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Annotate with Me: Daisy Jones and the Six

Hi friends! It’s been a little while since my last Annotate with Me post, and I’m really excited about this one because today we’ll be talking about Daisy Jones and the Six! 

I absolutely love this book —- it’s my favorite Taylor Jenkins Reid book. I did a reread at the end of last year and realized that I absolutely had to annotate it! With the Amazon series premiering TOMORROW (!!!) this seems like the perfect time to share my annotations with you all.

As I’m sure you all know, I am a huge music fan, and one of my favorite bands of all time is Fleetwood Mac, so obviously, this book really speaks to me. What I love most about it is that no matter how many times I have read it, I am fully captivated by this story and these characters. Each time I lose myself in the story, I’ll feel like I just started reading and then look at the clock and realize hours have passed. 

This was truly such a fun annotation process for me —- so many moments and lines stuck out to me. Honestly, many of my pages look like this

which is when you can tell that I’m having the most fun annotating. That being said, it’s time to get cozy, grab a cup of tea, maybe turn on Aurora and let’s get started!

As always with Annotate with Me posts, there are spoilers so, if you haven’t read Daisy Jones and the Six, proceed with caution!

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Annotate with Me: Little Women by Louisa May Alcott (Part Three)

Hello friends! Well, I had originally planned on my Little Women annotation series being two posts (which you can read here — one, two), but to absolutely no one’s surprise — well, I guess to my surprise because I was being an absolute clown — I had so much to say and the series has now been split into three posts. 

This post focuses on Laurie’s proposals to Jo and Amy, as well as how Amy and Laurie grow together while they’re in Europe. It, as always, is a long one because I have many thoughts and I have very strong opinions on these scenes. So, grab your cup of tea, get cozy and let’s get started!

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Annotate with Me: Little Women by Louisa May Alcott (Part Two)

Hi y’all! I’m back with the second part of my Annotate with Me post for Little Women — you can read part one here. Volume two of Little Women, also known as Good Wives, takes place three years after the conclusion of part one, and the second half of the book really does have some of my favorite scenes in the entire book, so I’m really excited to share my thoughts with you all. 

This time around, I wanted to focus on Meg and Beth, as I feel like they don’t get enough appreciation and I just adore them! So, get cozy, grab a cup of tea, and let’s talk about the less appreciated March sisters.

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Annotate with Me: Romeo and Juliet

Hi friends! Welcome back to another Annotate with Me post! As we know, I am a Shakespeare fan first and human second, so today’s post is focused on one of my most favorite Shakespeare plays — Romeo and Juliet.

Something that particularly motivated me to work on this post is that I see so many people say that the only reason why they don’t read Shakespeare is that they don’t really understand the language and that makes them feel inferior or unintelligent. That truly breaks my heart! I started reading Shakespeare when I was around fourteen, and I loved it but didn’t fully understand it. Then in college, as a theatre major, we had an entire class on Shakespeare, and my love kind of turned into an obsession because I was able to really understand and dissect his works. That is to say: no one is “not smart enough” to understand Shakespeare, you just need to spend a little more time learning how to read Shakespeare.

Shakespeare wrote for the masses, and I feel strongly that everyone should be exposed to his writing because he wrote about the spectrum of human emotion. I personally have learned so much through reading Shakespeare and that is thanks to the teachers I had who helped me understand him. While I am in no way a Shakespeare expert, I do think that I have a good grasp of his works and I would love to help others develop a love for him as well. And, to be 100% transparent I have SparkNotes and CliffsNotes open while I read as it usually helps me process my thoughts, and remember what happens in which scenes, since in the case of Romeo and Juliet, I’ve read it so many times that sometimes the minute details blend together.

So, all that being said, whether you love Shakespeare or not, I hope you enjoy hearing my thoughts, observations, and analysis on one of my all-time favorite stories, Romeo and Juliet. 

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Annotate with Me: Little Women by Louisa May Alcott (Part 1)

Hello friends! September 30th was the 154th anniversary of the release of Little Women,  and I thought that this would be the perfect time to post part one of my two-part Annotate with Me series on Little Women!

Nowadays, editions of Little Women are printed with both volumes (Little Women and Good Wives), but in 1868, only volume one, Little Women was published. Because of that, this post will focus on some of my favorite scenes from volume one!

Get cozy, grab a cup of tea, and let’s annotate volume one of Little Women!

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Annotate with Me: If We Were Villains by M.L. Rio

Happy Wednesday, everyone! I hope that you’re doing well and staying safe! This week, I’m bringing you another Annotate with Me post, and this time I’m highlighting my favorite book — If We Were Villains by M.L. Rio!

I did annotate a copy of If We Were Villains earlier this year, but I did so before I really started to develop my process for annotating, so, I wanted to try again with my more specific and detailed system. I also thought this was the perfect time to do so because I’ve (unintentionally) reread If We Were Villains on September 14th for the last two years — so it made sense to do a reread and re-annotation this month!

This post is basically all spoilers — I can’t really get into the nitty gritty parallels, influences, and foreshadowing without doing so — so if you haven’t read the book, I highly recommend reading it and then checking this post! Okay, it’s gonna be a long one, friends, so get comfy, grab some tea, and let’s get started!

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Annotate with Me: Babel by R.F. Kuang

Traduttore, traditore: An act of translation is always an act of betrayal.

1828. Robin Swift, orphaned by cholera in Canton, is brought to London by the mysterious Professor Lovell. There, he trains for years in Latin, Ancient Greek, and Chinese, all in preparation for the day he’ll enroll in Oxford University’s prestigious Royal Institute of Translation — also known as Babel.

Babel is the world’s center of translation and, more importantly, of silver-working: the art of manifesting the meaning lost in translation through enchanted silver bars, to magical effect. Silver-working has made the British Empire unparalleled in power, and Babel’s research in foreign languages serves the Empire’s quest to colonize everything it encounters.

Oxford, the city of dreaming spires, is a fairytale for Robin; a utopia dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge. But knowledge serves power, and for Robin, a Chinese boy raised in Britain, serving Babel inevitably means betraying his motherland. As his studies progress Robin finds himself caught between Babel and the shadowy Hermes Society, an organization dedicated to sabotaging the silver-working that supports imperial expansion. When Britain pursues an unjust war with China over silver and opium, Robin must decide: Can powerful institutions be changed from within, or does revolution always require violence? What is he willing to sacrifice to bring Babel down?

Links for Babel: Goodreads | TheStoryGraph | Bookshop | IndieBound

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Annotate with Me: Portrait of a Thief

Hi, besties! As I am fully in my annotations era, I thought it would be fun to start a new post series called Annotate with Me. In this series, I’ll be highlighting one of the books that I’ve recently annotated, show you what supplies I used, share photos of my annotations and discuss some of the things I chose to highlight and comment on throughout the book. Since we just wrapped up our read of Grace D. Li’s Portrait of a Thief for TeaTimeReads, I figured this would be the perfect book to start with!

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