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2024-12-29 09:31 pm
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books i read in jul-dec 2024

wow it has been a while... here's one last bookpost before the end of the year. spoilers for priory of the orange tree - samantha shannon, immortal longings - chloe gong, the radiant emperor duology - shelley parker-chan, murtagh - christopher paolini, fire & blood - george r r martin, eragon & eldest - christopher paolini.

currently reading: brisingr – christopher paolini, sword catcher – cassandra clare, a game of thrones – george r r martin
to read: exordia – seth dickinson, inheritance – christopher paolini, a song to drown rivers - ann liang, queen of nothing – holly black, long live evil - sarah rees brennan

ExpandThere was no such thing as a connection with only one end. There was no such thing as love, alone. )
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2024-07-03 11:56 am
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books i read in may-jun 2024

been doing a lot of staring blankly at walls to cope with the eofy work horrors lately which hasn't given me a lot of spare time or energy to do basically anything else let alone read but here's a couple of reviews from may I think. spoilers for the cruel prince and the wicked king – holly black; sound the gong – joan he:

Expandwhy did they have to make a you when there was already a me? )
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2024-04-18 11:29 am
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books i read in jan-apr 2024

literacy kinda fell off for me again ngl, I'm trying to get back into reading but work and college have me deep in the trenches ):

I did read dungeon meshi (2/10 To Me Personally I think it's objectively a beautiful thoughtful funny and well-crafted story that I wouldn't hesitate to rec to people who don't have pathetic guy haterism like I do but it has basically zero appeal to me in terms of characters/thematic conceits/dynamix and I came out of it really only caring about a tinhet so blasphemous I literally could not find anyone else posting about it no matter what I termsearched) and reread dorohedoro (10/10 still one of my all time manga and the jokes/terror story everrr even though my delicate constitution struggles to withstand the extreme gore) by reading dunmesh until I got bored and then switching to dorohedoro until I got too landmined and then switching back to dunmesh and so on. they're actually pretty similar in terms of their focus on food and death but dorohedoro has the cool slayers and crazy dynamix I need to live 😔

top of my tbr list: sofia samatar's new novella, sound the gong (strike the zither sequel) when it comes out at the end of the month, alecto the ninth if it comes out this year(/ever), and i will ofc be tuning in to hateread rfk's new book. kinda considering rereading asoiaf since it's been more than a decade since i first read and i do have the books in my house but I also don't really have capacity to read anything more taxing than a romcom sooooo.

this post contains spoilers for: foul heart huntsman – chloe gong, the truly devious trilogy – maureen johnson, i hope this doesn't find you – ann liang.

ExpandHe’s my enemy. My equal. My point of comparison. He’s the one I’m constantly trying to outrun, to outsmart, to impress. He’s the ever-moving target in my peripheral vision, the person I’ve mapped all my plans around, the start and finish line and everything in between. All my dreams and nightmares are about him and only him. )
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2023-12-07 10:47 pm

why is it called final fantasy when they keep making new ones though

this is not a post about final fantasy in general, this is very specifically a compilation post of ff7 fmvs i have recently enjoyed(?) as a guy who has never played a single second of any final fantasy in my life (although my question still stands). i have read about a million words of ff7 yaoi though! all over a couple weeks back in october! i don't know what came over me either. and then i watched advent children and understood nothing <3 i don't know who half the cast is and i couldn't tell you anything about the plot except for the parts that involve cloud getting impaled by huge swords, but one thing about me is that i love elite military academies and superpowers and fucked up enemies and people dying when killed and people not dying when killed and DOOM. so i will now proceed to make bold assertions about ship dynamics in a canon i don't actually know while reviewing another set of moving images.

Expandwho else up never being a memory )
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2023-10-26 01:23 pm
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books i read oct 2023

in this month's issue of solo book club report: untethered sky, a marvellous light, a restless truth, divine rivals, skulduggery pleasant books #1-#6. not in this month's issue of solo book club report: the no joke approximately 1 million words of ff7 fic i decided to read for reasons unknown to even myself (i have never interacted with ff7 in my life).

currently reading: this is how you lose the time war, the secret history, the archive undying, kingdom of the wicked, she who became the sun. YES all at the same time NO I am not making progress in any of them.

ExpandI loved her with the gravity of a stone sinking into a pool. )
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2023-10-03 03:29 pm
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even more beauty product reviews

recently purchased skincare makeup and perfume products roundup:

Expandalmost no misses )
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2023-09-08 02:22 pm
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books i read aug-sep 2023

welcome back to my solo book club. spoilers for this time it’s real, six crimson cranes, jade city and strike the zither:

ExpandFirst lesson a strategist learns is to keep their enemies close, and there’s no greater enemy than a rival. )
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2023-07-25 10:00 am
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no longer quarterly books i read may-aug 2023

another few months another books roundup drafted in outlook on company time, literacy win... this ended up quite long i think because i had so many opinions about things these books could have done better but honestly overall not a bad crop this time. spoilers for violet made of thorns, daughter of the moon goddess, fourth wing, and omniscient reader's viewpoint:

Expanda hand of someone who had been writing stories for a very long time )
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2023-06-23 11:05 am
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more recent skincare buys

quick round of skincare product reviews 👇

Expandsome good some bad )
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2023-05-04 02:18 pm
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book i read in 2023 q2

yes i am aware we are not even halfway through q2 but i do not really foresee myself reading anything else over the next 2 months or so, i'm in an illiteracy mood again. not really sure what has been happening to my spare time as I haven’t been reading but I also haven’t been watching anything other than magical girl lyrical nanoha over the past couple days or cultivating any hobbies so I guess I must have just spent all that time staring at walls or something.

anyway i only read one (1) book but it was good and i liked it so i wanted to post about it now:

Expandhet high school au akam i love youuuu )
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2023-03-17 06:38 pm
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books i read in 2023 q1

usually i do a yearly books review because my ass is not reading but my ass actually is reading these days since i don’t have to do 34857394859385934853 pages of academic reading anymore. i never said it was good though. but here is a roundup of everything i’ve read this year so far, will probably contain spoilers, also i typed this out into an email draft at work so apologies for any strange autocaps:

Expandwhat happened to all our books that have good vibes and are pleasant to be around )
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2022-12-27 07:20 pm
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buying beauty products is my passion

i don't want to make another skincare routine update post because i haven't really changed much since my last post except doing retinol every second day + FINALLY FOUND NON CLINIQUE MOISTURE SURGE MOISTURISER THAT WORKS FOR ME 🙏🙏🙏+ drinking 3-4L water every day + eating 2 vitamin c tablets a day. the last two i started doing this month to ward off illness but some combination of these factors is giving me the nicest clearest skin i've had for agesssss so hopefully it lasts... anyway here is a review of some recently trialled beauty products:

Expandwho could say if holiday season sales are good or bad )
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2022-12-25 09:10 pm
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books i read in 2022

this year i managed to beat my 2021 record of 5.5 books in the negative direction by only reading 2.5 new books! once again i was in the readings for class mines so i just didn't want to read anything else in english. anyway this post will contain spoilers for babel by r. f. kuang and nona the ninth by tamsyn muir.

Expandi think i am just not one of god's book readers these days )
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2022-06-15 03:01 pm

tropes are so good tho

going to go through some exemplars of my favourite tropes, this is pretty much just a multifandom fic rec

Expandwait it's all love... again )
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2022-01-03 09:48 am
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rating all of the night world novels

just finished my annual night world reread so i really want to talk about it... this is like half a review post half a rec post for my favourite ya series ever. NIGHT WORLD by lj smith is a ya supernatural romance series based on the premise that magical beings (vampires, shifters and witches) live alongside but separate from humans in a secret society known as the night world. every book is a loosely-interconnected standalone focusing on a different couple's forbidden romance when their soulmate connection kicks in, while in the background the prophesied apocalypse looms closer and closer, so you can pretty much read in any order, and they are all quite short and mindless.

this series is for guys who like TROPES... like i am not a soulmate trope liker but the night world take on it is soooooo delicious to me because so many of the soulmate couples are ENEMIES and even the ones that are not usually try to resist the fated connection!! and the soulmate thing only kicks in when skin-to-skin contact happens so there's a great element of physicality as well. there is a nice balance between friends to lovers soulmates and enemies to lovers soulmates so i truly believe there is a night world book for everyone. lj smith mostly writes 2 kinds of heroines (Determined Shoujo Heroine Girl and Jaded Battle-Hardened Girl), and 2~3 kinds of love interests (Genuinely Nice Guy and Bad Boy With Secret Heart Of Gold and Bad Boy Subtype: Cold Uptight CEO) and it slaps every time just trust me. i love repression and denial of feelings... i love enemies... i love elaborate cliquey social structures... i love magic... i love doom... and i love love.

unfortunately the series is a permawip, the last book has been pending for like 20 years so i don't think we're ever going to see how exactly the apocalypse plays out. other than the plot cliffhanger it's also a shame because from the previously released previews it seems that the last book's central romance would have been a girl with two soulmates, the guy who brought about the apocalypse and the guy prophesied to stop the apocalypse And They Were All Classmates which would have been very fun to see.

i will try to keep this as spoiler-free as possible!!

Expandone from the twilight to be one with the dark )
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2021-12-27 01:06 pm
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books i read in 2021

my ass was not reading this year (in english) literally all i was reading was doujins but i just went back through my twt archive and was shocked that some of the things i thought i read last year were actually this year. anyway this list is 5.5 entries long and umm Oops All YA but when is it not. i am an average romance enjoyer...

Expandevery year my inability to read english gets worse )
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2021-05-26 09:50 am
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may media wrap-up

i actually consumed non-tennis media this month so i thought i might as well do a review post!!

Expandi didn't actually do that much but somehow this still managed to be long as fuck )
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2020-04-25 03:42 pm
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reading list

post idea from eliza a while back... here is a quick rundown of all the books i've read recently, excluding anything i was rereading, since quarantine got me suddenly literate again. spoilers for all these books obviously. and non objective but definitely 100% correct opinions


Expandjesus christ this is long )