icarusandthesun's reviews
140 reviews

i wasn't a huge fan of no longer human back when i first read it. i thought the main character, yozo oba, was extremely unlikable and a mysogynist. but though in the flowers of buffoonery, yozo oba is the protagonist once again (obviously, since it's the prequel), i still thought it was thoroughly enjoyable.

it was funny, and self-deprecating. dazai frequently breaks the fourth wall, poking fun at himself, at the reader, at life itself. if you know a little bit about dazai's life, you will quickly notice the autobiographical aspects of the book—dazai as yozo oba, the very one he keeps talking down.

the flowers of buffoonery was also very wise, and though written in 1935, all the social observations still apply, it's really fascinating.

(on being "fake", as we would express it)

a very astute observation, could be tied to the way people enjoy creating "drama", or watching it unfold, be it on the internet or real life.

we've come to see these kinds of quotes as a little pseudo-deep as they've already been used a lot, but it's still interesting to see some things haven't changed at all. self-deprecation. laughing at your own pain as to not make a situation awkward.

and some other quotes that i enjoyed:

i mean, what can i say?
it's your average hades x persephone fanfiction—smutty, something that could be found on wattpad, feels like reading an animal documentary based on the amount of 'growls' the reader has to sit through.

the writing style was simple, wattpad-esque. and with that i mean very little sentences of description (except of course when it's about a dress, looks or beautiful black modern-victorian rooms) and lots of action in the simple noun-verb-object structure. a little boring, nothing special, but it gets you through the 400 pages all right.

what i had quite a problem with were the characters. i disliked most of them and that might be rooted in the fact that the author and i definitely have different headcanons when it comes to the gods/other ancient greek figures and their personalities and behavior.

i do personally believe that hades as a character was handled way better in the lore olympus webtoon for example—a little shy, still powerful but more in a lowkey nerd/constantly annoyed/grumpy kinda way, rather than this buff f-boy typa character. but then again, that's just personal.

i disliked persephone, because of her naïvité and there i say it, stupidity.

first she decided to take a swim in the INFAMOUS RIVER OF STYX, then she thought it was a good idea to drink a drink she didn't order and had the audacity to be surprised to find it was spiked.

she was portrayed as this smart goddess, gifted writer, university graduate but her behavior mirrored none of that. and yet she was still portrayed as a kind of mary sue.

i wasn't a fan of adonis and minthe either.

gonna be honest here, adonis' villain arc, i just didn't buy it. he didn't have a motive or a goal. every story needs a villain and i feel like the author just picked him at random because "well, someone has to do it."
same with minthe. like yeah, she was annoying as shit but i don't think she deserved to die like that.

there were some minor things about the gods/goddesses and how they were portrayed that i hated, too. for example that aphrodite, the goddess of love and passion, was put into this stereotypical (and sort of slut-shaming) role of "she sleeps with everyone but she's very lonely deep down inside". that just felt wrong and out of place because, well, she is the goddess of love. the whole "she's lonely" thing, idk, it felt pseudo-deep.

also the fact persephone put every god and goddess into a sort of "good" or "bad" drawer. ares was bad for starting wars. athena was good for making strategic war. aphrodite was kinda bad. hades was bad but turned out to be good. hermes was good. zeus and poseidon were not. 
it was so silly, because the gods and goddesses were literally written to be morally gray. that's the thing about greek mythology. the divine are beautiful, ethereal, but they are also deeply flawed like mortals. that's what made them so realistic and so easy to cherish. they were relatable.
acting like one god is better than another is just hypocritical and boring, because literally every deity has done some sort of horrible and unjust thing in their life. 

most of the characters also just acted like teenagers in general, even the gods, which is very suspicious, considering they've lived for like ... an eternity right. how giddy everyone acted when it came to hades' and persephone's relationship was goofy. "he's in love with you!" - "omg *blush* no he's not."
urgh.

the plot was relatively interesting at the beginning, but the closer persephone and hades got and the more the book started focusing on their relationship, the more boring it turned. going to clubs, and galas and events, baking cookies at home, fucking in a pool, it was all just a little ... too little, you know. if actual plot was sustenance, this book would be malnourished.

i thought the ending was boring, too. not because the ideas were lacking, but simply because i didn't like

the whole deus ex machina thing persephone's got going on with her powers. it was lame

.

yeah, personally just didn't like that one. i'm starting to doubt booktok and its recommendations and favorites (only now, yes i know), but it is what it is.

eliza clark is a bloody genius.
even though i'm not into true crime, not in the slightest actually, she was able to draw me in completely. this was a disturbing read, but also so much fun. from relatable sims 4 references to badly written school shooter fanfic, this had everything to properly entertain you.
 
it explored the depths of the internet and school life from the perspectives of a couple of very different people from very different backgrounds.
it was perfect. (but perhaps i'm also just a little biased because most of the references in this book just made so much sense to me as someone who used to spend - and still does - way too much time on the internet). an incredible read.

literally the only thing i didn't quite enjoy was the length and extensity. there were lots of chapters about the history of crow-on-sea and it was necessary, of course, and didn't feel like it was irrelevant at all, but personally, i just found that a little boring.

also, as i've mentioned before, i'm not really into true crime, so this was already a little bit of meh-territory you know.

but f- it, i still had a blast.

holy shit. this book was as vile, graphic and brutal as it was brilliant - which is to say, extremely.
cynical, self-conscious, unflinching, and surprisingly profound.
 
dorothy was hilarious, and absolutely crazy. and the worst thing is, the whole book was also incredibly and excruciatingly thrilling. i was having fun watching a mad cannibalist skin her lover. i was having a jolly old time while reading about this psychopathic woman eating human meat and analyzing it as if it were just any other ordinary (and with ordinary i mean sophisticated and *italian*) meal. 
it was horrible and so entertaining.

it was a very slow book though with a lot of detailed descriptions, sautéed in a sauce of names, places and meals i've never even heard of (did i do that right?). it was a little unrelatable, or maybe i'm just uncultured. probably both since i do believe i'm not a psychopath so relating to this woman would be a little disconcerting. 

anyways, fun read. 

charming, however a tad underwhelming.

it's definitely one of the prettiest hardbacks i own now, and i was really excited for it with makoto shinkai (the filmmaker of your name and weathering with you) having been involved and all.
but something was missing. i could go ahead, say it was boring and call it a day, but that wouldn't do it justice at all.
i suppose it was missing the sort of excitement that comes with uniqueness. because though it was a very heartfelt book with unique characters, it didn't feel very ... new? earth-shattering?

everything about the book was just fine, yk. but 'fine' books usually aren't the ones that stick with you for a long time.

very wholesome, forgettable, and wise in a very conventional type of way.

oh lord oh mighty, i was absolutely not born for this.

i guess i kind of understand why everyone seems to like alice oseman so much. her books have this easy writing style, these pop-culture references and conventionally relatable characters, especially when you're the target audience, which, for this book, means boy band obsessed fangirls (and with fangirls i mean it as a vibe, not necessarily that all of them are girls).
but something about her characters just always strikes me as deeply disconcerting.

wasn't any different with this one - i disliked all of them (except maybe lister).
angel was very self-absorbed in my opinion and just a bad friend to juliet in general. i didn't agree with her most of the time, and her whole talk about how "the fandom is actually such a comforting, supporting, respectful place and most people don't want to be with the band members", i didn't really buy it. also, i just hate her for shipping rowan and jimmy. shipping "real life" people is such a disgusting thing to do, and such a breach of personal privacy.
i didn't like her attitude either; the way she seemed to feel superior to everyone just pissed me off a bit. and the self-pitying phrases like "it's all my fault", "i'm the problem" - peak melodramatic teenage behavior.

juliet was honestly just bland, like her character could've not existed and nothing would've changed. and i don't quite understand what her problem was. she seemed to like mac and just because he "lied" about liking something (something he does like btw, just not as much as they do), she acts like that's the end of the world. that she stopped liking him for being a douchebag, yk that's something i can get behind. but the whole lying thing was written to be so prominent so that it seems like that's what put her over the edge to finally abandon mac. idk, it was weird.

mac was mac. definitely a douchebag, but he wasn't as bad as everyone acted like he was in my opinion. oseman just completely villainized him for no real reason.

now, jimmy. god, how i hated jimmy. he's such a child, literally. his whole crying and running off and not communicating and weird, illogical behavior... i cannot. i don't even want to dwell on him because man, what an absolute fleabag.

rowan was as bland as juliet, and bliss was written to be cool but i just disliked her and her whole personality anyway lol.

and i know most of these characters were written to be flawed so that the inevitable character development hits the reader like a damned truck, but it's not helping when all of the character development happens in the last 50 pages and the remaining 330 pages, the characters are absolute ass and wholly unlikable.

we don't even have to talk about the plot and how unrealistic it was. like all of it. and it made me not enjoy the book at all, because everything was so convenient and highly unlikely and frustrating.

and can we please, please talk about the god-motive in this book? because it seems like no one talks about it. the amount of religion and religious messages and stuff were so out of place.
it's cool that these characters believe in some sort of religion, i really don't care. but the joan of arc quotes about death and sin felt so out of place, because it's a fanfic-y young adult book!!!
and the woman in the tube suddenly preaching about god and god's plan...
that sort of felt a little bit like propaganda, ngl.

i also didn't buy the whole mental illness spiel that some of these characters've got going on. whenever something inconvenient happens, they all go "i hate my life", "i don't want to live", "i'm worthless". which i get because that's what teenagers do, being stupid and irrational about their own emotions. but still, it was annoying. like mental illnesses are a joke, can be dismissed as soon as someone is doing fine again. 

idk. it's safe to say that the book wasn't for me. i'm starting to think it's just an author-reader mismatch and that's completely fine. i think alice oseman is a good person, and i'm glad there are people who enjoy her books.
just ... not me.

a wonderful book, but simply wasn't for me.

nelson's writing is plain beautiful. lyrical. it sounds like a song, like a poem, like a friend telling you about their woes, like an observation of the world - its beauty and terrors - all in one.

i've never seen anyone describe life and love quite like he did. nelson's portrayal of love must be one of the most comforting, most romantic and rawest portrayals one can find in literature today.
passages heart-wrenching, alternating between joy and grief. appreciation for all kinds of art created by people of color. celebrating it.

nevertheless, i was a little bored. and i want to note that that's totally on me, not the book. since it is a very lyrical piece, it doesn't have a lot of plot. i also found it a little hard to concentrate on some of the passages, kept zoning out, because there were a lot of repetitions (used as a stylistic device and executed beautifully, but alas), long descriptions of memories and photographs of moments to remember. i just couldn't quite find my footing, if that makes sense.

it was kind of like swimming in open water - lyrical and sensitive words flowing all around you, but there was nothing to grasp, nothing that wouldn't immediately seep through your hands again, leaving you with but open water, and no land to be seen.
if you like swimming, that's great, you'll love this. but personally, i'm not one to swim.

but whatever! will this stop me from reading nelson's second book? absolutely not.
even if i won't be staying for the story, i will for the quotes, i know it. because the ones in open water were all gorgeous, filled with dreams and pure truth.

lovable characters, solid lore - boring plot.
the story was excruciatingly slow and the conflict stubbornly repetitive.

every bit of conflict followed the same pattern - the igibys suspect they're safe, then a fang shows up (or any amount of them) and they run and then the deux ex machinas (

peet and podo

) save the day.

it was all a little too lovely to be realistic. the descriptions of death and violence and murder were surprisingly brutal sometimes, but had no lasting effect in the end (

with every important person springing back to life after comsuming some magical water

).

the characters were amazing and the family dynamic was really wholesome, and i loved the annotations and all the illustrations and ideas surrounding the lore and world, but that just wasn't enough to fill in the gaping hole that was the lack of exciting plot for me.

lots of potential, average execution.

i picked this up because i saw a youtube short that basically said something along the lines of "i'm halfway through this book and i feel sick" backdropped by a picture of the first page, adorned with the very eye-catching first sentence:
 

i was intrigued, because i'm a fan of all things dark, disgusting, disturbing, mental.

and the first third was quite good, actually - funny (the narrator taking the "pith" out of someone's "lithsp" was probably the funniest thing i've read in a book ever) and cynical; the reader absolutely appalled by the narrator and yet being met with smart and relatable quotes, self-aware, realistic observations about life and the relationships we choose to fill it with.

but all of that sort of got lost as the story progressed: the narrator becoming an emblem in AA (alcoholics anonymous), getting a good job, fretting about the future, describing his boring and mid-life-crisis way of living, and tiring everyday life.
halfway through, this turned into some sort of self-pitying self-help book written by a touch-deprived middle-aged man.

and the thing with aisling, right...
the thing we've been waiting for since page one.

it was just silly. i didn't pity the narrator and i also didn't understand what her strategy was supposed to be. it didn't have any impact, wasn't surprising, wasn't brutal at all (which is what i'd desperately hoped for).

it was nothing.

infuriating, considering i read 140 slow and excruciating pages to get to this point just to be disappointed like every girl the narrator fooled back in his prime time. (ironic, if you think about it.)

yeah, i just expected something a little different. i wanted disgusting, unhinged. i wanted another humbert humbert (shame on whoever it was who compared this book to lolita in the synopsis).
i wanted so much more than this.

but alas.

na ja.

meiner meinung nach an sich definitiv einer der eher interessanteren deutschen klassiker - besser als homo faber und kabale und liebe und was man da so alles lesen musste.

die thematik war okay, die überlegungen bezüglich des holocausts und des zweiten weltkriegs recht gut zu lesen; die beziehung zwischen michael und hanna amüsant (wenn auch höchst fragwürdig angesichts dessen dass er fünfzehn war und sie über dreißig), allerdings auch faszinierend.
erinnerte mich sehr an frankenstein und sein monster; ... educating rita?

der plot-twist am ende war hervorragend. ein gutes ende für eine leider in allen aspekten mittelmäßige geschichte.