James > Recent Status Updates

Why didn't Adichie start this book with the only likeable character? There's actually no reason why this Kadiatou chapter couldn't have begun the book, besides...wanting to subject us to how shallow and foolish the other two characters are? Anyway, this is a note to people ready to give up on this book after the first 100 pages---Kadiatou is interesting!

More Democrats and Republicans: "As to this point, and as to some minor topics, there are differences of opinion; but it is perfectly clear to the brilliant and distinguished circle, all round, that nobody is in question but Boodle and his retinue, and Buffy and HIS retinue...A People there are...relied upon for shouts and choruses, as on the theatrical stage; but Boodle and Buffy...are the born first-actors..."

Democrats and Republicans: "On the other hand, the Right Honourable William Buffy, M.P., contends across the table with some one else that the shipwreck of the country--about which there is no doubt; it is only the manner of it that is in question--is attributable to Cuffy. If you had done with Cuffy what you ought to have done when he first came into Parliament, and had prevented him from going over to Duffy..."

Whiplash here after a week of McCarthy

I'm not sure I've been more surprised about how much I've enjoyed a book for a few years now. Who knew 1988 would be such a fertile year for a Roth- or Updike-esque chronicle of a divorced dude hanging out and selling houses in the New Jersey area?

The story of Hoan Ton-That in the first chapters is so well told! Peter Thiel is the actual Devil!

Really tempted to try to push this one or another one of his for book club. Also looking for a version of "Sons and Mothers" to maybe use for AP Lit, that story is so so good.

I finished it, I'm just reading it again because it's so good (and also so I can add it to my reading challenge for next year)

Yeah, this is starting to lag...though "A Squeeze of the Hand" is one of the greatest chapters in all of literature.

Why did I read Gravity's Rainbow twice and Ulysses once before reading this? Worried that I will run out of steam with this one like I did with those, but this is clearly the influence on every big book from the last ~175 years.

Though in many natural objects, whiteness...enhances beauty...and though this...applies to the human race itself, giving the white man ideal mastership over every dusky tribe...yet for all these...associations, with whatever is sweet, and honorable, and sublime, there yet lurks an elusive something in the innermost idea of this hue, which strikes more of panic to the soul than that redness which affrights in blood.

goddamn I have to see this movie now. So cinematic!

Game? I was born game and I intend to go out that way.

52 minutes into the audiobook and I AM UTTERLY SOLD ON PORTIS' RARE TALENT

UGH someone else put this on hold. Tempted to buy because parts of this are so transcendently good, but I can't tell if it's going to get grimmer or more joyful (I love Little Nonni) and so I'm going to just put it on hold again and maybe skim the first part again before I move on.

Needed to return to library but man this is good. May be Chabon's best. Feels like a much friendlier way to address the themes that have occupied him throughout his work: family, Jewishness, the Holocaust, American identity, etc.

SLOGGIN

NAUSICCA AND FIREWORK EJACULATIONS