Aine > Recent Status Updates

first time in ages i’ve kept myself up just reading this late which is such a feat - tartt can write a taut thriller!

kind of waiting on the “horror story” elements to kick in… it’s gothic in a sense but much of the horror is quite minimal (although not entirely absent). which isn’t a bad thing but a headscratcher when the cover advertises the book as such. living by the nice bookseller’s advice of waiting it out till it makes sense at the end

eeeearly days but the manner of narration here is so cool and worth appreciating! immediately i was like the way tokarczuk creates settings is so evocative - honestly feels like a film - and then of course it really leans onto the feeling that Wojnicz is being spectated or watched which is obviously eerie. cool stuff

sooo emotionally affected by so much of this i hope the ending doesn’t wreck me

“how do you ever expect to create anything if you get all your experiences second-hand?” 🫣

SPOILERS ofc
1. i’m struck by how lucid and modern charlotte bronte’s depiction of what i would call manipulation is like it’s actually crazy i was reading this like noooooo girl you’re being lovebombed after he’s ignored you. and you’re all alone. it’s red flag after red flag. very cool
2. just gasped the whole way through this last chapter. like audibly. and clutched my pearls

threw this in my bag for the train because jane eyre was too chunky and . it’s very train book but i’m enjoying still

i do hope nothing bad happens to my Dear Close Friend Jane Eyre

reread for essays because i can’t remember anything. ferdinand is fucking WEIRD like… ‘oh noooo u gotta change the subject before i imagine my sister sleeping with someone.. probably someone buff and massive’ freak ! and he’s a furry

another book for class to add to the cr shelf… ok

WHAT is going on

marked this as finished on storygraph because i wanted it in my september stats (because i am a shallow performative reader) and the guilt is eating me alive i lowkey don’t want to finish jt. had my seminar i have nothing else to say and no drive to finish BUT i’m a completionist so we shall see

i had nothing to say in workshop

i am so cooked workshop on this in less than two hours

this is soooooo fun i am having a grand time

finished text A. meh. it’s okay. fun and readable! i’ll take a break and maybe read text B at the weekend. maybe

1. ivan fucking sucks
2. this is so funny and clever at times and then at other times it feels like batuman is just describing a sequence of events in a ‘quirky’ way eg “ivan handed me two knives and two forks. i looked at the two knives and forks in my hands” LIKE i get what batuman is going for but it can be SO fatiguing
3. selin you like girls

i’m enjoying this moderately ! thought it would be a new fav, and i might like it more later on, but idk something’s not clocking. i like selin but i have very little connection to her? which of course could be rhetorical and to do with her depersonalisation, but i just feel there’s something missing. i do love an epistolary novel though

STUNNING once again i am in awe of zadie smith and how she can transplant fully realised characters into your head within a few sentences - and so memorably!!!! i hate everyone in this book but i am so attached. smith has such a keen eye

hooooly shit. also found out this is largely based on howard’s end hellooo bloomsbury group

far from the first person to say this but zadie smith is soooo clever and so funny im obsessed