#if you have anyyy thoughts on these i’d love to hear them

[vlindervin7]

two books i’ve been wanting to read for a very long time, with very different results. didn’t finish babel and loveddd young mungo. not that anyone asked but let me write down a quick little review

- young mungo: LOVED IT. heartbreaking and heartwarming at the same time like my heart was just going through it. written with so much humour and tenderness and compassion, while also never shying away from the harsh realities of the lives depicted. i thought the main character was written with a lot of subtlety and i enjoyed being in his head so much. and this might be a bit controversial (possibly? idk) but i really liked that even some of the antagonists weren’t put into the antagonist’s role entirely, but were also offered empathy and were shown to have other, less violent sides (not all the antagonists though, let me be clear. i’m very much talking abt the hamish category and not the the two Actual villains (no spoilers)). without romanticising or downplaying the bad, still there was good found in it which i thought was just very well-done. anyway. do check the trigger warnings please

- babel: i’m a little sad bc i’ve been looking forward to reading this literally ever since i heard abt it which was before it was even released but… it just didn’t keep my attention. it’s not that i disliked it bc i didn’t and i actually really really really (really!) enjoy the translation elements and the world building off of it. i think that part’s great. it’s interesting, well-researched, unique!! and paired with the footnotes it’s unlike any book i’ve read before. the author took the term dark academia and went all in and i really do admire that. however i think the problem for me is the writing. the prose isn’t bad, but to me it read a bit like ya. and yk i don’t think ya is a lesser genre, i think it serves its purpose really well, but it has this tendency of explaining every little thing and also to take on a sort of moralising function, which is fine for children’s literature, but once you grow out of it it gets kinda tiring. and that’s the issue i had with babel, that some things were a bit over-explained to the point where i didn’t think the message and themes were that interesting anymore because they were just so clearly spelled out to me constantly and were sometimes lacking some nuance. i didn’t really feel connected to the characters either sadly. and this is all very disappointing to me bc i would’ve loved to read more on the translations, so i’m not saying i’ll never finish it but for right now it was just too long for smth that lost my attention the more i read. and now i’m realising the things i didn’t like abt this book are also the things that made yellowface a bit underwhelming to me

#maybe i’ll put these on goodreads too…. but i never post on there so we’ll see #jasmine has thoughts #if you have anyyy thoughts on these i’d love to hear them