or not. goodreads ratings regularly give 4+ stars to books i hate and 3 stars to books i love with all my heart. it's coming to the point now where i really am like. okay i just have to experience this myself and see if i like it bc the only person's taste who i trust is mine.

[toss-a-coin-to-your-stan-account]

on today's episode of "hey fuckass did you know that fic authors can see the fucking bookmarks you make for their fics"