Messy Book Rant - Blog Posts

currently reading Dumb Witness by Agatha Christie! here are my current thoughts in a nutshell:

it’s kind of giving conservative grandma??

like, yeah, this was written in the 30s; pretty self explanatory.

i really like christie’s storytelling, i do. it’s just this book feels like her shading on the younger generation for,, idk, not being traditional or something?? which really does feel like something every younger generation faces (times really don’t change)

for the last 12 chapters i read, im just being constantly reminded about how emily arundell’s niece married a Greek doctor and how dreadful it is. like my bad, sorry this dude isn’t ENGLISH ENOUGH FOR YOU?? yall are just jealous they got good food okay

and let’s not forget there’s a slur in the book💀

literal jumpscare when i opened the table of contents.

but then again, just looking at my older copy of And Then There Were None makes me wonder why i’m surprised

UPDATE: Just finished the book! i’m surprised i got through it that quickly. anyways, here are my thoughts!

i thought the plot was interesting. i thought it was pretty cool how upfront everyone was abt how they wanted emily’s money since it shows that none of them can be completely trusted.

like everyone was after the same thing, for different reasons, but only ONE of them actually committed to it.

and let’s not forget the constant reminder of good old “english-breeding.” it’s not said a lot, but it’s something i notice popping up in the book from time to time.

like goodness gracious woman, please stop. describing others as “well bred” makes them sound like a horse freshly groomed

anyways, i think this is the first time i got introduced to hastings? i didn’t even know he was a reoccurring character and a friend of poirot since i’ve only read Murder on the Orient Express and And Then There Were None.

so you can imagine my confusion when i skimmed through random pages and noticed it was from someone else’s perspective.

but their dynamic is pretty cool! i kind of see it as like poirot doing his usual detective stuff and it going like:

poirot, lying to get some answers:

hastings: you are crazy, y’know that?

poirot: not crazy enough to kill, though!

well that’s how i see it anyways. i do think it’s cool that seeing through the lens of hastings does make things more fun. like this silly guy is as clueless as me

and he kind of vocalizes the audience? kind of? that’s how i saw it during the times he tried convincing poirot that the ball incident was genuine

but yeah it was okay. i might read the first book of the series because i just found out poirot is a refugee or smth?? like i need to know what’s up with that

so yeah, that’s my thoughts!

this book is a dumpster fire, and NOT THE FUN KIND!

i just got to part two of the third notebook, i am not okay. what the hell yozo

i think it’s very fun to read from different perspectives, okay. it’s interesting to dissect a protagonist and piece together how they got there and make some sense in what they’re doing

i still think the writing for this book is beautiful but yozo you need to TONE IT DOWNN. i know you’ve been through it but that’s not an excuse

i feel so bad for tsuneko, shizuko, shigeko, and yoshiko (a 17 YEAR OLD MIND YOU) like girl don’t marry him, RUN WHILE YOU STILL CAN😭

and the way yozo was talking about her age and virginity, that was SUPER DUPER ICKY someone come save this girl PLEASE

on a side note, i am very VERY nervous for what’s about to go down in the last two sections of this book. i saw the trigger warnings, and im absolutely dreading it. i know i did this to myself by picking up this book but im too lost in the sauce guys, its so bad i cant look away

my initial mentality while reading was “okay, let’s just get this over with” BUT NO. WE’RE DRAWING IT OUT

anyways this is an interesting read 😆

just started to read no longer human by osamu dazai. so far, it’s pretty interesting! i’m maybe halfway? through the second notebook

when i was reading the back, the summary mentioned how it was one of dazai’s last complete works and that just suddenly reminded me of a vid i saw of someone basically describing the book as his suicide letter, and i can see why

i don’t know too much about his life. it’s just a bit sad to think that this book was him laying himself bare under the guise of yozo, as if to finally tell people,”this is how it really feels”

that sense of feeling alienated from everybody is personal, and it feels strange to read it out on paper after going on for so long not knowing how to articulate it

the perspective of yozo does have his faults, i know that he’s an unreliable narrator, he does some fucked up things, and his opinions definitely were a product of its time. i just think it shows just how human he really was; he’s flawed.

like when he describes how he didn’t feel like he was loved while growing up, just taken care of. for me that really just illustrates how detached he was, his isolation clouded his judgement. because while yes the people in his life may have just taken care of him and nothing else, there’s also the probability that they really did love him

the writing style is beautiful. i’m not really sure where this will go. i know this is kind of a lot for only the first two sections i just think too much lol

i’m only on chapter 17 but i love this book sm.

spoilers under the cut

i love the way Lancali uses personification throughout the book. Not only does it add some awesome imagery, but also because it TIES SO WELL WHEN YOU REALIZE WHO SAM IS AS A CHARACTER!

Sam, who holds no gender or name, comes to people in the form others need them to be. watching in the background as people suffered, people being hit with that feeling that they met before. Sam is a personification of hope.

time, death, and disease are things intangible, but are personified by the characters who defy these notions, taking back a life that was stolen from them.

and i absolutely love how the original Sam, boy Sam, also played around with this personification. in one of the chapters, we see him greeting every inanimate object as if it was alive, greeting the wall, greeting a door, playing pretend. it’s only when he gives narrator Sam a name that brings them to life

so far, this book has been really cool! i love the character interactions, the author’s writing is absolutely beautiful, you can tell there is genuine emotion behind every page and that just makes me more sad

every time i end a chapter my mind is like “oh yeah, that’s a good place to end off.” only to remember THERES STILL MORE😭

this book has me in a chokehold to the point i’m scared to see how it goes, because apparently the characters DIE? (is this what i get for spoiling myself by watching the author’s tiktok’s?)

anyways, thank you for coming to my messy book rant