Book-Thoughts: The Shortest Book Non-Reviews
- Elle
- Mar 27, 2020
- 3 min read
Updated: Nov 30, 2020
Here are some of my favorite books. My thoughts on these are more than "here is what I read" and less than a review. These are my "book-thoughts."
Romantic, serious, thoughtful, thought-provoking, critical, inspiring.
Freaky but has its heart in the right place; funny because of the absurdity; distopian in the best way because realistic.
Not just funny (but obviously that), but also: life-affirming, clever, inspirational, and so good I bought the audio book after and have listened to it at least three times already (book came out in 2014).
Beautifully romantic in the simplest way (that is a positive attribute); traditional ideas but not dumb at all.
Heavy; beautiful; heart-wrenching; important; life-affirming; frustrating. Please read this book.
Thoughtful; thrilling, yet calm; underlying hopefulness.
Emotional; highly poetic (but written in prose -- vernacular!): you can't not feel every word; the difficulty and necessity of independence; the loss of control.
Significant; highly timely; entertaining; thrilling; thought-provoking; an "easy" read in the best sense possible; what do we owe to our fellow humans?
The Sandman.
Creepy; funny; disturbing; strange; full of valuable lessons; read through a feminist lense.
Lavish; optimistic; nostalgic; fun; what are we here for?
Disturbing; thought-provoking; important; captivating; made me very queasy but would definitely read again (for the first time).
Probably the most underestimated/wrongfully hated Shakespeare play; witty; clever; silly; warm; bizzare; captivating. Reading this means watching a master as he was becoming just that. Favorite themes: fickleness, romantic love (or might they be one and the same?).
Incredibly important book about the importance of the written word, a culture of discussion and growth, imagination and the right to dream; captivating; depressing; current; but above all: much too short.
From (probably) 411 BC, this is a hilarious, pre-feminist masterpiece based on facts.
Thick; visual; sad; romantic; unfair; beautiful; captivating.
Probably my favorite Austen; above all else: clever, skeptical, deeply romantic in an intellectual/spiritual way (even more than other Austens).
Original: Sorstalanság, English: Fatelessness
A gut-punch you can not put down; unbelievably sad, infuriating and optimistic; a narrator like no other; accusing yet without bitterness.
He is my king, the one who makes everything better, often by telling me to embrace the bad. If you only read two, let them be "Ode to a Nightingale" and "Ode on Melancholy" (in that order!).
A light novel covering some of the most heavy topics of our age; funny, intelligent, observant, lovely, excruciating; feeling your sympathy as a reader jump from character to character, trusting one this minute, then feeling embarassed about it the next; knowing when you're supposed to judge a character and yet finding yourself sympathizing with them.
It's about an extraordinary life, told through the mundane; subtletly of storytelling; a woman embracing her life unapologetically; set in the 1940s, the protagonist is modern even by today's standards.
What an introduction into a world of which I thought I had a fairly comprehensive understanding; moving, infuriating, inspiring, anger-inducing; in fact even better after having seen the Series! --It gave me the visuals I needed to fill the book with pictures since it is, after all, a world of which I know only the bare minimum.
Gripping, strange, humane; fiction weaved around historical facts; one of the most notorious female murderesses in Canada of the 1940s; Is she telling us all she remembers? Did she do it or didn't she?
What happens when friends grow apart -- or do they ever, really?; witty, heartfelt, clever, heartbreaking, positive; three friends judging each other's lives and an author judging none of them.
Only putting this here so that nobody in the history of the world will ever waste even a minute of their lives on this book; arrogant, ignorant, repetitive, empty, unfriendly, boring; a protagonist who is an all-around asshole without any redeeming characteritics or a back-story that might cause sympathy; no minor characters that can carry the reader through the story; overall, an amateur piece of work, trying very hard to make a point but loosing the reader along the way.
Spooky, intelligent, twisty, loving; a nameless protagonist who hasn't found herself yet, is confronted with her new husbands' dead wife and all that she was; every minor character is interesting and crucial to the storyline; don't you dare think you see what's coming until you read the last word.
Intriguing; a short novella packed with tension, color, and many an interesting character; sympathy-inducing; a "in one sitting" kind of read; making you realize how little of the story you know as an outsider, which -- as readers -- we most often are.
I don't think there is a more appropriate word to describe this novel than: genius; I will nevertheless give it a few more words: captivating, heart-wrenching, unfair; nobody writes injustice quite like Whitehead: He makes it unbarable in the smallest ways and yet weaves his story in a way that makes you want to continue, hoping for the best, naively; Best when read for the first time but always worth a re-read.
To be continued.
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