Christy > Recent Status Updates

Every time I read a Shannon Chakraborty I’m terrified I’ll never write anything half as good and die without a legacy

Was hesitant to restart this ‘cause I’d expected I’d miss the Society too much but am delighted to report that child Nicholas and Co are just as charming to read about

Bit the bullet and got myself a Kobo eReader ❣️

And when she does look up, her gaze always goes to the edge of town.
“A dreamer,” scorns her mother.
“A dreamer,” mourns her father.
“A dreamer,” warns Estele.
Still, it does not seem such a bad word.
Until Adeline wakes up.

pls be gentle with my soul, V.E. Schwab 🥺

Not even done with Part One and I already know this book will break my heart ahahahaha 🥲

– well, is this what family is like? The feeling that everyone’s connected, that with one piece missing, the whole thing’s broken?

Finally reading this memoir/adventure dystopia in English to find that Perec’s ingenious wordplay is almost completely lost in translation

“A nice evening out with a few old med school friends to persuade ourselves that our lives are fine, despite significant evidence to the contrary. It’s nice to catch up, even if it needed to be rearranged seven times.”

Us in two years!! xoxo

*if I don’t fail

“Performing an elective caesarean section, assisted by a hungover medical student ... Baby delivered, and just as I was sewing up the uterus, the student fainted, face-planting right into the open abdomen. ‘We should probably give the patient some antibiotics,’ the anaesthetist suggested.”

Is it bad that I found this hilarious?

Couldn’t sleep. Still wondering whether housemen in Hong Kong have sex with patients in hospital rooms. Surely...... not...?

(Will clarify that this is not the reason I couldn’t sleep)

Did Hercule Poirot just...... make out with a teen?

“A pair of arms slipped round his shoulders unexpectedly.

‘If you will stand just under the mistletoe—‘ said Bridget.

Hercule Poirot enjoyed it. He enjoyed it very much. He said to himself that he had had a very good Christmas.”

😷

“A book is an interpretation,” she says. “You want a place to be like it was in the book but it’s not a place in a book it’s just words. The place in your imagination is where you want to go and that place is imaginary. This is real.”

💔

“In the morning when the stars had fled under the watchful eye of the sun the star merchant inquired whether the traveler had departed, if there might be time to bid a proper farewell.
The star merchant was politely informed that there had been no other guests.”
Only Erin Morgenstern can repeat a fable within 20 pages and still have it be as compelling the second time around.

The Orphan’s Tales by Catherynne M. Valente vibes (but way less dark — so far). Which I guess means One Thousand and One Nights vibes. But way more engrossing. Ugh, so good.

“Part of him decides he is being childish and that he is too old to expect real life to be like books. Another part of him decides that if he does not try he cannot be disappointed and he can go on believing that the door could open even if it is just pretend.”

Wow. Me.

“...but the key rests on a tarnished ring on a hook that hangs on the wall nearby.
(Close enough to see from behind the bars. Freedom kept in sight but out of reach, left as a reminder to the prisoner. No one remembers this now on the key side of the bars. The careful psychological design forgotten, distilled into habit and convenience.)
(The pirate realizes this but withholds comment.)”
God, Erin’s a genius.

You may well ask: ‘Why direct action? Why sit-ins, marches and so forth? Isn’t negotiation a better path?’ You are quite right in calling for negotiation. Indeed, this is the very purpose of direct action. Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has consistently refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue.

“But let endurance have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing.”

Surreal to see a Penguin Modern Classic (!!) take place just a street over from where I live, and celebrating my home city with such palpable, understated lucidity. 🇭🇰

Thank you, Penguin, for this translation. I can’t wait to see our canon continue to broaden.

“Yes, yes! I was wrong, I admit it,” Weilong apologized. “How could there not be any difference between us? They don’t have a choice—I do it willingly!” Oof.

Harari spends an entire chapter hammering home how our social orders are imagined and asserting that “most people do not wish to accept [this]”. I’d wager that most people actually do realise human rights are social constructs – what really matters is why some imagined orders are perceived to be better than others, which Harari sadly neglected to discuss.

Exams are finally done (ish) so I can get back to the Eliana chapters ☀️

Exactly halfway through and on the cusp of what I know will be more bad news. I said The Toymakers is a grittier Night Circus, but now I don't think that quite captures the scope of its tragedy. Dinsdale better give me a happy ending because Cathy has been through enough sh*t already.

Signs and Symbols: So confused what the point of this story even was.

It's unfair how Nabokov can write so expressively in both English and Russian.

If Thomas just forgives his father like a good Kdrama son I will flip.