Helena > Recent Status Updates

The complete lack of any discernible characters or plot bothered me at the beginning but I'm actually fully sold now #lispectorhive

Finally finishing this as I got it out of the storage locker it accidentally got left in... I think the detached and blunt manner in which she describes relationships and sex is simultaneously bonkers and kind of illuminating

This is the only dostoevsky my dad could find to lend me, am moderately enjoying it but it mostly makes me want to read the better ones

Stratospherically high expectations for this... Pls don't let me down...

Want to read every single other Elaine Kraf book immediately... she understands the universe

This is a very compassionate and thoughtful account of Karen's anorexia but I do think the author is laying it on too thick with the idea that a fulfilling romantic relationship/life partner would've been her great panacea.

Author clearly deeply enamoured of her own transgressiveness but/so a fun read so far

Idk I kind of don't want to finish this because the thought of living in a universe where I have none of the Neopolitan novels left to read is depressing the hell out of me

The surrealism kind of reminds me of Alice in Wonderland if Alice in Wonderland was unrelentingly bleak

This is definitely kind of bad but I'm enjoying it anyway

"I love anything that pushes against the door of reality and offers an elsewhere. I don't need the elsewhere to be better, I just need it to be somewhere else."

What I'm learning about pretentious, self-absorbed postwar French intellectuals is that they're just like me

The version I'm reading has a foreword by Le Guin where she points out that what distinguishes this book from a lot of mainstream sci-fi is that it doesn't assume the superiority or omniscience of the human race (it's pretty much the opposite). That kinda gets to the root of what irritates me about most classic sci fi... Anyway this is good so far

The writing style is kind of jarring for the first few paragraphs every time I pick it up then suddenly I find myself several chapters further in hanging onto every word. Mad how much feeling she's able to convey with sentences that don't actually make sense as written really

Knew nothing about this book beyond having seen a collection of screenshots of the movie before I nicked it off my parents' shelf. What's surprising me is that it's very funny. In a hideously bleak way... But definitely funny

(Maybe I should reserve judgement until the very end but) it does kinda feel like Rose wanted to write about a selection of disparate women/feminist topics and she feels like she should occasionally pay lip service to the idea of linking them together to make it into an actual book. I'm not necessarily mad about that, a lot of it is pretty interesting. But there doesn't seem to be an overarching point developing atm

This is basically like reading an undergrad maths textbook but it is giving me sufficient knowledge to form more authoritative-sounding opinions about roller derby rankings. Which is what I wanted soooooo

"I believed more or less this: marriage is the end, after marrying nothing else can happen to me. Imagine: always having someone beside you, never knowing solitude - Good God! - not being with myself ever, ever. And being a married woman, that is, a person with her destiny all mapped out. From then on all you do is wait to die."

It's killing me that John von Neumann named his dog "Inverse"

The first few chapters really made me worry this book was going to revolve around the author's initial fixation on phalluses and phallic imagery but it does get more interesting and varied as it goes on. Tbf can't deny that a lot of stuff men do is about their penises like she wouldn't necessarily be wrong per se...

I think this book was written to drive me, Helena, specifically, insane

The big hook for me is how much the subject matter clearly means to the author; the level of thought she's put into this is so clear. But then occasionally I'm left thinking why are you so floridly imagining the sex lives of these real women that existed idk

Wow I love Samantha Hunt... this isn't quite as good as The Seas but nothing is so that's fair enough

I'm just not fujo enough for this I'm sorry...

Genuinely only reading this because of the conversation Jenny and Marina have about Anne Carson in season one episode one of the L Word sorry if this offends...

This is very very good but (so?) is also giving me hideous ideas about reconnecting with old friends that I really shouldn't

Kind of love how Darcey Steinke makes you vividly feel like you're watching some dubious and grimy 90s cult movie. But you're reading. Crazy

Enjoying this you know... hard not to be blown away by how smart Arendt is really. Feels constantly surprising in the ways it's insightful

Pretty sure I bought this in like my second year of uni or something... finally going to be a big girl and actually read it

Hate this woman's irritating fucking husband so muchhhhh.... divorce him plz sister 🙏

(I think she does based on a skim read of the acknowledgements, thankfully)