AWESOME

Finished Mircea Eliade's Rites and Symbols of Initiation. VERY COOL


review up at RXTT's Book Journey https://rxttbooks.blogspot.com/2025/...s-through.html

I forgot to pop in here and say that I finished this a month or so ago.

Fucking tremendous novel. Holy hell. Why did it take me this long to read it?

because it took a long time to write and it was think with ideas, characterizations, and a "philosophy of life" as they say, and it wasn't written in 4 days on twitter, and it wasn't a stretched out short story either. it was an entire world. my favorite chapter is when levin is working with the mujiks. felt like i was right there!

took me like 2 months to read it at the rate of a chapter or two a day. like one would watch a tv series these days, only requiring more effort, and therefore more satisfying

i also love the idea of "living well but thinking incorrectly" or however it was put in the translation, i forget really. one of the greatest books ever written

It didn’t resonate with me quite as intensely as Brothers Karamazov — the only other Russian classic I’ve read in the last few years — but yes, a whole world indeed.

I loved the chapter after Levin and Kitty first get married, the beginning of book 2, when it breaks down how their communication seems to constantly, inexplicably, deteriorate over the smallest things. That was relatable as hell, and utterly, devastatingly sad.

Also, the chapter when Levin’s brother is ill and Kitty is there to help. That was so touching.

So much of the book feels so nihilistic, but there’s a tenderness to the way it wraps up. So many people seem to find it so depressing, but to me it ended on a positive note (possibly because I was convinced tragedy would strike more characters, up to the very last page I was afraid of more deaths!)

Currently reading The Hotel New Hampshire by John Irving, an all-time favorite author of mine. I haven’t read one of his books in many years.

eh?? the book is anything but nihilistic. maybe levin's "bad thinking"? but the "bad thinking" is thoroughly refuted by the entire novel. tolstoy was a christian and ended up as i recall founding a religion or a cult or a theology or something...

it's a depressing book for anna, but in spite of the title she's not the main character, she's the... cautionary tale? this is levin's story, who is tolstoy's alter ego, after all

then again like count vronski tolstoy was a count and an officer (he was involved in the crimean war) and a young degenerate. so maybe anna is the life that he gave up

for more on tolstoy's moral/moralistic approach, i'd recommend a couple of shorter narratives: the kreutzer sonata (a "nervous" novella), and ivan the fool (a very funny fable, i read it as a child)

Reading a book called Time of the Magicians, about the intertwining lives of Walter Benjamin, Martin Heidegger, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and Ernst Cassirer, major philosophers whose ideas shaped the twentieth century

I just mean it kinda seems that way. It often feels hopeless, like there’s nothing worth believing in. And several characters — Anna, Dolly, Levin — essential say as much out loud multiple times in the novel. But I don’t think it’s nihilistic at its core. To me, again, it’s more hopeful than it’s made out to be.

I’m onto shorter and more leisurely reads now (see: Irving, boy am I storming through Hotel New Hampshire compared to the 2-month journey that was Anna K.) But eventually I’ll want more Tolstoy (AND Dostoevsky — man, that Brothers Karamazov floored me!)

Pure, White, and Deadly: How sugar is killing us and what we can do to stop it

That's true - as Miranda July says on All Fours (see how I keep it on-topic?), sugar is basically heroin. BUT, I'm not switching to Coke Zero or Diet Coke, which are an insult to Coke. So I'm fucked I guess. FUCKED.

Are you enjoying life? If yes, so be it.

Not particularly. :D:(

Maybe cut the soda pop then.

https://youtu.be/E90_aL870ao

Brothers Karamazov was my mom's favorite book