Vanshika
Currently rereading and rewatching a bunch of things i loved as a teen. Even though i am v. familiar with all the ideas that are discussed in this book (which some people find pretentious). They still hold up okay so despite internet discourse It wasn't embarassing that i liked this book a lot when i was 17. I started reading it on a whim today ( good old procrastination) and i practically inhaled it. It made me feel too many feelings all at once just like the first time i read it. It has some phenomenal scenes that still got to me.
Most well done aspect of the book-
Hazel and Augustus'smixture of weakness and strength that was one of the things that made these characters in the book so likeable and instantly lovable.
This one fell a bit short for me when comapared to Henry's other books. This book has some good things going for it sure but I just could never buy in to what this whole book is about in the first place, the break-up, which is just miscommunication. More than half of this book is putting us all through this absolute all-consuming agony and heartache for these two people who so obviously deeply love each other and are both completely shattered and heartbroken. The back and forth between the timelines serves to build on this epic love that spans nine years! And the whole time you are thinking, “What could have possibly happened to tear these two apart?” And then we finally get to the reveal.... and it just didn't add up. Misunderstandings and miscommunication? A four-minute phone call? REALLY? And then just total and complete acceptance? Naaahhhh. I don't buy it. Sorry not sorry, it's just not believable for me. This made the payoff of the ending also not hit like it was supposed to because ofcourse i knew they'd end up together. In the past, They were making all these beautiful promises to each other and when you know how their relationship ends it just makes the promises feel empty. Anyway, I digress Probably someone who is looking for this exact thing in a book will love it but for me it wasn't all that.
Truly moving. an amazing (quick) read and I think it would have been majorly influential had I read it in college. Pausch's optimism and resilience in the face of adversity are truly inspiring, and his message of pursuing your dreams and making the most of your time on earth is something that will resonate with everyone.
I don't know how to review this book. Firstly, I would like to give myself 5 stars for finishing this behemoth even when at the start it felt like a bit of a slog. Every single chapter after I was about 150 pages in made me impatient for just one more chapter. I was left in complete amazement at the incredible talent and intellect required to create a world so intricately detailed that it blew my mind.
My favourite aspect of this book is how character-driven it is. It is also a truly exceptional piece of literature in the sense that it has it all - tales of love, death, trust, betrayal, hope, despair, and faith, all told from multiple povs. Truly exhilarating. Intense in the best possible way.
The love story was endearing and captivating but felt very high-school. My main gripe with the book is that Lily's (female MC) entire motivation was some dumb high-school drama about being excluded. I wish Lily had more depth and nuance in her character. I understand I might be harsh and that the youtube/influencer game resembles high school as it also focuses on popularity and numbers. I will grant Lily's character that but that fact honestly only made me realize that I didn't really want to read about a protagonist who still bases her self-worth on those shallow social interactions at twenty-eight years old. It probably would have worked better had the author included some scenes about exclusion when Lily was in her early 20s. A story that elevates fleeting encounters and getting approval from people who peaked in high school as the main markers of a life well lived strikes me as a rather hollow tale. I prefer reading about characters with a richer set of life experiences and more substantive relationships that shape who they are becoming. on the other hand, I enjoyed reading about Tobin and the rest of the nerd herd. They are the kind of people I would like to read about more.
An immortal masterpiece. Sheer brilliance.
I finished this book on kindle and the first thing I did was go and buy a physical book. It was so so beautiful that I needed to hold these pages in my hand. I've never felt that for a book before. It was just pure bliss to read these words. I re-read them. I re-read them again and this went on for 3-4 hours. My copy of Geetanjali will always be with me. Wherever I move 5 years and then 10 years down the line y'know as life happens this will be the first book I always pack. The kind of love that he has written about in this book that's the kind of love I understand and feel for the world around me even though i am an atheist. I hope life never stops surprising me with books like this.
Gabrielle zevin's writing is so enjoyable that i never lost interest in Sam and Sadie's worlds - either the real one of their day-to-day existence or the virtual ones they were building even when I'm not really into video games. I really liked Sam and Sadie but I LOVED their friendship and I hated the fact that they weren't friends for a good portion of the book. Them not resolving their misunderstanding can be chalked up to both of them being absolutely workaholics. I grew to love Marx a lot and the chapter that's from his pov is so beautiful. That chapter moved me in a way that I'm always longing to be moved by a character. This is a special book.
2.5/5 The ingredients were all there for a good murder mystery whodunnit - creepy and claustrophobic atmosphere, multiple suspects with motive to kill, loads of secrets threatening to be revealed but this book falls a little flat.
I could guess the secrets halfway of 3 out of the 4 pov characters so my mind wasn't blown really which is the #1 thing I want out of a thriller. I also didn't like the characters much at all. Jules was so self-centred. I thought I'd like Charlie but he turned out to be a spineless POS. Hannah was just so hungry to be desired from rando males it made me roll my eyes. Olivia is a hot-mess but she's only 19 so she's the only ones that gets a bit of a pass. I love flawed characters but these people aren't flawed they are just miserable people. I'm only giving it 2.5 only because I still turned the pages to see who actually had died. I've DNF'ed thrillers before. I don't understand the hype. This is as average as average gets.
This was a riveting read. Reading about two souls finally come together and experience love and acceptance, something they both desperately crave but had in short supply all their lives, felt poignant and heartwarming but most importantly this book was also honest as well as heartwarming. that's a difficult line to toe but it was done superbly well in this.
3.5/5
This is going to be a somewhat confusing review. In some aspects TWMF was a bit of letdown. It still was a book that I couldn't putdown and that is because rothfuss writes about Kvothe with such narrative mastery that you're willing to forget your complaints.
This book doesn't get to the meat of the matter at all. It meanders so much that you want to leave the tangents that the author is on and move to a more interesting part. The existence of these parts is fine but why they took up so much of the books is not.
This book was really thick in the parts that I didn't care about and thin in the parts that I actually did.
I don't want to be too harsh on my valid complaints. I still found the book endearing. I still enjoyed it. The quality of writing and world building is still there. The pacing and some story decisions are odd but I suspect book 3 is supposed to explain that (if it ever comes out) .
So Insightful. Reading The Year of Magical Thinking was like being inside Joan Didion's heart and mind at the same time. So extraordinarily poignant. The prose is so eloquent. Every single paragraph is equivalent to a punch in the best possible way. I can already see myself reading this again and again.
It is getting to the point where it is becoming impossible to talk about everything that happened because there is so much happening in the story arcs of each and every character. (good problem to have imo). I have so much to talk about yet also so much that I can't spoil. This book get 5 stars solely on the basis of the quality of the Sanderlanche that hits us in the last 200 pages. Additionally, It's not all character development. Indeed, most of it is occurring during really fantastic scenes of action or during inopportune times. The momentum is maintained. And then there's a whole squad of flying, storm-riding heroes. Matter-altering women, master illusionists, blade dancers, immortal assassins, gods, and my personal favorite... the cognitive realm itself. There is so so much to love in these books that if i put it all down the length of my review will start to rival the length of Sanderson books. To sum it up : The book is brilliant. read it.
I first read this in September 2021 and I rated it 3 stars because I was too focused on why she divorced her husbands and why she chose Monique and I was looking for answers to those questions and the answers weren't really as evocative as I was hoping them to be. The book's best parts on my first read wer where young Evelyn creates these narratives around sticky situations that the press just laps up. On this reread this book fared a bit better because I put emphasis on the relationship between Evelyn and the love of her life and saw its beauty whereas the first time around I couldn't ignore that aspects of that relationship were underdeveloped and hence it didn't have an impact on me.
so my guy jorge is saying chances of getting anywhere in our quest to ‘read' and understand the world is or is very close to, zero. cool cool cool no doubt no doubt no doubt. The discussion on the concept of futilty of human effort as we have an endless amount of stuff to decipher is daunting to say the least.
Their relationship was cute and all but this really wasnt for me because I haven't ever watched any sort of reality dating so I wasnt into all that at all but that's just my situation. My main gripe with the story was that as an indian if you changed the name of mc dev to Dave and made him white there wouldn't be any difference in his character so I felt the characterization of both the mcs was very shallow.
The characters of this book were so rich. Their dialogue and banter was pretty much unmatched compared to all the romances I've read. It Was utter perfection. All of it. With everyone
I laughed at this book. Like, actually laughed at some of the dialogue that happened. Nora's characterization and desire to just take care of things. Such big sister energy. But the way Ms. Henry writes it, you get it. You're right there with Nora, nodding and understanding why she would do that for Libby. Charlie. Everything about him was a high. This is my favorite Emily Henry book by far.
