“Sometimes fate is like a small sandstorm that keeps changing directions. You change direction but the sandstorm chases you. You turn again, but the storm adjusts. Over and over you play this out, like some ominous dance with death just before dawn. Why? Because this storm isn’t something that blew…
“I have become something wonderful, she thought. I have become something terrible. Was she now a goddess or a monster? Perhaps neither. Perhaps both.” R.F. Kuang As a reader, I know that determining how good a book is can be a difficult task. Some books aren’t objectively good, yet they impact…
“In the winter of 1561, Lucrezia, Duchess of Ferrara, is taken on an unexpected visit to a country villa by her husband, Alfonso. As they sit down to dinner, it occurs to her that their journey to this lonely place has a sinister purpose: he intends to kill her.” Maggie…
William Stoner lives a quiet life. After his death, he’s hardly remembered; during his life, he moves from his family’s farm to the University of Missouri, where he becomes a teacher. He falls in love with literature and teaching, but never rises above the rank of an assistant professor; he…
Is Twisted Love really worth the hype? Sometimes, light books are the way to go. And what better light book than romance? They’re quick, easy reads, and, at best, just an enjoyable mood-setter. At worst, though? Absolute mind-rot material. Take Twisted Love by Ana Huang for example. Viscerally cringy, flat,…
“Beauty is terror. Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it.” The Secret History by Donna Tartt I’ve never experienced anything like this book in my entire life. Reading this book was so surreal, so hypnotic; it felt like a fever dream. I was caught in its enthralling web, so…
Right off the bat, the premise of this book caught my attention. Two magicians, bound for a life-and-death duel in a breathtaking circus…end up falling desperately in love. Who wouldn’t love a story so fairytale-like? Reading this book, I was impressed at how smooth a read it was. A large…
To be perfectly honest, I’ve been holding off on reading The Perks of Being a Wallflower for a while. The reason was that I found the first few pages virtually unreadable. The prose was too stiff, too rigid to navigate the passage smoothly. I get that the author was trying…
To say that this book broke my heart is an understatement. It did that, and more. It crushed it into oblivion, absolutely ground up its pieces. All because of the masterfully encrypted idea of helplessness, the idea that even if what is happening to us is so obviously unjust, we…