#books about loss
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Almond was a random find on my Kindle Unlimited. I'd never heard of the book or the author before but the description I head got to me... "This story is, in short, about a monster meeting another monster. One of those monsters is me."
How could I pass that up?
Now that I've finished reading, I can say it's something outside of what I would normally read. It is based in Korea, with Korean references, but there were no problems with that. It was perfectly translated and didn't have any references and uncultured American like myself couldn't understand. It was beautifully written, heartfelt and rich in details. The characters were deep and well rounded. They were imperfect and real in the best of ways.
The main character Yunjae was born with a brain condition called Alexithymia, which means that he doesn't feel or recognize emotions like 'normal' people do... even in the face of great tragedy. As always, I don't want to give away any major plot lines but it's the type of tragedy that would bring the strongest person to their knees.
His mother and grandmother spend their time raising him with love and acceptance but also, always trying to teach him proper reactions to those around him so that he can live normally and not be bullied or teased at school. They are the only real people in his life. His grandmother is where he gets the idea to call himself a monster. "“Maybe it’s because you’re special. People just can’t stand it when something is different, eigoo, my adorable little monster.” Granny hugged me so tight my ribs hurt. She always called me a monster. To her, that wasn’t a bad thing."
In the aftermath of the tragedy, Yunjae finds a whole new circle of people in his life. With them, he learns new things about himself and about the world. For the first time, he makes friends outside of his mother and grandmother. In their own ways, they try to teach Yunjae about feelings and people. They become in circle.
Some of my favorite parts of the book are how Yunjae describes the books in his mother's used book store.
Books that were already drenched in the scent of time. Not new ones that would regularly flow into the bookstores, but ones that Mom could handpick volume by volume. Hence, used books.
To be more specific, I felt connected to the smell of old books. The first time I smelled them, it was as if I’d encountered something I already knew.
Books took me to places I could never go otherwise. They shared the confessions of people I’d never met and lives I’d never witnessed. The emotions I could never feel, and the events I hadn’t experienced could all be found in those volumes.
But books were different. They had lots of blanks. Blanks between words and even between lines. I could squeeze myself in there and sit, or walk, or scribble down my thoughts. It didn’t matter if I had no idea what the words meant. Turning the pages was half the battle.
But books are quiet. They remain dead silent until somebody flips open a page. Only then do they spill out their stories, calmly and thoroughly, just enough at a time for me to handle.
They way he sees himself in books, even if he doesn't relate to the emotions he reads in them is touching to me. Maybe because I've always found solace in books myself. They've always been a place of comfort. They have lots of blanks as he said... for me, spaces we fill in with our own experiences and interpretations. And maybe that's why they were special to Yunjae as well, because they held no expectations for him, they didn't care that he wasn't 'normal'.
Perhaps one of the most poignant ideas of the story was Yunjae saying that Noone can ever know whether a story is happy or tragic. He says it might be impossible to fit so neatly into one category or the other because "life takes on various flavors as it flows." It reminded me of something I'd read before that stated that people are not all good or all bad, and that sometimes the perception comes again from our own experiences. You can be a good person who had done bad things. A life can be happy even with moments of tragedy.
This is absolutely a book I would recommend.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ 1/2
#book review#fiction#book recs 2023#angst#books about loss#books about overcoming#books with unusual themes#books with unusual plotlines#almond#won pyung sohn#korean literature
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it is healing to come onto this blog and see basic respect for diasbility after being in other corners of the fandom and reading the words “snowkit could never be a warrior because he wouldnt know what anything is. he wouldnt even know what a clan is because nobody could explain it to him” said in full seriousness
Im..... That statement is so ableist I cannot even imagine the worldview you'd need to have in order to come up with that.
They really think the only way anyone learns anything is through verbal-speaking-words-noises? No one has ever observed something before? Not even once?
This is beyond touching grass, this person just fell out of the fucking Jurassic Period when all they had was ferns and stegosaurs.
I just...
OH YES. I remember my first day of Society Lessons as a hearing person, where the everything was explained to me. Via Audiobook. FIRST they spoke and said, "you are standing on the ground." It was a life changing revelation, and the world began to spin.
But it did not stop.
THEN they said, "there are fingers on your hands." The sensation of flesh and bone crackling into existence is indescribable, but I did not yet know pain, until they told me, "that hurts." I began screaming immediately.
And yet... it continued.
They explained so much. Chairs. Tables. Walls. The sky. Frogs. Ionizing radiation. Breathing. I was told all of it, in one sitting, and only then did I understand. Only when my ears were bursting with normal hearing knowledges, did they begin... my final test.
A strange wall-chair-finger emerged from the sky-of-the-wall, stood on the ground several times, until it was in front of me. A second one came behind it, this one slimmer. The audiobook gave these things names;
Human. Father. Mother. Door. Walking. It was completely impossible to know what these things were until that very moment.
I watch a human dip a hook into water and produce a fish, and I recall my Society Lessons where they called that "fishing." I am decked in the face by a nefarious hooligan, and I have only the audiobook to thank when I know I have been "punched" by a "bad guy." It was only the magic of verbal-speaking-words-noise that made me understand that there are "other people" and that they "do stuff."
Sometimes, even, in "groups."
Before the Society Lessons Audiobook, I knew nothing. I was pure, innocent, uncorrupted by concepts such as "parents" and "door." I am grateful every day that there is no such concept as "being shown things" or "simple logical reasoning" or "looking."
Blessed be those amongst us who escape the horrors of the Society Lessons Audiobook. I pray that you never learn what anything is. Be free! Free as a bird, which also knows nothing and famously cannot learn. 🤗
DEAF/HOH FOLLOWERS I'm losing my mind do you want me to bump a 'Hearing Disabilities Herb Guide' to the top of my priorities? Something you can use to bludgeon whackadoodles like that. This is ridiculous
Obviously not a MEDICINE guide but like; common causes of hearing disability in clan cats. Accommodations for hearing loss vs congenital deafness. Actual difficulties of not having that sense Clan-by-Clan. Debunking of misconceptions like... not being able to learn APPARENTLY.
#bone babble#Fennelposting#Obviously the answer is 'theyre incapable of THINKING' but like... they do know snow has a line right#In the book. He figured out. A word. Through observation.#He says 's'all right' because he knows it calms ppl down#He did not need to hear the magic words 'You can make noises at others to influence them'#Like a fucking tutorial tip#Im going to start keeping a JOURNAL of ''times people have been weird about snowkit specifically''#Ableism#cw ableism#I could also link to the pawspeak thing so it's all in one place#I wrote this last night and put it in the queue and I laid awake thinking of this...#What do they think happens when someone goes to another country where things aren't written/spoken in a language they know?#Do they think they wouldn't be able to figure out anything? Do they think the tourist would just perish#Would they collapse in the streets of Berlin sobbing?#Happened to me. Went to England and they called it a Car Boot Sale instead of a Flea Market and I died to death#AND if I did make that guide please tell me if there's any other weird misconceptions you need to see in it#I know that ONE of them is going to have to be that. like. deaf people make noise.#theyre actually quite loud because they don't know they're making noise#and people with hearing loss do not suddenly forget how to speak.#and people born deaf dont talk like cavemen#cw body horror#tw body horror#EDIT: OOPS sorry I have such an astonishingly tolerance for body horror I did not realize that counted as body horror
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There’s just something about stories that allow teenage girls to feel their anger without prettying it up. Rachel from Animorphs. KJ from Paper Girls (honestly, ALL the Paper Girls in different ways). Ellie from The Last of Us. So often, narratives find ways to sand the edges off a teen girl’s fury, make her sweet or overly verbal instead of violent. Stories that allow young girls to be angry, to be bloody, to bite back at the world with sharpened teeth—those are always my jam.
#animorphs#the last of us#paper girls#more stories that worry less about being pretty and more about feeling that incandescent rage that comes from being belittled#and overlooked. and told to smile.#more stories that don’t care about being cute so much as making an impact#even ugly ones. even ones marked by a loss of control#I’m listening to the animorph books and goddamn does it hit that Rachel is a thirteen year old girl planning Murder
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Anasai of Ryddingwood.
Each of her poems was written as an elegy. This was for her father. She left instructions; it can be read, but should not be spoken out loud, except when it was right to do so. She did not explain when it would be right to do so.
#The wheel of time#wot edit#wot on prime#moiraine damodred#lan mandragoran#wot book spoilers#minor spoiler though#the poem in itself tells nothing#the poet was literally one of the clues given by the official account to unlock a promo picture#married to death#mine: wot#mygifs#still it's a very interesting poem in this context and I've been wanting to use it for ages#I remember seeing the quotes from Rosamund Pike about the loss of the OP being like the loss of a child#and it's true that their arc hits a lot of beats from such stories with the people involved being having nothing in common anymore#the bond was a bridge between them#now it's an absence between them#they have different ways of dealing with that loss and those ways happen to break them even further apart#Moiraine wants him to move on without her#Lan wants her to talk to him#they aren't compatible#the arc gets an interesting conclusion in the sense that their conflict doesn't so much resolve as it is stitched#Moiraine does not talk to Lan any more than she does to Siuan#and Lan very much cannot move on from her#but Moiraine accepts that he will stick with her whatever happens#and Lan accepts that Moiraine will not tell him everything#their bond is restored but the fractures remain#they don't change but they accept they won't always be able to understand each other#I do like that the show made a point this was a choice to renew their vows too#this arc was a platonic feast I tell you
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like the for me, the thing about the 'failure' of c!dream's plan isn't that it actually failed. he did what he set out to do. his plan, objectively, worked insofar as he was successfully implemented the whole thing and got the end result of being locked in prison.
it's just that it failed in the sense of it didn't get him what he wanted because he didn't even know what he wanted.
#all that loss man. that does something to a person y'know?#you get desperate and angry and scared and then he had the book#the paranoia and fear that came with that#he just didn't know what he wanted after everything that happened because it was so connected#to everything that he had lost or that had been taken away#anyway. so when i examine the whole failure of it. it's in that way y'know?#loyal talks about stuff and things#dreblr#dreamwastaken#dsmp#dream smp#c!dream
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and honestly, the fact of the matter is. that when a male character is killed for another male character's sake, it's almost guaranteed that the death will forever be a weight upon the narrative in the way a female character's death never will be. a male character will be mourned forever, the loss of a brother in arms considered a gaping wound that will never truly heal. meanwhile, the loss of a mother is a small footnote tragedy in the beginning of the story, but she is never truly remembered by her son. the loss of a daughter guarantees that a surrogate one will eventually arrive to replace her empty space. the loss of a wife will usher in a new woman to heal the man. but the loss of a brother or father is a constant cross the man will bear for the rest of his life.
#listen this has a lot to do with cultural masculinity and expectations of#like. my husband sometimes like to listen to audiobooks about various past wars#and there's a lot there wrt the loss of the comrade in arms never healing. the brotherhood is truly placed#above all other relationships#sidenote i'm also reading a real. special. book about being married to a firefighter & the book is basically like#“just learn to be okay with the fact that you'll never be his number 1 the brothers in fire will always come first to these guys”#culture teaches men that the male-male bond is the most important bond they will ever experience in their life
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also something about foolish, who usually sticks around spawn, who builds or fools around, who takes care of his daughter, going off thousands of blocks away to fight in dungeons. to throw himself into the fight again and again. to find something harder to fight each time, to get a reward that he doesn’t really need or want anyway. no leo around for him to worry about, or worry about him in return, after all
#foolish 🤝 bad - healthy coping mechanisms who??#anyways no one is dealing with this well and I’m ready for them to just destroy the island until their children come back or they can go#and save them#sorry to keep angst posting on main I’m going through it pfksjfjs#I’m just. foolish isn’t one to get serious or genuinely upset. frustrated maybe. hardly upset like he is#his reaction to Leo? not letting anyone read the book she left before he could even if it would take a lot more effort?#he had his moment of ‘wtf’ laughter. and then he has his genuine im upset I’m pissed I’m at a loss reaction. which is the polar opposite of#his usual frantic raised voice almost comical over the top reactions#when Tina finds out he can’t even fully brush it off with a joke to comfort her. he can’t reassure her. he gets quiet#I’m just. the whole combo. I’m upset about this man#mcyt#qsmp#foolish#z speaks
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I finished A Power Unbound and now I'm having a happy little sob about it and feeling many Big Emotions that I'm incoherently blubbering about and only managing to express as a joyfully tearful "it was beautiful"
#the last binding#a power unbound#IT WAS BEAUTIFUL#AND TENDER AND WARM AND VULNERABLE AND HEALING AND CATHARTIC#I love them all SO much and I'm so happy for all of them and their growth and their love#but I've been a hawthorn stan since book 1 as he chewed up my brain and my fascination#and just seeing someone go from a place of such devestating loss and shut-outedness to being full and part of the world again#and worth the wait of the year-and-a-half I spent rotating this miserable asshole (affectionate) in my mind#I'm crying about ALL OF IT but it's all good crying
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IT CAME!!!!! IT FINALLY CAME!!!!!!!!!!!!
#getting this book has been a year long process#that involves one non-refundable loss of $70 to australia that then never resulted in an actual book#does anyone have a bingo board i can fill out while I read this this weekend#top gun#pete maverick mitchell#tom iceman kazansky#actually nervous about it#😭😭 permanent bookshelf addition
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So you’re telling me that this huge debt that Belial owes Jem in Learn About Loss—
—was actually proposed by Belial himself because Jem once volunteered to pass on a message from him?
That— That’s just ridiculous.
#make it make sense#this book is filled with so many laughable attempts at explaining previous mysteries and tying loose ends#but this one is one of the most ridiculous#smh#chain of thorns#chain of thorns spoilers#chot#chot spoilers#belial#jem carstairs#the last hours#tlh#learn about loss#gotsm#ghosts of the shadow market
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I really wish they had kept the scene of Reaper apologizing to Jessup for having to kill him and promising to get vengeance on the Capitol and Jessup spitting at him in response because this sort of thing really can flesh someone out beyond the 1 trait the narrative allows them
#def happy about them skipping the rabies trasmission part of it but tbh it could just have been a spit not in the eye. or a slap lmao#i think a major loss from book to movie is how reaper is MAJORLY pantsing this whole defiance and rebellion agenda and how torn between#defiance and survival he is and i think its really charming and realistic and a pity to lose#and re: jessup its something beyond the kind protector role and overall a hint of what these guys who presumably are 18 years old and have#memories of the rebellion think about it politically. 11 having high militance and high control VS 12 being more discouraged and abandoned#is a theme in the books so maybe its going on already#tbosas#hunger hames#jessup diggs#reaper ash
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“During the daytime Elvis managed to cover up his grief. Sometimes, especially during the night, it might break through. Privately, and inwardly, he suffered badly. Sometimes he would be talking to us, hugging on us while we sat in his lap and talked to him. A sadness would hit him like a sudden cloud. His eyes would fill up with tears. One evening I found him in the bathroom with his hands over his face. ‘Are you alright, Elvis?” I said. He nodded but did not turn around. ‘I guess I’ll have to be,’ he said in a muffled voice. We put our arms around each other for comfort and stood there a long time. ‘I love you, Elvis’ I said. ‘I know you do’ he said…”
later that same day
“I walked into the kitchen when I saw Vernon and Elvis were standing by the sink. Their arms were around each other. They were crying. ‘Oh God, what’ll we do?’ Vernon said. I backed out of the room. They didn’t know I was ever there…”
(excerpts from “Elvis: This one’s for you” by Arlene Cogan)
#arlene could you spare my heart for just one chapter#this is why I cannot stand for a single bad thing said about Gladys#she was absolutely everything to Vernon and Elvis#there was just no recovering from a loss like that for them#it breaks my heart 😭😭#arlene cogan#Vernon presley#Gladys presley#elvis presley#elvisaaronpresley#elvis#elvis history#i love him#elvis book excerpts
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at my family's place and the local news is full volume and this. is not something I enjoy
#-> segment treating obama like a celebrity (''what r his favorite books omg?!'') -> ad for a car -> ad for weight loss -> ad for the news(?)#-> newscaster announces that someone died today isn't that scary? stranger danger!#what is pleasant about this!!
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my favorite thing about Translation State is that Qven is simultaneously a trans allegory and literally trans
#and in many ways those things are more or less separate#ann said we can have it all#and I thank her everyday#change your pronouns half way through a book! go through cannibalism puberty with your bestie and be worried about the loss of self!#being scared of medically transitioning even if it’s what you truly want! (<- also cannibalism puberty)#being worried about how people perceive you and being worried they won’t want you anymore! (<- cannibalism puberty again)#this book rocks#imperial radch#translation state
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And don’t even get me started on Charlie Lastra as a character!! “You’re not that tall” “I’m not that tall” “if you’re the wrong kind of woman than im the wrong kind of man” THE HUMAN PANTHER CHARLIE LASTRA!!! He’s a perfect counter to Nora but not in the hallmark-movie-opposites-attract way. He understands her because they are, at their cores, the same. She’s not cold! She’s intense because she CARES! And he looked at her and went god I love my shark wife!
#emily henry#book lovers#we can also talk about how they’re everlark in a different font if you want#intense quote unquote scary lady with trauma from parent loss x equally intelligent in a different font human from a standard family#but with a twist#sorry for my rambles
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Whenever I see people talking about TGCF Book 4 they always talk about Mu Qing leaving, Feng Xin being driven away, the temple scene, the creation of Ruoye, etc.
But to me, the hardest part to read, the true lowest point, is the robbery. It just took me a week to force myself to read that chapter. The second hand embarrassment is so strong, but more than that: the attempted robbery is, in my opinion, the only depth that Xie Lian reaches entirely on his own. Bai Wuxiang doesn't (directly) drive him there. No. He reaches the conclusion that it's the only way himself, implements it himself, lies to Feng Xin and his parents about it himself. After that, he catches his first post-fall glimpse of Bai Wuxiang (presumably because Jun Wu heard about what the heavenly officials saw), and he slips into an extended panic attack brought about by all the factors that drove him to that low point, but everything that happens afterwards has outside influence.
But staking out a mountain pass and deciding to rob a passerby?
Xie Lian does that all on his own.
And God he breaks my fucking heart doing it.
#unforth rambles#tgcf#ive only read this part once before and i put the book down mid graveyard scene to write this#when i realized that i actually felt relieved to know that id gotten past the robbery#all the rest feels easier to read by comparison#but that scene makes me feel like someone has a hand around my throat#because theres no choice theres no escape Xie Lian isnt trapped at all theres no bai wuxiang there but it doesnt matter#because his palpable sense that hes out of options is so smothering#i truly think that even after his parents die and feng xin is gone and hes mumbling to their air about his loss#hes still never as low as the robbery#the temple and its aftermath are things that are done to him and the bad choices he makes as a result#but the robbery attempt and the accompanying shame#are all him
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