Shannon > Recent Status Updates

I really hope the idea I just had doesn't turn out to be the big reveal. No one would make it that obvious, would they?

So far, I'm really enjoying the modern storyline and am quite bored with the Tudor-era storyline. I hope the latter picks up soon. It feels a bit like it's already been spoiled by what we learn from the modern characters.

I am so ready for something to actually *happen* in this book. It's mildly interesting so far but I'm not sure how much longer I can take something with seemingly no plot.

I was really enjoying this book until it became all about Reagan and other much more modern people than John Winthrop. I feel kinda baited and switched.

This has got to be one of the best historical fiction books I've read in a decade. I hope it stays this good the whole way through.

Good Lord do I hate Jude. What an insufferable character. Well-written, but eminently hateable.

Barely started and already annoyed because someone is wearing a Power Rangers T-shirt in 1987. A simple web search will show that the Power Rangers first appeared on the scene in 1993. Not even close. Unless there is some other Power Rangers with which I am unfamiliar?

I've never read a book with so many question marks paired with exclamation points in my life and I've barely started. What is up with that?!

Sometimes when I'm reading this, I'll be totally into it and completely forget what time it is or what else is going on around me. Then other times, I'll be so bored that my eyes glaze over and I stop paying attention because my mind wanders so hard. This book could have been truly amazing if it was tightened up just a bit and was better edited. It just drags in places.

Is there any plot at all in this book or is it just people going about their daily lives? I love the world and the characters themselves are mostly interesting but not much is really happening. And once again, I'm sad that we aren't following the characters I fell in love with from the first book in the series.

Wow this book has really grabbed me. I can't get over how accurate this future feels. I want to set myself some kind of reminder for 25 years from now to reread this book so I can see how right it is (if I'm still alive). So far, an incredibly intriguing book.

It might seem silly to some people but I really love a book with a female cop who is always referred to by her last name. I absolutely despise books that have male and female cops and the men are referred to by their last names but the women are referred to by their first names. They're all cops, why are women not cool enough to go by their last names?

Thank you author, for making this "lady cop" just a cop.

I can't believe this book has such a high rating. It's sooooooo boring so far.

I really could live without all the boring space talk and the politics. The medicine/science is cool but it's bogged down by all this annoying other stuff.

A third of the way in and the "shocking murder" from the description still has not happened......

I find the crossed out chapter titles so kitschy and annoying. So much of this book reads like a kids book.

So much more of this book is about a dirigible flying places other than to the North Pole that I feel a bit cheated. No one has lost any toes or resorted to cannibalism at all yet 😞

I love this little section of dialogue so much:

‘Your daughter had all of God’s best qualities: kindness, generosity and love.’
‘Is this the same God who endorsed slavery?’
‘God’s much easier to believe in if you don’t read the Bible.’

I love this description so much. I can absolutely imagine this:

"You didn’t realize how much work everyone else put into holding themselves upright until you saw Levi leaning against a wall. He looked like he was leaning on something even when he wasn’t. He made standing look like vertical lying down."

I could really live without needing to read Cath's fanfic. The story can stand on its own just fine without having to read about these meta fictional characters. They're fictional characters inside a book about other fictional characters written by someone who isn't even the real fictional author of these fictional characters. Isn't it enough just saying she writes fanfic?

I really hate it when we know exactly who the bad guy is early on and the only mystery is will the cops catch them (and they usually do, so it's not much of a mystery at all). I'm hoping there's some other mystery in this book or I might have to start skimming.

I've had this coffee table book gathering dust on my bookcase for a decade and I finally decided that it's time to give it a read. So far, it's excellent and gorgeous.

When I read a book, I like to forget that it's a book, forget that there's a writer behind every word, and instead immerse myself in the story, the plot, the characters, the setting etc. With this book, it feels like the writer is constantly saying "don't forget that this is a book. Don't forget that someone wrote this. Remember me, the writer, who crafted every sentence you're reading." It's really distracting.

I really don't like the design choices in this book. They really pull you out of the story. No quotation marks, no chapters (at least not yet), just one long stream of people perhaps talking or perhaps thinking inside their head, no way for you to know without quotation marks. I never realized how much I liked the way certain punctuation breaks up heavy text until reading this book.

OMG! Too many poems! I wish this author would either just summarize the poems that she deems important or only put a few of the most important lines, instead of having page after page after page of poems that aren't particularly fun to read. They're so boring I have to skip them but I feel like I'm missing whatever it is the author wants me to know. Please just summarize them!

Ugh I hate it when books set in medieval Europe eat New World foods. The characters in this book just got some squash to have with dinner and it bugs me so much!

I am in love with this author's portrayal of Thomas Beckett's parents. I know it probably isn't what actually happened, this is historical fiction after all, but it is so well done, so interesting, so fun to contemplate, that I am enthralled. I can't believe these books aren't more widely read, old though they may be.

I can't pinpoint exactly why but I am having such a hard time with this book. I was super intrigued in the first part, but it seems to be really dragging in the middle here. It's starting to seem to me like this book could have really benefitted from some serious editing. It maybe even could have dropped 10-20% and lost nothing. There's just too much fluff, too many things happening unrelated to the main storyline.

Ugh how annoying, I knew who the big bad was going to be literally the second they were introduced. The first time we met them I thought "oh, that must be the bad guy cuz he perfectly links all the dead bodies" and what do you know, I was right all along. What a letdown. I hate it when detectives don't see super obvious things.

There are really quite a few too many coincidences for me in this book. I'm sure some of them will be explained later (like how the guy who found the body is directly involved) but how on earth did an immigrant know the home address of the detective inspector and what are the chances that when one of the detectives gets drunk and wants a hooker that he ends up with the immigrant who went to his boss's house?