saint_eleanor's Reviews (295)

Girls Against God

5.0

adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective tense fast-paced

Loveable characters: Yes

God isn't the one writing anymore; its all the girls sitting inside paintings, hating. I'm looking for us.
I write a satanic pact between you and me. THE END.

I could talk about this book for literally hours, would not be able to fit all my thoughts into a review. If you want to talk abt it message me on discord honestly lol (pickledfishxoxo). I would love to know your thoughts on the closing quote, and

what the thick mass is, and who she is writing to. I think that it's an extension of the earlier quote "Tell me, in your darkness, in your ocean, am I ever there? Have we ever reached eachother?" and she is still "looking" for the 'hating' girls, saving them from the darkness/void of their paintings. She's reaching across time and space to rescue them.

In place of an actual review and bc im extra i made a list of every explicit and implied reference in the book and some I just thought would be good further reading because I loved this book sm and i think part of why is bc she referenced so many of my favorite medias 🤓:

Books:

Growth of the Soil by Knut Hamsun
Malleus Maleficarium - Hammer of witches
Gender Trouble - Judith Butler
Powers of Horror: Abjection - Julia Kristeva

Movies:

Wild Strawberries
Daisies, + Vêra Chytilovà movies
American Beauty
Penda's Fen
Jubilee
Sweet Movie
Citizen Kane
Insignificance
Love Exposure / Noriko's Dinner Table ("an episode", p.32, girls jump onto the subway tracks)
Wicker Man (p.120, the ram appearing in the circle of naked women)
Agnes Varda movies , Cleo from 5 to 7
Hausu (p.187 reminded me of it, when they are tossing something 'neither cabbage nor soccer ball', like a head maybe)
Men (p. 199, when nocturno culto is giving birth)

Art/Music:

Pubertad - Edvard Munch 🎨 and The Scientists
Nocturno Culto/ Darkthrone 🎶
Hellhammer 🎶
Rodin 🎨
Dan Graham 🎨
Jenny Holzer 🎨
Ann Sofi's Fideicommunism 🎨
Otto Meuhl 🎨
Meredith Monk 🎶
Varg Vikernes - Burzum 🎶 (nsbm, so watch out)
A-positive by Eduardo Kac (image of man and machine nursing eachother, p. 146)
The Collapse of PAL - Rosa Menkmen (No christians see trees fall in this digital forest. p.180)

Other:
Anders Breivik (?)- norweigan terrorist, Friedrichshof Commune, DWeb vs. ARPANET, Jacques Derrida- Algerian-French philosopher, Luce Irigaray- French philosopher and linguist.

Content Warnings

Africa Risen: A New Era of Speculative Fiction

Sheree Renée Thomas, Zelda Knight, Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki

4.0

adventurous challenging dark emotional funny hopeful informative inspiring mysterious reflective relaxing sad tense fast-paced

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Favorite stories: deification of igodo, rear mirror, the soul would have no rainbow, liquid twilight, once upon a time in 1967, a girl crawls in a dark corner, a soul of small places, star watchers, biscuit and milk.

Content Warnings

A Child Alone with Strangers

Philip Fracassi

3.0

dark mysterious medium-paced

Strong character development: Yes

This was way too long for what it was, the plot was incredibly simple idk how it stretched on for so gd long. The first half was addictive, and then he lost me, and then the ending got me again but just not enough for me to think this was good. The characters were flat and stereotypical even tho the writing was good? Idk
Would make a great show for tweens tho and a good read if you want to shut off your brain.

Content Warnings

Rifqa

Mohammed El-Kurd

5.0

dark emotional informative sad slow-paced

heartbreaking ❤️‍🩹
Ive been reading a lot of palestinian lit recently and i love seeing common important themes amongst all of them (olive oil, pomegranate, chewing gum, grandmothers and aunts)

Content Warnings

Children of the Sea, Vol. 1

Daisuke Igarashi

5.0

god i love daisuke igarashi

Metazoa: Animal Life and the Birth of the Mind

Peter Godfrey-Smith

5.0

challenging informative relaxing slow-paced

sheesh
i definitely have more questions than answers and am only starting to grasp how little we actually know about our brains, but this book was so insightful to the ways in which early cell development has contributed to consciousness and what that actually means.
I also was super pleased that the author mentioned Blindsight as that's one of my favorite topics.
I learned so much that I didn't know, like about EEG fields and ephaptic coupling, and that some of the 'mind' of an octopus is in their tentacles!
this book was also really easy to understand and quite beautiful.

Mary: An Awakening of Terror

Nat Cassidy

3.0

adventurous dark funny medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Solid 3, i feel very conflicted abt it so pros:

Middle aged woman main character
Gory
Mysterious
Relatable main character
Interesting plot
Bloodbath

Cons:

Insufferable main character
Flat character writing
Slightly confused worldview, inconsistent details or forgotten details
Unsatisfying ending kind of?
Feel like it should have been either shorter or longer

Content Warnings

Real World

Natsuo Kirino

3.0

dark emotional mysterious fast-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

There’s a saying that says “every translation is a betrayal” and i think that applies here— Japanese to english is so hard and i think it results in writing that feels super detached. Otherwise the characters were super believable and the story was interesting but it was just meh. I feel like the author was on to a lot of cool themes like repression of the self and disassociation and then she just like stopped writing lol

Content Warnings

Páradais

Fernanda Melchor

DID NOT FINISH: 9%

Reading in español which is hard for me, hopefully will finish someday

Medea

Euripides

4.5

dark emotional tense fast-paced

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