beanie baby worm blog

This novella immediately caught my eye at the secondhand bookstore in my college town. I’ve trained my eye to catch Penguin Classics spines, as they’re pretty distinct against a rainbow of colors, and I am almost always interested in reading the back or picking it up if it’s a classic I’ve heard of or meant to read. I looked it up on Goodreads, and for some reason, it was on my "Want to Read" list despite me completely forgetting how I heard of it. I must have seen it online at some point and added to my TBR, then promptly forgot about its existence. As I get older, this seems to be a recurring thing that happens. As you can tell, I did end up purchasing this extremely thin volume (I can never resist the siren's call of a short book) and reading it over the span of a few days. This is my first venture into Russian literature, if I’m not mistaken. I really enjoyed it. Although some of the cultural aspects went over my head, for example, the novel is based on a woman the na...

Reading In Watermelon Sugar felt akin to reading poetry for me. It made no sense. One of my English professors has told me that poetry isn’t about plot, characterization, storylines, or the like. It’s about how it makes you feel when you read it. So after reading this short novel, I mused about how that’s likely what the author was intending for the reader to take away: a feeling. Perhaps. This is just a hunch, as there is a plot, but one that didn't make much sense to me, and the characters are very flimsy as well. There aren't many themes or motifs. Descriptions of wacky characters and creatures, a sky that’s different colors depending on the day, strange happenings and history in a small community, a unclear line of thought, and not very linear story. I didn’t dislike the process of reading it though, so I suppose I can't say I hated it. I just felt so utterly ambivalent. The pacing was quick, and it was very fast to get through.  Unfortunately, similar to my relationsh...

I visited the location where the last scene of Catcher in the Rye takes place. I went during the summer, but I thought it’d be appropriate to share right before Christmas, like in the book. Does  Catcher in the Rye  count as a Christmas book then? That’s a stretch, maybe a holiday one at most. I never thought I’d say this, but I love this book so much. Much more so after rereading it for the first time this year. I caught so many more nuances that my tenth grade self didn’t. I’ve found that I don’t really take time to appreciate literature and allow it to resonate deeply within me when I’m being forced to overanalyze it for meaning and symbolism for academic purposes. I love the overarching theme of avoiding growing up. What else would you expect from me, a Little Prince enjoyer? The fear of losing childlike wonder, of growing up and becoming like the rest of the boring phony adults who go around pretending things are way more important than they are. Holden is a grade-A bra...

As 2023 comes to a close, I've decided to be upfront with those who know me or follow my reviews or reading journey. I read Welcome to the Monkey House  and Breakfast of Champions , written by Kurt Vonnegut, one of my favorite authors after reading Slaughterhouse-Five and Cat's Cradle in 2022. But I realized after manically reading these two as well as A Man Without Country  that I am not a huge fan of the former two, much to my chagrin and deep disappointment.  Anyone who knows me knows that I love Vonnegut so I was shocked and horrified to find that I didn’t really “get”  Breakfast of Champions . I thought I could get behind any level of zany and eccentric and weird that Kurt could throw at me. I’ve been strapped in since Ice-Nine and Bokononism in Cat's Cradle , since porn stars on planets and plunger shaped aliens in  Slaughterhouse-Five . Throw it at me! But even I draw the line sometimes. What was going on in this book? Even after reading it, I had no idea...

Stoner  is one of those books that I have not heard a single bad thing about online. I only ever hear people giving anecdotes about it putting them onto NYRBs, it being one of those books they wish they could read for the first time, it being one of their favorite books or modern classics, that it's so powerful. I've never read anything from the perspective of someone in academia (I'm firm in my belief that The Love Hypothesis  does not count) so when I found this at my local used bookstore, I picked it up, even with the higher than usual price tag than I'm used to. I was hoping to gain some insight on the world of being a professor or academic, and I will admit, I wanted to know what the hype is about and to own my first NYRB. I fantasize about becoming an English professor one day. It’s a far off idea, and nice to think about, but I'm not sure if it’ll ever come to fruition. But then again, most of my dreams are easily romanticized because they seem so unattainabl...

At this point in my career in reading, I feel comfortable saying that I’ve read my fair share of classics, the oldish ones are usually more confusing than delighting. The Beautiful and Damned had me lost, the writing in Lolita gave me an aneurysm, Death of a Salesman had me googling the entire plot while I read. I saw Of Human Bondage  on the dollar rack at my local secondhand bookstore and passed it up, but regretted it immediately after reading about it a bit online. So when I found another copy in another store a month or two after, it had to be fate. I decided to challenge myself, despite expecting to be bombarded with out of date scenarios, stuffy characters, a meandering plot and ostentatious vocabulary.  But instead, I found  Of Human Bondage  to be extremely approachable in terms of readability and the characters and plot were surprisingly modern. The book aged well considering it’s set in the late 1800s to early 1900s. There were serious moments, beau...

I am not a poetry fan, I never finished Bukowski's Love Is a Dog from Hell and I’m currently struggling to read through Robert Frost’s poems. As you can tell, I want to be someone who understands poetry so bad, but I genuinely do not understand what’s being said a lot of the time, and I feel like a lot of the meaning goes right over my head. However, Bukowski is a good introduction to poetry, because it’s not pretentious nor difficult to read, he speaks plainly yet with intention and meaning. I found a lot of themes in this less popular volume of his works touching, from discussing existentialism and hopelessness in the drudgery of life in America, the death of his first love, and observing life about him with biting wit contrasted with a tired tone. His words about his first love, Jane, were some of the more painful ones to read. He’s a bit of a grouchy old man but charming in his own way; This one isn’t as dirty as his other collections so proceed with caution if you peruse his...

I was excited to find Herland because I loved The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman when I read it two years ago, and the synopsis was too good to be true, a female only society and three idiotic men coming in and getting absolutely ridiculed? Sign me up. It started off strong, I laughed at the caricature-esque men and their assumptions regarding the female society they planned to broach with their imperialist style (of course), and the beauty and neatness of the society they observe when they come upon it. I found it interesting how the majority of the women were not young, conventionally beautiful women, but caring, maternal figures, which came as even a surprise to me, I liked that the idealized worship of the youth of women was gently let down. I also enjoyed the discussion of the intrinsically criminal nature of sexual assault, the approach towards the horror and their “this is completely and utterly unacceptable” approach is refreshing in our current society that sort...

I read The Outsiders  for my Young Adult Literature class, and was excited to find out my current impressions, because I last read it in middle school, like many of us. I was surprised by how much and how little I remembered. The feeling of the world and descriptions of the boys were familiar, and the general time and setting was captured very clearly through the writing, prose, and vernacular. Hinton discusses the boys' appearances right away, and it lent a very vivid image of the characters immediately and I had no trouble imagining what they looked like. However, I was surprised by how little I realized during my first reading, the sheer tragedy and helplessness of the entire story. All I remembered from my reading as a younger teen was that the boys had funny names and that someone died. But the way Ponyboy describes the helplessness of the “Greasers” who he loves like family but must watch them face their “fate” of dying young and desperate cut me deep, maybe because I am olde...

I’ve reached the same age my dad was when he came to the United States not knowing much English, but determined to study what he loves in college. He bought some of his first books in English, Misery by Stephen King, and The Little Prince , at a small mall bookstore that is long gone now. Growing up, I didn’t know the significance behind the small edition we had lying around at home, which is featured in the bottom left of the image, it survived every life change with him, unlike Misery . It is a little worn and water damaged, but he plucks it from my shelf and jokes that it doesn’t belong among my books, that it’s his. He has a fondness in his eyes when he picks it up. I tried to read it when I was a young teenager, but it confused me. I was between the age of a clueless child who accepts anything told in stories without quibbling, and being an adult who can analyze and discern personal meaning from a piece of art. I left it to gather dust for another couple years. But some time last...

An adorable story of how nursery magic allows toys to become real to children that truly love them. The velveteen rabbit loves the boy in such a pure sweet way, and the child’s love is equally pure as well. Life happens and sometimes we have no choice but to move on in life without the toys that brought so much joy in our early years. But this story immortalizes them, allowing us to recall a time when the toys we loved so deeply were real to us and will therefore always be real. The picture shows one of my most physically loved childhood toys, a My Melody plush that matches my sister’s Hello Kitty plush. Growing up, she always got Hello Kitty items and I always received My Melody, leaving no opportunity for quibbling. I have always enjoyed bunnies, they have followed me from my childhood till now. I see them in everything when I look around my surroundings, a stray white rabbit candy on my desk, My Melody box I keep my hair bows in, and even on my socks. Maybe I’ll never be able to tur...

I was very confused while and after reading the first chapter of Slaughterhouse-Five , it seemed to be written from Vonnegut’s perspective, but it was not a preface or introduction. I wondered, will the whole story be from his point of view? I thought this was a novel, not an autobiography. Although I understood that the first chapter is written from Vonnegut’s real life perspective after doing a quick Google Search for background of the story’s setting and context, the confused feeling did not change much after the first chapter. He decides to write this anti-war book about the little known Bombing of Dresen, and the latter chapters are where the story of Billy Pilgrim actually begins. Slaughterhouse-Five is eyebrow raising, strange, and vaguely dream-like throughout as a result of the famous time-traveling aspect, integration of aliens, and so many various timelines. It is peppered with shockingly morbid and weighty commentary on war intermixed with supposedly comical situations, sc...

After reading The Hunger Games , The Maze Runner , and other popular dystopian novels revolving around teenagers survival in a post-apocalyptic world, I wanted to kick it up a notch and read about even younger kids in a similar survival scenario. Suzanne Collins has said that she reads Lord of the Flies once a year and I am nothing if not nosy about people I do not know and will never knows' favorite books.  I found that Lord of the Flies is a tragic story with a lot of symbolism that likely flew over my head as I read it for fun, not as part of a class curriculum. I found myself consulting SparkNotes at times and looking up various words throughout. Despite this being taught to high schoolers as young as thirteen, I found myself confused and lost some times, and unsure of what was occurring in the plot and what was meant by some conversations and events. I had chills throughout, as the boys on the island slowly lost their innocence, and the younger ones dutifully looked t...

I read this culturally relevant piece out of curiosity and personal fulfillment, as I heard many things about how it is instrumental in defining the Beat Generation in America. I liked many of the lines and quotes; some of the descriptions Sal provided regarding the road he traveled on his journeys traipsing around America was truly breathtaking and I could feel his passion for life contrasted by his low moments of disillusionment and frustration with life, something every generation struggles with, it seems like. I found that the quote, “In God’s name and under the stars, what for?” describes my state of being at times very aptly.  However, despite some highlights, On the Road  was definitely too stream of consciousness for me to thoroughly enjoy it, it could have been cut in half and I would have been content, if not still a little tired of the prose, repetitive back and forth between the characters, and continuous drifting of Sal by the end of it. I read in the Penguin Clas...

Peter Pan is a story that highlights, berates and yet also celebrates the undeniable “heartless” nature of children. This intertwines with its inevitable pairing of the other part of the equation, the mother who would endure ten days of unhappiness to allow her children ten minutes of delight. Now this is a true glimpse into motherhood, another prevalent theme. Wendy, Michael and John leave their loving mother on a whim, fully expecting her window and thus her loving arms, to be open and welcoming when they come back at any time they please, even having the audacity to nearly forget about her while traipsing around Neverland. A mother’s love is a beautiful yet tragic phenomenon, taken for granted by children who cannot help their innocent and hence heartless nature, all we can do is observe.  Peter Pan embodies the worst traits of children amplified, his conceit, forgetfulness--greedily snatching glory that doesn't belong to him--and love for make believe, as there are never any r...