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laith

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laith is Currently Reading

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Beartown (Beartown, #1)

by Fredrik Backman (Goodreads Author)

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Apr 30, 2026 05:30PM

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Oryx and Crake (MaddAddam, #1)

by Margaret Atwood (Goodreads Author)

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Jan 21, 2026 01:13PM

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In Memoriam

by Alice Winn

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Reading for the 3rd time

read in July 2023

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laith said:

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

" "I sometimes hold it half a sin / To put in words the grief I feel; For words, like Nature, half reveal / And half conceal the Soul within."

this book utterly tore me apart

some passages I enjoyed—

I have tried to keep things from you, Elly, you are so "I sometimes hold it half a sin / To put in words the grief I feel; For words, like Nature, half reveal / And half conceal the Soul within."

this book utterly tore me apart

some passages I enjoyed—

I have tried to keep things from you, Elly, you are so fresh and clean, and I did not want to be the one to open your eyes, but I must write, I must describe, I must tell you about the man I saw trying to claw open his own windpipe without seeming to realise that he was missing a hand and was only succeeding in smearing the blood and tendons of his blasted arm all over his blackening face—I stood as he pressed by, and I thought, Why are you at Ypres? Why are you not sitting in a courtyard in Algiers, eating a ripe orange? We have conquered the world with promises that could not be kept. We told those Algerians that their civilisation was no good, that they must have ours instead, we carried our white man’s burden dutifully, enlightening Indians—Indians! They who built the Taj Mahal! And Egyptians! For we knew better than their pyramids! We swarmed through Africa and America because we were better than they, of course we were, we were making war humane, and now it has broken down and they are dragged into hell with us. We have doomed the world with our advancements, with our democracy that is so much better than whatever they’ve thought of, with our technology that will so improve their lives, and now Algerian men must choke to death on their own melted insides in wet Belgian trenches and I-

--
Gaunt turned over to face Ellwood and caught his eye. Ellwood smiled, and a sudden, dry bleakness spread over Gaunt’s heart as he thought of Hercules, and Hector, and all the heroes in myth who found happiness briefly, only for it not to be the end of the story.

--
It was spring of Lower Sixth, and Ellwood was so in love with Gaunt that his thoughts ran wild with anger. Gaunt was woven into everything he read, saw, wrote, did, dreamt. Every poem had been written about him, every song composed for him, and Ellwood could not scrape his mind clean of him no matter how he tried. He thought perhaps all the pain would sour the love, but instead it drew him further in, as if he were Marc Antony, falling on his own sword. And it was a magical thing, to love someone so much; it was a feeling so strange and slippery, like a sheath of fabric cut from the sky.

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30 august 2025 i dont know what gave me the brave idea to think i could reread this again. holding back tears right now

I'm sorry. This is not what I intended to say. What I meant to say is this: You’ll write more poems. They are not lost. You are the poetry.

2 september must be the lack of sleep or something i keep thinking i could read this book on public transportation then having to hold back tears like somebody died. ...more "

progress:

(page 25 of 382)
"so vivid it pulls you into the trenches with them i cant do this rn lmfaooooooo" — Sep 01, 2025 10:38PM

Sep 01, 2025 10:38PM · see review

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laith’s Quotes

“He saw that I was shy, and at the time I was still scared of feeling with another person, so he put his arm around me and pulled me and put my head on his breast and gave me love actually.”
― Allen Ginsberg, Howl and Other Poems

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