"WARNING SPOILERS: If you haven't read this book don't read this review! If there are a lot of grammatical/spelling errors in this review it's because I'm writing it blind. I rolled my eyes so hard throughout this novel that they dislodged from my head and I have yet to find them. Also, this book drove me to drink. A lot. So.. there is that as well.. I buddy read this with Francesca and it drove her to drink as well. SO IT'S NOT JUST ME!


Raise your hand if you despise GIRLS and they're #privledgedproblems.
*raises hand*
Raise your hand if you hate Hannah and her elitist, woe is me, judge everyone even though I do the same shit, no buddy understands me because I'm a writer, a WRITER, attitude .
*raises both hands*

I'm sure you're wondering, "Wtf, Hayley, Is this just a drunken ramble? This has nothing to do with the book! Focus!".

No, this is not a drunken ramble, maybe a little bit, I am just laying out the evidence of how Amanda and Hannah are one in the same and as you can guess she is not a character I enjoyed spending time with.

We're immediately thrown deep into Hannah's Amanda's head and I immediately wanted out and away from her conceited, judgmental thoughts. The few first chapters are spent listening to Amanda spew hate about everyone. The people in her writing class who "couldn't string a sentence together if they tried," and how all the girls who sleep with Blake, the asshole, are so pathetic and deserve what's coming to them, and how Blake is such an asshole, did I already mention that? Sorry, I just have to make sure that I point it out at least a thousand times like Amanda did. She then continues by explaining how hard her life is because she enjoys nerdy things (What nerdy things? Hell if I know.) and no one understands her wanting to be a writer as she drives away from her university, which Mommy and Daddy pay for, in her Mini Cooper, a graduation gift from Mommy and Daddy, to her apartment which is also paid for by Mommy and Daddy.

Yes, Amanda. You're life is so hard. Your parents paying for everything so that you can live out your dream, which they don't approve of but finance anyway. My heart bleeds for you..


This is the point where I cracked open bottle number two.

Then there is Blake who I will admit I enjoyed more than Amanda but who I still found flat and rather boring.. He is your typical alpha player who deep down has a soft side. *yawns*. He can get any girl he wants, which is explained a thousand times, but of some reason he only wants that bitch Amanda. His words not mine. Can someone please explain this too me? I mean seriously, what the hell did he see in her?

There are a few other secondary characters sprinkled in that shine as bright as a dirty rock. There is Rio, the token slutty friend, Ana, a big boobed Estonian divorcee in the middle of a midlife crisis who provided small moments of comic relief, Kevin, Blake's little step-brother (Blake HAS to have a gooey middle, remember?), the unsupportive yet still supportive (if that even makes sense) parents, Blake's token slutty friend, and random other characters I cared even less about.


Then there is the plot.. which pretty much consisted of them writing a short novella together for their writing class and was finished at 50%..

At this point I've contemplated DNFing this book multiple times, I've started chugging straight from the bottle and the only things keeping me going is laughing about it with Francesca and that I know there are some Harry Potter innuendos in there somewhere.


The story continues, they start writing smut and I'm bored out of my mind.

I start skimming.

Amanda refuses to lower herself to writing smut and explains that she doesn't need the money because her parents pay for everything. Oh, excuse me, she has a small loan.

*Thinks of my thousands of dollars of student loan debt and cries a little.*

Amanda agrees and they start writing kinky, wanton sex scenes and what do you know, they're getting horny for each other.

But Amanda refuses to be one of those girls.

They get to know each other and yet I STILL KNOW NOTHING ABOUT THEM!

Amanda can't stop noticing Blake's tight biceps and his beautiful eyes.

*I switch to vodka*


Amanda bites her lips. Blake groans.

Amanda WILL NOT be just another conquest.

*Things are getting blurry*

They fuck. Amanda, you hypocrite. But still, that was pretty hot..

Blake licks her asshole.

*I choke a little on my COCKtail, just kidding guys it's just a large glass of vodka, and look around to make sure my grandparents are far away.*

They are in loovveeee but alas there must be a break up before their happily ever after.Which was so ridiculous and immature. Are we in our twenties or in Kindergartner, kids?

*I start to skim the last chapters even faster*


"blahblahblah, oh they're fucking, blahblahblah, how does he even get his tongue in there at that angle? Blahblahblahblah. The End*

Overall, as I'm sure you can tell I was not impressed. Don't get me wrong, the smut was good but.. I need more sustenance more of a plot. I can't do just sex. Nothing really happened the entire book. I've read a few books where the plot is literally the characters getting to know each other and I've still loved them because the characters were so well developed and interesting that I didn't care what they were doing. They could be watching paint dry and I would still be stoked to read about them. Sadly, this book had very two dimensional characters and nothing going on.. I had such a hard time connecting with them, which in Amanda's case partly had to do with how much I disliked her character, but I didn't feel like the author really took the time to explain more about them, go into detail. She would tell you something about them like that Amanda is "nerdy" and leave it at that.. She never dipped below the surface. When there were opportunities to learn more about them and how they fell for each other (because I still don't get this!) the author would just skip right over them. For example, there is a point in which they are taking a weekend away together. This is right after they start fucking so obviously it's a big step because they don't know where they stand with each other. The author paints a kinky, asshole licking scene when they first get there and then next I read they were back. SHE LITERALLY SKIPPED THE WHOLE WEEKEND!

Most of the time I was trying to figure out if this book is supposed to be a joke. When writing their smut they talk about everything they have to include to complete the romance formula: the alpha male with a HUGE dick, the heroine who is sexy as fuck but doesn't know it with a "cunt that tastes like honey", the break up, the make up, the happily ever after. Which, of course, were all included in this book. So, was the author making a statement that I was just too drunk to catch..?

This book was cringe-worthy and boring but you know what, maybe contemporary romances just aren't for me anymore. Which would seriously suck because I have about 15 sitting on my shelf right now.. The genre is like going into Forever 21, a few gems hidden underneath a ton of hideousness.. This book gets two stars because I didn't fucking hate it.. I just thought it was boring and not my cup of tea.

"

"This book is a dynamite, written by a great mind and clearly possessing some controversial ideas. It is like a quick guide to Nietzsche's philosophy in general, maybe with a few exceptions like Ãœbermensch and Eternal Recurrence.

To me, Nietzsche is at his best when he is a poet. His meditations on art and aesthetics are beautiful and profound; loved them very much. However, when I delve into his system of thought, our values are different, the main one being compassion. Nietzsche loathed it intensely, he considered altruism to be "weak" and unworthy. I completely disagree. But still, I enjoyed this book a lot, and while his ideas are controversial, Nietzsche had such an immense impact on the philosophy that it's crucial to understand him."

"The Unnamable

Samuel Beckett

A masterpiece from Samuel Beckett, though may be a bit awkward to read,could be indecipherable at times but after a while you move with the flow and get consumed by it; it would be felt like a novel that does not have any plot, only some disjointed images which would stay in your mind. The book is not a prose actually rather it can be said as a long dazzling poem on the very human existence. The Unnameable, where the dilemmas, which were brought up by the author in Molloy and Malone Dies, finally come along here.

The starting lines themselves set the tone for the book,
Where now? When now? Unquestioning. I, say I. Unbelieving. Questions, hypothesis, call them that. Keep going, going on, call that going, call that on. Can it be that one day, off it goes on, that one day I simply stayed in, in where, instead of going out, in the old way, out to spend day and night as far away as possible, it wasn't far. Perhaps that is how it began.




There are only thoughts thinking themselves, ever babbling around but never moving forward. The narrative of the books is also not reliable, just like narrator, which keeps on changing throughout the book from first person to third. The narrator, or rather self-immersive narrator, of the book goes with its title and is unnamable in true self, who is unreliable and just shares his thoughts, immobile for eternity, uncommunicative, always curious about words themselves but not their meanings.

But the absurd! Of me whom they have reduced to reason. It is true poor Worm in not to blame for this. That's soon said. But let me complete my views before I shit on them. For if I am Mahood, I am Worm too, plop. Or if I am not yet Worm, I shall be when I cease to be Mahood, plop.

Unfortunately I am afraid, as always, of going on. For to go on means going from here, means finding me, losing me, vanishing and beginning again, a stranger first, then little by little the same as always, in another place, where I shall say I have always been, of which I shall know nothing, being incapable of seeing, moving, thinking, speaking, but of which little by little, in spite of these handicaps, I shall begin to know something, just enough for it to turn out to be the same place as always, the same which seems made for me and does not want me, which I seem to want and do not want, take your choice, which spews me out or swallows me up, I’ll never know, which is perhaps merely the inside of my distant skull where once I wandered, now am fixed, lost for tininess, or straining against the walls, with my head, my hands, my feet, my back, and ever murmuring my old stories, my old story, as if it were the first time








The book could be said as a well crafted voice of suffering, oppression of humanity through a un-namable character, whose existence itself is only a huge cry in dark solitude. The book ponders upon various problems of existence- solitude, human suffering- even the very problem of existence itself- meaning of existence, problem of one's ontological loneliness and nothingness of life; the narrator succeeds in scaling down his need - from wanting to reach his mother, to wanting to die, to wanting to stop speaking, which in essence is stripping of humanity to the core problems of life, to the core of life itself to know what is down there. Yet amid all the evidence that life is meaningless, hopeless, full of despair, anguish, one must go on. The book could be called as a representative of human consciousness trying to come to terms with its existence by telling itself stories featuring itself as hero of its own fictions, it resorts to paradox to describe the paradoxical nature of human consciousness divided within itself.

....there was never anyone, anyone but me. anything but me, talking me to me, impossible to stop, impossible to go on, but I must go on, I'll go on, without anyone, without anything, but me, but my voice, that is to say I'll stop, I'll end, it's the end already, short-lived, what is it, a little hole, you go down into it, into the silence, it's worse than the noise, you listen, it's worse than talking, no, not worse, no worse, you wait, in anguish, have they forgotten me, no, yes, no someone calls me, I crawl out again, what is it, a little hole, in the wilderness.






Beckett has worked on Postmodernist themes in ''The Unnamable'' as it could said to be based upon post-structuralist literary theory; whose characteristic is abandonment of grand narratives and unification of all knowledge. The novel is almost without "significant" event; its subject is itself, the narrating voice creating a world out of language. Before, between and after the jabber of words that constitute the fiction is silence.

...all these stories, these stories about paralytics, all are mine, I must be extremely old, or it's memory playing tricks, if only I knew id I've lived, if I live, if I'll live, that would simplify everything, impossible to find out, that's where you'are buggered, I haven't stirred, that's all I know, no I know something else, it's not, I always forget that, I resume, you must resume, never stirred from here, never stopped telling stories, to myself, hardly hearing them, hearing something else, listening for something else, wondering now and then where I got them from, was I in the land of the living, were they in mine, and where, where do I store them, in my head, I don't feel a head on me, and what do I tell them with, with my mouth, same remark, and what do I hear them with, and so on, the old rigmarole, it can't be I, or it's because I pay no heed, it's such an old habit, I do it without heeding, or as if I were somewhere else, there I am far again, there I am the absentee again, it's turn again now, he who neither speaks nor listens, who has neither body nor soul, it's something else he has, he must be somewhere, he is made of silence, there's a pretty analysis, he's in the silence, he's the one to be sought, the one to be, the one to be spoken of , the one to speak, but he can't speak, then I could stop, I'd be he, I'd be silence, I'd be back in the silence, we'd be reunited, his story the story to be told, but he has no story, he .............

I'm all these words, all these strangers, this dust of words, with no ground for their settling, no sky for their dispersing, coming together to say, fleeing one another to say, that I am they, all of them, those that merge, those that part, those that never meet, and nothing else, yes, something else, that I'm something quite different, a quite different thing, a wordless thing in an empty place, a hard shut dry cold black place, where nothing stirs, nothing speaks, and that I listen, and that I seek, like a caged beast born of caged beasts born of caged beasts born of caged beasts born in a cage and dead in a cage, born and then dead, born in a cage and then dead in a cage, in a word like a beast, in one of their words, like such a beast, and that I seek, like such a beast, with my little strength, such a beast, with nothing of its species left but fear and fury, no, the fury is past, nothing but fear, nothing of all its due but fear centupled, fear of its shadow, no, blind from birth, of sound then, if you like, we'll have that, one must have something, it's a pity, but there it is, fear of sound, fear of sounds, the sounds of beasts, the sounds of men, sounds in the daytime and sounds at night, that's enough, fear of sounds all sounds, more or less, more or less fear, all sounds, there's only one, continuous, day and night, what is it, it's steps coming and going, it's voices speaking for a moment, it's bodies groping their way, it's the air, it's things, it's the air among the things, that's enough, that I seek, like it, no, not like it, like me, in my own way, what am I saying, after my fashion, that I seek, what do I seek now, what it is, it must be that, it can only be that, what it is, what it can be, what what can be, what I seek, no, what I hear, I hear them, now it comes back to me, they say I seek what it is I hear, I hear them, now it comes back to me, what it can possibly be, and where it can possibly come from, since all is silent here, and the walls thick, and how I manage, without feeling an ear on me, or a head, or a body, or a soul, how I manage, to do what, how I manage, it's not clear, dear dear, you say it's not clear, something is wanting to make it clear, I'll seek, what is wanting, to make everything clear, I'm always seeking something, it's tiring in the end, and it's only the beginning.





As one gradually moves towards the inevitable end of the book, it may be felt like a lucid dream is coming to end, which one may have started to enjoy now and may feel an urge to be forever in that dream; but there's no need to go on, what could one get even if one goes on, for there's nothing to be achieved, nothing could be achieved, there was never anything to be achieved; life is so, one can't give any inherent purpose to life, there's no inherent purpose of life, there was never any inherent purpose of life, however one must go on, one will go on.

"