#my grandmother asked me to tell you she's sorry

[thebearsfrombeartown]

no one writes human beings like fredrik backman

#fredrik backman #beartown #anxious people #My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry #a man called ove #brit marie was here #like for fucks sake #how is this man so fucking insanely good #what the actual fuck

[ellickalways]

idk if any of y’all are readers but please just go pick up any book by fredrik backman it will cure something broken in you. please i’m begging you.

#fredrik backman #the winners #beartown #us against you #my grandmother asked me to tell you she's sorry #a man called ove #britt-marie was here #anxious people #any of these please #just go and read

[a-ramblinrose]

JOMP Book Photo Challenge || July 6 || Contemporary: My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry by Fredrik Backman

#My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry #Fredrik Backman #justonemorepage #jompbpc #book photo challenge #book photography #books #Not Out of Void But Out of Chaos

[book-and-manga-dragon]

Most books leave me feeling a whirlwind of emotions - sort of like I was dropped in the middle of a thunderstorm. Then end of story feels like the thunderstorm ended and I feel the loss around me keenly.

Backman though - I have only read 3 of his books and all 3 left me feeling .... complex. Like I was stood there, waiting for the rain I can see coming. A rain like the kind you see in anime funerals of a beloved character - cold * sad, yet gentle & steady. Like I can't bring myself to go back inside - so I stand there, getting drenched. And then the rain ends, and sun peeks out. I am still soaked - from rain and tears both, there is a feeling of tragedy, but also peace as I close my eyes and tip my face to the sun. That's the feeling it gives me.

#fredrick backman #a man called ove #anxious people #my grandmother asked me to tell you she's sorry

[litandlifequotes]

Death’s greatest power is not that it can make people die, but that it can make people want to stop living.

My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry by Fredrik Backman

#fredrik backman #my grandmother asked me to tell you she's sorry #fiction #reading #book #book quotes #quote #words

[pieceofwar]

#fredrik backman #a man called ove #my grandmother asked me to tell you she's sorry #grandma #grandmother

[pipperoni32-blog]

People in the real world always say, when something terrible happens, that the sadness and loss and aching pain of the heart will “lessen as time passes,” but it isn’t true. Sorrow and loss are constant, but if we all had to go through our whole lives carrying them the whole time, we wouldn’t be able to stand it. The sadness would paralyze us. So in the end we pack it into bags and find somewhere to leave it.

That is what Miploris is: a kingdom where line storytelling travelers come slowly wandering from all directions, dragging unwieldy luggage full of sorrow. A place where they can put it down and go back to life.

- My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She’s Sorry

#book quote #fredrik backman #my grandmother asked me to tell you she's sorry

[ablackcatontheberrytree]

می‌خوام اولین ریویوم رو درمورد کتاب مادربزرگ سلام رساند و گفت متاسف است بنویسم.

رمان، درمورد دختر هفت ساله‌ای به نام الساعه؛ که سخت می‌تونه با بقیه ارتباط برقرار کنه، بیشتر از سنش می‌فهمه، مادر تقریبا سخت گیری داره که طلاق گرفته و الان از شوهر جدیدیش بارداره و هیچ میونه خوبی با فرد مورد علاقه السا یعنی مادبرزگش نداره. السا دوست هم‌سن و سال خودش نداره اما مادربزرگی داره که پایه و همدم اون و حتی شیطون‌تر از خود الساعه!

وقتی مادر بزرگ السا در اثر بیماری فوت می‌کنه، دختر باید با فقدان اون دست و پنجه نرم کنه. اما مادربزرگش اون رو در این مسیر تنها نمی‌ذاره و براش ماموریت‌هایی تعیین می‌کنه. اینجوری السا هم با ادمای بیشتر و عجیب غریبی مثل مادربزرگش اشنا می‌شه و هم در این حین تا حدود زیادی داستان‌هایی درمورد گذشته مادبزر��ش کشف می‌کنه.

اوایل داستان، ممکنه کودکانه به‌نظر برسه ولی هرچی بیشتر جلو می‌ره به جذابیتش افزودا می‌شه و مفاهیم عمیق‌تری رو در قالب‌های ساده و دلچسب بیان می‌کنه.

کتاب درمورد فقدان، دوستی، اعتماد و شناختن همدیگه‌س.اینکه همدیگه رو از روی ظاهر قضاوت نکنیم و متوجه باشیم که هرکس برای رفتاری که می‌کنه، دلیلی داره.

در‌ کنار داستان اصلی، ما روایت‌های فانتزی‌ای مربوط به دنیای خیالی داریم که مثل داستان‌های مادبزرگ_نوه‌ای، بین السا و مادربزرگش روایت می‌شه. داستان هایی به ظاهر کودکانه اما با تمثیل‌هایی شیرین و پرمعنا که می‌توننن مفاهیم پایه‌ای زندگی رو خیلی ساده و ملموس بیان کنن.

این کتاب رو به همه کسایی پیشنهاد می‌کنم که چیزی با ارزش رو توی زندگیشون از دست دادن و برای بیان دردی که دارن تحمل می‌کنن زیادی تنها و ناتوانن و نیاز دارن بدون در میون گذاشتن این درد بدونن که تنها نیستن.

_پ.ن:راستی کتاب یه حیوونکی قشنگ و سیاه هم داره.

زیبایی‌های کتاب:

_بزرگترین توانایی مرگ میراندن ادم‌ها نیست، بزرگترین توانایی‌اش این است که می‌تواند کاری کند بازمانده‌ها ارزو کنند زندگی‌شان متوقف شود.

_همه هیولا‌ها از اول هیولا نبوده‌اند، بعضی‌هایشان هیولاهایی هستند که از اندوه هیولا شده‌اند.

اهنگ سلیقه‌‌یی من برای این کتاب👆

#کتاب #Spotify #My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry #فردیک بکمن #book review

[tiny-little-hobbit]

Hi, yes, I just finished My Grandmother Asked Me To Tell You She's Sorry, and I am a puddle of emotions.

#fredrik backman #my grandmother asked me to tell you she's sorry #oh my fucking god #my emotions rn #book reviews with a sleep deprived hobbit

[shouldprobablybereading]

Can someone please inform fredrik backman about proper animal nutrition. I understand the main character was a kid but daim candy is chocolate, why does the protagonist keep feeding a dog chocolate?!!!???!

#I thought it was a subtle way to tell the reader the grandma wanted to kill the dog #but no no #I sincerely hope any of the adult around fed it normal food at soem point #because a couple cookies a day does not sound like a healthy diet #my grandmother asked me to tell you she's sorry #fredrik backman #I was originally gonna say that britt-marie also keeps feeding a rat snickers in her book #but I googled and that actually seems ok

[roseunspindle]

Favorite Books of 2022

Dracula Daily - Partly I enjoyed the story, but also the community of reading it with many people, seeing the comments, fanart. 

#Favorite Books of 2022 #2022 #Favorite Books #reading #my grandmother asked me to tell you she's sorry #fredrik backman #This Poison Heart #Kalynn Bayron #a psalm for the wild built #Becky Chambers #The Ghost Bride #Yangsze Choo #the ballad of songbirds and snakes #Suzanne Collins #Uprooted #Words of Radiance #Brandon Sanderson #The Revenge of Eli Monpress #Rachel Aaron #Dracula #Bram Stoker #Dracula Daily #Raybearer #Joran Ifueko

[librarygraveyard]

long fuckin update

wow. hi.

so, uh, updating as i read got away from me because i just started...tearing through books again. i have some backlogged notes that i wanted to make into posts, but a one-two combo of ADHD meds and rediscovering the many, many magics of the library, but particularly the “oh shit, that library book is actually due, i have to read it before that date even if i can renew it because if i dont read it NOW i never will” deadline-imposed executive functioning really knocked me straight into like, 10 books at once.

all that to say: 1) i finished My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She’s Sorry (Fredrich Backman) and it has perhaps become my favorite book of all time. definitely an oomph of a book in the best way. i wanted to write a more thorough post about it, but i was knocked out by COVID, so i went on to read 2) coraline (neil gaiman)! i’d never read it, and i think if i’d read it when i was a bit younger i’d have loved the adventure and suspense of it, but given that i read it a) after i saw the movie in college (adore the movie) b) as a 23 year old, it fell firmly in the category of “i’m glad i’ve read this. i am very glad this book exists. i am also very glad the movie exists, if only because i feel like the soundtrack adds and because coraline should forever have blue hair and a yellow raincoat.” 3) then i read As the Crow Flies (Melanie Gillman), which is a graphic novel about a teen kid at a church retreat, and while the art is stylistically lovely and the story tries to do some interesting things, it felt like it ended at least two chapters too early? There were a lot of unanswered questions despite the nuances, and the kids are supposed to be 13-14 and they read like 15-16yos, in my opinion. It was less than I thought it would be, given how critically acclaimed it is---but I often find anything intersecting religion and queerness in an interesting way seems to receive critical acclaim (and critical ire) if it’s executed decently, because that’s what’s “interesting” now. 4) Then The Graveyard Book (Neil Gaiman) --Another Gaiman I’d never read, and this one I found delightful; it’s slightly episodic as it tells a coming-of-age story, and yet also explores themes of loss in life: loss of community loss of family, change of family dynamic as a type of grief, and loss of home---even if as a temporary displacement---as its own grief, and how grief is in itself a form of longing, and how that longing can’t always be fulfilled with an exact replacement, but how life is yours for the living and as long as you are alive you are in motion and you have potential, and to die is to end that potential. you have completed all the changes you will make in yourself and in the world. i even named a spotify playlist around this theme, and captioned it with a quote from Silas, the main character’s guardian: “face your life; leave no path untaken”---“You're alive, Bod. That means you have infinite potential. You can do anything, make anything, dream anything. If you can change the world, the world will change. Potential. Once you're dead, it's gone. Over. You've made what you've made, dreamed your dream....That potential is finished." 5) by the time I finished TGB I had finally tested negative for COVID and recovered in full, so I was able to pick up Spinning Silver (Naomi Novik) from the library. And oh. Oh my fuck??? I want this book for Christmas. Someone please get me this for Christmas. I saw the first page posted on twitter, which is how I found out about it at all and got hooked in the first place, but to go from that to an incredibly intricate story that balances so many arcs??? I mean, does she do it perfectly? No. There are absolutely some questionable points where I wonder if the plates are going to fall. There are absolutely some dropped threads that, yes, the world is richer for them having been hinted at, but also, given the tightly-woven story with so many threads so carefully developed, dropped, and continued at later points, it is weird to get to the end and go “Wait, but what about...????” My friends and I had a long conversation about SS last night---like, two hours long, and this being a full month and three books on after I finished it (and they read it ages ago), so I’ll spare you the analysis. But, the aspects of magic in the book, the commentary on work as proof of magic and economics as power and opening the door to both self-power and social power and that itself being magic; the political commentary and EVERYTHING going on with Mirnatius and Irina individually and as an arranged, very political marriage; the mythology of the world...yeah. yeah. if there’s anything i would recommend you on this list wholesale not knowing you, it’s Spinning Silver. 6) then, Sensory: Life on the Spectrum (Rebecca Ollerton) had come out, so I worked my way through that---it’s a comic anthology entirely from autistic artists talking about various parts of their experiences. I found it mostly to be geared toward autistic acceptance/narratives surrounding “life sucked. then i got diagnosed with autism/learned autism exists and realized im Not shit, im just Neurodivergent,” which is a fantastic resource to have and i’m very glad it exists, but the comics that stood out to me the most in the anthology were the ones that deviated from that structure. The two most memorable comics in the anthology, to me, was one that used pocket watches (the artist’s special interest) as their central imagery, and one that had circulated around tumblr that discussed neurodivergence and non-negative self-injury using stylized fruit characters. I would mostly recommend this anthology to someone who is new to the autistic community, or to neurotypical people.

7) i hit a bit of a slump after this (because how the fuck do you follow Spinning Silver?), but I was literally like, 85% through a reread of Norse Mythology (Neil Gaiman) via audiobook from a road trip I went on in May, with only about an hour and a half left to listen. So I wrapped that up. I had never listened to the audiobook---the first (and only) time I read Norse Mythology i began it just before my flight home from college......and then I devoured it across my two flights home and two flights back, despite my return flights being at like, 6AM. Hearing it in Neil Gaiman’s voice and cadence definitely brought the stories he was telling to life, whether on the winding back roads of Tennessee or in my living room while I finished an art project for a friend’s very, very belated birthday. 8) the last and latest book I’ve finished is Turtles All the Way Down (John Green), which was good, and then the last two pages absolutely knocked me flat on my ass. it was like, “oh, this is a good YA book about mental health, and there’s nuance without losing sight of the fact that Mental Illness Is Fucking Hard To Live With, and everybody feels 16, and---oh my fuck WHAT” so anyway. no spoilers, because to spoil it would be to ruin your chance to get knocked flat, but Turtles All The Way Down for YA book about living with mental illness of all time.

--- in December, I set a goal for myself to read 12 books in 2022.

...I read eight of the ten books I’ve completed this year since September. 

Four of those I read in one (1) month with COVID.

I was prescribed ADHD medication at the end of August. 

this isn’t the blog where I yell about all that, but... i cannot imagine how different college could have been for me. how different my life could be.

anyway, meds are an access need.

#review #rec #update #my grandmother asked me to tell you she's sorry #coraline #as the crow flies #the graveyard book #sensory: life on the spectrum #spinning silver #turtles all the way down #norse mythology #this post sponsored by neil gaiman (3 books) #.......did i read the first several issues of sandman in here? #storygraph is only tracking the omnibus because that's what i have #not going by issue #so .......no i think i watched the show before september #and i read the comics first #...but i have continued the comics. #.... #this post sponsored by neil gaiman [several writings]

[ithinkilikeit-reactions]

3 Book reviews from someone with no credentials other than the ability to read

I have been reading a lot again lately and this year I finished 3 books so far! So I wanna do a little review of the books because I think it’s fun and I really missed reading! Let me know if you’ve read these, what your thoughts were or if you have a recommendation for me!

Might contain spoilers

You’ve Reached Sam - Dustin Thao

It had been a minute since I had read a book with romance adjacent plot, I had recently watched a lot of tragic love stories in films and wanted to read something with a bit of a tragic air to it. Sam and Julie’s story is definitely tragic however I should have maybe skipped this one. The book is a Young Adult story about healing and moving on and that’s how it’s written. Young Adult is an amazing genre and considering I hadn’t been reading for a while, I thought diving in with YA book would be good for me and I thought wrong. It’s not that the story isn’t written well, it’s more that I found myself feeling slightly too old for it. I also found myself getting incredibly frustrated with the main character and some of her choices, while still understanding her loss. 

This being said, the ending was a great sense of closure for the book and main character Julie. It also had me bawling my eyes out as I’m an emotional wreck in general. 

2.5/5 Good read, just simply not for me!

My Grandmother asked me to tell you she’s sorry - Fredrik Backman

The connection between grandmother and granddaughter is something beautiful, as someone who has grown up with my grandparents surrounding me this book definitely hit me where it hurts. Elsa and her grandmother’s relationship was absolutely beautiful, even after the passing of her grandmother. I liked that Elsa didn’t regard her grandmother as a saint, learning about her wrong doings in the past and holding her accountable. There’s a beautiful sense of forgiving in this book, the residents of the apartment building all being connected to the grandmother in one way or another. Elsa’s grandmother created an entire world to make Elsa happy and it’s simply stunning. There’s a hint of found family trope in this book as well and that is simply my favorite trope ever. However, the wurse’s death had me sobbing because in my head it looked like my dog. 

4.8/5 as no book is perfect but this one nearly is

Pachinko - Minjin Lee

Now this book is another one that hits me in an emotional way. I have a Korean grandmother and know that she lived through many things in her life, she doesn’t like to talk about it and I don’t pry. This book gave me some insight however. I loved that you travel through this family nearly generation by generation, starting with Yangjin moving to Sunja, then to her sons Noa and Mozasu and then to her grandson Solomon. It’s a tragic story, Sunja’s life having never been quite easy. The first 2 parts of  this books touched me the most, Isak and Hansu’s characters being so different yet both oddly appealing. I love that Sunja grew to love Isak as he was truly her savior. While sometimes not much happened within the chapters, I found I couldn’t put the book down as I needed to know what would happen. 

It made me feel sad to see the shame people had simply being Korean yet also not being able to detest the Japanese as a lot of them grew up among them despite the things the country had done. It was interesting to see and shed a personal light onto the entire situation through the eyes of one family experiencing life this way. At many times through out this book I wanted to extend my arms and give Sunja a hug. Especially at the end, as she visits Isak’s grave to speak with him and burrying Noa’s picture next to him so that she has a sense of closure knowing her son is with him. 

4.5/5 The last part of the book didn’t keep my attention as well as the other parts. But the last chapter made my chest hurt, feeling sad that I wouldn’t get to see anything else from this family that I had been following for 500+ pages. I simply wept at the last page. 

If you have read any of these, let me know if you shared some thoughts! I know this is a kpop writing blog but reading has been bringing me peace and I wanted to share it with you all! Might do this more often after I finished another 3 books. 

#you've reached sam #dustin thao #my grandmother asked me to tell you she's sorry #fredrik backman #pachinko #minjin lee #book review

[a-ramblinrose]

JOMP Book Photo Challenge || July 6 || Contemporary:  My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry by Fredrik Backman

#My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry #Fredrik Backman #justonemorepage #jompbpc #book photo challenge #book photography #books #Not Out of Void But Out of Chaos #I'm 90% sure this is relatively contemporary #I honestly don't read a lot in that category #not unless its urban fantasy or magical realism which doesn't fit the prompt

[contagiousrhythminmybrain]

“Elsa's eyes open wide when she sees him, and then she looks at Alf's flat. At the radio. Because there's no coincidence in fairy tales. And there's a Russian playwright who once said that if there's a pistol hanging on the wall in the first act, it has to be fired before the last act is over. Elsa knows that. And those who can't understand by now how Elsa understands things like that just haven't been paying attention. So Elsa understands that the whole thing with the radio and the accident on the highway must have something to do with the fairy tale they're in.” - My Grandmother Asked Me To Tell You She’s Sorry, pg. 323

Re-reading My Grandmother Asked Me To Tell You She’s Sorry and I did not remember how meta this was for Fredrik Backman’s storytelling in general or how a character literally brings up and then subverts the Chekhov’s gun principle. This is maybe particularly vindicating for me and the essay about Chekhov’s gun in The Winners that I haven’t written (which mostly sums up to the first gun you see seems to already serve its narrative purpose up until it’s the one fired last).

#fredrik backman #my grandmother asked me to tell you she's sorry #i may have yelled and scrambled for my post-its to mark the page lol #all his novels are variations on the themes of grief and survivors and relationships #and unlikely heroes and what it means to be different etc etc #but on my first read i linked how writing ove could lead to britt-marie #and how writing britt-marie could lead to beartown #but somehow failed to clock the fairy tale of it all in mgamttyss linking to… well everything #also #thinking thoughts about ‘and one could say it's right and one could say it's wrong. and probably both would be right’ #because i love you stories with satisfying endings that also acknowledge the questions with no real answers #also also #thinking thoughts about boy best friends bonded though everything #by something they share with no one else #until one brings a whole lot of trauma for everyone

[yesireadforfun]

Every seven-year-old deserves a superhero.

my grandmother asked me to tell you she’s sorry

#booklr #book quote #my grandmother asked me to tell you she's sorry #fredrik backman #backman #fiction #books #book #book lover #book nerd #quote #I love books #read #reading #reader #story #elsa #granny #miamas