nastya > Recent Status Updates

so far this is not unlike moby-dick in a few ways

Or, another way to end it: each missile shot from Russia would stop midair, spin around, pummel into its exact point of origin.


reva stole this dream from me how dare she! it helps me to fall asleep often.

She told him about her deal with his granddaughter, the cold math of the agreement to exchange the remaining foreigners plus him, the grandfather, for her lost mother.
“You just made that up,” he said. Nastia blinked. “I didn’t.”
“Sounds a lot like the novel my granddaughter’s been trying to cobble together. She mailed me a draft, fed through one of those internet translation machines.

“And how do you propose the enemy should look, young man? A swastika flag in one hand, a Mein Kampf in the other? The enemy is more subtle now. Hides in plain sight. Inside every Ukrainian.”

what an amateur! personal icon of bandera and sims 3!

In the first year of the war, when I felt guilty for crying (I’m not the one being bombed!) and then guilty for not crying (Think of those being bombed!), I wondered, uselessly, who had a proper claim to grief. I knew expats who mourned dutifully, refusing social engagements, their faces ashen as if U fallen. I also knew friends back in Ukraine who were hiding in basements and still hadn’t stopped cracking jokes.

Sometimes I wonder if she and I are going insane, living two realities at once—the explosions peppering phone calls from Ukraine alongside the dinner parties in Vancouver with laughing, smiling friends in wrinkle-free fabrics who don’t mention the war.

ok so I was harassed in the comments under my review and when I playfully told him to fuck off the guy flagged me to the goodreads and goodreads penalized me, while leaving harassing comments live even though I blocked him. interesting... should I close my comments or it won't help? can anyone flag anything even if it's a joke? asking friends with experience

the moment we left Ukraine and got to Canada and diaspora life, the book instantly improved! almost as if the author has deep connection to the subject and is much more engaging! at least it became readable to me! A few quotes:

watched her interview yesterday (what a woman!) and she said that she tried to read a page of this recently and was like "not today satan". but she feels it speaks to 15 year olds and it should be read by them, she feels it was written by a 21 year old self for them. also had a feeling she doesn't like that 21 year old very much :)

I know it's a bit too early but I am not feeling this one. I don't like the writing, nothing feels recognizable, and I have no desire to keep reading. I am not the audience, but I wish Maria all the best on this award circuit. Don't feel like this book will survive past this booker.

“When the bachelors heard the name Anastasia, they thought about Russian royalty—about the Duchesse who’d vanished by the time the White Army reached her family, having either been murdered or escaped. A Disney movie about her…”

so true, esp disney

“And most important, while being exotic and enigmatic, the name was still easy to pronounce.”

eh…? it’s not a-nuh-stay-zhuh after all

What the hell am I doing reading a new release after vowing “never again,” you ask? Apparently risking a very bad time. You’re reading this book because it’s written by a Canadian with Ukrainian roots, about a country that’s in the news. I’m reading it as a Westerner writing for other Westerners about a current hot topic. We are not the same.
p.s. I am on page 4, and it already feels fishy.

🥱currently this is an old man yelling at clouds for some reason that is not very clear to me situation. such a shame, the beginning was a banger! not sure how much longer I will be able to keep going. pre order for tunnel is cancelled atm

“Somebody pops out of the box and says, ‘You’re a bunch of idiots!’ Boom. But the thing that gets me is when the good things are just so simple sometimes. My wife’s very much younger than I. When we were first courting, I had to hear a lot of pop music, because she was an eighteen-year-old. But after a few years, she scorned it and listened to Monteverdi.”
william h gass

anyway don’t read authors’ interviews folks

This is like a once-funny joke that went on for way too long. What am I missing?

good news: Endling is nominated for booker and maybe now my library buys more copies so I won't have to wait 11 weeks for my copy!!

Late at night I found myself, as I knew I should, on the beach. The air was calm, the night particularly beautiful. It would have been entirely possible for me to walk out into the sea. That I did not do so was the result of a sense of duty to myself. I wanted to know the rest of the story, however it might turn out.

Авжеж. Людство не може стерпіти думки, що світ народився випадково, через помилку, лише тому, що чотири безмозкі атоми зіткнулися на мокрому шосе. А тому треба знайти космічну змову, Бога, янголів або дияволів. Синархія виконує ту саму функцію, лише у зменшених масштабах.

This has been fun… for a while. And now I am praying for it to end. He doesn't care about his reader, does he? Explains his love for Borges I guess..

I'm 55% in,and it still feels like we're just setting the scene, the main story hasn't even kicked in yet

what am I reading? I can’t think of another writer so in love with himself and his puzzles, while giving so little of a shit about the reader.

My very first impression of my very first Brookner: wow, that's some olympic-level writing. Makes you realize how much mediocre prose I've been reading recently. Not sure about the subject matter yet. But this is some smart shit

Can you call yourself a coward simply because the courage of others seems to you out of proportion to the triviality of the occasion? Thus wisdom creates cowards. And thus you miss Opportunity while spending your life on the lookout for it. You have to seize Opportunity instinctively, without knowing at the time that it is the Opportunity.

Some talked about a brutal realism, some extolled my baroque imagination, some admired a female narrative that was gentle and embracing. In other words there were many positive judgments, but often in sharp contrast to one another, as if the reviewers hadn’t read the book that was in the bookstores but, rather, each had evoked a fantasy book fabricated from his own biases.

wait, did she suddenly go meta?

this was powerful

There's something admirable in Nino's ability to get it up for any woman in the world, don't you find? He is not predating on young school girls, he is schtupping the oldest, the ugliest women and gives them happiness, I just can't be mad at him. Like you don't try to capture this wild bird, you let it be free and bring happiness to the most undesired women, Elena!

are you folks worried about the writings and translations coming out from new names and the possibility it is done by llms? what will happen when the last writer we knew before stops writing? will we only be going for vintage books? the way you go for vintage jeans with the coveted made in usa label already in the fast fashion world?

I firmly believed that an egalitarian society was dawning, but I also thought that the trains, for example, in this better society ought to run better, and the militants around me were not learning how to shovel coal into the furnace, work the switches, or draw up timetables. Somebody had to be ready to operate the trains.

This book is extremely basic so far, like a level of basic I'm not used to, not to sound like a snob or anything. Plain, basic, banal. Where the hell is all that beautiful writing people keep raving about in the reviews? Why the hell am I 1500 pages into this mess? Can someone please explain me to myself?

My journey of discovering new taste continues and we are parting ways with Hild. Is it my sudden boredom with historical fiction (Dunnett's fault?)? My dislike of Griffith’s writing style? Or just the time and setting (Britain post Rome) that doesn’t interest me? Probably all of the above. I definitely don’t enjoy her flowery prose, and having ANOTHER fey special girl as a protagonist doesn’t help. Oh well.