❀ ──── 🟄 . ─ { pathways ) !

[caesou]

a journal of... reviews, i guess?
what i thought about movies, books, albums, works of art, whatever i feel like...
(warning: long, big text posts!)

wanna read about stuff i actually like and love? here!

was going to bbcode, but i think i should spend time on things i actually liked and enjoyed. not to say that everything i write about here is bad, but i like consistency, and if i'm going to post something i didn't like, i don't think it's worth my time to decorate it with so much effort.

[caesou]

books

• atonement - ian mcewan
  
• iliad - homer (lattimore translation)

movies

• idk

albums

• sjdfk

tv shows, anime

• sdkjgg

[caesou]

look i had to read this book for english advanced and um... it's not bad, honestly? it's good. but it's just not my style?
idk how to put it, but like, my interest over the book just waned and went in and out... could only read like 50 pages at a time because sometimes i just kind of got sick of it and wanted to move on.

i don't really feel like typing much because i finished it last night and i've already thought about how i feel about the book, so what is there to say here lol

but it's just not my favourite. it has really interesting themes and ideas - like seriously, i did not know metafiction was a thing, and it's the absolute coolest concept imo - but MAN there's still something missing. there's something that was so bland and boring about it, i don't even know what. maybe i should read on chesil beach next and soon since my teacher said it was good, and even included an excerpt of it in class last term. it was a really good excerpt, so i'm hoping maybe it's just... atonement's not my vibe. i thought it would be! the plot, when i hear it, sounds so cool, but just reading it was so... bleh.
maybe it's because it was compulsory to read and not because i felt like it, honestly. but the timeskips are too jumpy imo, you just jump from an entire half the book of briony to just... robbie in like, a click of a finger. i guess that's the whole idea of changing perspectives but idk... there wasn't much flow and i had to reorient myself.

it's an interesting, interesting book but man, i think i just want it a bit more cleaned up. a bit smoother? a bit something? i literally do not know what i want more of but i want more of something.
the beginning was also really slow. it picks up pace only after like, a quarter way through. i understand why it's slow and part of me likes that it's slow, but it also sucks for a first-time reading, cause you're just sitting there like... ughhhh, when's this gonna end? where's the good part? where's the plot?

oh the other thing, i also just don't really understand the necessity of the parts 2/3. i mean a majority of it is war war war, and not rlly thinking about briony. i understand that, i get that, but it feels weird walking away from the book when only a quarter of those sections really talked about briony and how the characters feel about it. i mean it's a good ratio but at the same time, there's just something off that feels like the other three quarters of those parts could've been used better???

honestly, it's a 3/5 for me. 5/10 stars for me. maybe 6/10. just not entirely my vibe. maybe it will be my vibe in the future when i reread it - and i do plan to reread it - but right now? not right now. not my thing.
thanks ian mcewan for the hours of complaining, suffering and only a little bit of interest. you're a good writer, but i'll need more time.

[caesou]

i finished the iliad the other day! and omg it is actually... pretty good.

i can't call it a favourite because of how dang DENSE IT IS!! literally denser than a rock. took me half the entire poem to get used to lattimore's writing style. maybe more like a quarter of the poem to be really honest, but for someone who does read faster than their peers, other people are probably going to struggle with the iliad much more than i did...
it is honestly a really nice story and i've heard lattimore's translation is like, some of the best, but... it is so boring and long and you do see the beauty in the poem, but i wonder if that's either cause homer's good, or lattimore's good. maybe it's both, but... it is such a struggle to get used to lattimore's writing style. the iliad made jane eyre look easy 💀 and idk if jane eyre is that difficult of a text to read, like its english is a bit old timey, but like... reading jane eyre was a piece of cake after reading the DAMN ILIAD FROM LATTIMORE.

honestly fell asleep for the entire first half of the iliad, the only things i remember was the stupid amount of ships that came in and were all individually named and identified in book 2 (greek teacher says that it's meant to be like, a nationalistic moment for greek people to be like, "look, that's my ship!" and i think that's super neat, but complaining is fun and it is literally a section in the poem that has no storytelling value and is super boring in terms of an enjoyment perspective), the one time where some guy drew back his bow and homer went on and on about his backstory and agamemnon getting salty once or twice. i get a few general themes and ideas, like i think it's very cool conceptually that homer references back to greek mythology and talks about every soldier's story to create this like, massive story within only a few weeks (or days? i don't remember) of the battle of troy - but holy moly it can be really boring to read through. or maybe that's a lattimore thing JFSKGSDF. the gods quarrelling tho was really fun, i enjoyed that. it added a new layer of spice to the iliad.
second half was fun, second half was interesting. i had already read song of achilles, so when i heard the name patroclus, my ears were perked, my ears were listening, my ears were all ears. achilles' rage was so fun to read - and so very devastating and savage, this man killed men like he was in a hack-n-slash game! - and in some ways, it was so heartbreaking, the dynamic and relationship between him and patroclus. it really is a highlight and stand-out moment in the iliad, and no wonder everyone harps on about it.

i still, for some reason, feel distaste when i hear people romanticise this whole moment? i understand why and i feel like i should be more into it, but... it just reminds me of the days when i started learning greek because i had a very romanticised view of greek mythology. i realised greek mythology wasn't as gorgeous, amazing, beautiful and dashing that everyone said it was, so i buried my head in my studies and just left it as is. maybe there is still a fragment of bitterness over that. i'm getting into greek mythology, the iliad was so cool, but the romanticisation i see and the swooning social media posts i see about it... turns me off so much, for whatever reason.

i'll read another translation of the iliad quite soon. my bf bought me butler's translation of the iliad and odyssey for xmas, it was like one of those fancy big book copies that you can get. i don't think butler's translation will be amazing, but i'm fine with it because i love reading different translations anyway. linguistics is really quite fun - yet quite challenging! - at the same time. i keep pushing it back because i keep getting book after book i want to read, but i'm just reading at my own pace, whenever i want and however i want, so i'm fine.

lattimore's iliad is a 4/5 overall. part of me wants to give it a 3/5 because of how boring and ramble-ly it can get, though 😂 i'll leave both ratings up there. there's some good bits and some not-so-good bits.

i am sorry that these first few posts have been so thick and massive. i just... seem to have a lot to say 😂 oh dear.

[caesou]

sorry sudden revival of this dead thread i had a thought

blackpink's pink venom and shut down were really disappointing to me. i'll talk about these two songs in particular since they're the ones i'm more familiar with out of their most recent album.

i'll expand on this thought in a mo. gotta revise for physics so like, give me a sec.
but pink venom's 3rd verse is a joke, and shut down is so devoid of effort in terms of music production.