cerena's reviews
41 reviews

Raskolnikov was far too chalant about popping Alyona Ivanovna, a bourgeois burden on society, Jack Torrance-style, and that’s why he didn’t get the proletarian hero Luigi Mangione treatment. Dostoevsky’s argument against Raskolnikov’s actions needlessly takes the high road for people whose lives are built upon the exploitation of others.  your conscience is justified in wanting to deny, defend, depose on your local wealth-hoarder. let a hundred vindicated, unperturbed Raskolnikovs bloom 🗣️🗣️

i tried to make a good case for reading this book to someone who felt bored by netflix’s horror selections. to my surprise, this recommendation didn’t land well with them 

regrettably a perennial read

i hate it when i’m so comfortable in my solitude that i start to calculate the motivations behind people (and animals) who would want to kill me 

Keiko, convenience store worker by choice and faildaughter by circumstance, is just like me frrr. where Izumi Suzuki's Hit Parade of Tears and Terminal Boredom (my favorite sci-fi books so far) uses the science fiction genre as a vehicle for the alienating, and frequently traumatic, experience of womanhood, Convenience Store Woman acts as a funnier, deadpan, and down-to-earth counterpart with a heroine who could be read as neurodivergent. or, less probably, this book could be a science fiction in disguise: the labor of an alien who discovers itself on Earth and trying, to mixed results, how to fit in feels similarly harrowing to Keiko's attempts at learning how to be an acceptable female specimen in a world designed to dispose of people who can't quite conform. because I'm a glutton for punishment, I would revisit this book to relish in Shihira's misogynist projections totally going past Keiko's head and him becoming her "pet" 

in the era of AI-generated playlists, the joy of discovery while browsing through physical media is increasingly rare. that is to say, I pulled Forest Walking from the library stacks without thinking much of it, only to find that I hit the library jackpot (in the sense that unearthing a Jesus-shaped Cheeto could be considered a jackpot). Forest Walking is an intro on how to decipher the North American wilderness but reads like a “Joe Pera Talks With You” episode. do not pick this book if you’d rather get straight to the forest facts because you’ll be frustrated with the authors’ tangents. on the other hand, do pick this book if you find meaning and joy in your journeys toward facts

miles better than the movie, which is (unfortunately) remembered solely for its anti-authoritarian bent. Chief Bromden as our interlocutor into his world of psychiatry in the carceral state, built by the same economic and sociopolitical institutions that stole the land from underneath his father’s tribe, takes One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest beyond the single-minded rebellion embodied in McMurphy and toward a sharp critique of capital’s benevolent facade used to coax submission from its impoverished subjects. too bad Kesey probably didn’t have this reading in mind while tripping on government acid courtesy of Project MKULTRA