“I think of what wild animals are in our imagination. And how they are disappearing-not just from the wild, but from people‘s everyday lives, replaced by images of themselves in print and on screen. The rarer they get, the fewer meanings animals can have. Eventually rarity is all they are made of. The condor is an icon of extinction...And in this lies the diminution of the world. How can you love something if all it means is loss?”

Marissa is a film editor who gets sucked into a real life mystery on her latest job. The film is based on the unsolved murder of a girl that happened 20 years prior. When Marissa arrives to work, she soon learns that something is wrong on set, and everyone is on edge.

This book is…fine. I don‘t have any specific complaints but I was never invested in any part of it. There‘s a fine line between a “slow burn” and just “slow”and this was the latter.

I love bookish/academic thrillers, so this was right up my alley. I was excited to discover this was the first book in a series and even more excited to find out the series follows my favorite character-detective Harbinder Kaur. Very excited to check out the next book!

🎼 In the letter I received from you two weeks ago
I noticed a comma in the middle of a phrase
It changed the meaning-did you intend this?
One stroke and you‘ve consumed my waking days 🎶

This fancy ginger cake took FOREVER to make and now I just want to relax with an easy book I‘ve read a million times before. I can‘t handle even looking at my pile of dirty dishes, so I‘m just going to focus on Josh and Lucy-will they confess their love to each other??! (They will). (Also this cake is pretty good).

“There are many stories of war to tell. You will hear them all. But remember among those who were lost, some made it through. Among the dragons there will always be heroes. Even there. Even then. And of those tales ending in defeat, tales of death and orphans wandering among the ruined, some ended the other way too.”

I just realized the 2005 Pride and Prejudice movie aka my happy place is back on Netflix! It‘s a perfect excuse for a reread. I know that as someone who adores this book I should prefer the miniseries, that I should be annoyed the movie ignores so many great moments and delicious satire. Intellectually, I understand this. BUT THAT HAND FLEX THO. You can pry this movie from my cold dead hands

Very excited to tackle tonight‘s read! NOT excited to try to sleep tonight after three glasses of iced coffee 🙃

I said yesterday that I was in the mood to reread “Persuasion” so today my book, my mask, and I went down to Boston Common and spent my lunch break reading on the dock. I don‘t want to brag but it was a fabulous decision. God, I love this book! Is it possible I love this MORE than Pride and Prejudice?! The thought is so blasphemous I have a hard time working it out...How do you rank Jane Austen‘s books?

I was looking for something light and fun to read today and “By the Book” really hit the spot. This charming adaptation of Jane Austen‘s “Persuasion” takes place on a college campus-where the literature professor struggling for tenure discovers the new university President is the man whose heart she broke years before. It was really great living in this book for a few hours. And now I DESPERATELY want to reread “Persuasion.” 💜

“A melancholy hour falleth. As afflicts a gentleman of colorful history. But, if he has nothing else to his name, he has his regrets, and these are not without value to the martyr‘s self-portrait displayed in his minds eye. I am fifty one years old, he thinks, and still at least halfway in love with myself. All told you‘d have to call it a fucken achievement.”

I was so sad to hear about Carlos Ruiz Zafon‘s death earlier today. The art he created was beautiful and heartbreaking and I‘m grateful I got to experience it 💜

“He wants to laugh out loud or punch a wall. He feels drunk or at least carbonated. Insane. At first, he thinks this is happiness but then he determines it‘s love. “Fucking love,” he thinks “What a bother.” It‘s completely gotten in the way of his plan to drink himself to death, to drive his business to ruin. The most annoying thing about it is that once a person gives a shit about one thing, he finds he has to start giving a shit about anything.”

I‘ve been hearing a lot of whining about Civil War losers and their associated statues (that should definitely be torn down) so I figured it was time to read 1,000+ pages about the guy who won the war for America.

An Earl Grey tea cake seemed like the appropriate snack while reading some Royal Romance. In the interest of transparency, I‘ll admit that this is cake #2 as the first cake came out, in the immortal words of Paul Hollywood “a bit of a mess.” But this one is a delicious success!

“Every year that passed, it seemed like a little more of her had slipped away; and I began to hear that one day I would come to forget her altogether. But the truth is: no matter how much time passes, those we have loved never slip away from us entirely.” 💜❤️💙🌹

“I hope to every god you have the guts to do what needs doing. I hope you will find the cracks in the world and wedge them wider so the light of other suns shines through. I hope you will keep the world unruly, messy, full of strange magics. I hope you will run through every door and tell stories when you return.”

Lately, I‘ve been watching a lot of BBC specials about the Tudor Dynasty (I watched a three part series about Lady Jane Grey this morning while I *worked from home*). I don‘t exactly know why I find this all so compelling right now, but “The Illustrated Story of England” is perfect for my current, inexplicable literary wheelhouse. It‘s surprisingly informative-I thought this book could be gimmicky- and the art is fabulous ❤️

This is a great examination of how translating works. I wish it delved more into the implications of translations-the politics and cultural forces behind how works are translated, but that could be its own book. This was a great beginner‘s exploration into this world and highly recommended to anyone who loves translated books.

Pasta, wine, CAKE, and an Italian serial killer?! And they say the perfect night doesn‘t exist...

“That was how evil spoke. It made its own corrupt sense; it swore that the good were evil, and that the evil had come to save mankind. It brought up ancient fears and scattered them on the street like pearls.”

Listen. LISTEN. I love romance hijinks as much as the next person. But when the two protagonists are dumb dummies whose problems would be fixed if they simply talked to each other, I just...lose interest. “Not the Girl You Marry” is a stupid retelling of “How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days.” Just rewatch the movie-it‘s better

“Just as it did in the nineteenth century, the notion that the victims were 'only prostitutes' seeks to perpetuate the belief that there are good women and bad women; madonnas and whores. It suggests that there is an acceptable standard of female behaviour and those that deviate from it are fit to be punished. Equally, it assists in reasserting the double standard , exonerating men from wrongs committed against such women.”

“I know it sounds like it was all just a terrible disaster. Of course it does. Any situation involving four dead bodies is clearly far from ideal.”

I know I‘ve been uncharacteristically quiet on this app lately, but that‘s because all I have wanted to do this week is read “Girl, Woman, Other.” I don‘t want to review other books, I don‘t want to talk to anyone, I don‘t want to do my job. All I wanted to do was read this book and now that it‘s over I truly do not know what to do with myself. This is absolutely stunning and you (yes, YOU) need to read it.

I finally finished “The Testaments.” It was a good book, but I still cannot figure out WHY we needed this sequel to “The Handmaid‘s Tale.” The ending to the original book was perfect, and I just don‘t understand why we had to revisit Gilead. And if we did, I don‘t know why this is the story Atwood chose to tell. Ultimately, “The Testaments” didn‘t impact my feeling for the original book-this sequel was just…kind of…there.

“Strange, isn‘t it? To love a book. When the words on the pages become so precious that they feel like part of your own history because they are. It‘s nice to finally have someone read stories I know so intimately.”

LESBIAN NECROMANCERS! EXPLORING A HAUNTED GOTHIC CASTLE! IN SPACE!!!!! DUELING! SKELETONS! This book is absolutely insane and I would like you to inject it directly into my veins.

“A reminder to remember: just because the sharpness of the sadness has faded does not mean that it was not, once, terrible. It means only that time and space, creatures of infinite girth and tenderness, have stepped between the two of you, and they are keeping you safe as they were once unable to.”

“I kissed your face and your hand was so cold that the coldness crept up into my face, my heard, my skull. Nothing colder exists in the world. Not ice, snow. No fear, no anxiety, no heartbreak as cold as your hand; your hand, which I kissed with my warm, loving mouth...So strange that you don‘t exist, I still feel you. My body still can‘t understand that you don‘t exist.”

“And he‘d figured out that the fun was often not the thing itself—the party, the keg stand, the naked running into the duck pond—but the endless talking about it after, the reliving and describing, and laughing about it in front of people who wished they‘d been there. Used to be he was one of the kids listening, one of the kids who missed everything, but now, since college, since Kate, he was in the stories.”

“And he‘d figured out that the fun was often not the thing itself—the party, the keg stand, the naked running into the duck pond—but the endless talking about it after, the reliving and describing, and laughing about it in front of people who wished they‘d been there. Used to be he was one of the kids listening, one of the kids who missed everything, but now, since college, since Kate, he was in the stories.”

“Does it sound crazy to say I looked at her and saw the world falling into some kind of order that I didn‘t even know it was out of?”

True story: Thanks to this book, my sister and I got into a screaming match about WHICH Nicholas Cage character we would want to add to our fantasy heist crew. We both knew Nicholas Cage had to be involved, but she was going for Face/Off Cage, whereas I was going for I‘m-gonna-steal-the-Declaration-of-Independence Cage and then my mother chimed in late in the game to advocate for Moonstruck Nicholas Cage which started this whole fight over again.

“We tend to think the future happens later, but we‘re creating it in our minds everyday. When the present falls apart, so does the future we had associated with it. And having the future taken away is the mother of all plot twists.”

That serendipitous moment when you learn the book you just started won a National Book Award TODAY 🤗

Now I really can‘t wait to really dig into “Trust Exercise.” My night is now planned!

Uhhhhhh...how did an editor miss this?!? (If you‘ve never read “Rebecca” the narrator is famously unnamed, the woman she is quoting is NOT Rebecca) 😰

well...damn

Where do I even begin? This story of five queer Uruguayan women during the height of the military dictatorship is so damn good I don‘t even have words for it. I know it‘s a bookish cliché, but I did not want to move until I finished reading “Cantoras.” It‘s absolutely one of my favorite books this year.

I really wanted to like this book! Roaring 20s, showgirls women behaving badly. But ultimately, I was just bored by “City of Girls.” At 470 pages, this only thing this book demands of its readers is stamina.

THIS is how you spend a Friday! With a cocktail (or two) and a breezy romance book. I am so looking forward to my night...

Halloween might be over but spooky season isn‘t done until I say it is ☕️👻

“The Future of Another Timeline” pits time-traveling Riot Grrrls against time-traveling MRAs and after you read that description you‘re either all in or totally out (I think it‘s obvious I‘m the former)

It is crazy to me that we know some parts of our universe better than we know the ocean. I don‘t know a lot about ocean exploration or diving, so I was excited to spend my afternoon learning about this totally different world, beneath the waves. I wish there was more in this book about environmental conservation (it‘s covered somewhat reluctantly in the end, but its absence was glaring) but it was still a good read!

“I wasn‘t trying to become Jude. Not exactly. But I wanted to disappear and she had left a space. When I stepped into that space, I vanished from my senses. It changed me into someone who didn‘t have my actual mind...Now I know how that sounds: teenage, teenage. I was and it brought me to wickedness. Except in wickedness, I loved the world, too, in a way so fierce I assumed no one could imagine. And I love it still.”

True crime 🔪

Glass of wine 🍷

Bed by 9 🛏

I‘m just a girl, reading out loud to a bunch of plants, asking that they don‘t die on her today. I‘m hoping that, deep down, they also want to know how “The Last Astronaut” saves the day.

It‘s 85 degrees out and so I‘m reading some summer teen angst. “The Summer Of Us” isn‘t a great book, but man is it hitting the spot right now. The mimosa doesn‘t hurt either.

It‘s 85 degrees out and so I‘m reading some summer teen angst. “The Summer Of Us” isn‘t a great book, but man is it hitting the spot right now. The mimosa doesn‘t hurt either.

“Killing in the name of racism-always justified through negative emotions: hatred, contempt, and objectification; a degree of farce-is not, in the liberal-romanticized West, a spontaneous practice. First the violence needs to be represented to the point where it becomes denatured, until it is converted into a solemn discourse, a sort of law.”