Ben Hambrecht > Recent Status Updates

Do you know the distress, the loneliness, the fear, the flight towards some heat, a voice, a body – then waking up in a wretched room in a foreign country, as if fallen from the earth, and then the dreary gratitude to hear another breath next to you – but what is that against the compulsive fantasy that drinks the blood and lets one wake up in the morning with the stale taste that one has abused oneself?

„The thing that really mattered was not to gaze at the view like tourists, but to partake of good meals there, to entertain people whom they liked, to write letters, to read books, in short to live in these surroundings,
passively allowing the beauty of the scene to soak into them rather than making it the object of their attention.“

…aaaand now the narrator has officially mutated from sweet nice guy to manipulative insecure POS boyfriend. No wonder the next volume is titled "The Prisoner". Albertine, stay strong

"We devote ourselves to the pastime of seeking to attract, while unable to love."

What a sentence. I have nothing to add.

Early weekend, checked out my bookstore to find a surprise new huge novel by one of my favourite authors, AND got 25 % off. Today, life is good.

Sometimes in this life, under the stress of an exceptional emotion, people do say what they think.

Humans, creatures obviously less rudimentary in structure than the urchin or even the whale, are nevertheless still unprovided with a certain number of essential organs, and notably possess none that will serve for kissing. The place of this absent organ they supply with their lips, and thereby arrive perhaps at a slightly more satisfying result than if they were reduced to caressing the beloved with a horny tusk.

„I remember the old doctor, ’It would be interesting for science to watch the mental changes of individuals, on the spot.‘ I felt I was becoming scientifically interesting.“

The only valid excuse for a reading slump is a writing high.

It is always bittersweet when books find you, like tonight. Someone forgot a book on a bus stop bench, alone in the cold. Now "My Brilliant Friend" has a cozy new home with lots of new friends.

Nothing much happens, in glorious detail.

"My gaze felt itself trapped in the spontaneous incandescence of the flashing eyes of the Princess, who had unconsciously set them ablaze merely by turning her head to see who it might be that her cousin was thus greeting, while the Duchess, who had remembered me, showered upon me the sparkling and celestial torrent of her smile."

This is shaping up to become the best book I have read all year. Or at least a close second.

…boy is this dragging on… this feels like reading a newspaper from start to finish, including the shopping catalogue