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robyn

@robynsreadingg

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— haunting the narrative
canterbury | london ⋆˙⟡
🦢 [email protected] (uk)

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can never have enough lace by @robynsreadingg

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a month ago

i missed my solo reading dates but uni is so busy !! im grateful for it regardless but was glad to have one day to have a solo café visit

#readingvlog #readwithme #solodate #romantasy #explorepage by @robynsreadingg

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8 hours ago

finally beginning this collection of wildes short fiction (gifted by a friend - i love my friends so much!!!)

#readingvlog #readwithme #oscarwilde #cosy #explorepage @penguinclassics by @robynsreadingg

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4 days ago

sense and sensibility book/film thoughts ⭐️

i reread sense and sensibility by jane austen the night before the film adaptation released into uk cinema, and absolutely adored it.

austen is not, by far, my favourite classic author, and yet i am constantly enamoured by her writing. given that this was a reread, and that im not seventeen like i was the first time i read this, i immediately fell into the plot. that being said, i think that the writing of sense and sensibility is incredibly accessible regardless of your experience with classics.

i saw the adaptation in the cinema on the day of its release, and immediately fell in love all over again. the atmosphere was so gloomy, weathered, and candlelit, and sitting there i wanted nothing more than to enter that world !! regency fashion is just so beautiful, i need a blouse !!

the true brilliance of this film, in my opinion, is its centred look at girlhood and womanhood, and the progression from the former to the latter. there is a very tender intimacy between the three sisters, seen through a highly empathetic understanding of one another despite any silences. no matter the tribulations they face singularly, they always had one another to fall back to.

jane austen is undoubtedly a brilliant entryway into classic literature, especially given the myriad of adaptations that follow her literary backlist. if you’re looking for a good classic to read this autumn, then pick up sense & sensibility ! by @robynsreadingg

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5 days ago

— ‘seasons of glass and iron’ by amal el-mohtar ☆☆

i wasn’t originally going to post a review of this collection because of my lower rating. i didnt connect with it in the way that i wanted, but i think that despite my personal thoughts it was a good collection that will be enjoyed by others.

this is a short story / poetry collection that was all a little bit weird, and a little bit intimate. it discussed broadly the symbol of femininity, and on a smaller scale, the offering of tenderness and vulnerability. with lyrical and mythic prose, it was able to present a dark fairy-tale perspective of reality.

it was also particularly invested in displays of otherness, cultural alienation, and individuality of queerness. across the entirety of the collection, there are underlining’s of this subjective experience.

i really do think it’s a brilliant collection for people who perhaps feel a little bit unmoored. for people who feel a little bit lonely.

(i think that my favourites from the collection were ‘madeleine’, and ‘john hollowback and the witch’.) by @robynsreadingg

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9 days ago

some of my priority tbr for autumn & some beloved recommendations for you 🍁 by @robynsreadingg

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14 days ago

according to marlowe, im a clown by @robynsreadingg

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18 days ago

the solo dates have expanded beyond cafes...who wants a sense & sensibility cinema vlog ??

#goodwillhunting #cinema #film #solodate #explorepage by @robynsreadingg

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21 days ago

— ‘dead beat’ by leigh bardugo ☆☆☆☆

“she allowed herself a look back at him…she had the unpleasant sense that this was forbidden. lot’s wife. orpheus. she might have only a passing knowledge of the classics, but she understood shit never went well when you looked back. even so, she needed to know he was there. it was that simple and that humiliating all at once.” p.16

[dark academia fantasy / third in the ‘ninth house’ trilogy. the gates to hell have been left open, so alex and her friends must hunt the demons coming through, reach deep into the secrets of yales societies, and unearth the truth about trust]

dead beat well and truly exceeded by expectations. i didn’t realise quite how much i missed this series and these characters until i was holding it in my hands once again. it begins with high stakes narration of detailed fantasy and compelling progressions, and maintains this fast-paced excavation throughout the entire book. the tone of dead beat, much like the previous two books in this series, was very dark and unforgiving.

the overarching development of the main cast of characters alongside this bloodthirsty plot was beautiful; in the first book alex feels useless in comparison to the others, and to go from that outcast feeling to the purpose and integrity of the group in this book - it was so heartwarming. on top of the platonic, i adored the romance subplot in this book. this was one of the slowest slow-burns that i have ever read and i love that the free indirect discourse in the narrative voice let me see just how much alex and darlington were suppressing themselves now that they were finally within each others physical presences. i mean, they quite literally go to hell and back for each other…so. safe to say that the yearning was insane.

if you read any fantasy series this autumn, let it be the ninth house trilogy. by @robynsreadingg

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25 days ago

— ‘life of m’ by rachel cusk ☆☆☆.5

“it was we who made the world seem to exist through our emotions. the places themselves were indifferent to us.” p.104

[literary fiction / m is an acclaimed actress, and our narrator is a writer who has decided to inspect m’s life. what truth will be unveiled in this proximity ? and to what degree is reality curated, whilst still maintaining authenticity ?]

this is the first time that i’ve read one of cusk’s novels in its entirety, and i was enamoured by her particular cadence of portraying humanity in minute detail. there is a very distinct nuance of observation that made for quite an intimate portrait of m.

in particular, given the content of the book, there were brilliant meditations on existence within fame, and the potential for authenticity to be lost. however, i do wish that the opening outlined the narrative structure of this book with more clarity; i had been confused as to whether this book was following the relationship between m and the narrator, or if it was the biography itself, and in the second half of reading i was leaning towards the latter option.

i think that having these two creative characters (the actor and the writer) was a good way to dissect the creative industry, and the separation of work and life. the introspection of m, someone in power feeling as though they have been reduced to an idea, was a very intriguing concept. i’m loving lately how literature is probing the influence of the media, and definitely want to consider life of m in tandem with researching this topic. by @robynsreadingg

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a month ago

— ‘taipei story’ by rebecca f. kuang ☆☆☆☆

“history mangled everyone. we weren’t the only ones cursed. and my personal tragedy derived not from the fact that it had happened but the fact that no one had thought to include me in this story” p.259

[contemporary fiction / college student lily chen spends summer in an intensive language program in taipei, taiwan, in the hopes that she can connect with her inherited culture despite any grievances she may experience.]

kuang was brilliant in this novel at dissecting the multifaceted perspective one can hold regarding their own presentation and perception of the self; lily was such a diverse protagonist in how real she seemed, as she believed herself to be better than those that disagreed with her, and worse than those she could not interact with. lily had such a wonderful character arc and i loved her presentation towards the end of the novel, because i think that it really emphasised the idea that as she learnt to express herself in chinese she was able to cemet her overall identity somewhere between the roots of all those before her.

there is a constant underlining of loss throughout the novel as lily begins to understand the vast nature of knowledge — every individual thing learnt becomes a chasm of unknown. she realises that there are questions to which she is no longer able to receive answers for, and is thus tormented by an irreversible guilt. the novel spans this haunting search for knowledge and justification, as lily clings to this longing for understanding as something that moors her to the world itself.

to explicitly address the negative press tour that this book received from arc readers: the israeli pianist was featured on, at most, three pages of this entire novel. considering the wider themes of colonialism, occupation, and imperialism which underscore this text, you would think that readers would pick up on kuang’s commentary on the privilege that comes alongside being a white coloniser. especially if those readers were complaining that in kuang’s previous works she was spoon-feeding the analytical interpretations. by @robynsreadingg

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a month ago

— ‘the wax child’ by olga ravn ☆☆☆

“history mangled everyone. we weren’t the only ones cursed. and my personal tragedy derived not from the fact that it had happened but the fact that no one had thought to include me in this story” p.259

[translated historical fiction / through the perspective of melted wax, moulded into the image of a child, we learn about the intimacy of womanhood and its apparent witchcraft, alongside observations of the cruelty of man]

although the summary of 'the wax child' may sound conventional, signifying particular images of witchcraft and hysteria, the expression of the experimental novella was quite singular. it interweaved incantations of history and folklore through the narrative voice of this wax child who seemed to be able to occupy anything in order to use it as a viewpoint. we read from the perspective of dewy grass strands, the kings ears, and the sideline’s of coven meetings, to name a few. ravn conjured replications of the danish witch trials, and despite this factual grounding there was a beautifully magical voice throughout. i think that 'the wax child' could almost be interpreted as a final resurrection of the women in these witch trials, that are commemorated through this novella — the existence of the women can be reclaimed through the perspective of something that they had created and nurtured.

ravn is also a celebrated poet, which explains the cadence of 'the wax child'. the prose featured mosaics of observation through the course of the narrative, although at times it felt verbose and disjointed. there was also a distinct lack of quotation marks around dialogue (which is something that i love in literature) which really emphasised the dreamlike and lucid nature of this novella. the narrative voice of this wax child was also rooted in the image of voodoo dolls; this child, moulded from wax and nurtured by women, speaks with a curious and archaic nature about contemplation. the perspective felt quite mythical, due to the very rhythmic prose, and was therefore quite compelling. by @robynsreadingg

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a month ago