El > Recent Status Updates

I'm mildly enjoying this cos I'm visiting Trieste, but, alas, for a novel so short, and a plot so, it must be said, thus far, at least, thin, there are far, far too many, commas.
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He has not, reader, become more likeable. I've offended my father-in-law by saying so. Screw them both.

Fucking finish this.

I sincerely hope this arsehole of a narrator is an ironic creation

I'm thoroughly enjoying this book. But now I've gotten to the point where every page is so steeped in looming tragedy that I can hardly bear to go on

"Today I know that it is a hopeless task to try and dress a man in words we can live again on the printed page, especially a man like Sandro. He was not the sort of person you can tell stories about, nor to whom one erects monuments - he who laughed at all monuments: he lived completely in his deeds, and when they were over nothing of him remains - nothing but words, precisely."

"Dissension, diversity, the grain of salt and mustard are needed: Fascism does not want them, forbids them, and that's why you're not a Fascist; it wants everybody to be the same, and you are not. But immaculate virtue does not exist either, or if it exists it is detestable."

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I love how Miller's stories start *right away*!

What a delight this is! Joy and humour bubble from every page

Fine story so far, but perhaps, if paragraphs were shorter than a page, and contained more than 3 sprawling sentences, it wouldn't've taken me 10 years to get past the first chapter.

Engaging start, plenty of hooks; maybe a bit 00s for a 2023 YA audience?

Interesting, but not sure I'll get to the end of it - I've never read a self-help book, or many memoirs! Though this is easy to read and engaging so far

"My father was undemonstrative, and could neither share his feelings with his children nor deal with the feelings we had for him. For a long time I believed there must be a wealth of undiscovered treasure behind that uncommunicative manner, but later I wondered if there was anything behind it at all."

This book is full of unadorned, familiar realisms like this.

Fresh and pacy so far. I like how passion is established efficiently.

The sense of foreboding is almost unbearable

Interesting premise. I like the way she includes the story of its inception as a preface - more writers should do this! My first Lessing - hope I don't like it too much, she's written about a thousand more

"She feels the pulse of life, he thought, because there are no layers between her and her planet."

Boak.

This seems an appalling book. It's written "nicely". The descriptions of nature are elegant: gentle, calming, appreciative, nostalgic. But this is not a pastoral novel, and its portrayal of all humans is classist, sexist, racist, and condescending. Not one character encountered so far is created to elicit anything beyond shallow, distant pity. So far, I have no idea why an artist would be moved to write it.

"How can men recognize their real enemies when their family, schools and work teach them to struggle with each other and to believe law and decency come from the teachers?"

I really hope that men in general don't loathe women as much as this protagonist does

I got quite far with this; then, about two-thirds in, I came to a moment where the protagonists experience almost pure joy, and I simply could not bring myself to turn the page to see that surely crushed. 2 years on, I'm ready to say I'm not finishing this book!

Though slightly dismayed to note that, despite reading more today than I'll be able to for the next 2 months, I'm still only 33% through

Against the odds, I'm getting into this!

I have to really pay attention to this book :-/

This is so fun. Ashamed to say it's my first Pratchett - shame, I would've absolutely loved this at about 11

So far, finding this relentlessly critical and bleak. No problem with ppl hating their parents, but can't bear the thought of the chaos of having all that resentment out there in form and thought for anyone to critique

"Somebody," said Jacques, "your father or mine, should have told us that not many people have ever died of love. But multitudes have perished, and are perishing every hour - and in the oddest places! - for the lack of it."

'you can give each other something which will make both of you better—forever—if you will not be ashamed, if you will only not play it safe ... You play it safe long enough ... and you'll end up trapped in your own dirty body, forever and forever and forever - like me.'

And how long, at the best, can it last, since you are both men and still have everywhere to go? Only five minutes, I assure you, only five minutes, and most of that, helas! in the dark. And if you think of them as dirty, then they will be dirty— they will be dirty because you will be giving nothing, you will be despising your flesh and his.