JJoyce Yu > Recent Status Updates

Reads like a hans Anderson fairytale/alice in wonderland. Really good world building. Well written. Just read to me very kiddish throughout haha. Fully recognize this book is not meant for me though. But now I’m ready for the author event!

Enjoying this more than I thought I would! Glad I gave it a chance!

P dull for me cos it’s YA but I understand I’m not the target audience. I’d probs love this when I was 12 and reading Eragon and phantom of the opera haha.

Done with this charming yet insufferable book. I can forgive the author for being a rich snob with unlimited free time, but her attitudes towards tourists, the working class, anything conventional, is atrocious. The pro: the towns and people she described are really charming, and I felt transported and got warm impressions of the remote and old Italian towns and countryside that I’ll probably never get to see.

Wow. This author would be the best and the worst dinner party guest. She’s so superficial and obnoxious and fake lolol. But so rich in time and money. Damn. When I grow up I wanna be just like her fr

wtf the author is such a douchebag. She was gonna give the landlady the finger cos the room was too cold?! I mean the travel logs are charming but between the “the tasting menu is expensive but who cares!” And other privileged snobbery I would not recommend this book to anyone lol. Her family is giving the movie “the menu” vibes

This book is so indulgent and bourgeois lol. Bit of whiplash coming from ferrante’s slums of Naples and the neighborhood communists. “Of course say yes to the wine pairing” lol but alas the Italy indoctrination must continue until our trip!

My first travel book!

How could anything ever compare with the Neapolitan novels. Not even you E M foster. 😭 also finding the Victorian English here harder to read than Jane eyre, even though it’s published 60 years after! Maybe it’s snobbish Victorian English because thats sort of the message of the book?

not ready to say goodbye… Idr the last time I cried so much when a book ended. And it’s not even because anything sad happened. It’s solely because the book has ended and I have to say goodbye to these chaotic people… the ending is perfect. Lenu letting Lila go, it’s as if the author is the readers to let lenu go too.. it’s like the ending of fleabag. When fleabag left us. I’m not ok 😭

Ninooooooo. He’s such a shit!!! The human capacity to be great and to be deplorable is mind boggling. Are we truly just monkeys?! Like when a difficult e-mail triggers my fight or flight?! I’m watching this disaster unfold yet the story is so well told and emotions so tightly woven into each steps the characters take I truly feel like there’s no other way this ending could’ve turned out

ADORE the autistic Emersons haha

(2/2) Also very interesting to read about the fascism v communist struggle in Italy. It’s been so surprising to find such parallels between post war Italy and my childhood. I concluded that class experience really transcends everything. Poor neighborhoods everywhere do be doing poor neighborhood shit across time and space lol. In the 1960s now and history obviously diverges from here for Italy and China 🛠️

(1/2) Scared to start it. Lenu’s self destructive streaks can be so painful to read… I thought we agreed that nino was a piece of shit!! Also I just do not understand this friendship. But at the same time I do. How is the author about to craft a character as hateful as Lila but who is also simultaneously so magnetic to everyone in the book and ME.

Ok wtf. That ending is so ooc for lenu!! I’m irrationally angry with her

So raw and devastating. So good.

Jesus even lenu’s mom is exactly like my mom. Fuck them.

Author may be guilty of a teeny bit of tunnel vision with salt so may want to take some of the salt correlation with historical events with a grain of salt (ha ha) Super interesting but not sure if viable as a cookbook 😅 curious to see what Bookclub potluck will look like!

Still need a recipe tho. I can’t be serving surstromming!

We have some family lore about unscrupulous fish mongering practices by my grandpa (for him it was painting a silver fish yellow and selling it as the more expensive yellow fish lol) so it’s kind of endearing hearing the Baltic/Atlantic herring trades people doing the same thing centuries prior haha.

Nary a usable recipe for book club potluck ahh!

Surprisingly enjoying this book a lot after still life! Also realized I’m a quite fan of Victorian novels after dmatmoobil and Jane eyre hehe. Oh and p&p, of course. The irony and dry humor are too too good

Probably the best writing I’ve ever read. I’ve decided to try and read this in the original Italian!

I was right! I survived! The ending was sad but the bad writing, weird pacing, lack of emotional depth and just weirdly developed characters constantly pull me out of immersion I never felt attached to the characters so I’m barely affected. Overall, I really didn’t like this lol. I can’t believe the author was salty about not getting a book deal like manacled and dmatmoobil it’s not on the same level at all

I can see that I’ve entered the emotional minefield that my friends warned me about (and to take pto for lol) But luckily I’m insulated by the bad writing!! Manacled sat with me bc everything was just so understated and the layers of tragedy weren’t apparent until I sat with it. With s&m I don’t even buy the love stories and the themes of sacrifice and betrayal just feel so surfacial. I hope I’m right >_<

Certainly not my favorite Erik Larson, but still loved his narrative history - history that reads like fiction. But wow sure hope some of these weather bureau assholes are burning in hell. No wonder pride is one of the deadly sins.