Britton > Recent Status Updates

Officially marks my second failed attempt at reading this novel… idk it’s just toooo cyclical in its storytelling. Like the same three events will be repeated over and over again with slightly more information each time for 45 pages. It’s super emotionally resonant and has made me cry but it’s also suuuuch a slog to get through. I’m over it!

I’ve been really busy lately and haven’t had a lot of time to read but I’m seriously obsessed with this book. Constantly thinking abt it when I’m not reading.

so far this has been like "what if cormac mccarthy was cool and interesting and had a unique perspective"

still have absolutely no idea where this is going

the combined forces of covid psychosis, a vague feeling of inadequacy in my knowledge of classical world literature, the semi-recent release of la vita nuova by christine and the queens feat. caroline polachek, and an edible led me to buy a three-volume set of the divine comedy in late 2020 that has since been silently sitting on my bookshelf taunting me. started reading last night and it's secretly fire.

This is my knausgård

I’m bored

Guess I’m one of these people now

cassius and brutus are gayboys

Imagine naming your kid Thornton.

”But now her judgement, instead of being controlled by duteous devotion, was made active by the embittering discovery that in her past union there had lurked the hidden alienation of secrecy and suspicion… There remained only the retrospect of painful subjection to a husband… whose exorbitant claims for himself had… made him defeat his own pride by shocking men of ordinary honour.”

YES YES YES

"For years after, Lydgate remembered the impression produced in him by this involuntary appeal -- this cry from soul to soul, without other consciousness than their moving with kindred natures in the same embroiled medium, the same troublous, fitfully illuminated life. But what could he say now except that he should see Mr. Casaubon again tomorrow?"

If he had to blame anyone, it was necessary for him to move all the papers within his reach, or describe various diagrams with his stick, or make calculations with the odd money in his pocket before he could begin; and he would rather do other men’s work than find fault with their doing. I fear he was a bad disciplinarian.

Anyone watching keenly the stealthy convergence of human lots sees a slow preparation of effects from one life on another which tells like a calculated irony on the indifference of the frozen stare with which we look at our unintroduced neighbour. Destiny stands by sarcastic with our dramatis personae folded in her hand.

Why is this so fucking funny.

"You have your own opinion about everything, Miss Brooke, and it is always a good opinion."
What answer was possible to such stupid complimenting?

Or, gossiping about the academic Mr. Casaubon:
"He has got no good red blood in his body," said Sir James.
"No. Somebody put a drop under a magnifying-glass, and it was all semi-colons and parentheses," said Mrs. Cadwallader.

When he came in, Lulu, the little Pekingese bitch, a ball of fluff, had barked, and angrily, too; well, when she stopped growling, she had sniffed his shoes at length. The vitality of those little monsters is incredible. You feel like petting them, then stamping them.

“And soon we were on to Fritz’s favourite topic: he pronounced it Larv.”

Calling the Americas "a continent conceived by the scum of the earth without a moment of love: the children of abductions, rapes, violations, infamous dealings, deceptions, the union of enemies with enemies." Based...

Glorified picture book

"At last, his money worries were over. He was able to send Helen to college and buy Louise the gift of her dreams: a complete set of Tupperware (5,481 pieces)."