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#same w on earth we're briefly gorgeous
greencarnation · 11 months
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malinaa · 7 months
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TOP 9 BOOKS
tagged : @hmsharmony ty jennifer this was SOOO hard oh my god like. genuinely agonized me for days to think about what to choose but it was SOOO fun tho <3 tagging : @rosesau | @evcndiaz | @pendrgcn | @gayarthur | @the-tenth-arcanum | @oretsev | @wherepoetsdie | @bellamyblakru | @ryekat & anyone else who wants to do it !!! rules : list your top 9 books obviously. i cheated a little and put series as as one option because that's just who i am as a person. most of these i chose at random from my 5 star reads from the past few years btw
1. percy jackson and the olympians (series) by rick riordan
i was never a big reader in elementary school—or at least not to the extent that my classmates had been. my sixth grade english class required us to bring a personal book from home for silent reading and i stole my brother's spine-cracked copies of pjo and brought them to class. i finished the whole series in less than a school week (i had to scramble to the library to pick up another series because the single novel should have lasted me at least three weeks). pjo literally kickstarted my love for reading as a hobby and i truly don't know how to state the importance it had on my little ten-year-old brain fr
2. on earth we're briefly gorgeous by ocean vuong
i have never read a book more beautiful in prose and so uncommonly human than this. there's just something so incredibly heartbreaking knowing this whole book is the narrator's letter to his mother who can't read! like what the fuck
3. alone with you in the ether by olivie blake
this came as a surprise to Me when i first read it. i meandered through the first quarter, loving the writing style but feeling disconnected from the characters until the Church Hand Scene™ and it was hook, line, and sinker at that point (i have since come to love the disconnectedness in subsequent rereads, knowing that the feeling was the Point). i have read this book four (4) times since i read it first last year. LAST YEAR!!! olivie has like... fundamentally altered my brain chemistry or something because i feel like everything i have written since having read this book has been somewhat influenced by it.
4. much ado about nothing by william shakespeare
what can i say! this is theeeeeee romcom ever. i have watched so many adaptations of this play, read it countless of times and can recite some iconic lines, and still the banter between benedick and beatrice is sooo elite. cannot be topped!!
5. a place for us by fatima farheen mirza
fun fact: seed rec'd this book to me and has been reccing it to anybody who would listen. the prose is so lush and melancholic. it's one of those books where nothing Really happens, but you feel Every Emotion Under The Sun and you're just like. altered by reading it
6. the song of achilles by madeline miller
obviously.... OBVIOUSLYYYYYYY this had to go here. if i had two nickels for every greek myth retelling i read during school that fundamentally changed me etc etc u get it. i read this as a junior in high school when we, yet again, had to bring a personal book to read durin class. i think at that point of my life, i've never read something that tragic yet so beautiful at the same time and now i am always looking at the beautiful and tragic in media. so! there u go! brain cells rewired and whatnot!
7. the grisha trilogy by leigh bardugo
this is funny because i . technically did not rate any of these books 5 stars i'm sobbing. but like, considering the fact that my url is what it is and the way i always have them in the back of my mind, it's no wonder that i put them here. i have such an odd attachment to these books and these characters. i had copies of these books since their release but didn't touch them until ... before the sab tv release which is so fucking funny. like i don't know what i would be like if i read this as a t(w)een. i would've been so fucking insufferable ngl
8. when my brother was an aztec by natalie diaz
i actually read this for an assignment and had to write a report on it and i had SO much fun doing it. diaz plays a lot with hunger and her imagery is literally unmatched. i think about the way she contructs sentences and am filled with such envy. my beginning sentence for my paper was a nod to her style (though i failed miserably). it was: "in a paradoxical sleight of hand, hunger feeds in natalie diaz's debut." she is just. so fucking good at words i need to CHOMP on it
9. sharp objects by gillian flynn
you know the thing where you see a really popular author for a really long time and they have their work adapted to the screen and it's so good but you still haven't read their actual writing? yeah, that was me with gillian flynn (specifically about gone girl). i read gone girl, i read sharp objects, i read her short story the grownup, i'm currently reading the last novel of hers that i haven't read, dark places, and flynn is just so... incredibly good at constructing harrowing stories. it's no wonder why all three of her novels got adapted to the screen! her prose is so grounded. vivid. there's this ease to her writing that, whenever i concurrently read another novel, i always find the other piece to be lacking. i slink back to flynn's prose and immerse myself in her awful, human worlds.
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oumaimas · 3 years
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why didn't you like on earth we're briefly gorgeous? I've never read it but I'm curious
ill preface by saying i loved ocean vuongs poems in night sky with exit wounds but his style doesnt translate well in this novel. its pretty but the fragmentation, general style and tone just didnt work w me. even a poetic, lyrical novel needs solid ground to stand on and for me this really lacked that. like im rereading it and there isnt one thing that caught my memory or eye in the first reading that im falling back on. i think it was especially disappointing bc i waited a while to read it and ppl REALLY hyped it up + it was just not at the same level/quality of writing as night sky with exit wounds
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straykats · 4 years
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i got ocean vuong's on earth we're briefly gorgeous today and its been.. an interesting read so far (im only 15pgs in lmao) but its been interesting to read smth from him because in a way, im like him..? Our parents came from the war and hmmm.. idk... a lot og what i've read is Relatable and its kind of. unnerving and comforting and terrifying at the same time. im kind of hoping i can come to terms w some stuff lmao but anyways
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