What are you reading?

[Xayide]

Alright, you guys, I’m through with this book, so here is my review of Sarah Schwartz - Tokyo Fever.

As I already wrote, after everything I read about this book I set my expectations really low which probably wasn’t the worst idea. BUT: Because of that, I have to say, that I am positively surprised

If you see it for what it is - a steamy romance book - it is really not that bad.
Is it realistic? No. The J Rockers in this book are filthy rich and are everyday in the yellow press, the protagonist and the singer talking about “loving” each other after knowing each other for like five minutes. But is this genre know for being realistic? Absolutely not.
Are the characters deep? Also no - but again, they are rarely in this genre and the book only has 282 pages so there is not much space to develop multifaceted characters.
Is the story original? Aaaand again, no and also, again, not unsual for these kind of stories - but I have to say, it is really not that bad especially considering that pretty much half of the book are sex scenes, so there is not that much room for a captivating story.

That being said, the writing style was good and the story was well-paced. The author obviously has some experience in writing. I was more entertained than I thought I would. It is definitely not the best book I read this year (heck, not even the best this month ). I would not spend money on it, but if you happen to speak german (I think it is only available in german, but I am not sure), have an amazon kindle unlimited membership and have a liking for this kind of books, I’d say: Give it a go.

Amusing little side note: The female protagonist has a dwarf rabbit called Corinna Quite the unusual name for a pet, but also cute.

If you want to speculate who the inspiriation for the male protagonist was, I made notes whenever his looks where described which was not as often and in much detail as I thought it would be. He has long black and red hair with one small braided pigtail above his right ear and a tattoo on his chest which shows angelwings with thorn vines. And that’s pretty much it. No idea which real life musician resembles that description, could be anyone.

But his roommate Shouta might be inspired by DeG’s Kyo - he is described as having bleached blond hair and an eyebrow piercing.

I was disappointed that there was NO Kabedon involved in this book

[Rena]

@Xayide

That being said, the writing style was good and the story was well-paced.

I think that was the part that saved me from cringing myself to death while reading it.
Hat’s of for you reading it.

To be honest, I would have let something like that stay at a fanfiction on Wattpad, but that’s up to the author and whoever is willing to publish your story

[x51715x]

thank u for ur service

[Xayide]

@Rena

I think that was the part that saved me from cringing myself to death while reading it.

There were definitely a few occasions were I rolled my eyes hard But I’m used to doing this when reading chick lit of any kind, which I don’t do that often. But sometimes I need a little bit of a break from all the thriller books I usually read

[gilnyangi]

Currently rereading Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang. Excellent collection of speculative fiction short stories with various plotlines that really make you think some big thinks about humanity.

[CanaryCarasoul]

I finished Alice in wonderland about a week ago so now I’m reading through the looking glass ^^ I don’t know if other places really have these but in my area there’s little bird house looking… mailbox things around the city, you can put any books in there and take any you like^^ I got lucky and found a combined Alice in wonderland and through the looking glass book a while ago, it’s got a really nice cover too!

[lilliecharlotte]

found this bad boy at the record store for cheap, it’s quite a beautiful time capsule into the scope of japanese fashion circa 2012-ish. 54 subjects, only 2 guys! there’s even a couple visual kei leaning styles in there, yippee!

[Rena]

Marseille is driving me mad

[supersick]

No One Knows by Osamu Dazai
its not like a formal book, but a collection of his short stories, more specifically ones narrated by female characters which i thought would be kind of an interesting read bc if you’ve read anything by him before you’ll know he writes women in a rlly odd way so i kinda wanted to see more of how he goes about that

[Jigsaw]

• The Tao of Bowie by Mark Edwards: interesting sort-of-self-help book with biographical elements of David Bowie mixed in. Pretty light read but with some deep thoughts to consider. Might pick up some practices and meditative exercises described in this book.

• Geek Love by Katherine Dunn: wanted to read this one for a long time, so far so good. It’s a novel about a family of purposefully bred circus freaks, pretty fucked up but also humorous and touching depending on the scene. I’m curious to see where the story goes.

• The Egyptian Book of the Dead / Papyrus of Ani: said to be the most complete version of this collection of traditional religious texts from Ancient Egypt, presented in a new Hungarian translation with photo references, detailed explanations and notes. Fascinating stuff.

• The Dharma Bums by Jack Kerouac: this one’s a re-read for me, good to break up the pace with the other books. Whenever I feel a bit down, this one manages to bring my mood up again with its positivity and carefree nature. I really should read On the Road too, one of these days…

[Rena]

It took me a whole month to finish that book
Ok, I became slow at reading. Tbh the books is good, but sometimes it gets hard reading the aerial battles and trying to understand what the hell is going on.
But yeah, sure my eyes were making pipi when marseille died. Not that I wasn’t aware of it to come. It’s biography, I knew how it will end.

So well… Off to the next book let’s see what it shall be

[NewsMan]

I just finished ‘The Red Tent’ by Anita Diamant yesterday. It is a retelling of the story of Dinah bet Leah, from Genesis in the Torah/Bible, and I think it reformatted my brain chemistry. There is a lot of weight in the power of stories and memory that gets emphasized by the novel.

For those not familiar with Genesis, Dinah is the only daughter of Jacob, by his wife Leah. You may be more familiar with the story of her brother, Joseph, and his “Technicolor Dreamcoat” as popularized Andrew Lloyd Webber. In Genesis, Dinah is taken and sexually assaulted by a man named Shechem, for which two of her brothers Levi and Simeon murder every man and boy in Shechem.
Notably, Dinah is a silent character in these verses of Genesis, and she is never mentioned again after Jacob’s family arrives in Egypt.

Diamant recontextualizes this story, fleshing out Dinah’s life, her sense of agency, and emphasizing the importance of telling our family histories down through the ages.

In ‘The Red Tent,’ we first spend about half of the book growing up with Dinah, seeing her relationships with her family shift and evolve over time, until we come to meet Shalem, the name given to the prince of Shechem in the novel. The book portrays their union as entirely consensual, and as the first time Dinah actually experiences romantic and sexual attraction in her life. But because they were not married when they lay together, and because Jacob and his sons are frightened of being absorbed into a more powerful family and losing their status in Shechem, they go against Dinah’s agency and desires, and Simeon and Levi carry out the murders as described in the Torah.

Where Dinah’s story would have ended in Genesis, the novel instead follows her. She curses her entire family, which is presented as the reason why her name was forgotten, and her story never passed down as it should have been. Then we follow her to Thebes, and then the Valley of Kings, and see her actually live a peaceful life in the end, as a loved and celebrated member of the community she finally settles in. The novel ends with her passing away, describing the moments of her death, and then thanking the reader for sitting to take in her story, for which Dinah blesses the reader.

One of my biggest fears in my life has always been death. Not the moment of death, not even how I might die, but rather I’ve always been afraid of there being nothing afterward. In Judaism, we are taught that HaOlam Ha-ba, ‘The World to Come,’ is unknowable to mortals, that we have no way of knowing or even imagining what the afterlife might be life. That unknowable nature has, for years, caused me great existential dread.

On the other hand, I’ve always believed in the power of memory. I believe that those I’ve loved and lost, are never truly quite gone as long as we can keep telling their stories and making them come to life in the minds of those we share with. ‘The Red Tent’ managed to push me deeper into that idea, to the point where I’m reevaluating my fears, and I feel much more at peace with my mortality. More at peace with mortality in general, less afraid of the future where I one day bury my parents.

It’s rare for a fiction novel to affect me this deeply, but I don’t think I can understate how much this book hit me in the soul. I can’t reccommend it enough. It feels like a foundational text that everybody should read.

[NewsMan]

If you’re into science fiction and stories about rebellion, I recommend ‘Red Rising’ by Pierce Brown

It follows a young man named Darrow, who lives in a future where humanity has been genetically separated into castes, named after colors. Darrow is a Red, the lowest caste that bears the most brutal of the highest caste’s subjugation. In order to fight against the system of oppression, he has to infiltrate the highest caste, the Golds.

Where this story differs from many others about oppression and subjugation, in my opinion, is in how Darrow has to exist within the society that oppresses his people in order to fight them. It takes a classic setup and allows it to have a lot of nuance, especially in how Darrow has to navigate a set of very morally complicated and layered feelings in order to fight an objectively (as presented in the text) bad system.

‘Red Rising’ is just the first in the series. I believe the series is split into two trilogies? I’ve just started ‘Goldon Son,’ the second book of the first trilogy, with my book club after we read the first one together. It can read like YA fiction in some places, but overall I’m a fan of Brown’s writing and worldbuilding.

[NewsMan]

I’d never actually read The Lord of the Rings as a kid. I tried, but gave up pretty quickly into Fellowship. It always made me a bit sad, since I’d adored The Hobbit as a child to the point of re-reading it an obscene amount of times - once, I read it thrice in a row on a single week-long backpacking trip. The Jackson film trilogy has been an important piece of art to me for most of my life, but the original novel escaped me.

Last week I finally finished actually reading the novel and WOW I’d been missing out all these years.

Tolkien’s writing isn’t the easiest to parse at all times. He uses long, detailed sentences, the kind I used to be marked down for in school as ‘run-on,’ but they don’t feel out of place here. It often feels like Tolkien is describing not just a place where the characters are in the moment, but recounting a journey he himself might have taken. When describing a pathway in the forest, it’s almost as if he’s describing a walk he took just the other day.

What really got me though was how much more the themes of kinship and found-family pop out from the page, even with how front and center they were in Jackon’s adaptation. The obvious focal points of this are Sam and Frodo, Aragorn and Éomer, and Merry and Éowyn, but the friendship that blossoms between Legolas and Gimli is perhaps one of the most beautiful relationships I’ve seen on the page. The films do a decent job of portraying them as an unlikely pair of friends, but the novel goes another step further. Not only do they represent a re-kindled friendship between Elves and Dwarves, but their own personal friendship with each other grows into them basically being brothers. After the Battle of Helm’s Deep, Gimli and Legolas each promise the explore together a part of the world that carries deep meaning for them - Gimli wishes to show Legolas the Glittering Caves, and Legolas wants to explore Fangorn Forest with Gimli. And they DO!! After the War of the Ring, they go off together on their adventures. They become so close over the course of their lives that when it comes time for Legolas to go to the Undying Lands, he manages to get permission for Gimli join him, becoming the first Dwarf to ever go to take The Straight Road into the Undying Lands.

As an adoptee, especially one who has never known my birth parents, found-family stories have always resonated strongly with me. As a result, digging into these themes within LotR was really special to me. The films have been important to me for years, and reading the novel felt like falling in love anew with one of my favorite stories, especially with these themes making themselves so palpable and important to the tale itself.

It’s gonna be a weird mood whiplash going from this to old Star Wars Extended Universe books lmao