Eastbound
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5%
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Siberia remains that which it always has been: a limit-experience.
30%
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Aliocha looks at her—the transparent cartilage of her nose,
DB Kalak
Mmm. Transparent? Translucent at best I'll bet.
33%
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where everything stirs gently, molecular as terror and desire, and
DB Kalak
I think of terror and desire as continuous, wave-like. So I don't get this simile.
33%
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the forest rises up in the razing light of dawn and
DB Kalak
Another metaphorical oxymoron for me, although I may just not see the desired physical interpretation. The "forest rises up" in a light that cuts things down? A rising sun that reveals more and more of something isn't "razing" in my view.
33%
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a forest identical to itself to this extent is insane,
DB Kalak
"[i]s insane" is jarring. Would be a lazy choice even in a 13-year old's double-thumbed text message.
40%
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the young man is well and truly there—indeed,
40%
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body rising and falling imperceptibly
DB Kalak
Imperceptibly? --- Not perceptibly?
40%
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Siberia to remember and imagine—two ways of seeing clearly—she
DB Kalak
Another case where my intuition is the opposite. I can remember stuff and imagine stuff, but in neither case is the stuff very clear.
41%
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bright eyed and bushy tailed
DB Kalak
Yes, Mother, may I finish my breakfast first please? And may I please have two hyphens?
42%
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Aliocha’s decidedly insoluble body
DB Kalak
And in the tomorrow's lecture we'll examine Sasha definitely in suspension.
44%
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Hélène spoke of the incredible Russians, the tree-lined hills around the village, beautiful though cold still, and the Yenisey which, yes, was certainly the most majestic river in Russia.
DB Kalak
This would be an awful sentence even in the Young Adult section.
45%
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he who had been born into the kitchens of dissent
DB Kalak
In all seriousness my favorite turn-of-phrase in the book.
45%
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they loved each other like crazy,
DB Kalak
A couple of times I thought maybe this book's first draft had been dictated, with the intention to go back over the text with a thesaurus in hand. But some of the informal dictation survived.
56%
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the scene unspools sharp and in real time, as though the railway and memory were built upon each other,
97%
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something else in them had given way, freeing an unknown temporality, elastic and floating. Their REM sleep time has been whittled down as well,
DB Kalak
and their theta waves took a hit.