I daydreamed the entire plot to my gay werewolf murder novel on the bus this morning and then fully fleshed out my MCs in my head while being tattooed?? what is going on???

If we were villains - M. L. Rio

"How tremendous the agony of unmade decisions"

07dec22// Today I decided to max it out.

Worked from 7am to15.30.

Did my chores (as I cooked yesterday, we had some leftovers today..sooo only cleaning was left).

I fed our dogs.

Uni starts at 5.30 pm so till then I will work on some homework for marketing management.

Aaaand the best part is that I have had an idea yesterday for an amazong project and Im looking forward to make it happen next year🤞❤️🤗

The Secret History by Donna Tartt

This book doesn't really need an introuction, not in these past few years, and certainly not here on tumblr, where dark academia as a whole was firstly created. I've had people telling me to read this book for ages, and I finally gave in. There's so much to say that I will probably miss on something.

Firstly the plot, if you have been living under a rock and have not been bombarded with informations on this novel. It's the og dark academia novel, we follow Richard as he is accepted into an élite Greek class in university that gives off low key cult vibes. We know from the first page that one of the people in the group of students will be murdered, and half of the novel follows the events before the murder, while the other half follows the events after. This book although in the past few years has been mostly prased for the aesthetic is a huge critique to elitism, and classism in academia.

As I said there is a lot to ba said, I'll start with the writing, which is clearly one of the reasons this book is so popular. The writing is beautiful, Donna Tartt paints beautiful scenes with her words, and it's gorgeous. One thing I wasn't a fan of is how slow the book was. Especially the second half felt painfully slow. What I found with this book is that it was surely hard to put down when I was reading it, because it's really captivating, but it was also hard to pick up sometimes, because of this slowness. This of course is really a matter of personal taste, but it had to be said. A bit more on the contents of the book, as I mentioned briefly in one of my daily posts I personally really liked how the author picked the study of classic languages to set the elitism the book critiques. Here's why. I have no idea how much you know about high school in Italy, but after middle school, so when we are about 13 years old we have to decide what we are doing next, and it means picking a specialization. There's a base of subjects everyone has and then whatever high school you pick will have specific subjects. I personally studied languages, but the school I went in was huge and had four different types of high schools in it, one of these was the classics one, so people studying Latin and ancient Greek. The elitism was a real thing, both from the students part and the teachers, there was this general idea that if you studied the classics, you were smarter, and generally better. Classics classes had the best professors of the whole institute, and they were generally picked as the perfect example. Anytime a teacher had to make a remark they would compare us to those who studied classics, even if they themselves did not teach in those classes. No offense if you studied in a classico, the majority of my friends actually did, and they too agree with me on this point. The fact that this book specifically picked those subjects to be the frame of the critique felt perfect to me for this personal reason, it felt plausable and quite creepy in a lot of senses. The group of students Richard gets into is very peculiar and closed off, it immediatly gives cult vibes if I am honest with you, and the professor who follows them is the center of all of this. These kids litteraly worship him like a God, and the references are very clear. It's incredibly scary if you think about it, because already in a normal academic scenario a professor has that much power to impress and manipulate their students, and here it's just exagerated a bit. Although at the beginning I wasn't super conviced on the second half of the book, at the end it was very interesting to see how the murder that they commit influences each character differently. What I'd like to say is that you do not need a classics background to understand this book, although there's some references both to the actual languages and to mythology/history. I felt like this book wasn't perfect, at least for me, but it's so layered it's worth talking about a lot. I'd definitely recommed giving it a try especially to focus on the many things the author critiques.

I read this for the studyblr w/ knives autumn reading challenge for the murder mystery prompt. I know the book doesn't fit the chategory perfectly, but there's a murder, and it's mysterious so that's good enough for me.

Gli dico: con te sto bene, sai. È un’affermazione banale, ma ho già compreso che a volte i termini più semplici dicono l’essenziale, meglio delle frasi più lambiccate. Lui risponde: lo so, sì. Come se per prima cosa fosse indispensabile soddisfare la vanità. 

Poi abbassa gli occhi. 

Sussurra: anche per me è così. 

Una cosa immensa, in quel momento. Per lui, il massimo della spudoratezza. Pensandoci ora, quelle parole così stupide, così puerili, potrebbero strapparmi le lacrime.

Rating: 5/5

Book Blurb:Aurelia Schwartz has spent twenty-three years maintaining the equilibrium between her carefully curated human life and the magical one that she endures in secret. With a devoted best friend and top marks at a prestigious university, she has everything one could possibly want neatly within her grasp. Except, her gift of green magic has begun to fade, and if that wasn’t enough to upset the balance of her life, a fateful run-in with another power-hungry witch with a penchant for stolen magic has threatened to bring it all to ruin. Cast into an unexpected alliance with her dreadfully arrogant classmate, Aurelia goes into hiding among a peculiar family of witches, where she discovers that the secret to their safety requires breaking rules she has followed all her life: Make no promises, Tell no one what you are, and Never stay the night.

Review:

Academic rivals, magic, and a dash of romance as they try to figure out who is trying to kill them and if they can stop arguing long enough to trust each other... and maybe... possibly, fall in love. Aurelia Schwartz has keeping her life in a carefully maintained way, separating her magic powers from her very human best friend and roommate. All she wants to do is defeat her academic rival, gain academic prestige, and hang out with her best friend.The only hiccup is that her powers are fading and it’s getting harder and harder to control and keep hidden from humans. So when she runs into another witch, which is very rare for her, she finds herself being threatened and the only person there to help her is the last person she ever expected or wanted... Theodore “Teddy” Ingram... and he just happens to possess magic of his own. Soon Aurelia is forced to the one person she can’t stand because he has a better grasp on what is actually happening and he is the only one she can turn to but Teddy is hiding his own secrets. Forced to spend the holiday with Teddy at his own home while trying to figure out why a witch is hunting them down and what she wants, Aurelia and Teddy will have to face their past hurts and answer the question of why they dislike each other so much and if they can even live in the same house together. It does not help that despite how much they argue and bicker, there is something else there growing between them. Magic, slow burn romance, enemies to lovers, angst, academic rivals, and a touch of Howl’s Moving Castle and what you get is a fantastic start to a series. To say I fell in love with this book is putting it lightly, it’s got everything I could ask for and the way Isa writes is just beautiful. The chemistry between Aurelia and Teddy is PALPABLE. This was an amazing slow burn romance, filled with so many memorable moments and honestly, I WOULD DATE BOTH OF THEM. I HAVE TWO HANDS, LET ME DATE BOTH OF YALL. I can’t wait to see where the second book goes and how Aurelia and Teddy grow!

the fact that i'm no longer the same age as the protagonists of novels and films i once connected to is so heartbreaking. there was a time when I looked forward to turning their age. i did. and i also outgrew them. i continue to age, but they don't; never will. the immortality of fiction is beautiful, but cruel.

And so it has begun....

Research: Initiated

Search History: Questionable

New WIP: Officially underway

Project.Claw, please be kind to me lmao

{Words by Anaïs Nin, from The Diary Of Anais Nin, Vol. 4 (1944-1947) / Cynthia Cruz from diagnosis,The glimmering room}

Fyodor Dostoyevsky // Alanis Morissette

Ci sono persone così, che non devono fare niente, tanto non si riesce a non pensare a loro, a non desiderarle.