Read Strays of Ruined Springs

 There's No Such Thing as an Easy Job (a review) rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐✨ I bought There's No Such Thing as an Easy Job  without having read it because my bookstore had neither of the two books I intended to buy, and I was not about to have gone to the bookstore for nothing. This was a gamble, but I would say it paid off because I liked this book a lot, and I could see myself rereading it in a year. I could also see this being the beginning of a book-buying addiction. Actually, I could not. Buying books still terrifies me. There's No Such Thing as an Easy Job  follows our unnamed protagonist, a thirty-something woman who has burned out at her last job, as she works a series of weird, borderline surreal jobs that her recruiting agent told her would be easy. You will know if you have read the title that there is actually no such thing as an easy job. This book is so good and so well written. Not a ton happens, and most of the plot events are pretty mundane, but the writing is so compell

 Kitchen (a review) kitchen rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ I read this book two months ago and did not understand it.  "This book is actually a novella and an unrelated short story. I did not realize the short story was a different entity until I was well into it. So that's fun. I didn't understand the novella at all. I understood, like, the plot. I think I'm missing something. I'm going to read reddit posts about this book and then I'll probably reread it because it's so short. I loved the short story. I am going to reread the short story because I liked it so much." - me, two months ago. I am very glad I reread it because this book is actually really beautiful both in terms of the writing and the themes. So there is this girl named Mikage who is maybe 20 years old, and she was raised by her grandmother, and her grandmother dies. Mikage goes to live with her friend Yuichi and his mother Eriko (a trans woman). Mikage enjoys kitchens and learns to cook. She and Yuichi t

 The Oresteia (a review) rating: ⭐⭐⭐✨ I read Elektra by Jennifer Saint, and then I saw a tiktok of a few lines from the Oresteia ("I'll take care of you." "It's rotten work." "Not to me. Not if it's you.") so of course I had to read this. So I borrowed Anne Carson's translation of the Oresteia from the library, but then I realized that was not the right one because it combines three different playwrights' versions of the story. So then I went back and also borrowed Alan Shapiro and Peter H. Burian's translation, and then I read both translations concurrently. It is conceivable that you have not read my review of Elektra , in which case I will summarize the plot of Aeschylus's Oresteia. Spoilers ahead for millennia-old myth. Orestes and his sister kill their mom for killing their dad for killing their sister. Orestes gets terrorized by revenge demons. Athena establishes the concept of a criminal trial and Orestes is acquitted. By

Democracy in America (Alexis de Tocqueville) Hello! I have returned! Because I am just so considerate and sensible, I have split up my veritable treatise on Stephen Breyer books into two parts. You do not want to read everything I have to say about Democracy in America tacked on to everything I have to say about The Plague and In Search of Lost Time .  (You may have already read my review of this book on goodreads, in which case you should skip to the subheading "judging stephen breyer for liking this book" if you are interested in hearing even more  of my opinions). Democracy in America is a 900 page political treatise about, well, democracy in America. I don't think you should read it. I liked it a lot, but I don't recommend it. The target audience is so specific. The conditions under which you should read this book are the following: you are so interested in politics. You love American political culture (or learning about it, anyway) so much. You would like to read

 All the books I read in July and what I thought of them In July I read 13 books because I didn't know what else to do with myself! I hate summer. Such a terrible season. I don't have a heat tolerance. I don't even know what that is. I hate the sun. I miss my sweaters, even the ones that make me alarmingly staticky. I cannot wait for November. At this point, I would settle for October. Anyway. ✨✨✨ Killing Commendatore by Haruki Murakami rating: ⭐⭐⭐ This book was far too long for the amount of plot, and the women were written poorly. But—I've said it before and I'll say it again—if an author can string me along for 500+ pages with no plot, just vibes, that means the writing is good. 🔪🔪🔪 Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage by Haruki Murakami rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐ I didn't review this book because I have too many feelings about it. This book does a really, really good job of portraying how it feels to lose friends and be lonely. I would recommend this bo

Reading Pretentious Books By Frenchmen Hello, and welcome to the terror dome (my Supreme Court obsession).  A  youtuber I enjoy  habitually reads books recommended by celebrities, and although it may be a stretch to call Stephen Breyer (or indeed any of the public figures I admire) "celebrities," I am doing more or less the same thing here. I found  this article where Stephen Breyer talks about five books he thinks everyone should read. It's a lot of Frenchmen. This does make sense for an individual who pretended to be French for the duration of the DC Shakespeare Theater Company's Camelot mock trial . the plague by albert camus rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐ This was the second book recommended by Stephen Breyer that I read. The first one was Democracy in America , but that's in part two because my review is upwards of 3000 words so far. I am going to extensively spoil this book both in terms of plot points and broad themes, but I am going to first explain the sorts of people th