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42/40 booksRead 40 books by Dec 31, 2023. You're 2 books ahead of schedule. 🙌
An absolutely stunning translation filled wall-to-wall with some of the most beautiful English text ever written.
I wish the essays had focused more on technique, and at times they didn't even really feel to be about writing at all; nevertheless, I enjoyed this book quite a bit. It just wasn't quite what I wanted (so the problem was me, not it).
But one useful thing I did learn is that ideas are like cats:
You treat ideas like cats: you make them follow you. If you try to approach a cat and pick it up, hell, it won't let you do it. You've got to say, “Well, to hell with you.” And the cat says, “Wait a minute. He's not behaving the way most humans do.” Then the cat follows you out of curiosity: “Well, what's wrong with you that you don't love me?”
are
This book has long been a favorite of mine. I've read it twice in print, listened to it once as an audiobook, and just finished it again, this time on my Kindle. This is a book that I've continued to come back to because the world is super interesting and the characters are wonderful. Has some of the content become a bit dated? Definitely. But the storytelling brilliance contained between the front and back covers of this book is mesmerizing.
Frankly, this remains today one of the most utterly disgusting tales in all of English literature. You can feel the nipping of the rats on your flesh as you read it.