riley > Recent Status Updates

“The next day an angry blood-red sun ringed by a dark tempest bounded out of the sand. A fiery east wind arose from the desert; the world turned black.” (p. 139)
“The sun was about to touch the sky’s foundations. The fever of the day wilted, the wind died down, the lake sparkled rose and blue.”
Kazantzakis’s descriptions are always so mesmerizing. (Power to the translator too!)

Why is Pyotr Stepanovich one of the funniest characters ever.

The last two chapters (25 + 26) were so so so insanely good. Some of the best I’ve ever read.

2026 reading goals: to read longer books that I can truly sink my teeth into; to take my time to digest and really consider the books I read instead of jumping into any new book I can get my hands on, which might mean taking longer to finish them; to keep up with my streak of nonfiction (have one nonfiction and one fiction book going at a time)… perhaps other goals will be added later…

I desperately need to learn more about 20th century Russian history. Reading this is entertaining and enlightening but every chapter feels like I’m chipping away at some secret code that everyone else already knows.

I’m sorry what just happened

First Banville book—super excited. One chapter in and absolutely ASTOUNDED already by his writing. Phenomenal prose.

“For over and all other considerations is the fact that wars are not won at GHQs or defeats avoided there but on the field of battle. An intact and fully manned general headquarters is of no use to a nation if its field army is smashed and disorganized.”

“The British imperialists down the ages owe in the main, their successful conquests of many peoples to the technique of ‘divide and conquer.’ They have consistently urged class against class, district against district, creed against creed, and in the resultant chaos of warring sects and factions, they established themselves and maintained their rule of exploitation.” Tiocfaidh ár lá… one day.

Reading this plague develop makes me think (obviously) about how quickly COVID really just passed us by… only 5 years ago the whole world was shut down. I didn’t see my closest friend for a whole year and she only lived 30 minutes away. The vaccine came out and the whole ordeal was sort of swept under the rug by anyone who didn’t lose someone from it. C’est la vie?

Literally can’t sleep, this book is truly scaring the hell out of me.

Suuuuuper hyped. Already a couple chapters in and can’t wait for more.

Reading so sporadically during lulls at work, so gonna take a while to finish this one. But it is gripping so far—praying no(t too much) (inevitable) propaganda!

Craving a Murdoch type read right now.

“Curious to think that we would almost certainly have been friends had we not been two young ‘heroes’ at the beginning of a new nation, each aware that at the summit there is a place for only one. As it turned out, neither of us was to reach the highest place. I hurled Hamilton from the mountain-side, and myself fell.” Absolute banger.

It is so hard for me to read short story collections I’m a fake English major.