Esmé > Recent Status Updates

So much drama.....the whiplash from Karenin hoping Anna will die, to their reconciliation, to her being irritated at his presence, to Vronsky shooting himself and somehow surviving, and finally to Karenin deciding to go through with the divorce and Anna saying nah I don't need it and going to Italy with Vronsky????? So much going on. Anyway, back to Levin's pre-marital bliss.

not sure how to feel about this yet. it feels important but also like i'm not supremely pleased with the execution. a lot of telling of facts and not showing of the stories and feelings that the author claims to want to get at alongside the history. a lot of the same pathetic expressions with sad eyebrows that don't quite capture the heaviness of the emotions. i'll keep going.

fuuuuuuuck - the real drama of Part 3 is of course Anna's confession to her husband about her love for Vronsky (and also when she told Vronsky that she's pregnant, which I forgot about until he mentioned it again), but the last chapters where Levin and his brother Nikolai are talking and can't acknowledge that Nikolai is dying...that was a different sort of painfulness.

“How could I have thought such a thing, since I did not wish it? And I could not suppose that my parents would see any harm in a visit in which I myself saw none...I imagined, like everyone else, that the brains of other people were lifeless and submissive receptacles with no power of specific reaction to any stimulus which might be applied to them" this book is like the definition of being autism-coded

his aunt needing to gossip with her maid constantly about what she sees out the window is just like me texting my friends all the time, like the need to debrief with the besties is so real

the thing about the madeleine anecdote for me is that my japanese grandpa who sometimes speaks french used to buy madeleines a lot. and talk about memory. and i never understood when i was 10 what he was really talking about (and i don't remember if he talked about the madeleines with me in english, japanese, or french). But now I see that maybe he was talking about Proust. I wonder if he would remember if I asked.

felt that

I've been challenged to read all of In Search of Lost Time, let's see how far I can get this month.

Actually so hilarious and fascinating the mix between the autofiction and the continuation of the Dykes to Watch Out For characters’ lives. I love how it is unnecessary to include Mo and [insert partner’s name here] since she was already basically an Alison Bechdel self-insert character anyway and so the dynamic is the same.

The chapter with the horse race was so thrilling, I felt that this must be what other people feel when they watch a FIFA match.

So freaking intense and for teenagers???

Part 2, Chapter 8: after feeling a bit of longing for the time during 2025 that I was listening to the War and Peace audiobook, I’ve been listening to the Anna Karenina audiobook for the last couple of weeks, and it is SO juicy. FYI the title character doesn’t actually enter until like Chapter 19, 3 hours into the audiobook, but the parallel stories are also great. Super engaging characters, I am enjoying.

So fucking awesome. I had to keep myself from bursting out laughing in the library.

I wish I would stop forgetting this at home so that I can keep reading it - super entertaining book for the bus, but unfortunately such a heavy (physically) book!

Ok this is starting to get weird. But here’s a section that I liked.

“A lie is also a truth, it’s just cunning and a little nervous. Lie if you can, and may you lie with a peaceful spirit. Because the truth demands a long staircase to climb as if I were condemned never to stop. I’m tired: that’s also why I speak softly—it’s so I don’t offend myself.”

“I am making a really bad book on purpose in order to drive off the profane who want to “like.” But a small group will see that this “liking” is superficial and will enter inside what I am truly writing, which is neither “bad” nor “good.””

Can’t get hit by the haters if you say this and also if you’re already dead.

Finally worked up the nerve to finish watching the series (best TV show ever), so excited to finally get into the books.

How am i like 10% through this book already and it’s all been like 1. Lil bit of Exposition = They live in a haunted house for real, and 2. Two characters having sex really quickly and most of the book so far is just them thinking about the past while they lie in bed afterward

The way I have to take so many notes with this book to keep up with the name dropping 💀

where is my mind, amirite brother

Not me crying in Irish trains rn

I’m literally 17 pages away from the end…but they’re like dying of thirst and I’m losing the will to continue on :(

The salamanders…he really thought he finally lost it

Just realized this part of the book is set at the same time as the Vancouver 2010 Olympics. Beautiful. What a time to be alive.

Just got out of the pig farm, that was fucking roughhhh

“But you aren’t really looking!” she exclaimed. “You are—” She flipped through her dictionary. “Wool, gathering!”
“That’s true,” I said. “I am woolgathering.”
“You are thinking about your friend,” she said. “That’s why you don’t want to listen to me.”
“But Rózsa. Don’t you ever like to . . . to do woolgathering?”
“No! I am not a dreamer!”

This Rózsa is rlly smth