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10.6.2024

I haven't read YA in a while, so it took me a moment to align with the characters being so young and making so many crazy choices, but by a few chapters in I was hooked.

As Above So Below is my favorite horror movie, and this book feels just like that but like...the YA adventure version.

I love the tension. Will they survive? What is really following them? Who is building the thrones? The friendship between Selena and Ruby, the relationship between Ruby and Sean, I'm here for all of it.

However I will NOT be going to the catacombs, ever.

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Sometimes my pictures get lost in my drafts and I forget about them for half a year

┐⁠(⁠￣⁠ヘ⁠￣⁠)⁠┌

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Holding onto anger is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.

The Love You Deserve by Jen Morris

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I was sad. Sad with a sadness I'd never felt before. The sadness chewed me up and swallowed me bit by bit. I was so sad I wanted to spend the whole day walking and looking at trees and gathering pebbles.

Ellie and the Harp Maker by Hazel Prior

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9.15.2024

"For an instant, before the facts of her life overtook her, she expected to see him fossicking around in the cabinets again for a jar of peanuts or a bag of chips. Foolishness. So much foolishness."

I read The Ghost Variations by Kevin Brockmeier, his collection of 100 short (very short) stories having to do with ghosts of all kinds. Whether it be the remnants of a past life still kicking around in our heads, or the rotation of a few hundred different ghosts through an empty host, it's all very haunting.

If you need a break from long novels, I recommend reaching out for this book, it really opened my imagination to the possibilities of the afterlife.

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A little fuse didn't stop being a little fuse just because it had decided to burn politely.

Ocean's Echo by Everina Maxwell

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You learn to take the punches when they come, and have your weak moments when you can afford to be vulnerable.

Gypsy Freak by Kristy Cunning

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8.20.2024

My favorite color has always been blue.

Blue is the calm on a do-nothing morning. It's eating a sandwich and chips while watching the pool water in summer. Blue is the dark velvet of a new dress for a Christmas eve party, or the dreamy cotton candy sky when you have nowhere to be.

Bluets by Maggie Nelson perfectly captures the feeling of being obsessive over a color, as well as dipping into the kaleidescope of emotions we feel through life. I was expecting much more blue, if I'm honest, but I still enjoyed the relatability of the rest of the book.

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7.25.2024

Book haul! Guess which one I planned on buying before ending up with five.

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I brace myself to be okay without him to breathe without him without my chest caving in on me. To be okay knowing I can't have this connection day in and day out, no matter how much I want it.

The Catch by Amy Lea

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Sadly, one cannot know the best of times until they are gone, until they are lost. How I would give the rest of my days to have just one of those days back.

Slewfoot by Brom

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I had come to understand that despair does not necessarily result in annihilation, that one can go on as usual in spite of it, I had become hardened.

Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto

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You know that the best you can expect is to avoid the worst.

If on a winter's night a traveler by Italo Calvino

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He couldn't think of the future, it was a terrifying void; but if he could only control the present, he would at least do that to the best of his ability.

Winter's Orbit by Everina Maxwell

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It's easy to fool ourselves into thinking we're fine when we're busy and around others all the time, but once we're alone, once we're forced to stop, it's harder to run from our pain.

The Love You Deserve by Jen Morris

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It is addicting, I think, this business of putting one word after another.

Agyar by Steven Brust

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7.15.2024

It took me far too long in my life to get around to reading this story. I wish I had read it sooner, though maybe I read it at exactly the right time in my life.

The loneliness of the characters and the hard takes on the legal systems were really relatable to today. Sometimes it surprises me how real some classic books feel. I wonder why some modern books fail to grasp that feeling? Maybe there were thousands of old books that missed that mark too, we just don't talk about them.

Neither Victor or the creature were truly good to me, but maybe that's the point? Maybe we're all capable of crazy things when we're desperate.