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seema

head in the clouds, nose in a book 🪱✨🌈 she/her

81810 points

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Early UserPagebound RoyaltyLevel 22
Cozy Fantasy
Dark Academia
Found Family in Fantasy
Pride 2025Pride 2026Readalong Completionist 2025
Winter 2026 Readalong
Spring 2026 Readalong
Summer 2026 Readalong
My Taste
Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil
Don't Let the Forest In
The Starless Sea
Palimpsest
The House in the Cerulean Sea
Reading...
Dracula
32%
Brigands & Breadknives
52%
The Stranger
31%
Get a Life, Chloe Brown
21%
A Love Song, A Death Rattle, A Battle Cry
0%
The Once and Future Witches
45%

seema commented on a post

3h
  • Brigands & Breadknives
    Thoughts from 49% (page 157)
    spoilers

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    13
    comments 1
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  • seema commented on a post

    3h
  • Brigands & Breadknives
    Thoughts from 45%
    spoilers

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    8
    comments 3
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  • seema commented on a post

    3h
  • Brigands & Breadknives
    Thoughts from 45% chapter 20
    spoilers

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    8
    comments 3
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  • seema commented on a post

    3h
  • Brigands & Breadknives
    Thoughts from 42%
    spoilers

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    10
    comments 2
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  • seema commented on a post

    3h
  • Brigands & Breadknives
    farron
    Edited
    Thoughts from 40%
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    8
    comments 3
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  • seema commented on a post

    4h
  • Brigands & Breadknives
    Thoughts from 39% (page 123)
    spoilers

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    9
    comments 1
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  • seema commented on a post

    6h
  • The Lion Women of Tehran
    Thoughts from 91% (page 296, end of Ch44) - Bahar's first party
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    16
    comments 6
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  • seema commented on a post

    6h
  • The Lion Women of Tehran
    Thoughts from 31% (page 101, mid Ch14)
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    11
    comments 2
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  • seema made progress on...

    16h
    Dracula

    Dracula

    Bram Stoker

    32%
    25
    0
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    seema commented on seema's update

    seema made progress on...

    16h
    Brigands & Breadknives

    Brigands & Breadknives

    Travis Baldree

    52%
    31
    6
    Reply

    seema made progress on...

    16h
    Brigands & Breadknives

    Brigands & Breadknives

    Travis Baldree

    52%
    31
    6
    Reply

    seema commented on seema's update

    seema made progress on...

    19h
    The Stranger

    The Stranger

    Albert Camus

    31%
    53
    20
    Reply

    seema made progress on...

    19h
    The Stranger

    The Stranger

    Albert Camus

    31%
    53
    20
    Reply

    seema commented on curlyjeannine's review of Piranesi

    22h
  • Piranesi
    curlyjeannine
    Aug 25, 2026
    Piranesi
    5.0
    Enjoyment: 5.0Quality: 5.0Characters: 5.0Plot: 5.0
    🌊

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    12
    comments 2
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  • seema commented on a post

    22h
  • The Stranger
    Thoughts from 4% (page 6)
    spoilers

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    12
    comments 2
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  • seema commented on a post

    22h
  • The Stranger
    Thoughts from 15%
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    25
    comments 7
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  • seema commented on a post

    22h
  • The Stranger
    Thoughts from 15%

    I'm reading the catalan translation and I'm a bit lost just at the beginning. The protagonist is talking with the keeper at the "morgue" where they have his mother's corpse. The nurse leaves. The keeper keeps talking, and suddenly his wife was telling him that the topics were not things to be said to the protagonist and he apologises, the protagonist telling him it's ok as he was interested. So... There was no woman there as the nurse left, so this wife... Where is she appearing from? I searched for an English translation but it's exactly the same: a disapproval from the keeper's wife that just appears from nowhere... Is the disapproval a memory from how his wife has reacted to his mention of the burial of corpses in the land?

    This is such a stupid detail but now I can't take it off my mind šŸ˜†

    11
    comments 5
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  • seema commented on a post

    23h
  • The Stranger
    Thoughts from 14% (page 19)
    spoilers

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    19
    comments 7
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  • seema commented on a post

    23h
  • The Stranger
    Thoughts from 6%

    This matter-of-fact prose style in this translation is so pleasing to me. I don't like simple prose usually but I knew it could be done well. It is done very well here.

    45
    comments 11
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  • Post from the The Stranger forum

    1d
  • The Stranger
    Thoughts from beginning: Translator's Note (Matthew Ward, 1989)

    There's nothing I love more in a book than an author's note or translator's note, and I'm really pleasantly surprised to be finding it at the start of my edition instead of at the end where I've more commonly seen it. I feel like it is such a gift to get a peek into the "why" of the writing or translation, and this note in particular made me really reflect on the artistry of translation and what a labor of love it is to try to take one text and turn it into another. Words like "faithful" and "honest" and "thoughtful" come to mind as goals of this effort, and Ward digging into some choices he made to try to get it "right" (if such a thing is possible) just filled me with a lot of appreciation before I've even started reading. I also thought it was kind of funny - like was that a little dig at Gilbert's translation's "paraphrastic earnestness" I detected?

    There's plenty of discussion in the forum already about the famous opening line and I've seen that discussion already includes some of what Ward mentioned in his note, so I won't rehash that. Instead, the part of the note I wanted to mention that I particularly liked and felt set my expectations well (and that others without a note at the start might enjoy) was from the very first paragraph of the note:

    "The Stranger demanded of Camus the creation of a style at once literary and profoundly popular, an artistic sleight of hand that would make the complexities of a man's life appear simple. [...] What little Meursault says or feels or does resonates with all he does not say, all he does not feel, all he does not do. The "simplicity" of the text is merely apparent and everywhere paradoxical."

    For lack of a proper literary way of saying this: that is just so delicious to me. It makes me so excited to sink my teeth into what sounds to be some really juicy negative space in this book.

    18
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