73% geek, the rest is girly bits.
I'm a shy lurker who enjoys friendly interaction but is bad at initiating. I like reading. Find me elsewhere on my blog, on mastodon, on pixelfed.art (art), and pixelfed.social (other stuff).
What my stars mean: ★☆☆☆☆ Hated it ★★☆☆☆ Didn't like it ★★★☆☆ It was OK ★★★★☆ Liked it ★★★★★ Loved it
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4% complete! 73pctGeek has read 1 of 24 books.
Marra — a shy, convent-raised, third-born daughter — is relieved not to be married off for the sake of her …
@OneMillionMice I'm feeling it. It's very…. detailed 😬
@OneMillionMice I'm feeling it. It's very…. detailed 😬
Set in England and Hong Kong in the 1920s, The Painted Veil is the story …
Kitty has an affair which leads to difficult consequences.
I didn’t care for this. Unlike “Of Human Bondage” in which Maugham mesmerised me with his prose, I found the dialogue stilted, flat and the writing tiresome. When I looked it up, I was stunned to learn “The Painted Veil” was written a decade after “Of Human Bondage”.
Kitty, the rather unpleasant protagonist, is a spoilt, shallow child of a woman who marries a man she barely even likes, on a whim. Her development throughout the novel didn’t ring true, and seemed unlikely, making her character feel flat and unbelievable. I just couldn’t manage to suspend my disbelief of the transformation she undergoes. I found the setting bland, didn’t care for any of the characters, didn’t enjoy the plot, and felt very disappointed by the ending. In short, not for me.
Set in England and Hong Kong in the 1920s, The Painted Veil is the story of the beautiful, but love-starved …
One of the most acclaimed books of our time, winner of both the Pulitzer and the Francis Parkman prizes, The …
Set in England and Hong Kong in the 1920s, The Painted Veil is the story of the beautiful, but love-starved …
Santo Domingo de la Calzada, 1532. London, 1837. Boston, 2019.
Three young women, their …
Alice, Charlotte and Maria all hunger for a life different than circumstance has afforded them.
An enjoyable read with a slightly different take on vampires. I love the title, and the twists to classic vampire lore Schwab plays with. Much of the book is historical fiction, and also queer, both of which I find appealing.
While I found the stories of Maria and Charlotte most engaging, Alice’s used a few tropes I am thoroughly tired of. Her chapters were the ones I least enjoyed. I also found the denouement somewhat lacking. Otherwise, a fun read with well-defined characters and interesting storylines.
Santo Domingo de la Calzada, 1532. London, 1837. Boston, 2019.
Three young women, their bodies planted in the same …
Spring, 1875, in the Cherokee Nation West. A baby, a black hired hand, a bay …
Check, matriarch and soon-to-be-widow, attempts to keep friends and family safe while living in the Cherokee Nation in 1875.
A fine read, but a little too sprawling and unfocused for my tastes. I found Verble’s “Stealing” a much more intimate and compelling read. Partly because “Cherokee America” isn’t written in first person, but also because its wide-ranging portrayal of a time and place which touches upon many characters and situations lacks the sensitive depiction of a single protagonist I so appreciated in “Stealing”.
Spring, 1875, in the Cherokee Nation West. A baby, a black hired hand, a bay horse, a gun, a gold …
Spring, 1875, in the Cherokee Nation West. A baby, a black hired hand, a bay horse, a gun, a gold …
Santo Domingo de la Calzada, 1532. London, 1837. Boston, 2019.
Three young women, their bodies planted in the same …
In nineteenth-century Russia, the wife of an important government official loses her family and social …
Anna Karenina falls in love with Count Vronsky.
Considered one of the great novels, after reading ‘Anna Karenina’ I’m not sure why. This is my first Tolstoy and while I enjoyed a couple of Dostoyevsky novels ages ago, I’m unsure whether I simply don’t care for Tolstoy or have meanwhile soured on Russian classics in general.
Though the prose might be sublime in the original, I read the Maude translation and found it fair to middling. It was bloodless and dispassionate, with a lot of telling and little showing. Nothing really seems to happen or matter, even though there are deaths and births and scandals.
There are many characters with many names, and because no-one is particularly interesting, they tended to blend together. Once nicknames were added to the mix, I really struggled at times. Add in the excessive amounts of philosophising on religion, politics, peasantry, and …
Anna Karenina falls in love with Count Vronsky.
Considered one of the great novels, after reading ‘Anna Karenina’ I’m not sure why. This is my first Tolstoy and while I enjoyed a couple of Dostoyevsky novels ages ago, I’m unsure whether I simply don’t care for Tolstoy or have meanwhile soured on Russian classics in general.
Though the prose might be sublime in the original, I read the Maude translation and found it fair to middling. It was bloodless and dispassionate, with a lot of telling and little showing. Nothing really seems to happen or matter, even though there are deaths and births and scandals.
There are many characters with many names, and because no-one is particularly interesting, they tended to blend together. Once nicknames were added to the mix, I really struggled at times. Add in the excessive amounts of philosophising on religion, politics, peasantry, and sundry other thoughts that occurred to Tolstoy, and it all makes for dull reading. While, at times, he displays extreme insight into people and emotions, Tolstoy will then quickly shatter the moment by shifting to different characters having an irrelevant conversation.
Characters are wracked by pointless anxieties which crop up constantly, something I found irritating rather than illuminating. And while Tolstoy states that every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way, I found his unhappy families all alike.
I suppose I’m glad I read it, but it really felt like one of those serialised novels where the author was paid by word. Ultimately, I didn’t care for it, and found it a slog.
In nineteenth-century Russia, the wife of an important government official loses her family and social status when she chooses the …
