Virginia Woolf – Cannonball Read 17

“…they and their deeds were dust and ashes, but this man and his words were immortal.“

Orlando A Biography by VIrgina Woolf

July 27, 2025 by ElCicco Leave a Comment

CBR17bingo O I’ve wanted to read Orlando for some time. I knew it was a time travel novel about a character, Orlando, who not only lives for centuries but also changes gender. It was made into a movie starring Tilda Swinton back in the ‘90s, but I never saw it. Apparently, the movie is more “inspired by” the novel than a direct adaptation of it, which, having now read the book, makes sense. Not gonna lie, the novel, published in 1928, is unusual, and I’m […]

What do we do about the terrible people in our lives? Mostly we keep loving them.

Monsters: A Fan's Dilemma by Claire Dederer

August 18, 2024 by carmelpie Leave a Comment

I wished someone would invent an online calculator – the user would enter the name of an artist, whereupon the calculator would assess the heinousness of the crime versus the greatness of the art and spit out a verdict. A calculator is laughable, unthinkable. Yet our moral sense must be made to come into balance with our art-love. I wanted there to be a universal balance, a universal answer. ― Claire Dederer, Monsters: A Fan’s Dilemma CBR16Bingo: Bananas We are living in an age where […]

To the Lighthouse

To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf

August 25, 2022 by vel veeter Leave a Comment

We won’t be able to go to the lighthouse tomorrow it seems. In this novel, we find ourselves in the Hebrides as a group of people are more or less on vacation. As with many Virginia Woolf novels, our narrative perspective flits around from person to person in a close, omniscient third person as they consider their lives in general, and on this trip specifically. Our main characters are a young painter named Lily Briscoe. We have the Ramsays, a married couple with eight children. […]

Nothing thicker than a knife’s blade separates happiness from melancholy.

Orlando by Virginia Woolf

July 10, 2019 by vel veeter Leave a Comment

CBR11Bingo – History Schmistory This is a wonderful and strange novel in which a biography is tracing the history of a young courtier in Elizabethan England who both makes his way into the future (present in the book) though time, and also becomes a woman in her 30s by the end. I don’t know if I have a lot more to add to the conversations surrounding this book in terms of adding useful discourse. I am no Virginia Woolf scholar or have spent enough time […]

But none speaks with a single voice. None with a voice free from the old vibrations

Between the Acts by Virginia Woolf

May 11, 2019 by vel veeter Leave a Comment

This novel takes place over the course of a single day as a long married couple plans an afternoon event, while the wife hopes to help fend off an alluring woman who seems interested in her husband. This is Virginia Woolf’s last completed novel, which she finished in a final draft form a few weeks before she died in 1941, at least according to the brief forward by Leonard Woolf. This book has an interesting and very light touch, compared other of her work (Orlando, […]

What we have to do now, then, Sir, is to lay your request before the daughters of educated men and to ask them to help you to prevent war

Three Guineas by Virginia Woolf

February 2, 2019 by vel veeter Leave a Comment

This has been an incredibly crappy week when it comes to thinking through a lot of the issues discussed in this book applied to contemporary society and recent news. I live in Virginia, and well, I KNOW, right? A poorly worded and meekly defended, but good bill that strengthens the privacy rights of women through their healthcare is being used in entirely bad faith and evil discussions to score cheap political points. And so looking at this book, it’s interesting to think through Virginia Woolf’s […]

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