This was the year I got more into book blogging. I used to share musings about small parts of the books I finished–not necessarily on what the book was about but just on whatever I latched on. But lately I’ve been practicing writing book reviews that actually cover what the books were about and/or how they made me feel. This was also the year I joined NetGalley, which I learned about from Heather @ Of Beauty and Happiness. NetGalley is a community of publishers, authors, and reviewers who work together to share upcoming releases. Anyone with a platform (other than/in addition to Goodreads, like a blog or Youtube channel) can be a reviewer. As a reviewer, I am so lucky to be able to receive egalleys to review before publication, and that has definitely encouraged me to read more this year! I’ve read one less book than last year (which was annoying because 28 is a prettier number and it allows me to collage a 4×7 image for this blog post), but I’m happier with my book choices. Less fluffy reads than last year.
The Interestings by Meg Wolitzer (all quotes): I could relate to this so much. When we’re little, life is full of art and we’re encouraged to enrich our learning through it. But as we get older, only a few of us continue to value it. For many, it becomes a luxury that they feel they can no longer indulge in. I was so interested to see where life would take these young creatives, each of them on such different paths.
If you like this, you might like: The Collective by Don Lee
- The world of law was filled with the fallen, but theater wasn’t. No one ever “fell back” onto theater. You had to really, really want it.
- He crashed quietly through the world.
- You want to know whether the problems that you teenagers feel–will they follow you over the rest of your lives? Will your hearts always be aching?
- Nobody tells you how long you should keep doing something before you give up forever.
- I always thought it was the saddest and most devastating ending. How could you have these enormous dreams that never get met. How without knowing it you could just make yourself smaller over time.
- Wasn’t the whole point of being an artist, or at least part of it, that you didn’t have to wear a tie?
- I’m aware that New York is a toilet bowl–but an expensive porcelain one.
- Everyone tended to believe everything was their fault; maybe it was just hard to imagine, when you were still fairly young, that there were some things in the world that were just not about you.
- And the child who was happy with herself meant the parents had won the jackpot.When you have a child, it’s like right away there’s this grandiose fantasy about who he’ll become. And then time goes on and a funnel appears. And the child get pushed through that funnel, and shaped by it, and narrowed a little bit.
- And the child who was happy with herself meant the parents had won the jackpot.
- Will you be okay? I do not mean in a cosmic sense.
Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn (all quotes): The film got so much hype, but I cannot watch thrillers. I can, however, read them. So I finally read the book even though I already knew the gist of it from what I heard from other people. Nevertheless, there were plenty of unexpected parts in the story that held me in suspense.
If you like this, you might like: The Stranger Beside You by William Casey Moreton, The Many by Nathan Field
- We named the bar The Bar. “People will think we’re ironic instead of creatively bankrupt,” my sister reasoned.
- You drink a little too much and try a little too hard. And you go home to a cold bed and think, that was fine. And your life is a long line of fine.
- Most beautiful, good things are done by women people scorn.
- It’s a very difficult era in which to be a person, just a real, actual person, instead of a collection of personality traits selected from an endless Automat of characters.
- I just want to live until I can’t anymore.
The Book of Lost Things by John Connolly (all quotes): I was drawn to the title and the cover, and I had been looking for a good fantasy novel to dig into, but I failed to realise that the book was targeted toward much younger audiences (like middle school) until I got into it, and by then I was just like, what the heck I might as well finish it.
- Stories were different, though: they came alive in the telling.
- We all have our routines. But they must have a purpose and provide an outcome that we can see and take some comfort from, or else they have no use at all. Without that, they are like the endless pacings of a caged animal. If they are not madness itself, then they are a prelude to it.
#GIRLBOSS by Sophia Amoruso (all quotes): Almost didn’t read this book because I was skeptical that it was all hype, but it turned out to be a really good and fast read. (Sophia Amoruso knows how busy a #GIRLBOSS is!) Any modern lady can take something away from this.
If you like this, you might like: It’s Not How Good You Are, It’s How Good You Want To Be by Paul Arden
- Many companies were spending millions of dollars trying to nail social media, but I just went with my instincts and treated my customers like they were my friends. Even with no manager watching to give me a gold star, it was important to do my best. Who cares if a tree falls in a forest and no one hears it? The tree still falls.
- Being from the suburbs, I’d always equated comfort with ennui, and possessions with materialism, but I was beginning to learn that this wasn’t necessarily the case. Living a comfortable life can allow you the psychic space needed to focus on other, often bigger, things, and when you treat your possessions as emblems of your hard work, they inherit a meaning that transcends the objects themselves.
- Own up to your mistakes and apologize for them. Everyone will make a mistake at some point, and the sooner you can admit where you went wrong, the sooner you can start to fix it. Be honest with yourself about yourself and your abilities. Many people accept titles that are beyond their experience to only later find themselves up to their neck in problems they can’t solve, and too embarrassed to admit they weren’t qualified in the first place. And what’s the first rule about holes? If you’re in one, stop digging.
- When you’re applying for jobs, it’s best to be employed while doing it. You want the world to know that you’re not lollygagging between gigs, but instead have a lot of choices in front of you and are actively charting your own path.
- Clothing is ultimately the suit of armor in which we battle the world. When you choose your clothing right, it feels good. And there’s nothing shallow about feeling good.
- I never assisted anyone; I just gave it my all.
- An advantage of being naïve is being able to believe in oneself when no one else will.
Dream Boy by Mary Crockett (all quotes): I’ve definitely thought about how awesome it would be if my dream boy became reality, so the plot intrigued me. But it wasn’t what I hoped it would be. It’s a solid fluffy YA novel though.
- It was a little boy looking lost among a bunch of kneecaps.
- Because I wanted my feelings for Will, as much as they hurt. They were real, and they were mine. They told me what I needed to know: that Will was never just my friend; he was always more. The mirror that saw me as I really was. The boy who loved me anyway.
Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan (all quotes): I’ve known this title for so long, but never actually read the book. I went into this book without expectations or doing any of my usual musings about how the story would go. I was pleasantly surprised by the themes and harmony of paper books and technology. With every step of the way, the mystery got bigger and bigger, which is always exciting!
- So I guess you could say Neel owes me a few favors, except that so many favors have passed between us now that they are no longer distinguishable as individual acts, just a bright haze of loyalty. Our friendship is a nebula.
- That’s what spies do, right? They walk to the bakery and buy a loaf of bread every day—perfectly normal—until one day they buy a loaf of uranium instead.
- A man walking fast down a dark lonely street. Quick steps and hard breathing, all wonder and need. A bell above a door and the tinkle it makes. A clerk and a ladder and warm golden light, and then: the right book exactly, at exactly the right time.
All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr (all quotes): One of my top reads of the year. And also, I’ve noticed, for many other people who read the book. Highly recommend!! Historical fiction. Pulls at your heartstrings. Pain everywhere but beauty found.
- The brain is locked in total darkness, of course, children. It floats in a clear liquid inside the skull, never in the light. And yet the world it constructs in the mind is full of light. It brims with color and movement. So how, children, does the brain, which lives without a spark of light, build for us a world full of light?
- From a certain angle, the spring seems so calm: warm, tender, each night redolent and composed. And yet everything radiates tension, as if the city has been built upon the skin of a balloon and someone is inflating it toward the breaking point.
- Isn’t life a kind of corruption? A child is born, and the world sets in upon it. Taking things from it, stuffing things into it. Each bite of food, each particle of light entering the eye—the body can never be pure.
- When I lost my sight, Werner, people said I was brave. When my father left, people said I was brave. But it is not bravery; I have no choice. I wake up and live my life. Don’t you do the same?
- To men like that, time was a surfeit, a barrel they watched slowly drain. When really, he thinks, it’s a glowing puddle you carry in your hands; you should spend all your energy protecting it. Fighting for it. Working so hard not to spill one single drop.
- We all grew up before we were grown up.
Where the Red Fern Grows by Wilson Rawls (all quotes): Maybe the only book that I’ve ever reread in my life? It’s been my favourite since 4th grade, but now that I’m a junior in college, I admit that I don’t remember much about the book, yet it was my supposed favourite. So I gave myself a refresher. I think there are other books that I enjoy more, but I was so filled with nostalgia whilst rereading this.
- On my way home I didn’t walk on the ground. I was way up in the clouds just skipping along.
- Looking to the mountains around us, I saw that the mysterious artist who comes at night had paid us a visit. I wondered how he could paint so many different colors in one night; red, wine, yellow, and rust.
When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi (all quotes): Another one of my top reads of the year. I’ve always been interested in medical stuff, but like Grey’s Anatomy and House kinda medical stuff, not like pre-med track kinda medical stuff haha. I also like falling into existential crises occasionally. This book filled both my needs and more. Lots of emotion. Tears. But also lots of inspiration.
- Suffering can make us callous to the obvious suffering of another.
- Brains give rise to our ability to form relationships and make life meaningful. Sometimes, they break.
- You can’t ever reach perfection, but you can believe in an asymptote toward which you are ceaselessly striving.
- Before my cancer was diagnosed, I knew that someday I would die, but I didn’t know when. After the diagnosis, I knew that someday I would die, but I didn’t know when. But now I knew it acutely. The problem wasn’t really a scientific one. The fact of death is unsettling. Yet there is no other way to live.
- Life wasn’t about avoiding suffering.
- What happened to Paul was tragic, but he was not a tragedy.
The Martian by Andy Weir (all quotes): I admit that I watched the film before reading the book, but I still enjoyed this book a lot! I love Mark’s sense of humour. How someone maintains that whilst stranded on Mars, idk.
- “What must it be like?” he pondered. “He’s stuck out there. He thinks he’s totally alone and that we all gave up on him. What kind of effect does that have on a man’s psychology?” He turned back to Venkat. “I wonder what he’s thinking right now.”
LOG ENTRY: SOL 61
How come Aquaman can control whales? They’re mammals! Makes no sense. - All around me there was nothing but dust, rocks, and endless empty desert in all directions. The planet’s famous red color is from iron oxide coating everything. So it’s not just a desert. It’s a desert so old it’s literally rusting.
- Things aren’t as bad as they seem. I’m still fucked, mind you. Just not as deeply.
- I need some encouragement. I need to ask myself, “What would an Apollo astronaut do?” He’d drink three whiskey sours, drive his Corvette to the launchpad, then fly to the moon in a command module smaller than my Rover. Man those guys were cool.
- Part of it might be what I represent: progress, science, and the interplanetary future we’ve dreamed of for centuries. But really, they did it because every human being has a basic instinct to help each other out. It might not seem that way sometimes, but it’s true. If a hiker gets lost in the mountains, people will coordinate a search. If a train crashes, people will line up to give blood. If an earthquake levels a city, people all over the world will send emergency supplies. This is so fundamentally human that it’s found in every culture without exception. Yes, there are assholes who just don’t care, but they’re massively outnumbered by the people who do.
The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender by Leslye Walton (all quotes): I’m bored of reading YA books about love, and though this book is essentially a YA book about love, it’s so much more than that and I enjoyed it thoroughly. It’s not your typical contemporary YA book filled with teenage angst and trivialities; it’s a fantasy and a tragedy. I haven’t read too many fantasy books since middle school.
- She found that she did not mind losing the previous moment, for this one was just as lovely.
- Maybe it would be a longer, deeper love: a real and solid entity that lived in the house, used the bathroom, ate their food, mussed up the linens in sleep. A love that pulled her close when she cried, that slept with its chest pressed against her back.
- Unmarried women woke in the night with tears in their eyes, not because they were alone, but because there wasn’t any cake left.
- The fact filled Gabe with so much hope that he grew another two inches just to have enough room to hold it all.
- Normally led through life by the heart attached to his sleeve, finding logic in love proved to be a bit like getting vaccinated for some dread disease: a good idea in the end, but the initial pain certainly wasn’t any fun. He came to appreciate that there were worse ways to live than to live without love. For instance, if he didn’t have arms, Gabe wouldn’t be able to hide in his work. Yes, a life without arms would be quite tragic, indeed.
- She’d never understood how other parents just lost it. Now she did; children betrayed their parents by becoming their own people.
The Stranger Beside You by William Casey Moreton (all quotes): I was looking for a thriller and this one started out pretty standard, but then things got too convenient and the end was not satisfying.
If you like this, you might like: Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn, The Many by Nathan Field
- I want the world to stop. I want this big machine we live in to shut down. I want everyone to stop where they are and offer a day of reverence, a day of stillness, to show respect for the passing of the most important person who will ever be a part of my life. There should be rain, and dark, dark clouds. The wind should blow with a chill. All laughter should cease. I want the flowers to wilt, the grass to turn brown and the leaves to lose their color and fall to the ground. The traffic should stop and all conversation should hush so that there is only silence. If I had my way, the sun would hide itself, for there is no room for its splendor or brilliance or warmth in the midst of my pain. Until further notice, it is banished from the sky.
It’s Not How Good You Are, It’s How Good You Want To Be by Paul Arden (all quotes): Short, quick, blunt, and to the point. This advice book is filled with strong ideas that tells you how Paul Arden sees it. The book inspired me to write this blog post!
If you like this, you might like: #GIRLBOSS by Sophia Amoruso
- Nearly all rich and powerful people are not notably talented, educated, charming or good-looking. They become rich and powerful by wanting to be rich and powerful. Your vision of where or who you want to be is the greatest asset you have. Without having a goal it’s difficult to score.
- Firstly you need to aim beyond what you are capable of. You must develop a complete disregard for where your abilities end.
- Start being wrong and suddenly anything is possible. You’re no longer trying to be infallible. You’re in the unknown. There’s no way of knowing what can happen, but there’s more chance of it being amazing than if you try to be right.
- When I mention that I am in advertising, people’s instinctive reaction is that you are trying to sell people things they don’t want. They regard advertising as being a bit distasteful. I am no more or less distasteful than you. Yes, of course, I am selling. But so are all of you. You are hustling and selling or trying to make people buy something. Your services or your point of view.
- The most popular conception of creativity is that it’s something to do with the arts. Nonsense. Creativity is imagination, and imagination is for everyone.
Sam Cruz’s Infallible Guide to Getting Girls by Tellulah Darling (all quotes): Guy is a player. Girl is a relationship kinda gal. They’re best friends. Girl wants to learn how to be a player because she doesn’t want to get her feelings hurt. Guy helps her. Quick, fluffy YA read.
- “Because you’re so running away, which is cool. I applaud your instinct to put as much space between you and that tool as possible, but you’re going to be sad and drunk at 3am at some point, so what happens then?” Sam arches an eyebrow as if he’s waiting for a serious response from me.
What a weirdo. “I get sick and fall asleep?”
“Or you could end up in a black market bust buying a rare species of scorpion to send to Jer. Then I’d have to break you out of a foreign prison, maybe get to meet a hot human rights lawyer but this is about you not me, and in the meantime, you’d be in a third-rate jail being someone’s bitch.” - We all have these beliefs. If we could just do this one thing, our lives would be better. Like lose twenty pounds. Be the hot chick. But I did that and my life is still a mess. Or at least it’s not the life I want.
Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell (all quotes): The story is written from six different perspectives, six different time periods, six different characters. The two perspectives I really enjoyed were that of Luisa Rey and Sonmi, and my least favourite perspective was that of Adam Ewing’s, which was unfortunate because the book starts and ends with Ewing. If Kathleen had not told me about this book and the movie years ago, I probably wouldn’t have made it through the book because it was so hard for me to decipher and comprehend the different writing styles (maybe it’ll be easier for you!). But I’m glad I made it through. Everything wrapped up with the last chapter and I was able to appreciate everything that happened before it. If you’re looking for adventure, this is the book for you. This book would definitely benefit from a second read; I think I’ll watch the movie instead and get a taste of both.
- A half-read book is a half-finished love affair.
- Maybe our daughters’ll live in a liberated world, but us, forget it. We’ve got to help ourselves. Men won’t do it for us.
- Because you cannot discern our differences, you believe we have none.
- If, by happiness, you mean the absence of adversity, I and all fabricants are the happiest stratum in corpocracy, as genomicists insist. However, if happiness means the conquest of adversity, or a sense of purpose, or the xercise of one’s will to power, then of all Nea So Copros’s slaves we surely are the most miserable.
- My mind fumbled with such enormity and dropped it; how could I understand such a limitless world?
- Now I’m a spent firework; but at least I’ve been a firework.
When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead (all quotes): The story is simultaneously told from two points in time from alternating chapters; the first from when it all started, and the second from where she was now. The whole time I was enthralled by the mystery and trying to guess who was sending those notes; I finished the book in one afternoon. The main protagonist is Miranda, a girl in sixth grade, and I was relieved that I didn’t find the narrative petty/childish/self-important/overdramatic like I do with many YA novels. This book has made me want to reread A Wrinkle In Time by Madeleine L’Engle.
- Each of us has a veil between ourselves and the rest of the world, like a bride wears on her wedding day, except this kind of veil is invisible. We walk around happily with these invisible veils hanging down over our faces. The world is kind of blurry, and we like it that way.
- I love the smell of new copies. Mom says I have an attraction to dangerous smells, her main example being the fact that I love to stand in a warm cloud of dry-cleaner exhaust and take deep breaths. There is something very food-but-not-food about the smell of dry-cleaner exhaust.
- I don’t know. I just feel stuck, like I’m afraid to take any steps, in case they’re the wrong ones.
- Sometimes you never feel meaner than the moment you stop being mean. It’s like how turning on a light makes you realize how dark the room had gotten.
- Well, it’s simple to love someone. But it’s hard to know when you need to say it out loud.
- I started screaming and covered my ears. I always cover my ears when I don’t want something to happen, like if I drop a glass and don’t want it to break. I wonder why I don’t cover my eyes or my mouth. Or try to catch the glass.
The Time Keeper by Mitch Albom (all quotes): Running off the same wavelength of my previous read, I’ve been interested in the topic of time, time traveling or otherwise, so I picked this book up. It read like a myth/legend and tells of three characters: Dor, Sarah, and Victor. They are as different as can be, and I found this assortment interesting. Dor is Father Time, a man fascinated with measuring, the inventor of the world’s first clock, a man from 6000 years ago; Sarah is “a teenage girl who is about to give up on life”; Victor is “a wealthy old businessman who wants to live forever.” It was interesting how the story merged “once upon a time” with contemporary. It was a quick, easy read, but not lighthearted, which is only to be expected of a story telling of time, life, and death.
- Try to imagine a life without timekeeping. You probably can’t. You know the month, the year, the day of the week. There is a clock on your wall or the dashboard of your car. You have a schedule, a calendar, a time for dinner or a movie. Yet all around you, timekeeping is ignored. Birds are not late. A dog does not check its watch. Deer do not fret over passing birthdays.
- Like other men of enormous power, Victor could not imagine the world without him.
- You marked the minutes. But did you use them wisely? To be still? To cherish? To be grateful? To lift and be lifted?
- And when hope is gone, time is punishment.
A Field Guide to the F Word by Ben Parker (on the blog): The narrative is a little too cavalier and felt almost satyrical. For me, the book didn’t offer as much logical linguistic analysis as it did social observations. I had my own expectation for what the book would encompass and the book didn’t turn out to be what I was looking for, so halfway through it I started skimming the rest.
- But perhaps even more demonstrative of versatility is its use by itself, simply as an ejaculation (in the verbal sense). So it can express
Anger
” !”
Suprise
” !”
Delight
” !”
Awe… Disappointment… Fear… Contempt… Exasperation
” !”
The Many by Nathan Fields (on the blog): The suspense kept me going, but at the same I felt like there could be more of it–more suspense, more anticipation, more build up. The way some characters seemed to be able to detect evil and feel trouble was unrealistic to me. When I thought I knew what was going on, I was a little disappointed because the mad scientist trope is so cliche, but I kept reading on because I didn’t know for sure, and I was pleasantly surprised with something bigger. My heart started racing as soon as the plan started rolling.
If you like this, you might like: Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn, The Stranger Beside You by William Casey Moreton, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson
- “Don’t get smart with me, kid.”
“Why? Do you only speak stupid?” - “Being old and slow doesn’t make you wise.”
“Maybe not. But being young and careless sure does make you stupid.”
All the Ugly and Wonderful Things by Bryn Greenwood (on the blog): This book was giving me some serious Lolita-ish vibes. I was intrigued and wanted to find out the reasons for Wavy’s strange behaviours, wanted to understand the misunderstood, but for me, but there comes a point. The story is written beautifully for sure, maybe even too beautifully. I’m just worried that some readers may romanticise it. Because of the weight of this topic, I would only recommend this book to a mature audience, whatever that means to you.
- I mostly liked high school. I liked learning things. How numbers worked together to explain the stars. How molecules made the world. All the ugly and wonderful things people had done in the last two thousand years.
- Renee liked to take quizzes out of women’s magazines. They were silly, but good for the same thing knitting was good for. The quizzes helped Renee empty her heart, and she filled it so quickly with the wrong things, it was no wonder she needed to empty it.
- That probably wasn’t what Renee meant when she said I had to try. That was me being impossible. Aunt Brenda said that about me. You’re impossible! Most days I was impossible. Like a unicorn.
- I was lying on the tracks under a train I was in love with.
Do Geese Get Goose Bumps? by The Bathroom Readers’ Institute (on the blog): I want to be that kid that knows random, irrelevant, useless trivia. I’m always so impressed when people know random things. Like wow, if this kid knows this little thing, what else is in that brain? Genius. They humbly say that it’s useless, and perhaps it is, but it’s so cool. It makes for fun conversation and is exciting to share with friends, and what’s life about but good company and good conversation?
- Q: Why don’t woodpeckers get headaches?
A: If you tried slamming your face against a maple tree 20 times per second with the same force that a woodpecker uses, you probably wouldn’t survive the attempt…
The Possibility of Somewhere by Julia Day (on the blog): I didn’t like the protagonist, so it was hard to get into the book. Maybe it’s all that teenage angst that rubs me the wrong way. Everyone feels like the world owes them something. I feel like teenagers don’t realise how angsty they are until they become young adults. If you’re in your teens, maybe you’ll enjoy this book more.
If you like this, you might like: Girl Online by Zoe Sugg, Better Off Friends by Elizabeth Eulberg, Sam Cruz’s Infallible Guide to Getting Girls by Tellulah Darling
- Life could be crushing you, yet it doesn’t. You have real reasons to complain, and you don’t. That’s what I want to be a part of.
The Invisible Life of Ivan Isaenko by Scott Stambach (on the blog): Ivan Isaenko is one of those kids you’d look at and shake your head and say, “He has so much potential, if only he’d stop wasting it on etc. etc. etc.” He creates his own fun. We see his world through his unique filter of sarcasm, cynicism, dark humour, and social ineptitude. It’s a refreshing story after the ableist Me Before You, in which we get to see Ivan not as a mutant freak or as a pitiful handicap but as a teenage boy.
If you like this, you might like: The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender by Leslye Walton
- Mostly, I choose to leave the hell of my surroundings in favor of the slightly more palatable hell of my mind.
- “Just ten seconds, Ivan,” she said. “That’s all it takes.” This was true, except that time lives in the mind, and seconds stop being seconds when your heart is on fire.
The Fortunes by Peter Ho Davies (on the blog): This was not a book I sped through, which does not mean that it did not keep me captivated, but that it required me to pause every so often and check in with myself to evaluate how I was feeling. I’ve been trying to explore my identity through books, finding words that articulate vague thoughts and feelings that I have but can’t put together. While this book was not perfect, I do think that more stories like these need to be shared, and I am thankful for this one.
If you like this, you might like: The Collective by Don Lee
- I’m still a star, if a little tarnished.
- They fought with or against all of us in the past fifty years and they still can’t tell us apart. And they wonder why they lost some of those wars. Shit, they can tell our restaurants apart more easily than us.
- What else can we represent if not ourselves, however uncertain or contradictory those selves might be? After all, aren’t those very contradictions and uncertainties what make us ourselves?
The Heart of Henry Quantum by Pepper Harding (on the blog): I anticipated that I’d be totally taken by Henry Quantum and the way his mind would wander, but then he started objectifying women, which totally turned me off from his personality. There were also some parts of the book that were kinda racist. I found the end of the story quite depressing and didn’t feel like there was any character development, albeit the story spans the time of one day, but I think there could have been so much potential with the character of Henry Quantum and with his quest.
If you like this, you might like: Landline by Rainbow Rowell
- Why do people put things off? Why don’t we just do what we say we are going to do? And he wondered if perhaps there was some sort of survival benefit to procrastination, because otherwise, why would we have this trait?
- The first person to make butter—you have to stir that cream a long fucking time to make butter—why would anyone do that in the first place? And yet they did. And that’s the whole human endeavor right there.
- Because no one really controls anything, do they? Not when they’re in the middle of it. You may think you have a handle on something, like history, but you don’t, you can’t. It’s just a trick of perspective, a fun-house mirror, some version of the world that has nothing to do with reality, because none of us know what is happening to us, ever.
When the Moon Was Ours by Anna-Marie McLemore (on the blog): Although this book is probably for younger audiences, it’s progressive and will leave you with something to think about. This story has so many things going for it, including PoC and LGBTQ themes, and the Author’s Note added a whole nother dimension to it. I think what sets this story apart is the topic of transgenderism. While LGBTQ works are growing, I feel like the majority of them talk about the experiences of being gay or les, but not as many talk about transgenderism. This could be the book that some youth need.
- He would grow out of this, he wanted to tell her. The same way he’d grown out of saying his favorite color was clear (Why? Miel had asked him. Because everything clear is magic, because it’s invisible, he’d told her) and Miel had grown out of saying her favorite color was rainbow (Why? he’d asked her. Because they all look prettier together, she’d said, and because I don’t want to pick).
- He was losing her, this girl who built with him each night a world so much softer and more beautiful than the one he woke to in the morning. She was the wild blossoms and dark sugar that spoke of what the world could be. She was the pale stars on her brown skin. She was the whole sky.
The Art of Living Other People’s Lives by Greg Dybec (on the blog): As a hobby blogger, I’m always looking for inspiration throughout my daily life, finding the stories to tell, searching for the next potential blog post. I’m sure many of you in the world of online media can relate to this. As the managing editor of Elite Daily, Dybec takes this to another level–call it people watching, eavesdropping, or research. The way I describe it sounds very idealistic, maybe even romantic. Maybe wishy-washy. But with Dybec it’s not like that. It’s candid, it’s funny, it’s honest, it’s true. It’s filled with oddly specific examples, anecdotes, and metaphors that we can somehow all relate to.
If you like this, you might like: #GIRLBOSS by Sophia Amoruso, The Invisible Life of Ivan Isaenko by Scott Stambach, It’s Not How Good You Are, It’s How Good You Want To Be by Paul Arden
- We’re all strangers someplace.
- What starts as a fervent, Al Pacino-style pump-up speech always ends up losing steam and heading in the direction of, “well, if I die, I’ve done a lot of things and seen a lot of places.”
- I was giddy with excitement. I hadn’t done much, but it was more than I thought I was capable of.
- The odd beauty of the modern day, millennial-focused website is that it often feels like an honest, intelligent, outgoing friend, who sometimes gets too drunk on weekdays but who can explain to you what’s going on in Syria and rant about the building effects of global warming.
- Life online can’t exist without life offline.
What have been some of your favourite reads of 2016?