Adam > Recent Status Updates

“And this I believe: that the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world. And this I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected.” P 131

“I write a lot - every day, seven days a week - and I throw a lot away. Sometimes I think I write to throw away. It’s a process of distillation.” - Donald Barthelme

“Bun (short for ‘Abundance,’ her grandmother’s name)…”. I love this name Abundance, what a great name!

“Surely if our Lord created [my face] for anything, He made it to be slapped, and it hasn’t been slapped yet.” P184

In regards to the possibility that a character might try and kill herself the priest says “Void fascinates those who daren’t look into it. They throw themselves in, for fear of falling.”

I just liked how this sounded, so somber and wise, and seems at least plausibly true. P157

“And yet I feel that such distress, distress that has forgotten even its name, that has ceased to reason or to hope, that lays its tortured head at random, will awaken one day in the shoulder of Jesus Christ.” P53

“It is hard to be alone, and harder still to share your solitude with indifferent or ungrateful people.” P35

“One cannot disbelieve facts…”
Great line.

But time’s money, you forget that,” said the colonel.
“Time, indeed, that depends! Why there’s time one would give a month of for sixpence, and time you wouldn’t give half an hour of for any money.”

Words of wisdom.

Page 117 “As Nadia put her boots back on she grinned to think of it. Two thousand years from now, their descendants might walk into this chamber…”
I like to imagine that this book and Red Rising are in the same universe! Darrow is Nadia’s descendant in the mines of Mars.

“Girard gave me free rein with his personal library, but then, as book people will, kept pulling his own darlings off the shelf and stuffing them into my hands.”

“I could’ve been Burke. That’s what I believe. Maybe I still could. What scares me is the notion we are all one rotten moment, one crushed hope or hollow stomach from stuffing someone blameless in a cage.” I’m going to have to mull this over because I don’t know if I quite agree with this.

Page 383 “People are awful. Drink some beer.”

How do you know Schmidt enjoys torturing the children in his stories? You know because he writes sentences like this: “It was the kind of day when the cafeteria serves Tuna Delight. With white cheese. And two asparagus spears. And a brownie bakes sometime during the ancient Indo-European period, in some polis very far away.”

“Of course there are machines to do these things, but an Aureate would never use a machine for something a person could do. There is no power in that.” P116

“…the soft new day shrugged itself awake, tried on amethyst and lavender for a while, and finally decided on a pale yellow.” 54. NY times best sellers aren’t written with this much poetry. Spectacular writing!

“Just then, twenty, thirty gulls rose from somewhere on the island coast and turned to face the sea breeze, screeching like broken promises.” That’s jus genius level writing. Who thinks like that? “Screeching like broken promises.” Brilliant!

“The population of literate people has been declining steadily since Gutenberg’s day. By the twentieth century, less than two percent of the people in the so-called industrialized democracies read even one book a year. And that was before the smart machines, dataspheres, and user-friendly environments.” This book was published in 1989! Prophetic.

“The HTN stuff doesn’t simulate” [the best AI expert explained] “it dreams, dreams with the best historical accuracy in the Web - way beyond the sum of its parts ‘cause it plugs in holistic insight as well as facts- and when it dreams, it lets us dream with it.” Holy cow. Can anyone say ChatGPT? This was written in 1989!

“We want nothing from you that you do without grace…”215

“We’ll you know, in a way I wish I hadn’t met you two. It’s much more convenient to think of the opposition as a nice homogeneous, dead-wrong mass. Now I’ve got to muddy my thinking with exceptions.” P 79

“If there’s pleasure in action, there’s peace in stillness.” P23

“The United States needs some theology and geometry, some taste and decency. I suspect that we are teetering on the edge of the abyss.” P37

Book two: The Wife, gets much more interesting with some political intrigue but also more difficult to follow as more and more Norwegian names and places come into the story. Kristin continues to struggle to feel forgiven even as her life is clearly blessed. Errand becomes more sympathetic and even forms a friendship with Simon and Lavrans. Good enough to want to finish the 3rd book.

“I read to fill my mind and to block out the bad memories. But I found that as I read more, my thoughts were getting deeper, my vision wider, and my emotions less shallow.” P 229

Technically, this copy holds a trilogy of books. I have finished the first: The Wreath. A very enjoyable read. On one hand, the story spends an awful lot of time focusing on Kristin’s virginity, or lack thereof. But it is also so much more than that. It is about family, and love and devotion and the pull between a good man vs an exciting man. It is also about how sin tramples in everything and everyone.

An absolutely masterful fiction! I do completely enjoy every page of this book. So many of the sentences aren’t just well written but are works of art. This will definitely go on my list of all time favorite books. I could see enjoying this book again and again and again.