Books I read, films I watched, thoughts I had.
I spent days, then weeks, wrestling with whether to see it. The trailer got me—that song alone is weaponized temptation. So I caved and went to see the adaptation of Hardy's classic. Here's what happened.
Read MoreCharlotte and the Petit Carré Jaune beat me to it, but I'm saying it anyway: I want to know NOTHING about the fall literary season before September. Maybe not even then.
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"Other people left her feeling lonely, sometimes even unsafe. She felt cut off from them. Their conversations, their dreams seemed artificial, something to endure before reaching the conversation that mattered." A life of quiet isolation.
Read MoreNine years. Nine years of this thing. Birthdays get repetitive, sure. I never thought it would last this long—but you don't think about longevity when you start a blog. You just start.
Read More"Stop telling yourselves stories. This world is done. The one we knew. Everything you're talking about—it's already over." Three months later, here's Vernon episode two. We've been waiting.
Read More"The future is another country," Carl said sadly, then the punchline came naturally; his face broke into a smile. "And I still don't have a passport." Two academic families with everything in common—and nothing at all.
Read More"I can't think outdoors—all my thoughts fly away." The English countryside in the 1870s: green valleys, wooded hills, murmuring streams, flocks of sheep. After years of labor, a shepherd meets a woman who will change everything.
Read More"I watched Marie, and I could see I wasn't there anymore. It wasn't me with her now—it was the image of my absence that this man's presence revealed. A striking image of my own absence."
Read More"Sooner or later you have to take sides. If you want to remain human." I hadn't read Graham Greene in ages—an English author who's fallen out of fashion. Time to dust him off.
Read More"But life grabbed people and shook them around until they became unrecognizable, even to those who'd known them well." Six kids, fifteen or sixteen when they meet at summer camp. They call themselves The Interestings. Then life happens.
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