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| 4.25
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| unknown
| Dec 03, 2024
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really liked it
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If I see a new Taylor Swift fan book come into the library, you best believe I am snagging it and reading it. Because we all need some tiny joys in li
If I see a new Taylor Swift fan book come into the library, you best believe I am snagging it and reading it. Because we all need some tiny joys in life. Long Live: The Definitive Guide to the Folklore and Fandom of Taylor Swift by Nicole Pomarico was a lovely little dose of joy indeed. A heartfelt tribute to a beloved star that reads like a love letter to the fandom as Nicole details through Swift’s career from a fan’s eye view of awaiting album news, getting excited about teasers and combing through lyrics, Long Live is a wonderful tribute to Swift and the community that supports her. With cute art and an in-depth overview of Swift’s Eras complete with defining characteristics such as a page for “how to dress� for the aesthetics of each Era (this is clearly a product of the Eras Tour), biographical information about Swift (and her cats), and more, this is cute and fun but also quite informative about all the behind-the-scenes aspects of the music process. Sure, maybe a bit of a coffee-table money grab BUT it’s also just a lovely little book and would make an amazing gift for the Swift fan in your life (which could include you, you should gift yourself one). Yay kitties! This is a nice, accessible overview that won’t quite hit an academic level of Swift lore and information, but it also doesn’t intend to be and is quite lovely for what it is. I really appreciated how this is very fan-centric and very much emphasizes and highlights the connections between fans and Swift. Fans will likely find themselves in this, particularly Pomarico’s rather heartfelt stories about her own love for the music. This was just a great little dose of joy and fun to flip through and read. Plus the cover is amazing. Just read it, it’s fun. 4/5 ...more |
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Apr 07, 2025
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| 1662527233
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| 4.12
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| Mar 11, 2025
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it was amazing
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While this deserves all the stars for the clever K.A. Applegate Animorphs reference alone, The Knight and the Butcherbird accomplishes so much in such
While this deserves all the stars for the clever K.A. Applegate Animorphs reference alone, The Knight and the Butcherbird accomplishes so much in such a short amount of space I can’t help but heap praise. Alix E. Harrow slays at the short game.
The Six Deaths of the Saint
had me jaw-dropped and dazed for days and here comes The Knight and the Butcherbird as if it were a sword Harrow swings with powerful strokes of dazzling prose and worldbuilding with finely executed twists and turns that will catch you unarmed and awed. The Knight and the Butcherbird finds us immersed in a world where knights �come to slay thy demon� amidst a population withering in this desecrated world. But what are the demons, truly? While harsh and haunting with a fascinating horror-fantasy atmosphere, love is ultimately the heart of the tale. And sometimes love asks a lot of us.This is a quick read that is deceptively short as the succinct world building and finely tuned plot feels far more sprawling than its page count and Alix E. Harrow has once again left me in awe. �At six, I’d thought love was a full belly; at sixteen, I’d thought it was wildflowers and gooseberries and Mayapple’s mouth on mine. At seventeen, I knew better: love is whatever you’re willing to kill for.� Set �three hundred and some odd years after the apocalypse� in the Outlands where our narrator lives in �a scrounging, desperate town full of sickly, short-lived people, where burials were more common than births,� there is so much imagination and creatively tightly wound in The Knight and the Butcherbird. The post-apocalypse setting frames it a really uneasy atmosphere where it all feels �balanced on the border between familiar and strange� and can have this fairly medieval fantasy style while still being firmly attached to our world. While references to the apocalypse and the diseases that lingered beyond the nuclear fallout—like COVID—might jerk you back out of the fantasy, it also grounds the story to force you to confront its messages as products of our own reality and our complicity in the world sliding towards this bleak future. It’s a world with rampant disease, small enclosed cities with kings and religious fear mongering to keep the people in line, a world where �we marry young, we die young. The wheel turns.� Death is as abundant as the clever twists and reveals Harrow deftly navigates and this is a story where you just hold on tight and let it soar. �She came to us as any apocalypse does: slowly at first, and then all at once.� It’s best to know as little of the plot as possible so I’ll make this brief because the unfolding of mystery in this monstrous reality is the joy of the experience here. But the existence of the demons in the world is really well crafted. �They say demons are spirits freed from hell by the fifth trumpet, along with cancer and mincroplastics, which slink into people’s souls and change them into monsters.� Yet in any realm of humankind where power is up for grabs, how much can we trust the popular lore. Especially one that involves �the Bible and the gun&Mdash;an old formula, well proven.� I also really enjoyed how storytelling is so important in this post-digital world and the narrator serves her community as a storyteller to keep the lessons of the past alive. Yet the only memory she has the energy to preserve is that of her wife, now gone, and what to make of a world so harsh and cruel. �As I loved May, as Sir John loved his wife, as god loved the world: with blood on our hands.� I had a blast with The Knight and the Butcherbird and I’ve found that Harrow’s short stories really work for me. It’s a world that is �brutal, maybe, but that’s survival for you� and one where change is frightening as the old is forever swallowed into the future. But one thing never changes and it’s the power of love, and I believe that is always worth fighting for. This was short, spectacular, and left me stunned. 4.5/5 �The wheel turns, Sir John. So do we.� ...more |
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Apr 05, 2025
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Apr 05, 2025
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Apr 05, 2025
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ebook
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| 0393285944
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| 4.24
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| May 16, 2016
| May 17, 2016
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it was amazing
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Rita Dove is a national treasure. A former Poet Laureate, recipient of the Pulitzer Prize (only the second Black writer to win it), 29 honorary doctor
Rita Dove is a national treasure. A former Poet Laureate, recipient of the Pulitzer Prize (only the second Black writer to win it), 29 honorary doctorates, the only poet to be awarded both the National Humanities Medal and the National Medal of Arts, an NAACP Image Award, and more yet even all her accolades cannot possibly prepare you for the depth, the beauty, and the power of her work. Collected Poems: 1974 - 2004 is an extraordinary overview of her work ranging from her first collection, The Yellow House on the Corner in 1980 through American Smooth in 2004. With lyrical prose that �sizzles with stars� across vibrant images, Dove traverses across history, culture, identity and everyday life on her poetic explorations. There is an incredible sense of balance between the universal and the singular in her poems and the boldness of broad history juxtaposed with domestic life or everyday moments because, as she writes in
, â€�what was bliss / but the ordinary life?â€� Profound and profoundly moving, this is an amazing collection honoring the decorated career of this essential American poet. What I want is this poem to be small, a ghost town on the larger map of wills. Then you can pencil me in as a hawk: a traveling x-marks-the-spot. â€Äì°ù´Ç³¾ Born in 1952 in Akron, Ohio, Rita Dove has lived quite the incredible life of language that has dazzled both on the page and in the classrooms. A teacher of writing, Dove also served as the youngest Poet Laureate (Dove was 40 at the time) and used her post to draw attention to the Black experience through art. Her work is often closely knit to ideas on Black identity, with poetry that celebrates civil rights activists like —â¶Ä�I help those who can’t help themselves, / I do what needs to be doneâ€� she writes in —o°ù in her 1999 collection On the Bus With Rosa Parks. Here’s her poem Rosa: How she sat there, the time right inside a place so wrong it was ready. That trim name with its dream of a bench to rest on. Her sensible coat. Doing nothing was the doing: the clean flame of her gaze carved by a camera flash. How she stood up when they bent down to retrieve her purse. That courtesy. Her Pulitzer winning collection, Thomas and Beulah, is an semi-fictional narrative about her maternal grandparents that explores the emotional resonance of the and recontextualizes the idea of “homeâ€�. But her work explores a vast variety of subjects and love and joy is often close at hand, examining how â€�there are ways / to make of the moment // a topiary / so the pleasure’s in // walking through,â€� as she writes in . Indeed, the act of reading her poetry is one of those very moments where we saunter through a series of pleasures of the moment. Pithos Climb into a jar and live for a while. Chill earth. No stars in this stone sky. You have ceased to ache. Your spine is a flower. â€�If you want to be a poet, the world has to fall away,â€� Dove advises in an , â€�there’s that feeling of diving deep and stirring things up without knowing exactly what is going to come out.â€� Her work largely becomes a brilliant example how a poet must â€�admit to that kind of mystery and confusion,â€� and then transfer it onto the page in a way that brings the interiority of ones mind into a gorgeous space for universal appreciation and guidance. It is â€�an essential condition for a poet,â€� she tells us: â€�The interior life can spill all over the place; it’s vital for the poem, and every poet has a different way of accessing that vital fluid. But where do you start? It doesn’t work by subject or through emotion, though they may be the forces that propel you. I need to enter the interior through language; for me, experience, emotion, and prosody are inextricably bound together. Getting to the center of the interior life, then back out onto the page. I love the way the interior world is writ large in her works. I love, for instance, her examination of aging in the poem (titled after the last cycle of ’s epic musical drama ) and how empowering and positive it is: So I wear cosmetics maliciously now. And I like my bracelets, even though they sound ridiculous, clinking as I skulk through the mall, store to store like some ancient iron-clawed griffin—but I've never stopped wanting to cross the equator, or touch an elk's horns, or sing Tosca or screw James Dean in a field of wheat. To hell with wisdom. They're all wrong: I'll never be through with my life. Though her work on the interior life is especially moving in many of her depictions of the smaller moments nestled into life that we often overlook. Dove gives them space to validate them, such as the exhaustion of a mother in the poem Daystar: She wanted a little room for thinking; but she saw diapers steaming on the line, a doll slumped behind the door. So she lugged a chair behind the garage to sit out the children’s naps. Sometimes there were things to watch â€� the pinched armor of a vanished cricket, a floating maple leaf. Other days she stared until she was assured when she closed her eyes she’d see only her own vivid blood. She had an hour, at best, before Liza appeared pouting from the top of the stairs. And just what was mother doing out back with the field mice? Why, building a palace. Later that night when Thomas rolled over and lurched into her, she would open her eyes and think of the place that was hers for an hour â€� where she was nothing, pure nothing, in the middle of the day. In this way she elevates the ordinary to the extraordinary and makes the small moments worth the space of epic poems. But most of all, I love her notion on embracing the mystery and unknown, and how something can be untangleable and unexplained and out of reach yet still something “true,â€� something important. Geometry I prove a theorem and the house expands: the windows jerk free to hover near the ceiling, the ceiling floats away with a sigh As the walls clear themselves of everything but transparency, the scent of carnations leaves with them. I am out in the open and above the windows have hinged into butterflies, sunlight glinting where they’ve intersected. They are going to some point true and unproven. As a huge fan of any poem about Persephone from Greek myth, perhaps my favorite collection contained within this book is Dove’s 1995 collection Mother Love. Written in seven verse-cycle sections, Dove retells the story of Demeter and Persephone in what she says was written â€�in homage and as counterpoint to Rainer Maria Rilke’s Sonnets to Orpheus.â€� There is a 10 page banger of a poem, Persephone in Hell, detailing the trials and tribulations of Persephone who â€�was not quite twenty when I first went down / into the stone chasms of the City of Lightâ€� and Dove’s poems move between the world of the myth and the modern day to touch upon mother-daughter relationships. Dove’s expertise is often in making myths out of life. The Breathing, The Endless News Every god is lonely, an exile composed of parts: elk horn, cloven hoof. Receptacle for wishes, each god is empty without us, penitent, raking our yards into windblown piles.... Children know this; they are the trailings of gods. Their eyes hold nothing at birth then fill slowly with the myth of ourselves. Not so the dolls, out for the count, each toe pouting from the slumped-over toddler clothes: no blossoming there. So we give our children dolls, and they know just what to do- line them up and shoot them. With every execution doll and god grow stronger. There is a lot of joy in these poems and that is a big part of what makes them really hit hard for me. Especially the empowerment on how it can be the little things, the small loves, that can sustain us. Or, as she writes, â€� in the midst of horror / we fed on beauty—and that, / my love, is what sustained us.â€� Thanks Dove, the beauty does help and so does the wonderful optimism. Dawn Revisited Imagine you wake up with a second chance: The blue jay hawks his pretty wares and the oak still stands, spreading glorious shade. If you don't look back, the future never happens. How good to rise in sunlight, in the prodigal smell of biscuits - eggs and sausage on the grill. The whole sky is yours to write on, blown open to a blank page. Come on, shake a leg! You'll never know who's down there, frying those eggs, if you don't get up and see. An incredible poet with an incredible collection of works, Rita Dove’s Collected Poems is a treasured book on my shelves. High decorated and deservingly so, she has crafted such profound and moving poems and I hope you will enjoy them as much as I have. 5/5 THREE DAYS OF FOREST, A RIVER, FREE The dogs have nothing better to do than bark; duty’s whistle slings a bright cord around their throats. I’ll stand here all night if need be, no more real than a tree when no moon shines. The terror of waking is a trust drawn out unbearably until nothing, not even love, makes it easier, and yet I love this life: three days of forest, the mute riot of leaves. Who can point out a smell but a dog? The way is free to the river. Tell me, Lord, how it feels to burst out like a rose. Blood rises in my headâ€� I’m there. Faint tongue, dry fear, I think I lost you to the dogs, so far off now they’re no more than a chain of bells ringing darkly, underground. ...more |
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Apr 04, 2025
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Apr 04, 2025
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Apr 04, 2025
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Hardcover
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| 9798368866345
| B0DM4LP19W
| 4.24
| 235
| Mar 19, 2025
| Mar 19, 2025
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really liked it
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*deep breath* Ghüüüüüüüüüüüüüüüüüüs!!!!!!!! YAY! Wow another “season� come and gone already? This year of Saga jumped around A LOT but the *deep breath* Ghüüüüüüüüüüüüüüüüüüs!!!!!!!! YAY! Wow another “season� come and gone already? This year of Saga jumped around A LOT but the forward motion of our ragtag focal fam was quite touching and well done and a ton of plotlines are slowly stirring into motion. But �We were living through history and history has a way of shiting on the most carefully laid plans� (of mice and men) and a big political powerplay has occurred and everything we know about the universe is fucked up now. Well other than the fact that everyone not of the ruling class gets massacred under the weight of the ruling class no matter what gets decided. �A balance of power that’s been in place for a hundred generations just got tossed in an effing blender. This changes everything, and not just for you Royals.� Also theres some of the signature gratuitous violence that is horrifically awesome to look at and we see so many characters again, some I’d forgotten where they were at in the universe so that was cool. Also Ghüs! YAY Ghüs! See you space cowboy. ...more |
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Apr 03, 2025
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ebook
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| 0226839680
| 9780226839684
| 0226839680
| 4.52
| 23
| Apr 17, 2025
| Jun 13, 2025
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Apr 01, 2025
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Hardcover
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| 0811230791
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| 0811230791
| 3.88
| 418
| unknown
| May 25, 2021
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really liked it
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I wish I were as cool as Anne Carson. I’m not. Nobody can be, Anne Carson is the coolest and Anne Carson does what Anne Carson wants. And I get to rea
I wish I were as cool as Anne Carson. I’m not. Nobody can be, Anne Carson is the coolest and Anne Carson does what Anne Carson wants. And I get to read it. If whatever she wants is a graphic novel “retranslationâ€� of Euripides’s The Trojan Women, she’s gonna do it and you bet your ass I’m gonna read it. And love it, because this is so bonkers and brilliant I can’t help but gush about how cool Anne Carson and this book are. Through a loose, crude yet engaging and expressive art style from , Carson brings Euripede’s tale from the stage to a visual landscape populated by…well dogs, cows, cats, crows and such all engaged in a Greek tragedy of suffering, slavery and societal collapse following the Trojan’s defeat in the Trojan War. You read that correctly. To the victors go the spoils they say, and Carson’s uniquely astute adaptation examines how horrifying a reality this is from the perspective of the women being carted off to serve the Greeks while still mourning loved one and the overall catastrophic loss of life and livelihoods in the city of Troy. It’s a harsh tale told in a harsh yet oddly hilarious and beguiling fashion that only Anne Carson could pull off. Bit of a bummer in ole Troy these days Troy has been sacked, the men have been slaughtered, and the Greek’s are divvying up the women as their prize at the start of Carson’s The Trojan Women. The way the citizens of Troy are portrayed as gangly cows or Hekabe, the central figure of the tale, as an old, beaten down sled dog really drives home the message of the novel that the losing side are little more than cattle to the victors. Though the visual entertainment does not stop at cows and crows because we have Poseidon represented as a giant wave, Andromache and Astyanax as trees, for some reason Athene is a *checks notes* giant pair of overalls with an owl mask, Helen is a sultry dog but also a hand mirror, and Menelaos is â€�some sort of gearbox clutch or coupling mechanism.â€� Why? Because Anne Carson can and Anne Carson fucking will. She’s a scholar, guys, okay? And undoubtedly the smartest person in any room she walks into, she can do what she wants. It’s kind of great and its just wild enough to work. Oh, so Kassandra isn’t an animal and is the only human character appearing…because her â€�mind is in another worldâ€� and is being all batshit with fire and fantasizing her captive romance. Why not I guess. Because everything else is wildly bleak. And so much cruelty for the sake of cruelty. I mean, even the godsâ€�ESPECIALLY the gods—are just going to ruin your day or kill your dad for laughs. Such as the plan between Athene and Poseidon that awaits the Greeks (no spoilers, friends who have read The Odyssey). â€�They need a lesson! Why? Because they broke something of ours. Because they squeak when they die. Because we °ä´¡±·.â€� And yea…that’s pretty much everyone’s mentality here. NOT AWESOME. But the book? Awesome. It shouldn’t work. Like, you look at this and think “what the actual hell?â€� but then you remember that “what the actual hell is this?â€� tends to be the first reaction to anything Anne Carson. And then you remember how amazing it always is. The same applies here. It’s a great little story where pretty much everything is horrible. Andromache is sent off to be the sexual “prizeâ€� for Pyrrhus, Achille’s douchey son, Odysseus insists that Andromache and Hektor’s little boy be killed for…morale I guess?...and Hekabe has lost literally everything including her will to live and is sustained solely on spite and hatred for Helen. Which is fair. The Trojan Women from Anne Carson and Rosanna Bruno is a strange yet satisfying graphic novel adaptation of Euripedes that pushing into the weird as a way to allow the themes and hardships to resonate with greater range. It’s a book you’ll pick up and say “what the hell?â€� but then “oooohâ€� and “oooooâ€� and “aaaaaahâ€� and, finally, “Thank you, Anne Carson, you are brilliant.â€� Thank you Anne Carson, you are brilliant. 4/5 ...more |
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Apr 2025
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Apr 2025
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Apr 01, 2025
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Hardcover
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| 1558493522
| 9781558493520
| 1558493522
| 4.06
| 48
| Jun 20, 2002
| Jun 20, 2002
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really liked it
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Laura Kasischke has written one of the most pure and beautiful poems ever. Nothing I can say can better explain this collection than her stirring word
Laura Kasischke has written one of the most pure and beautiful poems ever. Nothing I can say can better explain this collection than her stirring words here: Please Stay in this world with me. There go the ships. The little buses. The sanctity, the subway. But let us stay. Every world has pain, I knew it when I brought you to this one. It's true-the rain is never stopped by the children's parade. Still I tell you, it weakens you after a while into love. The plastic cow, the plastic barn, The fat yellow pencil, the smell of paste. Oh, I knew it wasn't perfect all along. Its tears and gravities. Its spaces and caves. As I know it again today crossing the street your hand in mine heads bowed in a driving rain. I love this poem to tears. It’s the sort of thing poetry exists to express. The sadness of life mixed with the tenderness, the ineffability of a comforting thought swelling the heart amidst the acknowledgement of impermanence and violent chaos. It’s why we write, it’s why we read. �It doesn’t matter because / we’re helpless in the hands of what does,� Kasischke writes in Dance and Disappear. It’s a collection that makes one believe poetry to be one of those hands holding us over the abyss. Spontaneous Human Combustion: "Girl, Kissing, Bursts into Flames" It happened to me. I was there. Out past the factory, where whole pleasure could be pried open with an impulse and a wrench. The strange cowboy of him, chains and leather and mascara. I was a keychain, some patchy fog. The noise of the neural system seemed to be coming from the stars. Oh, the wren brought those kisses down from heaven. A screech owl brought them up from hell. O earth, wind, water, this is a simile not satisfied by fire - Still, if he'd doused me in kerosene that night I could not have burned better or brighter. ...more |
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Mar 30, 2025
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Paperback
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| 1635868831
| 9781635868838
| 1635868831
| 4.28
| 830
| Oct 01, 2024
| Oct 01, 2024
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really liked it
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�To live wonder-smitten with reality is the gladdest way to live� writes Maria Popova. Think of the awestruck bliss of losing oneself in the vastness
�To live wonder-smitten with reality is the gladdest way to live� writes Maria Popova. Think of the awestruck bliss of losing oneself in the vastness of a night sky alight in the twinkle from countless distant stars, the humbling majesty of a mountain range looming over the horizon before you, the beguiling depths of the ocean, the infinity of the cosmos, the magic of a perfectly tuned phrase striking chords on your heartstrings like a symphony. Bridging the intellectual, emotional, and spiritual awe of science and poetry comes The Universe in Verse: to Wonder Through Science & Poetry from Maria Popova. Imagine a galaxy awhirl in grammar, a sunrise as a sonnet, a verse unfolding like a map through genetic codes and you’ll arrive at something akin to the nearly ineffable beauty concocted here. Popova, the Bulgarian-born poet, essayist, and creator of Brain Pickings (which later became ) crafts cosmic joy through her poetic examinations of science under a spotlight of poetic insights from a lovely range of poets. Pairing scientific discoveries, theories, and events with poems from writers like Tracy K. Smith, Mary Ruefle, W.H. Auden, Jane Hirshfield, Marie Howe, or Edna St. Vincent Millay, among others, and with stellar artwork from by , this is a delightful collection that looks at how, in our �yearning for permanence in a cosmos governed by incessant change,� science and poetry are similarly paired as tools for understanding the human condition and the world around us. �When we come to it We, this people, on this wayward, floating body Created on this earth, of this earth, Have the power to fashion for this earth A climate where every man and every woman Can live freely without sanctimonious piety Without crippling fear When we come to it We must confess that we are the possible We are the miraculous, the true wonder of this world That is when, and only when We come to it. �Maya Angelou from Popova comes strong with gorgeous prose in this collection of 15 creative nonfiction essays on science and poetry. She looks into scientific discoveries amd inventions we have �hanging as eternal beauty / in our collective memory� as Maya Angelou wrote, essays on the beauty of the natural world full of plants, mountains, rivers, and �all this resinous, unretractable earth� (Jane Hirshfield), or even the beauty of math such as Wisława Szymborska’s about, �the admirable number� π (Pi). This blessed union of science, language, and art hones in on the fragile beauty of life and our tiny role in a greater cosmos. But also the tinier lives of microbes and flowers, or incredible creatures and locales that seem almost mythical such as the depths of the ocean where �there / the octopus / godless and possible / lives.� Popova’s commentary is exquisite, such as in her discussion on flowers as examined by Emily Dickinson and her poem poem where �To be a Flower, is profound / Responsibility,� becomes a message about a greater understanding of life: �Suddenly, the flower emerges not as this pretty object to be admired, like it had been throughout the canon of Victorian poetry, but as this ravishing system of aliveness—a kind of silent symphony of interconnected resilience.� There are some rather ingenious pairings here and the book is rather impressively sourced in order to craft each short essay. There are discussions on entropy, first coined by German physicist , and the �thermodynamic collapse of physical systems into increasing levels of disorder and uncertainty,� the force that makes �lovers and thinkers� eventually �one with the dull, the indiscriminate dust� as Edna St. Vincent Millay wrote. But, as Popova points out, this acceptance of death and loss is a major force in poetry and, besides, �without entropy there would be no time—at least not for us, creatures of time.� There is beauty in rot, she observes. Such as the life of mushrooms which, as Popova writes, �were the first to colonize the Earth.� She cleverly pairs this with the Sylvia Plath poem , a �quietly mischievous work of genius, paying homage to the indomitable nature of the creative spirit, and considers the sadness that there have been breakthroughs with using mushrooms to treat depression, �a breakthrough [Plath] never lived to see.� There are discussion on Euclid and geometry, the poetry of angles, or the tale of and her work on the x-ray ambulance that would save countless lives while �not knowing she herself was dying.� This is paired with the poem by Adrienne Rich about the Polish Nobel Prize winning physicist who �died a famous woman denying / her wounds / denying / her wounds came from the same source as her power.� Though my favorite, perhaps, was the contrast on the indifference of stars, as W.H. Auden wrote in where �looking up at the stars, I know quite well / That, for all they care, I can go to hell� with that of Tracy K. Smith’s about her father working on the Hubble Telescope. Smith describes the shock and awe of the first photos: �We saw to the edge of all there is,� Smith wrote, �so brutal and alive it seemed to comprehend us back.� But Popova’s words are just as poetic as the poets she sights, such as in her discussion on Rebecca Elson’s poem : �Permeating Elson’s lyrical meditations on the nature of reality, mortised and tenoned with life and love, the mystery of dark matter culminates in one particular poem exploring with uncommon loveliness what may be the most touching paradox of being human—creatures of matter in a cosmos governed by the dark sublime of endless entropy, longing for the light of immortality, longing to return to the singularity so that everything may begin again.� Let There Always Be Light (Searching for Dark Matter) �Rebecca Elson For this we go out dark nights, searching For the dimmest stars, For signs of unseen things: To weigh us down. To stop the universe From rushing on and on Into its own beyond Till it exhausts itself and lies down cold, Its last star going out. Whatever they turn out to be, Let there be swarms of them, Enough for immortality, Always a star where we can warm ourselves. Let there even be enough to bring it back From its own edges, To bring us all so close that we ignite The bright spark of resurrection. Sure, this book is a bit brief for the hardcover list price, but it does have some gorgeous artwork and some rather enchanting discussions. I just love the blending of history and poetry and the discussions on it that Popova brings to The Universe In Verse. This is a clever and well crafted collection that is as charming as it is enlightening and educational. And that is a big win. 4/5 ...more |
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Mar 27, 2025
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Mar 27, 2025
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Mar 27, 2025
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Hardcover
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| 9781626928473
| 1626928479
| 4.23
| 6,794
| Apr 10, 2018
| Sep 25, 2018
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really liked it
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Wellllll I’m never going to look at trees the same again. Whew. I have been cruising right along through this series and Volume 5 of The Girl From the
Wellllll I’m never going to look at trees the same again. Whew. I have been cruising right along through this series and Volume 5 of The Girl From the Other Side is another great installment. This series is amazing and I want to shout about it from the top of a mountain and pass out copies on the street corner. This volume continues to tease out some more depth and detail about the curse and what befalls those who get it but also confronts us with just as many new mysteries as well. This series is plunging deeper into darkness and it feels like the walls are starting to close in for our adorable unlikely pair but Shiva remains as pure and sweet as ever. Literally would die for Shiva, I totally understand how Teacher feels. But his anxieties are showing consequences when his silences and withholding of information he hoped would protect her are revealed and she sees it all as if he had been lying. As one would expect with a child, it doesn’t go well for him. But this series is amazing and I can’t wait to keep going. As always the art is incredible and the story just gets better and better. There is a lot of change that happens rather suddenly here, and now I’ll have to get used to Teacher with a missing horn and a new location. The Girl from the Other Side is an ABSOLUTE DELIGHT. I want you to all read it. Please. We must discuss. It’s so good. SO GOOD. ...more |
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Tarot reading time! Pick a card: Pick Me(view spoiler)[ Eight of Cups: Letting go, transition, change, walking away, abandonment, acceptance, mov Tarot reading time! Pick a card: Pick Me(view spoiler)[ Eight of Cups: Letting go, transition, change, walking away, abandonment, acceptance, moving on. (hide spoiler)] Pick Me(view spoiler)[ Ten of Pentacles: legacy, roots, family, ancestry, inheritance, windfall, foundations, privilege, affluence, stability, tradition. (hide spoiler)] Pick Me(view spoiler)[ Three of Swords: heartbreak, separation, sadness, loss, betrayal (hide spoiler)] Pick Me(view spoiler)[ Two of Wands: planning, first steps, making decisions, leaving comfort, taking risks (hide spoiler)] Pick Me(view spoiler)[ The World: legacy, roots, family, ancestry, inheritance, windfall, foundations, privilege, affluence, stability, tradition. (hide spoiler)] Pick Me(view spoiler)[ Three of Cups: friendship, happiness, community, celebrations, social events (hide spoiler)] Pick Me(view spoiler)[ Eight of Wands: rapid action, movement, quick decisions (hide spoiler)] Pick Me(view spoiler)[ The Emperor: authority, structure, control, fatherhood (hide spoiler)] Pick Me(view spoiler)[ Death: transformation, endings, change, transition, letting go (hide spoiler)] Pick Me(view spoiler)[ Two of Vessels (cups): unity, attraction, connection, close bonds, joining forces, mutual respect (hide spoiler)] Pick Me(view spoiler)[ The Hermit: introspection, withdrawal, solitude, search for self (hide spoiler)] Pick Me(view spoiler)[ The Fool: beginnings, freedom, innocence, originality, adventure, idealism (hide spoiler)] Pick Me(view spoiler)[ Four of Cups: contemplation, feeling disconnected, melancholy, indifference, discontent (hide spoiler)] Pick Me(view spoiler)[ The Magician: willpower, desire, skill, concentration, manifestation (hide spoiler)] Pick Me(view spoiler)[ Four of Wands: celebration, stability, harmony, and the fruits of hard work (hide spoiler)] Pick Me(view spoiler)[ The Hanged One: sacrifice, waiting, martyrdom. uncertainty (hide spoiler)] Pick Me(view spoiler)[ Knight of Pentacles: abundance, reliable, security, ambitious, kind, patriarchal, protective (hide spoiler)] Pick Me(view spoiler)[ Knight of Swords: action, impatient, intellectual, daring, focused, perfectionist (hide spoiler)] Pick Me(view spoiler)[ Seven of Cups: choices, searching for purpose, indecision (hide spoiler)] Pick Me(view spoiler)[ The Tower: disaster, upheaval, trauma, sudden change, chaos (hide spoiler)] Pick Me(view spoiler)[ The Page of Cups: idealism, sensitivity, dreamer, naivete, innocence (hide spoiler)] Pick Me(view spoiler)[ Six of Wands: victory, success, public reward (hide spoiler)] Pick Me(view spoiler)[ The Empress: divine feminine, sensuality, fertility, nurturing, creativity, beauty (hide spoiler)] Pick Me(view spoiler)[ The Lovers: partnerships, relationships, choices, romance, balance, unity (hide spoiler)] Pick Me(view spoiler)[ The Star: hope, faith, rejuvenation (hide spoiler)] Now that you have your tarot reading for today it is time for the review: Tarot have long been used for games or cartomancy and are known for their gorgeous and interpretive artwork. Primarily originating in 15th century Italy as trionifi and later tarocchi, they are still widely known and used today. Maybe you want to do a bit of divination, maybe you want to ask the cards about your job or love life, or maybe you don’t believe in that but you like the art or have fun playing with the tarot. Either way, tarot are pretty fun to look at and collect. I have a few decks myself. Tarot: The Library of Esoterica from Taschen—known for their great art coffee table type books at a reasonable price—is such a delightful book packed with history and art of the tarot. It is more intended to be an overview of the art throughout history and about the artists behind the decks than a book about card meanings, though there is a bit of information about the symbolism and interpretations of the major arcana and the general idea of the suits. I really love this as a great resource to look at and think of the various artistic interpretations and I mayyyyyy have ordered a new deck that I found in it. I mean, this is just packed full of cool art: Tarot cards were usually hand painted until the invention of the printing press allowed for wider production and distribution of tarot cards. The earliest references to tarot are around the 1440s and 1450s and the cards painted by Visconti-Sforza Tarot in the mid-15th century, and Philippe Vachier of Marseilles 1639 deck are the earliest surviving cards. To design a deck is a huge undertaking and many artists have had wildy different interpretations of the card to help direct the symbolism. There are three primary types of tarot cards and symbolism: � , likely originating in 15th century Italy before spreading to France when the French conquered Milan. It was the Marseilles decks that went from being used for card game purposes to occult readings and divination. � , originating in 1909 when it was published by William Rider & Son, based on the instructions of mystic A. E. Waite and with the well-known illustrations by Pamela Colman Smith (both members of the ). Many modern tarot are based on the Rider-Waite symbolism and art, which was inspired by the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn as well as 19th-century magician & occultist . � , designed by along with Lady Frieda Harris. Crowley had previously been a member of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn but fell out in 1902 & went on to create an esoteric order of his own. The imagery & symbolism of the Thoth deck draws from science, philosophy, astrology & various occult systems, all detailed in his companion book, The Book of Thoth. �The origin of this pack of cards is very obscure,� Crowley said of Tarot, �Some authorities seek to put it back as far as the ancient Egyptian Mysteries; others try to bring it forward as late as the fifteenth or even the sixteenth century ... [but] The only theory of ultimate interest about the tarot is that it is an admirable symbolic picture of the Universe, based on the data of the Holy Qabalah.� The deck is structured not that unlike a deck of cards, with the major arcana added in.The terms major/minor arcana originated with , a French author know for his The History & Practice of Magic. But if you look at each “suit� you can see how they correspond to a normal deck of cards & each suit has its own set of symbolism & meaning with it. Pentacles corresponds with diamonds & sometimes called Coins. �Pentacles are the suit of material possession, career, & bodily health.� Associated with the element of earth, they often make us aware of our generosity or greed. Swords corresponds with Spades �Swords are the suit of higher consciousness, of intellect, of decisive change & focused power.� Swords are associated with the air element & symbolic of action, change, & force. Wands corresponds with Clubs �Wands are the suit of desire & yearning, dreams, & manifestation.� Associated with the element of fire, Wands symbolize sexuality, willpower, primal energy & is the suit of the ego. Cups correspond with Hearts. �Cups explore the complexities of the heart, the push & pull of relationship to others, the catharsis that comes with deeply felt emotions.� Associated with water, Cups are symbolic of intuition & nurturing. Doing a reading involves looking at the symbolism & constructing a story from them. Its about mindful perception, making an intuitive narrative from the cards. I quite like how it becomes a sort of storytelling with prompts, like creative writing that allows you to reflect on yourself & your actions. �After you have found how to tell a simple story, put in more details,� wrote Pamela Colman Smith, arist of the Rider-Waite, �Learn from everything, see everything, & above all feel everything! Fine eyes within, look for the door into the unknown country.� This book doesn’t give much in the way of looking at how to do readings, though it does provide some basic reading methods. I also enjoyed the history on artists and modern uses of tarot. I was fascinated to learn that Salvador Dali was contracted for the James Bond movie Live and Let Die to make a set. Unfortunately they did not use his cards but Dali finished them. Another favorite artist, Leonora Carrington, also created a deck of the Major Arcana. Tarot: The Library of Esoterica is a great little resource and so much fun to look at. There is a great variety of cards and artists represented here and it is fun for frequent users of the tarot or those just interested in art and symbolism. ...more |
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| Apr 07, 2015
| Apr 07, 2015
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it was amazing
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Called the �Mozart of poetry� but with �the fury of Beethoven� when she was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1996, Polish poet Wisława Szymbo
Called the â€�Mozart of poetryâ€� but with â€�the fury of Beethovenâ€� when she was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1996, Polish poet WisÅ‚awa Szymborska has left quite the lasting legacy (and if you were wondering, its pronounced “vees-WAH-vahâ€�). One of only 19 poets to receive the award since it began in 1901—a distinction she shares with another Polish poet, CzesÅ‚aw MiÅ‚osz, who was a friend and influence on her work—Szymborska has crafted an incredible body of work full of wit that balances darkness with charm in a way that is often as empowering as it is introspective. Translated into over 40 languages worldwide, English speakers can enjoy her work through the efforts of translators Clare Cavanagh and StanisÅ‚aw BaraÅ„czak, such as here in Map: Collected and Last Poems, a tome of text just brimming with brilliance from across her highly decorated career. Szymborska has long been a favorite poet, one I picked up on in college proud to find a poet so well regarded from Poland where my grandparents are from (note my last name, we’re pretty Polish my friends) and I was even holding a copy of Here in my hands when it came on NPR that she had passed away. This huge volume is a favorite that sits on my shelf, often pulled down and flipped through, and I would highly recommend spending some time basking in her beautiful words. The Three Oddest Words When I pronounce the word Future, the first syllable already belongs to the past. When I pronounce the word Silence, I destroy it. When I pronounce the word Nothing, I make something no non-being can hold. Born in 1923, Szymborska spent most of her life living in Krakow, Poland. Her poetry often hones in on quiet, introspective life and domestic affairs writ large against a landscape of history, such as the Second World War and the Soviet occupation of Poland. â€�After every war / someone’s got to tidy up,â€� she writes in her poem . When war came to Poland, Szymborska continued her studies in underground classrooms and worked as a railroad laborer to avoid being sent to Germany for forced labor. While she initially adhered to party standards in her work, Szymborska would be critical of the Soviet party and befriended many dissidents and frequently communicated with the intelligentsia outside Eastern Europe. Her blend of the personal and individual cast against history to be universally felt is a particular charm in her works, one in which the Nobel Committee praised her for stating she writes â€�poetry that with ironic precision allows the historical and biological context to come to light in fragments of human reality.â€� There is a blissful accessibility to her work that doesn’t sacrifice depth or beauty and she is a poet I would recommend to anyone, even those just looking to get their foot in the door of the poetry world (my staple gateway poet recommendations at work tend to be Mary Oliver, Jane Hirshfield, Audre Lorde, Charles Simic, and Ada Limon). There is a signature bemused flair for the human condition that seeps into each poem that makes us consider our place in the universe and the happenstance of chance that brought us here. â€�I know nothing of the role I play / I only know it’s mine. I can’t exchange it,â€� she writes in the poem , a humorous look at life as if it were a stage play where we all wish we "could just rehearse one Wednesday in advance, / or repeat a single Thursday that has passed! / But here comes Friday with a script I haven’t seen," and we all must carry on. The link between the past, present and future is often tied tightly within her poems. In a very existential way, Szymborska describes us as being a product of our choices and pasts, a unique chance of actions that created us out of the infinite possible selves. It's come to this: I'm sitting under a tree, beside a river on a sunny morning. It's an insignificant event and won't go down in history. It's not battles and pacts, whose motives are scrutinized, or noteworthy tyrannicides. And yet I'm sitting by this river, that's a fact. And since I'm here, I must have come from somewhere, and before that I must have turned up in many other places, exactly like the conquerors of nations before setting sail. Even a passing moment has its fertile past, its Friday before Saturday, its May before June. Its horizons are no less real than those a marshal's fieldglasses might scan. —F°ù´Ç³¾ Death looms large like a shadow over much of her work which often nestles into an introspective acceptance of our inevitable fate. While Szymborska is fond of showing humans as fragile, temporary, and sometimes rather insignificant in the face of eternity., there’s also a sense of empowerment in this acceptance. The poem for instance is one of the most optimistic poems about death I have encountered, illustrating Death as a bumbling employee of his trade that â€�does the job awkwardlyâ€� and â€�can’t even get the things done / that are part of its trade: / dig a grave / make a coffin / clean up after itselfâ€� reminding us that each breath we take is a victory against Death: â€�Whoever claims that it's omnipotent is himself living proof that it's not. There's no life that couldn't be immortal if only for a moment. Death always arrives by that very moment too late. In vain it tugs at the knob of the invisible door. As far as you've come can't be undone.â€� I love how Szymborska places the living on the winning side of the war with death. But we often see the absence death leaves, such as in the heartwrenching poems The Suicide’s Room or the â€�visibly offended pawsâ€� of the where she writes: â€�Die—you can’t do that to a cat. Since what can a cat do in an empty apartment? Climb the walls? Rub up against the furniture? Nothing seems different here but nothing is the same.â€� Life and death comingle in her words much as humor and sorrow, joy and darkness spiral into this great mess we call life that comes alive in her poetry. â€�Let the people who never find true love Keep saying that there’s no such thing. Their faith will make it easier for them to live and die.â€� â€Äì°ù´Ç³¾ True Love I love when Szymborska talks about love. It’s always so endearing and cuts right into my heart. I love the poems of Loversâ€� where â€�when we sleep / We dream of parting / But it’s a good dream, / It’s a good dream, / Since we wake up from itâ€� and the idea of waking to the face of the one you love is the best feeling in the world. And then there is my favorite, Love at First Sight which was even published as an illustrated book and always warms my heart. Love At First Sight They’re both convinced that a sudden passion joined them. Such certainty is beautiful, but uncertainty is more beautiful still. Since they’d never met before, they’re sure that there’d been nothing between them. But what’s the word from the streets, staircases, hallways â€� perhaps they’ve passed by each other a million times? I want to ask them if they don’t remember â€� a moment face to face in some revolving door? perhaps a “sorryâ€� muttered in a crowd? a curt “wrong numberâ€� caught in the receiver? but I know the answer. No, they don’t remember. They’d be amazed to hear that Chance has been toying with them now for years. Not quite ready yet to become their Destiny, it pushed them close, drove them apart, it barred their path, stifling a laugh, and then leaped aside. There were signs and signals, even if they couldn’t read them yet. Perhaps three years ago or just last Tuesday a certain leaf fluttered from one shoulder to another? Something was dropped and then picked up. Who knows, maybe the ball that vanished into childhood’s thicket? There were doorknobs and doorbells where one touch had covered another beforehand. Suitcases checked and standing side by side. One night, perhaps, the same dream, grown hazy by morning. Every beginning is only a sequel, after all, and the book of events is always open halfway through. It’s so cute, right? I love the final stanza, the book of events having a whole world of possibilities awaiting them. And all the times they may have met before, leading this love at first sight to feel like perhaps they’ve always known one another. Why do we treat the fleeting day with so much needless fear and sorrow? It's in its nature not to stay: Today is always gone tomorrow. With smiles and kisses, we prefer to seek accord beneath our star, although we're different (we concur) just as two drops of water are. â€Äì°ù´Ç³¾ While this great poet passed away in 2012 at the age of 88 of lung cancer, she has left a lasting legacy of poetry and thought for us to enjoy. Map is an amazing collection and gives us all the joys, sorrows, laughs, loves and losses of her work. 5/5 ...more |
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Mar 26, 2025
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'The set of pictures in the Tarot cards were distantly descended from archetypes of transformation.' �Carl Jung While the popularity of the surrealists 'The set of pictures in the Tarot cards were distantly descended from archetypes of transformation.' �Carl Jung While the popularity of the surrealists tends to minimize the achievements of women in the movement, painters Remedios Varo and Leonora Carrington have long been my favorite artists and left a body of work and influence with the best of them. Springing from , surrealism flourished between the world wars in Europe. The art form value expression over realism and was highly interpretable and symbolic, often thought of as a reaction as the social “rationalism� that descended into the horrors of 20th century warfare. �Surrealism is destructive,� wrote , �but it destroys only what it considers to be shackles limiting our vision,� and for artists like Varo and Carrington, tools such as the tarot became an exciting inspiration to guide their artistic visions. Drawing from the lives these two women and their shared love of tarot, Claire McMillan’s Alchemy of a Blackbird is a mystical romp through history to tell the tale of their ambition, passion, and friendship while living in Mexico and coming into their own as artists. A rather exciting and engaging journey of art, McMillan tightly winds biography with an exploration of the tarot cards that influenced them and threads a multitude of the other historical figures in their lives. Mostly told in third person, the narrative occasionally wheels into first person accounts from the various historical figures which can sometimes be distracting. While it can take a few liberties with their lives to streamline the story and Carrington often feels a bit of an accessory to the narrative, this was quite the fun and fascinating read. Full of mysticism and the marvels of art, Alchemy of a Blackbird is a portrait of women’s ambitions fighting to be heard under the oppressive and dismissive weight of men’s egos and the force of friendship that can guide them towards art, agency and achievement. �The tarot is like life…Like life, there is a random element to it, and like life, there is a synchronicity to it. And like life, what matters is the truth that can be glimpsed behind what is small and flimsy.� This tale of �stray-dog artist types� fleeing Europe during World War II and coming into their own while in Mexico began to take shape when author Claire McMillan first observed Remedios Varo’s 1961 painting La llamada (The Call). �I kind of needed to know everything about the person who painted this kind of portal of a picture,� McMillan said in and from her research she became enamoured with the friendship between Varo and Carrington. La llamada from Remidios Varo McMillan says she was also inspired by Varo’s success later in life after having struggled to find her way initially, something she deeply empathized with. �It wasn't really until she was grounded enough and settled enough that she could kind of let herself and her creativity off the leash a little bit and come into her own as a painter,� McMillan says, �having to create space to make your own art is something we don't talk about enough, and how hard that can be.� Her novel tells of Varo, struggling to stay afloat while in France painting reproductions or sometimes selling forgeries of famous Italian artists and feeling, like many other women in the surrealist movement, that their voices were drowned out by the surrealist men who didn’t value them. Eventually she and her lover, French Surrealist poet , flee the war for Mexico with the help of , an American heiress who helped artists flee Europe (I am particularly fascinated with her because her estate is in my city of Holland and she is buried only a few blocks from where I am typing this at the library). In Mexico City she finds herself continuously devalued by Péret until along comes Leonora Carrington, a woman she had previously met in Paris through André Breton, and the two begin a close friendship that would change their lives. Leonora Carrington Varo found surrealism to be an �expressive resting place within the limits of Cubism, and as a way of communicating the incommunicable.� Inspired by the art of and the nightmarish worlds of whom she channelled into her own work with influences of the dramatic compositions of painter , Varo created breathtaking art full of wonder and magic. There is a frequent motif in her work of being an outsider, often held in captivity by forces beyond her control and McMillan does an excellent job of portraying that in the novel as Varo and Carrington shared struggle allow them to refuse to merely be the muse for men such as their much older artist partners (Carrington was romantically involved with German painter and surrealist pioneer , a man over 20 years her senior, who left his wife for Carrington but would later marry Peggy Guggenheim in 1941). Art by Remedios Varo I rather enjoyed the connection to the tarot in this one, being a fan of tarot cards myself. Varo is gifted a deck by a bookseller and finds them to be a great source of inspiration as well as a mirror into her own soul to help guide her thoughts. I like how McMillan dispels the belief that someone must buy you a deck a cards and you shouldn’t obtain them yourself by tying it into the larger theme of patriarchal gatekeeping as explained by the woman who gives Varo her first cards: �This is a very old superstition, meant to keep women away from a source of knowing. Anyone who desires the knowledge of the tarot can buy a deck of cards for herself, can avail herself of that power.� The pair often do tarot readings within the text for people and I enjoyed McMillan’s method of teaching the meanings behind the cards by associating various historical figures with the one-card pulls that Varo does for them. After each, the narrative drops into first-person for a moment to give an internal account on the scene. McMillan uses the tarot’s rich symbolism to add a wonderful texture to the novel and, in keeping with the words of —a designer of the Rider-Waite deck with the art by � featured in the novel—that the symbolism connects to universal ideas that can help people unlock their consciousness and sift through the aspirations of the self. As Waite wrote: �The Tarot embodies symbolical presentations of universal ideas, behind which lie all the implicits of the human mind, and it is in this sense that they contain secret doctrine, which is the realization by the few of truths embedded in the consciousness of all.� The scenes with reading can be a bit corny at times, but I quite enjoyed them and this would be a great book for inspiring someone to get into tarot of the symbolism of the art (if so, check out Tarot - The Library of Esoterica which is a great resource on the art of tarot). I really enjoy how much tarot symbolism makes it into the art by Remedios Varo and while she only ever made one tarot card—the Star, which I’ve seen at the —Carrington actually designed a deck of all the major arcana: Selection of the Major Arcana by Leonora Carrington The Star, oil on bone, by Remedios Varo Art and ambition come alive through friendship in Alchemy of a Blackbird and Claire McMillan delivers a rather engaging historical novel. Fans of the surrealists, of the tarot, of art, or just anyone who enjoys a good historical novel will get plenty out of this one. Plus you’ll want to check out all the art of Varo and Carrington, which you definitely should because they are fantastic. 3.5/5 �The true Tarot is symbolism; it speaks no other language and offers no other signs.� � ...more |
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Mar 25, 2025
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Mar 25, 2025
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Mar 25, 2025
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| Mar 13, 2018
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really liked it
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Woah. I just finished this volume and� I CANNOT put these down and now that I’ve finished the fourth volume of The Girl From the Other Side Woah. I just finished this volume and� I CANNOT put these down and now that I’ve finished the fourth volume of The Girl From the Other Side you best believe I’m going to start reading vol 5 the second I finish typing this. So much happens in a single volume and even if it doesn’t seem like that much territory is covered plotwise, the landscape of emotions and lore expands fast. But we do get a bit of a breather for a moment here…but how safe can we feel? Once the tenderness gets you feelin� all the feels the fear comes screaming back in. There is also more to learn about the curse and the horrifying consequences that come with it, which really adds to the moral and existential conundrums the characters are wrestling with. But I did really love the moment where a baking mishap covers everyone in flour and we finally get a good look at the faces of the cursed ones. But then things get REAL dark� Wow I love this series and wow you NEED to read this. The story is so gripping and the atmosphere absolutely slays. READ THESE, you are welcome. 4/5 ...more |
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Mar 24, 2025
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Mar 24, 2025
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Mar 24, 2025
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| 1638581908
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| 4.52
| 1,727
| unknown
| Aug 02, 2022
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it was amazing
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If eerie atmosphere to a dark yet bittersweet and cozy fairy tale sounds enticing, you need to drop everything and check out The Girl From the Other S
If eerie atmosphere to a dark yet bittersweet and cozy fairy tale sounds enticing, you need to drop everything and check out The Girl From the Other Side by artist and author Nagabe because this manga is absolutely breathtaking. The vibes are impeccable and the art is gorgeous and gloomy in this tale of an abandoned child from the human world taken in by one of the beasts that roam outside the walls. Or, perhaps, is it the humans inside that are the true beasts� Collecting the first three volumes of the series, this marvelous hardbound volume complete with extra full color art is a real treat of imaginative world build building, brewing mysteries and a jaw-dropping tale that is as heart wrenching as it is heartwarming. Nagabe plunges us into a world of “outsiders� and “insiders� where just one touch from the creatures who roam the world outside the city walls spreads a curse so feared the humans have been rumored to kill entire populations of refugees fleeing the curse just to ensure it doesn’t infect their village. Yet, living in a cottage outside an abandoned village is Shiva, the cutest little girl being cared for by one of the “creatures.� This story builds quickly, compiling questions on top of questions as the lore unfolds along with a story that beautifully balances tension and tenderness. Sure, he looks terrifying but Teacher is a real sweetheart underneath the exterior. These are impossible to put down. The story really takes off and the world building is incredible. I love the way you see both sides of the wall and hear the legends that shape fear and inspire violence. There’s a lot to explore and despite taking time for quiet moments of periods of introspective anxiety, this moves forward at a great pace and the transitions are really fluid. Also it’s creepy as Fuck. Have I mentioned that the art is amazing? Because THE ART IS AMAZING! I mean look at this: Seriously, the art goes so hard and the character designs are extraordinary. Especially since you know these are creatures you stumble upon when deep in the woods (don’t think about that too hard at bedtime�) And the few pages of full color really look great in this edition: I really love The Girls From the Other Side and I hope you will too. It’s eeries, atmospheric, mysterious and just a lot of fun. Plus there’s some cool The Last of Us vibes and tons of lore teased out. Grab this, but actually grab them all because you will not want to stop. 5/5 ...more |
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Mar 23, 2025
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it was amazing
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We shake with joy, we shake with grief. What a time they have, these two housed as they are in the same body. Sometimes you need a little burst of joy to We shake with joy, we shake with grief. What a time they have, these two housed as they are in the same body. Sometimes you need a little burst of joy to break the looming clouds over your life. �Everyone should be born into this world happy and loving everything� writes poet Mary Oliver, �but in truth it rarely works that way.� Luckily we have her work because I’ve always found that reading the tpoetry of Mary Oliver is like microdosing joy. It’s a few quick lines that go down smooth and easy but they nestle into your heart and mind and burn with a warmth that keeps the sorrows at bay. She has an accessibility that never sacrifices depth and such a succinct clarity the words blow through the caverns of your soul to brush out all the cobwebs of anxiety and leave it fresh and shimmering in the sun. I’ve ranted and raved on here many times, but I’m back again because Evidence, Oliver’s 2009 collection, is a touchstone for joy and empowerment that ranks up with the best of her work. As always we have poems reflecting on the redemptive power and beauty of the natural world as well as a sagacious plea to live life to the fullest by embracing the world and all it’s glory while accepting death as just another stage of nature, yet for as many times as Oliver mines these themes she manages to make them always feel like the first breath of fresh air on a crisp spring morning bathed in light. Oliver’s poetry urges you to find your path to a better self and, in the face of her words, one can’t help but want to strive to be one’s best self and ride the waves of life with bravery and a love for living. Prayer May I never not be frisky, May I never not be risqué. May my ashes, when you have them, friend, and give them to the ocean, leap in the froth of the waves, still loving movement, still ready, beyond all else, to dance for the world. How can you not want to dance to the beat of life along with Oliver with such short, tender poetry such as that? Through her words we understand that �truly, we live with mysteries too marvelous / to be understood� and must accept that we take up only a small space within it all and find comfort it that. We can find the glee in �how people come, from delight or the / scars of damage / to the comfort of a poem,� and how we all, dear reader, can gather around these poems together. �I want to be / in partnership / with the universe,� Oliver writes and shows us that, distilled to its simplest core, it is when we �keep some room in your heart for the unimaginable.� When we look to the world and allow ourselves to be swallowed up by its glory. �Look at the grass� she tells us. Really, look at the grass, Oliver wants to know if you’ve ever truly contemplated the grass or if you are willing to �behold the morning glory, / the meanest flower, the ragweed, the thistle� and you think “huh, no I’ve never really thought about the grass� and then you do and wow does it help. Truly. �The witchery of living / is my whole conversation / with you, my darlings,� and what a glorious conversation to have with her and her endless and endlessly lovely advice. Such as the advice she dispenses in To Begin With, the Sweet Grass, because apparently we really need to think about the grass, friends: Look, and look again. This world is not just a little thrill for the eyes. It’s more than bones. It’s more than the delicate wrist with its personal pulse. It’s praising. It’s giving until giving feels like receiving. You have a life—just imagine that! You have this day, and maybe another, and maybe still another. You have this day and that is beautiful enough sometimes. Good job, You, living, breathing, reading this. I’m proud of you. Please know that. And so is Mary Oliver. And what do I risk to tell you this, which is all I know? Love yourself. Then forget it. Then, love the world. I love the simplicity of an Oliver poem and how it can sooth and enrapture you with ease. I think it’s because she speaks straight from the heart, but maybe not even that, she speaks right from the primal soul that is still wild amidst the natural world. It doesn’t have to be complicated or esoteric to be brilliant. She talks about poet James Wright putting a blank page in a book dedicated to �the Horse David Who Ate One of My Poems� and says she �suggest that you sit now // very quietly / in some lovely wild place, and listen / to the silence.� And that �this, too, is a poem� because we can find poetry even in silence if we let our soul speak in it. Poetry doesn’t have to be hard or a puzzle, it only has to touch our hearts, hold out its hand, and pull us along with it: I Want to Write So Simply I want to write something so simply about love or about pain that even as you are reading you feel it and as you read you keep feeling it and though it be my story it will be common, though it be singular it will be known to you so that by the end you will think� no, you will realize� that it was all the while yourself arranging the words, that it was all the time words that you yourself, out of your own heart had been saying These poems hit hard. �I believe in kindness,� she writes, �also in mischief� and we find both radiating from every page. And we feel ourselves beautiful, too, in it all. But as always, she reminds us to cherish the natural world, to respect and protect it. Because humans are polluting, refusing to stifle climate crisis, and generally corrupting the beautiful nature for profits. Such as she addresses in the poem Meeting Wolf where: he has given me A glimpse into a better but now broken world. Not his doing, but ours. A gorgeous collection of poetry that reminds us to slow down, embrace life and live it to the fullest, Evidence is one of my favorite single volumes of Mary Oliver poetry. She continuously hits familiar themes from book to book, but it never gets old and it always is so beautiful. And in this way, you feel beautiful too when reading it. A true dose of joy. 5/5 As for myself, I just kept walking, thinking: Once more I am grateful To be present. ...more |
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Mar 21, 2025
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| 1761380419
| 9781761380419
| 1761380419
| 4.23
| 7,544
| 2019
| Sep 03, 2024
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really liked it
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** You hear a lot about books that have a strong “voice,â€� but it takes a special talent to feel t ** You hear a lot about books that have a strong “voice,â€� but it takes a special talent to feel the gnash of sharp, gritted teeth through which that voice is propelled. The narrators of Dahlia de la Cerda’s Reservoir Bitches speak with a startling urgency across lucky number 13 harsh tales spilling equal amounts of blood and black humor. These are voices that read as if they are being shouted right into your face—â¶Ä�you’re here for me to tell you how I got where I am, not to hear me spout proverbs and shit. So buckle up’—smelling booze on their breath as the words cut the air between you sharp and swift like a knife pulled in a back alley of the parts of town where â€�houses got smaller and smaller, and the wrong kind of people moved in,â€� that makes up the scenery of these stories. Populated by migrants, drug cartels, wannabe Instagram models, assassins, sex workers, politicians and more, these stories and voices have been brought into English by translators Julia Sanches and Heather Cleary for a fluid rendering that earned a spot on the longlist for the International Booker. â€�Women always speak, think, and act from the memory of our pain,â€� de la Cerda writes and, plunging the reader into lives of women on the brink of disaster, women trying to survive poverty or living under the violent of patriarchy and transphobia, de la Cerda delivers cutting social critiques in these stories where the narrators often bite back. It is one wild ride. â€�Being a woman means living in a state of emergency.â€� The threats of aggressive men and the horrors of femicide lurk within every page of this stunning English language debut of stories. â€�Masculinity is like marzipan: fragile as hell, queen,â€� quips a transwoman in Sequins, yet this fragile masculinity also shivers in violent outbursts as life and death are balanced on the edge of a knife for the various narrators. â€�Mexico is a monster that devours women,â€� de la Cerda writes, â€�Mexico is a desert of pulverized bone. Mexico is a graveyard full of pink crosses,â€� and many of the stories here confronts the long legacy and tragically growing where more than , not to mention the countless number of women who have simply disappeared. The problem became a global news story centering on Ciudad Juárez where the killing of 370 women and girls sparked conversation about gender violence around the world (Roberto Bolaño’s novel 2666 is largely based on this). Worse, a 2021 report showed that . As one woman says in the story Yuliana, this is part of why â€�women always speak, think, and act from the memory of our pain.â€� This is a pretty harrowing collection where death is always a turn of the page away. â€�I’m angry at the world, and I swear I hate all men. I hate them. I see the assholes who did this to you in every single one of them. And I’ve found ways of channeling my anger.â€� The women featured in these stories are backed into a corner, but they often come out swinging. Two seamstresses are forced into violent defense against an intruder in God Forgive Us—one of several stories with recurring characters, God Forgive Us pairs with God Didn’t Come Through which features a woman cutting up a man’s body and displaying it on a bridge—a teen mom cuts off a deadbeat dad in Mariposa de Barrio, a woman becomes an assassin, and more. The drug cartels are lurking through many of these stories and the sudden entanglements of characters often turns deadly, recalling the Quentin Tarantino film from which de la Cerda playfully adapted her title. â€�Life’s a bitch. That’s why you gotta rattle her cage, even if she’s foaming at the mouth,â€� we are told, and the women here are ready to rattle. â€�You get used to killing,â€� says La China, a drug cartel assassin who appears in mutitple stories, â€�I’ve got no qualms about my job, and that’s the whole truth.â€� A harsh world is often met with harsh responses here. â€�I started stealing cause life fucked me sideways, mijoâ€� These fast-talking characters take us through some gritty territory, but de la Cerda keeps the book from descending too bleakly into nightmares by keeping it afloat on some rather wonderful dark humor. There are multitudes of great quips and insults, though the variety in voice and tone is left wanting and it would be difficult to place which speaker fits which story were you to open to a passage at random. Hardly a complaint, however, as there is a really exciting variety of characters behind the sharp voices and we are often told a story from beyond the grave such as the appearance of La Negra, the ghost of a victim of sexual violence in The Smile. There is also plenty of intersectionality in the collection and the issue of transfemicide is approached, particularly in the hard-hitting story Sequins. Violence against trans people has been declared an , so much so that there is even a Transgender Day of Remembrance on November 20th of each year, and in 2024 there were of trans individuals in Mexico adding to the issue of femicides. While a tragic issue, it was nice to see de la Cerda address it here. â€�No one is ever ready for the death of someone they love. But this wasn’t death. It was theft. You were stolen, violently ripped from my side…you were one more body in this genocide. Another nameless woman adding to the death count. Another pink cross.â€� A harrowing collection that raises awareness on important issues of gender violence while also delivering stories like fists of fury at the patriarchy, Reservoir Bitches is one hell of a read. Fast, ferocious, and often funny despite the hellish content, Dahlia de la Cerda’s prose comes screaming of the page and ensures that the voices of Mexico’s marginalized people are heard loud and clear. And in that there is some much needed comfort. 4/5 â€�Soon, even though I was crying, I spread my wings. Just like the song says.â€� ...more |
Notes are private!
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Mar 20, 2025
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Mar 20, 2025
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Mar 20, 2025
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| 1626925585
| 9781626925588
| 1626925585
| 4.34
| 10,510
| Apr 10, 2017
| Oct 25, 2017
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it was amazing
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Vibes: Immaculate Shit: gettin real Real?: body counts, Big Dog. Body counts Terror: rising Me: |
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The care and keeping of one another is how we protect the fragile flames flickering inside all our hearts. Having honed in on a sort of “cozy grandfat
The care and keeping of one another is how we protect the fragile flames flickering inside all our hearts. Having honed in on a sort of “cozy grandfatherly chicâ€� in the recent installments of his The Forgetters series—what Dave Eggers states will be a â€�probably-overly long novelâ€� someday maybe but is arriving in serialized short stories until then—Egger’s returns with another heartwarming, intergenerational slice-of-life in Where the Candles are Kept. While there is a lot of heart packed into such a short story, this one feels more slight than succinct though it also seems the sort of little tale that would melt the heart of someone like my dad: the older, tough but sensitive outdoorsy type. The sort that would be tickled by the older man, OisÃn who was first introduced in The Museum of Rain, having to care for two LA teens while thinking things like â€�had they ever seen a tree?â€� and charmed imagining these kids having to learn to go without phones. It’s a cute story with a good message and enough cozy charm to make it worth your short while. â€�There is still courage among us.â€� It’s a simple tale, really. OisÃn has two distant young relatives thrust on him for the summer and he doesn’t really want them and they certainly don’t want to be stuck out in the Idaho wilderness with him. He’s full of â€�the eccentricities of an old man who lived like a woodland hermit,â€� so you can probably guess where this is headed. But, surprise to us all, chance and fate intervene and instead of the old oddball caring for the teens, they find themselves having to care for him. It all wraps up fairly quickly and heartwarmingly with messages about caring for one another and how giving support can really boost someone’s ego and bond you together and its all rather lovely. It does sort of smack with a bluntness that could have been better blended into a story with more length for smoothing out the seams, though it already feels a bit overly long for what it is at the same time. A quick, one sitting read of a heftier short story (or very short novella?), Where the Candles are Kept is full of charm are rather well crafted sentences that let this quiet and slight little story still land with power in the heart of the readers. Sometimes cute, cozy and charming is enough. 3.5/5 â€�These two kids, who had seemed to him so flimsy yesterday, turned out to be monumental. They had gorgeous butterfly hearts beating hard within ribs of gold, and they could be trusted with the world.â€� ...more |
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Mar 18, 2025
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Mar 18, 2025
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| 4.06
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| Apr 05, 2022
| May 05, 2022
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really liked it
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For a sweeping saga where time travel threads together hundreds of years of human follies and fruition, the greatest moment of time travel in Emily St
For a sweeping saga where time travel threads together hundreds of years of human follies and fruition, the greatest moment of time travel in Emily St. John Mandel’s Sea of Tranquility was the way she transports the reader from opening the book to being two hours into the future and deep into the book as if in the blink of an eye. Her prose is practically a time portal that grips you in its gravity and sends your mind soaring across cosmos of thought. A single moment seemingly unstitched from time of melodic violin music echoing across an airship hangar bay of the future knits together four stops along the timeline between early 20th century Canadian wilderness to a far-flung future as humanity colonizes the deep-reaches of space and puts corporate control over visits to the past. As the varied and uniquely interesting cast of characters converge around this snag in the fabric of time, the juxtapositions of their lives and anxieties amalgamate into a cohesive portrait of humanity fraught with existential examinations into the nature of reality and eternally wary they are teetering on the brink of extinction. Because �no star burns forever.� Written during the Covid pandemic, Mandel incorporates her own experiences as an author of a pandemic novel alongside musings on illness and isolation that really hit hard. It is a thoughtful book, epic in its scope yet succinct in its delivery with a propulsive plotline that, despite a few potholes on the road of pacing, is impossible to put down. With a deft maneuverability across genres, Sea of Tranquility is endlessly engaging in examinations of life in the face of death, humanity against the landscape of expanding history and the inner struggles of morality, fear, and survival that we all share. �I think, as a species, we have a desire to believe that we're living at the climax of the story. It's a kind of narcissism. We want to believe that we're uniquely important, that we're living at the end of history, that now, after all these millennia of false alarms, now is finally the worst that it's ever been, that finally we have reached the end of the world.� There is a really moving moment early on when fictional author Olive Llewellyn is on a book tour in 2203 in the days leading up to a global pandemic which has a rather auto-fictional flair to it considering Mandel’s own experience discussing her earlier novel, Station Eleven, in light of an upcoming television adaptation as Covid began. Amidst a lot of rather misogynist comments on her as a career author, amidst missing her family and amidst spending all day �talking about the end of the world while trying not to imagine the world ending with her daughter in it,� she meets a fan who reveals having a tattoo from her novel. Which is always a cool thing, I mean every one of my tattoos are of favorite authors or novels though I’ve never gotten to show the authors (alas, Virginia Woolf is no longer alive). But in 2019, Emily St. John Mandel came to our town for the local Big Read and a librarian coworker of mine got to show Mandel that she had a tattoo from Station Eleven, the quote �Survival Is Insufficient.� In the book, Mandel’s fictional stand-in Olive mentions having seen several of these tattoos but each leaving a strong impression, but it felt really cool to suddenly come across this passage and see how reality and fiction on the page brush against each other. �You write a book with a fictional tattoo and then the tattoo becomes real in the world and after that almost anything seems possible. She’d seen five of those tattoos, but that didn’t make it less extraordinary, seeing the way fiction can bleed into the world and leave a mark on someone’s skin.� While many put books and authors on this pedestal of celebrity, it is lovely to remember they are people just like you and I and that the same emotions, fears, joys, loves, and losses that whirlwind through our own hearts are also the storms through which they harness their own stories. It’s why fiction can be so personal and universal at the same time and become an imaginary landscape where we can share our feelings and remember we are not alone. �I wouldn’t have written this book if not for the pandemic,� Emily St. John Mandel admitted in an . The fears of illness, isolation, and the uncertainty of the future that assailed us all cast a long shadow over Sea of Tranquility, which features a visit not only to the days leading up to our 2020 pandemic but also a fictional “Sars Twelve� pandemic 200 years from now. � Illness frightens us because it’s chaotic,� Olive says in a presentation on her book, �there’s an awful randomness about it,� and that is felt in each of the novel’s eras as each character seems to find themselves on the cutting edge of history but also fearful that edge might be the final cliff. As Madel says in her , living right by the Brooklyn hospital during Covid had her �working against a backdrop of constant ambulance sirens� in a city where � it’s not an overstatement to say that there was an atmosphere of death,� and this experience is writ large on many portions of the novel. Particularly the way our lives can suddenly be disrupted, how the pandemic can seem far off then suddenly its too late and you or someone you know is sick: �Pandemics don't approach like wars, with the distant thud of artillery growing louder every day and flashes of bombs on the horizon. They arrive in retrospect, essentially. It's disorienting. The pandemic is far away, and then it's all around you with seemingly no intermediate step.� There is also the rather incongruous feelings of the quiet and isolation, where �life can be tranquil in the face of death� as Olive is home with her daughter. Olive, Mandel admits, was where the novel began through exercises in auto-fiction. � I wanted to write about the strangeness of the tour experience, so I’d been playing around with autofiction in the months leading up to the pandemic,� she says, �then the pandemic hit, and it seemed to me that it might be interesting to look at the autofiction through a sci-fi lens and combine it with the time travel.� An uneasy feeling of end times at any moment is a pervading anxiety in each part of the novel, such as characters remarking on the oddity of a building lease that had an option to renew after ten thousand years and the hubris of �thinking civilization would still exist in ten thousand years.� This struggle to get us ten, hundreds or more thousands of years into a future becomes a major theme in Sea of Tranquility as it boldly reaches into a kaleidoscopic narratives of weaving timelines and cause and effect decision making that will have you eagerly turning pages. �Won’t most of us die in fairly unclimactic ways, our passing unremarked by almost everyone, our deaths becoming plot points in the narratives of the people around us?� Fans of the novel Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell will detect some similarities with the novel. It follows a very similar structure with half a narrative telescoping into the future before coming back (a style Mitchell described as putting a mirror at the halfway point of If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler by Italo Calvino) and follows a rather similar character order: travelling on a boat, composer, book tour. This is intentional. �It will come as no surprise to anyone who’s read both books that one of my very favorite novels is Cloud Atlas,� Mandel >has said, �I’ve always admired the scope of that book, and wanted to try something similar with Sea of Tranquility.� The two novels have very different purposes and themes so the similarities won’t affect the enjoyment. She also uses Mitchell’s style of character cameos, such as the cast of her The Glass Hotel showing up in the second section (no need to have read it to understand this one thought). Plus it was interesting to learn that the character Edwin St John St Andrew (the similar character to Mitchell’s Adam Ewing) is loosely based on Mandel’s own relative as she told Waterstones: �He’s based very loosely on a great-grandparent of mine, Newell St. Andrew St. John, who emigrated from the UK as a remittance man in the early years of the 20th century and failed rather spectacularly to make a go of it in Canada.� Failing spectacularly is a big part of this book too, though the book itself is quite a success. Sure, there are some pacing issues and plotholes conveniently covered by plot armor, but it is an ambitious novel that executes the turns and twists with precision and sticks the landing. I did have a laugh, however, when a character complains to Olive that the climax of her book �could have been a much bigger moment,� because I had the SAME complaint about the end of Station Eleven. But it also seems a common issue I have with her novels because a big decision made in this book feels like it wasn’t given the tension and wrestling with morality space enough. No spoilers, but Gaspery-Jacques does spend 5 years training for something and working on psychological training to not be disruptive and then IMMEDIATELY does what he isn’t supposed to do and it sticks out like a sore thumb on the novel. It’s also a major engine for making the latter half work though and �sometimes you don't know you're going to throw a grenade until you've already pulled the pin.� So that's fair. �Isn’t that why we’re here? To leave a mark on wilderness?� This is a novel where the less you know about the later half the better because one the plot starts to fall into motion its a pretty direct line to the solutions of the mysteries despite all the twists and turns that keep it obsessively interesting. Time travel is pretty central to the novel and �what is time travel if not a security problem?� which makes space for some rather great looks at the ideas of safety and control in a futuristic setting. There are moon colonies, one where the sky is burnt out so it is constantly night which was some imagery that I really adored here, there are strict time travel laws, and while you don’t get to learn much about the government you get a sense that things are pretty tightly reigned in and regulated to keep people safe. It is a very bureaucratic future and, as a character warms �what you have to understand is that bureaucracy is an organism, and the prime goal of every organism is self-protection. Bureaucracy exists to protect itself.� This makes a large theme in the book, but also the closest thing to a villain the narrative gets. �The distance is unbearable if you let yourself dwell on it.� Without getting into spoiler territory, an interesting theory is presented midway through the novel about the nature of reality. The answer to it remains a bit elusive even by the end, though it is less a lack of conclusive evidence and more that it is—for the purposes of the novel and character—beside the point with what she is trying to say. Still, there are some rather interesting tidbits throughout the novel. Edwin’s complaint that �the sky is aggressively blue,� for instance recalls the bright blue of Moon Colony One’s dome sky. But this also is an aspect how the landscape and the world are rather oppressive and threatening, or just rather off. �[Victoria is] It’s a far-distant simulation of England,� Edwin notes, �a watercolor superimposed unconvincingly on the landscape.� And then there are the prairies which reminds me a bit of Gerald Murnane’s The Plains: �the prairies are initially interesting, then tedious, then unsettling. There’s too much of them, that’s the problem. The scale is wrong.� It all leads Edwin to conclude �this place is indifference…this place is utterly neutral on the question of whether he lives or dies,� which reveals a large theme of the novel that the world is a threatening place where the land, the weather, and more can all kill you and pandemics can creep up on any horizon. �If there’s pleasure in action, there’s peace in stillness.� �We might reasonably think of the end of the world as a continuous and never-ending process,� Olive states in Sea of Tranquility and across each era of the novels we find characters locked into a life of chance amidst the elements. Still, Sea of Tranquility champions the human heart full of determination to find a way to survive and Emily St. John Mandel has crafted a fun-filled and time travel thriller across pandemics and moon colonies that confronts our fear of life up against our desire to explore, create, and continue forth into the unknown future. A well-knitted tangle of timelines and characters with a rather fun sci-fi engine to drive the narrative, Sea of Tranquility is so engaging I finished the whole thing in two sittings and can’t wait to read more of her work. A heartfelt examination of the human condition, an auto-fictional portrait of a woman at work and the pandemic that inspired it, and a rip-roaring story of life finding a way. 4.5/5 �I’ve been thinking a great deal about time and motion lately, about being a still point in the ceaseless rush.� ...more |
Notes are private!
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Mar 18, 2025
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Mar 19, 2025
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Mar 18, 2025
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Hardcover
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| 1626925232
| 9781626925236
| 1626925232
| 4.21
| 13,764
| Sep 10, 2016
| May 16, 2017
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really liked it
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The Girl From the Other Side is such a wild ride of dark fantasy and ferocious fear just…don’t lose your head. But the vibes here are IMPECCABLE. Dark
The Girl From the Other Side is such a wild ride of dark fantasy and ferocious fear just…don’t lose your head. But the vibes here are IMPECCABLE. Dark mysteries are brewing and bubbling over in scalding hot twists yet the story is delivered as quiet anxiety and a rather tender coziness. Like huddling around a small fire under a shelter just barely keeping the damp cold and rain away on a dark night. Volume 2 of The Girl From the Other Side picks up right where the first left off and launches right into deeper mysteries as the world building and new revelations come screeching out through the trees. And the art goes SO hard. Nagabe has really created something special here and I can’t get enough. Teacher, an “outsider� cares for Shiva, a girl abandoned in the wilderness outside the safety of the village walls but cannot touch her because apparently that is how the curse of the dark beasts of the outside spreads. Yet when we last saw Shiva her cheek was getting clapped by a horned beast and…somehow she seems okay. Are we getting a Last of Us sort of thing or is this about to spiral into something far more sinister with the new talk of “Mother’s� souls being brought back and the ominous hole in the ground. Oh yea, that hole is also under the water and a talking head brings us there. I’m sure thats fine� But for real this series GOES OFF. It is so cool and I am so hooked and I will think about nothing else until I read more. I love the art, I love the vibes, I love the mystery and how can you not love Shiva. This volume really dives into Teacher’s internal conflicts and wrestling with morality and while sure, he may go axe-murderer sometimes he’s a real sweet guy. I SWEAR. Also weirdly hot, don’t judge me. Or do, I stand by it. These volumes come at rapid fire and end on such intense cliff-hangers that, TRUST ME, you’ll want to have as many volumes as possible on hand before starting. And start you should because this series is amazing. Go, go get some now. You are welcome. ...more |
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it was amazing
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it was amazing
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Mar 30, 2025
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really liked it
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Mar 27, 2025
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Mar 27, 2025
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really liked it
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Mar 26, 2025
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Mar 26, 2025
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|
| 4.46
|
it was amazing
|
not set
|
Mar 26, 2025
|
|||||
|
| 3.90
|
liked it
|
Mar 25, 2025
|
Mar 25, 2025
|
|||||
|
| 4.30
|
really liked it
|
Mar 24, 2025
|
Mar 24, 2025
|
|||||
|
| 4.52
|
it was amazing
|
not set
|
Mar 23, 2025
|
|||||
|
| 4.40
|
it was amazing
|
not set
|
Mar 21, 2025
|
|||||
|
| 4.23
|
really liked it
|
Mar 20, 2025
|
Mar 20, 2025
|
|||||
|
| 4.34
|
it was amazing
|
Mar 20, 2025
|
Mar 20, 2025
|
|||||
|
| 4.05
|
liked it
|
Mar 18, 2025
|
Mar 18, 2025
|
|||||
|
| 4.06
|
really liked it
|
Mar 19, 2025
|
Mar 18, 2025
|
|||||
|
| 4.21
|
really liked it
|
Mar 18, 2025
|
Mar 18, 2025
|
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