I read this for the Women In Translation month. I really enjoyed the story in the begining but towards the end it got somewhat monotonous and repetitive. However I loved the way the author included small stories of crocodiles in human suits (the LGBTQ community) as a metaphorical manner. Hearing that the author committed suicide and how Lazi, the main character, similarly is being potraied as a lesbian woman suffering from depression and social confusion who often has throughts of ending her life made this book a really depressing one. For some reason I am attarcted to depressing emotional stories. I liked the book and the story, but I wish it was not dragging like it did in the last quarter of the book. 

"Candles are romantic because we understand shadows" This line taken from one of the poems called Trojan in the collection. Poetry has been a strong part of my life. When I was a kid and a teenager I used to write poems myself. I picked up that habit this year and made myself a goal to include more poetry in my TBR. Brown's collection explores topics such as rape, racism on the Black community and the murders of Black people by the police. I did struggle to understand some poems but I know you can give your own interpretation to the poems or even if you understand one line that you do enjoy in poetry I believe it's a succeful attempt on reading poetry.

 I always loved Korean mystery horrors when it comes to movies or TV shows. This is my first first reading of a Korean horror novel. This had me intrigued in all ways. The flow of the story the built-up of suspense of wanting to see the climax which was spread throughout the whole story but never just one climaxed point. I cannot wait to read other works of Han Kang.

Young-hae's husband marries her because he thought she would be the most suitable for the wife's role that he thinks how it should be: someone who would cook and clean and put food on the table and will go quietly with life without making a fuss. Much to his horror, One-day Young-hae decides to turn vegetarian because of a bizarre dream she had. From that moment onwards the lives of the characters around Young-hae and herself are not the same. Young-hae's sudden vegetarianism does not stop at that point she becomes hysterical and obsessed with anything to do with trees and plants and attempts to think of herself as a plant. I loved how the story is told in three parts and the main character in each part is a different character around Young-hae, to tell the same unsettling story. The first story is by her husband which was told in first person POV and the two other stories by Young-hae's brother-in-law and her sister, In-hae; both told in third person point of view. It was a mystery to me as to why only the husband's POV was told in first-person.

Han Kang meticulously delves into the topics that are common in Korean society but the ones everyone ignores, such as domestic abuse, rape, gender roles, male supremacy, child abuse, mental illnesses, and suicides. We get to see how all these small details built up to a part of the reason why all this is happening.  

I read this for the month of Watermelon:July. It imagery used was quite weird but very peculiar and eccentric. The story happens in a dystopian timeline in a place called iDeath. The sun rises as a different colour each day and everything is made out of Watermelon Sugar. As for the animals there are trouts in the rivers that are only inches wide. There were tigers who could talk. Most of them were hunted and were gone extinct as they were dangerous. The part where the protagonist's story when he was a kid, the two tigers who came up his shack and ate his parents and helped him with his artimatic was so weird and funny. Everything in iDeath is made out of Watermelon Sugar which seems to have the ability to be molded into literally anything--- watermelon seeds ink, watermelontrouts oil, watermelon window glasses, watermelon bridges and even the normal sugar. 

There is nothing particular for the readers to take from the book or to learn. I thoroughly enjoyed and relaxed listening to the audiobook since it was an interesting read with much hype built on around it. Even Harry Style's "Watermelon Sugar" was based on this novel. 

I loved the audiobook version. The narrator's voice was really soothing and interesting.

Another five flying stars on an audiobook! Written in 2nd person narrative, Carmen speaks to her younger-self on the domestic abusive queer relationship she was on with the woman in the dream house. 

I understand a lot of people did not like Carmen's tone as it feels like she was losing her breath while reading. The ending tones of her sentences go gradually up instead 9f reading them down. However, first of all, she is not a voice actress or any sort of. She is the writer of the story and the owner of the real-life story. I believe her voice added the perfect intense stay-on-edge feeling of a traumatic incident. Totally loved the format of the story: the chapters named as 'dream house as' something-something. It was really interesting the topics she chose. My favorites were 'Dream house as an idiom', 'Dream house as undead', and 'dream house as apocalypse'. Her wit and way of storytelling help us readers to actually understand the much dark and difficult subjects of mental and physical domestic abuse and gaslighting.

Totally recommended!

I really struggled with this book  not in the way of wanting to put down the book for good. do not get me wrong I enjoyed reading this book and I successfully finished it really contended. However, now looking back at the last few weeks of reading this, there were moments I just could not fathom some parts as Chang's descriptions are just mercilessly raw. She would start a normal sentence and ends it up in the most disgustingly adorable fashion. This type of language I have only seen on poems so far. The descriptions about piss, shit, saliva etc were overwhelming. At all times it felt like an exaggerated too much information scenario on the author's part. However, the story started to make sense by the last 1/3 of it. The book title itself being "Bestiary", we could not expect anything less than the imagery Chang has used. 

The use of Chinese folklore of Hu-Gu-Po the inspiration behind the tiger-human, Ge-gu: the myth of feeding your thigh meat to your sick parents, also the Crab stories and the "hole" that feeds on birdcages and goose meat and bringing back letters from Ama(the grandmother of the protagonist) all these details enhances the weirdness of this story to the maximum regardless this is a magical-realism book. I read this in June for the pride month. I just love Chang was able to write about the lesbian relationship and even about parental-daughter relationships in such a raw language. 

I remember when I studied Slyvia Plath's 'Lady Lazarus' for English at University. I thought what a weird poem. Do not get me wrong I love Plath. She feels strongly about womanhood and you can feel her disgust in men in her poetry. However, it is also tragic she was suicidal and also went ahead with it. I did enjoy some of the poems in this collection but I cannot say I understood most of them. Forgive me I am too dumb to understand Plath. However, it is said in the book that these poems are not for the ears, not the eye. 

This memoir is absolutely mental in terms of how toxic a family can be to someone. In the beginning, I could not fathom why Tara's story deserved a memoir since it felt like a normal ignorant Mormon family acting as Mormonish as they can be. They denied education, medical needs, and other normal conditions for the children.  However, the back stories of how they actually decided they do not need medical care when they get into accidents, how they condemn them from doing anything that is considered 'normal' were important to the later part of the story. The story in the start was somewhat too much information and it was dragging to a certain point. There were numerous times I was annoyed as to why Tara or anyone in the family did nothing to stop the tyrannic father who always preaches something ignorant. They believe he suffered from bipolar disorder. The mother always ignored all the abusing happening in her children's life. Both of them overlook how the brother Shawn is always violent and abusive towards the younger siblings, even after they are adults the bullying and the death threats continue under their noses. 

Tara's journey to get educated is not limited to the doctartes and degrees she later presues, it was for her to realize the toxicity runs within her family and to break away from it. For the education she gets, she ends up paying the price of disowning the family. For her it sounds like a pretty big cost to afford.

This book was totally different from what I imagined. Our protagonist Vatanen almost hits a hare with the car. Leaving his wife, his job as a journalist, his uneventful life behind, he grabs the hare and disappears from South Finland. At first, I thought it would be a nice story of a man spending some quality time with an animal in the wild. Do not get me wrong it still is a story about a man spending some quality time with his hare but not particularly in the wild.
 

He would travel around North Findland, Lapland, and even to Soviet Russia on a bear hunt. He meets a priest who tries to kill the hare and a man who tries to steal the hare. Also, a Swedish lady decides she cannot leave the hare since it saved her life during a bear attack.  Also, Vatanen befriends a person who tells him about some political, scandalous evidence against the president of the republic, which he later uses when he is arrested. Later, he gets drunk for months and gets engaged to a beautiful lawyer. Not only humans, but he also meets a pesky raven who steals food from him, a bear who almost devoured him, a pregnant cow. However, there were certain moments in the story, that I disliked. I looked at him from the perspective of him being an animal lover, with his work around the pregnant cow and the hare. However, he also kills and hunts the pesky raven and the bear. Also, I felt so frustrated that he did not do his best to keep the hare protected. With the pastor, he almost shot the hare and the Swedish lady who almost snatched the hare. Vatanen was too dense and calm at certain incidents.

 

This is also my first time reading  Paasilinna. I might not understand the necessity of the social and political details in a story related to a hare. However, you realize one thing: The story was never about a hare. It was about a man who escaped his uneventful life to have some fun. 

'Homegoing' is a wonderful story of the generation oppression of the black ethnicities like Fantes and Asantes. The topics from racism, sexism, slavery, basic human rights being violated, and sexual abuse were discussed within each story. 
Gyasi has dedicated each chapter to a descendant of Maame in each generation and regardless of hundred or thousands of years have passed, the war was stopped many times, even though freedom was given at certain points, the oppressive points keep happening. Racism never ended, slavery never ended completely, Freedom was taken back suddenly.