Imagoala

(I started writing this post quite a while ago and I meant to post it before my semester started but then things happened and I didn't have the time to finish it and now the semester has started and I have even less time! What I'm saying is: I'm sorry my blog is so empty at the moment.) Before I get into this I want to make a couple of things clear: I think it is important to read books you dislike at least every now and then (if you read a lot). On the one hand, I'm pretty sure it not only keeps my head awake it also provides sensibility to certain problematic aspects in stories (it's so much easier to detect flaws – and why said flaws are flaws/how they could be not-flaws – in books we are already not liking all that much) and, on the other hand, it often feels like a bad book makes space in your heart (when I read a lot of great books in a row it often feels, at some point, like I can't properly appreciate said books anymore and like 'my passion...

Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body  by Roxane Gay Blurb: New York Times  bestselling author Roxane Gay has written with intimacy and sensitivity about food and bodies, using her own emotional and psychological struggles as a means of exploring our shared anxieties over pleasure, consumption, appearance, and health. As a woman who describes her own body as "wildly undisciplined," Roxane understands the tension between desire and denial, between self-comfort and self-care. In Hunger , she casts an insightful and critical eye on her childhood, teens, and twenties-including the devastating act of violence that acted as a turning point in her young life-and brings readers into the present and the realities, pains, and joys of her daily life. Review: This  is not a book that will offer motivation. I don't have any powerful insight into what it takes to overcome an unruly body and unruly appetites. Mine is not a success story. Mine is, simply, a true story. ...

Into Thin Air  by Jon Krakauer Blurb: A  bank of clouds was assembling on the not-so-distant horizon, but journalist-mountaineer Jon Krakauer, standing on the summit of Mt. Everest, saw nothing that "suggested that a murderous storm was bearing down." He was wrong. A storm which claimed five lives and left countless more – including Krakauer's – in guilt-ridden disarray. Review: " With  enough determination, any bloody idiot can get up this hill," Hall observed. "The trick is to get back down alive." At  some point during this book Krakauer states that people who climb Everest usually are very aware of the risk they take but they want to do it anyway because that's, basically, how climbers work: always searching for a new thrill. As a climber myself I can only affirm the truth of this observation because never before have I wanted to climb Everest so badly as I do now, that is after I've read this book about all the ...

The Memory of Light  by Francisco X. Stork Blurb: 16-year-old Vicky Cruz wakes up in a hospital's mental ward after a failed suicide attempt. Now she must find a path to recovery - and perhaps rescue some others along the way. Review: But  right now we have at least one thing in common: We are both here at Lakeview, failures at the thing called living. This book is a little bit like being punched in the diaphragm in the beginning - especially if you've already experienced any kind of mental illness-thingy - and then slowly learning how to breath again. Which is to say that it was hard to not cry right at the beginning (approximately five seconds after I had started reading this book I already regretted it because I was waiting at the train-station and, while laughing because of books in public is something I've done so often I can't really feel embarrassed about it anymore, crying in public is new to me and I want it to be new to me forever) and ...

Oh, God, it has been a while, hasn't it? Well, I'm really sorry about that but, frankly, I've been so busy with university that it wouldn't have even warranted doing on of these each month because I didn't get round to reading all that much. Moreover, writing these takes up quite a bit of time and, let me tell you, time hasn't been something I could just hand out whenever I wanted recently (I'm exaggerating but also not really). Sooo... what did I read/listen to between October and January? Let me tell you: What I read: October: Choke by Chuck Palahniuk - 292 pages - 3 stars Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe - 320 pages - 1.5 stars Tokyo Ghoul 6, 7, 8 by Sui Ishida - 208 pages - 2, 2.5, 3 stars (respectively) I can't say that much about this series other than: it's just not my thing. They have gotten better (obviously) but I have, by now, given up on reading the rest (I read volume 9 but the 10th one was lying around in my room for w...