This tag all about vines and books, originally created over at emmmabooks, came at a seamlessly perfect time, as I recently discovered this wholesome Youtube channel full of the rarest vine compilations, and I had the time of my life going through them all. I’m weirdly dedicated to it, as well, going the extra mile of writing down my favorite vines* so my memory won’t fail me (with titles like: “ancient vines i watch with my grandfather,” “vines rarer than a good night’s sleep,” and “vines 2 trick you into feeling happiness”). Plus, ever since I reviewed milk and vine in 2017, I’ve just been looking for a reason to combine books and vines on my blog again, and this feels like a great comeback.
(Warning: I’m going to have way too much fun coming up with answers for these must-know, burning questions.)
I Want To Be Famous:
A book that is underrated but deserves more hype
I just recently completed my reading of Tell the Machine Goodnight by Katie Williams, which can essentially be narrowed down to two things: 1. it is a futuristic take on our national obsession with positive psychology, our reliance on quick fixes and technology. 2. it has the most brilliant insights and subtle little quips on life that are the key to my heart.
Here’s an example of a favorite passage of mine, taken from my full review: “Being home from college for the summer is like sleeping over at a friend’s house you’ve only ever visited in the afternoon. The furniture is familiar, but the light has gone funny on you.”
I felt this all the more keenly when I stumbled upon this tweet the other day, channeling into those same emotions:
Tell the Machine Goodnight is set to release June 19th, so I’m hoping that by then the hype will have caught on. (In the meantime, I’d recommend checking out the gem that is Motherest by Kristen Iskandrian that was released last year, which I always rave about in tags for underrated favorites but decided to mix things up this time.)
Hzzuhk:
A plot twist that caught you off guard
This answer will thread upon spoilers
Not a day goes by where I don’t try to make myself forget the moment of utter disbelief The Great Alone by Kristin Hannah made me go through when it hurt one of the best fictional boys to have graced my reading: Matthew Walker. If you’ve read my emotional review for the book, you know that Matthew’s friendship and budding relationship with our main character, Leni, was one of the most honest takes I’d read on experiencing the rush of giddy, young love. I always circle back to two quotes, in particular, when it comes to these two:
#1 realizing the moment you’ve caught feelings (so worth the read!!):
“It didn’t take Leni long to know that she was in trouble. She thought about Matthew constantly. At school she began to study his every move; she watched him as she would a prey animal, trying to glean intent from action. His hand sometimes brushed hers beneath the desk, or he touched her shoulder as he passed by her in the classroom. She didn’t know if those brief contacts were intentional or meaningful, but her body responded instinctively to each fleeting touch. Once she’d even risen from her chair, pushed her shoulder into his palm like a cat seeking attention. It wasn’t a thought, that lifting up, that unknown need; it just happened. And sometimes, when he talked to her, she thought he stared at her lips the way she stared at his. She found herself secretly mapping his face, memorizing every ridge and hollow and valley, as if she were an explorer and he her discovery.”
No fictional couple has made me feel as deeply as they have.
#2 the hidden things love teaches Leni:
“It was wonderful, exhilarating. She learned things no book had ever taught her—how falling in love felt like an adventure, how her body seemed to change at his touch, the way her armpits ached after an hour of holding him tightly, how her lips puffed and chapped from his kisses, and how his rough beard-growth could burn her skin.”
I was utterly intoxicated with their every move, which is why I wasn’t willing for anything even remotely bad to occur in the plot that would set them apart… Being this invested with a fictional couple meant that when the plot twist dropped (literally), it hit like a brick and I was beyond devastated. I go more deeply into what I felt in my review, but suffice to say that months and months later it still hurts to revisit it in my mind.
I Didn’t Get No Sleep ‘Cause of Y’all:
A book you lost sleep over
The first feeling that hits me whenever I look at the cover for Matti Friedman’s Pumpkinflowers is utter and complete sleep-deprivation, simply because I thought it a bright idea at the time, upon waking up in the middle of a rare winter night, to read this war story deep into the morning hours; I hit two hours of sleep total that day.
It was one small hilltop in a small, unnamed war in the late 1990s, but it would send out ripples still felt worldwide today. The hill, in Lebanon, was called the Pumpkin; flowers was the military code word for “casualties.” Award-winning writer Matti Friedman re-creates the harrowing experience of a band of young soldiers–the author among them–charged with holding this remote outpost, a task that changed them forever and foreshadowed the unwinnable conflicts the United States would soon confront in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere.
Avi Ofner’s story still affects me deeply today. As well as this passage below that I shared in my review, recounting Harel’s response after tragedy hit his platoon:
“Once, in a television interview, Harel was asked how he did it—how he went back to the army after what happened. He looked at the interviewer for a moment. Here was a chance for an expression of ideology or faith, a love of country, all of those generations of Jews looking at him, depending on him not to give up. In the fighting in Jerusalem in 1967 some of the soldiers claim they felt King David himself pushing them through the alleyways. How did Harel go back? There might have been a flicker of disdain in his eyes, but otherwise he betrayed no emotion. “On the bus,” he said. It is one of the great lines.”
So No Head?:
A book that makes you PISSED OFF (an event makes you angry or you’re angry you wasted time and money on this book)
I recently caved in to read the sequel to Wires and Nerve, Vol. 1, aka Marissa Meyer’s graphic novel adoption to The Lunar Chronicles, and I couldn’t even bother to complete it because I became so stuck on how utterly recyclable the plot for this sequel is.
Iko – an audacious android and best friend to the Lunar Queen Cinder – has been tasked with hunting down Alpha Lysander Steele, the leader of a rogue band of bioengineered wolf-soldiers who threaten to undo the tenuous peace agreement between Earth and Luna. Unless Cinder can reverse the mutations that were forced on them years before, Steele and his soldiers plan to satisfy their monstrous appetites with a massacre of the innocent people of Earth.
And to show he’s serious, Steele is taking hostages.
Scarlet and Wolf being separated is literally the same storyline (step by step) as Winter, the fourth book in TLC series. Also, the reasoning behind everything in the plot felt so caricature-esque; it’s like the author lost track of her characters and their unique components. The cast of characters in here (Cinder, Iko, Kai, Thorne, Cress, Scarlet, Wolf, Winter, Jacin) don’t hold their distinct voices anymore. I have no idea who’s talking unless I take a close look at the arrow of the speech bubble. It’s like they all lost their identity with this overkill sequel.
Plus, now that’s it’s been a good couple of years since I last read about Wolf and Scarlet, I’m couldn’t shake my mind off the fact that 2014 YA dystopian was obsessed with Stockholm syndrome romances, like, first Warner and Juliette resurfacing with Restore Me, and now these two…
Can I Get A Waffle?:
A sequel/spin off that you are begging your favorite author for
The number of times I pick up Fangirl simply to read a page (preferably featuring Levi, as my review states: Why I Fangirl over Rainbow Rowell’s Fangirl (Spoilers: Levi)) as a pick-me-up* during the day is insurmountable. And on every reread, my mind keeps begging for any info on new content from the author, preferably a fictional novel.
(*My process includes closing my eyes, flipping the book to a random page, taking my sweet time reading and smiling at my favorites, and then putting Fangirl down with a ‘to be continued’ look.)
To answer the question, my wildest dream would, of course, include a full sequel to Fangirl (other than the Cath and Levi cameo we receive in Landline). But I know not to get my hopes up on that one, so I’ll settle for any news regarding the future projects of Rainbow’s fictional books. I’d love to see her explore more Young Adult, in particular.
Please, Rainbow, can I get a waffle?
HoOAOAOOAOAH:
A new release you are knocking on your local bookstore’s door for
I’ve had my eyes on this particular beauty of a book – on par with our green theme – since April, and I’m patiently waiting for the chance to read it. Thankfully, the synopsis sounds just as good as the cover looks:
It is Spring. A young woman, left by her husband, starts a new life in a Tokyo apartment. Territory of Light follows her over the course of a year, as she struggles to bring up her two-year-old daughter alone. Her new home is filled with light, streaming through the windows, so bright you have to squint, but she finds herself plummeting deeper into darkness; becoming unstable, untethered. As the months come and go, and the seasons turn, she must confront what she has lost and what she will become.
At once tender and lacerating, luminous and unsettling, Territory of Light is a novel of abandonment, desire and transformation. It was originally published in twelve parts in the Japanese literary monthly Gunzo, between 1978 and 1979, each chapter marking the months in real time.
I’m especially intrigued by the concept wherein each chapter in the book marks the months in real time. I hope it lives up to the hype I’ve created in my mind.
Finally, to really end this tag on a good note, I have to highlight some of my absolute favorites:
Really hits the spot for me when compilations already have me laughing by the second vine, like the above.
I cannot get the race car cry after “I love you and I miss you” out of my head (minute 7:50), and it’s becoming a problem.
Another particular love of mine is when they include back-to-back vine series, like the one with the cups starting at the first minute.
And that’s an official wrap on all my answers for the Vine book tag. I hope you enjoyed reading! If you’re interested in answering these questions, I tag you.
Oh, and let me know any of your favorite vines in the comments below!
Motherest is an inventive and moving coming-of-age novel that captures the pain of fractured family life, the heat of new love, and the particular magic of the female friendship-all through the jagged lens of a fraying daughter-mother bond.
The cover for this timeless piece of fiction can be summed up in one word: grandiose.
I simply had to give this empowering collection a spotlight. I read and reviewed it earlier this year and have been on the search ever since for more feminist reads like it.
So far the only book that’s succeeded at creating that effect is one I have a long history with: Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell.
I probably wouldn’t have discovered my love for reading back in 2014, if it hadn’t been for the phenomenal characters Rainbow Rowell created in here. So looking at that cover always makes me reminisce about so many things, including my favorite scenes from the book, which I talk about extensively in my review here .