“Trees have great power to console”
Not a comfortable read during the pandemic and while California burns. Written in 1993, Butler is eerily prescient. I sure hope everything in this novel doesn‘t come true‼️😳 On second thought please read this before you vote if you are considering the orange abomination...
Yeah! Proust gets it‼️📖🤓❤️
This might be the most beautiful love story I‘ve ever read. ❤️📖💔📖❤️
My literary avatar. Change a couple of words and this would be me. #PandemicComfortRead (reread, in this case)
Proust‘s memory was not just madeleines and tea; he also mentions pain d‘épices, or gingerbread. So I had to make some to go with my tea...
This edition is soooooo great. I couldn‘t pass it up even though I already had nice copies of other editions. The illustrations are spot on and Le Guin‘s forewords and afterwords are amazing. I got sucked into a pandemic comfort read. I miss you so hard, Ursula Le Guin.
Might be the first time I‘ve smiled the whole novel. Grim reading about the human condition.
Of Human Bondage (through careless love): “He thought to himself that there could be no greater torture in the world than at the same time to love and to contemn.”
Refreshing to read a book from before we taught boys that colors were gendered... #ILikePink
OMG. I love you. A booknerd soulmate. 📖🤓❤️
The chapter on Carter-Reagan-Bush: the Bipartisan Consensus makes me realize my country‘s politicians have never been there for me my whole political life. (My first election was yuck and yuck in 1980) 😞
My 3rd pandemic “Stay @ Home” order puzzle. Makes me really want to read this book and really bummed I missed out on buying the Folio Society edition when it was published. Now to search for a copy...
The yogi. So amazing. I love this foldout of the different yoga lineages. This Taschen book is excellent. Always a joy to thumb through, as their books often are.
My feminism runs too deep now not be pissed by men translating a title as simple as ‘Albertine Disparue‘ as ‘The Sweet Cheat Gone.‘ She‘s the victim. How about ‘Albertine Escapes her Abuser‘? You go, Albertine. I love your writing, Marcel, but your alter ego in the book got what he deserved.
Leaving one series by an awkward boy/man about his awkward boy/man self (Karl Ove‘s My Struggle) for another in this one. Second to last book in both series. Gonna need a break from awkwardness after I finish with Knausgaard and Proust. The ‘plus‘ is they both write beautifully.
Trigger warning: sexuality, female orgasm. This series of women reading to orgasm is 🔥Walt would definitely approve, I think. https://youtu.be/nHt4IEyYuyQ
My Struggle is that every time I start a book in the series I realize how much I dislike the young Karl Ove. But then his beautiful writing sucks me in...
Going for another comfort (re)read in these pandemic times. Look at this beautiful Folio Society Edition‼️😻📖
Wow! That was a trip. An interesting book to read during the pandemic, with characters that slip in and out of life and death and time. Definitely worth the struggle.
James Baldwin speaking a reader‘s truth: “ You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read.”
“Maybe I come from where the sidewalk / ends, or maybe I just read that in a book once. / It can be hard to tell the difference sometimes.”
When you‘re only on page 9 and you‘re already disgusted by another pig of a father...
I don‘t know how I‘ve dodged this book throughout my schooling and never got to it on my own in 50 years if reading. Finally reading this Thornwillow press edition for my fine press blog.
This book is so scary. Name blotted out so as not to be a spoiler. But this person was none of those things but someone who fought the terror of the KGB. It‘s amazing how easily a country can slip into Totalitarianism and terrorism towards its own people. Are we next?
What a beautifully written book. This is why I read literature in translation. Where else would I learn about the genocidal erasure of Dersim and it‘s people? It‘s amazing that pain, trauma, and memory can be described so poetically. I‘ve found another writer whose books I need to seek out.
Settling in for a thick one. I like big books and I cannot lie. Especially if they‘re not written by a white guy...
“Figs are sensual. People are sensuous” — misquoted from the movie Animal House. 🤪😻
Ah, Duras. You keep coming up and reminding me to read more from you. This book is sending me off in search of so many books, especially the Arabic ones containing the open words about sex by the early Imams that seems so lost on the fundamentalists today.
Haha. YES!!! Progress. I read the first sentence...and the second...and I was thinking “hmmm, I think you mean polyamorous”. And then, she caught herself too...
So excited (pun intended) for this book three chapters in and over 10 passages marked. This is gonna be good.
Love this book; love Stephen Mitchell‘s work. Full review of the Providence Press #letterpress edition on www.thewholebookexperience.com
That was delightful. One of the best things I‘ve read in a long time. I love the constant intertwining of prose, poetry, and visual poem. I love the constant calling out of the senseless violence of men of power and caste by the women, wives and mothers and sisters, and by the lower caste and poor men who are just fodder-pawns for their glory.
“Sometimes you need to wrap up history in hushed linen and bury her beneath a banyan tree”...ah, not so, Queen, even if we sometimes wish for that easy road.
“Women. As another soldier remarked, throughout history women are among the first casualties of war and conflict. Their bodies become territories: possessed, ravaged, ploughed as though for produce, discarded, carelessly destroyed. But, unlike with land, the stigma of conquest is attached to their person; they become repositories of lost honour, individual and collective.”
This is gonna be a good one!
Being a literary translator seems like a dream job to this reader. (Note to self: you need to know another language). But even with the little French I do have, I‘m totally puzzled by the change in the title of this work. I‘m halfway through and still don‘t get why it was changed for English readers. Title translation shenanigans are a pet peeve of mine! 😤
“I‘m not a Harki,” I respond. “You‘re confusing me with my father.” Why do we punish children for what adults do/don‘t do? Read this book if you‘re concerned about the xenophobic and nationalistic immigration policies around the world. Your heart should break. If not, you‘re part of the problem. Just sayin‘...
Got pie, got latte, and a new book. Amazing day so far... 🥧 cred: @lalatiburona
My dinner read. I love the Baldwin title, and I love Jesmyn, and I despise racism, so I‘m sure I‘ll love this.
Love this illustration of Proust by Simon Brett for the Folio Society Shakespeare‘s Sonnets. Had to share it.
Pizza and Proust: For to the disturbances of memory are linked the intermittences of the Heart. 🍕❤️