BOOKS

07/17/2025-07/18/2025

Ararat by Louise Glück

My second Glück collection!! Honestly I liked The Wild Iris more, but this was still great. Last poem wrecked me!! ("...I thought / that pain meant / I was not loved. / It meant I loved.")

07/14/2025-07/17/2025

Hidden Valley Road: Inside the Mind of an American Family by Robert Kolker

Wow. About a family of 12 children, 6 of whom were diagnosed with schizophrenia. Pretty devastating but ultimately hopeful, I think. Really compellingly written. I listened to an audiobook as well as flipping thru the physical thing--could not stop listening/reading.

07/11/2025-07/15/2025

The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway

My first Hemingway novel. I read the bulk of it in two days. I think I liked it. Pretty repetitive but... it was alright. Last line was great.

07/09/2025-07/11/2025

Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse

Woah!! Flew through this one--the writing is super clean and simple, but in a beautiful and effective way. I like how the philosophy of this, I think, ultimately meshes Buddhist and Christian thought (although I am no expert on spirituality/religion, so that could be a gross simplification). Powerful stuff. I really really liked it.

07/02/2025-07/09/2025

Notes from Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky

Okay... there is so so so much I could say about this. Masterfully done. The fact that I myself have experienced a man crying in my arms telling me he doesn't know how to love properly... made that final soliloquy by the Underground Man veryyyy interesting to read, to say the least. This novel does a great job at showing how deep misery and self-consciousness is, I think, at its base, usually narcissistic. Upsetting and scary that people really live their lives thinking of themselves and others in this way. Anyways. Five stars, very well done.

07/03/2025

Poems by Akhmatova by Anna Akhmatova

More Russian poetry yayyyy ! I read thru this super quickly and I probably need to re-read a lot of it. I think I prefer Tsvetaeva's collection from last month but this is still really good. I need to learn a whole lot more about Russian history.

06/27/2025-07/02/2025

The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath

Beautiful writing in here but I feel like I should have read it like five years ago.



FILM

July 25, 2025

The Fantastic Four: First Steps (2025)

Watched at the theater with my brother. Not good... but also not something I would have ever watched on my own.