Hi, I’m Liv!

This blog was born from a need to celebrate my new bookish era, after a decade away from non-academic books.

I read across the places where fantasy, queer melancholy, identity and memory overlap. This space is my quiet corner for reflection, a digital record of feelings, fragments, and literary ghosts that stayed behind after the last page.

You’ll find here:

📌 musings on friendship, identity, ruin, and the beautiful yet terrifying intimacy of being seen;

📌 recs for fantasy, queer & speculative fiction that leans tender, tragic, or strange;

📌 quotes and aesthetics to inspire your TBR.

I post whenever the mood strikes, without a fixed schedule. I’m still experimenting in terms of format and trying to figure out what works best.

Think of this blog as a candlelit desk inside a crumbling library, a place for anyone who finds beauty in sorrow, rebellion, and quiet acts of tenderness.

See you in pages,

Liv

Stoner, John Williams

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Classics, historical fiction | 292 pages | 1965

Summary:

William Stoner is born at the end of the nineteenth century into a dirt-poor Missouri farming family. Sent to the state university to study agronomy, he instead falls in love with English literature and embraces a scholar’s life, so different from the hardscrabble existence he has known.

My thoughts:

As the title suggests, Stoner offers a stoic and unrelenting meditation on the small tragedies of ordinary life. We follow the journey of William Stoner, an earnest and unremarkable farm boy who stumbles into college almost by accident, and finds belonging in the only place where he recognizes himself: the university classroom.

What I found particularly compelling about this novel is the idea that “home” is not always tied to a family, a city, a house, or even a relationship. Stoner chooses the academic life not in search of greatness or stability, but because it offers truth, beauty, and a refuge that he was never able to find elsewhere. Studying becomes that which heals and grounds him as the rest of his life slips into disappointment and loss.

I love how this novel portrays the lives of people who feel deeply but struggle to articulate their emotions, who never quite match society’s definition of “success” but can still find small moments of joy despite the hardships. Stoner’s marriage collapses, his career stagnates, his personal life is crushed by deep sorrow. Though implacable, the novel refuses to treat him as a tragic figure and chooses instead to dignify his endurance, revealing an understated tenderness that shook me to the core.

Another fascinating element here is the portrayal of academic politics, showing how universities can become battlegrounds of ego, ideology and unspoken resentment. Through Stoner’s steady integrity, we observe how small conflicts can erode a scholar’s sense of belonging just as profoundly as personal heartbreak.

Stoner closes this rec series on belonging and found family, this time not through conventional bonds but introducing the idea of home as ideas, the pursuit of knowledge, intellectual satisfaction. This is not a light read; in fact, it is an incredibly sad story and I guarantee it will break your heart multiple times. And yet, I never found it bleak for the sake of bleakness. Beneath the melancholy and heartbreak there is the quiet realization that a simple life can still be full of meaning.

Brilliant and haunting, this novel is for anyone who has ever felt out of place in the world, but at home in a library; for anyone who has dedicated their lives to quiet passions; for those who know what it means to be transformed by learning. This is a celebration of ordinary people persevering through ordinary lives, proving that significance is not measured by grand achievements but by the depth of one’s devotion.

moodboard inspo: scholar life | academic solitude | fractured family

Lonesome Dove, Larry McMurtry

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Classics, Historical fiction, Western | 960 pages | 1985

Summary:

Lonesome Dove is a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel about retired Texas Rangers Gus McCrae and Woodrow Call who lead a cattle drive from Texas to Montana. The story follows the two friends and their eccentric crew as they face hardship, danger, and the changing landscape of the American West.

My thoughts:

I’ve recently finished this book and am feeling so raw over it that I decided to write this rec before reading the rest of the series. Lonesome Dove is an epic western that blurs the line between myth and truth, revealing the American West as a world built on violence, loyalty and the quiet tragedies of people who rarely say what they feel. The plot is grand and devastating but brilliantly told in a fun, lighthearted voice that pulled me in from the very first line up until the last one.

The book’s greatest triumph is its extraordinary storytelling and character work. Despite being a big cast, each character gets enough page time to feel real, nuanced and larger-than-life: from the philosophizing Gus to the taciturn Captain Call, from naive Newt to the countless side characters, everyone has their own quirks and flaws and get a full emotional arc which I deeply appreciate.

Though the narrative revolves around themes of traditional masculinity and focuses on the quiet partnership between two former Texas Rangers, the novel also introduces some strong, complex and propelling female characters. Clara, Lorena and Ellie resist the simplistic “frontier woman” stereotype and retain a lot of agency and depth, becoming the moral backbone of the story.

It’s important to note that although memorable, these women remain confined to roles shaped by the men around them. Their arcs often serve as plot devices for male suffering or growth, or else revolve around the classic marriage-motherhood-domesticity triad. While this doesn’t diminish their power, it certainly obscures a more nuanced representation, as a reminder that Lonesome Dove is a story primarily written for and about men. Which doesn’t mean the emotional triangle between Gus, Call and Clara cannot be brilliantly executed and (in my opinion) one of the most understated dynamics in the book!

For readers drawn to queer-coded dynamics such as myself, Lonesome Dove offers a surprisingly rich subtext beneath all the “dude bro” elements. Characters like Captain Call, with his solitary stoicism and near-total emotional repression are a compelling example of male affection constrained by the sense of duty. Other characters like Newt and July Johnson experience more interiority and don’t shy away from expressing their vulnerability.

Ultimately, Lonesome Dove is a tragedy disguised as a western adventure. Every small moment of tenderness is overshadowed by the oppressive reminder that the West was built on violence. The novel offers a reckoning with that cost, revealing how dreams are paid for in grief, exhaustion, and the quiet ache of people who survive because they have no other choice. And yet, this story has so much heart. It is fun, charming, heroic and heartbreaking, timeless and painfully honest. A story that lingers within long after the last page.

moodboard inspo: dusty roads | western melancholy | cattle drive | lonely cowboys