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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
Related Recs
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The most gorgeous book I’ve ever read; beautiful; sexy; heartbreaking
Winterson is the best!!!
Feb 11, 2025
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Wanted to share some 5star reads 🤡
1) they’re going to love you - Meg howry
2) biography of X - Catherine Lacey
thats All tbh. 🫶🏻 I think I love this little life
Apr 11, 2024
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1. House on the cerulean sea 🌊 This book is a great one to read going into spring. It’s so heart warming!! it makes me feel so happy and ready to appreciate life.
2. The opposite of loneliness ☀️ this book is a collection of fiction and non fiction essays from a girl who died right after graduating. I really like her work, the fiction feels creative and fun and the non fiction feels personal no matter what age I read it.
3. Bad Summer People 🏓 horny rich people play tennis over the summer and make bad choices! Quick read, gets me in the mood to keep reading more and more.
Mar 2, 2024
Top Recs from @ellynhere
Mar 6, 2025
Jan 27, 2025
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Not a native New Yorker but have lived here since 2011. I’m an actor + antique lover. Here are my top reccs for newcomers (restaurants + thrifting only) lmk if you want more!
🍔Restaurants with unique atmosphere + great food:
1. Freeman’s Alley - lower east side. Unmatched vibes. hidden at the end of an alley. Amazing roasted Brussels sprouts. great cocktails and wine selection. Dark and moody and cozy.
2. Tea & Sympathy - west village
authentic spot for British high tea and pub fare. as tiny as a matchbox. Ridiculously charming. The staff are lovely. There’s a british import store next door.
3. Buvette - west village
worth the hype. Incredible spot for brunch (or anytime meal). Unbelievably cute.
4. Lucali - Carroll gardens, Brooklyn
possibly the best pizza in the city. Beyonce and Taylor swift apparently love it too if that helps sway you at all. No reservations, you need to line up by 4p to get a table. Otherwise order a pie to go for $40 and walk around the historic neighborhood eating your pizza and admiring the brownstones.
5. Sake Bar Decibel - east 9th street
Hip underground sake joint with amazing food. Often crowded but the service is very quick.
👗For thrifting clothes:
Manhattan:
1. Beacon’s Closet on 13th street (near the new school)
2.Housing Works on West 10th
3.Housing Works on 74th
4.Cobblestones on E 9th
5.East Village Vintage collection on east 12th
6. Crossroads Trading on 2nd ave
Brooklyn
1. Beacon’s Closet on Guernsey (it’s MASSIVE)
2. Awoke vintage
3. Monk Vintage
4. Buffalo Exchange on Driggs
5. Unearth Vintage on Smith street
6. Life Boutique thrift on 5th ave
7. The attic brooklyn
Jan 28, 2025