Anna Karenina Book 1, Chapter 2 "There was no answer, except the general answer life gives to all the most complex and insoluble questions. That answer is: one must live for the needs of the day, in other words, become oblivious." #TolstoyReadalong

„There was a man there,a novelist,who was going straight on to another residency in France, and then another one in Sweden after that: his whole life, as far as she could see, consisted of writerly sinecures and engagements, like a whole life of eating only dessert. She wasn't sure it was healthy.“

#TolstoyReadalong „Gehen Sie noch einmal zu ihr hin, gnädiger Herr, und gestehen Sie Ihre Schuld ein … Bekennen Sie sich schuldig gnädiger Herr! Was ist da zu machen — wer etwas erlangen will, darf die Mühe nicht scheuen …“ [Kindermädchen Matrjona Filimonowna] LEO N. TOLSTOI Anna Karenina I,2

Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy Book 1, Chapter 1 "He had not managed to prepare his face for the position he found himself in . . ." Yes, the first line of this novel is ironic, but this one resonated with the autistic in me. Also, hard not to read on. #TolstoyReadalong

ESCALUS Mercy is not itself, that oft looks so; Pardon is still the nurse of second woe. #MeasureForMeasure_2026 II,1,269-70 Arden #TheBard_ProblemPlays Angelo's House—Escalus, a Justice, Elbow, Froth, Clown, Officers, etc. (Shakespeare, Measure for Measure, Act 2, Scene 1) The Met

„… der Verbrannte und ich schauten zu deinem Fenster hoch. Ich meine: Als ich zu deinem Fenster hochschaute, hatte der Verbrannte schon seine Augen dort, und mir war klar und ihm war klar, dass ich jetzt am Zug war.“ [Charly]  Roberto Bolaño Das Dritte Reich 29. August

"Few can keep constant company with another, without revealing some, at least, of their secrets; for all of us yearn for sympathy, even if we do not for love; and to be intellectually alone is a thing only tolerable to genius, whose cherisher and inspirer is solitude." - Melville, Redburn (1849)

"And there they sat—the charmers, I mean—eating these buttered muffins in plain sight. I wished I was a buttered muffin myself. […] I have never seen them since: no, nor heard of them; but to this day I live a bachelor on account of those ravishing charmers." - Herman Melville, Redburn (1849)

"She was by far the most beautiful rosebud I had yet seen in England." - Herman Melville, Redburn (1849)

Something to remember as we enter a New Year : 6.373 Die Welt ist unabhängig von meinem Willen. Wittgenstein / TLP The world is independent of my will.

POMPEY Truly, sir, I am a poor fellow that would live. #MeasureforMeasure_2026 Act II s1 (l. 198) #TheBard_ProblemPlays

„Der Verbrannte war also kein Spanier. Und hatte nichts davon gesagt. Diese an sich unerhebliche Tatsache schien mir aufs höchste beunruhigend und bedeutsam… Ich fühlte mich nicht hintergangen. Ich fühlte mich beobachtet. (Nicht vom Verbrannten, eigentlich von niemandem speziell: durch ein Loch, 1+

#RachelCuskTogether #Kudos … „Dante … carved his vision out of the deepest understanding of human nature and could look after himself. It was a position of weakness, he believed, to see literature as something fragile that needed defending, as so many of his colleagues and contemporaries did.“

#TolstoyReadalong „Bei den Oblonskijs herrschte allgemeine Verwirrung… Alle fühlten, dass ihr Zusammenleben sinnlos geworden war, ja, dass in einem Gasthof zufällig versammelte Leute enger miteinander verbunden sein müssten als sie, die Angehörigen der Familie Oblonskij und ihre Hausangestellten.“

#tolstoyreadalong Happy New Reading Year! Bonus content from Tolstoy’s A Calendar of Wisdom!

ESCALUS (aside) Well, heaven forgive him! and forgive us all! Some rise by sin, and some by virtue fall. #MeasureforMeasure_2025 Act II s1 (37-38)

Australia has entered 2026 with fireworks from the Sydney Harbour Bridge and Opera House. Crowds gathered as the city observed a one-minute silence an hour before midnight to honour victims of the Bondi Beach attack, with the bridge lit in white for peace. #Australia

6.36311 Daß die Sonne morgen aufgehen wird, ist eine Hypothese; und das heißt: Wir wissen nicht, ob sie aufgehen, wird. Wittgenstein / TLP It is an hypothesis that the sun will rise tomorrow: and this means that we do not know whether it will rise.

#AmericanReadalong „… a sail drew near, nearer, and picked me up at last. It was the devious-cruising Rachel, that in her retracing search after her missing children, only found another orphan.“ FINIS Herman Melville Moby-Dick EPILOGUE

#AmericanReadalong THE END Thanks for reading along this year! Hope you join us in 2026 for the #tolstoyreadalong

ESCALUS Let us be keen, and rather cut a little, Than fall, and bruise to death.  #MeasureForMeasure_2025 II,1,5-6 Shakespeare (Arden) #TheBard_ProblemPlays Magistrate Escalus and Constable Elbow meet in Measure for Measure, woodcut, early 17th century. The Granger Collection, New York

I’m finally catching up! I’m reading A Dance to the Music of Time by #AnthonyPowell and I’ll never again see a sugar dispenser without thinking about Winderpool… #Booksy 📚

"The sudden mechanical punctuated strike of the typewriter contrasted starkly with the ruminative flow of the pen." h/t @zoestodd.bsky.social thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/how-typing-t...

26. August „Ich weiss nicht, was mich zu dem Geständnis verleitete, Schriftsteller sein zu wollen… ‚Fachautor’, sagte ich. ‚Schöpferischer Essayist‘. Daraufhin entwarf ich vor ihm in groben Zügen ein Panorama der Welt der wargames mit ihren Zeitschriften, Wettkämpfen, Ortsgruppen usw.“

ISABELLA My power? Alas, I doubt. LUCIO Our doubts are traitors, And make us lose the good we oft might win, By fearing to attempt. #MeasureForMeasure_2025 I,4,77-79 Arden #TheBard_ProblemPlays Miss Glyn and Mr Hoskins as Isabella and Lucio William Paine (engravers) 19th century (published) V&A

#MeasureForMeasure_2025 Duke Vincenzio: We have strict statutes and most biting laws. The needful bits and curbs to headstrong weeds, Which for this nineteen years we have let slip; Even like an o'ergrown lion in a cave, That goes not out to prey. (I.3.19-23) - Arden 3rd

#AmericanReadalong „… and so the bird of heaven, with archangelic shrieks, and his imperial beak thrust upwards, and his whole captive form folded in the flag of Ahab, went down with his ship, which, like Satan, would not sink to hell till she had dragged a living part of heaven along with her, 1+

An appreciation thread on this last #MelvilleMonday of the year, with some passages that come to mind... "Whoever afflict us, whatever surround, Life is a voyage that’s homeward-bound!" - Herman Melville, White-Jacket (1850) Marine by Knud Andreassen Baade (1808-1879):

It's almost time for the #tolstoyreadalong Are you ready?! #americanreadalong Preparing for the 2026 Tolstoy Chapter-a-Day Read-Along nicksenger.com/readalong/pr...

DUKE Now, as fond fathers, Having bound up the threat’ning twigs of birch, Only to stick it in their children’s sight For terror, not to use, in time the rod Becomes more mocked than feared; #MeasureforMeasure_2025 Act I s 3/4 (23-27)

“…but this new governor Awakes me all the enrolled penalties Which have, like unscour’d armor, hung by th’ wall So long that nineteen zodiacs have gone round And none of them been worn; and for a name Now puts the drowsy and neglected act Freshly on me.” #Measureformeasure_2025

We live in a paradox: pets must be vaccinated to protect public health, yet children can remain unvaccinated. The rules are strict for animals but optional for humans, even though the stakes are far higher. The irony, we are right in it.

“But it is also a hymn to democracy. Bent as the crew is on Ahab’s appalling crusade, it is equally the image of a co-operative community at work: all hands dependent on all hands, each individual responsible for the security of each.” —Shakespeare and Company, Paris. #MelvilleMonday 🐋

Ahoy, Shipmates & Friends! Happy #MelvilleMonday ! 🐳⚓️ Whale “sculpture”, whale lamp, whale teapot, wooden whale, and on top of Moby-Dick, a “stuffy” whale

25. August “Aber Conrad muss begreifen, dass ich Ingeborg in unserem ersten gemeinsamen Urlaub nicht links liegenlassen kann, um mich mit Leib und Seele der Variante zu widmen.“ Roberto Bolaño Das Dritte Reich

„I didn't really know anything about the dying process—I've never been with someone when they died—and I realised I was beginning to feel impatient. It wasn't even that I wanted him to get it over with for his own sake. I just wanted something to happen.“  #RachelCuskTogether #Kudos

Lord Angelo is precise; Stands at a guard with Envy; scarce confesses That his blood flows; or that his appetite Is more to bread than stone. Hence shall we see If power change purpose, what our seemers be. #MeasureForMeasure_2025 I,3,50-54 #TheBard_ProblemPlays … Authority shows what a man is …

Happy #MelvilleMonday 🐳!  „So that to this hunter's wondrous skill, the proverbial evanescence of a thing writ in water, a wake, is to all desired purposes well nigh as reliable as the steadfast land.“ Herman Melville Moby-Dick CHAPTER 134. The Chase-Second […] [Original post on mastodon.social]

"Confidence? What has confidence to do with the matter? That moral of the story, which I am for commending to you, is this: the folly, on both sides, of a friend's helping a friend." The Confidence Man. 41. Happy #MelvilleMonday , dear friends!

#AmericanReadalong #MelvilleMonday

Happy #MelvilleMonday 🐳!  „They were one man, not thirty. For as the one ship that held them all; though it was put together of all contrasting things—oak, and maple, and pine wood; iron, and pitch, and hemp-yet all these ran into each other in the one concrete hull, which shot on its way, 1+

. . . regularly jetting his silent spout into the air. To the credulous mariners it seemed the same silent spout they had so long ago beheld in the moonlit Atlantic and Indian Oceans. #MobyDick C133 “The Chase—First Day” #AmericanReadalong Wood Engraving by Garrick Palmer

“Edie, you don’t understand how things are here. For half a century Alaska’s been run by the same bunch of old sourdoughs, bankrolling each other, glad-handing, swapping jobs, pushing their agenda and keeping anyone new out.” #SundaySentence (s) M J McGrath The Boy in the Snow

Today's #WaferThinBook: Famous Fathers & Other Stories by Pia Z. Ehrhardt (2007, 166p.) "Yet why not say what happened?" This line from Robert Lowell opens and captures the spirit of this collection. Ehrhardt writes about recognizable people and families in all their failures and good intentions.

CLAUDIO. From too much liberty, my Lucio, liberty: As surfeit is the father of much fast, So every scope by the immoderate use Turns to restraint. Our natures do pursue, Like rats that ravin down their proper bane, A thirsty evil, and when we drink we die. Act I s3 #TheBard_ProblemPlays Remorse?