Julia > Recent Status Updates

This is Very Wordy and Very Uninteresting.

I can’t believe I still have 16 flipping chapters of this book. I feel like I’m trapped in Siberia.

Bro has been wandering around for 100 pages. How much dwelling on Russian stereotypes can one man do?

The prose…it is purple.

Getting really frustrated with this absolutely cynical read of women’s entrance into sport and just read through some egregious reading comprehension failures, so idk if I can finish this one. I kind of want to finish it just to engage, but man.

What pernicious anemia does to a mf

“Mothers are only visible within this market society to the extent that we detach ourselves from caregiving, which is seen largely as an obstacle to that participation, and therefore to self-realization.”

“Why was she going into church on a weekday? Maybe she had a problem. Maybe she was knocked up. Maybe if he followed her into the church and told her he knew a little about problems, having been born with no toes, she’d have coffee with him.”

“But in all the Great Plains literature to come [...] every writer would be echoing the assumptions of the Turner thesis. It was a manifesto of the country’s willful refusal to recognize the limitations of the land.”

Wonder what precisely would be the Berry-an critique of the pioneer Boomers v. eastern Stickers. The pioneers of the Dakota territory did not live with the land as in his agricultural writing.

Reading this is like an examination of conscience every time.

This is my "book I'm embarrassed to be excited about" for the MMD reading challenge, but learning about Scientology is my secret embarrassing hobby and I watched her whole A&E show so...

Our lunch time read-aloud. The best.

"Public health campaigns that promote pumping are thus overturning the expectation that breastfeeding depends on contact between a mother and her baby. [P]olicy makers build [a] defense against arguments for paid federally mandated maternity leave. Who needs lavish European-style maternity leave when a mother's body is no longer the only vehicle through which the magic elixir, mother's milk, can be delivered?"

Cardinal Sarah for Pope.

This main character is almost intolerably whiny and I can't tell if she's supposed to be sympathetic.

I'm learning a ton and laughing at a juggalo reference. What's not to like?

I decided to read along with Chris' Newman class this semester, as much as I can.

"A man of this temperament is but a few doobies away from a harmless, hippie version of Islam." This book is great.

"Those who are generous in abandonment awake to marvelous vistas. After the days of storms and darkness, when Jesus lifts the veil and reveals a little of what he has done for him who has believed (he will not show it fully except in heaven - that will be our heaven), what joy to be able to say, 'Oh how right I was to believe! I believed and he surpassed all my hopes.'"

LOL: "Why should you...read Locke or Hume? Can grammar alone feed the human soul? Locke is a dreary old man; he may have a God, but he is a dusty dim God. And Hume is blasé. [...]He knows everything. [...] If I were to die tonight, he would know all about me by tomorrow. These old bones would be all arranged, sorted out, explained and in his coat-pocket; but somehow he would not have got me all the same."

"You see, my daughter, this great architect of mercy: He converts our miseries into grace and makes salutary medicine for our souls from the venom of our iniquities." - St. Francis de Sales

This is very long and ponderous.

This is absolutely horrifying.

World government, Masons, Esperanto! This book is great.

His time in Chiapas is so dreadful it's hilarious.

Experiencing weird synergy having read Greene's (hilarious, biting, fantastic) thoughts about Mexico City this morning and spending nap time watching The Bachelor travel to the VERY SAME PLACE. #whoa #icontainmultitudes

OK, this started slow, but now I'm beginning to get it. Super depressing, but it's medieval Russia. I guess I got what I asked for.

Guenever is reminding me of the narrator of The End of the Affair.

I'm enjoying Lancelot's story exponentially more than the first two parts of the book, but I fear it might be a bit scandalous to discuss with my middle school students. At least it's generally clear (so far) on the consequences of sin and does not glamorize Lancelot's, hem, indiscretions.