Julia J. > Recent Status Updates

Imagine writing a letter home about how much you hate Richard Strauss but then when you call him ignorant you misspell it as “ingorant [sic]” Oh the irony

Best part of the book has to be when mid-paragraph suddenly Jane’s narration goes off about how poetry “these days” is nowhere near as good as it used to be. HOWEVER, “I know poetry is not dead, nor genius lost; nor has Mammon gained power over either, to bind or slay: they will both assert their existence, their presence, their liberty and strength again one day.” Lol

Not to make this about me, but when is someone going to disguise themselves as an old fortune teller woman just to see if they can figure out if I like them back

Jane is so iconic… has a little hope that her crush is returned, then finds out there’s another girl her crush might be interested in, then berates herself for being so silly, then MAKES A PORTRAIT OF HERSELF AND A PORTRAIT OF THIS OTHER GIRL (who she has never seen) TO COMPARE AND REMIND HERSELF THAT IT WOULD NEVER HAPPEN, then congratulates herself on how effective at curbing her feelings this exercise is

Jane and Rochester sit down to have a real conversation for the first time and then just proceed to insult each other on like 30 different counts. Romance

The chapter on Shostakovich and Prokofiev in Stalinist Russia was deeply moving

I’m not gonna lie this book is actually so sad

“We’ll go with you,” Brother said.
Jig shook his head. “No, honey. You might drown. It’s awful easy to drown in this river.”
“We can swim,” Brother said. “We won’t drown.”
“Listen,” Jig said. “If the Lord’s planning for one of you all to drown, that’s His business. But He don’t want me to get messed up in it.”

Lol

“‘Every day I have seen the cranes. Flying south in full cry with their music. Have been yet again their most assiduous pupil. Their cries echo throughout my being.’ When, on the third-to-last day of his life, the cranes duly appeared, [Sibelius] told his wife, ‘Here they come, the birds of my youth!’ One of them broke from the flock, circled the house, cried out, and flew away.”

Sibelius recorded in his notebook next two a description of 16 swans flying over his home: “One of my greatest experiences! Lord God, that beauty! They circled over me for a long time. Disappeared into the solar haze like a gleaming, silver ribbon. . . That this should have happened to me, who have so long been the outsider. . . The swans are always in my thoughts and give splendor to [my] life.”

“Composing is a difficult business. …a laborious traversal of an imaginary landscape. What emerges is an artwork in code, which other musicians must be persuaded to unravel. Unlike a novel or painting, a score gives up its full meaning only when it is performed in front of an audience; it’s a child of loneliness that lives off crowds. Nameless terrors creep into the limbo between composition and performance.”

Bartók, 1926: “Recently I have felt so stupid, so dazed, so empty-headed that I have truly doubted whether I am able to write anything new at all anymore. All the tangled chaos that the musical periodicals vomit thick and fast about the music of today has come to weigh heavily on me: the watchwords, linear, horizontal, vertical, objective, impersonal, polyphonic, homophonic, tonal, polytonal…”
Relating in 2026

Pretending he was writing a biography of Schoenberg instead of working on an opera that Schoenberg disapproved of, then encoding Schoenberg into the opera as the evil doctor and himself (Berg) as the maligned main character is TOO iconic

“On one occasion Berg had trouble keeping a straight face when his comrade-in-arms Webern, at a rehearsal of his Quartet for violin, clarinet, tenor saxophone, and piano, Opus 22 told the saxophonist to play a descending major seventh with ‘sex appeal.’ Berg feigned an asthma attack, fled the room, and burst into hysterical laughter.”

WAIT this is so funny I kind of thought this was going to happen but I had no idea it would happen this way

Lowkey a crazy title but I love Kate Stradling so I’m here for the ride

Regency era romance between cousins is always insane, but in this case specifically I can’t complain because it’s just so well written. 245 pages in and they’ve just barely had their first really admitted reconciliation

Is it time for my Georgette Heyer era ? This book is so funny so far

This was weirdly enough my favorite book when I was like 16, so it’s time to see if I can stomach the descriptions of embalming again

Two things: One, I think in the movie they go to college in Boston instead of Chicago and THAT’S A CRIME!!! And two, this is somehow even more of a psychological thriller than the movie was

I watched the movie and lowkey hated it but the people said the book was better. And then yesterday saw this book in my neighborhood book swap library box (is there a name for that) so now I can read this book while I eat meals at my apt and probably still hate it

I’m reading this because it was recommended at ACDA a year ago but know that I have skimmed the reviews and have low expectations

Can’t a guy go a little crazy and be enclosed in a Shroud of Eternal Darkness without people going around viciously slandering his name to the good folk of London and Venice???

He’s grinding up a dead mouse into dust and eating it because he’s trying to go insane on purpose but if you ask me he’s already well on his way

Hi this Isn’t Fun anymore

You wouldn’t steal a car… you wouldn’t MOVE the CITY OF BRUSSELS to AMERICA……

We are really cooking now fellas

EXTREMELY powerful work to have a character’s name be In The Title, but then only allude to him on occasion and then only REALLY start his journey on PAGE 215!

I truly cannot fathom where this book will take me as I am only at 21% !! Apparently the shenanigans have only just begun

Henceforth shall be calling death penalty by hanging the “sisal two-step” or “hemp fandango” (depending, of course, on what the rope is made out of)