"An unhappy marriage! No ill-treatment--only that indefinable malaise, that terrible blight which killed all sweetness under Heaven; and so from day to day, from night to night, from week to week, from year to year, till death should end it!" Young Jo's sympathy for Irene (1/2) P2C10 #Forsytesaga26

At Soames' for dinner James is so focused on Irene we don't even see Soames until he leaves: "Soames, pleading the excuse of business, betook himself to the room at the top, where he kept his pictures." Soames is invisible not only to his wife and father but also to the readers. #forsytesaga26

Goodnight. Dame Peggy Ashcroft as Cleopatra in a London stage production of Shakespeare’s “Antony & Cleopatra,” Angus McBean, 1953.

The "saddle of mutton" discussion has clinched it for me. I am in the hands of a master storyteller. Will follow Galsworthy anywhere he want to take me. #Forsytesaga26

So... the hat. OMG, that hat! "The uneasiness of the Forsyte family has been justified by the simple mention of the hat." #forsytesaga26

Laertes:That drop of blood that's calm proclaims me bastard,/Cries cuckold to my father, brands the harlot/Even here between the chaste unsmirched brow/Of my true mother. (IV.5. 118+) Laertes' lines upon hearing of his father's death... Evidence for Hamlet's doubt re: his own parentage. #Hamlet_2026

What a way to end publication day! For the Guardian, I’ve written a piece on navigating the weird and wonderful word of Muriel Spark. Read it, and do give my book a read, too. LIKE A CAT LOVES A BIRD: THE NINE LIVES OF MURIEL SPARK is out right now! 🐈‍⬛ www.theguardian.com/books/2026/a...

In Act 1 s2 I am struck by Hamlet's desire for friendship over respect or duty toward his office/position. Horatio labels himself "your poor servant," but Hamlet corrects him w/ "my good friend" saying, "I'll change that name [poor servant] with you." Duty vs Feelings #Hamlet_2025

#Hamlet_2026 Remember that list of big stressors we're supposed to do one at a time? Hamlet...Lose a parent, check. Lose other parent(mom? I thought I knew you),check. Move house(not go back to school), check. Change job(no longer expected to be King after dad died). And spoiler alert: lose spouse?

Fortinbras, who "Hath in the skirts of Norway here and there/Shark'd up a list of lawless resolutes," plans to wage war and avenge his father, taking back what lands were lost. So there's Fortinbras giving Hamlet an example of how to be a good son. #Hamlet_2026

So far behind... I just finished the doctor's chapter. I gotta say he's the most interesting character so far. I wonder if it is because of the PofV--so close in his head. The opening chapter is in Futaki's head, but it's somehow less stream of consciousness and more reportage. #satantangotogether

You know you're in the right dentist's chair when the hygienist looks at the book in your hand and says, "I've read that!" and then later says, "Who doesn't love a good book light?" #booksky

Finished Bleak House and continued to live in Esther's world in my head for a while. I thought it was good the first time I read it some 30+ years ago. And I liked it this time as well. Just picked up The Moonstone, and just like 30 years ago I find Wilkie Collins a superior writer on all counts.

"...a zone of infinite reverberation to human destiny..." #rachelcusktogether

Pg187 "I've tried to remember some particular incident" Melete says re: the former student/stalker (seeking the catalyst for the behavior), but Anne--the new teacher--refers to her mugging as "the incident." Anne knows exactly what precipitated everything that followed. #RachelCuskTogether

Today's reading--the story about the dog--tests the limits of believability in its delivery. Getting dialog on a page is more than recording words said; there's pacing. Stage directions and descriptions can give the feel of pauses in actual conversations. But Cusk is going for +1 #RachelCuskTogether

It is so interesting to see all the different interpretations of the characters (in particular the nameless "neighbor" or boat guy). I can't help but think they are all there to educate the narrator. Each tale instructs her about her broken marriage and survival as a single self. #RachelCuskTogether

"'I've tried, obviously, to remember some particular incident, but there isn't one. You could spend your whole life,' she said, 'trying to trace events back to your own mistakes.'"p187 And we do. We search for that one misstep.Melete says we should accept the situation. Maybe so. #RachelCuskTogether

"I listened to this confession...in silence. I found that I was disappointed in him, and that discovery made me feel, for the first time, afraid of him." This fear may stem from the fact that her neighbor made her feel...something, anything. He goes on to complain that his +1 #RachelCuskTogether

The workshop icebreaker is one I've used, and the students (whose sole purpose for signing up for the class is to tell stories) do so with enthusiasm. It is difficult to sort who is revealing more. The students? The narrator? The author? How much is tailored for a certain effect? #rachelcusktogether

"Those people were living in their moment, and though I could set it I could no more return to that moment than I would walk across the water that separated us. And those two ways of living--living in the moment and living outside of it--which was the more real?" p75 +1 #rachelcusktogether

The voice is hypnotizing. The detailed description is entrancing.And the precise word choice is stellar. Yet I cannot help but think about the people she's captured and drawn on these pages. The book is described as both fiction and nonfiction. So imagine telling intimate secrets #rachelcusktogether

#AnthonyPowellTogether Oooh! A Widmerpool reference.

I keep thinking about the flight attendant with her props: "we listened or half-listened, thinking about other things, as though some special hardness had been bestowed on us by this coupling of formality with doom." "Special hardness" absolutely encapsulates that feeling. #RachelCuskTogether

#rachelcusktogether I have opened the first volume--publisher Picador--and what is this font?! Books used to say which font was used, some even had the history of the font in a little blurb on the back page. Sigh.

Discover the neglected modernist masterpiece. Dorothy Richardson's 13-volume novel, Pilgrimage, available in the US weagain, exclusively from @asterismbooks.bsky.social.

#ANote_2025 The fact that BOTH young men in this novel know Oliver is oddly reminiscent of Anthony Powell. And we find Mary (the mistress of the manor) knew Hugh's father. These insulated groups are baffling to me.

#ANote_2025 "Time was not real, except as one made it so. Why not bind it to one's purpose, make it servant instead of master? It should be a simple matter to abolish ten years of nothingness..." p165 John Donne making the sun run... all seems possible until your knees and hips tell you otherwise.

#AnthonyPowellTogether (Talk about wallpaper!)

P76-77 "It does not ease the burden of the past to share in recollections; for with each plunge into it, each withdrawl, something is left behind that weighs more heavily than the memory; something that can never be shared or imparted--a sense of accumulating unease..." #ANote_2025

Found the article about Powell's wife, Lady Violet Powell in The Hudson Review. Well worth the read! hudsonreview.com/2024/11/at-l... #AnthonyPowellTogether

"You never know till you try. Besides, if things had been different, they would have been totally different. That is something that perhaps only those--like ourselves--engaged in the arrangement of words fully understand." Delavacquerie continues-- " #AnthonyPowellTogether

John Blaxter pointed out on the Anthony Powell email group that Hearing Secret Harmonies, the 12th and final volume of A Dance to the Music of Time, was published on 8 September 1975, which means we've just passed the 50th anniversary of this remarkable series. musicoftime.com

#aNote_2025 Pg1 we see Grace remembering being up a tree, separate from family and "the Parish Ladies," and we're told she "blushed painfully" for her father and "had known he was being ridiculous." Still, she wanted to "protect" him from those ladies. So much to unpack here. Her father is a vicar

There are so many dualities and contrasts in Swann's Way, like the Swann the family knows and the Swann the family won't believe exists, I wonder how I didn't notice this before. #AContinuation25

As I read Swann's Way this time, I am struck by how M. Swann senior is a perfect contrast to our narrator. Senior lives in the moment, enjoying his garden and the hawthorns, and saying "it's good to be alive." I can't imagine our narrator doing or saying any of those things. #AContinuation25

#AContinuation24 #Proust I had forgotten about how anxious our speaker is. It seems impossible for him to appreciate being in the present; he is so young and so anxious, anticipating dread before it descends.

According to William C. Carter, the first few pages of Swann's Way was labeled "Overture." A roman numeral 1 appeared on p9 between the para that ends "...what I have actally seen of them, and what others had told me" and the next para that begins "At Combray, as every afternoon..." #AContinuation25

For those of us on the last volume... #anthonypowelltogether

Day 1. #AContinuation25

My apologies to Anthony Powell and the group. I was wrong in my previous post. I finished Temporary Kings. No spoilers, but I will say my faith In Powell as a writer has been restored. #anthonypowelltogether

#AContinuation25 A reminder that we're beginning our group read of SWANN'S WAY this Saturday, August 2! @insearchofproust.bsky.social kindly provided the page numbers for the Penguin Classics & Oxford editions & I've added them to our page guide. Download here: www.joiedevivre9.com/uploads/1/4/...

Finished the opera scene in Temporary Kings, and I felt like the author promised much more than we actually got. I thought there would be at least a lot more tension in that room than was shown. Am I being too harsh? Did I miss something in Powell's telling of the tale? #anthonypowelltogether

‘Shakespeare knew what kind of tragedy this was going to be, this world of politics and randomness where all that had meaning was violent and inaccurate encounter.’ Barbara Everett on ‘Hamlet’ and power, in her final piece for the LRB: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

"The General, speaking one felt with authority, always insisted that, if you bring off adequate perservation of your personal myth, nothing much else in life matters. It is not what happens to people that is significant, but what they think happens to them."p147BooksDo Furnish #anthonypowelltogether

To buy a new cake of soap is to buy a fresh stretch of days. Its little weight, treasure, minutely heavy in the hand, is life, past and present and future compactly welded.

Yes, I read an article by his biographer Hillary Spurling which makes it sound like Violet did a lot of work on the Dance cycle. Hope this link works. hudsonreview.com/2024/11/at-l...

Bogged down in Powell's description of Trapnel--still 100 pgs from the end of Books Do Furnish--but was struck by Jenkins' lack of description/discussion of his wife. She seems almost nonexistent. Is it because Powell's wife was so much a part of his writing process? #anthonypowelltogether

Shout out to the Cuppa app people. You changed my way of making tea for the better, and I love the subtle sound of the teacup on the saucer telling me my cuppa is ready!