Weadee

I think this book is a very good introductory read on prison abolition. There wasn't any complicated jargon so it was pretty easy to follow along and it's fairly compact (you could read it in one sitting if you wanted to). I do wish however, that more time was spent talking about alternatives to the prison system. She only really explores decarceration in the last chapter and doesn't necessarily offer viable solutions. Still a really good read though.

This was such an odd (yet clever) book. By the time I finished, I sat quietly for a few minutes trying to make sense what I had just read but felt just as bemused as I did at the start. The book feels like a nod and ponder after a long conversation about nothing in particular yet everything significant. I probably won't remember a single thing from it in three weeks.

On the train I was asked a few times what I was reading and I truly struggled to describe the book because well, there's not much to say! It's mostly just about life and by extension, death (but isn't everything?) Like someone else said, this book should be read by everyone planning to die. It probably won't change much but at least you'll have something to distract you until then.

The dialogue is amazing, I loved the literary style and I truly admired every character, yet on the whole I never quiet felt completely hooked? I like being pulled into a story but here I just felt like I never could quite settle in

This book has such a sombre undertone that I actually had to take a break from it for a while because it was making me so...sad (at least more than I usually am). But I think that's why I liked it so much. Sinclair Ross' writing is so immersing on it's own, and coupled with the melancholic dairy entries of Mrs. Bentley, the book makes you feel just as trapped in that little town as she did.

It definitely is a slow book so I wouldn't recommend it to people that prefer more action-packed stuff, seeing that some people found it quite boring; but I really did appreciate the complexity between their relationship and Mrs. Bentley's loneliness.

Pretty sus of the people that gave the book 1 star........Wood's writing was definitely not that bad and he makes his case pretty clear. Just say you don't want Chechnya to be independent and go.

I appreciated how comprehensive the book was despite its length and he has a very measured approach with each chapter. It is a bit dated now but does a good overview of Chechen history and Soviet/Russian atrocities in the nation without going down the rabbit hole. I just wish he would've written more on civilians. I never really felt like I got an image of people with actual flesh and blood. More just the idea of them.

This book left me feeling very conflicted and hurt my heart but I really liked it. Of course Enquist is a psychoanalyst. This whole book is essentially a character exploration and she does that extremely well. Doesn't mean I liked Johan- in fact I pretty much hated him, but at least the other characters made up for it. Also, the way she explores the bond between his twin sons is the most accurate I've ever seen.

The ending did confuse me although I'm not sure if that's just because of the translation or simply my stupidity. Appropriate ending either way and I'm excited to read more of her stuff :)

When I started this collection at the beginning of April I thought it would be an assortment of naturalist poems that would keep me company as I welcomed the spring. While it's kept me company in some capacity, the content was a bit different. Rather than exploring the natural world, Freeman instead examines its relationship to lives spent in it. I don't know if that's what made it hard for me at the start, but when I went back and revisited some of the poems tonight, keeping that in mind made a noticeable difference. I enjoyed it :)

Favourite poems were:
Yard Dogs
The Green Tram
Icicles
Without
Still
Sailing and
Signs

“We are tired of living under this tyranny. We cannot endure that our women and children are taken away and dealt with by the white savages. We shall make war. . . . We know that we shall die, but we want to die. We want to die.”

I would not have finished this book if not for the stories of William Henry Sheppard, George Washington Williams, Roger Cassment and E.D. Morel. I trudged through the endless pages of the numbered dead. the unnumbered dead. the severed hands, mutilated bodies. burned villages and tortured African natives if only to find some relief. As if seeing King Leopold die a second death through the book would satisfy me in the end. It didn't.

King Leopold's ghost is just as real as he was. The chief mass murderer himself knows he won't rest in peace for crimes he committed on this earth so he roams around haunting Congolese people to this day. As if genocide wasn't enough!!! If you don't believe me just go to the end of the book where Hochschild details how, as the country finally began taking its first steps of independence, the CIA (under Eisenhower) shot the first democratically elected prime minister of Congo, cut up his body and dissolved it in acid to prevent Patrice Lumumba from becoming a symbol.

How much of the 20th century was built on the corpses of tens of millions of Africans? Congo went from a population of roughly 20 million people before the arrival of Leopold to roughly 10 million at his death ten years later. I just get so frustrated and tired and discouraged reading about the imperialist history on the continent that it takes everything in me to keep reading and searching to learn more. For once I just wanted to find a glimpse of the stories of the people who fought against.

Maybe that's why this book is different. Thoroughly researched and handled with tremendous care, Adam Hochschild was committed to showing the efforts of the people who did bring the problem of Congo to the international stage. If crimes go on and on, the only solace is the people who still go to great lengths to fight it.
I'd recommend this book to anyone

I guess I'm done?? I thought I had another 70 pages but that was just the afterward, dang. Honestly a bit upset that it ended there because I felt like it was just getting started? The dialogue actually made me laugh and the characters were great (even if the premise of the earth being totally obliterated, save for Arthur Dent, hurt my heart). T'was a good book but I'll admit that it'll take a while before I'm in the mood to read the others. After this short little adventure, I think I've had enough sci-fi for one night

I know I'm a selfish reader, but this book took more out of me than it could ever give back.
Maybe it's my fault for constantly returning to books that take me through so much emotional turmoil but always at the end of them, I await (and get) my gratification. The moment where our heroine says “reader, I married him,” and you pause for a moment, close your eyes and smile because, despite the hardship, all is well. This book was anything but.

I can't tell whether I should commend Lucy for having such a steadfast spirit or pity her for the way that steadfastness was more often than not, simply some form of hopeless self-restraint. It was her (perhaps rightful) cynicism that I struggled with the most. Hers was a character to accept all forms of torment as her cross to bear in this life. Never asking or hoping for anything more. There was not one time she did not resolutely drink her cup down to the dregs. I could not but grieve as I watched.

Charlotte Brontë has this way of painting a perfect picture of reticence, but with Lucy, it becomes so difficult because she shies away from you just as much as she does the others. I finished the book less than an hour ago and I could tell you more about any other character than I could her. She's a withdrawn, doleful little creature that you want to love but aren't allowed to. She assumes you won't care.

Can you blame Lucy for her inability to trust or receive love? Is it wrong to think she should yet hope? I really don't know and truthfully, I don't think she knows either.

4 stars because it hurt my heart and 500 pages of that is too much. Most passages are highlighted though so I will at least give Villette that

3.75 - I don't really know what to say about this one. I liked a lot of it, but it was hard to get through because I didn't want to read it anymore but also didn't want to DNF. I don't know. It was just exhausting and I struggled. Maybe it to Nao's credit that the emotional strain of their marriage was palpable enough to convince me to never get married or have children, but I don't really think that was the point. I admired her exploration of grief in this absurd, bizarro way (half the book is filled with them “walking their fish” or trying to empty out the ocean) and I loved the writing style but anytime the husband and wife (Ethos and Catholic) interacted, I became more frustrated with Catholic's behaviour towards her husband than immersed in the picture of their grief. I became so annoyed with her over 75 pages that by the time the narrative switched to her POV I didn't want to read anything she said. People that deal with their pain by hurting everyone around them will never not frustrate me. Especially when they hurt the one person carrying the pain with them.