Gian Luigi > Recent Status Updates

I have reached chapter 51 "Revelations in Tanchico"...

I struggle with this book... Some of me is still captivated by it, but I often wonder about its meaningfulness in the world we live in...

“A Wise One must be in control of her emotions, not they in control of her.”

Is this the way to go?

Being purely driven by one’s emotions seems wrong, but trying to control what one feels seems equally wrong…

I think emotions should be a guide not a commandment...

"A wise one should be guided by her emotions, not slave to them..." could this be a better a better maxim of wisdom?

“Of course. She had not been to Rhuidean; apparently the prohibition against speaking of what happened in Rhuidean with anyone who had not been there applied even between husband and wife.”

“There was still time to tell Aram to put the sword back, to go ask Ila’s pardon. Time to tell him . . . what? That maybe next time he would not be there to watch his loved ones die? That maybe he could just come back to find their graves?”

“He had not really thought since that night, only drifted as events took him, reacting to what presented itself.”

“She seemed to be telling everyone about the Black Ajah of late.”

“It was a thought shiveringly close to treason, but it would not go away.”

“He was not mad yet—he did not think he was—but many would think so before he was done.”

"What did he have to do to drive her away? More than he could bring himself to, if he had not managed it already."

"A city without choras would seem bleak as wilderness."

"She clained one of the Forsaken was only partly trapped, or maybe not at all; Ishmael still touched the world, she said. She had to be as mad as the remaining male Aes Sedai."

"We have legs; we have backs. We will drag the wagons, if need be. We will be faithful to our duty!" Adan

So far I enjoyed the most Elayne's love for Rand.

“And remember, if a woman does need a hero, she needs him today, not tomorrow.” Egwene al’Vere

20% done. Currently reading from Egwene's PoV.

Reading something completely new despite three seasons of Amazon video adaptation, given how much the Amazon series twisted the plot.

I started reading right after finishing The Great Hunt, the second book in the series.

The passages about Cairhien gave me mixed feelings.
On one end, this city and country are different from the rest of the setting so far, providing a very enjoyable sense of variety and bringing this world further apart from generic fantasy. Still, the style within the city is described as very homogeneous through a 3000 years history, which sounds very unlikely and created a sense of deep immersion break.

Apparently I reached 61% if the progress counter of the Books app can be trusted.

It's been a struggle because anxiety.

I enjoy it, but I started to really question the flow of time in the history of the setting. The descriptions of the city of Cairhien brought this into focus. It's hard to believe this city has kept a single style of architecture in its 3000 years. Once that falls apart... a lot of it does.

Anxious as f**k at the moment. I just keep reading.

Sometimes I'm reading this when I feel I "should" be reading something else.

It's a comfort binge. Other things I could be reading fit neatly under "research", they could be "useful" that way. I do not know where this fits.

I do need things to keep me sane though... and this book is helping there, I think.

-"They told each other stories."

-"The demonization of working-class people is a grimly rational way to justify an irrational system."

-"There are now nearly a million people working in call centres, and the number is going up every year. To put that in perspective, there where a million men down the pits at the peak of mining in the 1940s. If the miner was one of the iconic jobs of post-war Britain, then today, surely, the call centre worker is as good a symbol of the working class as any."

-"The number of people who go to bed every night and have nightames about getting repossessed is a major issue."

-"The reality of this party of Thatcher's class war is that shifted the tax burden from the rich to everybody else."

-" 'the legacy of Geoffrey Howe is the de-industrialization of our economy,' in the words of economist Graham Turner."

-"The Tories had made a big deal out of the fact that unemployment had reached a million under Labour in 1979, employing ad firm Saatchi & Saatchi to design their famous 'Labour Isn't Working' poster."

-"Recent memories of the Great Depression seemed to have permanently discredited free-market capitalism,"

#MOVEMENT: “change may and ought to be seen as type of movement — the flow of matter through time”

-'it is precisely the problem of "the emergence and evolution of form" that I am proposing to discuss.'