Greg > Recent Status Updates

“Looking down at her, I studied my daughter with the fullness of my vision, seeing her not as the three-dimensional object another man might see, but the manifold event she was. No mere body in space, but a wave crashing across the universe, rippling where she struck the present moment again and again, collapsing into one certain past from the infinite uncertain futures.”

Home is so sad. It stays as it was left,
Shaped to the comfort of the last to go
As if to win them back. Instead, bereft
Of anyone to please, it withers so,
Having no heart to put aside the theft

And turn again to what it started as,
A joyous shot at how things ought to be,
Long fallen wide. You can see how it was:
Look at the pictures and the cutlery.
The music in the piano stool. That vase.

Phillip Larkin

Loving this: https://oyc.yale.edu/english/engl-300

The last time I relied on SparkNotes this heavily, I wasn’t actually reading the accompanying book. Haha.

“There is no failure in love, and I have loved without measure.”

“My soul would sing of metamorphoses.
But since, o gods, you were the source of these
bodies becoming other bodies, breathe
your breath into my book of changes: may
the song I sing be seamless as its way
weaves from the world's beginning to our day.”
― Ovid, Metamorphoses

Dude. Half this book is just Shakespeare references...

I have entered my dark academia phase. We'll see how it goes.

“Only now is the child finally divested of all that he has been. His origins are become remote as is his destiny and not again in all the world's turning will there be terrains so wild and barbarous to try whether the stuff of creation may be shaped to man's will or whether his own heart is not another kind of clay.”

I've had a concern that this book was nothing more than an exercise in inclusion; a step towards normalization of marginalized or underrepresented groups. That concern is gone. These characters are real people and I will not be convinced otherwise.

Beautiful writing so far. Really reminds me of Anthony Doerr. The characters feel very deep and very real most of the time. I've rolled my eyes at a fews lines. Some of the social commentary is very poignant, but feels forced at times. Hoping the story itself picks up...

“Act in haste. Repent in leisure.”

"Do not be afraid. Our fate cannot be taken from us. It is a gift."

Is the plot a vehicle for the magic-system? Or is the magic-system a vehicle for the plot? Plot and characters are taking a back-seat to a mythological who-done-it that I have trouble engaging with.

I'm struggling. Kuang writes trauma and tragedy so well, but I've gotta say, it's a little one-note. I need a break from the guilt and self-doubt. I'm ready for Rin to play the game instead of being a piece controlled by other.

DNF