Get To Know Me Meme

Adding ‘lol’ to the end of a sentence is the laugh track of the written word.

this is actually, besides thomas hitting his head on the wall apparently, the funniest bit of the book

did it hurt? when you forget your headphones and couldn’t romanticise your walk home?

how does matthew somehow think James will forgive him for this, how did he just leave his family the day his brother almost died, how-??? i know this whole thing will be put on the 'bracelet blinding james' but even without that, "hey I love you run away with me from your husband, who's supposed to be as close as a brother to me" is-- ???? how is this not obviously a total betrayal, even if he thinks James is with Grace

"Quivering" is my least-favourite word in the english language. Nothing and nobody should be quivering. If you're quivering right now, stop that shit immediately. Tremble or shake if you must but the quivering has to stop.

why couldn't it just be that jem saw Jessie get belial's marks stripped off of him and that's what he was talking about when he told Emma about it

I completely forgot about the scene where Laurie seems pleased to be perceived as older! And while I was reading, I never even thought of the idea of molding, or Laurie thinking it's possible or trying to do it 😭 When I read Charlot's scene, I took is as the moment when Laurie finally has to confront the reality of who Andrew is and how different they really are...I will definitely be reading that scene more closely now that you mention it here!

You're definitely right that Laurie should've seen it coming with Charlot 😭 it's not as if Andrew hadn't told him who he is, but I don't think he ever had to really confront it until then. It's one thing to hear about the spine of steel, but another thing completely to rush into it headfirst at 80 miles per hour 😭

I don't understand why Laurie immediately interprets the relationship between Andrew and Dave as anything other than father/child or even just uncle/nephew. I'm rereading chapter 5, where Andrew is telling him all about his father's death and despite the fact that he clearly explains Dave is old enough to have known both his parents, Laurie is insanely jealous of Dave and thinks the whole situation gives him a 'headstart'... why?

I'm trying to think through the rest of what I know happens in the book, and the only other scene I can connect it with is the one where Laurie's sitting with Mervyn and thinks suddenly about how Sandy's friends could misinterpret the situation if they walk by. I don't know if there's supposed to be a connection or anything, but I really do not understand the vibes Laurie is getting at all 😭

Hello there, I would love to hear all your thoughts on 'The Last of the Wine'!

Hey, thanks for the ask! I really loved Last of the Wine! Alexias was a lovely character, and it was really interesting to watch his development and the development of his relationship with Lysis! He was so sweet in the beginning and then he became harder as the book went on; his father said that he once thought Alexias was 'too soft' to be a soldier, and I think he was right to feel that way at a certain point! His entire character progression was a trip to get through!

I absolutely loved the writing, which was beautiful as always, and there are some parts of the story I don't think I'm going to forget about anytime soon; the story of Phaedo (I cried), the moment Alexias exposes his brother and asks him 'bear no ill-will to me' (I cried), quotes like 'at Gurgos's once I lay awake considering how to kill him. But already it was too late,' 'I saw death reach out for you; and I had no philosophy,' 'if there be any god who concerns himself with the lives of men, the god himself must suffer with me,' etc. etc. It was just so good but very disturbing in some points...sometimes, you never stop to wonder why people do the things they do and only see that what has been done is evil. In a way, this is good; evil things ought to be derided as such no matter the circumstances, but in another way it is unfair and unhelpful. This is how I feel about a lot of the last third of the book: I understand why and how certain things happened, I just wish that they hadn't happened.

Something that made me laugh though and which I will think about forever are the few scenes where it's apparent Mary Renault is writing with a modern audience in mind, like the absolutely hilarious scene where Alexias is afraid of asking Xenophon if he only likes girls because he doesn't want to offend him 😭 or the scene where Alexias, assuring his dying father of vengeance, says: "Am I so base of soul as to forgive my enemies?" They're really cool scenes because they kind of play with the expectations of a modern audience and subvert common sentiments and understandings in modern culture and society; the opposite situation in the Xenophon scene would seem likelier to a modern person (especially at the time Mary Renault was writing) with Xenophon worrying about offending Alexias by asking him if he likes boys. And it's really a head-trip to read that question asked by Alexias because it's a direct contradiction to the common and widely known sentiment of forgiveness and loving your enemies within Christianity...this becomes 10x funnier 10 pages later when Alexias accidentally stumbles onto the whole point of Christianity 'God with us' 😭😭😭 I love the whole sequence of these scenes because they seem written specifically to challenge the reader; to get it through your mind that this was a foreign place and time, and these people are foreign to us; they have an understanding different from our own...but maybe not completely different at the same time.

Anyway, I don't know if this makes sense, my thoughts are kind of all over the place with this one but the tldr version of it is: I loved it! The writing was beautiful! It made me sad!

Eugene de Blaas 👒🍋

Tess of the D’Urbervilles (1998)