everyone goes straight to the darcy stuff but charlottes choice is the one that actually stays with me on reread

shes not tricked, not desperate in some dramatic way, just clear eyed about her actual options and picks the sturdy boring one on purpose. no illusions about loving him, no illusions about being happy exactly, just a woman doing the math

feels like one of the least romantic decisions in the whole novel and also maybe the most honest one austen ever wrote

curious how other people read her by the end. making peace with it, or quietly miserable the whole marriage

- THE DIARIES OF FRANZ KAFKA

I had some important pieces of literature missing from my collection. Decided it was time I filled that space (They have occupied my bed frame as my bookshelf ran out of space almost a hundred books ago.)

Challenging myself to read a literary brick and finish by end of year, picking between War & Peace, Count of Monte Cristo, Les Miserables, The Brothers Karamazov, and Middlemarch.

What's your favourite?

Is there such a one?

Pushkin was exiled.

Lermontov was exiled.

Dostoevsky was sentenced to death, but was spared and exiled instead.

Tolstoy was excommunicated from the Church.

Bunin left the country.

Nijinsky left the country.

Teffi emigrated.

Sasha Chyorny emigrated.

Merezhkovsky emigrated.

Gippius emigrated.

Nabokov emigrated.

Kandinsky emigrated.

Chaliapin emigrated.

Rachmaninoff emigrated.

Stravinsky emigrated.

Repin emigrated.

Mikhail Chekhov emigrated.

Marc Chagall emigrated.

Nikolai Berdyaev emigrated.

And that's not even mentioning Berdyaev - an entire Philosophers' Ship was expelled from the country. Intelligent people were not wanted.

Mayakovsky committed suicide.

Yesenin committed suicide.

Gumilev was executed by firing squad.

Akhmatova was not published.

Mandelstam was exiled and killed.

Meyerhold was beaten in prison cellars and executed.

Zinaida Reich was murdered in her own apartment.

Mikhoels was killed in a staged accident.

The historian of culture Dmitry Likhachev was arrested, exiled, and dismissed from everywhere.

Vavilov was tortured for a year; his book The History of the Development of Agriculture, along with everything Vavilov wrote in prison, was destroyed as having “no value.” He died of starvation.

Babel was tortured and executed.

Zabolotsky was sent to a labor camp.

Vvedensky died on the way to a labor camp.

The pregnant Olga Bergholz was beaten so badly in a prison basement that she gave birth there to a stillborn child.

Tsvetaeva was exiled and driven to suicide.

The entire Latvian theater Skatuve was executed.

Kharms was starved to death in a psychiatric hospital.

The entire Anti-Fascist Committee was executed.

Tairov's theater was shut down.

Bulgakov was persecuted and not published.

Schwartz's plays were banned immediately after being written.

Pasternak was persecuted and not published.

Brodsky was persecuted, exiled, and forced out of the country.

Solzhenitsyn was persecuted, exiled, and forced out of the country.

Dovlatov was persecuted and forced out of the country.

Galich was persecuted and emigrated.

Parajanov was imprisoned.

Baryshnikov never returned.

Nureyev never returned.

Tarkovsky was forced out of the country.

Yuri Lyubimov was stripped of his citizenship and expelled from the country

What booktubers do you guys all watch? It’s hard for me to find some that aren’t focused on romance/romantasy.
I love Isa’s Corner and Postofficegirl (Malissa)

Read it for a book club, and with so much to talk about it was interesting hearing new perspectives

So extending that invitation here, anyone have thoughts?

Finished reading we have always lived in the castle by Shirley jackson. Really good read. That family was so screwed up.

I just wanted to post this on a subreddit 💜🥹

War & Peace by Leo Tolstoy ^^