Enia started reading Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros (The Empyrean, #1)
Twenty-year-old Violet Sorrengail was supposed to enter the Scribe Quadrant, living a quiet life among …
look, I wanted to see what all the fuss was about...
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StoryGraph describes me as "Mainly reads fiction books that are reflective, emotional, and dark."
The rest of me is sfba.social/@eniatitova
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44% complete! Enia has read 11 of 25 books.
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Enia reviewed The Future by Naomi Alderman
The latest novel from the Women’s Prize-winning, bestselling author of The Power, The Future is …
slow middle, weird ending
4 stars
it took me forever to get through this, mostly because the middle was overly drawn out with exposition on "this is how we got here." I love me some character development but this wasn't compelling and so it was a slog to get through.
similarly, the ending felt forced. like there was a true ending, and the editor wanted a couple of extra chapters to tie up the loose ends so the reader wouldn't feel cheated out of a conclusion after investing so much time in that sloggy middle. and then that felt too rosy so there was another ending tacked on.
the structure of this book, woof: you think youre done, there are acknowledgements, and then there's another chapter, a colophon, and then more book?! what kind of easter egg nonesense is that?! if I wasn't reading on paper, I would have missed it.
I really did like the …
it took me forever to get through this, mostly because the middle was overly drawn out with exposition on "this is how we got here." I love me some character development but this wasn't compelling and so it was a slog to get through.
similarly, the ending felt forced. like there was a true ending, and the editor wanted a couple of extra chapters to tie up the loose ends so the reader wouldn't feel cheated out of a conclusion after investing so much time in that sloggy middle. and then that felt too rosy so there was another ending tacked on.
the structure of this book, woof: you think youre done, there are acknowledgements, and then there's another chapter, a colophon, and then more book?! what kind of easter egg nonesense is that?! if I wasn't reading on paper, I would have missed it.
I really did like the concept of this book though. It's a shame that these things got in its way.
Enia quoted A Luminous Republic by Andrés Barba
A new novel from a Spanish literary star about the arrival of feral children to …
Even now, nearly twenty years later, those words are like monks who'd been waiting patiently inside their monastery to mortify me. The vengeance of memory.
— A Luminous Republic by Andrés Barba (Page 37)
Enia rated A Living Remedy: 4 stars
Enia finished reading A Living Remedy by Nicole Chung
Enia started reading A Luminous Republic by Andrés Barba
A Luminous Republic by Andrés Barba
A new novel from a Spanish literary star about the arrival of feral children to a tropical city in Argentina, …
Enia wants to read Thick: And Other Essays by Tressie McMillan Cottom
Thick: And Other Essays by Tressie McMillan Cottom
In these eight piercing explorations on beauty, media, money, and more, Tressie McMillan Cottom-award-winning professor and acclaimed author of Lower …
Enia quoted A Living Remedy by Nicole Chung
It’s daunting work, turning the people you love into characters in a story— not to reduce or shortchange them, but to try to make them come alive on the page so that other people will understand them, too, and see a little of what you see in them.
— A Living Remedy by Nicole Chung (Page 107)
I worry about this as I write about my family.
Enia quoted A Living Remedy by Nicole Chung
I'm sorry, Nicole, she wrote back. It's so hard to lose a parent. But it will be a comfort to see your father live on in your children.
I stared at the screen for a moment, uncomprehending, until the meaning of her words sank in. She doesn't know that Im adopted.
— A Living Remedy by Nicole Chung (Page 101)
that’s a mindfuck about being adopted that I honestly hadn’t considered before, yet it’s something my father lived with his whole life. there was no generic thread between my grandmother and me.
Enia quoted A Living Remedy by Nicole Chung
"Although many people identify as middle-of-the-road, middle-class, average Americans, there are differences between a working-class and a middle-class existence, and these differences can be far from subtle. If you grow up as I did and happen to be very fortunate, as I was, your family might sacrifice much so that you can go to college. You'll feel grateful for every subsequent opportunity you get, for the degrees and open doors and better-paying jobs (if you can find them), even as an unexpected, sometimes painful distance yawns between you and the place you came from —and many will expect you to express that gratitude, using your story or your accomplishments to attack those who weren't so lucky. But in this country, unless you attain extraordinary wealth, you will likely be unable to help your loved ones in all the ways you'd hoped. You will learn to live with the specific, hollow guilt of those who leave hardship behind, yet are unable to bring anyone else with them."
— A Living Remedy by Nicole Chung (Page 21)
This rang so true and broke my heart. Any immigrant kid who tries to help their parents also knows that there's nothing worse than offering help to your family, only to have them decline it. even though they were integral to your academic success, even though they continue to support you and your help is offered with no strings attached. its heartbreaking when they feel uncomfortable sharing in the wealth they helped create, because our society makes them feel that the only success that matters is individual.
Enia commented on A Living Remedy by Nicole Chung
I’m having trouble focusing on Immortal Longings so I’m going to go read something terribly depressing instead
Enia started reading A Living Remedy by Nicole Chung
Enia started reading Immortal Longings by Chloe Gong
Enia reviewed Waiting to Be Arrested at Night by Tahir Hamut Izgil
Required reading
5 stars
it isn't often that I say "wow, the Soviet Union [I grew up in] was not as bad as this." The world Tahir tells us about, the world he lived in for many decades, and fled to give his children a better future, is one which combines the worst of the Stalinist purges of the 1930s and the Nazi Holocaust, but turned up to 14 with the use of modern surveillance technology.
Perhaps the most heartbreaking stories in Tahir's book are about the choices family members and friends have to make to protect themselves from the consequences of his decision to seek asylum in the United States. Even his father, mother and brother are forced to denounce him after a single phone call from his US phone number.
What the Chinese state is doing to Tahir and his people absolutely meets the definition of genocide.
This book isn't just mandatory …
it isn't often that I say "wow, the Soviet Union [I grew up in] was not as bad as this." The world Tahir tells us about, the world he lived in for many decades, and fled to give his children a better future, is one which combines the worst of the Stalinist purges of the 1930s and the Nazi Holocaust, but turned up to 14 with the use of modern surveillance technology.
Perhaps the most heartbreaking stories in Tahir's book are about the choices family members and friends have to make to protect themselves from the consequences of his decision to seek asylum in the United States. Even his father, mother and brother are forced to denounce him after a single phone call from his US phone number.
What the Chinese state is doing to Tahir and his people absolutely meets the definition of genocide.
This book isn't just mandatory to understand the crisis China has created for the Uyghur people, but is also keen commentary on the importance of privacy, the destructive power of corruption in a totalitarian regime, the continued importance that American democracy, flawed as it may be, continues to exist.
Enia commented on Waiting to Be Arrested at Night by Tahir Hamut Izgil
the thing that really struck me so far is his description of an interview with the Public Security Bureau he had in 2009 where at the end, they demanded his credentials for his email and messaging accounts. and he had to write down a password. that's something that not even KGB agents would have the balls to demand in the worst Soviet times. sure, they would read your mail and listen to your phonecalls but they would at least be discrete about it!