#god I love Donna Tartt

[miroana]

the secret history was really a story of fatal flaws, hedonistic haze (charles woke up inside a plastic snail), bacchanal in the woods, glorification of the picturesque (hold up, humans landed on the moon?), an elaborate murder plot, hubris and vanity (“say, what’s wrong with this type?” “triple spaced it”), pretentious aphrodisiacs, attempts at losing oneself completely (loudly kills a bee with a bible at the funeral of a recently murdered friend), utter obsession with the aesthetic—

[roadkilledthegirl]

ok. I’m going to say it.

I love ALL eras of boreo/decklikovsky EQUALLY, and I will FIGHT for EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM.

Las Vegas era? Brilliant - the inexplicable teenage love and lust for each other (terrifying and amazing) - caring for someone because they’re the only person in the universe who cares for you, getting drunk and high and altogether plastered together because you’re so traumatized and lonely that you don’t know how to bond with people in any different way and hey, you both like it (a little too much in fact) so why not?? It’s DELICIOUS. this part of the book was just written too well to be put down as “unfortunate” or “less than”. It’s so so so sad and raw and angry and vulgar and and and

And you couldn’t even have post-Vegas New York, Antwerp & Amsterdam without it!! Where would the tension, the longing, the shock of seeing your - best friend? ex best friend? The guy you hate so much because you love him even more ??? Where would all of that come from without such a complex, tangled backstory???? There’s no one without the other!!!!!!

[dearest-lady-disdain]

say what you will abt donna tartt but in the goldfinch she introducted this one slavic character, gave him three most reletable slay lines about grief, loss and god's cruelty all in one page and i think that's great

[therealdostoevsky]

what if murakami didn't specify the reason behind kizuki's death is because he wanted us to see ourselves in his place and give him a reason

[dykefever]

not to stir the pot but i’d love to hear why you didn’t enjoy tsh!

okay hello so i think the sparksnotes of my thoughts can be summed up with my storygraph review that i’ve copy pasted - but i can definitely expand on what i’ve said! under the cut again (tsh fans look away xx)

Donna Tartt creates an incredible atmosphere with vivid imagery and then essentially drifts through the book on that alone. Henry and Bunny were both interesting and dynamic characters (and Richard, to a degree) - everyone else was very one dimensional. Camilla sort of just waifs around and is beautiful and everyone is in love with her (it feels like tartt wrote her as a male fantasy character then failed to make a point about it in any way like she was almost accidentally written that way. sorry!!)

A huge amount of the action is told through dialogue which gets incredibly tedious and boring. There are an exceptional amount of scenes that aren’t really about anything other than sustaining that dark and beautiful atmosphere or showing dynamics between characters that don’t really … say anything - about the characters or the story or overarching themes (there are scenes that do achieve this too but just so many that don’t). What was achieved in 500+ pages could have been done with less, and with far more impact. I don’t mind a scene with no particular purpose than to show the characters/ who they are/ how they interact but as said before, most of the characters are one dimensional!! it’s an impressive feat considering how often the core group are on the page! I just finished this book feeling frustrated and bored - although the last 10% picks up.

+ i think i’ve said if i didn’t have such high expectations i would have been able to enjoy it more for what it was! to me, it read as a book by an author wanting to show they were a good writer - and donna tartt is in a lot of respects, she has beautiful prose - and how almost… smart? they are? also why was julian barely in it i feel like he could’ve had far more impact ALSO i think the julian/henry dynamic could have been explored that could have been so interesting

[lluvguts]

it always makes me laugh when people say how much they love my writing style because I got it from donna tartt herself sweetheart

[butiambatman]

“I add my own love to the history of people who have loved beautiful things, and looked out for them, and pulled them from the fire, and sought them when they were lost, and tried to preserve them and save them while passing them along literally from hand to hand, singing out brilliantly from the wreck of time to the next generation of lovers, and the next.” - Donna Tartt, The Goldfinch

[smeagol-on-my-deagol]

PART 6

reading 'the secret history' by donna tartt for the first time, here are my thoughts after reading through chapter 6:

[CONTAINS SPOILERS] obviously

— snow killing flowers : winter killing bunny

— + charles and camilla bringing in tulips into their house before they could die and also being the most (outwardly, and so far) affected by bunny's murder

— judy poovey, i love you, you are nuts but also so so normal

— richard, once again, giving us unimportant foot descriptions

— i think henry may be trying to set charles up to be the most likely suspect out of all of them,, i don't think he actually expects for any of them to get caught, but i think there's a reason why he wants charles to be the most involved starting from when cloke broke in to bunny's room

— average queer friend group

— bunny's family, especially his nieces and nephews makes my stomach turn :((

— i feel like the first half of the book is meant to make you kind of see why they would kill bunny, and the second half is meant to make you understand that he was still a human being, a son, a brother, an uncle, and a friend, despite his flaws

— like was it ever that serious

— "if it was up to me they'd put you in jail" over some parking tickets, girl you don't even knowwww

— i think julian is slowly starting to understand just what exactly they've done,, which he most definitely put ideas in their heads, but at this point i don't think he meant for it to end up like this

— i can't believe i've never heard anybody mention the racism before, because oh my god

— as things in the book become actually serious, it feels like the dialogue of the central characters and richard's inner voice becomes sillier

— as opposed to in the beginning of the book, when things weren't that serious, but everything was written as if it was dire

— the dirt under his nails "he was grabbing at anything he could get ahold of" is sickening i cannot stop thinking about it

[iphigennia]

I love you, did I say it? - Roman + Logan

succession (2018-2023) / it's time for 'succession' to dig deep with connor roy, (daily beast) laura bradley, link / we pals go fishing / fishing with dad, joseph francis kernan / succession (2018-2023) / t. real / rehearsal, succession (2018-2023) / argestes, succession (2018-2023) / honey boy, alma har'el (2019) / heaven and hurricans, sean norris / woodtangle, mary ruefle / connor's wedding, succession (2018-2023) / connor's wedding, succession (2018-2023) / all my sons, arthur miller / gods and kings, lynn austin / all the bells say, succession (2018-2023) / tarjrish, soroosh shahrivar / succession (2018-2023) / anti-savior complex complex, (tiktok) @asoftepilogue / i went to market, succession (2018-2023) / rehearsal, succession (2018-2023) / paternally grateful, stewart stafford / and my father's love was nothing next to god's will, amatullah bourdon / all the bells say, succession (2018-2023) / the autobiography of my mother, jamaica kincaid / the goldfinch, donna tartt / connor's wedding, succession (2018-2023) / connor's wedding, succession (2018-2023) / succession (2018-2023)

part one part two

[an-architect-of-words]

Sometimes I wonder if Francis’s suicide note is partially inspired by the Introductory Rites of a Catholic Mass or the Act of Contrition. Knowing Donna Tartt is a Catholic convert makes me feel like it could have been intentional even if it’s not worded the same. It has the same energy:

Francis’s note

Forgive me for all the things I did, but mostly for the ones that I did not.

Introductory Rite:

… I have sinned through my own fault in my thoughts and in my words, in what I have done and what I have failed to do…

Act of Contrition

My God, I am sorry for my sins with all my heart. In choosing to do wrong and failing to do good, I have sinned against you whom I should love above all things.

[bookofspiders]

𝔥𝔢𝔩𝔩𝔬 ⭒˚｡⋆ 𓆑 ⋆｡𖦹 𝔩'𝔞𝔭𝔭𝔢𝔩 𝔡𝔲 𝔳𝔦𝔡𝔢

aries ☼ aquarius ☾ gemini ↑ pisces venus

i’m just a 24 year old girl

i’m in school for creative writing and literature

i love all things books, writing, horror, gothic, dark academia

꩜ sylvia plath, mary shelley, jean-paul sartre, vladimir nabokov, madeline miller, donna tartt, oscar wilde ꩜

as a writer i mainly write genre, short story, non fiction, and personal narrative

꩜ lana is god, melanie martinez, mitski, sleep token, fka twigs, grimes, deftones, tyler the creator, hozier ꩜

what you will find:

꩜ girl blogging

꩜ venting/ shit posting of my thoughts

꩜ random tbh

MY DNI LIST

꩜ nsfw men (pls leave me alone) i’m not looking to be a sub or entertain anyone

꩜ racist, misogynists, homophobics, transphobic, anything relating to that so just don’t be an asshole!!!

꩜ minors: pls do not directly interact with me

🏷️ tags i use 🏷️

#asks (pls for the love of god be fucking normal)

#spider🕷️ (me)

#spiderlife (photos i take)

#spiderreads (books/reviews)

i’ll probably add more tags as i use this blog

へ ♡ ╱|、

૮ - ՛ ) (` - 7

/ ⁻ ៸| |、⁻〵

乀 (ˍ, ل ل じしˍ,)ノ

i think that’s all for now :3 let’s be moots? ꒰ᐢ. .ᐢ꒱₊˚⊹

divider by @fairytopea

[spongewormedpants]

I CAN’T STOP THINKING ABOUT BOREO.

Guys they are so much more to me than just like

“I love you”

“I love you too”

They are so complex and so traumatized and messed up oh my god get these guys in therapy please

BUT LIKE…

God, they so obviously mean so much to each other in the book especially. They aren’t perfect in any way shape or form, but they’d both be dead without one another and I stand behind that claim fully.

It’s the little things too—they are so much more than the kiss.

Theo frequently recalling every tiny detail about Boris

The amount of physical and emotional affection they both offered each other

Theo saying he’d run away with Boris without even thinking about it

THERE ARE COUNTLESS EXAMPLES AND I ADORE THEM SO DEARLY…

Even if they never explicitly said the words “I love you” romantically to each other, they showed it. They always showed it.

They mean the entire world to me.

“More than anything I was relieved that in my unfamiliar babbling-and-wanting-to-talk state I'd stopped myself from blurting the thing on the edge of my tongue, the thing I'd never said, even though it was something we both knew well enough without me saying it out loud to him on the street- which was of course, I love you.”

— Donna Tartt, The Goldfinch (2013)

[alderwoodbooks]

Currently Reading: The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt

oh my god. I'm 60 pages in so far and I'm already just absolutely falling in love with this book. I read The Secret History by Tartt earlier in the year and it quickly became one of my favorite reads of the year, it felt like a text I could sink my teeth into and just get lost in. The Goldfinch feels similar. I love how Tartt is able to build suspense so easily in her work, and her writing style is so up my alley.

like that highlighted passage?? her use of words to really drive home just how wet and damp and gross the rain is and how its soaking through everything is just so good, I could talk about it for days, and the line "Of course the texture of that morning is clearer than the present..."

Excuse me??? the TEXTURE?? what the hell is she on about? I don't know but it makes sense in my brain and I'm obsessed with it and I love it. This book is so fun to annotate and dive into and get lost in, and is such a good brain break from a lot of the nonfiction I've been reading (and am still continuing to read!! Don't you dare stop thinking and talking about Palestine!! I sure as hell haven't!!!)

[revasserium]

a not at all definitive list of books that literally physically are a part of who i am and why i am and how i ache and love stories so fiercely it sometimes threatens to consume me:

the night circus by erin morgenstern

"The circus arrives without warning. No announcements precede it. It is simply there, when yesterday it was not."

"I would have written you, myself, if I could put down in words everything I want to say to you. A sea of ink would not be enough.' 'But you built me dreams instead."

"Like stepping into a fairy tale under a curtain of stars."

the starless sea by erin morgenstern

"Strange, isn’t it? To love a book. When the words on the pages become so precious that they feel like part of your own history because they are. It’s nice to finally have someone read stories I know so intimately.

"For those who feel homesick for a place they’ve never been to. Those who seek even if they do not know what (or where) it is that they are seeking. Those who seek will find. Their doors have been waiting for them."

"Occasionally, Fate pulls itself together again and Time is always waiting."

the ten thousand doors of january by alix e harrow

“If we address stories as archaeological sites, and dust through their layers with meticulous care, we find at some level there is always a doorway. A dividing point between here and there, us and them, mundane and magical. It is at the moments when the doors open, when things flow between the worlds, that stories happen."

"They are artifacts and palimpsests, riddles and histories. They are the red threads that we may follow out of the labyrinth."

the secret history by donna tartt

"Does such a thing as 'the fatal flaw,' that showy dark crack running down the middle of a life, exist outside literature? I used to think it didn't. Now I think it does. And I think that mine is this: a morbid longing for the picturesque at all costs"

"She was a living reverie for me: the mere sight of her sparked an almost infinite range of fantasy, from Greek to Gothic, from vulgar to divine."

the wayward children series by seanan mcguire

"We notice the silence of men. We depend upon the silence of women."

"She was a story, not an epilogue."

"We’re all puzzle boxes, skeleton and skin, soul and shadow."

daughter of smoke and bone series by laini taylor

"She moved like a poem and smiled like a sphinx."

"Happiness. It was the place where passion, with all its dazzle and drumbeat, met something softer: homecoming and safety and pure sunbeam comfort. It was all those things, intertwined with the heat and the thrill, and it was as bright within her as a swallowed star."

"Like mold on books, grow myths on history."

the book thief by markus zusak

"I wanted to tell the book thief many things, about beauty and brutality. But what could I tell her about those things that she didn't already know? I wanted to explain that I am constantly overestimating and underestimating the human race-that rarely do I ever simply estimate it. I wanted to ask her how the same thing could be so ugly and so glorious, and its words and stories so damning and brilliant."

"It was a Monday and they walked on a tightrope to the sun."

dreams and shadows by c. robert cargill

"If you remember one thing, even above remembering me, remember that there is not a monster dreamt that hasn't walked within the soul of man."

"It's as if we are God's waking dream, each gifted with a small piece of his consciousness; the beauty of that arrangement is that we create the dream for him. If you can understand that, if you can wrap your mind around it, then you can conjure up anything you want from out of the ether. "

"You always assume we must have fallen, that we were thrown out of Heaven. Some of us just jumped."

stardust by neil gaiman

"He stared up at the stars: and it seemed to him then that they were dancers, stately and graceful, performing a dance almost infinite in its complexity. He imagined he could see the very faces of the stars; pale, they were, and smiling gently, as if they had spent so much time above the world, watching the scrambling and the joy and the pain of the people below them, that they could not help being amused every time another little human believed itself the center of its world, as each of us does."

"What do stars do? They shine."

the picture of dorian gray by oscar wilde

"Behind every exquisite thing that existed, there was something tragic."

"Children begin by loving their parents; as they grow older they judge them; sometimes they forgive them."

"The world is changed because you are made of ivory and gold. The curves of your lips rewrite history."

a midsummer night's dream by william shakespeare

"Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind; And therefore is wing'd Cupid painted blind. Nor hath love's mind of any judgment taste; Wings and no eyes figure unheedy haste: And therefore is love said to be a child, Because in choice he is so oft beguil'd."

"I’ll follow thee and make a heaven of hell. To die upon the hand I love so well."

"Love's stories written in love's richest books. To fan the moonbeams from his sleeping eyes."

deathless by catherynne m valente

"You will always fall in love, and it will always be like having your throat cut, just that fast."

"I do not tolerate a world emptied of you. I have tried. For a year I have called every black tree Marya Morevna; I have looked for your face in the patterns of the ice. In the dark, I have pored over the loss of you like pale gold."

the song of achilles by madeline miller

"I could recognize him by touch alone, by smell; I would know him blind, by the way his breaths came and his feet struck the earth. I would know him in death, at the end of the world."

"We were like gods at the dawning of the world, & our joy was so bright we could see nothing else but the other."

"We reached for each other, and I thought of how many nights I had lain awake loving him in silence."

circe by madeline miller

"It was my first lesson. Beneath the smooth, familiar face of things is another that waits to tear the world in two."

"But gods are born of ichor and nectar, their excellences already bursting from their fingertips. So they find their fame by proving what they can mar: destroying cities, starting wars, breeding plagues and monsters. All that smoke and savor rising so delicately from our altars. It leaves only ash behind."

[callmedaisyhill]

I think the brilliant thing that donna tartt accomplished in the secret history is that at first attempt reading it you‘re so hooked into the story, that it seems like a beautiful tragedy. Blood, Love, Hate, Death, Arts you get the full programm. But when you reread it, it becomes a satyr, a comedy. You see that it’s just Richard romantacicing everything they do, looking through his pink coloured glasses, and then you find it all ridiculous. I mean he even said it himself; „I think that mine is this: a morbid longing for the picturesque at all costs“ (talking about the fatal flaw). So to sum it up, he got involved with a group of to-be murderer, even became one himself, that are getting high and murder a man in the name of a greek god, just because he found that they had pretty clothes and a nice way to carry themselves? WTF RICHARD?

[sleepy-vix]

Hi...If you don't mind, can I ask your top 7 fav (fictional) books and your top 3 fav (non fictional) books of all time? And why you love them? Thanks if you want to answer....

(Do you mind if I send you an ask from bookish ask game)?

ooohh do send me bookish asks! i love talking abt literature

tho i gotta admit that i havent read many non fiction books (like, at all). i'm trying to get into them more often, but it's hard to find anything that interests me and also is not laid out in a high school textbook style

i'm planning to read alot of books on psychology soon tho (carl jung to start with)

the only psychology book ive read so far is quiet by susan cain and i loved it- that's the only non fiction book that i have for my "top 3 fav non fiction books" 😭

and as for fiction, well idk if i can rank them in order but i'll try

1. The Poppy War (R.F. Kuang)

2. Crime and Punishment (Dostoyevsky) (i really want to read more dostoyevsky agsvsjs but for now ive only read this one. im really looking forward to notes from underground)

3. The Secret History (Donna Tartt) (the writing is so swoonworthy oh my god)

4. No longer human (Osamu Dazai)

5. Solitaire (Alice Oseman)

6. If we were villains (m.l. rio)

7. Six of crows (leigh bardugo)

honestly i think this ranking system is out of order but this is how it is for now... it is VERY subject to change

tysmmm for the ask