🐇 This book reminded me of the incredible ways writers play with and manipulate words. There were times I was brought to a stop by the way a sentence or two had unfolded. Mesmerizing, deliberate character development too. Highly rec!
others I read last week:
- the seep by chana porter
- two books from the throne of glass series by sarah j. maas
- jazz by toni morrison
Mar 18, 2024
Related Recs
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Almost screamed out loud at multiple points. Just fantastic
Apr 6, 2024
it was excellent - vivid, elegant, supple. it felt real, and one of those stories that I will carry with me for a long time.
Feb 29, 2024
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The year is off to a sumptuous and riotous start with these three novels, each containing some of the most glorious, delicious, nostalgic, aching, and poetically articulate turns of phrase I’ve ever been lucky enough to absorb.
1. Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh
Prose: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Heart: ❤️🩹❤️🩹❤️🩹
Intellectual Stimulation: 🧠🧠🧠🧠
I devoured this in about a week. Waugh’s prose is some of the finest I’ve ever come across. A nostalgic wine-soaked novel that follows the lives of a couple of privileged Oxbridge students in the 1920s/30s. A love letter to the things that used to be so big and full, and are now decayed.
Some favorite quotes:
“The fortnight at Venice passed quickly and sweetly—perhaps too sweetly; I was drowning in honey, stingless.”
“But I had no mind for these smooth things; instead, fear worked like yeast in my thoughts, and the fermentation brought to the surface, in great gobs of scum, the images of disaster.”
2. Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
Prose: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Heart: ❤️🩹❤️🩹❤️🩹❤️🩹❤️🩹
Intellectual Stimulation: 🧠🧠🧠
Yearning!!! Gilded Age New York City!!! High society mean girls and soft bois!!!
Wharton spent her high society years in New York City during the Gilded Age which makes reading her novels set in this time period so thrilling because she was writing directly from experience. Rustling silks and satins and candlelight and calling cards and yellow roses and hair and gloves and the opera and love notes and yearning glances and upstate New York and Park Avenue. GIMME IT!
3. Atonement by Ian McEwan
Prose: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Heart: ❤️🩹❤️🩹❤️🩹❤️🩹❤️🩹
Intellectual Stimulation: 🧠🧠🧠🧠🧠
This entire book is an utterly magnificent, staggering masterpiece. I love the movie and it was a treat to discover it is very faithful to the book. I think I would re-read Atonement before I would re-watch the movie, simply because McEwan’s prose is perhaps the greatest of any living author.
I simply don’t understand how one person is able to articulate so many rippling, shimmering ideas and emotions with such economy, clarity and poetry. Perfection. Read it.
Jan 28, 2025
Top Recs from @nicolefar
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love treating my shelves like an indie bookstore! the owner has fantastic taste and everything’s free
Mar 3, 2024
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being sincere is in, thinking you’re always the most interesting person in the room is OUT.
take the opportunity to learn from this random human you have crossed paths with at the function. make a big impact with a little, casual convo. what are they into? how did they get into their line of work? what did they eat that day? what is their biggest fear? (lol) small talk is only shallow if you let it be.
tell someone working in a super busy place that they’re doing great and you hope they get a breather soon. compliment an outfit you like when you see it. tell someone when you notice their beautiful smile. quick interactions =/= insignificant
Mar 4, 2024
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very satisfying to prolong the life of things in a world where not very many things are made to last. just applied renovating cream to my blundstones. cleaning my car, sewing up holes or tears in clothing, trimming the wicks of candles, and using slip-on covers for old books fall into this category too
Mar 11, 2024