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au is Currently Reading

au is currently reading

Women Lovers, or The Third Woman

by Natalie Clifford Barney

bookshelves: favorites, sapphic, french, affairs, sappho-1900, currently-reading

Reading for the 5th time

read in May 2023

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au said: " 4th read: annual reread of the book that started it all. . . and still one of my favorite books!! fun to read liane's account of the affair in her My Blue Notebooks side by side ^^ also think it's interesting how this book is dedicated to mimi and no 4th read: annual reread of the book that started it all. . . and still one of my favorite books!! fun to read liane's account of the affair in her My Blue Notebooks side by side ^^ also think it's interesting how this book is dedicated to mimi and not both her and liane- i would think, since this whole relationship ended liane and natalie's relationship of 28 years, that she would dedicate it to liane too like an explanation for their breakup- perhaps it's dedicated to mimi solely because she doubts mimi knows how much she was affected by them

3rd read: it's exhausting to read this, but so flowery and rich that it's rewarding. there are the constant themes of jealousy, sisterhood, and love that are wonderfully woven into each other. i can imagine this as some avant garde film where the characters don't really speak to each other, the music is melancholic like a walk through paris at night, and N's gaze is averted from the camera or scribbling away in her notebook. though many of the chapters are more so set in the intimate, private corners of life like letters or N's monologues. the usage of prose, poetry, and letters creates this sense of peeking through the windows~

2nd read: first book i rated 5/5 in 2023!! the 1st time i read it, i more or less skimmed over it but i really feel you need to take it slow with this.. it's so, so good. the language is fascinatingly poetic and beautiful beyond words- probably the most unique thing i have ever read

"Let them get intensely involved or have as much fun as they can! Which one will destroy the other? To no longer be the buffer between these two destructive, devastating principles. To prevent L. from destroying M., or M. destroying L.? The match is equal. Place your bets, Mesdames! You can't waltz as a threesome. Other dances need to be created. . ." (96)

"Most of us aspire to love, to lose ourselves-others love to find themselves. I don't know which of the two is better-I have felt the exaltation of losing myself-and so much happiness in finding myself again." (135) ...more "

progress:

(page 0 of 216)
— Jul 20, 2025 07:43AM

Sep 04, 2026 07:47AM · see review

au is currently reading

Collected Poems: With Notes Toward the Memoirs

by Djuna Barnes

bookshelves: currently-reading

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Aug 30, 2026 10:23PM

au’s Quotes

“What a strange girl you are.”
“Why?”
“Flung out of space,” Carol said.”
― Patricia Highsmith

tags: carol, love, the-price-of-salt

49 likes

“When she lowers her eyes she seems to hold all the beauty in the world between her eyelids; when she raises them I see only myself in her gaze.”
― Natalie Clifford Barney

tags: beautiful-thoughts, inspirational, lesbian, love, wonderful

7 likes

“Isn't it funny. I'm enjoying my hatred so much more than I ever enjoyed love. Love is temperamental. Tiring. It makes demands. Love uses you, changes its mind. But hatred, now, that's something you can use. Sculpt. Wield. It's hard, or soft, however you need it. Love humiliates you, but Hatred cradles you.”
― Janet Fitch, White Oleander

tags: cradle, enjoy, hate, hatred, humiliate, love, sculpt, soft, tiring, use

631 likes

“Our bones only ache while the flesh is on them. Stretch it thin as the temple flesh of an ailing woman and still it serves to ache the bone and to move the bone about; and in like manner the night is a skin pulled over the head of day that the day may be in a torment. We will find no comfort until the night melts away; until the fury of the night rots out its fire.”
― Djuna Barnes, Nightwood

12 likes

“we don’t know what comes after evil, do we? And sometimes the deadliest things, those that hold enough power to destroy us, can become, given time, the instruments of our salvation.”
― Benjamín Labatut, The MANIAC

7 likes

More of au’s quotes…