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What kind of manic pixie dream girl plot dump is this?

Beginning of the second and final volume of my edition. Usually for this kind of long read I'd take a break here and begin the next major section at the start of next month, but in this case, I'd rather maintain what momentum I have.

I've managed to give out at least one of each of the five available star ratings in the first six reads of 2022. A rather rocky start, but at least you can't say that it's boring.

The young are not so young here, and there is no such thing as midlife.

Dude fakes imminent death to have sex. Oh boy.

This is really quite an amazing piece of richly interwoven, heavily enculturated writing. Not for everyone, including me at times, but it wouldn't be so great if it were.

Apparently, one (1) sex negative representation of rich white same sex romance is less threatening a topic than solidarity among workers, judging by how this one particular character's definition was completely thrown out the window once they achieved the position of subject rather than object.

Ovid is to epic as Marguerite Young is to Walmart.

It no longer surprises me that Stendhal wrote this in less than two months. What does surprise me is the number of well referenced authors who hold by it. Or, perhaps, I shouldn't be, considering the amatonormativity of it all and the fact that said authors are white boys.

"If one chooses to look upon Go as valueless," [Naoki Sanjūgo] said, "then absolutely valueless it is; and if one chooses to look upon it as a thing of value, then a thing of absolute value it is."

Well, unfortunately, the more this progresses, the more absurdly self-indulgent it gets in regards to the heroic heroes, the villainous villains, the fainting ladies, and the worshipful lower classes. I keep waiting for Stendhal to show at least a small amount of ironic self awareness, but I'm not sure if there'll be enough to go around.

But then I acknowledged that no matter who had been in the White House, it had always been hard to be me.

Still waiting for this to turn into something more than a mélange of 'murica' that I've read before.

The world stopped feeling like a gauntlet I had to run through. But very quickly I discovered that passing didn't just mean slipping below the surface, it meant being buried alive.

I understand that it's common to confuse sadistically puritanical attitudes towards human eroticism with profundity, especially in how the typical "American" narrative chooses to treat its characters, but this is laying it on a little thick.

I'm hoping that this doesn't turn out to be as "Western" bourgeoisie dicklit as it threatens to be at times.

Dude needs to calm down and stop being jealous of a relationship that would basically be incest.

Lol, GRAmazon's sniping at me for being behind my challenge already and it's like. I'm currently reading one of the longest novels ever composed. Calm yourself.

I have no idea how I managed to not only get through, but also really like, The Red and the Black a decade ago considering how little awareness I had nearly everything Stendhal's referencing in order to lay this scene. I'm glad I did, though, because this is a real treat so far.

I'd prefer it if this made me think at least a little bit, cause for the most part so far, it's been a mosquito whining in my ear.

Been looking forward to this for a long time.

Start off the new year with a bang.

...I don't see why scepticism will teach her more wisdom than compassion.

It's a bit of a shame how many books I'm one starring simply because of how much they fail compared to this work, but honestly, it's for the best when it comes to holistically honing my personal taste.

And now Joan Didion! Maaaaan. How much more cursed can the last days of 2021 get.

Some benefit to having such a rigorously regular reading schedule is being able to slot this in due to knowing that it takes up almost exactly the excess page count I'll have leftover once I've finished my other three works for 2021.

This strikes the nicest balance between intellectualism and amusement that I've encountered in a long time.

It's all quite pretty and mysterious, but the almost complete lack of credible character development and diversity in personalities is very distracting.

So far, this has been little more than a litany of Tumblr posts, and some of the most basic ones at that.

Folks who only have either white or Japanese authors on their shelves are so creepy.