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welcome to...THE APRILVENTURES OF SHERLOCK HOLMES. wow. i've outdone myself on the terrible pun, so you know what that means: we're back at it with pro welcome to...THE APRILVENTURES OF SHERLOCK HOLMES. wow. i've outdone myself on the terrible pun, so you know what that means: we're back at it with project long classics, in which i divvy up an intimidating classic over a month in order to feel smart and accomplished. even though this one is just a bunch of fun crime puzzles. but the real mystery is the order i'm reading this series in. DAY 1: A SCANDAL IN BOHEMIA, PART ONE these don't divide evenly, so i'm going to read them in half-story chunks. or just go for it. i can't decide. i first read this story in an english 101 class, and i have the same opinion today as i did then: sherlock holmes goes down as one of the greatest characters of all time, but arthur conan doyle's real masterpiece was irene adler. DAY 2: A SCANDAL IN BOHEMIA, PART TWO no one is doing it like her!!! she really is on a whole different level to quote sherlock himself. similarly, i doubt that these stories will ever get as good as this first one. the only problem with it is it's much too short. follow irene for the whole volume i say. rating: 4.5 DAY 3: THE RED-HEADED LEAGUE, PART ONE every single sherlock holmes story has this bit where he says 4 extremely specific things to a stranger and they're like "what the devil —" and he explains his deductions. and yet it hits every time. "I am a very stay-at-home man, and as my business came to me instead of my having to go to it, I was often weeks on end without putting my foot over the door-mat." introvert who works remotely representation is so important. DAY 4: THE RED-HEADED LEAGUE, PART TWO i have to say, creating an institution to celebrate red-headed men and faking a photography hobby in order to attempt to steal some french gold...well, that's whimsical as hell. but it's no irene adler. rating: 3.5 DAY 5: A CASE OF IDENTITY, PART ONE this is anout of a woman getting ghosted. if only we each had a sherlock holmes in a time like this. DAY 6: A CASE OF IDENTITY, PART TWO well. it's not as fun when we catch the guy but there is no JUSTICE. i would've answered yes to sherlock's little "should i beat him with a riding crop," even. rating: 3 DAY 7: THE BOSCOMBE VALLEY MYSTERY, PART ONE my life's nightmare is to be watson's wife. unnamed, uninteresting. just being like "yeah totally, take your 80th day off from your job so far this year to go do unpaid labor as the guy sherlock makes look stupid in order to emphasize his intelligence. i'll just be sitting here powered down until your return regardless." DAY 8: THE BOSCOMBE VALLEY MYSTERY, PART TWO it's like...okay, this guy committed a murder to prevent his daughter from having to marry a guy that she immediately marries anyway. and then it's a happily ever after. not our finest logic on this one. rating: 3 DAY 9: THE FIVE ORANGE PIPS, PART ONE every one of these stories begins with watson being like "sherlock is an unparalleled genius...he has never been defeated...irene adler got lucky..." and now all of a sudden he's like "well, for 8 years he solved some stuff on occasion but mostly he was all, i got nothing." what happened??? i gotta say, i'm not feeling confident that he's going to figure out the 2.5 murders we've just been presented with. DAY 10: THE FIVE ORANGE PIPS, PART TWO yep. this is the story of how sherlock holmes takes on the might of american institutional racism and loses. pretty depressing. rating: 3 DAY 11: THE MAN WITH THE TWISTED LIP, PART ONE in this story a guy finds out that it's actually friday when he thought it was wednesday and bursts into tears. i've done the exact same thing in the reverse situation. DAY 12: THE MAN WITH THE TWISTED LIP, PART TWO this one was very fun. even if it did hinge upon having a conservative comedian's concept of what begging is. rating: 3.5 DAY 13: THE ADVENTURE OF THE BLUE CARBUNCLE, PART ONE my fiance has a sherlock holmes board game in which you get a case description, a copy of a newspaper, a map of london, and a directory and have to solve a mystery from there. there has never been a game that i like so much while being so bad at. this case is reminding me why. DAY 14: THE ADVENTURE OF THE BLUE CARBUNCLE, PART TWO to be fair, i could also solve a goose-based mystery if some criminal-looking guy showed up at the goose stand yelling about a missing goose. that doesn't take sherlock holmes levels of deduction. i have to say, though, i respect his anti-prison industrial complex inclinations. rating: 3.5 DAY 15: THE ADVENTURE OF THE SPECKLED BAND, PART ONE "Very sorry to knock you up, Watson," said he, "but it's common lot this morning. Mrs. Hudson has been knocked up, she retorted on me, and I on you." eventful day. it is so funny that this story hinges on the idea that if a lady has to clean up after herself her hair will go gray by 30 from strain. who's going to start doing my laundry for me then??? then again, in this same story women can die simply "of fear," so i probably don't have much to go on. DAY 16: THE ADVENTURE OF THE SPECKLED BAND, PART TWO soooo satisfying. you love to see it. like a scandal in bohemia, i read this one in school, and also like it it's one of the best. rating: 4 DAY 17: THE ADVENTURE OF THE ENGINEER'S THUMB, PART ONE the intros to these get real repetitive reading them one after the other like this. "Of all the cases I have known Mr Sherlock Holmes to take on..." "In all my years as assistant to the great Mr Sherlock Holmes..." "Out of every mystery in the time I spent with the renowned detective..." etc etc. DAY 18: THE ADVENTURE OF THE ENGINEER'S THUMB, PART TWO honestly, if i were nearly stamped to death by a hydraulic press and got away with just a chopped-off thumb, i'd be like "thank you very much" and mind my business. no running to quirky detectives for me. rating: 3 DAY 19: THE ADVENTURE OF THE NOBLE BACHELOR, PART ONE this one is about sherlock holmes using his divine powers of deduction to figure out why a couple he knows broke up. which is literally exactly what i would use my divine powers of deduction for if i had them. DAY 20: THE ADVENTURE OF THE NOBLE BACHELOR, PART TWO justice for lord st. simon. being left immediately post-wedding and then not even being the main character of my own mystery would be my villain origin story. rating: 3 DAY 21: THE ADVENTURE OF THE BERYL CORNET, PART ONE i mean...i'm not going to say on jeff bezos' internet that stealing shouldn't be a crime and should in fact be a robin hood-style accoladed achievement if done from the senior partner of one of london's largest private banks...but i am going to heavily imply it. DAY 22: THE ADVENTURE OF THE BERYL CORNET, PART TWO women, am i right. ok it is actually very funny to refer to a gun used in self-defense as a life preserver. rating: 3.5 DAY 23: THE ADVENTURE OF THE COPPER BEECHES, PART ONE i love sherlock holmes for reading watson's plethora of what is essentially john x sherlock fanfiction and being like..."not enough ME in this." DAY 24: THE ADVENTURE OF THE COPPER BEECHES, PART TWO what an insane tonal shift to close this entire collection out. but in a fun way, i have to admit. spoke too soon. i wish i had checked doesthedogdie.com on this one. rating: 3.5 OVERALL some of these stories were much stronger than others (i love you forever irene adler), but overall sherlock holmes is the world's most famous detective for a reason. these are generally clever and fun. sorry, poirot. rating: 3.5 ...more |
Notes are private!
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Apr 2024
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Apr 26, 2024
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Dec 12, 2023
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Hardcover
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| 0141393211
| 9780141393216
| 0141393211
| 3.52
| 223,895
| 1400
| Nov 26, 2013
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liked it
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welcome to...THE JANTERUARY TALES. get it? like the canterbury tales? only january? anyway. this is an installment of PROJECT LONG CLASSICS, by which i m welcome to...THE JANTERUARY TALES. get it? like the canterbury tales? only january? anyway. this is an installment of PROJECT LONG CLASSICS, by which i make intimidating books less scary by reading them over the course of a month and bothering all of you. it's been a while since i read an old-timey-language one. let's give it a shot. DAY 1: PROLOGUE you can tell i'm being really smart and brave because i'm actually reading a prologue. this is basically an introduction to a cast of what seems likes 92 characters. i hope none of this is on the quiz. DAY 2: THE KNIGHT'S TALE they honestly must have built women different in the olden days. i don't know anyone who's hot enough that just hanging around in her own yard can cause two heroic men to become so obsessed they essentially curse themselves. in other words, you'd be surprised how much this story from 1000 years ago has in common with clockwork princess. DAY 3: THE MILLER'S TALE oh thank god it's a short one. reading yesterday's in several-page batches to try to ensure i was actually understanding the weird words and not just letting my eyes go over the sentences was a real struggle. this story has everything: the c word, cucking, trumpian "grab them by the [redacted]," kissing a literal asshole, pranks, tomfoolery, flattery, farts, song, grievous bodily harm, and more hijinks than you can possibly imagine. DAY 4: THE REEVE'S TALE i doubt there's any competing with yesterday's, but this one is at least even shorter. DAY 5: THE COOK'S TALE mercifully this one is like 2 pages long. thank god, because any discussion of what passed for food in ye olden days would function like a horror story to me. also i'm famously bad at doing this project on weekends, so. DAY 6: THE MAN OF LAW'S TALE this is very jesus-y (boring) but also about a framejob for a murder planned directly by satan himself (perfect). it also taught me that there used to be a word called "eggement" that meant incitement (like egging on), so now i'm going to mourn that forever. DAY 7: THE WIFE OF BATH'S TALE for some reason this one is roughly 1120 times easier to read than the previous 6. or maybe i'm just getting used to reading it. probably the first option. DAY 8: THE FRIAR'S TALE this seems like it's going to be very exciting (about thievery) but it is not (mostly just two guys talking to each other about how bad they are and then becoming good guys). DAY 9: THE SOMPNOUR'S TALE step one: google what the hell a sompnour even is. at one point in this a man proves he isn't drunk by killing a child with a bow and arrow. at another point a guy tells a friar he has something privately hidden in his pants and when the friar goes to grab it he farts in his hand. i cannot stress enough how unprepared i was for how unrelentingly insane these stories are. DAY 10: THE CLERK'S TALE this is about a guy who picks some girl to be his wife out of nowhere and she's like "sure i'll do my duty and marry you" and he proceeds to spend the rest of their lives putting her through good wife tests like "will you let a guy kill our daughter just because i said so?" men are a plague. DAY 11: THE MERCHANT'S TALE back to back wife stories...chaucer should have had a more critical editor. switch the order, my guy! DAY 12: THE SQUIRE'S TALE so yes, i skipped a day for the first time of this installment yesterday. but in my defense i spent a saturday drinking red wine and watching old movies. if i also picked this up i would have broken Being Cultured On A Weekend regulations. DAY 13: THE FRANKLIN'S TALE the franklin (whatever that is) (don't worry i looked it up like an intellectual) spends a solid portion of this talking about various times from history that large groups of women have died rather than swipe their v-card, and he keeps being like why even keep going? who needs more examples? and then gives more. i don't know sir! not me! enough! DAY 14: THE DOCTOR'S TALE if my dad was like "hey sorry i have to kill you," my reaction would not be to be like "ok, fair enough. all i ask is i get some space to complain about having to die, as is any murdered daughter's right according to the bible." but then i would also not prefer death over losing my virginity, nor would i be one of the mob of a thousand people who rushes in to say her dad doesn't deserve prison because he sliced her head off and brought it to court for that valiant cause. so i guess i just wouldn't do that well in chaucer's time. DAY 15: THE PARDONER'S TALE for a guy whose title is pardoner, this fella sure doesn't seem very forgiving to those of us who may enjoy a glass of wine or two on occasion... DAY 16: THE SHIPMAN'S TALE finally, a GOOD wife story (this wife loves partying and buying clothes and creating debts in order to do so) DAY 17: THE PRIORESS' TALE sera in the comments said "When you get to the Prioress' Tale, be sure to read it out loud for full effect. In as prissy a voice as you can manage. :)" i have to second that recommendation. DAY 18: CHAUCER'S TALE OF SIR THOPAS a fun mystery about this book is that when you get to a short one, there's a 50/50 chance on whether it's actually short or it's been abruptly redacted. this one is mostly describing a #OOTD before ending midsentence. DAY 19: CHAUCER'S TALE OF MELIBOEUS this one isn't even in verse. not a rhyme to be found. just a collection of the longest paragraphs you've ever seen in your life. it just feels wrong. DAY 20: THE MONK'S TALE this is like a tale multipack. all of the ancient world A-listers are here to teach us a moral lesson in meter via a monk. DAY 21: THE NUN'S PRIEST'S TALE do nuns just...receive a complimentary priest? pretty good deal if so. i always thought it was kind of a short end of the stick situation to trade your life to god in exchange for a weird outfit you have to wear forever, but this sweetens the pot a bit. DAY 22: THE SECOND NUN'S TALE i don't know what the nun math is here, but i'm just going to ignore it. if i'm granted a wish by an angel...i'm sorry but there's no way i'm using that wish to convert my brother to christianity. i'm wishing for more wishes. or a gift card. DAY 23: THE CANON'S YEOMAN'S TALE it is funny that we started out this book with tales from guys like "The Doctor!" and "The Cook!" and now we're at the old timey equivalent of "Your Childhood Babysitter's Neighbor" and "Your Sister's Boyfriend's Cousin." it's like when your mom tells you a story and it starts "you remember your aunt's old boyfriend's daughter." no i do not. DAY 24: THE MANCIPLE'S TALE i sh*t you not, this book actually just contained the words "he pouped in his horn." and it gets even better. it means burped. they just don't make phrases like they used to. DAY 25: THE PARSON'S TALE can't believe we're finishing this book today. it feels like just centuries ago i began torturing myself by struggling to find meaning in vaguely spellchecked middle english for 40 minutes a day, with only butt jokes as my reward. just kidding. butt jokes are a good reward. aw, man. this was a straight up sermon. OVERALL i thought i had a 0% chance of enjoying this at all, and instead it was 50/50 on whether each story contained a moment of pure insanity that would make my entire day, with the alternative of being both boring and difficult to read! i'll call that a good time on average. rating: 3.5 ...more |
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Jan 02, 2024
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Jan 27, 2024
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Dec 12, 2023
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| 1476764522
| 9781476764528
| 1476764522
| 3.82
| 325,981
| Sep 1929
| Jul 08, 2014
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liked it
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welcome to...A FEBRUARY TO ARMS. you know it, you love it. a bad month and title pun, an intimidating book, and me, at the beginning-ish of february. i welcome to...A FEBRUARY TO ARMS. you know it, you love it. a bad month and title pun, an intimidating book, and me, at the beginning-ish of february. it's another installment of project long classics, in which every(ish) month i read a long(ish) classic in small(ish) chunks to make them less scary. because i'm picky about what i read. unless you put it on a list titled "books you must read in a lifetime." then i'm falling for it every time. CHAPTER 1 this entire chapter was about 2 pages long and made up of a) setting description and b) one quick crack about the military not caring about lives lost. i am so locked in. CHAPTER 2 i traveled through europe for a bit in the fall with my sisters, and it's like i invented the concept of europe. i have become the stereotype of Annoying Girl Who Visits Somewhere And Makes It My Whole Personality. all of this to say i'm having fun just reading dialogue listing places in italy. CHAPTER 3 the dialogue in this! snappy! we've got a bunch of yappers on our hands! CHAPTER 4 the thing about the authors i love, like hemingway and fitzgerald and steinbeck and salinger, is that everyone says it's a red flag to love them because they're super Male and Sexist. so what is wrong with me for thinking they write the most interesting women. CHAPTER 5 a hemingway romance moves pretty fast. if you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it. CHAPTER 6 okay never mind about what i said. this girl is crazy. CHAPTER 7 i was reading an ebook copy of this but enjoying it enough that when i found the same edition in a bookstore, i bought it. to which my boyfriend said, "is that the book bradley cooper throws out the window in silver linings playbook?" correct. CHAPTER 8 this chapter ends in hemingway's version of a cliffhanger, which is when he does one of his long paragraphs of scenery and then abruptly stops. CHAPTER 9 hemingway has this way of making things that should be clichéd and trite feel totally new. having anti-war dialogue in which the protagonist is pro and then is shelled and the horrors come to him...i knew it was coming but i felt jarred and convinced by it anyway. CHAPTER 10 dialogue city. i love it. CHAPTER 11 this is one of those moments where you're like, "oh, i love this character so much and i can't wait for him to have his happy life at home...oh he is going to die isn't he." CHAPTER 12 we come to the end of book one, injured, on a train, and at war. it reminds me of my college days. CHAPTER 13 if i had to deal with a grave war wound to my legs without the marvels of modern medicine, i'd sure like to do so in italy. CHAPTER 14 "when i saw her i was in love with her. everything turned over inside of me." they did instalove better in the old days. CHAPTER 15 more doctors should be italian men who give you a little kiss on the forehead for being brave. CHAPTER 16 closed door sex scenes have nothing on hemingway's. he doesn't even say, like, "time passed." there's just a vague implication pages later. CHAPTER 17 i have to say, being wounded in a mostly empty hospital in the 1940s isn't sounding like the stuff of nightmares i expected it to be. CHAPTER 18 all this "we don't need to be married by the state to be married in our hearts" stuff is nice and romantic until you remember it was the olden days and the punishment for unmarried women was like, being hung up by the toes or tested for witch marks. CHAPTER 19 everyone is way too happy for the not even halfway mark. untold horrors await. CHAPTER 20 catherine barkley being like "there's way too many people here...can't we just get drunk by ourselves and bet on stuff." she's just like me for real. CHAPTER 21 three months pregnant and still getting offered cognac in a hospital room. it was a simpler time. CHAPTER 22 whoever heard of a vacation getting canceled because you're having too good of a time? (read: our protagonist lost his convalescent leave because he dabbled in alcoholism) CHAPTER 23 sam in the comments said "the scene in the hotel room is easily the most important and most impressive," so i was a bit starstruck to stumble across it. it is damn good. CHAPTER 24 and thus we end book two. melancholy as hell. CHAPTER 25 we are told that war has been very bad while we were away, but mostly so far it's been spaghetti dinners and sex jokes. foreboding. CHAPTER 26 i cannot stress enough how much i dread the certain death of the priest. they don't make characters this sympathetic to give them happily ever afters, i'll tell you that. CHAPTER 27 today it occurs to me just how much better this book is than for whom the bell tolls. tell that to their respective goodreads average ratings, i guess. CHAPTER 28 happy valentine's day! we're spending it in the front seat of a car on the way to war, where two girls just hopped in and now we're desperately trying to convey that we aren't going to do anything untoward through a language barrier via asking if they're virgins. the most romantic celebration. CHAPTER 29 well, we just shot at a couple of random sergeants who were hanging out with us for a while and i do believe were on our side, so. i am losing the thread a bit here. CHAPTER 30 if there is one thing i feel qualified to say that hemingway loves writing about, it's bridges that may or may not be on the cusp of exploding. now i feel bad for being cavalier about the bridge, considering our first truly evil act of war was witnessed at the other end of it. CHAPTER 31 a train stowaway moment! man, the action came out of nowhere in this one. CHAPTER 32 and so we end book three, cold, wet, hungry, miserable, and lonely. typical boston winter. CHAPTER 33 there is a part in this chapter where the main character eats three sandwiches and drinks martinis and i know in my heart that i'm not a martini drinker but damn it sounds good. CHAPTER 34 i can't stress enough that if my friend were pregnant and unmarried during world war i i would also scream at the guy who knocked her up and cry at a dinner. oh wait is THIS the hotel scene...too many hotels. this one is good too. CHAPTER 35 i bet i would be more into fishing too if it was on a lake in italy and they had a bartender who rowed out to you. CHAPTER 36 we are well and truly on the run. and i want a sandwich again. CHAPTER 37 in this chapter is where i decide forever that catherine barkley is an angel from heaven. she spends all night in some shoddy canoe in the cold rain, sometimes rowing, and the whole time she's thinking about rolls and jam and butter and when she gets to breakfast they don't have any of it. i can't stress enough how i would ruin everyone's day if i were her. and thus we end book 5. CHAPTER 38 there is truly nothing funnier in this whole book than catherine barkley saying she'll drink another beer because the doctor says it'll keep the baby nice and small. THAT is literature. THAT is history. but catherine saying that she wished she'd known all of our protagonist's exes so she could make fun of them to him is also pretty good. CHAPTER 39 everything is so romantic and happy here in switzerland. we have just enough time left for it to all fall apart. CHAPTER 40 it is a marvel that there is a surviving generation of babies born in the world war i era. this level of drinking is flabbergasting me. CHAPTER 41 I SEE WHY BRADLEY COOPER THREW THIS GODDAMN BOOK OUT THE F*CKING WINDOW. OVERALL this book has remarkably little to do with war, which is kind of a surprise considering 100% of its synopsis and marketing revolves around it being The Great American WWI Novel, but it does have some very memorable characters. even if it does upset me a bit to think that the boys from All Quiet on the Western Front probably would've loved to spend the wartime drinking wine in italy. the best war novels convey the utter soullessness of it, and while this shows the brutal moments of life, it sure doesn't do that. rating: 3.5 ...more |
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Feb 2024
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Feb 21, 2024
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Dec 07, 2023
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Paperback
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| 0374528039
| 9780374528034
| 0374528039
| 4.17
| 1,602
| 1903
| Sep 05, 2001
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really liked it
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welcome to...THE COMPLETE CLAU(GUST)DINE. that's right. it may have been several months. the book in question may be several reasonably sized classics welcome to...THE COMPLETE CLAU(GUST)DINE. that's right. it may have been several months. the book in question may be several reasonably sized classics bound together. the pun may be worse than ever. but it's another PROJECT LONG CLASSIC installment. (this is when i read a set amount of a long and intimidating book every day for a month, like a coward, and also the smartest girl in the world.) as mentioned, this book is actually 4 books, and because of that i am far too lazy to go through and count the number of chapters in each one and divide accordingly. so i will be reading 20ish pages a day. i love being optimistic (buying long books as if i'll ever read them) and being rewarded. let's get into it. CLAUDINE AT SCHOOL, DAY 1 i have actually already read the complete short works of colette in another of my devilish little projects, and another of her normal books in one of my normal reading experiences, so i am feeling excited. and ready. and intimidated. and like i already want a baguette. that was fun!! CLAUDINE AT SCHOOL, DAY 2 i could not have possibly imagined how sapphic this book would turn out to be. i am refusing to read critically. this is the best. CLAUDINE AT SCHOOL, DAY 3 this is soooo jane austen emma coded...heavenly. CLAUDINE AT SCHOOL, DAY 4 thank god i was too lazy to divide this into chapters. i just hit the end of the first one. ON THE EIGHTIETH PAGE. oh, the humanity. CLAUDINE AT SCHOOL, DAY 5 took the weekend off because i'm evil and there is no way today is catch-up day. claudine's opinions are infallible to me at this point. i love a mean girl more than my own life. CLAUDINE AT SCHOOL, DAY 6 i can relate to claudine, as a girl who also went on a class trip to a city in france and was trapped in her shared hotel room by the teacher-chaperone following a perceived wrongdoing. i did not manage to escape, though. in spite of some discussion of walking across some decorative windowsills outside like a heist movie. CLAUDINE AT SCHOOL, DAY 7 no matter how much time passes, standardized exams don't change. this whole section was like the old-timey french equivalent of when you'd go on twitter after AP exams to look at the memes. CLAUDINE AT SCHOOL, DAY 8 probably i will think of the phrase "that bitch of an Anaïs" for all my days. and we are officially caught up!!! CLAUDINE AT SCHOOL, DAY 9 and just when you think this book can't get any more perfect, there's a boob joke. this was made in a lab. a pretty french lab. CLAUDINE AT SCHOOL, DAY 10 and thus we conclude our time with claudine at school how we spent it: with sex rumors, drama, insults, and pretty dresses. i'm going to miss this cast of characters! but claudine will find more people to make fun of and it'll be all the same to me. CLAUDINE IN PARIS, DAY 1 claudine has just tragically informed us her hair has been cut to below her ears, and i am mourning the occasion like a character died. CLAUDINE IN PARIS, DAY 2 our titular girl spending a paragraph bemoaning the fact that she had to leave her friend back at school, suffering, and couldn't bring her to paris...and then ending the paragraph with (besides, I didn't want to). greatest there ever was. CLAUDINE IN PARIS, DAY 3 suddenly chapters are now only a few pages long, as if we're in a normal classic rather than a hundred-page-section hellscape of demonic creation. paris changed you, claudine. CLAUDINE IN PARIS, DAY 4 eating chocolate and making herself feel sad and nostalgic over bygone times she didn't actually enjoy while she was in them...she's just like me fr. CLAUDINE IN PARIS, DAY 5 reunited and it feels so good!!! CLAUDINE IN PARIS, DAY 6 not if you gave me a thousand guesses would i be able to uncover the half of this luce reveal. good lord. i am growing nervous about the looming end of this book — we haven't the time to resolve half of this!!! CLAUDINE IN PARIS, DAY 7 oh, no...no no no... i've been afraid of a certain outcome since approximately day 3 and i am ready to call it. i don't think we're getting out of this one alive. welcome to the worst case scenario, claudine stans. old-timey kinda-incest. CLAUDINE IN PARIS, DAY 8 for the first time, this statement brings me no joy to say: i was right. but this was worse than i ever could have anticipated...claudine should be unmarried and mean and beating children up forever. and if she absolutely had to get married, it shouldn't be to some guy she sees AS A FATHER!!! good lord in heaven. CLAUDINE MARRIED, DAY 1 had to take a rare day off from this project due to the sincere trauma of claudine marrying some old guy because she wants a daddy...only to be greeted with the renewed suffering of having to read about said elder swiping the v-card. sheesh. CLAUDINE MARRIED, DAY 2 WE'RE BACK AT SCHOOL!!!!!!!!!! and we are caught up! and my tarnished soul is healed. for now. CLAUDINE MARRIED, DAY 3 donate to my gofundme: Raise Money For Claudine To Annul Her Marriage, Find Her Cast Of Characters And Move Back To Montigny For A Lifetime Of Sexually Charged Bullying. CLAUDINE MARRIED, DAY 4 oh thank god. we have a replacement luce. CLAUDINE MARRIED, DAY 5 i hate when people say "i could write a 40 page dissertation on this," but...i could straight up write a 40 page dissertation on gender in claudine. CLAUDINE MARRIED, DAY 6 in many ways this book is just about getting the ick. CLAUDINE MARRIED, DAY 7 i will set the whole of fictional old-timey paris ablaze. i will hunt down rezi and renaud. i will hunt down claudine too if she ever so much as dares to leave montigny again. it's like "only bad things happen in philadelphia" but only bad things happen when claudine leaves montigny. CLAUDINE MARRIED, DAY 8 well, the unthinkable has happened: for the first time in my life, i have been proven wrong. it seems bad things can happen even with claudine safely staying in montigny. i hate you, renaud. you big old freak. CLAUDINE AND ANNIE, DAY 1 who the hell is annie. at one point claudine is referred to as "colette"...i stan these even harder for the confirmation that colette wrote the coolest funniest girl in the world as a self-insert character. CLAUDINE AND ANNIE, DAY 2 if this isn't a luce situation i'm going to lose interest fast. or i guess lose it permanently. i'm already not interested. CLAUDINE AND ANNIE, DAY 3 overall this book has the feeling of the weird anne of green gables books that were about other characters and written out of order. this is not what i wanted!!! you are tainting me and claudine's beautiful memories!!! CLAUDINE AND ANNIE, DAY 4 goddamn if claudine isn't 200% more charming from her own perspective. enough of this annie girl. enough time has passed that i can't even really hold out hope she'll do something crazy. CLAUDINE AND ANNIE, DAY 5 well. she did do the crazy thing after all. OVERALL i love me some claudine, and while the last book was annoying and unnecessary and desperate to make me rage-lower this rating, i refuse. because the first book was perfect and the middle two weren't half bad either. i guess they were like. 1/3 bad. we'll take it! rating: 3.5 ...more |
Notes are private!
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Aug 02, 2023
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Aug 31, 2023
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Mar 13, 2023
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Paperback
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| 024155263X
| 9780241552636
| 024155263X
| 3.75
| 129,378
| Feb 02, 1922
| Jan 27, 2022
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welcome to... JULYSSES. this is part of a project in which i read intimidating classics over the course of a month in chunks i delude myself into findi welcome to... JULYSSES. this is part of a project in which i read intimidating classics over the course of a month in chunks i delude myself into finding approachable. this nightmare of a book apparently doesn't have "chapters," because that would make this seem at all doable, but it does have 3 books and 18 unlabeled basically unmarked episodes. so i'll be doing one of those a day. in other words, i'm acting out of self hatred again. EPISODE ONE i hate that these are called episodes, because it's making me think about star wars and thinking about star wars is making me feel nostalgic and excited and the only things i should be feeling right now are, like, grit and determination. i anticipated that the difficulty here would be that the language would be super dense, but it's actually that it all sounds very funny and it's easy to fall into reading without thinking about it at all. i'm just letting words glide through my brain. straight vibing. EPISODE TWO these first two have been pretty short, which can only mean suffering for future me. too bad for her! i'm having a great time. EPISODE THREE another short episode and we've finished the entire first book. the level of unearned confidence i'm getting from what a chill and fun time this has been so far...james joyce should be scared. fun that the word "snot" was in the 1930s irish lexicon. EPISODE FOUR do you ever read a kind of gross description and think, welp, that's gonna stick in my brain for the rest of my life? file the faint urine flavor of sheep's kidneys under that. EPISODE FIVE when i was 14 and read the odyssey in school, i was also a little brat and insisted time and again that it was sooo boring. imagine past me's disgust at finding out i'm now voluntarily reading an odyssey retelling with no monsters, no witches, and no gods. just a bunch of drunk irish guys. in other words, the odyssey motif is just now starting to be more apparent here. EPISODE SIX well, these are still nice and short, but it's getting to the point where i'm impressed with myself just for understanding at all what a paragraph means on first read. so. scratch the hubris from before i guess. EPISODE SEVEN oh boy, we're getting experimental. the sudden fun we're having with formatting is not upping my confidence. i have to say, everything i'm hearing about this molly gal is making me yearn for more content. we've got a hottie adulteress singing genius who bosses her husband around in the picture? let's get back to that! ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Jul 2024
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not set
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Aug 10, 2022
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Hardcover
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| 4.10
| 1,383,337
| Mar 31, 1969
| Aug 05, 2009
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it was amazing
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welcome to...SEPTEMBERHOUSE-FIVE. it's another title + month based pun, it's another classic on my currently reading list, it's another PROJECT LONG CL welcome to...SEPTEMBERHOUSE-FIVE. it's another title + month based pun, it's another classic on my currently reading list, it's another PROJECT LONG CLASSIC installment, a project by which i take on classics i've been procrastinating reading in itty bitty sections to make them seem manageable. this one isn't long, but i did only add it to my want to read list because i somehow have a bookmark that says "everything was beautiful and nothing hurt" and i feel like a poseur. so similar in impact. let's get into it. CHAPTER 1 i think this book has like 10 chapters, so i'll just read one a day till it's done and call it the world's worst project selection in terms of accuracy. to be honest i just want an excuse to read it immediately. CHAPTER 2 "The most important thing I learned on Tralfamadore was that when a person dies he only appears to die. He is still very much alive in the past, so it is very silly for people to cry at his funeral. All moments, past, present and future, always have existed, always will exist. The Tralfamadorians can look at all the different moments just that way we can look at a stretch of the Rocky Mountains, for instance. They can see how permanent all the moments are, and they can look at any moment that interests them. It is just an illusion we have here on Earth that one moment follows another one, like beads on a string, and that once a moment is gone it is gone forever." i mean. holy moley. CHAPTER 3 this book has a character who briefly appears and in his short time with us says that if you're writing an anti-war book, you may as well write an anti-glacier book for how effective it will be. both war and glaciers are here intended as timeless and permanent parts of human life. with climate change now making glaciers a much more impeachable concept, this statement acts as one of strange and ironic and twisted hope. CHAPTER 4 "Well, here we are, Mr. Pilgrim, trapped in the amber of this moment. There is no why." if i have to get abducted by aliens i hope they're also wise. CHAPTER 5 it's always fun to see another book you've enjoyed or want to read mentioned in a book you're actively reading and enjoying. like a special guest star appearance. CHAPTER 6 do you know the meme where a book / movie / tv show / romping good time / limited series / human life has to end when they say the title? anyway. this book would've just ended. CHAPTER 7 one of those books where you're like "i could write a whole paper about this" every other page. CHAPTER 8 this book is somewhat unique in antiwar books for its admission that war is intended to make shells out of heroic people, and that "one of its effects" is to prevent people from being "characters." it seems there is an impulse to think antiwar media will be more effective if this truth is ignored, but i've never found that to be the case. the most disturbing part of war, after all, is its anti-humanity. CHAPTER 9 a while back my boyfriend was flipping through my copy of this book and laughed pretty hard, but i didn't ask why because he appeared to be fairly close to the end and i didn't want to be spoiled. i have to say, i gave him more literary benefit of the doubt than he was entitled to for laughing at what i now realize was a drawing of boobs. CHAPTER 10 welp. OVERALL this book was mind melting and funny and smart and touching and painful, as was realizing that the quote i love so much that it inspired me to read this book is not meant sincerely. not everything is beautiful. a hell of a lot hurts. we shouldn't respond to death with nonchalance—we should never accept that that's how it has to go, not all of the time, not right then. war is evil, and things mean things, and we should keep life close to us even when it's tempting to release it, to pull your hand back as if from a hot stove. and the hurting makes the beautiful more beautiful anyway. rating: 5 ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Sep 03, 2023
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Sep 13, 2023
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May 17, 2022
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Kindle Edition
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| 4.29
| 361,855
| 1967
| Mar 02, 2023
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liked it
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welcome to...THE MASTER AND MARCHARITA! another excellent title + month pun, another paragon of literature added to my currently reading at the beginni welcome to...THE MASTER AND MARCHARITA! another excellent title + month pun, another paragon of literature added to my currently reading at the beginning of the month...you know what that means. IT'S ANOTHER PROJECT LONG CLASSIC INSTALLMENT (in which i read long classics segmented into smaller chunks over the course of a month to make them manageable). and this one is ordained from the heavens. my friend asked me if i had ever read this book as we stood in the middle of a three-story barnes & noble and i said no and we looked down to see the one (1) copy left in the entire store. so if i don't like it, i will be betraying not only my friend, but the universe itself. let's get into it. CHAPTER 1: NEVER TALK WITH STRANGERS oh how i love when chapters have titles. this book has 32 chapters, so it doesn't work PERFECTLY, but i'm incredibly brave and dedicated and it's pretty close, so. onward at roughly 1 chapter per day. immediately this is so cool. CHAPTER 2: PONTIUS PILATE a fairly long and extremely jesus prequel-y second chapter is a damn bold move. i see why people DNF this. CHAPTER 3: THE SEVENTH PROOF I DID NOT SEE THAT COMING. I WAS TOLD IT WOULD HAPPEN AND I DID NOT SEE IT COMING. CHAPTER 4: THE CHASE not as climactic as the title and the immediately preceding events and the overall vibe would make it seem. CHAPTER 5: THERE WERE DOINGS AT GRIBOEDEV'S for those moments when the plot has really kicked off and things are shocking and violent and high-stakes and you're like, "i wish i could be reading lengthy descriptions about restaurants and the group of writers that meet there right now." CHAPTER 6: SCHIZOPHRENIA, AS WAS SAID i feel prepared to say i have no idea what's going on. CHAPTER 7: A NAUGHTY APARTMENT this certainly didn't bring any enlightenment. CHAPTER 8: THE COMBAT BETWEEN THE PROFESSOR AND THE POET this was the most logical chapter yet. and it took place in an insane asylum. CHAPTER 9: KOREVIEV'S STUNTS out of the insane asylum and into the insanity. CHAPTER 10: NEWS FROM YALTA folks, i don't know how to tell you this, but...we are 5 days behind. sometimes procrastinating a project you completely made up and assigned yourself feels a lot like self-care. CHAPTER 11: IVAN SPLITS IN TWO let's be clear that there is nothing i would rather read about than a friend group involving a dark magic practicer, his weird annoying sidekick, and a cat. but can i not read about their trials and tribulations instead of alternating members of the russian public's reactions to them... CHAPTER 12: BLACK MAGIC AND ITS EXPOSURE i mean, this HAS to be good. ... the real magic trick was me predicting this would be fun from title alone!! CHAPTER 13: THE HERO ENTERS no heroes, please...i'd like to spend some more time with our bad guys... ah. the titular MASTER. CHAPTER 14: GLORY TO THE COCK! i mean...come on. it's too easy. CHAPTER 15: NIKANOR IVANOVICH'S DREAM i cannot for the life of me remember these russian-ass names. can you blame me? everyone's name has 11 consonants and 8 of them are Vs. CHAPTER 16: THE EXECUTION pontius again...i'm at a loss. CHAPTER 17: AN UNQUIET DAY now this is the kind of nonsense i can get behind. this is just magic and tomfoolery. i feel comfortable here. CHAPTER 18: HAPLESS VISITORS i still don't know what's going on but someone just hit someone else over the head with a roast chicken. so i have no complaints, really. how could i when literary genius is unfolding before me. CHAPTER 19: MARGARITA we're caught up AND we've checked both of our titular boxes. what a day. CHAPTER 20: AZAZELLO'S CREAM this chapter is dedicated in its entirety to describing the power of a nice lotion. CHAPTER 21: FLIGHT sometimes, as a woman, you have to run out of your house naked, become a witch, turn invisible, and start smashing windows. it happens to all of us. CHAPTER 22: BY CANDLELIGHT very cool to go to the devil's house and mainly be like, "oh sick, his chessboard has animated pieces." très stoic. CHAPTER 23: THE GREAT BALL AT SATAN'S the absolute must-attend event of the season. CHAPTER 24: THE EXTRACTION OF THE MASTER well. here they are. the titular duo, in the flesh, hanging out at the devil's house. and still i have no idea what this book is about. CHAPTER 25: HOW THE PROCURATOR TRIED TO SAVE JUDAS OF KIRIATH oh my god. more pontius. CHAPTER 26: THE BURIAL please, no...not more pontius...not more pontius in a long chapter on a day i don't feel like reading this...take mercy... CHAPTER 27: THE END OF APARTMENT NO. 50 i'm sick today and i'm making it absolutely everyone else's problem, so...all i can say is that if this chapter so much as alludes to jesus christ's lifetime, mikhail bulgakov should live in posthumous fear. oh my god. CHAPTER 28: THE LAST ADVENTURES OF KOROVIEV AND BEHEMOTH well, it happened. i finally got too tired of this book to go on and took a days-long break that included the entire end of march. happy april. let's finish this. CHAPTER 29: THE FATE OF THE MASTER AND MARGARITA IS DECIDED hard to imagine a scenario in which i spend as much time, as many pages, and as significant a portion of my mental health on two characters and care this little about their "fate." CHAPTER 30: IT'S TIME! IT'S TIME! crossing my fingers that the time in question is "time for this book to be fun again." ...i don't want to jinx anything, but... CHAPTER 31: ON SPARROW HILLS the nicest thing i can say about this one is that it's like two pages long. CHAPTER 32: FORGIVENESS AND ETERNAL REFUGE i am like pavlov's dog, except instead of drooling i experience unfettered rage and instead of a bell ringing it's this f*cking book talking about pontius f*cking pilate again. EPILOGUE thank god. OVERALL there was a lot going for this book. talking cats. tomfoolery. dark magic. big parties. annoying people eating dinner. institutes for the mentally insane. decapitation. a woman becoming a witch. the devil himself. but unfortunately none of it was enough to save itself from what was either a terrible, unforgivable translation (which, thanks to the unheeded warnings in the comments, i'm leaning towards) or a propensity to total nonsense. for the first time in this project's somewhat considerable history, i did not have fun. what a bummer. rating: 2.5 ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Mar 2023
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Apr 03, 2023
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Apr 24, 2022
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Hardcover
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| 0141192437
| 9780141192437
| B007YXQJHY
| 4.13
| 351,231
| Mar 25, 1902
| Oct 01, 2009
|
liked it
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welcome to...THE HOUND OF THE DECEMBERVILLES. man, every sherlock holmes title sounds like it was randomly generated by a computer. anyway, it's another welcome to...THE HOUND OF THE DECEMBERVILLES. man, every sherlock holmes title sounds like it was randomly generated by a computer. anyway, it's another PROJECT LONG CLASSICS installment. this is not that long of a classic, but i couldn't think of a better pun (i know – think of how low of a bar), so i'll be reading a chapter of this per day all month long. let's get into it! CHAPTER 1: MR. SHERLOCK HOLMES likely title for chapter 1 to be. kind of fun to just watch watson and holmes gossip for a while...attempt their little "deductions" and whatnot. and then also be totally wrong. CHAPTER 2: THE CURSE OF THE BASKERVILLES inching ever closer to that title. unfortunately i find it very difficult to be scared by the thought of a big dog, which is the best kind of dog there is. CHAPTER 3: THE PROBLEM to be honest i would have pinpointed "guy murdered by magic ghost dog" as the problem. but i guess that's why i'm not sherlock holmes. CHAPTER 4: SIR HENRY BASKERVILLE i bet this guy is about to seem completely innocent and normal. he actually does seem okay. but the doctor just revealed a phrenology side interest that i'm not loving. CHAPTER 5: THREE BROKEN THREADS i want to say that holmes and watson have a will they / won't they thing going on, but i'm scared of the fanfiction creators i would align myself with. CHAPTER 6: BASKERVILLE HALL oh, what a coincidence. there's a deranged escaped murderer lurking around our new neighborhood. chekhov's nearby serial killer. CHAPTER 7: THE STAPLETONS OF MERRIPIT HOUSE can't a woman even sob horrifically through the night with no tangible cause without being considered a clue in a murder anymore? CHAPTER 8: FIRST REPORT OF DR. WATSON can't wait for this dork's basic thoughts to be translated into brilliance by sherlock. i have to say, it's an interesting strategy for a (checks notes) sherlock holmes book to have its hero offpage the whole time for...the incredible reasoning of "he's working on other cases which we are not reading about." CHAPTER 9: SECOND REPORT OF DR. WATSON - THE LIGHT UPON THE MOOR two people are hunting an actual nearby serial killer in the dead of night on a mysterious moor, and they're more scared of a dog they heard barking. get real. CHAPTER 10: EXTRACTS FROM THE DIARY OF DR. WATSON no chance this is anything but "Mr. Dr. Sherlock Holmes...Mr. John Holmes...Dr. Mr. John Watson Sherlock Holmes...he loves me, he loves me not..." CHAPTER 11: THE MAN ON THE TOR let's play another round of my favorite game: Am I In A Bad Mood Or Was This Twist Annoying? CHAPTER 12: DEATH ON THE MOOR dun dun dun! this is a lot more scandalous than other sherlock installments i've read. all sorts of impropriety happening. CHAPTER 13: FIXING THE NETS it's all coming together now... CHAPTER 14: THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES title chapter title chapter title chapter! we gained awareness of an evil dog and we lost awareness of an evil woman...tragedy unfolding before our eyes. CHAPTER 15: A RETROSPECTION sounds like this one will be action-packed. OVERALL this is not the best sherlock (he's barely there, the mystery itself requires multiple extensive recaps, the big reveal is kind of drawn out and therefore disappointing) but it's still sherlock. rating: 3.5 ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Dec 06, 2023
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Dec 20, 2023
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Dec 25, 2021
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Paperback
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| 0141040319
| 9780141040318
| 0141040319
| 3.70
| 339,437
| Dec 15, 1856
| Oct 06, 2008
|
liked it
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welcome to...MADAME BOVUARY! you know what time it is — it's a title / month pun, i'm picking up an ill-advised classic, and i'm going to be as attenti welcome to...MADAME BOVUARY! you know what time it is — it's a title / month pun, i'm picking up an ill-advised classic, and i'm going to be as attention seeking about it as possible. IT'S ANOTHER PROJECT LONG CLASSIC INSTALLMENT. except this time i'm doing it at the end of one month into the start of another, the book is not that long, and i'm kind of proud of the terrible pun. because it works with both months. inasmuch as it works with anything. let's get into it! PART 1, CHAPTER 1 i primarily bought this book because i'm addicted to penguin clothbound classics, and secondarily bought it because the description is "Emma is beautiful and bored" and that's my life story. this book is not long, but there are 35 chapters and i'm trying to be More Chill about my reading, so a chapter a day it is! PART 1, CHAPTER 2 so far, so weird. PART 1, CHAPTER 3 thus far it's been a lot of exposition-y chapters, which makes sense, but they are so oddly written as to be more confusing than enlightening. whatever! onto the actual story. PART 1, CHAPTER 4 wedding scene!!!! this sounded fun. good chapter. i approve. i don't have a lot to say about this book thus far, if you couldn't tell. PART 1, CHAPTER 5 i do actually love the description in this. so pretty and clear. PART 1, CHAPTER 6 hello and welcome to our first catch-up day. a three-chapter situation. everyone say thank you, gustave for making these chapters so short. emma is addicted to novels...once again she is just like me fr. PART 1, CHAPTER 7 in a twist that will surprise absolutely no one, i like the unlikable pretty protagonist who hates her life and charms everyone. PART 1, CHAPTER 8 i do feel bad for charles, though. PART 1, CHAPTER 9 she's sooooo difficult...i stan PART 2, CHAPTER 1 a fun lil Get To Know The Villagers chapter. PART 2, CHAPTER 2 suddenly, just as i settled into the comfort of the idea that this would be a Description Book, here we are in Dialogue City. what a change! PART 2, CHAPTER 3 i really do feel like classics will cover the local politics of a small village for 75 pages, and marriage / birth / death are fully covered in a paragraph or two. PART 2, CHAPTER 4 happy three chapter day to all who celebrate. my copy of this is used (part of my How To Afford Collecting Penguin Clothbounds strategy) and there has been nary a mark inside until now. the last line of this chapter is underlined, and i agree: it rules. PART 2, CHAPTER 5 accidentally got enraptured and forgot to write about individual chapters. this is the REAL problem with three chapter days. PART 2, CHAPTER 6 yearning!!! PART 2, CHAPTER 7 emma has to stop reading novels??? good god...a fate worse than death.... PART 2, CHAPTER 8 something fun that this chapter did is make me feel the same existential boredom, but for the sweet relief of bantery dialogue, that our dear emma suffers from every day. because it was very boring. CONTROVERSY ARRIVES. PART 2, CHAPTER 9 a recipe for disaster is unfolding before us. PART 2, CHAPTER 10 emma, girl...stand up... PART 2, CHAPTER 11 HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY! let's spend it reading four chapters of existential ennui. and apparently extensive descriptions of club foot. PART 2, CHAPTER 12 i do love that being a hater and a trickster is making emma turn hot again. that's my entire skincare routine and life philosophy summed up. PART 2, CHAPTER 13 you hate to see a man win a situation...women are so much better at deception and deviousness...it looks odd on a man. PART 2, CHAPTER 14 2-14 on 2/14...pretty cute. there is no romantic connection or eternal tie quite like the correlation between something bad happening and life-altering illness in classic books. if you had a bad day as a protagonist in 1809...welcome to a life of Consumption. PART 2, CHAPTER 15 emma has a ROSTER. what an achievement. PART 3, CHAPTER 1 there is a 5 chapter day in my future...and today is not that day. i do love the drama of it all. everything emma does seems to be for maximum theatricality and that is a life's purpose i can get behind. PART 3, CHAPTER 2 hi mtv and welcome to my attempt at a catch-up day. honestly i would love to be charles bovary. no thoughts, head empty, zero suspicions, getting through life on vibes alone. PART 3, CHAPTER 3 it's remarkable — this book has no tension at all. one of the most tense things in the world is happening (repeated marital affairs! will someone discover it? will they be able to love openly? none of these questions come to mind) and it's like. no stakes. crazy. this chapter appears to be attempting a cliffhanger and the crowd went silent. PART 3, CHAPTER 4 these chapters are so wonderfully short. it's like they were written with me being days behind on a made-up project in mind. PART 3, CHAPTER 5 "From that moment her existence was but one long tissue of lies, in which she enveloped her love as in veils to hide it. It was a want, a mania, a pleasure carried to such an extent that if she said she had the day before walked on the right side of a road, one might know she had taken the left." this duplicitous little devil...i love her. PART 3, CHAPTER 6 too much math in the last chapter. debt is boring. give me something more interesting. jinxed myself. this was even longer and even mathier. PART 3, CHAPTER 7 super jarring to have a passage of dialogue here from two women just...witnessing emma emma-ing it up. you forget how Improper all this sh*t is until suddenly some lady is like "whip her in the streets." PART 3, CHAPTER 8 WHAT. but we have three chapters left! PART 3, CHAPTER 9 who cares anymore...what's even the point...if i weren't so goddamn close to finishing this i'd take a day off and catch up later... this is the coolest charles has ever been. low bar, but still. PART 3, CHAPTER 10 you hate to see an adult mom / overly fond son duo... PART 3, CHAPTER 11 well, today is the final day and i have literally no idea what i think about this book, so...pretty high stakes for this single chapter here. OVERALL generally, i think if you have the free time, the patience, and the refined taste, you can skip this completely, go for anna karenina, and pretend you read both. but if you're pressed for time or into melodrama, this one is good too. rating: 3.5 ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Jan 23, 2023
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Feb 26, 2023
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Dec 25, 2021
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Hardcover
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| 014139465X
| 9780141394657
| 014139465X
| 3.91
| 462,325
| -800
| Nov 06, 2014
|
really liked it
|
welcome to...THE APRILIAD! for those of you who are new here and do not yet feel the existential dread and heart-stopping moroseness that a title + mon welcome to...THE APRILIAD! for those of you who are new here and do not yet feel the existential dread and heart-stopping moroseness that a title + month pun inspires in the hearts of many... 1) hi. and 2) you have been cursed to stumble upon yet another installment of PROJECT LONG CLASSICS, in which i divide up an intimidating book into skinny and appealing chunks, dispersed over the course of a month. in this case, this stems from one of my defining personality traits: pretending that someday i'll reread the million-page classics i half-read in school. but now i'm doing it. let's get into it. BOOK I: PLAGUE AND WRATH i love that the greek gods had nothing better to do than mess with human rivalries. it's like if you were allowed to pick fights between people while you watched reality tv. BOOK II: A DREAM, A TESTING AND THE CATALOGUE OF SHIPS this chapter was roughly 60% roll call and i have to say...homer, if you think i'm remembering ANY of these names, you are in for a posthumous surprise. BOOK III: A DUEL AND A TROJAN VIEW OF THE GREEKS ok...the helen stuff is sadder than i remember... on a lighter note you have to respect homer's commitment to the wartime #OOTD. BOOK IV: THE OATH IS BROKEN AND BATTLE JOINED if i were SHOT by an ARROW and everyone wanted to stand around and poetically recap what had happened for paragraphs on end...i would freak the hell out. and i certainly wouldn't be all "it isn't mortal because of my sick-ass armor, don't worry about it." BOOK V: DIOMEDES' HEROICS huuuuge chapter for fans of tongues getting cut off at the root. BOOK VI: HECTOR AND ANDROMACHE helen calling herself a "cold, evil-minded slut" and then going on to discuss how her husband is brainless and annoying...kind of a slay. BOOK VII: AJAX FIGHTS HECTOR you have to respect homer — that is a CRAZY matchup for this early in the game. getting the big names out there early. menelaus really catching strays out here...he's the only one brave enough to say he'll fight hector and then agamemnon gets up and calls him old and washed up in front of everyone... #JusticeForOlympian-BredMenelaus BOOK VIII: HECTOR TRIUMPHANT pretty quick turnaround on triumph. hector just got his ass beat by ajax in front of everyone iirc this chapter alone uses the insults "cry-baby" and "barefaced bitch." the ancient greeks: they're just like us. BOOK IX: THE EMBASSY TO ACHILLES folks...we're 20 days behind. i don't know how this happened, but i'm guessing a combination of ennui, laziness, self-pity, distraction, a girls' trip to miami, and a hero's journey of my own involving frozen oreos and learning how to play poker. but that's just a guess. time to play catchup - 7 days left in april and 15 books left to go! achilles, petty king. BOOK X: DIOMEDES AND ODYSSEUS: THE NIGHT ATTACK i'm going to be honest — this is way, way too many names for me to be keeping active track of who belongs to which long lost city-state. let alone which gods are fans of which one. BOOK XI: ACHILLES TAKES NOTE achilles is like...the original person who says they're into self care but is actually just putting an amazing PR spin on being truly selfish and a nightmare to be around. another crazy bloody chapter. and not in the british way. although i guess that too. BOOK XII: HECTOR STORMS THE WALL this book loves nothing more than having one character say two full paragraphs of dialogue, then having another character parrot the exact same two paragraphs to another audience. it's very me when i'm trying to hit word count-coded. BOOK XIII: THE BATTLE AT THE SHIPS literally the only way that the hundreds of character names in this could be harder to track is if it were being read aloud. which is, you know. the intention. BOOK XIV: ZEUS OUTMANOEUVRED look at that fancy spelling. we're in business. hera is truly #goals in this chapter...i want to spend multiple pages getting all dressed up and be best friends with Sleep. as is we're barely even warm acquaintances. although i guess your husband listing the various hot women he's slept with and expecting you to be flattered is not ideal. BOOK XV: THE GREEKS AT BAY imagine getting killed by a dart to the nipple...tough way to go out. BOOK XVI: THE DEATH OF PATROCLUS uh oh. we got here faster than i remembered. oh, patroclus...you either live slaying or live long along to die seeing yourself become slayed. as the saying goes. (this works on 2 levels, because war is happening and also because patroclus is cool.) BOOK XVII: THE STRUGGLE OVER PATROCLUS mess with the body of patroclus and your brain WILL ooze bloody out of the crest-socket...i know that's right!!! patroclus hive we stay winning BOOK XVIII: ACHILLES' DECISION uh oh hector!!!!! get your ass ready!!! here the boy comes!! we just have a dozen pages of the most stunning and poetic and emotive writing of all time to get through first. but then we're on our way. BOOK IX: THE FEUD ENDS you might think that if war is raging and we have bodies to collect and there's stolen armor on the lose and the battle is about to be lost that we DON'T have time for 30 pages of emotional exploration via dialogue. rookie mistake. BOOK XX: ACHILLES ON THE RAMPAGE i'm gonna say it...go off, king. also extremely funny to be pleading for your life and fairly convinced it's going to work because you're the same age as your opponent. fellow 25-year-olds, we are in a permanent truce! BOOK XXI: ACHILLES FIGHTS THE RIVER he's just that good. excellent strategy to hear someone's whole life story, all their suffering and sadnesses, plus YOUR involvement in it, and just go "idiot." afterward. this book is like a how-to guide for absolute sass at this point. BOOK XXII: THE DEATH OF HECTOR you read this title and you're all hell yeah and then you remember that little scene by the wall with the baby freaked out at the helmet and the wife and and and... i see what you did there, homer. and it's only slightly undercut by the beginning of this chapter being about how hector saw achilles and ran away and achilles had to chase him around the city limits thrice. BOOK XXIII: THE FUNERAL AND THE GAMES kind of a tough itinerary but okay. it is a testament to the power and beauty of the conversation between patroclus' spirit and achilles that the reader only spends some time like "okay...kind of insane that we're doing the olympics right now." BOOK XXIV: PRIAM AND ACHILLES oh, the humanity! OVERALL usually i find the various installments of this project fairly easy to read, because of the whole They Are Very Short thing, but this never ended up feeling effortless. that's fine — what it did feel was incredibly evocative and impressive, a bajillion years after its writing. rating: 4 ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Apr 03, 2023
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Apr 30, 2023
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Dec 13, 2021
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Hardcover
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| B003WUYR9K
| 3.91
| 190,159
| Apr 14, 1952
| Sep 28, 2010
|
really liked it
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welcome to...INVISIBLE MAY. i've done it again. another impeccable pun combining the title of a seminal work with the month it currently is. another pa welcome to...INVISIBLE MAY. i've done it again. another impeccable pun combining the title of a seminal work with the month it currently is. another paragon of literature added to my currently reading. another several-week period that shall be spent reading it, one chapter at a time, daily. it's another PROJECT LONG CLASSIC installment. if saying you want to read long classics counts as reading them, i'm the smartest girl in the world. and now i'm reading them, also. let's get started. PROLOGUE love to own a book for 8 years without ever picking it up and then immediately find it compulsively readable from the very first page. extremely cool nonsense behavior by me. CHAPTER ONE clear from the prologue this would be a solid read for me. clear from chapter one that it is going to be brutal and excellent. CHAPTER TWO the way the theme of what white people want and expect and reward in Black people here is shown and not told is brilliant. the dichotomy between how the intellectual student and the castout are treated by the millionaire...so fascinating. CHAPTER THREE kind of cool that there was very little that could ail you in old times that couldn't be cured by a glass of whiskey at a strip club. CHAPTER FOUR love a secret code. CHAPTER FIVE the OTHER thing is that, on top of everything else, this also has some of the most gorgeous and visual descriptions i've read in recent memory. CHAPTER SIX we're going to the big city! CHAPTER SEVEN it is very hard to come up with my goofy little entries for each day of this project when i think each chapter is very good and i keep finding myself taking it very seriously. very. CHAPTER EIGHT okay cliffhanger! it speaks to how invested i am in this that "something had to happen tomorrow, and it did. i got a letter" feels suspenseful to me. CHAPTER NINE a rich white daddy's boy telling our protagonist that he's the one who's "freed" while this spoiled kid is trapped, and that he can be his valet, since he really wants to help... sheesh. "I could hardly get to sleep for dreaming of revenge" is the proper reaction to literally all of this. CHAPTER 10 he's working in the Liberty White Paint factory...folks, we have officially moved into metaphor city. CHAPTER 11 nothing is horror-movie-level scary like medical malpractice. CHAPTER 12 "the cool splash of sleep" — that's so good. nearly as good as this mary character and the idea of dumping a bucket of mop water on an actively preaching reverend. CHAPTER 13 we're getting into the invisibility origin story. and also my origin story of accidentally reinventing the word "invisibleness" through a combination of parallel thinking and it being monday. CHAPTER 14 it's party time!!!! and the party is mostly an induction into the revolution. which is the best kind. CHAPTER 15 breaking ugly decorations in a home should be the right of every single human. it's called the betterment of society — look it up. also to throw things away? i thought that went without saying but then i encountered the plot of this chapter. CHAPTER 16 let's get fired up!!!!! it's speech time! CHAPTER 17 watching the beautiful and pastoral color-based descriptions switch to the same language and style for violence and suffering...wow. CHAPTER 18 the worst kind of sabotage is when the person f*cking your sh*t up is not malicious. just dumb. there's no coming back from that. CHAPTER 19 the Woman Question? sounds like me asking my boyfriend why he loves me at the exact moment he's about to fall asleep, am i right? this guy gets it! "And I wanted both to smash her and to stay with her..." little did ralph ellison know that in the future those would be synonyms. CHAPTER 20 folks, i believe we are beginning to witness the titular invisibility. CHAPTER 21 never mind. not yet. getting ahead of myself i guess. CHAPTER 22 this has that specific high school assigned reading feeling of "I Am Culturally Relevant In A Way That May Fit The Syllabi Of Both Your History And Your English Classes." which is a bizarre sense to have in the midst of adult life. CHAPTER 23 ah yes, literature's favorite problem-solving tactic: There Must Be A Woman Who Can Do This For Me CHAPTER 24 welp. crazy how you can be absolutely and totally on board for an entire book only for the penultimate chapter to just about lose you entirely. CHAPTER 25 if we don't get invisible now, when will we. we have found the time. and i fear i may be back on board. EPILOGUE and it all comes full circle. OVERALL this is a very clever and very incisive and very allegorical but still compelling plotwise book, which had one chapter i hated and 24 i truly enjoyed. rating: 4 ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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May 2023
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May 29, 2023
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Apr 30, 2021
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Kindle Edition
| ||||||||||||||||
| 0141196890
| 9780141196893
| 0141196890
| 4.02
| 165,182
| 1872
| Jun 02, 2011
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it was amazing
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welcome to...MIDDLEMARCH MARCH. this book is a calm cool and collected 880 pages long, so elle and i will be tackling three chapters a day...every day welcome to...MIDDLEMARCH MARCH. this book is a calm cool and collected 880 pages long, so elle and i will be tackling three chapters a day...every day for this whole month. join us as we melt our minds. i love a project! DAY 1: CHAPTERS 1-3 immediately i am having fun. approx 30 pages per day for 31 days currently seems like the perfect way to read a book, i am walking on sunshine, i am breathing rainbows or whatever. this is beautifully written and a whole blast. i'm gonna live forever. DAY 2: CHAPTERS 4-6 somehow i have been cursed with reading not one, but two books about the devil's work on earth (beautiful twenty-something women marrying random dudes in their 40s) at the same time. gotta give it up, though: i'm not even at the 10% mark and i'm invested enough to do all but scream NOOOO at the pages. DAY 3: CHAPTERS 7-9 listen to this roast: "He has got no good red blood in his body [...] Somebody put a drop under a magnifying-glass, and it was all semicolons and parentheses." insanely good. i like this will ladislaw character! DAY 4: CHAPTERS 10-12 there's like a full page of dialogue in this about how dumb men look playing the flute and in other words i think i am in love with this book. DAY 5: CHAPTERS 13-15 i could read about rosy for 100 years. i could read about dodo for 50 years. i could read about will for 25 years. i am reaching the end of my patience with mr. old man husband and dr. boring guy. DAY 6: CHAPTERS 16-18 for the first time thus far, i almost missed a day. you may be tempted to say "emma, it hasn't even been a week, how are you already almost missing days" and to that i would respond a) i'm doing a WHOLE OTHER PROJECT right now and b) i'm lazy. technically it's 1:19 a.m. and thereby i did miss a day, but i ascribe to my own calendar, which is whenever i'm awake it's one day and then when i go to bed and wake up it becomes the next. this was very trying (three in a row of the more town politics-y chapters) but i did it in spite of dawning sleepiness. DAY 7: CHAPTERS 19-21 AND WE'RE BACK TO DODO AND LADISLAW! that sounds like a truly unlistenable indie band. anyway, after all those chapters about chaplaincies and town doctors, it's a treat beyond words to read about these two again. speaking of treat beyond words, i just remembered i have Trader Joe's Dark Chocolate-Covered Cherries™️...hang on, middlemarch. let me get my priorities in order. oh man i'm having so much fun. 1,000 pages of dodo and ladislaw dialogue, please and thanks. DAY 8: CHAPTERS 22-24 i've straight up been looking forward to this since i put it down yesterday. i don't want to jinx anything buuuuut...if this level of fun keeps up we may just have a 5 star on our hands. we have now entered Book 3, which has the cheery and promising title "Waiting for Death." i'm in heaven. DAY 9: CHAPTERS 25-27 27 is my favorite number. just a fun fact. this fred vincy character sure is a ding-dong, and a bit of a jerkoff to boot. chapter 26 uses the phrase "to be caught tripping," a moment which i imagine is what people mean when they say a timeless classic. DAY 10: CHAPTERS 28-30 wow. can you believe it! almost a third done already. time flies when you're assigning books to yourself like homework. relatedly: best homework ever. this rules. DAY 11: CHAPTERS 31-33 anyone else as stunned as i am that i haven't yet missed a day? if you aren't you should be. do not believe in me. a cliffhanger!!!!!!!! DAY 12: CHAPTERS 34-36 we are now entering book 4: three love problems. my guesses for the three titular issues in question: 1) Dodo's Old Man Husband Is The Worst And His Young Artist Cousin Rules 2) Mary Garth Deserves Better Than Fred Vincy But Will Probably End Up With Him 3) Somehow Middlemarch's Hottest Single Is Engaged To Some Poor Guy. No Thanks, As A Reader next book is called "THE DEAD HAND," very ominously, and we're getting some foreshadowing as to what that means here on the day of featherstone's funeral. technically that's a spoiler but i don't think "oldest character dying in a sprawling 1000 page novel" is much of a twist. already today is so long and i'm not even halfway through the first of the three chapters but!!! "There would be a satisfaction in being buried by Mr. Cadwallader, whose very name offered a fine opportunity for pronouncing wrongly if you liked." this is so funny. and i haven't even mentioned yet that there's an oft-referenced place called Freshitt. okay and: “I dare say Dodo likes it: she is fond of melancholy things and ugly people.” me using dating apps. DAY 13: CHAPTERS 37-39 okay. i am suddenly multiple days behind. in my defense: on sunday i took medical leave of reading (so scared of slumping again) and yesterday i was equal parts busy and anxious, and thereby effectively illiterate. but the good news is: today is a 9 chapter day!!! (it is really a reflection of how much fun i'm having that this is good news, instead of the sickening impact of procrastination.) "Each looked at the other as if they had been two flowers which had opened then and there." golly. this is a very witty and smart and beautifully written book, and the nicest thing i can say about it is that there are approx 100,000 characters and i'm not having that much trouble remembering them. huge praise. DAY 14: CHAPTERS 40-42 haha. chapter xl. “The lad is of age and must get his bread.” was this published YESTERDAY? i'm losing my damn mind current character ranking: 1) dodo 2) will 3) rosamond 4) mary 5) fred 6) celia any of these guys as the focus: good with me. when we open up a chapter and i see the dreaded word "lydgate"...a different story! DAY 15: CHAPTERS 43-45 as very witty people in the comments pointed out: IT'S THE MIDDLE OF MIDDLEMARCH MARCH. the ides, even. it is also now BOOK V: THE DEAD HAND, a badass title that only grows more badass because of the aforementioned foreshadowing. nothing is more badass than foreshadowing. I CAN'T BELIEVE THIS. ROSAMOND IS SUDDENLY LIVING WITH AND MARRIED TO AND ACQUAINTED WITH THE FAMILY OF LYDGATE. WHAT THE HELL KIND OF PACING IS THIS. NARY A SINGLE WEDDING SCENE IN THIS DAMN BOOK IN WHICH 3 WEDDINGS HAVE TAKEN PLACE AMONG MAJOR CHARACTERS. casaubon and lydgate can be exiled from this book, as far as i'm concerned, for their respective crimes of being a butthole and being boring. DAY 16: CHAPTERS 46-48 it's the best time of the day! will ladislaw, a pro-union pro-democracy king. also the first recorded instance of a floor person. this is also such a perfect example of the Every Good Heterosexual Romance Involves The Man Liking The Woman Way More. i'm once again having a blast. I JUST GASPED AT THE END OF THIS CHAPTER. OH LA VACHE. DAY 17: CHAPTERS 49-51 i love this book so much (reading it earlier in the day than usual for i can't wait reasons) but it is SO FRUSTRATING SOMETIMES. when a once-major character has a baby I DON'T WANT TO FIND OUT THROUGH A PASSING LINE OF DIALOGUE. jeez. tangled webs here in middlemarch. DAY 18: CHAPTERS 52-54 ugh! i like the vicar better for mary than dumb old fred vincy. sure, he's 5th in my character rankings, but i rank, like, the mad hatter pretty highly too. doesn't mean i'd wanna marry the guy. was just thinking "ah, don't know if i have a long bulstrode section in me..." and then after two paragraphs this book straight up says "enough." i'm in love aaaaand onto book 6: THE WIDOW AND THE WIFE. ok. three months have suddenly just passed without will and dodo even glimpsing each other, meanwhile if i go like 10 days without seeing someone i'm dating i assume we're ghosting each other. how times have changed. goddamn i am yearning! this book is so f*ckin' good. DAY 19: CHAPTERS 55-57 okay. so i missed a day. in my defense i was drunk for like 90% of the friday to saturday block of this week, for reasons of "It Was 70 Degrees And St Patrick's Day Weekend And I Am Young And Hot." aaaand i missed another day. i read one chapter but i was very hungover and had also drunkenly bought basketball tickets so time was limited. 8 chapter day it is!!! some fun mary and fred action happening. maybe i will have time to turn Team Fred before the end of this. DAY 20: CHAPTERS 58-60 immediately this set started out by saying lydgate hates his cousin because his haircut is lame. maybe i'll do a 180 on lydgate, too, because that f*ckin rules. oh my god and it says the same cousin isn't actually hot but girls think he is because of his mustache. i love that this million year old book has the same opinions as the average tiktoker. oh my god and: “If he got his head broken, I might look at it with interest, not before.” PLEASE this project is really testing my roman numeral reading ability. DAY 21: CHAPTERS 61-63 oh man. drama alert. oh god. chapter 61: drama. chapter 62: yearning. onto BOOK 7: TWO TEMPTATIONS. ugh. i was trying so hard to like lydgate but him being an asshole immediately on the heels of a perfect dodo / will chapter is too much to bear. DAY 22: CHAPTERS 64-66 read over 100 pages of this yesterday. now i feel invincible going in for what will surely be, like, 22. rosamond is a complete and utter b*tch and i love it. DAY 23: CHAPTERS 67-69 hehe. this was like...all bulstrode. rude. DAY 24: CHAPTERS 70-72 ugh. more bulstrode. at least he's doing crimes. and i guess we have to kill the time somehow until will and dodo can see each other again. onto book eight: SUNSET AND SUNRISE. it's giving ethan hawke. “And, of course, men know best about everything, except what women know better.” so true bestie DAY 25: CHAPTERS 73-75 oh thank god, will ladislaw is coming back. i can't deal with all this bulstrode and lydgate action, even if i do keep getting the opportunity to see rosy be an absolutely divine asshole because of it. DAY 26: CHAPTERS 76-78 this set of chapters is so dramatic that i just explained the entire plot of this 900 page book to my sister just to try to indicate the massive yearning angsty payoff of dodo and will seeing each other again under unintended circumstances. i am having so much fun it's hard to stop!!! DAY 27: CHAPTERS 79-81 I AM GOING THROUGH IT, EMOTIONALLY SPEAKING. DAY 28: CHAPTERS 82-84 AAAAAAAAAHHHH!!!! honestly in my heart of hearts i find this kinda anticlimactic but still. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!!!! actually i take it back. it's nice just the way it is. DAY 29: CHAPTERS 85-87 folks, we are nearing the end and i have to say...I DON'T WANNA. don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened, or whatever, i guess, ugh. also now realizing it's been about a hundred years since we last heard from fred and mary. we're down to the last seconds, george eliot! thereeee they are. all the star crossed dodo-and-will stuff is lovely, but this is so good too: "I don’t think either of us could spare the other, or like any one else better, however much we might admire them. It would make too great a difference to us—like seeing all the old places altered, and changing the name for everything." and it's over. i didn't know it was finishing today!!! i'm going to cry. OVERALL this is a funny, wry, smart, witty, political, historically significant, educating, romantic, beautifully written, basically perfect book. it is worth each and every one of its 880 pages and i would have kept reading far more! rating: 5 ------------------- tbr review am very into pretending i want to read super-long books lately ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Mar 2022
|
Mar 29, 2022
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Feb 23, 2021
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Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||
| 0141393386
| 9780141393384
| 0141393386
| 3.96
| 155,137
| 1874
| Sep 26, 2013
|
liked it
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welcome to...FAR FROM THE MARCHING CROWD! i can't tell if i'm deluding myself, or if the puns have just gotten really bad, but this title-month-combo p welcome to...FAR FROM THE MARCHING CROWD! i can't tell if i'm deluding myself, or if the puns have just gotten really bad, but this title-month-combo pun doesn't feel as awful as some of the others. anyway. welcome to another installment of PROJECT LONG CLASSICS, in which i make huge old books less intimidating by reading them in small chunks over the course of a month and making a lot of bad jokes. CHAPTER 1: DESCRIPTION OF FARMER OAK - AN INCIDENT this is my first thomas hardy experience (although not my first tom hardy experience – that would be band of brothers). we're off to a fun start. like who knew the meaning of "ugly-hot" originated in 1874. CHAPTER 2: NIGHT - THE FLOCK - INTERIORS i mostly added this one to my tbr because i want to watch the movie (for carey mulligan reasons) and i'm a self respecting bookworm who will read the book first. that motivation can get me through a lot of sheep farming descriptions. CHAPTER 3: A GIRL ON HORSEBACK - CONVERSATION it's so funny what was considered sexy in the days of yore. this guy is like man, i wish it were summertime...so i could see more of her arm ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Mar 04, 2024
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Mar 31, 2024
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Feb 23, 2021
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Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||
| 0060929790
| 9780060929794
| 0060929790
| 4.12
| 986,507
| 1967
| Jan 01, 1998
|
really liked it
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welcome to...ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF AUGUSTUDE! while logically i know that is far from my best month / title pun, and is also actually among the worst, a welcome to...ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF AUGUSTUDE! while logically i know that is far from my best month / title pun, and is also actually among the worst, and in point of fact that's even worse than it sounds because my puns have never been good... i like it. and that's that. we are back for another exciting round of Project Long Classics, in which elle and i find it within our cowardly hearts to brave long books from old times only by dividing them up into teeny-tiny chunks for four entire weeks. if it works, it works. i have been putting off reading this for a long time, and i am still very scared, but i do have this joke to get off: one hundred years of solitude? sounds like quarantine, am i right? buh dum ch! okay. i'm ready to get started. we're also reading this for our book club - join the discussion here follow on instagram here let's go. DAY 1: PAGES 1-15 it's august 3, i won't lie to you. i could never. my nose would grow. pinocchio was based on a true story from the future about a human woman who writes book reviews. okay, i'm procrastinating. i'm scared and i have to read 50 pages today!!! sue me! all right. couple of things: this is beautiful; i have a used copy, acquired at an unknown time but probably 5+ years ago, and it smells good as hell; i'm not catching up today. DAY 2: PAGES 16-30 okay. honesty hour: it's day 7, and i'm 15 pages into this book. folks...i am SLUMPED. (also i've been busy and i have trouble prioritizing these projects NOTORIOUSLY when i'm busy, but who cares about that part.) anyway, i've decided i'm ignoring it in order to indulge in my favorite way to spend a sunday: bringing 5-10 books in bed with me and alternating chapters all day, absolutely refusing to so much as make eye contact with another human being. so hopefully we catch up! DAY 3: PAGES 31-45 okay...dare i say...i'm starting to have fun with this. i'm definitely liking it more than a good number of the collected stories, i'll say that much. DAY 4: PAGES 46-60 so far this is giving very much no plot just vibes, and i can't say i'm not into it. and it's a collected stories crossover episode! DAY 5: PAGES 61-75 the drama!!! sheesh. although you have to respect a classic that just comes right out and admits that nothing in life is more interesting or important than love and sex. most old books are always pretending it's something boring, like politics, or accounting, or blood feuds. DAY 6: PAGES 76-90 maybe it's just me, but personally if i were selecting a wife out of everybody i knew, i'd probably pick someone who wasn't still literally wetting the bed. genuinely. not metaphorically. but that's just my pref. DAY 7: PAGES 91-105 caught up!!! in our third consecutive hour of reading!!! alternating with 6 other books!!! is there nothing a project cannot do!!! there is just...so much going on here. DAY 8: PAGES 106-120 pretty badass behavior happening here...i love it when women DAY 9: PAGES 121-135 i took major advantage of the included family tree today, i'll say that. hoo boy. DAY 10: PAGES 136-150 this is like. Intense to read. it never gets natural or easy in the way that most books do, even really old timey ones of major significance. but it is so damn good. DAY 11: PAGES 151-165 a lot of these fellas up to no damn good... DAY 12: PAGES 166-180 did anyone else notice that i accidentally started numbering the days in decreasing order. (now fixed.) how did that happen?! am i being pranked?? if someone hacked my account, please go to my messages and see how funny it is when men send desperate DMs to faceless book reviewers. i don't wanna be alone in the humor anymore. anyway. amaranta pulls. DAY 13: PAGES 181-195 another weekend, another two days i accidentally took off from reading in their entirety. this is the first time that my 15 page intervals have actually lined up with a chapter. this is the height of luxury!! DAY 14: PAGES 196-210 this is such a fever-dream way to read a fever-dream book - cut up into senseless little chunks like this. it's already such a discombobulated and nonlinear read, and absolutely refusing to acknowledge chapters or page breaks of any kind is insane! but fun. DAY 15: PAGES 211-225 all the women in this book slay...they are very sexualized but also very badass. it's very fun to read about. caught up! DAY 16: PAGES 226-240 HOW is ursula still alive. we're on, like, our 8th aureliano. DAY 17: PAGES 241-255 imagine being so hot it kills literally any man who doesn't leave you alone... goals. DAY 18: PAGES 256-270 make that like. 25 aurelianos. back to 8 again. DAY 19: PAGES 271-285 URSULA!!!!!!! I LOVE YOU DON'T GO!!!!!!! i know you're like 200 years old and i just took you for granted like 3 days ago. but still. DAY 20: PAGES 286-300 since my mourning cry for ursula, multiple people have died but she is not among them?? what a rollercoaster of emotions. there is a girl whose name is truly Meme in this and she is just as wonderful as her name would indicate. anyway generally the women in this remain discernible and one of a kind and interesting through this whole crazy book, while the men continue to bore me and be absolutely impossible to keep straight. DAY 21: PAGES 301-315 folks, we're behind again. because even when my weekends are extremely lazy (read: indoors and conducted in solitude, as is my wont), and even when my weeks consist of little to no reading, something in my soul says that i should take at LEAST one saturday or sunday off entirely. i can't help it. DAY 22: PAGES 316-330 there are like 200 characters in this book and 196 of them have been publicly executed. DAY 23: PAGES 331-345 ursula somehow still alive and kicking. i love when magical realism is just like..."it rained for four years straight and this woman is like 180 years old." DAY 24: PAGES 346-360 under 100 pages to go and i feel confident stating there will never be a plot! and for that reason i have to stan. i cannot keep these men straight for even one second and yet i could summarize each female character in a paragraph by first name alone. it's the misandrist in me. also the fact that every man has one of two names. but still. DAY 25: PAGES 361-375 aaaand it's an almost-no-paragraph-breaks day. of course. on a morning when my entire operating system feels like it's been replaced by a rube goldberg machine, which i just almost called a lou gehrig's machine. did i say morning? it's 12:48 p.m. onward and upward. anyway. intense chapter! DAY 26: PAGES 376-390 how does a book with no plot conclude? not sure. seems like a lot of death but that's also par for the course for the most part. DAY 27: PAGES 391-405 goddamn this is one cursed family. DAY 28: PAGES 406-420 seems pretty late to be introducing new major characters but what do i know! this book plays by its own rules. DAY 29: PAGES 421-435 the penultimate day! and we've reached the Sweeping Statements About Love And Decline And Meaning section. i'll miss reading this book but i'm so excited to see how it concludes. DAY 30: PAGES 436-448 whoa. OVERALL this book is wild, lovely, and weird, conveying in a completely unique way themes about family and time and suffering and love. i can't decide whether reading it in arbitrary doses over a month is the best or worst way to do so, but i had a good time! rating: 3.5 ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Aug 03, 2022
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Aug 30, 2022
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Nov 23, 2020
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Paperback
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| 024119895X
| 9780241198957
| 024119895X
| 4.01
| 117,855
| Jun 1848
| Jan 28, 2016
|
it was ok
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welcome to...TENANT OF WILD(APRIL) HALL. doesn't roll off the tongue like middlemarch march, but elle and i bravely march on in our project of reading welcome to...TENANT OF WILD(APRIL) HALL. doesn't roll off the tongue like middlemarch march, but elle and i bravely march on in our project of reading long classics in small installments over the course of a month. also - not enough houses have names these days, in my opinion. might start walking around calling my apartment Oakbrook Abbey or some nonsense. anyway. let's do it! DAY 1: CHAPTERS 1 & 2 imagine if you were at a party and you made a new friend so you told him about yourself and were like "what about you, what's your deal" and he refused to answer and you were like ok weird...and then a few weeks later he starts sending you a series of letters detailing his life story and totaling 576 pages. that is the frame story of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. DAY 2: CHAPTERS 3 & 4 it is technically past midnight and i am not sober but i refuse to fall behind on the second day. “'Well! you ladies must always have the last word, I suppose,' said I [...] 'You may have as many words as you please,—only I can’t stay to hear them.'” god that goes so hard. i get as much a kick of calling old books feminist as the next guy but...this may be genuinely feminist. will keep you posted. in other news: there are WAY too many names in this, and our narrator is annoying and deserves to be named gilbert. DAY 3: CHAPTERS 5 & 6 “[T]his was too disagreeable a supposition to be entertained a moment after it could conveniently be dismissed.” me when i'm deluding myself gilbert is still pretty annoying but i think helen may be up my alley. what could be better than a b*tchy and mysterious woman??? DAY 4: CHAPTERS 7 & 8 “Where her opinions and sentiments tallied with mine, it was her extreme good sense, her exquisite taste and feeling, that delighted me; where they differed, it was still her uncompromising boldness in the avowal or defence of that difference, her earnestness and keenness, that piqued my fancy: and even when she angered me by her unkind words or looks, and her uncharitable conclusions respecting me, it only made me the more dissatisfied with myself for having so unfavourably impressed her, and the more desirous to vindicate my character and disposition in her eyes, and, if possible, to win her esteem.” now that is a man written by a woman. i've said it before and i'll say it again: the best straight romance is a man who is obsessed with a girl with no stakes or expectations and she has no idea until a sudden Big Reveal. DAY 5: CHAPTERS 9 & 10 just noticed i've quoted from this every day since day 1, which was a plot summary.......not an awesome sign actually!! not pointing towards me having much to say about this!! except that this gilbert fella is a real bozo. DAY 6: CHAPTERS 11 & 12 too much drama too early. who cares. it's like how gossip is better when you know who it's about? same thing for love-based angst and declarations and rejections from characters you barely know in romances you didn't even think were happening yet. i did like the part where gilbert laid on the ground, though. that was funny. DAY 7: CHAPTERS 13 & 14 at one point in this, a younger brother starts singing a love song to annoy his older brother, who's in a bad mood, until the older brother hits him and he tells on him. the human experience is unchangeable by time. less relatable when gilbert beats some guy on the head with a metal-tipped whip, but ok. it is badass to follow that up with “You may go to the d—l, if you choose—and say I sent you” though. DAY 8: CHAPTERS 15 & 16 guys, i'm on vacation. this is another way of saying that the wherewithal it's taking me to continue with this project today is roughly equivalent to conquering a small nation, or pretending to enjoy listening to classical music. it's backstory time for these characs. i was about to say "finally," but we're actually not all that far into this book - it's just comically slow going. “Never fear, my dear! the male fools and reprobates will never want for partners, while there are so many of the other sex to match them.” savage. DAY 9: CHAPTERS 17 & 18 it is actually day 11, but i'm going to experiment with something called "not catching up," since i think we have days to spare this month. and also i haven't read in days and i'm not sure i still know how. more of girlfriend's backstory today, and i gotta say: knowing more about her is making me like her less! in conclusion: mr huntingdon is an ass, gilbert is a bozo, and helen is annoying. all star lineup. DAY 10: CHAPTERS 19 & 20 still 2 days behind but honestly i think that's pretty impressive for the kind of vacation i am having. this is SO ANNOYING - i have heard 0 reasons why she likes this guy and a hundred not to and we're just expected to be like "yeah that makes sense that she would marry his ass against the wishes of her combination mother / BFF." DAY 11: CHAPTERS 21 & 22 it's actually day 14 now, but this book is only 53 chapters long and thereby i do not have to catch up yet. also i don't feel like it, because this hasn't been that fun! mostly it's been one thing, which is "cut into mercifully short sections." helen is very annoying to me and it is funny to read all two (2) of her friends be like...your husband to be is pretty red-faced, are you sure on this one? YOU SHOULD NOT BE SURE, HELEN. also, how ironic that this is the longest day so far. i will never be positive again. DAY 12: CHAPTERS 23 & 24 ...it's day 16. fellas, is it cheating for your girl to love god? that's space in her heart for another man........ a third of this book has been backstory, with no end in sight. can't even find the humor in the phrase "confounded slut." DAY 13: CHAPTERS 25 & 26 some things are true throughout time, such as if your significant other is really trying to get you to leave town they are definitely hiding something, and if you're already married it's probably bad. DAY 14: CHAPTERS 27 & 28 i want to take back what i said about the feminism of this book. so far it seems mostly hinged on acting like a woman isn't responsible for her emotional actions. or maybe i am just SO SICK OF READING ABOUT THIS TRAGIC MARRIAGE THAT COMMON SENSE AND BASIC DECISION-MAKING RECOMMENDED AGAINST LIKE 11 TIMES!!! DAY 15: CHAPTERS 29 & 30 attempting to catch up while the most irritated with this i've been yet. a brilliant idea from me. she goes, "But I remembered that I had brought all these afflictions, in a manner wilfully, upon myself; and I determined to bear them without a murmur." APPARENTLY 15 CHAPTERS DOESN'T EVEN QUALIFY AS A MURMUR NOW DAY 16: CHAPTERS 31 & 32 i wish i could turn back time just to be like WE GET IT, ANNE. HER HUSBAND WAS BAD NEWS. BUT NOW WE'VE SPENT MORE THAN HALF THE BOOK TO THIS POINT ON BACKSTORY AND I AM ON THE CUSP OF COMPLETE BREAKDOWN. i truly eat any and all positive words i have said about helen to this point. she is so mean to people who don't deserve it and so passive in her own situation. DAY 17: CHAPTERS 33 & 34 another set of chapters today in another dreaded catch-up attempt. the drama is higher but i care even less! ah, that's not fair. helen at least had some good lines in this one. DAY 18: CHAPTERS 35 & 36 all but begging for mercy at this point. it is probably #Cruel and Unusual to blame helen for 100% of her problems, but i do blame her for my having to read about 100% of them. DAY 19: CHAPTERS 37 & 38 third two-set day in a row and i am finally almost caught up. curse you, vacation version of myself!! this is a bit cartoonish imo!!! DAY 20: CHAPTERS 39 & 40 if i can read two sets today, as i have for the previous 3 days, i will finally be caught up. but at what cost. why...would this woman...who has hated this one man before there was even a reason...rush to tell him her biggest secret, immediately before making him hate her? genius alert!!! DAY 21: CHAPTERS 41 & 42 there's a part in this where a character is like "god damn me" and our protagonist is like "if god was listening you'd be in hell already." that's the only part of today's set i have enjoyed. caught up. DAY 22: CHAPTERS 43 & 44 we are now nearly to the three-quarter mark of this book. we have been in backstory purgatory since 25%. never in my life have i read a book structured like this, and that is a good thing. helen has to be the slowest writer on earth also. she'll write a 5 page journal entry and be like "i had been up all night - hours had passed since i sat at my writing-desk - the sun began to light the room -" blah blah blah. BACKSTORY OVER! oh my god. i thought we'd never seen the day. i had completely forgotten this is all a series of letters to some dude who made the grave mistake of expressing casual interest, including hundreds of pages' worth of some woman's journal. jesus. helen has terrible taste AND decision-making skills. DAY 23: CHAPTERS 45 & 46 really feeling like ye olde boat beating against the current at the moment. after our narrator has finished reading the manuscript (interrupted by 30 minutes spent GETTING DRESSED) he shows up at helen's house only to refer to her servant and only companion as an "old virgin." insane. missed this guy's antics. if i nearly killed someone by hitting them on the head with a blunt object and then found out they'd actually done nothing wrong, i would have apologized better than "i'm sorry but idc if you accept." AND this guy hits him with "I clenched my hands and stamped my foot upon the rug." these are possibly the most annoying characters in all of classic literature. not him holding hands with helen's brother because they look like hers.............. i can't take this anymore. DAY 24: CHAPTERS 47 & 48 well, yesterday i was pretty dismal, but i was also reading during commercial breaks from watching my precious sixers lose. so maybe that was why. well. it wasn't that. DAY 25: CHAPTERS 49 & 50 a whole new meaning to the phrase "so close, yet so far." "I never sought his company but with the hope of hearing something about her, and he never sought mine at all, because he saw me often enough without." the only person who might find what's his nuts as annoying as i do is poor lawrence. dramatic things are happening, but they don't really feel dramatic because i do not care. DAY 26: CHAPTERS 51 & 52 i cannot believe how violent this guy is. this dude is causing permanent brain damage and hurting women on the daily. elle was talking about how charlotte and emily hid this book for ages and everyone thinks it was because they were jealous, but her theory is that it's actually because it was bad and they should have done a better job. she's right!!! one chapter to go. DAY 27: CHAPTER 53 okay awesome i'm so glad these hateful bozos found eternal happiness. whatever. OVERALL in all honesty, this book has none of the charm of jane austen, none of the compelling darkness of wuthering heights, and none of the skillful characters of jane eyre. if anne didn't have the last name brontë, i think there's no way this book would have survived 200 years to remain relevant. it's not even really feminist. rating: 2 ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Apr 2022
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Apr 27, 2022
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Feb 16, 2019
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Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||
| 152900246X
| 9781529002461
| 4.00
| 391,518
| 1865
| unknown
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it was amazing
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welcome to...ALICE'S ADVENTURES IN SEPTEMBERLAND. might be my best month/title pun since middlemarch march. we are BACK (and a week late) for Project Lo welcome to...ALICE'S ADVENTURES IN SEPTEMBERLAND. might be my best month/title pun since middlemarch march. we are BACK (and a week late) for Project Long Classics, in which elle and i tackle a long intimidating classic in small chunks for an entire month. however, this book is not long, and it's not intimidating, and personally i will be reading this AND the sequel at a chapter-ish a day. join our book club to join the project!! follow on instagram here or join the discussion here. DAY 1: DOWN THE RABBIT-HOLE as we start things off, i'll include the cheesy declaration of love i wrote when announcing this pick in our book club discord: this is my favorite book of all time. this teeny tiny children's classic is so dear to me - whether you want a light fairytaley read or a thematically rich toughie you can analyze all day long, you can find either experience in this. filled with whimsy, imagination, and the bittersweet nostalgia of dreams and childhood, i never tire of this - and i get something new from it with every read. at one chapter a day, this and its sequel (THROUGH THE LOOKING-GLASS AND WHAT ALICE FOUND THERE), which i see as a continuation of the first more than a separate book, can be read in 24 days! bleh. gross. look how sweet and earnest. DAY 2: THE POOL OF TEARS it's actually day 8. i'm terribly slumped - the kind where it literally never occurs to you to read and then when it does you're like...am i physically capable of doing this? how did i ever make these words enter my head? if anything can heal me it's this. update: not yet, but we did get our first curiouser and curiouser...slay... DAY 3: A CAUCUS-RACE AND A LONG TALE the titular mouse's tale / mouse tail pun here...one of the greatest of all time i dare say... DAY 4: THE RABBIT SENDS IN A LITTLE BILL i don't know how the little EAT ME cakes manage to sound so good with virtually no description, but they do. maybe because these look so goddamn delicious? [image] or maybe just because i like cake. DAY 5: ADVICE FROM A CATERPILLAR folks...it's day 12. i've never been slumped like this and at this point i am Frightened. my goodreads challenge is beginning to appear to stare back at me, like the void or one of those scary crusty small white dogs. but this book is simply...everything. DAY 6: PIG AND PEPPER the baby-turning-into-a-pig thing is honestly objectively terrifying. especially when alice is like "this baby is like a star-fish" and looks down and boom. but! cheshire cat appearance. and "we're all mad here." huge quote for people with watercolor tattoos and hot topic graphic tees. DAY 7: A MAD TEA-PARTY ICONS ALERT!!! a real heavy hitter. maybe my favorite chapter. what can i say? not all my opinions are unpopular. DAY 8: THE QUEEN'S CROQUET-GROUND monarchs, am i right. DAY 9: THE MOCK TURTLE'S STORY well, it's actually day 14, so i might as well mess around and finish this book already. i wanted to relish it but my dumb suddenly-illiterate brain refuses to allow me to! also: "Alice did not much like keeping so close to her: first, because the Duchess was very ugly." vibes. DAY 10: THE LOBSTER QUADRILLE this one is a ton of fun but impossible to compete in a universe that contains the walrus and the carpenter. DAY 11: WHO STOLE THE TARTS? let's go to court!!!!! sooooo important to remember that even in a nonsense-world, nothing is more illogical and annoying than outdated monarchical structures and the incompetence of the judicial system. DAY 12: ALICE'S EVIDENCE and it was all a dream!!! or was it? or does it even matter at all? (no.) perfect book. OVERALL i have this wholeeeee five star review below, but i'll quickly say that nothing makes me happy and fulfilled and whimsical like this book does. and that's my ideal way to be. my favorite forever! rating: 5 ------------------------ original review THIS IS MY FAVORITE BOOK. No qualifier. No excuse. No “one of my favorites.” This one is it, y’all. https://emmareadstoomuch.wordpress.co... Well, also Through the Looking Glass. But THAT’S PRACTICALLY THE SECOND HALF OF THE SAME BOOK. (And other examples of my inability to make decisions or commit in any way to anything.) I currently have 18 copies of this book. I’ve attempted to read it at least annually for the past three years. And by “annually,” I mean I last revisited this book about nine months ago. [image] But hey, it was a different year then, technically speaking. How do I even review this? I don’t know where to begin. (Just a heads up that my obsessive personality is going to become verrrrry clear as this review progresses. I’m not proud. This is who I am, you guys. I was a member of the fandoms of some teen pop sensation or other for nearly ten consecutive years. I’m no longer thirteen but I still need an outlet. Honestly I’m quite afraid that if I don’t have an obsession, I’ll become a drug addict. Lots of pent up energy.) [image] Well, I’ll say that I always, always, always feel enveloped by this book. I have never picked this up without feeling instantly submersed in Wonderland. And it’s really my favorite place to be. It’s hard to feel unhappy when you’re in the greatest setting ever created. And oh yeah, there’s that. I firmly believe this is the most amazing and beautiful and confusing and curious setting of all time. It’s immersive, and it’s strange, and it’s so unique and fantastic and creative and I love it so much. I can come up with even more loosely positive adjectives if that overwhelming number didn’t suffice. Wonderland is my Hogwarts. While many readers pray their letters just got lost in the mail, I’m constantly hoping I’ll see a white rabbit in a waistcoat and fall down, down, down into what must be the center of the earth. [image] I love Alice and her curiosity. She may also be my favorite character ever. She’s funny and sweet and childish and such a blast to read about. Her reactions to everything are so, so funny. Her curiosity always outweighs confusion and fear. I’d like to wake up one day and be Alice. I’ll likely become one of those creeps who pays millions for plastic surgery in order to “resemble” some celebrity or other. On an unrelated note, anyone have millions of dollars they’re trying to get rid of? I’m also fiercely protective of this book. I constantly pick up retellings only to be utterly disappointed. (Like Heartless. Get out of here with your shoddy Carroll-stealing.) DO NOT, DO NOT! GET ME STARTED ON THE TIM BURTON FILM ADAPTATION. Horrific. Alice, an adult? Alice, engaged? Alice FIGHTING THE GODDAMN JABBERWOCK? [image] But I do love the original animated Disney adaptation. There’s a certain quality to the book that’s captured within that film, which I haven’t found recreated in any other retelling or use of the setting or adaptation. Oh, and one more thing, while I’m here. THIS BOOK ISN’T ABOUT DRUGS, YOU SURFACE-LEVEL INTERPRETERS OF SYMBOLISM. It’s not that easy, boo. [image] In the words of BBC News, “[the drug] references may say more about the people making them than the author.” Lewis Carroll isn’t thought to have been a user of drugs, the Caterpillar was smoking tobacco, and the mushroom is no more magic than the various cakes Alice eats. Honestly, the drug reading is simple and boring. It’s such a stretch to attempt to read each character as a different substance. And scrolling through countless quasi-psychedelic GIFs to find the actual ones was irritating, too. Ah, yes, real art: taking images from a 1951 children’s film but messing with the colors and movement until it looks like nothing more than a trigger for epilepsy. Enough, Tumblr. [image] Alice in Wonderland carries as much or as little significance as you want it to. It’s everything from a mindless romp in an imaginative land to a depiction of the effects of a ruthlessly authoritarian system of justice. Just have fun with it. And please, for the love of God, stop applying your weird psychedelic edits to a Disney movie. Note on the audiobook: This time around, I listened to the audiobook, to switch things up. Scarlett Johansson read it. I loved her funny accents and hated her overly-acted narration. A mixed bag. [image] Bottom line: This is my favoritest and I doubt it will be dethroned anytime soon. Come at me, every other book. ------------ reread updates when I find myself in times of trouble Lewis Carroll comes to me speaking words of wisdom "just reread" ...more |
Notes are private!
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11
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Sep 06, 2022
Apr 21, 2022
May 20, 2020
Feb 26, 2019
Jul 04, 2017
Nov 03, 2016
Dec 14, 2015
Oct 30, 2014
Jan 19, 2014
Jan 2010
Jan 2007
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Sep 14, 2022
Apr 21, 2022
May 20, 2020
Feb 27, 2019
Jul 04, 2017
Nov 03, 2016
Dec 16, 2015
Oct 30, 2014
Jan 19, 2014
Jan 2010
Jan 2007
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Mar 01, 2017
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Hardcover
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| 1784871958
| 9781784871956
| 1784871958
| 4.09
| 859,247
| 1878
| May 01, 2017
|
really liked it
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welcome to...ANNA DECEMBERENINA! it's the start of the month (kinda). i've attempted a (reprehensible) pun on a book title (to everyone's chagrin). the welcome to...ANNA DECEMBERENINA! it's the start of the month (kinda). i've attempted a (reprehensible) pun on a book title (to everyone's chagrin). there is a notoriously long classic on my currently reading (ill-advisedly). you know what that means. IT'S PROJECT LONG CLASSIC TIME, the fan favorite in which i read a very long book divided up into little bits over the course of the month, and usually i drag elle along with me except this month i'm planning something truly nightmarish so i'm starting while she's asleep as an act of terror / peer pressure. let's do this. DAY 1: PAGES 1-25 my tbr review of this was "sometimes i like to pretend i'm capable of reading thousand-page books. just for fun," and in this case that pretending includes starting 2 days early and doubling up eventually so that i can read in 25 page chunks. i'm cool like that. damn! that opening line! we are off to the races. DAY 2: PAGES 26-75 didn't even intend to make today my bonus day but this is just so readable. why didn't anyone tell me the 900 page classic from 150 years ago is unputdownable?? i fear i may adore all of these characters. DAY 3: 76-100 in a state of bliss right now in which i look forward to reading this every day but am relishing it so much that dividing it into sections works perfectly. DAY 4: 101-125 literally any book is doable in teeny chunks like this. i had negative free time (and a negative interest) today but boom. easy money. DAY 5: 126-150 the descriptions of emotions in this...sheesh. excellence. DAY 6: 151-175 and here we have the farming sections i've heard so much about... in truth if they're like this every time i can handle it. i like poetic descriptions of the descent of springtime as much as the next annoying girl. DAY 7: 176-200 i am absolutely indulging in vronsky's downfall here. finding pleasure in his every misfortune. his sadness and disappointment spark joy for me. hate that guy. DAY 8: 201-225 well jesus anna! we're only at the 25% mark, we can't act like this already! DAY 10: 226-250 i missed a day. i'm a nightmare person. now i have to see how many pages i can manage in, generously, 20 minutes. perhaps unsurprisingly it took 25 and i'm not caught up. DAY 11: PAGES 251-275 something fun that the universe and i are doing is that we've set up the last three weeks of the year so that i don't only have to finish 24 books, complete two projects, and remain active on seemingly 100 accounts, but i also have the busiest work week(s) i have had in (without exaggeration) 2 years. without the depressive episode that made the last time so fun. anyway i may never catch up on this. DAY 13: PAGES 276-300 guess who's behind. behind again. emma's behind. except she never caught up in the first place so now she's just...50 pages behind instead of 25. or i guess 75 since i haven't actually read any yet today. okay NOW 50. why is this book so good?? DAY 14: PAGES 301-350 well, well, well. look who decided to catch up. biiiiig farming chapters. DAY 15: PAGES 351-375 part four alert. we pray for mercy from agricultural labor bureaucracy content. and our prayers are heard <3 DAY 16: PAGES 376-400 KITTY AND LEVIN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! wow i am so invested in this. even dozens of pages about farming and politics can't divest me. i am in it. DAY 17: PAGES 401-425 way, way, way too much is happening. it's the halfway point, people! this is no time for climaxes OR happily ever afters, let alone both! we have 400+ pages to cover! DAY 18: PAGES 426-450 i am uncomfortable with how high stakes everything is. THERE IS SO MUCH LEFT. WHEN I HEFT THIS UNWIELDY VOLUME I AM ONLY AT THE HALFWAY POINT EVEN STILL. I THINK. EVEN THOUGH I'VE BEEN SAYING THAT FOR SEEMINGLY DAYS. DAY 19: 451-475 honestly i care less about the Christian Art than the farming. sheesh. DAY 20: 476-500 it's the circleeee of lifeee... DAY 21: 501-525 what a moral quandary we find ourselves in! DAY 22: 526-550 okay phew, i'm back on board with being obsessed with anna. it makes me uncomfortable to not like a female character who is constantly committing moral wrongs...feels unnatural. part 5 done! DAY 23: 551-575 i'm internally titling this one twenty-five page chunk number 23: the tangled webs we weave. get it together, folks! it's like a sally rooney novel in here. DAY 24: 576-600 this too realistically conveyed the feeling of being clinically annoyed by a friend of a friend. i feel irritable now. DAY 28: 601-650 it's the most wonderful time of the year... read: it's actually december 26, meaning we have actually skipped right to day 28, and i am extremely behind just in time for the end of the year to be right around the corner. but i'm also behind on my other project, and i'm also behind on my actual literal reading challenge, so we're just going to ignore that for today. no time for worrying, only time for reading. actually read 50 pages anyway because i am perfect and infallible. DAY 31: PAGES 651-700 being very brave and reading 50 pages again and also pretending anna isn't on my damn nerves. GIRL STAND UP. we find ourselves heading into part 7. never mind. it's not hard to not be bugged by anna. she's the sh*t. DAY 32: PAGES 701-750 anna is so evil and kitty is so perfect. i love them both. DAY 33: PAGES 751-817 it appears it is time. hello and welcome to the last day of the anna karenina project. oh man. OVERALL not only was i intimidated by this book's length, i was sure i'd find it unconquerable. even as i started it and found it a pleasure, i was waiting for the other shoe to drop. it never did! i enjoyed this every day, through farming and politics and religion and art. readable and sweeping, stunning in its writing and its carrying across effortlessly of both the minutiae and the most important topics of life. it's insane how applicable, how of the moment this book is now, across languages and centuries. read it! i can't believe how long i put it off. rating: 4.5 ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Nov 29, 2022
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Dec 29, 2022
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Feb 25, 2017
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Paperback
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| 0141197692
| 9780141197692
| 0141197692
| 4.15
| 712,114
| Dec 20, 1817
| Apr 24, 2012
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it was amazing
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welcome to...PERSUAS(JULY)ON? god, that was the worst attempt at a title/month pun yet. i'm so sorry. if it helps, i wish i never started this, but now welcome to...PERSUAS(JULY)ON? god, that was the worst attempt at a title/month pun yet. i'm so sorry. if it helps, i wish i never started this, but now here we are, all of us in a sisyphus situation at the start of every new project. except worse. the guy who's getting his guts eaten on the daily by a big bird. prometheus. (isn't that kind of the most torturous part of that punishment - that he clearly has it so much worse than sisyphus and yet in comparison, zero household name recognition? tough stuff.) (like, prometheus is obviously famous, but you don't throw his example around like my boy sisyphus. sad.) ANYWAY. welcome back to Project Long Classics, the series in which elle and i read a long classic over the course of the month, too make it less scary! some updates here: 1) we're rereading, 2) this isn't long, and 3) it's not coming from a place of fear. but otherwise, we're all set. we're also reading this for our book club - join the discussion here follow on instagram here let's go!!! DAY 1: CHAPTER ONE we're immediately late (today is july 2), and yet that's fine, because i love this book and also i only have to read one chapter a day this time around. living the dream. something i love about anne elliot is that she should be quite boring - a real fanny price, if you will - and yet she isn't. and relatedly, i get why people are upset by what appears to be her fleabag-ification in the upcoming adaptation...but i am capable of separating the adaptation from the book (on rare and special occasions, like arbor day and half-birthdays) and i think it seems fun. DAY 2: CHAPTER TWO look at us, catching up! i love how in old times you could just call people "unsuitable." i wish we still had that. "i find that acquaintance to be one well below your standing, and altogether unsuitable" (or something like that) sounds so much better than "you are my friend, and i like hanging out with you, but i find your friend very annoying." DAY 3: CHAPTER THREE WENTWORTH MENTION!!!!!! genuinely...the yearning already...you gotta give it up for jane. DAY 4: CHAPTER FOUR a day behind because i was drinking to make it through our nation's birthday. bleh. escapist reading time! DAY 5: CHAPTER FIVE i just...left this blank yesterday. read the chapter. added this to my update feed. didn't say a thing. the first few chapters of this are (i think) even more uneventful than usual austen books. maybe because it's less funny? i don't know. it's a lot of past to establish, where we're usually picking up right in the swing of things relatively speaking. DAY 6: CHAPTER SIX i don't like, also, the pity-party we have to throw anne every other paragraph at the beginning. yes she is lonely and her sisters are annoying. let's get to the romance part!! or give her a hobby at least. but here is some drama! another slay for miscommunication, a trope that endures through the centuries. wait why did jane go this hard: "The real circumstances of this pathetic piece of family history were, that the Musgroves had had the ill fortune of a very troublesome, hopeless son; and the good fortune to lose him before he reached his twentieth year; that he had been sent to sea because he was stupid and unmanageable on shore; that he had been very little cared for at any time by his family, though quite as much as he deserved; seldom heard of, and scarcely at all regretted, when the intelligence of his death abroad had worked its way to Uppercross, two years before." like jane he's dead! take mercy you have already killed him! DAY 7: CHAPTER SEVEN wentworth!!! i'll kill you!!! poor anne. suddenly the pity party is working on me. DAY 8: CHAPTER EIGHT "But I hate to hear you talking so like a fine gentleman, and as if women were all fine ladies, instead of rational creatures. We none of us expect to be in smooth water all our days." slay mrs croft. poor anne again! DAY 9: CHAPTER NINE well, folks. persuasion (2022) has debuted on rotten tomatoes with a score of 27%. i can no longer pretend it's extremely likely that i'll watch it, but! onward. all the best crushes come from one (1) completely inane moment. DAY 10: CHAPTER TEN catching up! (took another day off to be drunk. this is a tradition, at this point.) there are so many Charleses in this. it seems to be a personal affront. DAY 11: CHAPTER ELEVEN lmao the whole gang is taking a road trip to visit wentworth's friend, who ol' captain thinks loved his dead wife more than any man has ever loved a woman, and anne NO JOKE thinks "he has not, perhaps, a more sorrowing heart than I have." pull it together, girlfriend. DAY 12: CHAPTER TWELVE action chapter!!! i love immersing myself in a 19th century understanding of medicine. when you jump up and down too many times, you almost die, and them's the breaks. one of anne's most relatable characteristics is being like "hopefully i'm too old to blush now" and then blushing constantly. DAY 13: CHAPTER THIRTEEN "Lady Russell had only to listen composedly, and wish them happy, but internally her heart revelled in angry pleasure, in pleased contempt, that the man who at twenty-three had seemed to understand somewhat of the value of an Anne Elliot, should, eight years afterwards, be charmed by a Louisa Musgrove." this rules. i cannot be a lady russell hater for this alone. DAY 14: CHAPTER FOURTEEN at the i-look-forward-to-my-daily-chapter-every-day phase of this :) goddamn. anne can PULL. DAY 15: CHAPTER FIFTEEN "The worst of Bath was the number of its plain women. He did not mean to say that there were no pretty women, but the number of the plain was out of all proportion. He had frequently observed, as he walked, that one handsome face would be followed by thirty, or five-and-thirty frights; and once, as he had stood in a shop on Bond Street, he had counted eighty-seven women go by, one after another, without there being a tolerable face among them. It had been a frosty morning, to be sure, a sharp frost, which hardly one woman in a thousand could stand the test of. But still, there certainly were a dreadful multitude of ugly women in Bath; and as for the men! they were infinitely worse. Such scarecrows as the streets were full of!" this is the funniest and most relatable passage in the whole thing. as someone who has a rule that i should not be forced to view anyone ugly when watching television (a guideline continually broken by basketball coaches and the existence of most conservative politicians), i have to stan sir walter. DAY 16: CHAPTER SIXTEEN anne's life really seems like such a snooze, from one girl who is always right to another. but at least i have indoor plumbing. and refrigerated cookie dough. DAY 17: CHAPTER SEVENTEEN the thing about jane austen books that we can forget when it's adaptation time is that the love interest is often not the most handsome of the gang. wickham is probably handsomer than darcy. mr elliott is certainly more handsome than wentworth. but still. how can we be expected, as a society, to root against henry golding?? anyway. a kinda boring Anne Is Perfect chapter. DAY 18: CHAPTER EIGHTEEN come on, jane...give me some yearning today! asked and answered. DAY 19: CHAPTER NINETEEN every day has to be a yearning day at this point. WOO!!! things are picking up! i will say i feel like anne's family lacks nuance compared to, say, the bennets or the woodhouses, who are flawed characters but have their arcs and their positive traits. elizabeth and mary and sir nobility what's his name feel a little black and white by comparison. and speaking of things i will say... "the handsomest and best hung of any in Bath" is a great description. should have been used somewhere besides curtains. DAY 20: CHAPTER TWENTY "A man does not recover from such a devotion of the heart to such a woman. He ought not; he does not." AHHHH!!!!!! oh boy. yearning city. this whole section is everything. and the letter soon!!! DAY 21: CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE ahhhh!!! jane sure knows how to cancel a guy. DAY 22: CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO the amount of drama in this chapter...my sister is watching below deck in the background as i write this and their screechy voices pale in comparison!!! DAY 23: CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE the penultimate day!!! i'm going to miss this so much. should i do this all the time??? ...no. the last thing i need is the excuse for yet another project. THE LETTER!!!!!!!!!!! OH MY GOD. not only is this the most romantic love letter of all time (and it's not close! i openly read this out loud to someone i was with on the STREET!!! not as a declaration but just because it's really good and everyone should know about it), but the FRAMING. the conversation anne has with harville! her confusion at wentworth's dismissal! the yearning! her reaction to his coming back! and her feelings after! AHHHH. jane, no one does it like you. it'd be five stars for this alone. DAY 24: CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR the end of an era. i have so enjoyed our time together. this is a cute kind of epilogue-y chapter, like at the end of movies that were Based On A True Story when they tell you what happened to all the goofballs you've gotten to know. i love it. every book should either have a chapter like this or a sequel. unless i didn't like the book. then it shouldn't have anything. OVERALL this is still coming it at a close third in austen rankings for moi (after emma and pride & prejudice) but damn is it still good. that letter! that yearning! anne being a Nice Girl who isn't boring! what a gift! rating: 5 --------------- general update NETFLIX ADAPTATION STARRING DAKOTA JOHNSON AND HENRY GOLDING THIS IS NOT A DRILL!!! --------------- reread update if you ever have the opportunity to spend an hour or so rereading this in a park on an unseasonably warm fall day, i recommend you take it --------------- original review find a long version of my original review + a review of sense & sensibility at https://emmareadstoomuch.wordpress.co...! ...more |
Notes are private!
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3
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Jul 02, 2022
Nov 02, 2020
Nov 12, 2016
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Jul 24, 2022
Nov 03, 2020
Nov 16, 2016
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Nov 12, 2016
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Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||
| 0241980356
| 9780241980354
| 0241980356
| 4.41
| 548,767
| 1952
| Jul 06, 2017
|
it was amazing
|
welcome to...(MAY)ST OF EDEN!! this might sound like my month/title puns are getting worse and worse, but wait until we get to the reveal on this one. b welcome to...(MAY)ST OF EDEN!! this might sound like my month/title puns are getting worse and worse, but wait until we get to the reveal on this one. by being excited i have definitely cursed myself into forgetting to do it. every month, elle and i read an intimidating classic in a couple chapters a day all month long. MIDDLEMARCH MARCH was a raging success, but TENANT OF WILDAPRIL HALL sucked hard. to heal ourselves, we're revisiting a book we know we love. we're also doing it with our book club! constantly living the dream. follow along on instagram or discord!! timshel, b*tch. DAY 1: CHAPTERS 1 & 2 hope someday to love anything as much as john steinbeck loved the land of california. anyone who gets a bit snoozy over in-depth nature descriptions, today's exposition central might be a little tough to get through, but this gets to be sooo worthwhile and scandalous!! DAY 2: CHAPTERS 3 & 4 "She smiled at Adam, and he closed his eyes." there is truly more characterization and relationship development in that single sentence than there is in some entire books i've read this year. in love with the exploration of adam's absence of a mother and charles' absence of a father and who it makes each of them. steinbeck is unbelievable when it comes to characterization and to relationship dynamics, and it's never clearer than in this, his family saga masterpiece. some really compelling chats going on in the east of eden channel - i'm having so much fun with this book and you guys already! DAY 3: CHAPTERS 5 & 6 in this year of reading i've noticed myself really enjoying unlikable characters - which is good because they are so absurdly trendy right now. loving reading this book because it's slightly different - even with characters who Should be unlikable, like charles, i care about him a lot. i think steinbeck's writing is just that good - he can indicate powerful emotions in just a few words or one action (i'm thinking in particular of charles and the clean versus unclean house). heart destroying! DAY 4: CHAPTERS 7 & 8 cathy...in many ways the original girlboss. steinbeck's ability to explore the full spectrum of good and evil while managing to create not only Believable and Convincing characters but also characters you care about is truly one of a kind. many classic authors are unable to write a real-seeming depiction of a person with bad intentions (think about the brontës, for example), and johnny boy is managing not only to do this but to get me invested in what happens to each and every one of them. a master. i apologize if this is less analytical than other entries (and elle's lovely one for today). i had to read this drunk because i couldn't watch my precious basketball team lose sober. it's what steinbeck would have wanted. DAY 5: CHAPTERS 9 & 10 my sister and i have a saying: "men are so tender with each other." it started when one day in a bagel shop a guy behind us in line looked at another guy who came in and went, "bro, i was JUST thinking about you!" and now we notice sweet stuff like that all the time. say what you will, but men love each other a lot. relatedly, i loved this chapter about charles and adam and their complicated love for each other. and i loved more of cathy's villain origin story, and the line "No one who is young is ever going to be old." i hope this month of reading never ends! DAY 6: CHAPTERS 11 & 12 strawberries really DON'T taste as good as they used to. (best way to describe how the passing of time feels that i've read.) DAY 7: CHAPTERS 13 & 14 it is day 10. i am in a life slump i recently misdiagnosed as a reading slump, but now i am attempting to get myself back on this glorious biblical retelling bandwagon come, well, hell or high water. i don't know how many ways there are to say that this is one of the great character books of all time, but i hope chapter 14 and its loving and wonderful depiction of olive is taught in creative writing classes. in the general east of eden channel we're having a fun talk about steinbeck's female characters - i find them compelling beyond reasonable expectation for a dude from old times!! DAY 8: CHAPTERS 15 & 16 i know steinbeck isn't perfect, but i do find his attempts at subverting traditional bigoted stereotypes very compelling - blaming adam for his inability to see through cathy; creating full and complex female characters; and in these chapters, the character of lee. these are flawed depictions, even still, and maybe i'm giving too much credit, but i appreciate the effort!! DAY 9: CHAPTERS 17 & 18 so much to find interesting about cathy as a character, including how her role facilitates reflection on who is responsible for evil. not only is cathy not the only person expected to take accountability for her amorality - she almost isn't! for whatever reason, we can blame adam for his blind devotion, liza for her lack of superstition, sam and lee for their self-doubt, the sheriff and deputy sheriff for their inability to recognize what's before them, all more easily than we can blame cathy for her own nature. DAY 10: CHAPTERS 19 & 20 it's hard trying to do actual analysis for this book every day. skipping that today because i have the kind of sinus headache that makes you empathize with the cartoon character-shaped balloons at grocery store checkout lines. just going to say cathy is crazy i could read about this wild gal forever. DAY 11: CHAPTERS 21 & 22 it's day 15. this may seem like a disaster, but really i'm just so enjoying savoring this book!!! i can't make myself binge it. the other book we're reading for our book club this month is conversations with friends, and while the two have almost nothing in common beyond the fact that they are part of the rare and mighty few i've five starred, there is something similar to me...perhaps just in the fact that both are as if the smartest and most interesting people you know sat and talked about the most important and fascinating topics in the world, and the best writer you could think of summarized it all. not a bad setup. both i feel endlessly grateful for. both i could read forever. DAY 12: CHAPTERS 23 & 24 there's something almost insulting about the death of a character. my favorite characters are like family members i can return to every time i open their book - a story that kills them ruins the perfection of that illusion. if the hamiltons of reality can't live forever, the hamiltons of fiction at least should. anyway, here finally we have the pun reveal: TIMSHEL, BABY! thou mayest. in other words - MAYST OF EDEN. tearing up and it's not even at my own joke. DAY 13: CHAPTERS 25 & 26 don't mind me, just in a state of mourning. fortunately i have approximately 89 other excellent characters to get me through. DAY 14: CHAPTERS 27 & 28 doubling up today because of my most insane hobby: putting 6 or 7 books on my currently reading and reading them chapter by chapter, one at a time. it is bliss for the focus-challenged nerd in your life. it's odd - as i read this book i have this sense of foreboding, not only for having read it before, and not only because of that déjà vu knowledge that a retelling provides, but because there's this shakiness to everything in this story. fundamentally east of eden is about the tenacity of people and the precariousness of life. anyway. even as i know what's to come, on so many levels and for so many reasons, i'm illogically crossing my fingers for the best for all of them. DAY 15: CHAPTERS 29 & 30 the most wonderful part of this book (if you'll forgive that i've probably called a hundred parts the most wonderful) is the complexity and realism of the characters. none truly good, none truly evil. sometimes you want to shake cal, and a lesser writer would let you hate him, but goddamn instead in chapter 30 he breaks your f*ckin' heart. DAY 16: CHAPTERS 31 & 32 i love dessie and tom so much it hurts my heart. what mental illness is it when you would literally trade your own happiness if made up fictional characters from 70 years ago could have a happy life? DAY 17: CHAPTERS 33 & 34 possibly the only character i dislike in this entire book, which includes one of the most enduring depictions of pure evil in fiction, is will. i can't bear a capitalist, and i adore tom. f*ck you, will. let the man have his acorns. anyway, i'm crying again. DAY 18: CHAPTERS 35 & 36 i think it'd be tempting to say that steinbeck is depicting a person of color who craves servitude, and there is evidence of that. but more so i don't think steinbeck sees lee as a servant, and in turn, adam and cal and aron don't either. they're a family. lee doesn't return saying starting a bookstore was too hard - he comes back because he was lonely. obviously there's nuance to this and its own kind of problematic-ness, but it's nice to see the nice things. DAY 19: CHAPTERS 37 & 38 i don't find adam to be a very compelling character, so it's odd to read two greats (cal and lee) discussing how he's the best man they know. i'm like, out of this all star lineup?! DAY 20: CHAPTERS 39 & 40 oh, i love sweet cal. to have a sibling you love can be such a complicated thing. DAY 21: CHAPTERS 41 & 42 god damn it. steinbeck won't let me dislike even one character. coming out swinging making me like will goddamn hamilton too. there are dozens of characters in this book, and every single one of them is a person. i mean, every single one has a history that made them who they are, has weaknesses that came from somewhere and dreams and disappointments. how do you even do that? this book is miraculous. DAY 22: CHAPTERS 43 & 44 i haven't met a man in my entire dating life (and i'll be honest with you, it's extensive), with a full awareness of the way in which men can create their idea of a woman and then cast it on to a real human, and call that falling in love. but i just read john steinbeck do it. DAY 23: CHAPTERS 45 & 46 i can suspend my disbelief as well as the next fiction reader, but kate getting taken down by some random dumb petty criminal man is not something i can get behind in terms of realism. DAY 24: CHAPTERS 47 & 48 these short chapters are killing me. i'm used to 35 pages of this a day and now i'm having to catch up in order to get there. dire straits. this also made me look up the etymology of the word "cupcake" - dates back to 1828! who knew. i just thought it was goofy to picture steinbeck at a pastel micro-bakery. DAY 25: CHAPTERS 49 & 50 poor aron. poor cal. poor lee. at least kate's still got it. in her way. things'll get worse before they get better! (and by get better i mean they won't, really, and the book will end, and i miss the hamiltons.) DAY 26: CHAPTERS 51 & 52 i do love dear abra. it's nice to know steinbeck was so capable of writing full female characters - he sure didn't in of mice and men. but then he hardly had the time, really. DAY 27: CHAPTERS 53 & 54 the penultimate day. i'm going to miss this book so much it's embarrassing. another theme i love in this book is an extension of the broader topic of good and evil - the idea of personal responsibility, and whether it's your right as a human being to be a truly good or truly evil person. adam and aron, who are sinless to the point of self-motivation, are marked by the sins of adam's father and of cathy. cal, despite his best efforts to be bad, is continually drawn toward good. and then there's the cal and aron of it all. what was really so bad about cal's and charles' gifts to their fathers? and was what cal did to aron really worse than his response to it? did cal kill aron, or did aron kill himself? or was it less personal than even that? a real thinker. i'm not reading the last chapter today. i can't do it. DAY 28: CHAPTER 55 all i can do to finish this, tear up a bit, reread the timshel passages, and stare at the wall for a while. OVERALL this is one of the greatest: - retellings - family dramas - generational novels - testaments to the power of the character - books to build your life around of all time. i loved revisiting it very much. rating: 5 ...more |
Notes are private!
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2
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May 2022
not set
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Jun 2022
Jan 2013
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Oct 13, 2016
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Paperback
| ||||||||||||||
| 0688120490
| 9780688120498
| 0688120490
| 4.02
| 136,567
| Nov 1865
| Apr 23, 1993
|
it was amazing
|
welcome to...ALICE'S ADVENTURES IN SEPTEMBERLAND, PART 2! i know that seems like a copout, but to be fair, i've always considered this book a continuat welcome to...ALICE'S ADVENTURES IN SEPTEMBERLAND, PART 2! i know that seems like a copout, but to be fair, i've always considered this book a continuation of the first one, rather than a separate entity. usually as, well, a copout so i can call both of them my favorite book of all time. anyway! here we are for part two of a modified installment of Project Long Classics, in which elle and i tackle a long intimidating classic in small chunks for an entire month. but because alice is not long to me, nor is it intimidating, and i consider both books to be like one thing, i'm reading both! welcome to that. join our book club to join the project!! follow on instagram here or join the discussion here. DAY 1: LOOKING-GLASS HOUSE immediately we're off to the races. man, this slays. the thing about this book (and keep in mind i have said "the thing about [an alice book]" and followed up with about 97 different statements in the course of my life) is that there has never been a more curious, more interesting, more charming character than alice - and yet she is perfect believable. kids are like this. it rules. DAY 2: THE GARDEN OF LIVE FLOWERS iconic!!!!!! i love to think that if flowers could talk, they'd be pretty and mean and prone to puns. DAY 3: THE LOOKING-GLASS INSECTS talking flowers would be a tough act to follow by any stretch, but goddamn. BUGS are the best we can do?! but oh my god oh my god. speaking of all stars...tomorrow we head to the dweebs. DAY 4: TWEEDLEDUM AND TWEEDLEDEE AYOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO mandela effect because "tweedledum and tweedledee" sounds so wrong. feels like it should be the other way around. but then again i typed wrong as "swonr" on the first try so what do i know. is there any word better than contrariwise? DAY 5: WOOL AND WATER alice is forever the one exception to my talking-animal rule (that they're boring and dumb and should be left out of everything). cue paramore. DAY 6: HUMPTY DUMPTY a children's classic crossover fav! DAY 7: THE LION AND THE UNICORN wordplay city!!!! imagine how hard this would hit if 99% of these poems and riddles and songs and sh*t were still in pop culture. it's like the SNL of the 19th century. but like, a good era of SNL. DAY 8: "IT'S MY OWN INVENTION" and suddenly.......an icon receives her crown.............. DAY 9: QUEEN ALICE queen of my heart alice!!! queen of all characters of all time alice!!! queen of being the best there ever was and it isn't close alice!!! life should have more dinner parties. and they should always be written like this: "dinner-party." and they should contain altogether more nonsense. DAY 10: SHAKING no... DAY 11: WAKING don't. :( it's all over now. what a real and literal awakening. like a wake-up call. DAY 12: WHICH DREAMED IT? i'm no poetry girl. but possibly my favorite poem ever comes at the end of this chapter. OVERALL this has a little less of the nonsensical whimsy of the first alice and a bit too much animal chatter even for my taste, but this exploration of dreaming and childhood and magic and nostalgia is so charming and dear to my heart. i will love it forever. rating: 5 ---------------- full review It’s not fair that I have to review this book. I mean, no one is making me. Technically speaking, I am in no way obligated to review this. But also, in a much more real important way, because I am the one saying it: I absolutely must. Because I love this book so goddamn much. BUT HOW AM I POSSIBLY EXPECTED TO PUT THAT LOVE INTO WORDS. There’s only one way to do it. By cheating. Read my review of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland so you understand the immensity of my love for these books (which I kind of count as one book, spiritually, and only don’t actually count as one book for reading challenge purposes). But you still won’t really know how much I love these books, so you should probably read me scream more about it in my review of The Annotated Alice. And Alice's Adventures Under Ground, for good measure. And also, you should read all of Shakespeare’s love sonnets, and the great love letters of history, and the collected works of Jane Austen. You should watch the bird scene from The Notebook, and the sad part from Titanic, and the scene in Say Anything when John Cusack holds the boombox over his head. All of those viewings are just to have a good laugh, though. And also to jam the f*ck out to In Your Eyes, a musical treasure. To reallyyyy understand, you should watch Booksmart and Safety Not Guaranteed and Mamma Mia 2: Here We Go Again! Perhaps through all of these reviews and readings and viewings, you can gain a passing understanding of how much I love Alice. Probably not, though. Bottom line: I HAVE TOO MUCH LOVE IN MY HEART. ...more |
Notes are private!
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7
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Sep 14, 2022
Apr 27, 2022
May 27, 2020
Feb 28, 2019
Sep 06, 2016
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not set
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Sep 29, 2022
Apr 27, 2022
May 28, 2020
Feb 28, 2019
Sep 07, 2016
not set
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Sep 06, 2016
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my rating |
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| 4.30
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really liked it
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Apr 26, 2024
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Dec 12, 2023
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| 3.52
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liked it
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Jan 27, 2024
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Dec 12, 2023
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| 3.82
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liked it
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Feb 21, 2024
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Dec 07, 2023
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| 4.17
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really liked it
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Aug 31, 2023
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Mar 13, 2023
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| 3.75
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not set
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Aug 10, 2022
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| 4.10
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it was amazing
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Sep 13, 2023
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May 17, 2022
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| 4.29
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liked it
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Apr 03, 2023
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Apr 24, 2022
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| 4.13
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liked it
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Dec 20, 2023
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Dec 25, 2021
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| 3.70
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liked it
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Feb 26, 2023
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Dec 25, 2021
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| 3.91
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really liked it
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Apr 30, 2023
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Dec 13, 2021
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| 3.91
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really liked it
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May 29, 2023
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Apr 30, 2021
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| 4.02
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it was amazing
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Mar 29, 2022
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Feb 23, 2021
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| 3.96
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liked it
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Mar 31, 2024
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Feb 23, 2021
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| 4.12
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really liked it
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Aug 30, 2022
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Nov 23, 2020
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| 4.01
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it was ok
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Apr 27, 2022
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Feb 16, 2019
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| 4.00
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it was amazing
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Sep 14, 2022
Apr 21, 2022
May 20, 2020
Feb 27, 2019
Jul 04, 2017
Nov 03, 2016
Dec 16, 2015
Oct 30, 2014
Jan 19, 2014
Jan 2010
Jan 2007
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Mar 01, 2017
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| 4.09
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really liked it
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Dec 29, 2022
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Feb 25, 2017
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| 4.15
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it was amazing
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Jul 24, 2022
Nov 03, 2020
Nov 16, 2016
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Nov 12, 2016
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| 4.41
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it was amazing
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Jun 2022
Jan 2013
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Oct 13, 2016
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| 4.02
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it was amazing
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Sep 29, 2022
Apr 27, 2022
May 28, 2020
Feb 28, 2019
Sep 07, 2016
not set
not set
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Sep 06, 2016
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