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‘Such stormy thoughts—so many different resolutions crowded in upon me, that my mind was little better than a chaos of conflicting passions.’

Okay, I’m done adding books for now, promise. 😁

Oooh Anne Brontë’s writing is delightful.

I like the way Steinbeck uses interstitial chapters to describe the wider socio-economic problems of the area at the time, before returning to the main story in other chapters. It’s really effective.

‘Two Gallants’

Experience had embittered his heart against the world.

‘After the Race’

That night the city wore the mask of a capital.

‘Eveline’

All the seas of the world tumbled about her heart.

‘Araby’

…my body was like a harp and her words and gestures were like fingers running upon the wires.

‘An Encounter’

…I disliked the words in his mouth…

‘The Sisters’

‘No one would think he’d make such a beautiful corpse…’

From the introduction by Terence Brown:

It is as if for a moment in the text Joyce reveals the bonding agent, comedy, which allows him to bring irony and compassion together, to show himself as the comic artist in the making who would eventually give the world Ulysses in which some of Dubliners’ Dubliners would achieve comedic fictional apotheosis…

Finished the story Don’t Look Now and honestly, I have no idea what happened at the end. Or why he saw his wife in the boat when it wasn’t her? Very confused.

Oh, you silly, silly man, Lionel. Such a dumb thing to do.

This is set in 2078! And it was published in 1826! That is wild.

Anyway, I’m in Vienna and the a/c in my room is not working and it is 26 degrees and I am WARM.

Even just from the first chapter, I can tell I am going to love Shelley’s writing. It’s so vivid!

If only—IF ONLY—this app allowed you to reply directly to comments on your status updates, while also NOTIFYING you of it. It really is the little things that make me happy.

‘Ah, that’s how you tyrants are,’ she said. ‘You love a beauty, you think only of her; you are condemned to death and, as you are going to the scaffold, you devote your last sigh to her; and yet you ask me, poor girl that I am, to sacrifice my dreams and my ambition.’

So much has happened already in such a short space of time. This book is wild.

It’s amazing what good writing can do for a reading experience. (Glares at Richard Matheson.)

I have no idea what to read.