Alexandra > Recent Status Updates

Ehhhh -- not bad, just not feeling it right now to help me get out of my mini slump

I'm gonna call it quits on this one, sadly. Nothing wrong with its writing or story—I found myself at times getting absorbed into the action—but honestly... I've been trudging along. And it's my fault, not the book's!

I think I just waited too long to get to this book in the series & honestly kinda moved on from the story. I skimmed to the ending. No clue how I'll rate this or organize it in my bookshelves though

"But, east or west wind, I suppose this man comes" (75).

"...and time to people of limited income was money" (97).

"There were the yellow, sea-stained letters, with the peculiar fragrance which ocean letters have" (106).

"Even in this smoky place, enough to blind one's eyes, the owls can see that" (130).

Just some lovely sentences (out of many that I can't fit into this update) that have stood out to me <3

Yeah, I'm running out of patience with Mr. Hale with every turn of the page 🫠

I'm just laughing at how without meaning to—if one wanted to, you really could find so much of what has so many romance readers in a chokehold nowadys in this book. You got a male protagonist that's "tall & broad" (totally headcanoning a minimum of 6'3 here sorry not sorry), a slow burn lite E2L tention simmering, and now apparently an age gap trope thrown in between Margaret & Mr. Thornton. Hilarious, really

Elizabeth Gaskell lowkey outdoing all contemporary romance writers in just five sentences describing how Mr. Thornton can't stop staring at Margaret fiddling with a bracelet that falls over and over from her arm to her wrist..... HER MIND

"The stroll down to the beach to breathe the sea-air... the great long misty sea-line touching the tender-coloured sky; the white sail of a distant boat turning silver in some pale sunbeam:it seemed as if she could dream her life away in such luxury of pensiveness, in which she made her present all in all, from not daring to think of the past, or wishing to contemplate the future"(59-60). Gorgeous details to drown in

Halden needs to get chewed up by a dragon I'm so serious

Narelle reacting to Xaden and Dean in the bookshop is hilarious I'm afraid

The ending to Coda was magnificent oh wow

I need more time to take in "Marigold & Cable."

"In morning's coloratura
a magick eye plays tricks
under the ongoing mossy
cloud-mass, exhilirating
traingles and timpani softly
in silt air, in the blanketed
nowhere of now
...
darkly we love
in the ex, the far sun
carpeting, the clouds
stilling,
...
the sun
over aphasia, we
didn't ask for this
wintering rust
but elegy is tonic
on the stoop,
far candle" (59-61)

Just to get it out of the way because the sentiment's been building up—I AM NOT A BIG FAN OF MR. HALE!!!

Okay. Frustrations aside, I am absolutely in love with Gaskell's writing. I'm constantly catching myself spellbound by her sentences and the way she describes her characters and their thoughts and actions. Also kinda proud that I've retained enough BritLit knowledge from past classes so I don't feel too lost lol

Awww I procrastinated foreverrrrr in opening this book since it came out last year and while my memory of the sequel is slowly coming back to me—making me have to pause and look up details like every three pages lol—I missed these characters!

"Inside Out Loud" and "Letter to the Ghost World" almost succeeded in breaking me with their tenderness.

"There is
a greensward
inside.
A reclamation
in small things.
There is a hill and
on this hill
I see
another hill.
...
Leaves
came to
ground.
What wind
brought me,
wanting
to see
the truth
in green.
...
Sunday was
like this,
an unwavering
lively
occurring,
stupefied
and restless" (38-39).

A trickling stream of consciousness, almost dream-like. I keep pausing having to pause as the scenes dissolve or transform into nothing or something else entirely...

"Passion comes from a difficult world—I'm sick of twilight,
when the light is crushed, time unravels its string.

Along the way I discovered a voice, a sun-stroked path choked with old light, a ray already blown.

Look at the world, its veil" (16-17).

Okay, I did not realize this was the second book in a series, my baaad — It does seem like this is a standalone, I was just kind of thrown off a bit because I had no idea the FMC was like some popstar and literally thought to myself how did I miss that information lol

I'm wrecked.

Edward Hirsch has left me emotionally wrung dry again. How is this man reallllllllll

…I was curious……. And you know that one popular saying about curiosity? …. Yeah… 🫠 Giving this one up lol

Kinda surprised at how much I've enjoyed this story world. YA is just too much of a hit-or-miss for me, but sometimes there's little hidden gems like this with quirks that make for a wholesome read. The metaphors based on physics are everything to me too—LOVE that the MMC is an unrepentant nerd savant <3

I've not updated my favorite moments from this book so far bc of life being life, but I NEED to digitally archive the moment I came across the poem "Fast Break." I read it during the last day of March during my basketball mania phase & it felt like a surreal moment when the universe SEES you and lets you know it loves you. A little wink. There's even a PBS special reciting it w/ Shaq, Pau Gasol, and Edward Hirsch :')

"In theory he was a master of existence, in practice he not only didn't master his existence but was destroyed by it, I thought" (114).

I haven't actually done any research into Bernhard so for all I know this may or may not be an exaggerated self-reflection, but at least for now, the madman narrator's unceasing ramble concerning theory vs practice, action vs inaction, and ambition vs cowardice has left me in awe.

Peire Cardenal, you are now my newest most favorite employee 🤩

Okay, but speaking sincerely—I think Cardenal’s verses are without a doubt in my top ten of favorite verses I’ve read in this book so far. “Ar me puesc ieu lauzar d’Amor / I Dare to Claim, Now, Love Cannot” might possibly be my number one verse I’ve enjoyed the most!

"So I perceive all things reversed;
Beautiful plains instead of hills;
I take for flower the pale hoarfrost,
Perceive some warmth that the chill has cut.
Thunder sounds like warbles and chips;
Leaves embellish the barren sticks:
So firmly am I bound to gladness, no one seems to me that bad..." (117)

-Raimbaut d'Aurenga

"Wertheimer was no traveler like me. Was no passionate address-switcher... [He] was always and only the loser. No one pounded the streets of Vienna like he did, coming and going in until he was totally exhausted. Diversion maneuvers, I thought. He wore out tremendous quantities of shoes" (44)

"My constant curiosity got in the way of my suicide, so he said, I thought" (47)

Wertheimer is just as pitiable as loathsome

"You should understand that the limitations on the degree to which you can approximate the rule (pertaining to the suggested outlines) are not only ones of time and effort. You are a finite, mortal creature; but a book is also finite and, if not mortal, at least defective in the way all things made by man are. No book deserves a perfect outline because no book is perfect. It goes only so far, and so must you" (85).

That........ was an unexpectedly lovely note to end on considering the journey... Wow.

…Well, that was a journey.

I gotta say—my favorite parts have been when the war is in motion and we get on-site reportage from Helena from the field & emergency make-shift medical areas. A friend told me (prior to reading the book) that Alchemised was more of a fictional war memoir with some romance here and there & I wholly agree. It’s gotten so heavy, wow.

Going to start inserting “In nomine patri et filii et spiritus sancti” in my daily conversations just because I can.

I can’t resist educational books about books.

“Good books are over your head; they would not be good for you if they were not. And books that are over your head weary you unless you can reach up to them and pull yourself up to their level. It is not the stretching that tires you but the frustration of stretching unsuccessfully because you lack the skill to stretch effectively” (48).