Meghan > Recent Status Updates

Really distracted by the fact that there’s a female character named Vincent. Such a strange choice.

I’m really struggling to get through this one. Loved Homegoing and heard such good things about this novel, but man, it’s so flat.

‘While we talk, the world, with all of its terrible troubles, rolls on. There will never be enough money. There will never be enough time. There will always be more work to do. But every now and then we find a small extra thing, a necessary sweetness, that keeps us from believing we know everything and all the news is bad... The beautiful surprise.’

‘Karen’s true adult life began when she recognized she was a child, and remembered that, unlike her mother, her father viewed her as a child as well.’

‘Acting is: fidelity to authentic emotion, under imagined circumstances. Fidelity to authentic emotion is: standing up for your feelings.’

Like it more now but the first 40% was really difficult to get through. Had to force it down.

‘They were all children who had previously failed to fit in, or had failed, to the point of acute misery, to feel satisfied, and they had seized on creative impulse in the hope of salvation.’

It strikes me that most of what Kendall is arguing for is really a matter of addressing rampant American capitalism and lack of social support systems. I'm reading this in France, which is not a perfect country by any means, but basic human dignity and needs are ensured by social programs for every citizen. The contrast to the America she describes in jarring.

Books like this are such a struggle for me. This is the field that I work in, so I try to get through them. But my god, the platitudes and “we must change the world!” It’s like a high school graduation speech...

Truly bizarre.

“I understand that forgiveness is utilitarian, that it is likely even the missing piece in my life, the keystone that will allow me to balance and stabilize and keep the bricks of my life from tumbling down. But I can’t do it. To me it feels false.”

Hm. Quite different from what I expected. Light and easy read, not “literary” writing. Not sure where my expectations even came from!

The thing most forbidden, the one we'd never believed possible, the contraceptive pill became legal. We didn't dare ask the doctor for a prescription and the doctor didn't offer, especially if one wasn't married -- that would be indecent. We strongly sensed that with the pill, life would never be the same again. We'd be so free in our bodies it was frightening. Free as a man.

Hmm... struggling with this one so far. I loved Coates’ nonfiction and was excited to read this, but his prose here is so difficult to follow. I find myself spacing out and losing interest because the writing is so cluttered and confusing. Not sure if I’ll make through all 400 pages...

"Coming so close to death as a young child, only to resurface again into life, imbued in me for a long time a brand of recklessness, a cavalier or even crazed attitude to risk... It was not so much that I didn't value my existence but more that I had an insatiable desire to push myself to embrace all that it could offer."

Really struggling to get into this one...

“Fucking Ireland. Its smiling fiends. Its speaking rocks. Its haunted fields. Its sea memory. Its wildness and strife. Its haunt of melancholy. The way that it closes in.”

“Only the cunten Russians, he said, have less class than us when they get a few pound.”

“I haven’t enjoyed a mirror since 1994.”

I’m not sure I’ll finish this one. So far it’s reading like a Young Adult book. Dialogue sounds about as sophisticated as a Disney movie, but without the humor. Yikes...

I can usually see a way to understand terrible things; satanic worship, decaffeinated coffee, cosmetic surgery, but Renoir's portrait of Madame de Bonnieres? No. It cannot be understood or forgiven. And framed in gold plastic and spot-lit from above? No offence intended, Charlotte, there is not a chamber of hell hot enough for a woman of your taste.

What do you think is more patient, an idea or a hope?

Heinously depressing.

The first chapter was great. But this is quite a lot of octopus content. Getting a bit bored...

Just 'ok' for me so far...

I'm really, really, really enjoying this book.

I'm really, really, really enjoying this book.

Author strikes me as crotchety misanthrope who thinks she’s smarter than everyone except possibly her lab partner Bill. I might not be able to finish this one...