Jess > Recent Status Updates

Quite tedious. Might only finish because it's my designated chores audiobook.

I love the ideas of concepts like beauty, freedom, power, truth being "broken signposts"- things meant to point us to God but having been broken along the way and now pointing no where.
Tom Wright as ever makes God's kingdom beautiful and compelling, a rare thing these days in modern Christian writing.

Annual re-read.

I fear I do not posses the same level of patience with their plight as Patchett's hostages seem to ...

Fascinating book, ominously prescient. Love all the meditation on the theme of the aesthetic vs ethical life found in other writings from this era.
I laughed out loud many times at the droll, evil musings of Lord Henry.

Book club choice- probably fine if this is your cup of tea genre. Kind of cringey, kind of snoozey, wondered at least 10 times if it had been made into a hallmark movie.

Haunting, apocalyptic, philosophical, Knausgaard. I had to skip some gory scenes but not much. His emphasis on the terror that lies within is what draws me back for more of his intensely detailed chronicling of the human condition. I like his auto fiction series more but interesting to see him write characters outside himself.

A hodgepodge of spiritual ethers, a coming to terms with the world, post COVID.

This very much is a man chronicling his every mundane thought and experience he's ever had and I cannot stop reading it.

This is a journalistic overview rather than scholarly. Very informative about modern cults and the importance of language.

"I feel at such a loss for words but this is a new place and new words are needed."

I didn't get what Lakshmi meant when she said she "wasn't a writer."
"I'm rubbish at it,"she said.
"Well, none of us are good."
"No, it's different. I used to write poems. . . ."
Horror flickered over her face and I dropped the subject.

Going to post updates with the quotes that make me audibly laugh.
"Juho was 23 but already had a Ph.D, in both chemistry and physics. He belonged to a society of fellows who all lived here for three years and were paid to do whatever they wanted. One fellow was working on a new classification of mammals. He thought mammals were classified wrong."

Best opening hook of a novel maybe ever?

Tim Mackie said this is one of the most profound explanations of genesis 1-3 so now I have to read it.

So far I feel about this book the way Maeve and Danny's mother felt about the Dutch House. It is stifling and increasingly unbearable. I can't figure out what it's telling me and I guess I'll stick around to find out but sheesh can I get out of here yet?