Diane Evans > Recent Status Updates

You’ve got to be kidding me.
Why am I crying?! I just keep rereading it and crying more.
This is only the first book?!

“a long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right”

T.Paine is about to make things messy!

Gandalf’s timing is so funny.
The old man is nowhere to be found, then the first thing he does when he shows up is chastise Frodo for all the mistakes that he’s made. You can really taste the catholic guilt.

This book is breaking my brain in all the best ways.

“Had not a researcher once, audaciously fanciful, referred to the “beasts of the Milky Way,” cosmic monsters whose flesh, bone, and brain were built up out of solar systems?”

I looked up Thomas Mann’s faith after this passage, and I love how you can see his questioning of faith/origins in the midst of this awe-inspiring take on the universe.

Ever have a book read you so harshly you should be lying on its couch and paying it by the hour to psychoanalyze you?

“But in general we would emphasize the fact that people in Hans Castorp’s state regularly feel a craving for self-revelation, an impulse to confess themselves, a blind preoccupation with self, and a thirst to possess the world of their own emotions…”

Ouch, this hurts. It’s hard to avoid knowing the ending because it’s such a short novel, but knowing the ending makes you hurt so much more for the main character as you walk through his emotions.

“I open a round of nighttime negotiations, which take the form of prayer.”

This chapter.

“When your spirit is uneasy, stillness can be a kind of suffering.”

I trust this narrator about as much as I would trust a one-legged chair.

Chapter 28 is a necessary re-read.

“A field sowed with thousands of tiny metallic seeds of war that produce no harvest.”

Darrow’s kinda lost the plot hasn’t he?

Sobbing. I wish I could give Morrie the biggest hug.

“Perspective is a wicked creature.”

I’m already 6 chapters through this book right?
The main character’s name is Chase. I SWEAR up until this point no context has been given to this character’s gender, so I’ve been assuming it’s just a guy who was in a past relationship with the other male lead. Nope. They start throwing “ma’am’s” and “she’s” at me and I’m just sitting here wondering when we changed POV.

“Now I knew my mother had liked almond cake with honey and hot tea, that she once used the word ‘profoundly’…”

I only recognize it because I’m currently in that position, but there’s a portion of grief when you worry about the things you don’t know about a person who is gone. You recognize that your memory of them will fade and even knowing the words they would use is such treasured knowledge.

I’m watching the show The Punisher and there are so many book/literary references. I totally wasn’t expecting that from a show like this but I love it and hope they keep them coming!

“I feel like a tourist in my own country”
“You still think of this place as your country?”

The symbolism! The parallels!

You’ve got to be kidding me. There was such a great set up to get the main character out of this situation and to a smooth conclusion, and you drop the ball just like that?! With a piece of paper?! COME ON.

I’m in the introduction and there’s already a Letterkenny reference, I love this.
“If you do what you love, you’ll never work a day in your life.”

I have 1 gripe so far. Just one.
The female main character. Her first move in a fight is always a kick to the face. When you are presumably shorter than your upright opponent, their face is not the best option to start with.
I just keep imagining a cartoonish Rockettes high kick in the middle of these intense fight scenes. There are better ways to show her hand-to-hand combat training. Otherwise I love it.

“It wasn’t meant to be. Or, maybe, it was meant not to be.”

The way Hosseini describes events is just so eloquent. It’s respectful of the subject matter without lessening the impact of it.

Woah. Talk about a shock factor!

On audiobook format, the character focus changes are a little more confusing than I imagine they would be with the physical book.
But it’s reminding me of Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr, which was a book I enjoyed so I’ve got high hopes.

wooo boy that middle part was slow rolling. It’s starting to pick up the pace again, but there’s still so much left and I don’t understand how.