Really didn’t like the writing style of this one, and it took waaaaay too long to get going. Dialogue lowkey impossible to follow, and even some sentences didn’t parse. Kept waiting for things to pick up cuz I was bored and un-compelled and saw that I was already at 44% and had to call it on principle. 

I just kept waiting for this to catch me and it just didn’t I fear! Should’ve been up my alley but just felt.. boring? Lots of Lacanian business that was sort of over my head so maybe u need to rly be about that life

This book kinda sucks I fear?? Chock full of millennial gay coming of age and moving to the Big City tropes that never do anything. Not that I’m always looking for original, but I am looking for compelling at least. I kept picking this up to give it a chance to get better but I can’t be 60+ pages in and still not care

Flop! So formulaic and so much showing-not-telling (

eg. “That’s me, Mr Predictable!” And the doctor randomly just bringing up the test??

). Literally unbearable prose to read 

Lots to dig through here and it feels kinda crazy to read Freud cover to cover like this without a class assignment LOL and I only needed a taste for my Political Myth class.  Enjoyed the  “Dream Work” chapter section on Condensation tho. Shout out manifest vs. latent content 

God this writing was just so clunky. No characterization/personal motivations to speak of, unnatural and ellipse-filled dialogue, and a poor set up. Suddenly we just arrive at this school? Idk it just all felt so middle-grade, like exactly what you would write if you were 14 and told to write a spooky magic model (

“Go complete the ritual or else something bad will happen to your mom” “Good job now go to this special school”

Hello??). Unclear how much of this is reading in translation but I don’t want to attribute poor characterization and flat motives to simply the Russian language cuz I don’t think that’s what’s going on here…

Sorry to Esohe </3

The style read like a Dickensian novel with outlandish characters and stuffy, stilted dialogue (derogatory). Man discovers the poverty in which half the world lives (also derogatory): ~ revolutionary ~

Erotica??? More like pedophilia, incest, genital mutilation, and many other disturbing stories!!! Was trying to read this to get into Anaïs Nin before reading her diaries but this truly spooked me. Would have loved an index of which ones are deeply fucked up and reprehensible and which are safe for human eyes so I could enjoy these 

I don’t want to read a memoir. I want to know about how ppl get through winter!!!! 

Flop! Which is a shame bc I was ROOTING for this book, esp with its spooky Halloween-y vibes just in time for October. Instead, tell-and-no-show o’clock. Not compelling (and with such a great premise? Perhaps a greater fault). Can’t tell if the writing is bad bc of itself or the translation. Either way, with so many other good books on my list rn, I couldn’t bear to stick with this.