meh/style
Sarah Rose Etter,
Lydia Kiesling,
Ellen Pao,
Claire Stanford,
Gabriela Garcia,
Adelle Waldman,
Natasha Brown,
Sam Byers,
Yaa Gyasi,
Jennifer Egan
The city wears away at all of us, wrenching open mouths full of a rage that explodes out of us, turns us into self-immolators or sacrifices to commuter trains or people who relentlessly scream our pain into the night.
too vague
The men with Upstairs Eddie were making a lot of noise. They looked, Bunny noted with amazement, like seniors just graduated from Stanhope, the boarding school where she and her older brother, John, would return in the fall: gorgeous in the aggregate if not individually, white boys with gently shaggy hair, bronzed, golden-furred legs in khaki shorts and dirty running shoes. They were drinking Heinekens fished from a cooler full of lukewarm water, from where Bunny had earlier fished her own tepid Coke.
why is she amazed? im so bored
[...] Some stares were simply from interested people who could tell immediately that Bunny was not from Azerbaijan. Some were pointed but mostly playful: “Hello, beautiful girl!” Some scared her, boys who followed her until she could walk fast and resolutely to a safe and crowded distance. “Monica Lewinsky! Monica Lewinsky!” one of them had yelled, cracking up. Bunny cursed the slutty intern as she broke into a humiliating jog.
terrible
Her father considered for a moment. “His view is that since the collapse of the Soviet Union, there’s been a gold rush for resources, and that a lot of unscrupulous people are making money in very corrupt ways. Which is true.” When the Glenn parents were together, she sometimes heard her father lament the quality of men with whom he was now expected to engage, and the variety of work he was expected to do. Bunny, despite her sense of alienation from her father, knew he was a very smart man. His bookshelf was filled with forbidding books by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn that Bunny sometimes tried and failed to read.
so lazy
Bunny had heard again and again of the Contract of the Century, without knowing exactly what it was. Something about oil, different companies working together, revitalizing decrepit wells, blah blah blah. It was as impenetrable to Bunny as the warren of pipes and factories that ran through the Black City, the industrial east of Baku where she had been told not to go. [...]
????
After they had finished Lale’s food, they watched several of the Friends episodes from the tape Bunny had been given. Bunny loved Rachel’s and Monica’s outfits—so sleek and put-together. [...]
???
Maryellen spoke again after a few minutes. “Sue found out she had some kind of inner ear thing, vertigo. She had to quit.” She turned down Poirot. “I felt so bad for her; she was devastated. But then she did this travel-booking certificate program they had instead, and she ended up managing a high-end guest house in Bora Bora for years,” said Maryellen. “She married an Australian guy out there. Now she’s retired. Never had any children,” she said, the matter finished. Bunny admired the way that Maryellen and Ted knew so many people with very interesting lives.
how do you admire 'the way that'
Bunny had even come to love the long Repro nights and their time-and-a-half pay, the way she imagined an athlete would love an away game at a distant stadium. When she looked at her bank account every two weeks and saw that $1,072 was deposited there, she felt a miserly happiness. She spent money on nothing but gas, Zumba, Starbucks, and her share of groceries. She packed spartan and sensible lunches, sating afternoon hunger with salted almonds and La Vache Qui Rit. She was always slightly hungry, the hunger forming a slender iron rebar that held up the habitual laxity of her character and flesh. She ate her peanut butter sandwiches with smug slowness while her colleagues went to Buffalo Wild Wings. Her bank account fattened as her body attenuated.
i dont like the way this is written [too obvious] but the details are interesting
Bunny was surprised at this. Obama was heroic to her, a symbol of the victory of good over evil. And he had gotten Osama bin Laden, whatever that was worth—although after the disasters of Iraq and Afghanistan, it did seem a little beside the point. Frank Turnbridge had said, “Finally, something good out of Obama-nation,” and Bunny bristled within.
lmao. hate this. too obvious. like a wikipedia page in simple english
“Please get in,” she said. “I can drop you somewhere.” Gulbahar had been beautifully hostessing all day, and Elizabeth hated to keep her longer. She knew little of Gulbahar’s life outside of her work. She assumed she was unmarried—no ring—but she didn’t know for sure. Elizabeth had been amazed to learn that the receptionist in the BP office, a very young woman, had two small kids. Their photos were on her desk; she had first assumed they were her younger siblings. Elizabeth was constantly being surprised by the revealed information of people’s lives.
such boring writing