Mila

Why is it so popular and “the best novel in Russian language”? I am confused.
It is beatifully naked Chekhovian language, it is heart-touching memories of a child of memories of his ancestors of Russia that we lost. And that is all.

Dickensian humor and language without Dickens' comforting happy end.

Brillant idea, poor language, hot woman running around (half naked ofc)

travelog before instagram and facebook were invented.

sudden comparisons with Scotland were funny.

couldn´t stop until i was finished. reading like a poem. perfect rythm of words.

name is misleading - only third part of book is about Donner Party. although it was not a disappointment -the story of a girl growing up without her parents in 1890s california. fascinating slice of life.

(also from this book I learned that Pony express was real Pony express. Fascinating. Real ponies.)

ending was a little bit unexpected.
interesting that when the woman went crazy she turned to religion. I wonder if it was intentional.

i re read this book in third time. first time was in school and i dont remember much of it. another time in university, just for memory refreshing.
this time i cried.

i didnt understand the point
very uneven book - from girly frolicking to long talk about australian peasantry

this year i have made two discoveries among short stories. one of them was katrin mansfield. the other was salinger's nine stories. I have read them before five or six times in translation and I discovered that they translated were nothing compared to the original.

“No,” sobbed Laura. “It was simply marvellous. But Laurie—” She stopped, she looked at her brother. “Isn't life,” she stammered, “isn't life—” But what life was she couldn't explain. No matter. He quite understood. “Isn't it, darling?” said Laurie.


Leila gave a light little laugh, but she did not feel like laughing. Was it—could it all be true? It sounded terribly true. Was this first ball only the beginning of her last ball, after all? At that the music seemed to change; it sounded sad, sad; it rose upon a great sigh. Oh, how quickly things changed! Why didn't happiness last for ever? For ever wasn't a bit too long.

I was overwhelmed by this poetry. It is not a poetry itself it is a concentrated impression of the life.
I will reread it in the future. definitely.

I have unexplainable antipathy to Hosseini's books. Too much pain and horror for the one page of the text.

Getting an education was a bit like a communicable sexual disease. It made you unsuitable for a lot of jobs and then you had the urge to pass it on.

‘Look at it this way, then,' she said, and took a deep mental breath. ‘Wherever people are obtuse and absurd . . . and wherever they have, by even the most generous standards, the attention span of a small chicken in a hurricane and the investigative ability of a one-legged cockroach . . . and wherever people are inanely credulous, pathetically attached to the certainties of the nursery and, in general, have as much grasp of the realities of the physical universe as an oyster has of mountaineering . . . yes, Twyla: there is a Hogfather.'

DOWN TO THE FINEST POWDER AND SIEVE IT THROUGH THE FINEST SIEVE AND THEN SHOW ME ONE ATOM OF JUSTICE, ONE MOLECULE OF MERCY, AND YET— Death waved a hand. AND YET YOU ACT AS IF THERE IS SOME IDEAL ORDER IN THE WORLD, AS IF THERE IS SOME . . . SOME RIGHTNESS IN THE UNIVERSE BY WHICH IT MAY BE JUDGED.

CORRECT. STARS EXPLODE, WORLDS COLLIDE, THERE'S HARDLY ANYWHERE IN THE UNIVERSE WHERE HUMANS CAN LIVE WITHOUT BEING FROZEN OR FRIED, AND YET YOU BELIEVE THAT A . . . A BED IS A NORMAL THING. IT IS THE MOST AMAZING TALENT. ‘Talent?' OH, YES. A VERY SPECIAL KIND OF STUPIDITY. YOU THINK THE WHOLE UNIVERSE IS INSIDE YOUR HEADS.



It was the first book of Pratchett that I read in English. I was fascinated. Now I continue to think about belief. How our belief forms the world around us. There is still Hogfather, Twyla, as long as people believe in him. And not only him. There are still justice, mercy and compassion as long as we believe in their existence.

the description of London before the main character leaves it was poignantly sad. I googled - of course, Wyndham wrote from his own experience - London bombings in the Second World war. Of course.