folks. it's with great sadness that i inform you that when you're asked "when did you know you were seeing emma's downfallwelcome to...YEAR AND PEACE.
folks. it's with great sadness that i inform you that when you're asked "when did you know you were seeing emma's downfall" you can tell them september 1, 2024.
today i begin the project that will surely bring about my mortal end.
on this day, elle and i will read one chapter of tolstoy's war and peace, and then we will do that again tomorrow, and the next day, and the next day, and so on and so forth for the following 357 days, shaking our heads to show we disagree with war and nodding to show we agree with peace.
(because this book has 361 chapters, and because goodreads has a character limit, i'll only be updating this periodically. don't worry. you'll see me daily in other places annoying the sh*t out of you.)
PART ONE hello again. we're 25 days and a hundred pages into this project and essentially haven't made a dent.
how to summarize...there's war, there's peace. there are a lot of descriptions of mouths and beautiful princesses. people have died, people have been disinherited, people have inherited. guys are shipped off and girls are knocked up. eventful, and yet this has been 99% people going to each other's houses.
PART TWO coming to you live from 6 weeks and 200 pages into this to tell you: we have stopped going to people's houses and we have gone to war. it's bad vibes here. no one seems to be having much fun at this point. even people who get to ride on top of a tank (fun) are only doing so because they're severely wounded and being dragged out of battle (bad vibes).
PART THREE i thought we might get a complex look at the psychology behind war in this book, but i didn't expect the insight would be "all the soldier guys have huge crushes on the tsar and are showing off for him."...more
it's a new month, i'm reading a classic, i'm doing a bad pun: it's another installment of project long classics, in which iwelcome to...STON(OVEMB)ER.
it's a new month, i'm reading a classic, i'm doing a bad pun: it's another installment of project long classics, in which i read old intimidating books in small chunks over several weeks in order to assuage my fears.
this one is not really all that long, but i just finished oliver twist and therefore deserve only ease in my life.
let's get into it.
CHAPTER 1 i would read anything published by the new york review of books, which is honestly my main reason for picking this one up. other than that i have no idea what this is about, but i'm guessing A Guy.
i'm happy to inform you that thus far, i love it.
CHAPTER 2 well, if i wasn't already pretty anti-war already, that would do it. it got me on the futility of life, though!
CHAPTER 3 what's so striking about this book is that it's about a person who is ostensibly an adult, and yet is learning how to live completely on his own. he's somehow made himself so separate from social expectations that he is creating something completely new for himself.
in other words he's now engaged to someone who seems to not care if he lives or dies.
CHAPTER 4 well, let me just say i hope that stoner is supposed to cut a pretty unlikable figure at this juncture. at the beginning it was hard to imagine a character i could feel for more, but those days are gone and i'm mostly #FreeEdith right now.
CHAPTER 5 edith was simply born in the wrong generation. sorry edith you would've loved bed rotting and psych meds.
CHAPTER 6 took a day off of reading to scream cry throw up at the state of the world yesterday. you know, my own personal version of skipping the wwi draft to go to grad school. but now let's get back into it.
i'm back in on stoner and his meager expectations for happiness and his self-constructed dream library. it seems again like there's never been a more sympathetic character....more
Loading...
