ellemaddy's reviews
1094 reviews

 gonna write a review but maybe not now because i just read this in one sitting on an 11 hour train ride and the ride ain’t over, baby! my brain’s so fried but yes yes this was fucking amazing!!!!

It’s always such a treat to read this kind of literary narration. I love, LOVE it when authors explore the human psyche in an alien environment and I think it was done really well.

We were introduced to our main character, a young girl (who remained nameless if i remember correctly?) who was locked inside a bunker along with the other 39 women. They were guarded heavily and were not allowed to touch each other. For years they grew docile inside the confinement since there were no point in asking questions or trying to escape. But then one day the guard left and one of them left the key to their prison and they managed to get out. Soon they found out that the guards were all mysteriously gone and they finally could leave. But is there even a point in leaving? We’re following their story as they explored the outside world and found that there was nothing outside. The world felt alien to them, it didn’t feel like earth. There was no extreme seasonal changes. There was no sign of civilization. They were completely and utterly alone in a strange world. Once in a while they found bunkers like theirs, one after another, and everyone inside were always dead from starvation since their guards didn’t let them outside. It was a bleak and absurd situation. You can ask the why and you can ruminate or speculate about the reason why they were locked inside the bunker for years. You can ask where did the guards go or why was the electricity still on for years and years after that with no power plant in sight. But no matter how hard you ask, you can never get an answer. It is absurdism at its very core and some who couldn’t find the answer gave up completely.
Their journey outside spanned out for years until one by one the women started to die, either from illness, suicide, or old age, until our narrator, the youngest of them, was the only one left. Even until the end of the story as the narrator was near dead from an illness, we still didn’t get an answer for any of the questions that were asked in the beginning and perhaps getting an answer is not the point.

It was a desolate and frigid world, but the characters kept each other and this book warm. It’s a story about womanhood and women’s relationship to each other that felt incredibly gentle and human despite the difficult and strange situation that they were in. Overall this was such an amazing book and it really hooked you from the beginning. Well done!



“You are insolent,’ she said, relieved to find an explanation for the incomprehensible words I’d just uttered, certain that it would be enough to return to the habitual ways, to convention, to commonplaces.”

“And now, racked with sobs, I was forced to acknowledge too late, much too late, that I too had loved, that I was capable of suffering and that I was human after all.”

“None of them looked at me and I hated them. I thought it was unfair, and then I understood that, alone and terrified, anger was my only weapon against the horror.”

“But human beings need to speak, otherwise they lose their humanity, as I’ve realised these past few years.”

“For the first time, I understood that I was living at the very heart of despair. I had insulated myself from it, believing that it was out of bitterness, but suddenly I realised it was out of caution, and that all these women who lived without knowing the meaning of their existence were mad. Whether it was their fault or not, they’d gone mad by force of circumstance, they’d lost their reason because nothing in their lives made sense any more.”

“I looked at the women: they’d just been given the vegetables, and were bustling about as usual, trying to find a new way of cooking cabbage and carrots when all they had was water and salt. They didn’t seem so stupid, because I understood that, having nothing in their lives, they took the little that came and made the best use of it, exploiting the slightest event to nourish their starving spirits.”

“They were as ready as ever to burst out laughing and I began to understand that it wasn’t out of stupidity or hopelessness, but as a means of survival.”

“To me it feels as if I’ve always been alone, even among all of you, because I’m so different. I’ve never really understood you, I didn’t know what you were talking about.’
‘It’s true,’ she agreed. ‘You are the only one of us who belongs to this country.’
‘No, this country belongs to me. I will be its sole owner and everything here will be mine.”

“It was only at the moment of death that they admitted their despair and rushed headlong towards the great, dark doors that I opened for them, leaving the sterile plain where their lives had gone awry without a backward glance, eager to embrace another world which perhaps didn’t exist, but they preferred nothingness to the futile succession of empty days. And I know that at that moment, they loved me. My hand never trembled” 

 This is my subjective opinion about the book, so if you do find comfort from this I am not here to invalidate you.

Getting into this book I had my own set of expectations. I expected it to be a self help / inspirational book that could help you to deal with your own solitude. But I quickly found that that’s not the case. What you can find here instead are a collection of short essays about several different topics, from the aforementioned solitude, about dreams, and weirdly enough about AI. The topics felt sporadic and they felt way too simple and generic for me. They read like writings you can find on an english test (I did read the english version) like when the test is asking you to describe an idea in 5000 words or something. It felt kind of clinical and impersonal and I just had a hard time of relating to any of the topics because there seems to be no personality going on behind these essays.

“The advices” that i expected and had found here like "Improve a skill" or "imagine yourselves in your memory palace" are such basic advice that you can find on google or probably you have had thought / done yourselves. It just feels like empty and shallow words that mean nothing and they felt very impersonal so I find it hard for me to care. The thoughts and ideas that are being shared here are also thoughts and ideas I already have myself. Maybe this book would fit a younger audience better.

In my opinion I just think that this book doesn’t know what it wants to do. Is it supposed to be a self help? Is it supposed to be a collection of essays where the author takes an idea and expand on it? Because it seems to me that it just doesn’t hit any of those goal and as the reader I just felt like i can take nothing from this book. No new ideas is being offered here, no good advice, no inspiring anecdotes etc. 

 “Most men, even in this comparatively free country, through mere ignorance and mistake, are so occupied with the factitious cares and superfluously coarse labors of life that its finer fruits cannot be plucked by them.”

“The laboring man has not leisure for a true integrity day by day; he cannot afford to sustain the manliest relations to men; his labor would be depreciated in the market. He has no time to be any thing but a machine. How can he remember well his ignorance-which his growth requires-who has so often to use his knowledge?”

“Some of you, we all know, are poor, find it hard to live, are sometimes, as it were, gasping for breath.”

“Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared with our own private opinion. What a man thinks of himself, that it is which determines, or rather indicates, his fate.”

“The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation. From the desperate city you go into the desperate country, and have to console yourself with the bravery of minks and muskrats. A stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called the games and amusements of mankind. There is no play in them, for this comes after work. But it is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.”

“We might try our lives by a thousand simple tests; as, for instance, that the same sun which ripens my beans illumines at once a system of earths like ours. If I had remembered this it would have prevented some mistakes. This was not the light in which I hoed them. The stars are the apexes of what wonderful triangles!
What distant and different beings in the various mansions of the universe are contemplating the same one at the same moment!“

“The incessant anxiety and strain of some is a well nigh incurable form of disease. We are made to exaggerate the importance of what work we do; and yet how much is not done by us! or, what if we had been taken sick? How vigilant we are! determined not to live by faith if we can avoid it; all the day long on the alert, at night we unwillingly say our prayers and commit ourselves to uncertainties. So thoroughly and sincerely are we compelled to live, reverencing our life, and denying the possibility of change.
This is the only way, we say; but there are as many ways as there can be drawn from one centre.”

“The life which men praise and regard as successful is but one kind. Why should we exaggerate any one kind at the expense of the others?”

“I sometimes despair of getting any thing quite simple and honest done in this world by the help of men.“

“Most men appear never to have considered what a house is, and are actually though needlessly poor all their lives because they think that they must have such a one as their neighbors have.”

“It is possible to invent a house still more convenient and luxurious than we have, which yet all would admit that man could not afford to pay for. Shall we always study to obtain more of these things, and not sometimes to be content with less? Shall the respectable citizen thus gravely teach, by precept and example, the necessity of the young man's providing a certain number of superfluous glow-shoes, and umbrellas, and empty guest chambers for empty guests, before he dies?”

“We have built for this world a family mansion, and for the next a family tomb.”

“Nations are possessed with an insane ambition to perpetuate the memory of themselves by the amount of hammered stone they leave. What if equal pains were taken to smooth and polish their manners? One piece of good sense would be more memorable than a monument as high as the moon.”

“Wherever I sat, there I might live, and the landscape radiated from me accordingly. What is a house but a sedes, a seat? —better if a country seat.”

“We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aids, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn, which does not forsake us in our soundest sleep. I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by a conscious endeavor. It is something to be able to paint a particular picture, or to carve a statue, and so to make a few objects beautiful; but it is far more glorious to carve and paint the very atmosphere and medium through which we look, which morally we can do. To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts. Every man is tasked to make his life, even in its details, worthy of the contemplation of his most elevated and critical hour.”

“Why should we live with such hurry and waste of life? We are determined to be starved before we are hungry.”

“If we respected only what is inevitable and has a right to be, music and poetry would resound along the streets. When we are unhurried and wise, we perceive that only great and worthy things have any permanent and absolute existence,— that petty fears and petty pleasures are but the shadow of the reality. This is always exhilarating and sublime. By closing the eyes and slumbering, and consenting to be deceived by shows, men establish and confirm their daily life of routine and habit every where,”

“Let us spend one day as deliberately as Nature, and not be thrown off the track by every nutshell and mosquito's wing that falls on the rails.
Let us rise early and fast, or break fast, gently and without perturbation; let company come and let company go, let the bells ring and the children cry,-determined to make a day of it.
Why should we knock under and go with the stream? Let us not be upset and overwhelmed in that terrible rapid and whirlpool called a dinner, situated in the meridian shallows.
Weather this danger and you are safe, for the rest of the way is down hill.
With unrelaxed nerves, with morning vigor, sail by it, looking another way, tied to the mast like Ulysses. If the engine whistles, let it whistle till it is hoarse for its pains. If the bell rings, why should we run? We will consider what kind of music they are like. Let us settle ourselves, and work and wedge our feet downward through the mud and slush of opinion, and prejudice, and tradition, and delu-sion, and appearance, that alluvion which covers the globe, through Paris and London, through New York and Boston and Concord, through church and state, through poetry and philosophy and religion, till we come to a hard bottom and rocks in place, which we can call reality, and say, This is, and no mistake; and then begin, having a point d'appui, below freshet and frost and fire, a place where you might found a wall or a state, or set a lamp-post safely, or perhaps a gauge, not a Nilometer, but a Realometer, that future ages might know how deep a freshet of shams and appearances had gathered from time to time. If you stand right fronting and face to face to a fact, you will see the sun glimmer on both its surfaces, as if it were a cimeter, and feel its sweet edge dividing you through the heart and marrow, and so you will happily conclude your mortal career. Be it life or death, we crave only reality. If we are really dying, let us hear the rattle in our throats and feel cold in the extremi-ties; if we are alive, let us go about our business.”

“"Mourning untimely consumes the sad;
Few are their days in the land of the liv-ing,
Beautiful daughter of Toscar."

“Men frequently say to me, "I should think you would feel lonesome down there, and want to be nearer to folks, rainy and snowy days and nights especial-ly." I am tempted to reply to such,— This whole earth which we inhabit is but a point in space. How far apart, think you, dwell the two most distant inhabitants of yonder star, the breadth of whose disk cannot be appreciated by our instruments? Why should I feel lonely? is not our planet in the Milky Way? This which you put seems to me not to be the most important question. What sort of space is that which separates a man from his fellows and makes him soli-tary?”

“I find it wholesome to be alone the greater part of the time. To be in company, even with the best, is soon wearisome and dissipating. I love to be alone. I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude. We are for the most part more lonely when we go abroad among men than when we stay in our chambers. A man thinking or working is always alone, let him be where he will. Solitude is not measured by the miles of space that intervene between a man and his fellows.”

“The indescribable innocence and beneficence of Nature,-of sun and wind and rain, of summer and winter,
-such health, such cheer, they afford forever! and such sympathy have they ever with our race, that all Nature would be affected, and the sun's brightness fade, and the winds would sigh humanely, and the clouds rain tears, and the woods shed their leaves and put on mourning in mid-summer, if any man should ever for a just cause grieve. Shall I not have intelligence with the earth? Am I not partly leaves and vegetable mould myself?”

“Let the thunder rumble; what if it threaten ruin to farmers' crops? that is not its errand to thee. Take shelter under the cloud, while they flee to carts and sheds. Let not to get a living be thy trade, but thy sport. Enjoy the land, but own it not. Through want of enterprise and faith men are where they are, buying and selling, and spending their lives like serfs.”

“Our whole life is startlingly moral.
There is never an instant's truce between virtue and vice. Goodness is the only investment that never fails.”

“Why do you stay here and live this mean moiling life, when a glorious existence is possible for you?
Those same stars twinkle over other fields than these,-But how to come out of this condition and actually migrate thither? All that he could think of was to practise some new austerity, to let his mind descend into his body and redeem it, and treat himself with ever increasing respect.”

“The light which puts out our eyes is darkness to us. Only that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star.”

“I learned this, at least, by my experiment; that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. He will put some things behind, will pass an invisible bound-ary; new, universal, and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around and within him; or the old laws be expanded, and interpreted in his favor in a more liberal sense, and he will live with the license of a higher order of beings. In proportion as he simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty poverty, nor weakness weakness. If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be.
Now put the foundations under them.”

“Why should we be in such desperate haste to succeed, and in such desperate enterprises? If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away. It is not important that he should mature as soon as an apple-tree or an oak. Shall he turn his spring into summer? If the condition of things which we were made for is not yet, what were any reality which we can substitute? We will not be shipwrecked on a vain reality. Shall we with pains erect a heaven of blue glass over ourselves, though when it is done we shall be sure to gaze still at the true ethereal heaven far above, as if the former were not?”

“However mean your life is, meet it and live it; do not shun it and call it hard names. It is not so bad as you are. It looks poorest when you are richest. The fault-finder will find faults even in paradise. Love your life, poor as it is. You may perhaps have some pleasant, thrilling, glorious hours, even in a poor-house.”

“Cultivate poverty like a garden herb, like sage. Do not trouble yourself much to get new things, whether clothes or friends. Turn the old; return to them. Things do not change; we change. Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts.” 

 can be comforting but i found the stories to be a little simplistic. i find it hard to read self help books without finding them preachy. and i think with books like this that are so filled with quotes, you’re not meant to read it all in one go to really get the message and apply them to your life. 

 Hard agree on the saccharine and fluffy comments about this book. I understand why some people can like this and I'm not going to invalidate your feeling about this book if you do feel that way. But some, like the jaded person that i am, can find it cloyingly sweet and kinda gives nothing. My main problem (as a person who struggles with anxiety, depression you name it and can relate to the main character's problem) is that this is a magical realism book where the main character found her will to live AFTER she was shown all of these different (HUNDREDS) versions of her lives and I cannot relate/use that in my life. It's not as easy as gaining perspective and changing your mind-set in order to not be depressed. I cannot just get up one day and decide, for example, oh I wanna go to the Arctic to become a glaciologist because I've always wanted to and I've always regretted not doing that! I won't be able to do that and then found myself face to face with a polar-bear-near-death-experience in order for me to realize Oh actually I wanna live! You know some people are so depressed they can't even get out of bed? Or worse??? And some people's depression is not caused by regrets from bad decisions they made in the past, sometimes they're hormonal or caused by chemicals we have no control over. So it's a sweet thought that you can just gain perspective from a magical event in your near-death experience where you get to visit your other lives, but in real life that is not a thing. You might argue that that is not the point of the book. You should take away the message that Nora, despite being successful in her other lives, were still depressed and unhappy. And her other lives were not perfect either. Which is again... what am I supposed to do with that information? And how is that going to change anything about my own and other people's depression? AGAIN, it's a sweet thought. But it's giving nothing. It's not applicable for everyone, you see what I mean. Sometimes it's not even about not being grateful enough or not having perspective, sometimes it's just chemical imbalance, deep trauma, abuse etc. Things that you literally cannot control / take back / can be erased just by trying to be ~more grateful~.

If I treated the midnight library as a self-help mental health book, it did nothing for me. If i treated it as a piece of fiction that just so happens to have a theme of mental health and a character who struggles with depression, then it still did nothing for me. Overall it was just a mid book. 

 Jail for every men in this book. Review contains spoiler.

There’s something so disgusting about writing a 15 year old character who’s ‘abused by her family’ and whose only characteristic and life purpose is to save and fix a pedo twice her age who developed an unhealthy fixation for her. It’s disgusting how every men in this book treated her, failed her, abused & assaulted her, and kept talking about how she’s 15 but doesn’t look 15, the way they keep mentioning that she’s a CHILD but she also managed to manipulate them into doing what she wants them to do. At some point she’s also being referred to as a ‘woman’. She’s 15. There was a scene where she literally did a school play in this. Thats a kid with HOMEWORK. A 30 something year old ADULT man has no business falling in love with that kid, especially not when the “falling in love” process is him seeing her and noticing how pretty she is. GET FUCKED.

The main character is a vain flat piece of cardboard written in such a way that manipulates you into thinking that he’s imperfect and that even though he’s rich, successful, talented and GOOD LOOKING (i counted at least 4 different characters telling him that they disliked him but they think that he’s good looking. Everytime the side characters bring it up it’s so out of place and weird that i can’t help but notice it) you should feel sorry and admire him for it. Is it depth just because your main character has one single flaw? (or more like a non flaw. You’re telling me he’s so afraid of failing or being mediocre so he attends mediocre clubs and college to have less competition and in the process that makes him stand out from all of his peers and that’s supposed to be his Flaw?) Get the fuck outta here, joel.

Another thing. I’m no professional book reviewer or the boss of literature so this is purely my subjective opinion but is it just me or is the writing actually SO HORRENDOUS? 90% of this book is people having conversations and telling you things. It’s a lot of telling and no showing. The way the timeline goes back and forth is so messy and redundant. One thing I can give to this author is his ability to keep you enraged and pissed off enough to keep reading but i think it’s a bit much that this shit is 600 pages long. Is it actually that serious? You’re literally writing a trashy thriller, pack it up.

Reading this book makes me wish that some men are banned from writing. Please spare us from the all the pathetic wish fulfillment gary sues. I’m so sick to death of them.

Anyway, I wanna list the crimes that these male characters have committed in this book (plus the annoying things they did):
1. Markie mark: for bragging non stop about his success and being rich and a wunderkind. Are you ryan howard??? Also because the narrative keeps pushing for us to remember about his success and his good look NON STOP. Idrgaf. what is his personality other than being a fucking loser??? I also think it’s insane that the police guy just let him led the investigation. In which world are we living in, huh???
2. Harry the pedo: a literal child predator. Non only that but he’s also a flop writer who stole other people’s work. Another guy with loser behavior that i have 0 sympathy for. The way he keeps yapping about nola like N-O-L-A. We get it, you read lolita. What’s the reason why you fell in love and developed an obsession with a 15 year old girl again? *checks note* oh yeah because you’re a child predator. Last I check that’s illegal. Jail for a thousand years.
3. Chief pratt: a literal child predator and a rapist. I wanted to say that he deserves jail time for a thousand years too but he’s dead. Deserve. acab number 1.
4. That one rich guy: child predator enabler, also a criminal
5. Luther: another child predator. painting a 15 year old nude? he deserved to die
6. Jenny’s dad: another child predator enabler. So a kid tells you she’s in a relationship with a 30 year old guy and your response is “oh they found love, i’m gonna help them” you deserve to actually get cancer. It actually doesn’t fucking matter to me how often the characters in this book condemn Nola & Harry’s relationship, they keep saying that it makes them want to throw up. OK YES AND??? Do something tf.
7. Nola’s dad: for being an absentee dad and just for generally being yet another useless man
8. Travis: incel murderer. acab number 2. jail for a thousand years 

 

i’ve learned that my track record with ve schwab’s book tend to be a hit or miss. either i get or hooked or they just piss me off. this one didn’t particularly do anything for me. i liked none of the characters or the relationships or the world building. nothing stood out from the book and the whole time i just felt bored, wishing that it was over. quickly! sorry!
it didn’t matter to me how many characters with cool superpowers were introduced, i think they were all awful and had 0 charisma. and i don’t even mind morally grey characters, but at least make it fun. they were all just so dull!!!

 

 I love freaky buildings lore and smart women. 

 You know what, I enjoyed it. I loved whatever this book had to offer and I ate it all up. *crunching noise* 80% into it I started thinking... uh, Seokga and Hwanin's dynamic reminds me a bit of Thor and Loki. Seokga especially is so Loki coded which kinda got me into thinking, was this a Lokixsomething fanfic in the beginning or...? I think it's so funny how he's continuously catching strays in this book, everyone just called him a pathetic loser for the attempted coup. Bro, he failed so bad. I also love Hani as a character, she's chaotic and fun and she's matched Seokga's freak.

Anyway, I think the book was good, it was well-written, the lore and the cast of characters are well-liked and felt three dimensional. It does feel a little fanfic-y at times, but if you like that kind of vibe mixed with a little pinch k-drama vibe, then you'll enjoy this book. I saw some criticism about how Hani is not acting menacing / scary enough as a 1700 years old gumiho and personally it didn't bother me. It's just not that serious. And I think the pettiness and the stupidity of Hani and Seokga (yeah sometimes they act like stupid teens when they bicker, but mostly... not?) was fun!! I think the way that the author approached these characters just made sense for me. ALSO! The conflict resolution is SO well done.

Overall I was surprisingly impressed by this book that I just picked up on a random Tuesday. I will definitely pick up the sequel if there's any in the future!! 5/5 

 well that fucking sucked for everyone involved, especially the mouse :-(