beth > Recent Status Updates

'Frédérique knew about my morning walks. Every day I got up at five; my room-mate was asleep. The school was cloaked in a subterranean wind, life was rotting, or regenerating itself.'

'Marfua To’xtaxo’jaeva makes a similar argument about the results of
the Soviet modernization program: that while it did create equality in
work and education (those areas that benefit society), discourses and
gender roles remained largely unchanged in the Soviet period.'

'For those who were literate, the language that they read shaped the
borders of their world. For example, in 1928 Russian teachers in Xorazm, Uzbekistan, lived in the Soviet Union . . . At the same time, Turkic-speaking teachers in Xorazm lived in Uzbekistan, reading Uzbek-language newspapers that were published in Tashkent and Samarkand and nothing from the larger union.'

'Joan Scott argues that in any case, subjects “are not unified, autonomous individuals exercising free will, but rather subjects whose agency is created through situations and statuses conferred on them. Being a subject means being ‘subject to definite conditions of existence. . .’ These conditions enable choices, though they are not unlimited.”'

This is getting weiiird. Loving it so far. Very different from the other two books I’ve read from her.

The fact those leading the service worried those in the service would be viewed as transphobic for being interested in the stories of those who had detransitioned… That’s their lives. Imagine feeling so let down and then people saying you’re too politically inconvenient to be spoken of

Impossible to not keep thinking 'Jeeeesus Christ' as this escalates. The most basic thing you'd hope for from a specialist health service is that they have a coherent clinical model that they are following... But they didn't. It was some kind of free-for-all that varied widely between clinicians. Makes you worry about other parts of our starved NHS.

It's so interesting to me that people have distorted cultural relativism to mean "things are culturally specific and such things that would be deemed abuse in our culture is not elsewhere", rather than simply a (correct) observation that cultural practices, ideas, etc, are products of their environment/local conditions. Defending every cultural practice as benign is to identify with the ruling class of that society.

Every time I think he's saying something that can't get any worse, Yanagihara says "Wait, what if I had him add some misogyny on top? For a bit of extra flavour."

the power these men (and a woman with them) have over this woman they've encountered is insane. nightmare fuel

I would have arrested this man before he had the opportunity to abuse anyone simply for thinking about women this way

I definitely like this more than A Little Life so far. I guess the subject matter is more interesting to me. I think her writing style works very well in the hands of an awful narrator.

'And in that moment I promised myself two things: first, that I would hate Esme Duff, and second, that within a few months it would be I, not Esme, whom Tallent would consider the expert.'

his obvious misogyny too... truly awful unreliable narrators are so interesting to read

he's already so hatable in numerous ways

'Here then may be lived a life of the senses so pure, so untouched by any
mode of apprehension but their own, that the body may be said to think. Each sense heightened to its most exquisite awareness, is in itself total experience. This is the innocence we have lost, living in one sense at a time to live all the way through.'

I’ve finished part one! I’ve heard that this is the heaviest part, difficulty-wise, so feeling good that I’ve gotten through it.

'You can’t listen to the Thanksgiving Address without feeling wealthy. And, while expressing gratitude seems innocent enough, it is a revolutionary idea. In a consumer society, contentment is a radical proposition.'