↣ a great and terrible beauty

• i cannot believe this is my first ever reread of this series
• i think that libba bray might be one of my favorite authors. the way she writes teenage girls just rings so truthful
• i love the way this book talks of the boxes that women have historically been put into, and the deep, deep desire to leave those boxes, lead their own lives
• i remembered the relationship between felicity and pippa being revealed in this book, so i was shook when it didn't happen. i eventually remembered it wasn't until the third book, but not before i wondered if i had imagined the relationship entirely
• "Felicity ignores us. She walks out toward them, an apparition in white and blue velvet, her head held high as they stare in awe at her, the goddess. I don't yet know what power feels like. But this is surely what it looks like, and I think I'm beginning to understand why those ancient women had to hide in caves. Why our parents and teachers and suitors want us to behave properly and predictably. It's not that they want to protect us; it's that they fear us."
• "We're all looking glasses, we girls, existing only to reflect their images back to them as they'd like to be seen. Hollow vessels of girls to be rinsed of our own ambitions, wants, and opinions, just waiting to be filled with the cool, tepid water of gracious compliance."

↣ rebel angels

• i love the descriptions of the realms. this is very much a place of female power, female thinking and freedom and wildness. in my women in literature class, we often discuss the common comparison between women and Nature, both being something that men see as wild and needing "tamed." the realms reminds me of this concept, as a place historically ruled over by women, that is wild and unruly, in its natural state. i love the worldbuilding we get of the realms in this and the next book, but i still wish we knew even more
• sometimes, i find gemma to be only the only one of the girls that i can tolerate. felicity and ann's behaviors are unbearable to me at times. they can be so selfish and demanding. but then, i feel bad for thinking like this. it was time when women were not able to live their own lives, when everything was planned out for them, and one of the points of the series is that women be allowed to be selfish, to want things for themselves, but felicity and ann seem to refuse to accept that they can not have the magic for themselves. the times that they have almost ruined everything in the realms, because they wanted to twirl around with pippa instead of letting gemma do what she needs to do. in the conversation with libba bray in my copy, she said her initial plan was to have felicity and ann go evil, and i really wish sometimes that that had happened.

↣ the sweet far thing

• i am so excited to reread this book. i remember when i first read it, i said that it was the kind of book that i would love to write. i hope that i feel the same way this time around
• i love the way this book is divided into acts like a play, like the tragedy it is. i also love that the acts are divided as the parts of a day
• the nietzsche quote that begins the second act is one of my absolute favorites
• i love this books so much, it is so incredible. truly beautiful.
• "I should like to say that this statement brings blush to my cheek and I quickly dismiss it as rubbish. But secretly, I treasure it. I am coming to realize that I should like to feel special. That I should like to make my mark upon the world. And that I don't want to have to apologize for it."
• "We sit and listen and are enthralled anew, for good stories, it seems, never lose their magic."
• "And that is how change happens. One gesture. One person. One moment at a time."
• _"Kartik stands on the shore, watching us drift out on the river. With the smoke and the fading flames behind him, he looks slightly unreal -- a ghost, a flickering image in a magic-lantern show, a star falling to earth, a moment that can't last."
• "When I dream, I dream of him."
• "The light is so bright it hurts my eyes. But I don't dare close them. I won't. Instead, I try to adjust to the dawn, letting the tears falls where they may, because it is morning; it is morning, and there is so much to see."