Luke > Recent Status Updates

You also know you're in for it when the end notes recommend you skip a section, and then proceed to provide notations for the supposedly skipped section.

'The Mark on the Wall' is one of the best short stories ever written.

"Why did the gringos pull out?' I wanted to know.
"They got cold feet. Afraid that we're all communists. They say they don't want another Fidel. They'd rather have a dozen Trujillos."

I can never stay away from Woolf for too long.

You know you're in for a trip when you find out that the main character (said status being proven by his portrait being present in the introduction of Volume One) you remember the best isn't going to show up till Volume Two.

"You're going to fight everyone's fight, aren't you?"
"It's all the same fight, Mamá,"

I've never read Wilde outside of doing so for school, so we'll see how this goes.

Shame's a luxury. Like a good nature.

One of the tricks to getting through this is to near completely disregard any and all named characters and their associated details unless there's an illustration of them in the introduction.

After all, civilised behaviour didn't require actual compassion, only the ability to follow compassionate rules.

Found quite the fancy bookmark in my copy.

Is it just me, or did GRAmazon get rid of both individual work shelving update records and the ability to select multiple shelves?

2019 Wrap Up

# Read: 128
# of Total Pages: 38,972
# of Absolute Favorites: 2
# of 5 Stars: 10
# of 1 Stars: 4
# by WoC: 37
# in Translation: 37
# of Original Languages: 9 (not including those of 'Book of Women Poets')
# Pub Before 1800: 6
# Pub Before 1900: 17
# of 600+ pagers: 8
# of Revisited Authors: 28
# of Poetries: 8
# of Nonfic: 33
# of Short Story Collections: 10

Feel free to request other statistics.

There's less than a ten book difference between my number of read books and my number of to be read's. Feels weird. Almost threatening.

I didn't expect the game 'Portal' to show up in this, but it does fit.

The cultivation of potatoes was under way, although their vaguely testicular shape still made people think they were good only as an aphrodisiac.

Even if an ambulance came howling and the sick person was howling too, they checked, because of one pregnant woman from when I was in fourth grade. The one who had a nine-month-old fetus in her stomach and a bomb with a diameter of thirty-centimeters under her gurney. Both these types of checkpoints showed that we would not let our lives be cheap, but my checkpoint only showed that we wanted our homes to be cheap...

I read Whitehead before the hype and am returning to him through a non-hyped work, so let's see if skirting the border serves me well.

Strange, Andras thought, that war could lead you involuntarily to forgive a person who didn't deserve forgiveness, just as it might make you kill a man you didn't hate. It must have been the amnesiac effect of extremity, he thought, that bitter potion they ingested every day in Ukraine with their ration of soup and sandy bread.

I know I'm getting old cause I'm annoyed that this work doesn't have a page devoted to details about its typeface.

Very strong Jane Eyre vibes from this one. I don't expect this to be as brilliant, but it'd be nice if the strength of the resemblance proved steady.

A signed New Directions edition, which is rather neat.

On the boat we had no idea we would dream of our daughter every night until the day that we died, and that in our dreams she would always be three and as she was when we last saw her: a tiny figure in a dark red kimono squatting at the edge of a puddle, utterly entranced by the sight of a dead floating bee.

'China's only crime' had been 'her weakness and her belief in international justice after the war [(WWI)]. If, driven to desperation she attempts something hopeless, those who have helped her to decide her fate cannot escape a part of the responsibility.'

—Liang Qichao

I'm going to have to come back to this 'act that later invited accusations of genocide' in the case of the Armenians and the Turks, and I don't think it's going to make Mishra look good.

'To those who claim', Liang [Qichao] wrote, 'that opening mining, railroad, and concessionary rights to foreigners is not harmful to the sovereignty of the whole, I advise you to read the history of the Boer War.'

Brooke-Rose could go one of two ways at this particular juncture. My opinion of this work largely depends on her choice.

Missed the hype period for this by a good five or six years, but better late than never.

I haven't yet found a poem I liked that was short enough to fit, so this is just to mark the fact that I am indeed making progress.

This is one of the more beautifully designed editions that I've seen in a long time.