#book reflection

[thetypedwriter]

Curious Tides Book Review

Curious Tides by Pascale Lacelle Book Review 

This book has so many things to love. 

Too bad I disliked almost all of them because of other glaring issues in the book. 

I still give Lacelle so much credit. Her book had so many dreams (literally) and tried to tackle so much for a debut YA novel. However, I really think she could have benefited from a more succinct editor, by changing up her timeline, and by shearing off a good 200 pages or so. 

This book’s plot is ambitious. It switches POV’s between two main characters: Emory and Baz. Emory, a student at Aldryn College, specializes in healing powers. Used to being mediocre and constantly standing in the shadows of her best friend, Romie, Emory is suddenly the recipient of every power after a near death experience that leaves several dead, including Romie.

However, in the aftermath of the event, Emory learns that she’s a mythical tidecaller. Baz meanwhile, is an eclipse-born, a person who receives his powers from being born on a lunar eclipse.

Known for their horrific and “evil” powers that combust in an event called “collapsing”, Baz is ostracized and alienated by the other students at Aldryn, but also the world at large for his incredible, but frightening ability to control time (another big issue that I won’t even get into). 

The setting of this book is a world based on the idea that people receive abilities depending on the moon they were born under. There’s lore galore, colleges dedicated to honing special abilities, rituals, language, and mythology–all based on the tides and the moon. 

The details that Lacelle includes in this is really interesting, as is the concept of magic based on the moon phases itself. A dark academia setting based on the tides and lunar alignments? I love it.

However, the magic system was needlessly complicated and Lacelle spent way too much time describing events, world-building facets, and societal elements that had nothing to do with the plot and only succeeded in making the book longer instead of pulling me into the story more deeply. 

In addition, a lot of Lacelle’s writing was incredibly repetitive. She hit the same points over and over and over again: eclipse-born are evil and everyone hates them, everyone loves the moon, Kieran is hot, Romie is great, Baz’s memory of his father’s printing press blowing up, Emory feeling inadequate compared to Romie, and Baz thinking or describing the children’s book Sorrow of the Drowned Gods. 

No joke, the items I listed up above were about 75% of the book. The remaining 25% was action, too-in depth details about the college that didn’t matter—like what all the different halls were called and what they looked like in each dormitory, more flashbacks of Emory and Baz’s past, and interactions between the characters. 

Even though Emory and Baz are at a college, their classes don’t matter whatsoever. Honestly, I have no idea why they’re even at a college other than to have them all in one place. Emory’s classes are described once, briefly, and we see her go to about two classes. Otherwise, it’s not mentioned at all. 

The characters themselves were okay. Not great. Just…okay. Lacelle tried way, way too hard to give her characters depth, but only succeeded in telling instead of showing.

Instead of me figuring something out about Emory, Lacelle would have a huge, descriptive paragraph of Emory realizing that she compared herself to Romie too much and that she had her own self-worth. Moments like this aren’t bad per se, but they were way too frequent for my liking. 

Let me, the reader, figure things out about the characters and come to my own conclusions. Don’t spell out every single detail for me and hold my hand. It’s tedious and it’s boring. Lacelle did this constantly. 

In addition, for a nearly 600-paged book, about four characters mattered: Emory, Baz, Kieran, and Kai. Emory and Baz are the main characters so it’s hard to discount them, even though they’re not that interesting due to having every single personality trait of theirs spelled out and analyzed by the author itself. 

Kieran and Kai, although important characters, were very one-dimensional. Kieran’s power-obsessed manipulative personality was not a secret whatsoever.

Lacelle reveals his “true” nature at the climactic end, even though the signs showing his megalomania were painfully clear to a ten-year-old. 

I liked Kai the most, but he’s in very little of the book. We see him mainly in flashbacks and then at the very end. Lacelle, why lock up your most interesting characters and hide them away for most of the novel?? She does this with Romie too, a more egregious error. 

Romie dying is the catalyst for this whole story. It’s what changes Emory and makes her a tidecaller, it’s what invigorates Kieran and sets him on his master plan, it’s what influences Kai to collapse—the whole story starts with Romie dying at Doveremere Cave. 

Yet…Lacelle starts the story after this event. Why would an author do this??? It’s excruciating. Your most important part of the whole novel isn’t even included in the novel. She inserts it later as a flashback, but I don’t want a flashback. I want the real thing. 

The book should have started with Romie and Emory going to Dovermere and then 

progress from there. It easily could have been the first chapter and it would have introduced us to Romie’s character more, set up Romie and Emory’s friendship, and acted as the catalyst for the whole story. 

Even better, it could have even started with Baz’s memory of his father’s printing press blowing up, then the three of them starting at Aldryn, them going to Dovermere, Romie dying, and thennnnn continuing.

That already would have been a better book. It wouldn’t even have to be longer. By cutting out all the repetitive and useless bits that I already mentioned, Lacelle would have had plenty of room to include these essential moments. 

I truly don’t understand the choices she (or her editor) made about the plot timeline and pacing because they were all terrible.

This is a true injustice when you take into account how original and fascinating the initial concept is and how much time and effort she put into the world and its lore. 

Recommendation: This book had all the right ingredients for something truly great, but fell short due to verbose, albeit beautiful writing, a slow plot, choppy pacing, predictable characters, and too dense world-building that added nothing to the story.

If you want dark academia, look elsewhere like If We Were Villains or the Atlas Paradox. These stories have much better plots with much more interesting characters and it doesn’t take 600 pages to get to the end. 

Score: 4/10

#curious tides #pascale lacelle #favorite books #book #book blogger #book review #books #book blog #book recs #book rec #book reflection #ya book rec #ya fiction #magical fantasy #popular books #top books #popular fiction #book recommendations #4/10

[zenaidedossantossatumberl]

Nova obra de Vinicius que é um autor carioca, cujas obras são baseadas em escrita de auto ajuda e autor reflexão. New work by Vinicius, an author from Rio de Janeiro, whose works are based on self-help writing and self-reflection.

#news #culture #tumblr #tumblr milestone #book #author #writer #book reflection

[potatofelts]

After reading a bunch of horror novels in a row that have inspired all sorts of new nightmares (thanks Grady Hendrix), I had a really lovely time reading Tress and the Emerald Sea 💚 An endearing yet grown-up story that kept me turning pages until the end!

I’m new-ish to the Cosmere (read all of Mistborn and WoK) and still enjoyed this a lot — especially with the fun, off-kilter narration. I love that Tress is imperfect — selfless but not to an extreme degree that women protagonists tend to be painted in, and resourceful but not overpowered.

After reading through the end, I feel like I’ll need to do another run to fully appreciate it, but for now I’ve moved on to WoR. Here’s hoping I take less than a month to finish it!

#cosmere #book reflection #tress #tress of the emerald sea #brandon sanderson #stormlight archive #first book of February

[b00ks-and-cl3v3rn3ss]

Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister | "The Imp-Riddled House" Chapters 9-15:

Book Reflection/Spoilers

The book is divided into 5 main parts with the addition of it's prologue and epilogue.

This second part is called THE IMP-RIDDLED HOUSE. It has 7 chapters:

9. The Small Room of Outside

10. Small Oils

11. The Masterpiece

12. Rue, Sage, Thyme, and Temper

13. Reception

14. Virginal

15. Simples

This part starts with Iris, Ruth, and their mother in Van den Meer's house. Iris was called by him to help Clara with English and to be friends with her. I really love how Iris tries to interact with Clara by talking about fairytale things. This leads to Clara and Iris being close "friends". I say "friends" because Clara seems to be fond of Iris; however, she has certain manners that seem quote "socially awkward" and also with a bit of judgy-ness. She tends to kind of "judge" Iris and Ruth but is still friends with them. Clara seems to not be like the nice and gentle Cinderella we see in our Disney animated (and live-action) film.

Something that caught my attention while reading this part is from chapter 11, The Masterpiece.

It seems that the more wonderful this painting becomes, the less chance there is of the Master's ever surpassing it.

^Here, the Master is making a painting of Clara and tulips. The entire paragraph, especially the highlighted sentence, reminds me of Olivia Rodrigo's song Teenage Dream (one of my top favorites from her GUTS album). Especially the line in her song that goes, "...but I fear that they've already got all the best parts of me..."

^So the Master is definitely giving Teenage Dream vibes here👀 and can I say I sooo relate to this even in my 20s. I was a straight A student and had everyone talk about my grades, smarts and other performing and visual arts talents. I felt like I was best also at painting and drawing but after graduating high school I felt like I NEEDED to be better than I was and couldn't fail once. I'm mentally in a much better place now though! Always improving!

*

Something I forgot to mention in the reflection from Part 1 was that this book is more based on real life than the magical side of Cinderella. It talks about witches, imps, fairies, gypsies, and changelings; however, they seem to be rumors and make believe in this book's universe. There are elements of history and some religion; however, the children seem to still question and/or imagine a magical world.

#confessions of an ugly stepsister #book reflection #book notes #books and reading #olivia rodrigo #guts olivia rodrigo #guts album #teenage dream #teenage dream olivia rodrigo

[unbridledmemories]

Yaa Gyasi's Transcendent Kingdom

I read the final pages of Yaa Gyasi’s Transcendent Kingdom, and I soiled one page with my teardrops. I couldn’t stop weeping.  For the life of me, the story of Nana, Gifty, The Black Mamba (the Mother), and Chin Chin Man (the Father) transported me into a world, though fiction, felt real. I was immersed in their lives, albeit tragic and heartbreaking, and even towards the middle of the book, I…

View On WordPress

#Book Reflection #book review #books #Homegoing #love life #mother #Transcendent Kingdom #Yaa Gyasi

[ale-arro]

been going a little bit insane about this sentence from Ace by Angela Chen for the past week

#replace this with any other type of significant relationship too #also! this book actually rules btw i really recommend it #i didnt read it when it first cane out bc i was like. well i am already pretty familiar with asexuality and not rly interested in 101 stuff #but it turns out it doesnt feel 101-y at all its a super awesome piece of queer theory and also chen has Good opinions #and not weird watered down ones that i am sometimes wary of in aspec communities (frankly especially ace ones) #i think maybe if more people approached asexuality the way chen does (including and maybe even especially ace people) #i would be more inclined to still ID as ace #but anyways! #aro #aromantic #<- tag selections that reflect how i personally engage with this quote #also #described in alt text #also also #j tag #:/ #aro media

[nothatsmi]

On my computer I titled this Neil's sanity.

Don't you hate it when your reflection tries to murder you.

Anyway here's an animation I spent the day doing, it's Millport Neil and his Guilt :)

Also thank you so much for all the replies for the animatic! It means so much!! Tbh I would draw and animate more but each time I do so I gotta catch on the school work and I'm getting behind already.. But yeah today I was like meh what's work anyway.

#aftg #all for the game #the foxhole court #the raven king #the kings men #neil josten #the reflection is named nathaniel #also are we gonna talk about the fact that there's gonna be a fourth book #the sunshine fucking court??? #i cannot wait for this shit i am oh so excited #i'm gonna draw jean moreau next time #noah's aftg series

[misskaboom]

#mirror #adult reading #reflection #artistic nude #black and white #books and reading #vintage #panty pics #shygirl #natural body #naughty thoughts

[jaaerieb]

AAA I REALLY MISSED DRAWING THEM

#infinity train #lake infinity train #grace monroe #jesse cosay #infinity train book 2 #infinity train fanart #lake and jesse #alan dracula #cracked reflection #infinity train cracked reflection

[warriorcatsofficialfacts]

i think 2024 should be the year where we switch up the fanon gender presentations of dove and ivy. i want muscular blocky butch dovewing and ethereal willowy ivypool with eyelash extensions on my desk by tommorrow

#this reflects the books where dovewing is constantly bullied and belittled while ivypool pretends she's oppressed for being normal

[thetypedwriter]

The Bear the Nightingale Book Review

The Bear and the Nightingale by Katherine Arden Book Review

This book is so different from what I would normally read. 

I was browsing the shelves at Barnes and Noble as I’m prone to do when I picked up a YA book with a beautiful cover.

I don’t recall what the book was, but I decided to check out the reviews for it on Goodreads to determine whether I should purchase it or not. 

On Goodreads, the overwhelming statement being made about this forgotten YA book was that it was the poor man’s version of The Bear and the Nightingale. 

Intrigued, I wandered a shelf or two over until I found The Bear and the Nightingale itself and decided to buy it. The Bear and the Nightingale at its core is a novel steeped in Russian folklore.

It tells the story of Vasilisa Petrovna, a young girl with the powers to see spirits and otherworldly creatures. 

Starting from Vasya’s birth up until she’s on the brink of womanhood, you learn about Vasya’s mother Marina, who dies in childbirth, all of Vasya’s siblings, her father, Pyotr, and their small Russian village on the outskirts of metropolitan cities like Moscow and Vladimir. 

The plot revolves around Vasya’s deep connection with the spirits and guardians that live in and around her home and the disturbance that shakes them and the village with the arrival of a priest, Konstantin Nikonovich. 

Father Konstantin thinks that Vasya’s village is backwards for their savage reverence towards the old gods and sets the village and its people on a path of devoted fear and cruel judgment. 

Soon enough, everyone thinks Vasya is a cursed witch and the people who once loved her now cast her aside, both out of cowardice and obedience from Father Konstantin.

However, the person who hates Vasya the most is her stepmother, a righteous, pious woman who is the only other person in the village who can see the spirits. 

Unlike Vasya, who sees the creatures as guardians, Anna sees the creatures as devils out to damn her and her daughter, a curse she has borne to bear and has never been able to get rid of. 

As the village falls away from the old, traditional times, the spirits grow weak and infirm. From this fragility and vulnerability, the devil, Medved the Bear, grows stronger.

\With his newfound power, he turns the dead into upyrs, brings about bitterly freezing winters, dry summers, and poor harvests, cursing the people of the village slowly but surely. 

The only one who can stop Medved is his brother, Morozko, the winter king known as death himself. Teaming up with Morozko, Vasya must fight back against the evil that threatens her village, putting herself and her loved ones in perilous danger. 

I feel like there’s more to this plot and yet, this is the best summary I can come up with. At its core, The Bear and the Nightingale is a retelling of the Russian fairytale of Frost, the blue-eyed winter demon.

In the fairytale (which Vasya’s nurse Dunya tells her at the beginning of the story) a witch-girl from the village comes across Morozko, who is so taken with her beauty and courage that he gives her a bountiful dowry upon her return home. 

Arden takes this classic fairytale and turns Vasya from a beautiful damsel into a fierce witch that refuses to marry, be sent off to a convent, or be shackled in any way to God or to man. 

The most astounding part of this book for me was the Russian folklore influence. Folk stories of any kind have always been fascinating and it’s always so intriguing to learn about myths and stories from other cultures.

I’ve never heard of the Frost demon and while Arden turns the story contemporary with Vasya being an independent woman, the rest of the story is steeped in Russian lore, language, and history. 

The way that Arden wrote this book reads like a fairytale. With a lot less focus on dialogue and traditional methods of exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, and resolution, the book rises and falls like a fairytale would. 

It was a lot of telling not showing, which I’m usually fiercely opposed to, but in this case, it was inherently intentional. It’s as if, Dunya, Vasya’s nurse, was telling the story the whole time, from start to finish.

It reads in a lyrical, poetic way, very different from other novels and a breath of fresh air for pure ingenuity. 

The characters themselves were also good. Just like in a fairytale, they don’t have the deepest of characterizations, but that’s also not the point. They’re archetypes, lessons for young ears to hear and heed.

I find it a bit strange that Vasya had the mentality of a young woman growing up in the year 2024, but it’s also forgivable. Arden wasn’t trying to create a fully functioning fairytale that’s wholly accurate. 

There are some other critiques I have, especially towards the ending. It felt like the climax came out of nowhere, with not much of a build to hit the ground running as a reader, and the death of a certain character was inexplicably vague and unimportant. 

But Arden’s decision to base Vasya’s story on a fairytale, twist it with modern sensibilities, and sprinkle in some magic and poetry—is a concoction that clearly worked as the book is a national bestseller. 

Recommendation: Overall, I enjoyed The Bear and the Nightingale. While it’s not something I would usually read, as stated at the beginning, I liked the reset. Every once in a while it’s refreshing (and needed) to get away from the typical YA love triangle or slow-burn romance, from the humdrum fantasies and the summer flings. 

It deepens my appreciation for literature, expands my horizons, and teaches me something new, which—isn’t that what we’re always looking for as readers?

Score: 7/10

#book blog #the bear and the nightingale #katherine arden #favorite books #book review #book #book reflection #book recommendations #book rec #popular books #top books #popular fiction #book reccs #fairy tales #russian literature #russian folklore #7/10

[zenaidedossantossatumberl]

O Coletivo das Marchantes Margaridas de Guarulhos escreverão livro sobre o protagonismo na Marcha. The collective of margarida marchers from Guarulhos will write a book about their leading role in the March

#news #tumblr #culture #tumblr milestone #writer #literature #book reflection #books & libraries #x reader

[gingebreadbeetle]

There’s no way Hazbin fans (more so Stans) and Viv herself genuinely believe Hazbin hotel is anything like Bojack? Where does Hazbin even take inspiration from Bojack?? Bojack horseman is such a good show, with complex thoughts and ideas expressed in its writing and characters.

Vivziepop is not a curious writer. She doesn’t care about representing people, she has a limited creative mind because she cannot understand politics nor philosophy beyond a highschool level. Her progressive ideology is built of hate for women and the fetishization of gay men. She has nothing interesting to say, nothing new to add and no substance to her works.

There are so many reasons bojack horseman works where Hazbin doesn’t, and I’m tired of pretending a ‘adult show’ that brings up ‘adult themes seriously’ is on the same level as bojack horseman.

#hazbin hotel critical #hazbin hotel #anti vivziepop #anti spindlehorse #hazbin hotel critique #anti hazbin hotel #seriously Bojack is better #I need to rewatch Bojack for the 900th time #like the writing is so vulnerable #if you cannot reflect on your actions and take responsibility for them then you cannot produce good writing about redemption or assholes #Viv is bojack when he tried to write his own book without Diane’s help. #fuck vivziepop

[b00ks-and-cl3v3rn3ss]

Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister by Gregory Maguire | "The Obscure Child" Chapters 1-8:

Book Reflection/Spoilers

The book is divided into 5 main parts with the addition of it's prologue and epilogue.

This first part is called THE OBSCURE CHILD. It has 8 chapters:

Marketplace

Stories Told Through Windows

Looking

Meadow

Sitting of Schoonmaker

Girl with Wildflowers

Half a Door

Van den Meer's Household

I'm sure we've met all of the characters in this first part of the book except for the "Prince Charming" of this story. I instantly felt bad for Iris and Ruth, especially on how their mother Margarethe treats both of them. Iris is always treated and even see as ugly. Her thoughts are always shifted to thoughts of physical appearance.

One of my favorite interactions from this part would probably be in chapter 6, Girl with Wildflowers. Here we see how Caspar sees the painting that the Master did of Iris and the wildflowers.

"He's taken and flattened all that is attractive in you," says Caspar. "It's like a lie that has enough resemblance to truth to convince for a brief moment. But you must not take it for gospel. He has used the-the grammar of your features to spell out a sentence. Do you know what it says?"

.

"It says," Caspar insists, "it says nothing about luck, nothing about Iris, nothing about girls. It says only one thing. It says: Aren't the flowers beautiful?"

^Here is where I confirmed that Caspar might become the love interest of Iris. He states how Master painted Iris without her attractiveness. Meanwhile, Iris and her mother think the painting is exactly how she looks.

*

Also, in the chapter 4 named Meadow...

Without question Ruth is an idiot, but she is not a pig.

^Why did I laugh after reading this line? It felt too blunt. I was reading this before bed when I was getting sleepy and reading this hit me in a funny way😂

#confessions of an ugly stepsister #book reflection #gregory maguire #book notes #books and reading #bookworm

[soybean-official]

What's going to happen to me now?

#devil may cry #beanie art #vergil devil may cry #vergil dmc #nelo angelo #urizen dmc #v devil may cry #v dmc #dmc fanart #devil may cry fanart #i mean do i have to tag the nightmares too #anyways let me elaborate on the piece here in the tags #its based on Triple Self Portrait by Norman Rockwell #planned to do a thing where each reflection is holding in its left hand whatever vergil's 'heart' is at each point in his life #while the right hand would hold his 'weapon' #like the symbolism at the end of VoV where the young vergil is holding the book and the yamato #for nelo angelo it's the amulet as his heart and mundus's sword as his weapon #for urizen he has nothing in his hand as his heart and the qliphoth fruit as his weapon #v was meant to have his book in his hand as his heart and the familiars as his weapon #and ofc young vergil has the amulet and the yamato (hes looking at nelo angelo in the leftmost mirror whats he thinking HMMM) #but regardless the way the piece worked out you cant see everybodys hands!!! #it be like that sometimes i hope someone reads these tags and sees the intent lol

[kreftropod]

Absolutely loving the fact that, despite Dracula being adapted to death and back by media over the last century, a lot of people don't actually know the original story. As in, here we are, in 2022, tagging spoilers for a 125 year old novel that most people thought they knew from it's countless adaptations but turned out to not know at all. It's great. I love it. Thanks for sharing your first-time reactions to this comedy of an old book.

#it's good to remember that we have 125 years of hindsight when reading this though #people back in 1897 didn't know the things we know today #their worldview was very different from ours and they didn't know all the spooky tropes we know today #since yknow this book was part of the ones who started those tropes to begin with #yes Dracula is a comedy by todays standard and please continue to make fun of our Dear Friend Jonathan and Domestic Teeabo Dracula #but also remember that this book is Old as Fuck #and very old timey English(tm) #so there's inevitably gonna be descriptions and character-opinions that reflect that #just good to keep in mind #anyway love yall #keep on what you're doing #I'm having a blast reading all of your funny Dracula posts #Dracula Daily #Dracula #Bram Stoker's Dracula #babbling in the tags I guess