nastya > Recent Status Updates

So that one spring day in 2012, as I tried my hand at writing a radiant, life-affirming novel, I was once again confronted by this unresolved problem. I had long lost a sense of deep-rooted trust in humans. How, then, could I embrace the world? I had to face this impossible conundrum if I meant to move forwards, I realized. I understood that writing was my only means of getting through and past it.

“The folly of not allowing people to be comfortable at home—and the folly of people’s not staying comfortably at home when they can! …here are we setting forward to spend five dull hours in another man’s house, with nothing to say or to hear that was not said and heard yesterday, and may not be said and heard again to-morrow.”

Me every time I go out

Is this the 13th best novel ever written in the whole wide world?? Stay tuned!

We already know each other’s views on these subjects; we speak in order to keep the silence away. It’s as though we reheat these issues in our very dear little copper saucepan—so battered and beloved—hoping by accident to stir in something new. But we are inoculated against surprise. We can no longer make each other laugh. We can’t even startle one another.

She had always wanted to do every thing, and had made more progress both in drawing and music than many might have done with so little labour as she would ever submit to. […]She was not much deceived as to her own skill either as an artist or a musician, but she was not unwilling to have others deceived, or sorry to know her reputation for accomplishment often higher than it deserved.

"In viewing the biblical text in this way Origen followed Clement in relishing the use of an ‘allegorical’ method of understanding the meaning of literary texts, which by then had a long history in Greek scholarship. This is how learned Greeks had read Homer and how learned Alexandrian Jews like Philo had read the Tanakh."

This feels wrong to me, personally. I feel like you should commit to your sacred texts.

My penguin edition starts out with tips on reading this book and begging me to keep reading even though it is very boring, it was even boring for her contemporaries who never had anything better to do! It even tells me to get an audiobook. That's new :)

I am trying, Helen, but why tf Kiev, Odessa?... I might get annoyed again so no promising to finish

When I discovered that history is a fable, and a poor one at that, I started looking for a better fable, and found theology.

“Thus I draw from the absurd three consequences, which are my revolt, my freedom, and my passion. By the mere activity of consciousness I transform into a rule of life what was an invitation to death—and I refuse suicide.”

hope he tells us soon where you can procure that passion cause I have none

Seeking what is true is not seeking what is desirable. If in order to elude the anxious question: “What would life be?” one must, like the donkey, feed on the roses of illusion, then the absurd mind, rather than resigning itself to falsehood, prefers to adopt fearlessly Kierkegaard’s reply: “despair.” Everything considered, a determined soul will always manage.

Please watch 'The Ballad of Wallis Island' if you crave bittersweet adorableness this holiday season!

I don’t think she’s good at short stories, at least at this point in her career

More Hastings?! Can we not?

It’s hard to tolerate Hastings’ stupidity . Why did Agatha decide to write him in this way I wonder

Randall is fantastic and all, but I wish he were not her first cousin! Yikes!

First impressions: This is just a simple puzzle box with characters being nothing more than puppets. I remember loving her in my early teens but these days give me Heyer’s any day, with her beautiful settings, humor, fun characters and good writing

Not as fun as the two previous mysteries ☹️

This book just makes me happy, what the hell?! It's a delicious intricate cake made from the best ingredients. And to think I once thought Heyer was meh.

She was wrong. He did not dislike her; he was even, in a contemptuous way, fond of her, but she had lost her charm and become instead of the blushing, adoring girl he had married, a shrinking, exasperatingly virginal woman who tried nervously to placate him, and whom it was impossible not to bully.

Heyer is an incredible observer of people

The first year since I started reading again I won't hit even 40 books a year! I am transforming from a rabid avid reader into a casual one.

Trying a few of the most beloved Heyer romances before and not enjoying them at all, I thought Heyer was not for me. Yet this mystery is absolutely delightful and I am having such a grand time! There're 11 mysteries for me to look forward to, and then, maybe, I'll try her romances once more?

Not very impressed after the first story; it wasn’t nearly as smart or witty as I’d been led to believe. "It's so online omg!" I guess I am not, cause I don't know these people, thank zeus!

Can someone explain me to myself? Why do I love anything Ancient Greece, but whenever it’s Romans, I’ve got nothing? Is it because Ancient Greece is a mythical place, the land where you can meet Athena or horny Zeus in the woods, and Rome feels like a real place? How do I start appreciating Rome at last??

“I’d normally recommend you investigate the general shelves in your free time, but I doubt you can actually read.’
“‘I can read fine,’ I scowled. ‘My mama taught me.’
“‘Then I’ll be sure to send you a letter when I start giving a damn.’


come on, it was a perfect opportunity for yo mama joke!

This book had 431 “fuck”s in it! It’s sooooo cool!

Persuasion is the most romantic, but this one is the most fun?

“If there is a good fortune on one side, there can be no occasion for any on the other. No matter which has it, so that there is enough. I hate the idea of one great fortune looking out for another. And to marry for money I think the wickedest thing in existence.”

I thought Lizzy got hots for Darcy sometime after she saw his house. And then he saved her family… with his money. Also, “No matter which has it”?Rly?

Where people wish to attach, they should always be ignorant. To come with a well-informed mind is to come with an inability of administering to the vanity of others, which a sensible person would always wish to avoid. A woman especially, if she have the misfortune of knowing anything, should conceal it as well as she can.

And while the abilities of the nine-hundredth abridger of the History of England, or of the man who collects and publishes in a volume some dozen lines of Milton, and a chapter from Sterne, are eulogized by a thousand pens—there seems almost a general wish of decrying the capacity and undervaluing the labour of the novelist, and of slighting the performances which have only genius, wit, and taste to recommend them.