Another Study Blog

🌻 22. UK. i also share my poetry here 🥰

[literameera]

This is my one chance to tell you the truth Even if it makes you hate what you see. Feeling lonely became second nature. What we have right now can not sustain me. No one matters more to me than you do. I lie awake all night in bed thinking; Telling myself not to do this to you. Each day I don't is harder than the last Living like this has been endless torture. A boundless limbo that can't continue. I need to explain why I'm doing this. Why now. This could only stay hidden for so long You're the reason I had to write this down. This is not your fault. We're kind of like two crashing cars at night. Everything built up for us to have met. When you're not around I put on that song. The one you sent me, it makes me miss you. I think about the impact I have had. The things you will associate with me. I'm sorry for how this will change some things. I'll always be the person I have been. I don't know how to reconcile with that. I would change for you if you want me to. If I knew how to. We know that this has always been coming. Forgive me please for catching you off guard. No one has ever made me laugh like you. I'd have loved to spend my whole life with you I love you. I'm sorry.

Dancing: Suicide Note/Love Confession

[literameera]

bad fruit - ella king

[literameera]

bad fruit - ella king

[papayajuan2019]

love from a person that will die one day

[literameera]

'Crisis' Reinhart Koselleck [translation: Michaela W. Richter]

In honour of the rapture today

[literameera]

and to think. life is only going to get worse for mariam

[literameera]

started a thousand splendid suns today and my hand started shaking

[hedgehog-moss]

You mentioned on your sister blog that one of your favorite genres is peaceful post-apocalypse. What would you recommend from this genre?

Unfortunately I don’t know many such books; recently I’ve read two and it got me wondering what it was about these kinds of books that I liked. They are peaceful in the sense that the post-apocalypse angst is minimal and internal (“I’m the last human on Earth and it makes me feel some kind of way”), with very little external conflict, no zombies or bleak urban hellscapes or possibly dangerous other humans to worry about. My small, in-progress list of such books is:

Andrew Krivak’s The Bear (I found the ending so lovely)

Lily Brooks-Dalton Good Morning, Midnight

Elizabeth Moon’s Remnant Population (not technically post-apocalypse, but the old lady protagonist is the last remaining person on her planet so I’m counting it. Plus I loved it)

Alan Weisman’s The World Without Us (nonfiction—counting it as post-apocalypse as well even though the reflection alternates between ‘what if humans disappeared’ and ‘what if humans had never been there’)

Jan Henrik Nielsen’s Høsten (I thought it was so-so—I don’t think there’s an English translation yet)

(The post-apocalypse book I’m currently reading is Thomas von Steinaecker’s Die Verteidigung des Paradieses (no English translation either)—I don’t dislike it but it doesn’t qualify as peaceful)

Gwendoline Courreges’s Earthbound (or at least parts of it)

Marlen Haushofer’s The Wall—I didn’t like it but several people I know loved it.

Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou—this manga about a robot-woman who runs a countryside café in a mostly-depopulated post-apocalyptic world is what I want out of this genre… It’s peacefully melancholy; there is a real sense that things are coming to an end, but in such a way as to let people continue to savour their little daily joys and routines while the world quietly goes to sleep. That’s what was missing from The Wall, for me—it had a lot of “daily routines” but very little joy.

I think I’m looking for books that feel like reading the last few pages of the novel of humanity, in a way that is bittersweet but not depressing (1, 2 and 9 would qualify)—books with an undertone of “the rest of the living world will go on beautifully without us” but that aren’t overly misanthropic, just, humanity happened and did some regrettable things and some awe-inspiring things and now for the world it is the end of this chapter and the beginning of another and that’s okay. My ideal apocalyptic / post-apocalypse novel would be one that talks about the twilight of humanity in the spirit of these posts; with some clemency, and quiet warmth.

[literameera]

sarah/akira parallels in when we were orphans

[literameera]

the cyborg manifesto - donna haraway

[literameera]

my first year of university i had bought a copy of seamus heaney's poems secondhand and the person who had it before had annotated some poems, and they were much more intelligent than I could be. but the poems i read and would have to annotate i would add my analysis around theirs (in a different colour to not mix us up) and would sometimes try to add to their points and that experience with dialogue endeared me to seamus heaneys work much more than the actual poems themselves could.

[literameera]

this author goes to therapy and not that there's anything wrong with that but every character in this book also goes to therapy.

[literameera]

the year of magical thinking is not a book I could really critique or review because of how personal of a narrative it is. what can i say? i think the way didion expressed her grief after the sudden death of her hushand is uncompelling (for the record that's not what i think at all) but one thing i can say is, in citing the literature of grief that came before her, i enjoyed how she solidified her place in the canon. the book was very much: freud, klein and lewis said this, and didion says this. i think it reaffirmed this idea throughout that grief is simultaneously an incredibly personal and unique thing while also something most everyone in the world has gone through. in her establishing of a canon she uses her personal experiences to become a definitive voice on the topic / theme. is this anything?

[literameera]

reading the year of magical thinking (likely thing for woman who wrote her dissertation on grief to be doing)

[literameera]

actually incredibly relevant to have done my dissertation on grief because most every source she cites is something I've read. 'given that grief remained the most general of afflictions its literature seemed remarkably spare' brother dont i know it !

[literameera]

reading the year of magical thinking (likely thing for woman who wrote her dissertation on grief to be doing)

[literameera]

i know a reoccurring comment people will say about reading lolita is that you have to be a vigilant reader because hh is so charismatic and manipulative it's easy to fall for ehat he's saying but I think the opposite and you have to be intentionally stupid and deliberately obtuse to think he even actually properly cares for and loves dolores. i understand being confused maybe regarding if she did come onto him initially and believing him when he tells the reader the order of events. but all you have to do is read the words on the page to think this guy sucks, like without the being a pedophile thing, he sucks ! he's cruel and manipulative and abusive and cowardly and he ends a 12 year old girls whole life just to rape her. if you're a fully capable person reading this book and falling for it? you might be stupid?

[trueishcolours]

One thing I find very odd is how I almost never see anybody discussing HH's first wife! He doesn't even attempt to cloak his abuse of her in his narration, which gives you a baseline for how little worth he assigns to any woman or girl who isn't useful to him as a sex object. This makes it easier to understand that when he says flowery, superficially romantic things about Dolores, it's not because he's changed as a person since he was married to his first wife. The underlying contempt for women and girls is still there; it's just that Dolores is a pleasing object to him and his first wife was a worthless one.

It also gives the lie to his claims that paedophilia is a curse or affliction that he didn't choose and which is motivating all his other crimes. Paedophilia wasn't a factor in his relationship with his first wife (except that he resented her for being a grown woman and not the little girl of his fantasies) and he chose to abuse her anyway, almost as an afterthought. Just as he then chose to abuse Dolores. He wasn't 'driven to distraction,' it was already his standard behaviour.

Anyway I agree with OP; Nabokov gives us the whole first marriage episode to help establish HH as a villain.

[literameera]

the thing that really sticks out to me is how often he talks about lusting after other young girls. he makes dolores pleasure him while he watches children play in the park, he watches a school play and comments on which girls he liked the most, he let's dolores invite her friends to the house but Only the good looking girls, he uses her as bait and then punishes her when she assumes that role. after she leaves he still goes to parks to watch the children, he picks up an adult, but still very young, companion just for sex and to mistreat her. at one point he thinks about impregnating dolores so he could rape their child, and grandchild. like you can't believe he truly loves this girl because at every turn he reveals how disposable she really is. any girl could have been lolita, she was the only one unfortunate enough to actually be.

[literameera]

i know a reoccurring comment people will say about reading lolita is that you have to be a vigilant reader because hh is so charismatic and manipulative it's easy to fall for ehat he's saying but I think the opposite and you have to be intentionally stupid and deliberately obtuse to think he even actually properly cares for and loves dolores. i understand being confused maybe regarding if she did come onto him initially and believing him when he tells the reader the order of events. but all you have to do is read the words on the page to think this guy sucks, like without the being a pedophile thing, he sucks ! he's cruel and manipulative and abusive and cowardly and he ends a 12 year old girls whole life just to rape her. if you're a fully capable person reading this book and falling for it? you might be stupid?