Mini Book Review: There There by Tommy Orange

There There
Publisher: Vintage
Pub Date: 9 May 2019
Genre: Literary Fiction

Panda Rating:

(3.5 pandas)

📖 SYNOPSIS

Jacquie Red Feather is newly sober and hoping to reconnect with her estranged family. That’s why she is there. Dene is there because he has been collecting stories to honour his uncle’s death, while Edwin is looking for his true father and Opal came to watch her boy Orvil dance.

All of them are connected by bonds they may not yet understand. All of them are here for the celebration that is the Big Oakland Powwow. But Tony Loneman is also there. And Tony has come to the Powow with darker intentions.

⚠️ CONTENT/TRIGGER WARNINGS

Racism, rape, domestic violence, addiction (alcohol & drugs), alcoholism, drug use, gun violence, mass shooting, death, blood

This isn’t an easy book to review and there’s nothing I can say that others haven’t already said and done so much better than I ever could, too. This is a highly-lauded piece of literary fiction and part of me understands why but maybe this book was just too smart for me because I often struggled to really “get” it. I empathised with many of the characters and I wound up spilling tears over them by the end but, at times, it was hard to feel fully immersed in the story and to grasp what the author was trying to share.

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Sundays in Bed With… #MyWeeklyWrapUp [218]

We’re back with another Sundays in Bed With… meme! This meme dares to ask you what book has been in your bed this morning and is hosted by Midnight Book Girl. Come share what book you’ve spent your time reading in bed or wish you had time to read today!

Last night, I started two books but have kept on with only one of them today.

Last night, I started two books but have kept on with only one of them today. I started The Places I’ve Cried in Public, a YA contemporary that I’ve been putting off for years because I knew I had to be in the right mood for it. I read about 20% but I’m not sure it’s working for me. I might DNF for now or try it again after I finish my second, fluffier read!

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Book Review: Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel

Sea of Tranquility
Publisher: Picador
Pub Date: 5 April 2022
Genre: Science Fiction

Panda Rating:

(5 pandas)

📖 SYNOPSIS

A novel of art, time travel, love, and plague that takes the reader from Vancouver Island in 1912 to a dark colony on the moon five hundred years later, unfurling a story of humanity across centuries and space.

Edwin St. Andrew is eighteen years old when he crosses the Atlantic by steamship, exiled from polite society following an ill-conceived diatribe at a dinner party. He enters the forest, spellbound by the beauty of the Canadian wilderness, and suddenly hears the notes of a violin echoing in an airship terminal–an experience that shocks him to his core.

Two centuries later a famous writer named Olive Llewellyn is on a book tour. She’s traveling all over Earth, but her home is the second moon colony, a place of white stone, spired towers, and artificial beauty. Within the text of Olive’s best-selling pandemic novel lies a strange passage: a man plays his violin for change in the echoing corridor of an airship terminal as the trees of a forest rise around him.

When Gaspery-Jacques Roberts, a detective in the black-skied Night City, is hired to investigate an anomaly in the North American wilderness, he uncovers a series of lives upended: The exiled son of an earl driven to madness, a writer trapped far from home as a pandemic ravages Earth, and a childhood friend from the Night City who, like Gaspery himself, has glimpsed the chance to do something extraordinary that will disrupt the timeline of the universe.

A virtuoso performance that is as human and tender as it is intellectually playful, Sea of Tranquility is a novel of time travel and metaphysics that precisely captures the reality of our current moment.’

⚠️ CONTENT/TRIGGER WARNINGS

Infidelity, suicide (recounted), drug use, COVID-19 pandemic and future global pandemics, false imprisonment, gun violence, death

Whoa. That’s how this book left me feeling by the end. I was concerned for a minute that maybe I wasn’t smart enough for this book because I found myself getting confused by what was happening around the 66% mark. The writing kept me gripped though and I’m glad that I didn’t waver because when it did click, it was wow. How clever and neat and entirely not what I expected! As I was reading two books of similar genres and styles came to mind: The Chronicles of St. Mary by Jodi Taylor and Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell and I think that’s what made me love this more.

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Let’s Talk Bookish: Are Reading Goals Worth It?

Let’s Talk Bookish is a weekly meme created by Rukky @Eternity Books and hosted by Aria @Book Nook Bits, and it’s where we get to discuss certain topics, share our opinions, and spread the love by visiting each other’s posts! Check out the January 2024 Topics if you want to join in the bookish discussion fun.

This week’s topic asks us:

Are Reading Goals Worth It?

Prompts: Did you set reading goals for 2024? Have you set reading goals in past years? Do they motivate you to read more, or do they make reading more stressful? What kinds of goals, if any, are the most motivating to you? Have you noticed a change in your reading since you started blogging? How about the goals you set?

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2024 Buzzword Reading Challenge

So you know how I said that I don’t do reading challenges? Well, apparently 2024 is the year where I’m trying to shake up my reading life a little and I’ve decided to partake in a couple of them! I came across the Buzzword Reading Challenge when Kayla @BooksandLala popped up on my FYP on YouTube and it looks like it could be a fun time! You can watch her video introducing it below:

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Choose Your Own Adventure: Year in Aeldia 2024 Reading Challenge

Following the reading challenge’s success in 2023, the Choose Your Own Adventure: Year in Aeldia 2024 Reading Challenge is back! This reading challenge is part of the annual Magical Readathon hosted by the supremely talented G @Book Roast. I don’t know (m)any challenges but this is one I do each year without fail. If you don’t know what I’m talking about or want to learn ore about choosing your own adventure, check out the explainer video below:

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Sundays in Bed With… #MyWeeklyWrapUp [217]

We’re back with another Sundays in Bed With… meme! This meme dares to ask you what book has been in your bed this morning and is hosted by Midnight Book Girl. Come share what book you’ve spent your time reading in bed or wish you had time to read today!

I’ll be spending my Sunday in bed trying to figure out what to read next! I finished a 5-star read in the early hours of Sunday morning (3am to be exact) and as I’m still reeling from how it utterly emotionally wrecked me, I’m not quite sure what to read next. Here are the books I’ll read a couple of chapters from to figure it out:

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2023 End of Year Survey – Parts II & III

We’re on to the next part of the annual End of Year Survey. If you haven’t yet, you can check out Part I here—it’s a lengthy survey and it did make me lose my mind a little but I felt so accomplished when I finished answering all the prompts! 😂 As always, this part is more about my blogging journey in 2023 and looking ahead to 2024.

This survey was originally created by Jamie @The Perpetual Page Turner.

Check out my previous survey wrap-ups:
2019Part I / Part II / Part III | 2020Part I / Part II & III
2021Part I / Part II & III | 2022: Part I / Part II & III

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