dieulinh > Recent Status Updates

on page 74 anolik used the word stratagems for didion. i fear i see where this is going.

sure it's this deliberate reframing intent on rescuing didion from the sentimental image of the perfect wife, insisting on her ambition and edge. yet this correction feels imposed and not earned where the domestic didion was once flattened into passivity, anolik is sharpening her into something unduly severe.

fun and gossipy tabloid like reads like babitz and not like a paris review journalist. but also um hello let's get to didion here can we?

read post nap on my flight home.
really do not enjoy the prose. but maybe it's good to not only always read devastatingly haunting books with every line being a terrific one liner.

i wish goodreads had a photo feature so you all can see how i'm bawling

the only book so far to get me out of my reading slump. every word better than the last. how can something be both so out of body and so embedded and felt deep within my heart i literally do not know. actually crying on the way to work not even giving the day a fucking chance.

man what the hell

THIS WRITING STYLE I CANNOT I HAVE TO DNF I FEAR

for book club. i hate the writing style. but anything for book club.

found myself wanting to break my own heart again, so here we are.

starting to see some parallels in little lea and i. convinced that everything's a metaphor in this book.

very stream of consciousness, maybe this is what i need right now. can't tell if it's working or if it's making her sound very annoying.

now realising i should not be pleased when finding parallels between me and a sally rooney character

professional book hoarder, amateur finisher

LEFT THE BOOK BEHIND WHEN I SPENT THE NIGHT AT A FRIENDS UGGGGHHHH

"to fear judgment was not the same thing as believing that the judgment was valid" oh great now i need therapy

"what does he have to tell him anyway. i just want to say, i'm on your side. i know i've never done anything to help you, but in principle, in spirit. i've been on your side all along"

made me rethink some relationships i've had and have. made me rethink a lot.

wrapped up part one! tldr: sensual, complex, just right.
peter is an odd and yet somewhat (not to be a male apologist) understandable character, ivan is as clumsy as clumsy can be but almost endearingly so. naomi is, well, naomi, sylvia tugs on my heart strings, and as does margaret. they're all equally complicated in their own ways and rights & rooney manifests tensions in each dynamic so well.

"a false soothing or a true soothing, she can't tell"

on cowardice and courage: "we're being hard on ourselves in a way, he remarks, because both our lives involve some voluntary exposure to what other people might call defeat. which i think requires a certain degree of courage. even if just psychologically."

wow.

wanting and working towards a more equitable society and fucking a girl who needs you financially (above wanting you sexually) and leading another on? great heavens what

sure ivan and margs are kinda sweet, but much more interested in ivan and peters dynamic. glad to see its playing out quite sweetly one could say. intrigued.

vulnerable linh moment: excuse me if i wanted smut i wouldve revived my pink ipod touch 5 with wattpad

oh thats fine i planned on crying today anyway.

"not the one they wanted, but the one they have" mightve just saved me.

as if with some kind of magic, rooney puts into words the clumsiness and fragility of something as delicate as human relationships. in all forms. in any form.

"It means nothing. That isn't true: it means something, but the meaning is unfamiliar."

and in one sentence sally rooney has given me more clarity in my own life

WHAT

first chapter done. great heavens. sylvia and naomi and mfing peter.

i'm gonna be crushed by this one too now aren't i...
read on the tube. almost missed my stop. mentally preparing to never get over anything ever all over again. bad.

already can tell this is a 4+/5 star read.

the first author ive seen to write the way i do, with accents on vietnamese words woven into english prose.

giving new light to my home, i really like it so far.

"and also why she prayed for so radical an alteration. Implicit in her desire was racial self-loathing... The novel pecks away at the gaze that condemned her."

I suspect this book is going to heal my inner child more than I know.

"the main character could not stand alone since her passivity made her a narrative void"

only on the foreword and i already feel morrison's magic