Minus one star for sending me into a panic about how to ever make the world a good and liveable place, but otherwise really interesting/varied/importaMinus one star for sending me into a panic about how to ever make the world a good and liveable place, but otherwise really interesting/varied/important stuff....more
also, rereading these Eva Ibbotson books and understanding my stupid crushes COMPLETELY. I first read these when I was 12 and now I can only fall in lalso, rereading these Eva Ibbotson books and understanding my stupid crushes COMPLETELY. I first read these when I was 12 and now I can only fall in love with older men who love fossils and hate Nazis....more
christmas holidays aren't complete without rereading all five of the best Eva Ibbotson books.christmas holidays aren't complete without rereading all five of the best Eva Ibbotson books....more
Everyone in this book is terrible and I never want to get married, but it's also a great book.Everyone in this book is terrible and I never want to get married, but it's also a great book....more
Persephone Books are consistently SO GOOD but I sabotaged this one for myself by reading it in one evening babysitting. Panter-Downes has a certain ..Persephone Books are consistently SO GOOD but I sabotaged this one for myself by reading it in one evening babysitting. Panter-Downes has a certain ... style, I guess, that's fun for a few stories but feels very quickly repetitive and routine if you read 23 of them in one go. ...more
I always think of Perec as this super playful dude who was just crazy imaginative and clever with language - and, yeah, this has all of that, but it'sI always think of Perec as this super playful dude who was just crazy imaginative and clever with language - and, yeah, this has all of that, but it's also horrible.
It's half about a childhood he can't remember with a father who died on the front and a mother who was killed in Auschwitz (there's this horrible line, I am paraphrasing the French here, but his Polish mother returned to her childhood country to die and it's just - awful) and half about all the stuff he invented in his childhood to, I guess, deal with trauma - an island that's almost a concentration camp, awful allusions to the Holocaust, and just constant constant suffering.
And he's still clever and playful and Perec through it all, somehow. ...more
I love Ali Smith for a variety of reasons, but one of them is for those parts of her books where it feels like she's untangled something I'm strugglinI love Ali Smith for a variety of reasons, but one of them is for those parts of her books where it feels like she's untangled something I'm struggling with thinking through and has put it into her wonderful passionate and eloquent prose. This felt more explicitly political than Autumn, and perhaps because of that there were even more of those moments where I felt like my thoughts were being better explained. ...more
Really tenderly written and interesting book; I wasn't a fan of the ending, but the first three-quarters of the novel made up for that.Really tenderly written and interesting book; I wasn't a fan of the ending, but the first three-quarters of the novel made up for that....more
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