"No glory for this sheep in tiger's hide."

Not the epitaph I would want, but it does seem fitting for Yuan Shao.

"Our troops, backed against the water, will fight to the death and defeat Yuan Shao."

Because what could go wrong?

"[Lü Bu] has no humanity, no honor. Why not leave him to his fate?" suggested Xian. "That's not a hero's part," replied Wei Xu. "Let's deliver him to Cao Cao instead."

Chapter 19, siege of Xiapi. A very different understanding of roles.

"The freedom that the soul could discover in prayer was the secret of her reform."

Timodemus, irrationally jealous of Themistocles success over the Persians at Salamis has been mocking Themistocles saying the recognition he has received from Sparta was due only to his being from Athens. Themistocles finally responds: it's true that if I came from Belbina the Spartiates wouldn't have honoured me as they did, but they wouldn't have honoured you, my Fri, even though you come from Athens!"

Nice.

"There is nothing like an undiluted view of divinity to make a person feel small."

Clever. Second person narrative interesting - draws reader into the story. Like Invisible Cities, a frame story, but unlike Invisible Cities, here the frame is the real story, the love story between two readers, one of which is "you" and the framed stories are intentionally incomplete, each ending at an early critical moment.

In the end this did not work for me - in part because of sex which got stranger and kinkier as the story progressed.

I just finished chapter 8. 6.67% of the way done. I have so far taken notes on 21 characters who seemed important enough to keep track of and have book marked a couple pages with lists of major generals. Of the 21, 6 have already died and I don't think Dong Zhuo is long for this world. He will not be missed. I wonder if Martin got his inspiration for Game of Thrones from Three Kingdoms. #threekingdoms

Gongsun Zan to Yuan Shao: "There was a time when I regarded you as loyal and just, and supported you as leader of the confederation. Today I see that you think like a wolf and act like a dog."

I have to admit I love the creative insults. #threekingdoms

"Nobody these days holds the written word in such high esteem as police states do."

"All books continue in the beyond . . ."

Like I said, Borges.

"all interpretation is a use of violence and caprice against a text"

Okay, I'm hooked. The challenge is going to be not dropping all my other reading goals. #threekingdoms

Zhang Fei to Lü Bu: "Bastard with three fathers!"

Now that's an insult.

"Better to wrong the world than have it wrong me."

I guess that tells us what we need to know about Cao Cao's character.

Lü Bu to Dong Zhuo: "If you will have me, I beg to honor you as a foster father."

Note to DZ, since he just murdered his last foster father, you might want to think about this.

@JenP 's discussion of how she is preparing to read infinite jest made me think of how I ought to prepare for #threekingdoms. Especially when I started chapter 2 and couldn't remember who the people were. So a notebook for key facts related to characters and some maps of Three Kingdoms China. Of course, it helps to figure out who to make notes of - the first three I noted all died in the first few pages of chapter 2.

Long novels written today are perhaps a contradiction: the dimension of time has been shattered, we cannot love or think except in fragments of time each of which goes off along its own trajectory and immediately disappears.

Oh, yes, I'm to blame! Most likely I'm to blame for everything! I still don't know precisely for what, but I'm to blame . . .

Prince Myshkin

There are so many things at every step that are so beautiful, that even the most confused person finds beautiful. Look at a child, look at God's sunrise, look at the grass growing, look into the eyes that are looking at you and love you . . .

Prince Myshkin's climactic speech at the Epanchins' party, just before his seizure.

There is a whole stratum of writers who are extremely fond of appointing themselves in print as friends of great but dead writers. Part four, chap VI.

Going to try a buddy read of this with Patrick. Anyone want to join us?

I expect to be able to read a chapter a day for the next week or so, then faster after that, aiming to finish mid-February. I'm reading the four volume version, so that would be Chapters 1 - 32.