Oliver > Recent Status Updates

She ends the story by essentially saying that while escaping responsibility through the lives of others is enjoyable, there’s comfort in your own experience of life.

Underlying the critique of social class is the idea that humans will be humans, will hope and dream and live and seek happiness in their circumstances

The story dives into an appreciation of the human experience. I understand now what she meant by the sociability of evening life. Not just interacting with others but considering their lives and experiences rather than focusing on the weight of your own life.

She goes on to describe the undesirables of society who try and fail to to escape the weight of reality. This story is at least in part a critique of social class and consumerism

I like how she juxtaposes the suffocation of daily life with the anonymity of an evening on the streets, the relief of being able to exist without the weight of expectations and memories

I’m only reading the short story Street Haunting, not this short story collection. The author so far is discussing the sociability of London streets on winter evenings. Me personally, I would not want to stand in the cold ass streets of London talking to people.

This book still sucks. I’m really hoping it’s one of those books that is slow for over half the book and then the plot randomly picks up. If not, the read will continue to be long and painful

This guy’s really self aware, especially when it comes to academia and pretension as a means of escapism.

“As Nelson Mandela said, the oppressor determines what tactics must be used to dislodge them.”
The amount of violence needed for a movement depends on the amount of violence used by those in power

In the 1930s, corporations were the biggest purchasers of tear gas and other chemical weapons because they used them against striking workers

Missed the book club because I was out of town, but I feel obligated to finish it

I forgot that Gollum used to be a hobbit and not a man. He was a Stoor hobbit, the only group of hobbit that used boats and swam, which makes a lot of sense why he settled in the mountain lake.

Normally, I forget the plot of a book immediately after reading it, but I surprisingly remember a lot of this.

Bilbo mentions the Last Desert. I googled it, and it’s weirdly not mentioned anywhere else in Tolkien’s works, but even The Silmarillion.

Read this for the first time in college. Reading again for book club.

“He suddenly felt he would go without bed and breakfast to be thought fierce.”

And he does lmao

Still sucks

I started this book back in December. I hate it. I don’t like the writing style. It’s too wordy. It pisses me off that I know she ends up with Darcy. He’s an ass, and no amount of character development could make me like him.

Avery finds out that Eira (like 70 something) was dating a man in his early 20s and says that she feels “oddly proud” of her. Ew. A few pages before, Eira’s son is treated like a creep (rightfully so) for flirting with a woman half his age.

It gives me the ick that the author chose to make Saga’s paternal grandmother a Norwegian from South Africa. She could have made her from anywhere and chose to make her a white South African 🤢

Kinetic raindrop tiles seem like a really cool way to collect energy. I wonder if they’re real or made up for the story

Holy shit, the British call an umbrella a bumbershoot

I’m not loving the author’s writing style. Seems forced