nastya > Recent Status Updates

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!

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