Emily > Recent Status Updates

HEY um what THE FUCK

The endless summer passage is a perfect encapsulation of the period writing the author is trying to mimic, but it leans more Montgomery in Anne of Green Gables than Brontë???

Was absolutely riveted by the whole TNO week. Just got to the part two date reveal and I’m stumbling. Not sure if I’m ready to return to that but let’s see how sittenfeld deals with it *holds breath*

And cue the Cave of Wonders

Ugh they’re doing it to me again (in the best way of course)

After ten years of watching John on vlogbrothers, I’ve concluded that this is the book John was born to write

That was a hard chapter to read about the pills and the chads and Jordan Peterson and the... ugh

I have immense trouble with Luc. I want to ship it but I know he is her abuser but aaah

Addie and I already have the same Type, but A BOOKSELLER??! I’m done for.

I am going back and forth with myself about whether I should devour this or sip it. Every time I pick it up my heart feels so excited and mournful that every line I read is a line that i also lose. My god.

“Greed violates the spirit of connectedness and community that is natural to human survival... The will to sacrifice on behalf of another, always present when there is love, is annihilated by greed. No doubt this explains our nation’s willingness to deprive poor citizens of government-funded social services while huge sums of money fuel the every-growing culture of violent imperialism.”

This entire book is a masterclass, or at least 14 college credits worth of knowledge. Goddamn. And it’s just $30?? Or free, at the local library? A blessing from one of our brightest minds.

“The likelihood that your acts of resistance cannot stop the injustice does not exempt you from acting in what you sincerely and reflectively hold to be the best interests of your community.”

“The unceasing propaganda in our time for ‘the individual’ seems to me deeply suspect, as ‘individuality’ itself becomes more and more a synonym for selfishness. A capitalist society comes to have a vested interest in praising ‘individuality’ and ‘freedom’— which may mean little more than the right to the perpetual aggrandizement of the self, and the freedom...

“When the great Lincoln speeches are cited..., they have— in true postmodernist fashion— become completely emptied of meaning. They are now gestures of nobility, of greatness of spirit. What they were being great about is irrelevant. It is all in the grand tradition of American anti-intellectualism: the suspicion of thought, of words.”

“Let’s by all means grieve together. But let’s not be stupid together. A few shreds of historical awareness might help us understand what has happened, and what May continue to happen. ‘Our country is strong,” we are told again and again. I for one don’t find this entirely consoling. Who doubts that America is strong? But that’s not all America has to be.

“The unanimously applauded, self-congratulatory bromides of a Soviet Party Congress seemed to us contemptible. The unanimity of the sanctimonious, reality-concealing rhetoric spouted by nearly all the American officials and media commentators in these last days seems, well, unworthy of a mature democracy.”

This essay should be added to every 9/11 lesson plan. It points out the infantilization that even I noticed when I was a kid.

“We cannot remember everyone. What is remembered is not testimony but... literature.”

I really should learn me a thing or two about Russian history. Still, I like reading Sontag’s reproduction of history

“that feminism [war on men] suggests an avowal of strength—and a denial of the difficulty and the cost for women in being strong (above all, the cost in masculine support and affection); more, it proclaims pride in being a woman, it even affirms the superiority of women— all attitudes that felt alien to the many independent women who were proud of their accomplishments...

Ellie’s first person narration feels so distant somehow, as if it’s just a continuation of dialogue. It is so surface, like her thoughts don’t get deeper than what she says to other characters.