Caleb Thrasher > Recent Status Updates

annual tradition

this has been a welcome surprise for when i want to read something less serious
the jokes still hold up, the art is good, and the characters have really fun personalities that play off each other well.
good to take a break sometimes

today livi came over and laughed at me because she saw war and peace next to my pillow and she said it was a real life “i wonder if he’s thinking of other girls” meme

like no i am up late at night thinking ab how prince andrei was horribly wounded in austerlitz

the thing nobody tells you about middlemarch is it’s the greatest novel ever written because that’s something you really can’t put into words until you read it

like the best i can get in summarizing it is “it makes jane austen look like dime novel genre fiction” and i love jane

every man goes his whole life looking for the perfect novel that will hold his attention at every moment and that book is war and peace this is the bible for dudes

boy this prelude section sure does seem to resemble a certain irreconcilable sectarian divide

probably nothing

it’s just a joy literally so much fun i’m taking my time with this deliberately bc i’ll only get to read it once but ohhhhhhhhhhhhh baby this has some
serious juice

“i don’t see how a man could be good for much unless he has one woman to love him dearly”
“i think the goodness should come before he expects that”

MIDDLEMARCH

oh my god?

damn that boy - he’s gone to sleep again

people online saying this book is boring and that’s bc a major theme is boredom but thats So Lame and when this book injects a boring moment or quote one of the characters always comments on it
not nearly as hard to follow as i thought
people make DFW out to be some impossible literary puzzle
i think reading james joyce would kill the average american

we are one book in and i can not wait to see the rest of this story that seems like it’s gonna be “jane austen romance ends in disillusioned divorce”

“look for us to elect someone who can cast himself as a rebel, maybe even a cowboy, but who deep down we’ll know is a bureaucratic creature who will operate inside the government mechanism instead of banging naively bang his head against it”

everybody should read 1.201-216
cyrus’ hubris in trying to control the massagetae plays out like a greek tragedy (probably bc this story mostly isn’t true but who cares)
having a blast