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the is Currently Reading

the louver is currently reading

Anne of Green Gables (Anne of Green Gables, #1)

by L.M. Montgomery

bookshelves: tbr-fall-2026, currently-reading

Reading for the 2nd time

read in August 2022

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the louver said: " dnf @ 240 pages.

i really wanted to like it so bad "

progress:

(page 190 of 336)
— Aug 20, 2022 12:46PM

Sep 06, 2026 12:45PM · see review

the louver is currently reading

Tess of the D’Urbervilles

by Thomas Hardy

bookshelves: tbr-fall-2026, currently-reading

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Sep 06, 2026 12:43PM

the louver is currently reading

The Idiot

by Elif Batuman

bookshelves: 2025-favorites, need-to-purchase-physical-copy, currently-reading

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read in September 2025

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the louver said: " Then something changed. My life no longer seemed like a movie to me. Ivan was still in the movie, but had left me behind. Nothing extraordinary was happening anymore, or would ever happen again. I was just there with my relatives, living pointless, Then something changed. My life no longer seemed like a movie to me. Ivan was still in the movie, but had left me behind. Nothing extraordinary was happening anymore, or would ever happen again. I was just there with my relatives, living pointless, shapeless days that weren't bringing me any closer to anything. It seemed to me that this state of affairs was a relief to my mother. From her perspective, I thought, the past weeks had been a perilous, temporary adventure, something to be endured, and now things were back to normal. It was painful to feel at such cross-purposes with her. Almost everything that was interesting or meaningful in my story was, in her story, a pointless hazard or annoyance. This was even more true with my aunts. They didn't take anything I did seriously; it was all some trivial, mildly annoying side activity that I insisted on for some reason, having nothing to do with real life. I couldn't challenge or contradict this view, even to myself, because I really didn't know how to move to a new city, or have sex, or have a real job, or make someone fall in love with me, or do any kind of study that wasn't just a self-improvement project.

***

Beautiful people lived in a different world, had different relations with people. From the beginning they were raised for love.

***

But, to me, nineteen still felt old and somehow alien to who I was. It occured to me that it might take more than a year -- maybe as many as seven years -- to learn to feel nineteen.

***

i am so devastated this book is over. i experienced such a deep level of immersion reading this that the days just flew by. this is one of those rare books that feels so deeply catered to me it hurts. i wish i would have written this. the literary references, the sort of dry humor, selin filtering her experiences through the lens of the academic texts she's consuming. i think that batuman forgoing a more traditional and settling for a more diaristic, slice-of-life approach -- with a bunch of one-off characters and situations that don't ever come back or fit into the overall puzzle of the novel -- was the best thing she could have done. it makes the book feel so real and rich and just super immersive. selin's freshman college journey feels so real it hurts. i also LOVED the way she portrayed selin's crush on ivan, the intricacies of it. god, i guess my praise of this book all comes down to the fact that batuman manages to capture these experiences that have always felt so singular to me, the way she writes about school, crushes, selin's relationship with books, it feels so me, like a piece of my soul, god, i love this book so much! also, i really liked selin and ivan. i know this might be unpopular, but i love these unconventional, flawed sort of pairs. people are hardly ever perfect in real life, so i hate when writers attempt to portray relationships in fiction through a lens of strict morality. i find that so incredibly boring.

i am so excited to read the sequel, but i think i'm going to wait a little bit. i want to hold on to my experience with this first volume, and linger with that last sentence, just a little longer. I hadn't learned anything at all. genius. ...more "

Sep 07, 2025 06:51PM · see review

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