Status Updates From G.

"I begin to be glad I’ve lived half my life. A fair part of it has been
good. But from now on everything will get worse. Everybody is
becoming ignorant and mutton-fisted and too busy judging
everybody else. We’re going to have sermons and commerce."

"All history is contemporary history: not in the ordinary sense of the
word, where contemporary history means the history of the comparatively recent past, but in the strict sense: the consciousness
of one’s own activity as one actually performs it. History is thus the
self-knowledge of the living mind.

I am deeply in love with this book! Its like narrated like Patrick Süskind's "Perfume " but much more concise and poetic. I could read it for hours

"Yes, I was in love with you when we went to Venice three years ago.
You were like no man I had ever heard of. You could have made
whatever you liked of me. But you did nothing. A woman isn’t like
money that you put in a bank and it will bring you interest without
your doing anything about it. A woman is a person. "

"She has
never before been able to ignore Umberto’s advances because they
have offered her an opportunity to show him the intricate sexuality
of her body which has always seemed to her to be as unpredictable,
as delicate and as pure as an almond hidden in its two shells. Her
immunity now surprises her. Her child has already offered her the
gift of self-sufficiency."

"She lies in Umberto’s arms, content to be held but indifferent to his
passion. If he lies still, she is pleased. She finds it acceptable for him
to cherish her; she finds it absurd for him to desire her."

I'm being so naughty reading this as
1) I have no time at all for a new book
2) I'm hoping to clear my currently reading before 2026 and I have a 600+ page behemoth I've been reading quite slowly since September [*cue alarm*]
3) this is a books that scares me ,could cause a slump like Doris Lessing

But John Berger is so hot and woke I can't help it. Wish me luck!