my first 5 star book this year | what i read this week
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- Опубликовано: 5 фев 2025
- My first week of the year in books, resetting my TBR, reading my first 5 star read of the year, and spending a lot of time talking about my love for Kazuo Ishiguro's books ❤️
Ishiguro's Nobel Lecture: • Nobel Lecture: Kazuo I...
📚 Books read this week 📚
This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone
Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
Whale Fall by Elizabeth O'Connor
Greetings from Seattle! I'm not quite sure how YT decided to recommend your channel to me, but I'm excited to hear more about your favorite reads and how your journey from 9-5 to your own personal happiness unfolds!
Hi! Thank you so much! ❤️
Love both Meg and Amy 🥹🥹
i'm glad you enjoyed never let me go! i read it for a literature class in university and i wasn't the biggest fan of it, but one thing i couldn't deny is how well he's mastered speculative fiction, and also how well he seems to understand the minds of teenage girls lol.
i'm not sure how to explain it, but it was really great how he crafted this world which is so wildly different than ours, but he doesn't describe it with a plot twist or anything, because it's almost like he's writing about their world /from/ their world. a lot of other authors would write about the fates of the protagonists as if it were some horrifying, terrible thing, but he writes about it like it's a regular function of their world, because it is. like, why question their world's systems any more than our own? if that makes sense.
i didn't like the book as a piece of fiction but it was phenomenal to pick apart in a class for sure! happy you liked it :p
“how well he seems to understand the minds of teenage girls” this made me laugh so hard, because it’s so true 🤣
But I like what you’re saying, this alternative world doesn’t feel shocking from the perspective of the book, it’s just the way of life.
Lmk what some of your favorite books are! Always looking to add to the TBR ☺️
@@oliviainthecity if you're looking for more speculative fiction, "annihilation" by jeff vandermeer is great!
ooh thanks for the rec, just added it to my TBR! I did watch the movie, didn't even know at the time it was based on a book, but really excited to read it!
@@oliviainthecity yes the book is so good! the movie is good too but i'll warn you, they are totally different in terms of absolutely everything. like nothing is the same lol. so you won't know any spoilers or anything!
interesting, i wonder why they did that! but good to know, thanks!!
heyy!! I loved watching your content. never stop posting!!
Hi! Thank you so much!! ❤️
Happy to have found this channel! Instant Sub. Can't wait for more! Love your idea of marking down your TBR books with little notes on what made you place it on there in the first place. It can contextualize so much.
Read "Never Let Me Go" some years ago. (potential SPOILERS ahead! - and yes, I'm passionate about good books lol)
I think Ishiguro captures the voice of Kathy really well. She's someone who doesn't really "belong" in the world. She was raised to live a borrowed life. But how would someone like that express themselves? How would a person who was not raised to be a person talk about their experiences as a person? This is why I think her sort of suspended adolescence-ness works really well, along with her not fully having a clue about things. Unlike us, the Reader, she hasn't been raised to think of the future (the cassette scene is a crucial example of this). So, to me, that's a masterful example of knowing how voice should work in a 1st person narrator, along with Holden Caulfield and Humbert Humbert (two well-written narrators who I despise for different reasons) and Jane Eyre and Ishmael (who I love, also for different reasons). Kathy feels 100% real to her world.
If there's something I didn't care for, it was the sudden break into monologuing at the end by whatshername - call her Old Villain in Big Chair. I feel like the pacing took a huge hit here and pulled me out of the story, even if I understand that Ishiguro wanted that character to be a sort of sci-fi villain trope telling the narrator "how it really be out there" in Dystopia. It was almost like that was written for a totally different version of the book, one with a different narrator. And this is where I feel "...Remains..." is a superior novel. Because our narrator is also somewhat, very distantly complicit in some not-so-nice things, but the monologuing fits the voice, and it never feels long-winded, IMO.
ALSO! If you liked "...Remains...", check out the prototype for it if you haven't already: "An Artist of the Floating World". Ishiguro's "only" Japanese novel.
Wow love all the thoughts here!! Thanks for taking the time to write this out! Love the insight about Ishiguro’s choices for Kathy’s voice. Completely agree, I also loved how his understanding of his characters extended into how they interacted with one another as well. Ruth learning about the world through TV and emulating it to try to fit in and “be normal” not realizing that no one there was “normal”, Kathy seeing through it and judging her for it.
I also think I prefer The Remain of the Day. Oh I didn’t know that, adding An Artist of the Floating World to my TBR right now (with a note about your comment 🙂), thanks for the rec! Definitely want to read through the rest of his work!
@@oliviainthecity Yes! There's a scary thing about this emulation. When I read it, it reminded me of how, some time ago in America, high school students would be given a raw egg to "care for as if it was a baby", and the ones whose egg was still intact by the end of the week would be considered "good parents". It was those sorts of things which made me feel like this wasn't purely dystopian fiction at all (or sci-fi). His writing is always so grounded in our own reality and the questions we could/should be asking about our own ways of life.
please read the picture of dorian gray!! ^^
Thanks so much for the rec! Adding it to the TBR ☺️
I'm glad you liked never let me go!! Sadly, I didn’t liked it because I found the narrator too unemotional and detached. Even though it was very sad, the slow pacing and focus on quiet, philosophical themes didn’t match my preference for intense conflicts and morally complex characters. It felt too subtle and lacked the emotional depth I enjoy in books. 😊
Ah makes sense, I definitely see that perspective! What are some of your favorites? I also love a good morally complex character 👀