What I’ve Just Finished Reading

I finished Zola’s Nana. I rather think Zola intended me to dislike everyone in this book, but in fact I just ended up feeling terribly sorry for them all: they all seem so human and stupid and tragic, wasting their lives and their treasures buying pleasures that give them no happiness. Not that they would be likely ( Read more... )

What I’ve Just Finished Reading

I finished Frances Hodgson Burnett’s A Fair Barbarian, which is absolutely charming, and includes a scene with an unworthy suitor receiving a resounding smackdown, which I find so satisfying and very rarely see in fiction.

I also finished Ngaio Marsh’s Death of a Fool, which is also charming, although I think that ( Read more... )

"So too in history what is known to us we call the laws of necessity; what is unknown we call free will. Free will is for history only the expression for the unknown remainder of what we know of the laws of human life ( Read more... )

PETYA. PETYA NOOOOOOO ( Read more... )

I’ve reached the final book in War and Peace! We’re on the home stretch ( Read more... )

I've passed the thousand page mark in War and Peace! There are only...four hundred more pages to go ( Read more... )

What I’ve Just Finished Reading

I finished Charlotte Bronte’s Shirley! Which was good for about a third of the book in the middle there - or perhaps I should say relevant to my interests, as that is the part of the book which is about Caroline and Shirley’s friendship - and then abruptly changes focus to documenting Shirley’s budding romance with ( Read more... )

Prince Andrei is ON THE VERGE OF DEATH again! I don't see how he's going to get out of it this time, seeing as he's got a stomach wound and all, but I also read somewhere that he eventually meets Natasha at a ball and she snubs him thoroughly - unless I'm misremembering? - so he can't die just yet ( Read more... )

PRINCESS MARYA HAS A SUITOR! PRINCESS MARYA HAS A SUITOR ( Read more... )

Shirley has arrived! Brilliant young heiress Shirley Keeldar shows up about a third of the way through Charlotte Bronte’s Shirley, just when she’s most needed, for our erstwhile heroine, Caroline, had fallen into the Depths of Despair following her crushing separation from her beloved cousin Robert Moore, who she thinks doesn’t return her love. ( Read more... )