There Once Lived a Girl Who Seduced Her Sister’s Husband, and He Hanged Himself: Love Stories

★★

I picked this up after having read too many books on doomed love. I wanted a book filled with happy romance and thought that this would resolve my conundrum. Alas, I should have paid attention to the title because this collection of short, love stories was anything but happy. From one-night stands to rushed courtships, these contemporary tales follow women who are out looking for love in all the wrong places.

Apparently, Ludmilla Petrushevskaya is one of Russia’s literary giants. She is well known for being a contemporary fiction writer and has even been compared to other big authors such as Tolstoy, Chekhov, and Poe.

I thought the first couple of stories had a clever twist at the end; then, halfway through I realized each story had the same monotonous trope that pretty much starts with “there once lived a _______ who ________”. These stories, they don’t stick with you; they’re not memorable, which makes it hard to give it a good review.

The Miniaturist by Jessie Burton

★★★★

This edition was published by HarperCollins, and it makes for a very stunning cover.

The book follows the story of Nella, an 18-year-old girl who is whisked away from her small home town to live with her husband, Johannes, who is a merchantman. Nella is overwhelmed and excited by Johannes’s proposal. She is ready to leave boring, little Assendelft and begin a life with her new husband.

To her dismay, she finds Johannes to be aloof and distant, and his sister, Marin, reluctant to let Nella into their home. The only friends Nella seems to have are the two servants, Otto and Cornelia, and her pet parakeet. To make his detachment up to her, Johannes buys her an unfurnished dollhouse, hoping Nella would find some use out of it while he is away on his business trips. Affronted, Nella pays no attention to the small cabinet… at first. Nevertheless, as time passes, she sets out to employ a miniaturist, someone who specializes in making small figurines for dollhouses such as these.

Nella begins receiving packages from the mysterious miniaturist of items that she didn’t order. At first, she thinks it was a mistake, but realization dawns on her when these small figurines mirror what is happening in real life.

Thoughts: 

The idea for the story is based on an actual Petronella (Nella) Oortman, a Dutch woman whose furnished miniature house is part of an Amsterdam museum.

The detail on the cover reflects the intricate writing Burton displays in this debut novel. I had started this book sometime in November 2014, but found it to be incredibly slow, and I didn’t really care for the protagonist all that much. That all changed when I picked it up at the end of May 2015. Somehow, I managed to read the remaining 300 pages in a couple of days! It was completely mesmerizing: the delicate language used, the surprises lurking around every corner, it was great. It made me jump back into the world of reading; I’d been without it for so long due to school.

It starts to become very plot-driven once you hit the climax of the novel. One criticism is that the book tries to make it seem like Nella grows a lot as a character. She’s very young and naive at the beginning of the novel, but I don’t think enough time was given to her to embrace this new life headed her way. I mean, you can’t possibly expect her to actually be okay with what’s going on, but it doesn’t shake the fact that her innocence made it unbearable to read.

I think for someone to really enjoy this book, you have to make time for it. Post-graduation, I found it easier to sit down and fully immerse myself into the story.

What’s Up Wednesday

Hello, friends! Long time no talk.

WHAT I LAST READ // I read one little essay in September, and it was We Should All Be Feminists by Chimimanda Ngozi Adichie. It was a quick and accessible read. I wouldn’t say completely mind-blowing, but it IS an important essay that I feel everyone should read.

WHAT I’M CURRENTLY READING // Honestly, nothing right now. I still have a chunk of books on my ‘currently reading’ shelf in my room as well as on Goodreads….

WHAT I’VE BEEN WATCHING // The fourth season of Once Upon A Time is in full swing on Netflix so I’ve been watching that. Is it just me or is the acting in this season dreadfully cheesy? Also, I’m getting a little tired of how everyone seems to be connected with each other one way or another.

WHAT I’M INTO LATELY // Lipstick. I really want to start wearing lipstick, so I’ve been watching a ton of beauty gurus on YouTube.

WHAT’S UP, BUTTERCUP? // So. Many. Things. September was incredibly busy, hence not a lot of reading. Here are some highlights:

• I took CNA classes in the evening, Mon-Fri 4-10 PM. I have completed the course and now just awaiting the state exam WHICH GOT PUSHED BACK A WHOLE NOTHER MONTH on Nov. 20th. Ugh.
• I SUBMITTED MY P.A. APPLICATION
• I GOT AN INTERVIEW AT A PLACE I SHADOWED AT FOR P.A. SCHOOL. So please, please cross your fingers (and yer toes!) that I can land that job.

One Lovely Blog Award

I was tagged by Michalah over at Cape Town Dreamer for the One Lovely Blog Award. Thanks, girl!

RULES:

1. You must thank the person who nominated you and include a link to their blog.
2. You must list the rules and display the award.
3. You must add 7 facts about yourself.
4. You must nominate 5 other bloggers and comment on one of their posts to let them know they have been nominated.

FACTS:

1. My parents immigrated to the U.S. when they were in their late teens. We are Vietnamese with just a hint of Chinese ancestry. I tried to do a genealogy search, but that only went so far because we didn’t know the exact birth locations or birth years of our great-great grandparents 😦 If I were to guess, I’d say we come from a long line of farmers haha.

2. The last thing I bought was a beef gyro. It was way too salty. 😦 I’ve gotten a chicken gyro from that place before, but it was nowhere near as sodium-infused as that beef gyro!

3. My all-time favorite color is sea foam green, but I also really love darker hues. For example, if it’s red, I go for burgundy, maroon, and wine. If it’s blue, I go for navy.

4. I can eat my weight in cookies. Cookies are delicisoussussususs.

5. I graduated this past May with a Bachelor of Science in Biology.

6. There for a long time, I was obsessed with Ancient Egypt. So much so that i tried to learn how to read hieroglyphics.

7. I’m a huge animal lover. I don’t think there’s any creature on earth that I dislike. (bugs are excluded from this category… especially flies and cockroaches and mosquitoes, but who likes mosquitoes except for Pleakley?)

NOMINATIONS: 

I nominate Heart Full of Books, Chels & A Book, Loving My Lit, Romance Novels for the Beach, and Choncey Boddington.

A Most Belated Book Haul

Books I bought during the summer months and the beginning of September. I also bought We Should All Be Feminists and I’m beating myself up for forgetting to put that one in the video.

Life.

I cried a lot yesterday.

I got news that Tyler might be moving to OK City over the summer for an internship. Granted, it’d only be three months, but to me that feels like forever. We’ve never been apart from each other more than a couple weeks due to family vacations. So to think that we would be apart for so long is scary.

Then I thought, how selfish am I? Here I am applying to P.A. school, which takes anywhere from 2-3 years to finish, and the schools I’m applying to are about 2-4 hours away. I guess I now understand his concerns with me moving away if/when I get into a program.

I started to think more logically once I calmed down.

Let’s say I do get accepted into a program. That means I’ll have something to occupy my time while he’s working in the summer. It isn’t too bad, right? It could be worse….