#amor towles

[loganslowdown4]

I shouldn’t be surprised, but I just finished A Gentleman In Moscow by Amor Towles today and it is SUCH a Logan book, like I know they chose it on purpose but WOW

It’s about a former Count, stripped of title and put under house arrest in a hotel. He’s very smart, has a lot of teacher qualities, after a while feels like he’s being ignored, and with the patience of a saint, slowly figures out a way to escape.

I’m talking like 30 years imprisonment but he learns and pays attention and adapts. There’s so much in here that all points to Logan relating to and loving this book, well done. It was very good.

[the-hearth-and-the-wild]

I've come to realize that however blue my circumstances, if after finishing a chapter of a Dickens novel I feel a miss-my-stop-on-the-train sort of compulsion to read on, then everything is probably going to be just fine.

Amor Towles, Rules of Civility

[friskynotebook]

T-2 days until we meet Count Rostov . . . ✨❄️✨

You can get a high quality print of this piece on my Inprnt ✨

No-pressure tags: @saradika @obiknights @ladyxskywalker @thetorontokid @ewandaily @ewanfuckingmcgregor

[beljar]

After all, what can a first impression tell us about someone we’ve just met for a minute in the lobby of a hotel? For that matter, what can a first impression tell us about anyone? Why, no more than a chord can tell us about Beethoven, or a brushstroke about Botticelli. By their very nature, human beings are so capricious, so complex, so delightfully contradictory, that they deserve not only our consideration, but our reconsideration.

Amor Towles, from A Gentleman in Moscow

[appleinducedsleep]

Random Word BPC | February 2023

1. Punish

[emmieedwards]

"Homero começou a história in medias res, o que significa no meio de uma coisa. [...] E, desde então, é assim que várias das maiores histórias de aventura são contadas. [...] Tenho certeza absoluta que estamos na nossa aventura, Emmett, mas não vou poder começar a escrever até saber qual é o meio dela."

— A Estrada Lincoln, de Amor Towles

[wellesleybooks]

A new Amor Towles book makes us happy.

[the-phooey]

After all, what can a first impression tell us about someone we’ve just met for a minute in the lobby of a hotel? For that matter, what can a first impression tell us about anyone? Why, no more than a chord can tell us about Beethoven, or a brushstroke about Botticelli. By their very nature, human beings are so capricious, so complex, so delightfully contradictory, that they deserve not only our consideration, but our reconsideration—and our unwavering determination to withhold our opinion until we have engaged with them in every possible setting at every possible hour.

Amor Towles, A Gentleman in Moscow

[cliothemuse]

WHY DID NO ONE TELL ME THAT GENTLEMAN IN MOSCOW WAS GETTING AN ADAPTATION?!?!?

WITH EWAN MCGREGOR?!?!

WHY DID I HAVE TO FIND OUT BY AN AD ON A BUS?

[amazingaa]

"Embora Billy fosse apenas um garoto, ou talvez porque fosse apenas um garoto, ele aparentemente entendia que mesmo não havendo nada de errado, em si, em acordar ou se vestir ou tomar café, existe algo fundamentalmente desconcertante em fazer essas coisas da mesmíssima maneira dia sim e outro também, sobretudo na versão de mil páginas da nossa própria vida."

— A Estrada Lincoln, de Amor Towles

[writerswritecompany]

Quotable – Amor Towles

Find out more about the author here

[the-hearth-and-the-wild]

Anyone can buy a car or a night on the town. Most of us shell our days like peanuts. One in a thousand can look at the world with amazement. I don't mean gawking at the Chrysler Building. I'm talking about the wing of a dragonfly. The tale of the shoeshine. Walking through an unsullied hour with an unsullied heart.

Amor Towles, Rules of Civility

[happilyaloof]

Do I wish I belonged to aristocracy?

Because if you could get sentenced to a lifetime stay at a grand hotel in Moscow, for merely holding a title in the aftermath of the 1917 revolution, it still sounds good to me. Like Count Alexander Ilyich Rostov, I already have a similar lockdown routine sans the hotel, if nothing else! 😅

More than the novel, it’s the author I’m in awe of. He taught you world history, art, drama, even french lessons, all in this one elite book. From works of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky to the study of American films and music, from Tsar to post revolution Bolsheviks, from Louvre to London, Amor Towles’ vast knowledge with which he has backed his stories within the story, is par excellence. I have come out more informed, more polished I’d say.

It is a long read but elegantly written, focusing on the very charming Count Rostov and his life inside the hotel. All the while achieving a great balance of every bit of information and its effects, from his life that he left outside, in a mutating Russia.

It’s one of those books that has so many memorable characters that they become immortal, so many memorable quotes and moments that you can’t choose a favourite. However, what I can choose is this book, as now one of my favourites. It’s truly an experience.

Looking forward to the TV show based on it, that’s currently in the works.

[francescacammisa1]

"A volte, tutti dicono qualcosa perché sono tutti" mise in chiaro Nina. "Ma perché si dovrebbe prestare ascolto a tutti? Sono stati tutti a scrivere l'Odissea? Sono stati tutti a scrivere l'Eneide?" Scosse il capo, per poi concludere, in modo definitivo: "Non riesco a vedere alcuna differenza tra tutti e nessuno".

Amor Towles - Un gentiluomo a Mosca

Peter Demetz Artist

[veganpeachpie]

Books without overwhelming romance

I feel like a lot of books people talk about these days have a heavy focus on romance and spice, which really isn't my cup of tea, and it's hard to find good recommednations that don't have that. So here are some YA/adult books I love that don't have romance as a huge part of the plot!

(There may be some minor romantic subplots, but they aren't a major focus.)

The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles In June, 1954, eighteen-year-old Emmett Watson is driven home to Nebraska by the warden of the work farm where he has just served a year for involuntary manslaughter. His mother long gone, his father recently deceased, and the family farm foreclosed upon by the bank, Emmett’s intention is to pick up his eight-year-old brother and head west where they can start their lives anew. But when the warden drives away, Emmett discovers that two friends from the work farm have hidden themselves in the trunk of the warden’s car. Together, they have hatched an altogether different plan for Emmett’s future.

A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles In 1922, Count Alexander Rostov is deemed an unrepentant aristocrat by a Bolshevik tribunal, and is sentenced to house arrest in the Metropol, a grand hotel across the street from the Kremlin. Rostov, an indomitable man of erudition and wit, has never worked a day in his life, and must now live in an attic room while some of the most tumultuous decades in Russian history are unfolding outside the hotel’s doors. Unexpectedly, his reduced circumstances provide him entry into a much larger world of emotional discovery.

Babel by R.F. Kuang 1828. Robin Swift, orphaned by cholera in Canton, is brought to London by the mysterious Professor Lovell. There, he trains for years in Latin, Ancient Greek, and Chinese, all in preparation for the day he’ll enroll in Oxford University’s prestigious Royal Institute of Translation—also known as Babel. The tower and its students are the world's center for translation and, more importantly, magic. Silver-working—the art of manifesting the meaning lost in translation using enchanted silver bars—has made the British unparalleled in power, as the arcane craft serves the Empire's quest for colonization. For Robin, Oxford is a utopia dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge. But knowledge obeys power, and as a Chinese boy raised in Britain, Robin realizes serving Babel means betraying his motherland. As his studies progress, Robin finds himself caught between Babel and the shadowy Hermes Society, an organization dedicated to stopping imperial expansion. When Britain pursues an unjust war with China over silver and opium, Robin must decide . . .

This Savage Song by V.E. Schwab Kate Harker and August Flynn are the heirs to a divided city—a city where the violence has begun to breed actual monsters. All Kate wants is to be as ruthless as her father, who lets the monsters roam free and makes the humans pay for his protection. All August wants is to be human, as good-hearted as his own father, to play a bigger role in protecting the innocent—but he’s one of the monsters. One who can steal a soul with a simple strain of music. When the chance arises to keep an eye on Kate, who’s just been kicked out of her sixth boarding school and returned home, August jumps at it. But Kate discovers August’s secret, and after a failed assassination attempt the pair must flee for their lives.

Anxious People by Frederick Backman Viewing an apartment normally doesn’t turn into a life-or-death situation, but this particular open house becomes just that when a failed bank robber bursts in and takes everyone in the apartment hostage. As the pressure mounts, the eight strangers begin slowly opening up to one another and reveal long-hidden truths. As police surround the premises and television channels broadcast the hostage situation live, the tension mounts and even deeper secrets are slowly revealed. Before long, the robber must decide which is the more terrifying prospect: going out to face the police, or staying in the apartment with this group of impossible people.

The Midnight Library by Matt Haig Somewhere out beyond the edge of the universe there is a library that contains an infinite number of books, each one the story of another reality. One tells the story of your life as it is, along with another book for the other life you could have lived if you had made a different choice at any point in your life. While we all wonder how our lives might have been, what if you had the chance to go to the library and see for yourself? Would any of these other lives truly be better? Nora Seed finds herself faced with this decision. Faced with the possibility of changing her life for a new one, following a different career, undoing old breakups, realizing her dreams of becoming a glaciologist; she must search within herself as she travels through the Midnight Library to decide what is truly fulfilling in life, and what makes it worth living in the first place.

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak It is 1939. Nazi Germany. The country is holding its breath. Death has never been busier, and will be busier still. By her brother's graveside, Liesel's life is changed when she picks up a single object, partially hidden in the snow. It is The Gravedigger's Handbook, left behind there by accident, and it is her first act of book thievery. So begins a love affair with books and words, as Liesel, with the help of her accordian-playing foster father, learns to read. Soon she is stealing books from Nazi book-burnings, the mayor's wife's library, wherever there are books to be found. But these are dangerous times. When Liesel's foster family hides a Jew in their basement, Liesel's world is both opened up, and closed down.

The synopses were all taken from Goodreads. Feel free to comment/DM me if you have any questions about these!