Emma > Recent Status Updates

Can I write?... Above all, CAN A SELFISH EGOCENTRIC JEALOUS AND UNIMAGINATIVE FEMALE WRITE A DAMN THING WORTH WHILE?

'It is you, Frodo, and that which you bear that brings us all in peril.' why would you say that to him though 😢

aragorn really committed to the bit when he decided to just carry half of a sword everywhere he went. because, you know, symbolism!

it's been five years since my last re-read, it's the end of summer, there's a mini series coming in october - of course i am reading this again.

in the house of tom bombadil...such an atmospheric chapter to read before falling asleep. 'nothing passes doors or windows save moonlight and starlight and the wind off the hill-top'

rachel cusk writing about the pregnant body is...something. a "crisis of the flesh" indeed

these women are so obnoxious and unrelatable wow. cusk is really honing in on the pastiche of White suburban Womanhood huh

i feel like a lot of high fantasy writers that have come after tolkien, in their vain attempts to imitate, have failed to acknowledge how whimsical lotr is. and how this whimsy is absolutely vital for a story to emerge with such pathos and magnitude. they are singing in the forest! they're reciting poetry at a whim! they're bursting into tears because they're leaving the fields of their childhood!

the shadow of the past - easily my favourite chapter of the fellowship

I think I'm becoming a rachel cusk girly

'...I'm trying to figure out if there is anything I can do about my boyfriend thinking he's Jesus Christ'

is such a great sentence though

I'm desperate to feel close with [my mom], but also desperate for that closeness to be on my terms, not hers. I want her to know me for who I'm becoming. I want her to allow my growth. I want her to want me to be me.

The sea would be evident to [the skylark], as it always is to any creature - mammalian or avian - that lives on the peninsula: its colossal expanse and strength, its cold, turquoise depths, its saline scent, its restless presence at the fringes of the land, its power forever eroding some parts of it and building up others.

What Bran took amiss most of all was this leaving, the brazenness of it, as if it didn't matter at all, as if they didn't care that it was Bran's job, his purpose in life, to keep them all together, here, safe. They just opened the door and walked away and left, first the man and then the girl.

Lands are also formed in another way, suddenly emerging in a different sea, as if nature were compensating the earth for its losses, restoring in one place what it has swallowed up in another.

that plot armour is certainly very thick. but it's so darn compelling.

'Sie hat sich sehr gut nicht gehalten'

savage

'But a broken blade can still cut, Diago'

I am finding this very readable, although moving quite fast between plot points. I would like to linger more with each new setting, each new (or old) dynamic between characters, but maybe this is just the fault of the very first chapters.

I am...intrigued.

I have the choice of being constantly active and happy or introspectively passive and sad. Or I can go mad by ricocheting in between.

He eases himself down to die. He thinks, others can do it and so can I.

He has lived by the laws he has made and must be content to die by them. But the law is not an instrument to find out truth. It is there to create a fiction that will help us move past atrocious acts and face our future. It seems there is no mercy in the world, but a kind of haphazard justice: men pay for crimes, but not necessarily their own.

goethe ist schon irgendwie arg unsymphatisch

Henry glances back over his shoulder. No one has approached them. They are alone, as in a wasteland. Henry says, "Her breasts are slack and she has loose skin on her belly. When I felt it, it struck me to the heart. I had no appetite for the rest. I do not believe she is a maid."

my guy, have you looked in the mirror as of late?

In short, the construction of identity is bound up with the disposition of power and powerlessness in each society, and is therefore anything but mere academic wool-gathering.

Never underestimate Walter, his violence and cunning. The first blow came from nowhere and stunned him. There was blood in his eyes and after that Walter could do what he liked. He did it with his feet and he did it with his fists, till he, Thomas, was a bleeding jelly on the cobblestones, and his father stood over him and roared, 'So now get up!'

Weil ich bin jetzt auch nicht mehr dieser fanatische People Pleaser, der ich noch vor Kurzem war. Ich hab mich selbst aus meinem Blumentopf gerissen und begonnen, wild zu wuchern. Und deswegen zerstör ich die Stimmung jetzt, und es tut mir überhaupt nicht leid.

she felt in her heart a sort of wild affection for them, wanted to go to the, to stand next to them and pull them tightly to her side; and yet she also knew that to intervene in this way would disrupt something sacred that - at twelve and thirteen and fourteen years old - they were learning about themselves and the world. And this, too, was how she thought of God.

spent the better part of yesterday (sunday) reading this. Enjoying it immensely, very fast-paced, immersive. A particular favourite is the 1950s-60s timeline that scratches my need-for-historical-fiction itch