nastya > Recent Status Updates

This is very really good so far with the potential to end up extraordinary.

Although the eponymous hero of the classic Tale of Genji was known for his amorous adventures, in Japanese literature romantic love had always been merely one theme among many—certainly less central than the change of seasons. The Western novels that had reached Japan in the last century and a half were almost all romance novels, transforming Japanese readers—especially women—into romantics.

Holding a glass of amber liquid in her hand, she idly scanned the room. No dark suit in sight. No one paid any attention to a middle-aged woman looking around the room. Inevitably, the older a woman became, the less she attracted people’s eyes; now that she could go virtually unseen, it was her turn to observe others. This was the law of a woman’s life.

According to the pamphlet they’d been given at the reception desk, the Hôtel du Lac had been redesigned more than once during its long history

ha! I’ve been thinking about Brookner because this is very much Japanese version of the same story of a woman struggling with loneliness, getting old, dealing with an old parent and here it is! Damn if I had read that book I might’ve noticed allusions but alas.

A corner of her mind had shut down. In life, did getting older inevitably mean getting inured to unhappiness? Part of her accepted this, but another part rebelled. Her health eventually broke down.

I wanted to grow up and plough,
To close one eye, stiffen my arm.
All I ever did was follow
In his broad shadow round the farm.
I was a nuisance, tripping, falling,
Yapping always. But today
It is my father who keeps stumbling
Behind me, and will not go away.

Barlaam and Josaphat, the audacity!

Is "I am so depressed, so deeply and thoroughly depressed" part over? 🤞

I don't know, folks... Am interested in 1200 pages more of this? Anyone read much further, your verdict?

If Albert was right and they were only schoolgirls about the same age as his sisters in England, how was it they were allowed to set out alone, at the end of a summer afternoon? He reminded himself that he was in Australia now: Australia, where anything might happen. In England everything had been done before: quite often by one’s own ancestors, over and over again.

It took time to warm up to the book, but now I am finally in. It's definitely surprising and I have no idea where it's going which is rare. Can't imagine how she is going to tie everything together in the end.

There’s zero Hardinge whimsy in this one and this doesn’t feel ya at all.

WHAT is a poet? An unhappy man who hides deep anguish in his heart, but whose lips are so formed that when the sigh and cry pass through them, it sounds like lovely music.

Oh! I always deserve the best treatment, because I never put up with any other

First Persuasion and now Emma, and I am finally under the thrall of her superior writing skills. I get Austen now! At least with those two!

There was nothing in all this either to astonish or interest, and it caught Emma’s attention only as it united with the subject which already engaged her mind. The contrast between Mrs. Churchill’s importance in the world, and Jane Fairfax’s, struck her; one was every thing, the other nothing—and she sat musing on the difference of woman’s destiny...

Harriet rational, Frank Churchill not too much in love, and Mr. Knightley not wanting to quarrel with her, how very happy a summer must be before her!

She liked his open manners, but a little less of open-heartedness would have made him a higher character.—General benevolence, but not general friendship, made a man what he ought to be.

“No, I thank you. But do come in. Who do you think is here?—Miss Woodhouse and Miss Smith; so kind as to call to hear the new pianoforte...”
“Well,” said he, in a deliberating manner, “for five minutes, perhaps.”
“And here is Mrs. Weston and Mr. Frank Churchill too!—Quite delightful; so many friends!”
“No, not now, I thank you. I could not stay two minutes. I must get on to Kingston as fast as I can.”

Very smooth!

Crosses had featured little in public Christian art outside written texts before the time of Constantine; now they could even be found as motifs in jewellery.

Gaius Julius Caesar looked at his wife. “Isn’t it a rare pleasure to discover that one genuinely likes one’s child? To love one’s child is natural. But liking? Liking has to be earned,” he said.

And here I am reading about Gaius Julius Caesar scheming with Gaius Marius, Julius mentioning he is almost 60, and I am confused where the hell is Cleopatra. I did not have these issues with Thomases I swear.
"Julia was the daughter of Gaius Julius Caesar and Marcia (daughter of praetor Quintus Marcius Rex). She was a sister of Gaius Julius Caesar and a paternal aunt of future Roman dictator Gaius Julius Caesar."

“One would rather have a stranger preferred than one’s very particular friend—with a stranger it might not recur again—but the misery of having a very particular friend always at hand, to do every thing better than one does oneself!”

Just solid, unpretentious, skillful writing I respect and enjoy.

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!