giovanni's room
james baldwin

date started: feb 1, 2024
date ended: feb 23, 2024
thoughts: i really liked this book! i usually read my bookbugs (?) online, but this one i'll probably purchase. my favorite quote from the entire book would probably have to be "I did not want him to know me. I did not want anyone to know me. And then, again, I was undergoing with my father what the very young inevitably undergo with their elders: I was beginning to judge him." so good... i love how though david 'escaped' giovanni's room, it haunted him. i dont think he really ever left. even with hella, he starts antagonizing the house theyre staying in. he even calls hella "...extremely cold, she was very bitterly handsome." projecting onto her.. even when his "clean" ending, the one society expects of him is in grasp, he cannot leave giovannis room.

convenience store woman
sayaka murata

date started: jan 3, 2024
date ended: jan 4, 2024
thoughts: i... did not like this book. it was an easy read, and the prose was interesting, but it felt like it was just. lacking. it felt flat to me. im writing this at the end of the month so i dont remember much. i can understand finding the comfort in the convenience store, in the structure, and i dont fault keiko for that. i guess that it didnt feel fulfilling as a narrative? i have conflicting thoughts. i like the points that she made abt how human beings 'infect' each other with their likeness. all the reviews on the cover praising how this book is "hilarious and witty" probably read it with their eyes closed. im not sure what was funny about society putting so much pressure on keiko to perform that she'd willingly house some incel. and then that her sister would rather keiko be in SOME sort of relationship, ignoring the actual details of said "relationship" completely. grah.

crime and punishment
fyodor dostoevsky

date started: dec 6, 2023
date ended:
thoughts: i am reading the pevear/volokhonsky translation.
i still havent finished.... i finished part 1, but i didnt get further. maybe one day. the chapter of raskolnikovs childhood dream, where they beat the horse to death, was awful. it was awful to read.