i don't think it was abridged, because there were definitely the parts one would think to abridge still in there. i also read it like, 20 years ago and apparently have misplaced my copy so i can't check.
this also reminds me that i was like, 60% done with war and peace and actually really into it, but i left my copy on a train and i haven't yet brought myself to try reading it again.
(Note: I was a pretentious teenager and have no active memory of this, but my friend Paul mentions it from time to time, and I'm just like, yeah, that sounds like me at 14 or so.)
anyway the current book is a people's tragedy by orlando figes and i am, in fact, reading it on my ipad even though i have a physical copy from the library.
i will probably try to read more about the russian revolution but it's one of those topics where a lot of the scholarship has an obvious political slant.
he has some political sympathies for the liberals but is pretty disdainful of them individually (and he also seems to have a grudge against richard pipes)
three
: I have a very small edition of Middlemarch in two volumes! Hardcover with a slipcase. Also a very large edition of The Tale of Genji in two volumes, but it only sort of helps.
Other than that it's not too common and I wish it were, but I think it has to do with bookstore stocking and what American consumers are like and so on.
Yeah, that's the thing. When you're constantly carrying about 25 lbs of books (and when I was this age, wheeled backpacks were not really a thing yet), The Brick is not really so bad.
Also I also got about 60% through war and peace and was enjoying it and then I put it down for some reason and kept forgetting and now I would definitely have to start over.
Because it's not just "my taste is basic" -- it's also "my taste is relatively highbrow but not as highbrow as Jerkface McGee's" or "someone with basic tastes is being shitty in the same way in the other direction and calling something I like pretentious and boring"
it does a great job of putting all of the pieces together and really mapping out that like, at any one point someone could have made a decision that steered clear of the revolution until there wasn't any more chance for decisions to be made, but i think the fact that his open sympathies for the man voted most likely to have deserved what he got make it a
it is really, really hard to be sympathetic to Nicholas once you learn about all the chances he had and how he always, unfailingly, continually, made the opposite choice even when told it's a bad idea. SO LIKE, I"M NOT WILLING TO CHALK IT UP TO HIM BEING A BETTER FIT FOR A HISTORIAN THAN AN EMPEROR.
oh, i didn't think it was very sympathetic towards nicholas at all, but i also paused reading the book for like, a year, so the parts fresh in my mind are after he was out of the picture.
anyway he does say something like "nicholas was thriving in captivity, living the life of an english bourgeois" but i read that as quite contemptuous, because figes fires so many shots at the british it's obvious he's one of them
it's fine, but the mystery is almost entirely a product of how the book is arranged (one present timeline, one flashback timeline) and it's much more just about sexism, body issues, and competitive friendship in the ballet world.
the narrator is french and the book takes place in paris, but the dialogue is in english for some reason? it was confusing to me. i mean i don't expect the dialogue to be in french like war and peace but figuring out what dialogue was supposed to be in what language was difficult. it didn't usually effect the plot but it might have.
finished american politics in the early republic, i read this before once a long time ago and it's interesting to return to now that i have a better understanding of the "classical republicanism vs republican liberalism" debate in early 90s historiography.
it was published by a university press and the author is a professor but he's a poli sci professor. the thing this book reminds me of is "leadership in turbulent times" in that it examines a theme (in this case, collapse of faith in the republic/republicanism/america) through biographical sketches. it's quite readable as these things go.
but i think i was hoping more a broader survey of political doomerism in the 1790s and conspiracy thinking vs individual intellectual journeys of e.g. hamilton and adams.
one thing about being me is that everyone gifts me whatever founding fathers biography is currently in so i got both a jefferson book and a sam adams book for christmas.
and by online hate groups, maybe the gentler way to say that is, anti-fandoms? basically places where community is based around disliking something or someone.
honestly maybe what first got me thinking of this is either the caroline calloway documentary where she called her haters from the anti-caroline calloway reddit, or that one instagram personality that hired a PI to track down some of the people in her deranged subreddit.
and i've honestly always thought of antis like, oh, they're young, let's hope they grow out of itโ and a lot of the stuff i do see from antis still reads very "i'm 15 and i think sex is icky but i have no idea how to voice that"โ but it's also clear that the compulsion to build communities of hatred isn't just a juvenile impulse.
I think a whole lot of it is also just envy that turns into Bitch Eating Crackers stuff -- like, "why is she getting attention? she's not that special. she's not that perfect. she's not even interesting."
i've definitely seen people on my timeline who may have done something wanky once and thenโฆ for years when they're not doing anything anons post "updates" or whatever.
part of this is me trying to hash out what my own boundaries should be. like, i have, in my time, made fun of caroline calloway. and importantly, a lot of these people do and say bad and hurtful things.
i'm thinking of that vanlife influencer againโฆ if i recall the story, she asked for donations because her dog was hit by a car and made a big tearful post about that
(Also, when I say "problem" I mean that the problem is that they feel some kind of way about something and cannot sit with the discomfort without acting on it.)
yeah, i can get people who donated feeling lied to (since there was a big lie of omission) but really the money did go to helping the dog, who was hurt.
or another one is hilaria baldwin who hilariously pretends to be spanish even though she's not. there's a lot of things wrong with that, but i can't imagine needing to think about hilaria baldwin again.
tbh like it is so easy for making fun of someone for something valid to slide into making fun of their aesthetic or whatever in a way that feeds harmful narratives. but also I feel like it is so easy not to do that
but there's a difference between people getting out of line about twitter main characters and true antis. like once you have made hating something part of your personality and daily life how do you come back from that????
the idea that people need to be receptive to legitimate criticism is actually terrible. it's a norm in the rp community too. i think it is true that you should always be willing to listen to thread partners expressing their discomforts & boundaries. but a lot of the time it means "you should listen to how i hate the ship you play and thank me for it"
Maybe it's a sign that I'm getting old but I will never understand why anyone would spend this much time and energy on the internet hating anyone. A whole subreddit about hating Meghan Markle?
I'll admit, one of the podcasts I listen to every week will sometimes do an episode about an influencer who turns out to have done a legitimate crime like scamming people out of a ton of money but they don't harp on one person like some people do. Yikes
yeah, blogsnark isโฆ i'm not going to call it a positive good, but it's noticeably less toxic than r/saintmeghanmarkle for two reasons. 1) it is strictly moderated and 2) it has a wide and not singular focus
anyway i'm definitely at the age where i don't want to make "liking things" my whole personality, but i definitely don't want "disliking things" to become a lifestyle.
i do recognize on some level it's helpful (and soothing) to have an outside source to blame everything on? when i was a teenager i decided isaac newton was my archnemesis and i would blame him for all my petty disappointments. this was cringe, but probably harmless.
this is going to sound woo new age whatever, but honestly, I think that making negativity a focus in that way means you stop seeing good in other things
I'm not trying to say toxic positivity, because that's equally bad in its way, but I think when you go out looking for things to be mad about and people to attack, you're doing yourself a lot of harm too.
I also think that can be a chicken or egg thing -- if you are on the lookout for stuff to be negative about maybe there is something in your own life that is making you unhappy and that you could address? Or maybe you can't address it, but wallowing in negativity as a coping mechanism is not really going to offer more than fleeting satisfaction.
i've read the first two books in this trilogy, so let's keep going!! taylor suggests in the preface they should maybe be named: american colonies, colonize harder, and colonize hardest
book release of 2o23
heck yes free religious whackery in the apartment lobby
disgusting
yeah that sounds about right lol