books

☆ less than zero - bret easton ellis

Oh boy where do I even begin with this book. I read this the summer after graduating high school, at a very low point in my life. This book had given me comfort when I grieved, in an odd way. It's so cynically beautiful that I feel like if I reread it, it would not hit me the same way as it did to me when I was freshly eighteen and everything felt so painfully raw and fucked up. It didn't hide what the jump into adulthood felt like and the reality of experiencing it for the first time - being hopeless lost and caught up in everything. I saw myself through each of the characters yet I would hate it if I were. But you only wanted what was best for them. The apathy that exudes from this book gave me chills and it was if I was watching a shitshow behind a glass. It's a life that I would never want yet am so fascinated by that every page had me hooked. This book haunts me yet I love it dearly so.

☆ the shards - bret easton ellis

Shocker, another Ellis book. But I love his writingggg sorry!!! LA, 1980s, new wave, Wayfarers, private-school uniforms. More money than you could imagine. Absent parents and abandoned houses. There's something about how he describes this hedonistic and nihilistic lifestyle that again entraps you and makes you want to live it yet everything about it is a living nightmare. It's the center of affluent pop culture and the daily rituals of each person is so cyclical that it's hypnotizing. Out of the books of his I've read, this one is so sensory driven at every facet. Lists of roads, songs, foods, drugs, sexual encounters, memories make you become Bret, and I loved it. It felt like you were always being chased. Loved a mystery/thriller set in this.

albums

☆ folie a deux - fall out boy

holy fucking shit this album is really one of those masterpieces that is so hard to describe succinctly. it's just that perfect. so controversial at the time yet it is quite literally one of their most polished albums. i really really wished that they didn't get the hate they did at the time because i would have loved to get more songs with a similar tone in this one. i love this album more than i love myself and will forever appreciate it.

☆ tourist history - two door cinema club

not a single bad song in this album. the base, the guitar, the drums, the vocals, chefs kiss. the indie blueprint. i remember when it came out and the singles were everywhere, even in the nba 2k11 video game. didn't really listen to it again until October of last year which was coincidentally the same time i had started talking to my boyfriend. so there's that added bonus that whenever i listen to this album i think of the leaves changing and me having the biggest crush on a guy. need to see it in concert desperately.