i don't even remember how old i was when i read this (probably 13-14?), but i really loved it. a huge emotional experience. no notes.

finished 19/6/23. i think reading it in 2023 made it hit even harder than it would have pre-overturning of roe v. wade. it should be mandatory reading for any politicians who have the power to make laws about reproductive rights. and tbh mandatory reading for everyone, i really think it would be helpful surrounding those conversations.

i read this entire series and got crazy autism obsessed with it when i was like 11 or 12. is it a staple from the height of my ya fiction phase? yes. but it's also an incredible, layered depiction of the evil within late-stage capitalism. a really powerful piece of anti-capitalist media. i would make a joke about it radicalising me but tbh i was never "radicalised", i just kinda came out the womb a borderline anarchist lol.

i read this at age 15/16 when i was in the height of my depression. some of the writing felt like reading sentences that came straight out of my own head, like wording and everything. there were genuinely thoughts i had struggled with written word for word on the page. i found it oddly affirming, i think it helped me to know i wasn't alone in certain thought patterns. so this one's always going to be special to me.

finished 12/12/24. i love biographical/historical reading, being able to learn everything about a specific person's life is so fascinating. the way jenette writes is so powerful- i feel like first person present tense can be very temperamental to write with because you risk sounding like a y/n wattpad story, but she avoided that and it really works for the message she's trying to send. i loved it, the only circumstance in which i wouldn't recommend it is if you're someone very sensitive to reading about eating disorders and child abuse. i like reading about heavy stuff because i feel like it's important to see things represented to understand them, and important to make an effort to understand them. but it's definitely a VERY heavy read, so you've got to be prepared for that to read it.

finished 13/6/24 (i think). love historical fiction. a really good depiction of how much women's lives were historically defined by men, with a focus on listening to the unheard voices of victims. it is about an australian colonisation-era british woman, but thankfully there is some emphasis on aboriginal people being people and an acknowledgement of their culture. i really liked it, it made me emotional.

finished 27/12/23. i spent the whole time reading this hating the narrator. it's ostensibly a kind of "unreliable narrator" story i think (or at least one with a twist), but it wasn't done crazy well because i was just pissed off at the amount of medical malpractice going on the whole time. especially because of the psychological/psychology aspect, i was pretty annoyed about the way the main female character was written. like okay, she doesn't speak. nonverbal people exist, and there's ways to communicate nonverbally, but she's treated like this unreachable mysterious enigma that they have to *make* speak again the whole time. this possibly made me angrier than it should have bc i'm autistic, studying disability, and working with nonverbal people. but like even without that personal bias, the amount of legal conflict of interest also drove me crazy. good twist but i couldn't really enjoy reading it much lol.

finished 3/9/23. very very emotional, i cried a lot. personally i'm not the hugest fan of the writing style- it's very flowery and beautifully written, but it does come off as slightly pretentious at times. regardless, a gorgeous concept and i loved the characters.

finished 21/8/23. a really good portrait of performative gender (specifically femininity). liked the feminist themes, wasn't a huge fan of certain other things (eg. some of the descriptions/aspects of the writing style).

finished 6/7/23. stephen king writes so well, EXCEPT when it comes to writing women for some reason. like the story is great, but bro cannot go one sentence after introducing a female character without mentioning their boobs for some reason.

finished 4/7/23. a beautiful look inside sylvia plath's mind. i love reading books about mental illness/mental health issues- i think it's really interesting to see how other people experience it from their own point of view. and even more so from a historical point of view, one of my autism hyperfixations was reading through patient records from "lunatic asylums" written in the late 19th and early 20th century. anyway, the bell jar obviously isn't actually about sylvia plath, but it still gives a lot of insight into her experiences. also, she was so so real about the fig tree metaphor.

finished 19/6/23. i think reading it in 2023 made it hit even harder than it would have pre-overturning of roe v. wade. it should be mandatory reading for any politicians who have the power to make laws about reproductive rights. and tbh mandatory reading for everyone, i really think it would be helpful surrounding those conversations.

finished 26/5/23. beautifully written. i can't remember if this one was the piece of writing that got used to legally out oscar wilde, but it isn't hard to notice that dorian and basil were gay as fuck. i cannot believe that they are apparently making a movie/tv adaptation of this where they are SIBLINGS. BROTHERS?? REALLY?? How does one read Basil say "[I see him] Every day. I couldn't be happy if i didn't see him every day. He is absolutely necessary to me [...] He is all my art to me now" literally 12 pages in and think "wow how brotherly!! family so cute!!"

finished ?/5/23. to be fair i read this while stressed af in the midst of my SACE, but. so slow-paced, oh my god. while the writing is very descriptive, it's really dense, and it took like 200 pages (out of 600) of build up for any major plot development to happen. it's the kind of book where you have to sit and process once you've finished- not in the 'wow, this has really affected me' kind of way, but in the 'what in the fuck did I just read' kind of way. at times, it felt like events were just happening without a point to them. looking back, it makes more sense, but while reading it i was just kind of slogging through.

finished ?/2/23. i feel like sally rooney's writing style can feel pretty pretentious (which is why conversations with friends isn't on here lol), but i liked normal people because of the gender themes. i read this almost 2 years ago at the time i'm writing this so tbh i don't remember much of my thoughts on it, but i liked it a lot.