celestesbookshelf's reviews
259 reviews

🎧Listened to this on audiobook from @libby.app, narrated by Jennifer Kim & Julian Cihi from Random House Audio

I will breakdown the themes that stood out to me the most and had the most impact to the story for me:

▪️Gaming
Initially I felt put off by the gaming and coding themes but since I saw this book everywhere I went in anyway. If you’re like me and know nothing about gaming or coding; don’t let it stop you! I enjoyed this novel and not once felt distracted by coding language. If anything the gaming theme kept me engaged because it was original and like nothing I’d read before.

▪️Power Imbalance in Relationships
🚨 Spoiler 🚨 
A significant part of the novel involved Sadie’s professor; Dov. He’s a brilliant, famous, and vulgar game maker. 

Zevin did a phenomenal job with Sadie’s character development changing her opinion on Dov. It went from admiration and need to have his approval to simply respect for his work and the knowledge that she’d been taken advantage of because of her naïveté. She recognized the influence Dov had on her but most importantly the way Dov exploited this influence. The realization left her feeling resentful of those around her who knew and perhaps even condoned it because of the help Dov had on the development of their game.

Again, Zevin did a great job separating Dov’s professional accomplishments from his reprehensible actions as a husband/boyfriend/father/professor. He never changes. He remains raunchy to the very end and as the reader I felt disgusted by his emotional abuse of Sadie while simultaneously feeling glad he recognized Sadie’s talents.

▪️Parenting
Although Sadie doesn’t become a parent until more than halfway through the novel, I felt the parenting insights she had stuck with me. Particularly the following quote:

“She was trying hard Not to romanticize her daughters personality. She didn’t want to ascribe characteristics to her that were not truly hers. A good game designer knows that clinging to a few early ideas about a project can cut off the potential for the work.”

Sadie isn’t a regular mom - she’s a cool mom. 

▪️Freda - badass grandmother
Her role in the novel is minor but Zevin had me loving her at
“…an inch under five foot, stylish, and terrifying.”

I’m 4’11” so obviously I root for any character that’s a badass and under 5’ 👏🏼 


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The book was published 1985 and is based on the late 1870s.  We start off in Texas, near the Mexican border and are introduced to Gus and Call, two retired, well-known Texas rangers. 

The plot of the book begins when an old compañero, Jake Spoon, tells them that paradise is in Montana. That they should be the first to settle a cattle ranch. Call becomes enthralled with this idea and so the great journey from Texas to Montana begins. 

This journey encounters snake-infested rivers (nightmares), sand storms, grasshopper clouds (yes, literally), long stretches without water or other people. And when there are people the cowboys are concerned about Indians. 

In order to enjoy this book it’s important to have a detached view on the blatant racism in the book. The verbal derogatory remarks are aimed at native Americans, Mexicans, Black people, sex workers, and at one point indirectly Asians. 

As a Mexican woman there were points where I felt disappointed at the way Mexicans are spoken to and of. However, I chose to think of it as the author being historically accurate and it’s better to recognize the racism that minorities have overcome rather than change history and pretend 1870s cowboys weren’t bigoted. 

Spoilers below 👇🏼 
I enjoyed this novel quite a bit, I felt sad at the end. I felt the characters all went through so much and it was all for nothing.
Their efforts were futile, Gus dies alone. Call makes it to Montana but never manages to recognize Newt as his son, he loses his best friend, settles his cattle herd but then has to leave for a year to go back to Lonesome Dove. Dish never moved past Lorena.
Lorena is in a much better place than when she started out but is now consumed by her grief for Gus. However, this turn of events added to the realism of the novel. Not all pursuits lead to a happy ending.

Part of the novel takes place in San Antonio, my hometown, one of the saloons they visit is still standing. It’s now a Texas Ranger museum although still a saloon. I’m going to plan a visit in the near future as this novel has awoken an interest in Texas Rangers.

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💀 okay WHAT! I wanted a creepy October book but this really took the cake 🥴 
▪️alternate name for this novel could be “Husband from Hell”.
▫️First heard of this book from watching Gilmore Girls:
Rory (after being startled by Dean): God! You’re like Ruth Gordon just standing there with a tannis root. Make a noise.
Dean: Rosemary’s Baby?
Rory: yeah. 
Dean: well that’s a great movie. You’ve got good taste. 
▪️if you haven’t heard about it; it’s about a young couple who move into a new building and become friendly with their elderly neighbors. Guy, the young husband, suddenly changes his mind about having a baby and Rosemary is thrilled. The creepy old neighbor comes and delivers some special chocolate mousses for dessert and when Rosemary says it tastes weird and she doesn’t want it; Guy is toxic AF and guilts her into finishing every drop. She passes out soon after and has a horrific “nightmare” where she’s being raped while her husband and neighbors all watch naked and chant satanic verses 🫠 
▫️throughout the last few chapters I just wanted to finish because I felt so scared and creeped out by the constant chants to satan and the horrible way they speak about God. Definitely a good spooky read if you can take sacrilege and also since it’s a considered a classic by many I’m glad I finally know what it’s all about.
▪️Moral of the story: if your chocolate mousse tastes weird and your husband tries to guilt you into eating it - RUN.

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🔖 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die list
🚨 this books got it all: abortion, suicide, drug abuse, alcohol abuse, infidelity, incest
▪️this books been around a long time and there’s much online about it. Nonetheless, here are my thoughts with spoilers 👇🏼 
▫️a few chapters in I had to do some background research to figure out what in the world I was reading, so some relevant info: Britain’s sexual revolution took place in the 60s and 70s, this book was published 1961. Coincidence? I think not.
▪️Despite the dense issues mentioned in the trigger warning the book is first and foremost a satirical farce, yes I took that phrase from literary critics. At first I wasn’t sure what they meant but the further into the novel the more I realized there wasn’t another word to describe the plot!
▫️I’m convinced Murdoch held some deep, repulsed feelings toward a man or maybe all men. My theory is she then used her literature to turn them into fictional characters with their primary traits being egotistical, having many delusions of grandeur, adulterous, incapable of monogamy, and obsession with women much younger than themselves. After reading The Sea, the Sea and now A Severed Head, Murdoch had to have had a certain type of man around whom she detested and felt was ridiculous and foolish!
▪️I’ll finish off with the best review I read on the novel: Of all the lots-of-people-screwing-lots-of-other-people novels this is probably the best, and certainly the weirdest. With less philosophising and more shagging than Murdoch's other books, it is a joy to see this wonderful writer let her hair (and her knickers) down." - William Sutcliffe

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🔖 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die list

Although much has been analyzed and discussed on this novel I’ve written my ~strong~ feelings below 👇🏼 

Archer, a gentleman delighted to be engaged to the beautiful May, is hypocritical, pedantic, and oblivious to his own ironic behavior.

When he meets his fiancées cousin, Ellen, the book quickly becomes a series of his constant criticism of May; feelings manifested from his comparison of May to Ellen. He labels May a product of Old New York with her perfect manners and “inability to notice inequalities between men and women and much less to question them”. He states she is unable to realize she is “free” and insists on basing her choices on what is accepted in society rather than to even consider what she wants. 

Yet when he realizes he’s in love with Ellen he is not yet married. Instead of claiming this “freedom” he’s fond of he instead begs May to push their engagement up. May being much more cunning than he ever acknowledges, freely hands him an exit. She openly encourages him to pursue this “other woman” even if it goes against societies expectations. 

Archer, being the one incapable of seeing his freedom, denies it and continues his persistence to marry sooner. He gets what he wants and days after their wedding thinks “there was no use in trying to educate a wife who had not the dimmest notion that she was not free”. Ummm???? She literally handed Archer freedom and he couldn’t accept it because he couldn’t go against society’s norms. In another scene he’s daydreaming of his wife dying young and, get this, “setting him free”. As if she didn’t encourage him to call off their engagement and it wasn’t him to push it forward.

The scene with Ellen and May’s grandmother where she meets with Archer privately to increase Ellen’s allowance now that she’ll be staying with her left a bad taste in my mouth. The grandmother makes suggestive comments as to Ellen’s good looks, the misfortune that it wasn’t he whom Ellen married, the encouragement to keep from May, also her granddaughter, what they’ve met to talk about. Completely traitorous and shocking that a grandmother would callously plant the seed of dishonesty in one granddaughters husband in favor of another granddaughter.

Archer claims to Ellen that he doesn’t want her as a mistress, that he doesn’t want to sneak around and that it’s marriage to her that he yearns for. I call BS. I don’t think Archer knows what he wants. His feelings for Ellen are lust and the high of something forbidden and unorthodox. Him claiming his “love” for her shows that it’s he, not May, who are naïve. Marriage is meant to be stable, predictable, and there will always be “monotonous” periods. Yet all of these characteristics he shuns in his marriage to May. Even her comments at his reading poetry bothers him. 

His naïveté lies in his claiming it’s marriage he wants when everything about his current marriage he abhors. It’s an adventure he wants to break from the same Old New York product that he’s been groomed to be. It’s the concern for appearances that keeps him from breaking off his engagement to May in the first place yet he resents May for these same qualities.

The last chapter jumps 26 years, May has been deceased 2 years and their 3 children are grown. Archer has become an “upstanding citizen” and reflects that Ellen had become a memory that kept him from other women. 

He goes onto to narrate to reader that he’d been a faithful husband once their children were born and he “genuinely mourned” Nay when she passed. 🙄 How altruistic of him to genuinely feel for his wife and mother of his children. 

His eldest son casually asks about his being in love with Ellen, claiming his mother told him that his father gave up “what he wanted most” for their family. 

I don’t know about y’all but May never asked him to give it up; she gave him an out way before marriage and it was Archer who acted selfishly and locked May into a marriage where she is unappreciated, undervalued, and overlooked. It is crass for their son to not feel loyalty for mother and be encouraging his father to go visit his former “love”, the “woman he would’ve given anything for”. This overlooks the fact that May had put herself second from the beginning and encouraged Archer to pursue his happiness and implies Archer is the one who had to make a sacrifice. 

The only redeeming factor for Archer was in the last scene he decides to not go meet Ellen and chooses to keep her as a memory.

I don’t consider this a romance. I consider this the perspective of a man who doesn’t have the gall to fulfill his dreams in fear of becoming socially exiled yet resents his wife for having the same values and consciousness of her appearance in society. It was May who deserved better, she deserved Archer to put her first and set her free from their engagement so she could find a partner who valued her.

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Of Women & Salt by Gabriela García 

A political novel spanning four generations and two family trees. All POV’s are women so the reader gains insight into the struggles of women throughout generations.

The plot is driven by themes of domestic violence, political turmoil, immigration issues, substance addiction, and sexual abuse. All the women have experienced either one or multiple of the above and Garcia takes reader through their internal thought struggle. 

I enjoyed that this book wasn’t finished with a neat bow tie. It’s not a happily ever after. Anyone who has experienced firsthand or through family the cruelty that immigration laws impose will feel for these characters. The injustice done and the psychological trauma children are left to deal with on their own is heart-wrenching. 

On a lighter note - my favorite part isn’t a big spoiler. Simply a historical fact that the author wove into the story. In 1800s Camagüey the cigar factories hired lectors to read news and literature to entertain the assembly workers. Giving us some of the famous cigar names: 

▫️Montecristo. 

◾️Fuente Hemingway

▫️Romeo

▪️Sancho Panza

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🔖 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die

I’m happy I got through it! This was my first Murdoch read and I enjoyed hearing about her history in the introduction.

Not much can be said about it that hasn’t been said before but nonetheless, below are my thoughts which contain spoilers 🚨 👇🏼 

Thoughts:
* Arrowby - a “famous” theatre director/actor has retired and moved to a cottage on the side of the sea, the sea. He is an egotistical narcissist whom believes every person he comes across is in love with him or at the very least admired him immensely. 
* His delusions go so far as to kidnap his childhood sweetheart and attempting to force her to leave her marriage because she “belongs with him”. 
* He tries to build a family by simply assigning roles: wife, son, to someone else’s family and trying to insert himself into being part of their life permanently. 
* There were many examples of him saying something along the lines of “…but you love me”, “yes you’re afraid of how much you love me!” “You dream of me! You’re so happy to have me back!” Etc etc 
* Hartley and Ben’s fight when Arrowby is eavesdropping sounded a lot like domestic violence. In this case I can see why Arrowby had illusions of being her knight in shining armor but the way to approached it is by trying to convince Hartley she belongs to him. Less so about her deserving better.
* A handful of his former lovers show up - all talking about how much they loved him; one writing him a letter offering to give him a baby and the honor of taking her virginity; which only contributes to his delusions of grandeur.
* Finally, Murdoch is vicious when describing aging women and I wonder if she deliberately exposed mens superficiality when it comes to looks. Terms such as “wrinkled neck” “crows feet” “droopy eyes” “dry skin” were all used to describe women characters and Arrowby felt proud of himself for feeling attracted to Hartley even though her age has begun to show.

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This book is so well written in terms of realism between friends, romantic relationship, relationships between children and parents, the complexity of  asking for a raise, demanding unpaid wages, the passive aggressiveness of employers or property managers. There’s just so much here from real world that gave me anxiety to read because it’s incredibly accurate.

All of Sneha’s encounters with the stupid property manager, Amy, gave me actual ire. Most likely because of how accurate the veiled racism and prejudice was portrayed. “We’re nice people…” *is bothered by nothing*.

The book isn’t a happily ever after - it’s realistic in the ups and downs of life and the emotions that come with them. I felt triggered in multiple scenarios that were relatable as a millennial. Recommend to all young adults navigating through life who have experienced their fair share of self-doubt, disappointments, failures, but somehow always find a way to get back on their feet.

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LEBRON: Life Lessons From the
King
Thank you very much to @stmartinspress for my gifted
copy!
We're basketball fans in this home (Spurs Forever) but I
love LeBron.
I know he's a basketball legend but have you seen him
in Trainwreck?
That was my favorite part of the memoir. Learning his
part in Trainwreck was originally supposed to be a
short cameo but LeBron had bigger plans.
On a more serious note - his biography dives into his
upbringing. The challenges he faced (intentionally not
going into it) but how he beat the odds and was drafted
right out of high school at 18-years old
Recommend to any basketball fan of course but also
anyone who enjoys a motivational success story.

Late to the party for this @reesesbookclub pick! Had it on my shelf over 2 years before I felt it needed to be picked up. 

▫️Dual POV: granddaughter & grandmother

▪️Story of Cuba’s feeling their country under the rise of Fidel Castro

▫️Lovers: right person, wrong time 

▪️Strong family ties 

▫️Revolutionary men; strong patriotism

▪️I didn’t see the twist coming towards the end; it was a pleasant surprise

This is a historical fictional novel that removes the veil of the pain and suffering that Cubans endured under Batista and Castro. 

The oppression that Cubans have been under for decades; the censorship and lack of freedom of speech is unfathomable. The lack of housing, reliable internet, freedom to THINK, has all been censored, restricted, and punished if found out.