Rosa > Recent Status Updates

“What I learned about desire is that it never goes, not really. But you can make it smaller, you can fold it up and tuck it neatly away. I felt like I was carrying a solid-gold pillbox of my wants and needs somewhere deep in my chest, just behind my rib cage. I kept lifting the lid to slip things inside. It was getting more and more full, but there was still room.”

Omg like stop fighting and meet your wife already Peter. I deeply loved every single one of Massie's other Russian biographies/history books, but the amount of military mumbo jumbo here is crushing me.

So much military history fml

Will she ever finish this

Ryan is forcing me to read this so we can watch the Sackler show fml I just want to read some wholesome garbage 😩

Starts wonderfully absorbing as usual, this is my last Robert K. Massie Russian history read :( I was holding onto his magic because he passed away in 2019. If you haven't already read them, his book on Catherine the Great, Nicholas and Alexandria, and the Romanovs (more on the forensics post-assassination than their history) were just fantastic.

Slowly but surely. I wish there was more social history in SPQR, but that is always what I want and never what I get (not any modern writer's fault, just the lack of resources re: women/slaves/children).

Unsure if it’s worth a progress update because I’ll prob finish it soon because I’m so wildly into it

How did I like the first one so much? This is almost as terrible to get through as that pretentious history of art dealers

Wow this protagonist is so incredibly unlikeable I’m having trouble getting into it. Also so vague that she’s half “brown” what even is that? Is that an “inclusive” way of saying Caucasian female with a tan?

Like I am reading too many amazing fantasy books right now to give SPQR the attention it deserves. It's such a marvelous read but I'm on a genre buzz. Sorry Mary.

Someone tell me how this 10th century Japanese woman is literally me “I wondered how it was that I had ever consented to embark upon a career
for which I was so hopelessly ill-qualified” LOL

Loving it so far!!

Wow this is incredibly boring to get through and I was so excited for this book. Art history theft is a lot more interesting of a concept when not written by a pompous English white guy.

Imagine having 2 husbands and 4 sons and they're all entirely incompetent and you have to constantly come out of retirement to clean up their messes. Eleanor was an incredible, well-travelled woman, but I wouldn't have wanted her life.

Like imagine dying after living this adventurous, accomplished life and all they write on your tombstone is that you were famous for being a daughter, wife, and mom. Matilda didn’t deserve this wack epitaph.