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sammy

@sammysdigitalarchive

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ur local un-aesthetic book enthusiast
📖 literary fiction & whatever else i feel like at the moment

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5 plays, 5 days!

i’ve read a few plays before but i’ve always wanted to read more. so to read more, i randomly decided to see if i could read 5 plays in 5 days just bc why not lol.

swipe to see my reviews on each play for each day of the week!

#books #reading #reader #readingplays #bookreviews

monday:

the glass menagerie by tennessee williams

started with an absolute banger! i’ve read a streetcar named desire before and loved that, so i was looking forward to what else williams had up his sleeve. needless to say, i loved this.

every character had such a clear voice, every motive was so well laid out that i never questioned why anyone was doing anything. since everyone was so clearly laid out, it was pretty easy to pick up on what everyone represented. (past, present, future). there was so much symbolism within the actual glass menagerie and the family/cast of characters. i can totally see why this is such a loved play and something you could really dive into and pick at every character and object that plays a part in this story.

⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ /5!

tuesday:

waiting for godot by samuel beckett

it isn’t that i felt dumb, it’s that nothing made sense and that’s kind of the point?? but i still felt dumb lmaoo. this is famously an absurdist play but knowing that didn’t help with me enjoying or understanding this honestly.

my interpretation was that this was about if you avoid self discovery and betterment, you will basically be a siting duck who never learns or grows. perpetually “waiting” if you will. i’m probably wrong but that’s what i took from this at least.

this wasn’t for me. i’m not sure i get the appeal of the absurdist sub genre.

⭐️ ⭐️ /5!

wednesday:

m. butterfly by david henry twang

fooling a white man into thinking you’re a hot asian woman when you’re actually a male chinese spy trying to get info out of said white man? insane plot and even insaner when you find out this is based on a true story!

as an asian girl myself, i really loved the way this discussed asian stereotypes and used them as an advantage over the white guy. it was kind of cathartic to see a white guy, who fetishized asian women, fall into the exact trap of stere taken in BOOKSTA by @sammysdigitalarchive

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3 days ago

my local library hand picked recs: book 5/6 ✅

my dark vanessa by kate elizabeth russell is told in 2, equally devastating, timelines. 2000, where vanessa is in high school and has an affair with her teacher that grooms her. 2017, where vanessa is learning that said former teacher is being accused of sexual assault by another former student and vanessa is being asked to speak about her experience.

i expected this to be a heavy book and the author successfully made me feel incredibly disgusted and uncomfortable through a lot of scenes. i felt like everything was written purposefully and that every scene was there for a reason. the writing as a whole, just made sense for such a traumatized character like vanessa too.

i think this book does an exceptional job at putting the reader into the head of someone working through a situation like this. she can’t understand why people want to bring the past back up but at the same time, she is stilted by what happened to her despite trying so hard to convince herself that she isn’t.

i rarely pull quotes for my reviews but this one made me stop and reflect. “You didn’t ask for that. You were just trying to go to school.”

to a degree, i think a lot of women can relate to that, even if it’s not in the same context. how many women everyday are just trying to go about their day and then are met with some of the most heinous actions?

what a heartbreaking and painfully, realistic, book surrounding grooming, sexual assault, abuse and trauma.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️/5

quinn the librarian, you are a STAR book recommender!! 4/5 hits is a crazy record for someone i’ve never met! can’t believe we’re down to our last personalized book rec! stay tuned for our final book and a grand wrap up for this series! by @sammysdigitalarchive

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10 days ago

september no context moments + annotations & my fav song this month 🍂📚☕️

books mentioned:
📚: klara and the sun by kazuo ishiguro
📚: may we feed the king by rebecca perry
📚: the bee sting by paul murray
📚: hollywood, ending by john green
📚: hell bent by leigh bardugo

#books #septemberwrapup #monthlywrapup #booksta #septemberreads taken in BOOKSTA by @sammysdigitalarchive

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17 days ago

the bee sting by paul murray 🐝

this is a 600+ page family saga that keeps you turning the pages over and over again! following each member of the barnes family, you unravel a difficult time in all of their lives, but for different reasons. that’s all the description i’ll give bc i don’t know how to explain this book and do it justice!

i was utterly in love with cass’ chapters right from the get go and was so sad when it switched pov’s to pj, only to be equally as in love with those chapters, and so on with the mom, imelda and the dad, dickie too! the changing povs you get from this book is brilliant. a teenage girl sees her parents differently than her adolescent young brother. a mom sees her children differently than a dad. a dad sees his son differently than his daughter, etc. they all have such great observations on each other that help flesh each character out for the reader. 600 pages is a lot of time to spend with characters and by the end, they all felt so real. aka, it’s me going, “oh cass, that’s so like your father of you,” as if i know these people?!???

loving these characters is important bc this book gets quite experimental in the writing style as well. there are 100s of pages with ZERO punctuation to showcase the stress and loss of control one character feels. there is a play like writing format to another section too. while, i loved these characters, that section without punctuation slowed my pace drastically. it wasn’t bad, it just had the opposite affect to what i think it was trying to convey on my reading experience. but that is my only complaint about this book. like actually lol.

i won’t spoil anything, but there is an incredible feeling of completion at the end of this book, where you want to just go back to page one and start again. there is so much to unpack with the ending that i was scouring reddit for theories and interpretations. is it a happy ending? is it a tragedy? is the real enemy climate change? paranoia? the inability to speak your truths? the bee sting incident?

i could talk about this book forever! a big book that is big worth it in my opinion!

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️.5/5 by @sammysdigitalarchive

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24 days ago

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a month ago

summer travels via books ✈️🗺️

i’m honestly not the biggest travel person irl 😬 it stresses me out lol. this though, is why i love to read. you can learn so much about cultures and the world around you from books when you read outside of your own country, even without leaving the comfort of your own home!

so here is an ode to SOME of the places i went this summer through books. my “travels” took me to many places but i do think there’s many left to go in this lifetime. this has helped me identify the gaps in countries visited/books i haven’t read yet. there’s so many countries i would love to read books from and i think this has only fueled my desire to seek those out more and more.

the way some people have a world map and put pins in it for all the places they’ve traveled to, i want to do with books lol. maybe one day, at a flea market, a world map will call to me and i can truly start taking this journey around the world through books more seriously.

until then, here’s to all the places i’ve gone, and all the places i will go next through books!

books mentioned:
📚: she who remains by rene karabash (translated by izidora angel)
📚: every summer after by carley fortune
📚: what it's like in words by eliza moss
📚: almost life by kiran millwood hargrave
📚: so i met this guy by alexandra potter
📚: love in the big city by sang young park
📚: bad habits by alana s. portero (translated by mara faye lethem)
📚: my friends by fredrick backman
📚: madonna in a fur coat by sabahattin ali (translated by maureen freely)
📚: slasher summer by e.l chen

#books #reading #summertravels #aroundtheworldinbooks #readersofig by @sammysdigitalarchive

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a month ago

august no context moments+annotations & my fav song of the month 🎥🛍️🌆

books mentioned:
📚: fruit fly by josh silver
📚: ninth house by leigh bardugo
📚: i want you to be happy by jem calder
📚: vanity fair by william makepeace thackeray
📚: grape juice by eliza dumais
📚: legendborn by tracy deonn

#books #reading #augustwrapup #booksta #readingwrapup taken in BOOKSTA by @sammysdigitalarchive

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2 months ago

*4 books i’m planning to reread (hopefully) before the year ends!

is this an unpopular opinion lol. i love rereading books, personally. the first time you read a book, you’re taking in so much at once. when you reread a book, you get to be more critical or you get to focus in on a specific characters arc that you loved. i love to pick a character or plot point and really focus on the authors development of that. what works and what doesn’t. what’s foreshadowed and what feels out of blue.

these are the 4 latest books on my radar to reread for different reasons. some bc writing fascinates me, some bc i keep thinking about them, some for well… adaptation reasons lol.

swipe to read more about each book in the captions!

#books #bookstack #reread #readersofinstagram #bookish

the winter of our discontent by john steinbeck

i read this in high school english class and we were specifically looking at steinbeck’s dialogue. dialogue has fascinated me ever since. it’s led me to analyzing dialogue in every movie and book i consume, and years later, i want to revisit the book that started it all. it’s snappy and simple dialogue but flows like a real conversation. you know who’s speaking without being told who is. i can’t imagine this won’t hold up as a great book years later for me!

slouching towards bethlehem by joan didion

call me a basic literary girl bc didion is my literary idol! rarely does nonfiction capture my attention the way her words do. this was the first didion i read that kickstarted my journey of reading every joan didion book. i’d like to just go back to see which essays stand out now vs then. also, i only thrift didion books bc its more fun to find them this way, and i haven’t found one in a minute. a didion a year keeps the heart at bay so my doctor says (they don't actually 😔)

it lasts forever and then it's over by anne de marcken

i don’t know what it is about this book but i haven’t stopped thinking about it for over a year. it masterfully strings grief through a zombie apocalypse allegory and i NEED to revisit it now that i know where we start and how we end in this book. i want to pick this book apart this time around and really get into th by @sammysdigitalarchive

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2 months ago

i did last current next in august last year so it felt fitting to do it again this year too!

i liked madonna in a fur coat more than i expected. 3.5/5 i’d round up to a 4 if i had to. it kind of caught me at a bad time i think but beautiful writing overall.

i’ve been in a dark academia mood if you can’t tell. there were 2 days of overcast last week and my mood went right to reading dark academia. perfect timing with the new ninth house book coming next month too.

next on the docket is (hopefully) elena knows. i’ve been trying to find this book out in the wild for YEARS and finally had good luck at a local indie. so stoked to finally get into this one!

💭: let me know - what are you hoping to read next?

books mentioned:
📚: madonna in a fur coat by sabahattin ali
📚: legendborn by tracy deonn
📚: ninth house by leigh bardugo
📚: elena knows by claudia pineiro

#books #lastcurrentnext #currentlyreading #readersofinstagram taken in BOOKSTA by @sammysdigitalarchive

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2 months ago

2 recent 5 star reads! swipe to read the next captions with my thoughts on both!

💙 into the blue by emma brodie is an emotional journey following childhood friends and their push and pull of a romance through their careers in the film and tv industry with a devastating but believable reason to keep them apart and or draw them together.

📱 i want you to be happy by jem calder is a cautionary tale of modern dating masquerading as a “love story” centering around a man in his mid 30s and a women in her early 20s, trying to connect in a world plagued by performative intellectualism and loneliness offline.

have you read either of these books? what are your thoughts on them?

#bookreview #readersofinstagram #intotheblue #iwantyoutobehappy #bookreviews

📱I WANT YOU TO BE HAPPY📱

think of the worst person you’ve ever met and then multiple it by 10 bc tHATS who this man is!! chuck is the worst person ever!!

this was the situationship from hell LOL. both characters are lonely but cope (or don’t cope) in different ways. chuck is in his mid 30s, friendless, works from home and works too much. he lies about getting promotions at work and lives in an apartment he cannot afford.

joey on the other hand, a woman in her early 20s, is often scrolling through tik tok on her phone with the sound off or walking into her bedroom and instantly opening instagram. she is connected to the world but is so disconnected at the same time. she wants to be a poet but doesn’t ever take steps forward to do so. instead, is working as a barista and not showing any signs of making a change any time soon.

i wish i could word this more articulately but this felt like a case study on dating someone who is stunted emotionally. this was a frustrating read, but intentionally so. again, what a treat for fictional people and words on paper to make me feel so much.

💙 INTO THE BLUE 💙

this has been added to the list of books that made me sOB.

we spend multiple decades with these characters, so i was unbelievably attached to both aj and noah and just knew i was in for tears at some point. they say the wrong things and learn from their mistakes but they feel like real people to the point where i fe by @sammysdigitalarchive

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2 months ago

i read and ranked ALL the year 1, @___inklings___ book club picks so you don’t have to (but you should bc they’re good!!)

everyone on here knows @jackbenedwards in someway at this point. he is a booktuber, the guy who made cillian murphy actually smile in a press junket, a literary contributing editor to esquire mag and the creator of the inklings book club/podcast.

i’m a mood reader through and through but when inklings kicked off in july 2025, i wanted to see if i could keep up month after month with the picks. spoiler alert: i did!!

jack has picked some pretty great books overall and introduced me to some surprises that have expanded my reading taste a bit. a big reason i wanted to keep up with this book club was to find new books i wouldn't gravitate towards on my own and i can safely say that this book club has given me that.

so, can inklings books be trusted? for me, i think so. year 1 set the bar high though, so here's hoping that year 2 is even better!

also, if you know the song then hello fellow og viewer 🤭

#bookstagram #bookclub #jackedwards #reading #readersofinstagram by @sammysdigitalarchive

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2 months ago

july no context annotations + moments & my fav song of the month 🎂💙🎃

books mentioned:
📚: the razor's edge by w somerset maugham
📚: into the blue by emma brodie
📚: the lowe job by grace alexander
📚: summer slasher by e.l. chen

#reader #julywrapup #readingwrapup #books readmorebooks by @sammysdigitalarchive

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3 months ago