Shane A > Recent Status Updates

"We are the universe."

(1) An asexual Queen?
(2) Not a fan of last-minute ditching someone you had plans with! But, alas, we'll let it slide for the sake of the plot~

OH MY GOSH we're flashing back after THAT opening scene?!? Time to strap in.

"I can’t stand chaos. I hate loud environments. Art makes me cry. No, I'm not crazy; I'm a textbook example of a Highly Sensitive Person." -Anne Marie Crosthwaite

"But no man could do for me what a plane could. What man could propel himself to a speed of 150 knots before lifting us to an altitude of 37,000 feet? What man could carry me across continents and seas, all while keeping me warm and oxygenated inside his aluminum torso? No man I'd ever chanced to meet!"

WHAT a premise

The prose is very engaging and easy-to-read.

Maybe I need to attend a VBP (Vision Board Party).

Oh! This *is* non-fiction! My goodness! I am impressed by the engaging prose.

"Although Mengele's subjects could be operated on without any painkillers at all, a remarkable example of Nazi zoophilia is that a leading biologist was once punished for not giving worms enough anesthesia during an experiment" (86).

This chapter interestingly became an intellectual history of Nazi zoophilia and eugenics, even coming with direct quotations. A fascinating aside, and linked to the story!

An interesting premise so far, and the way the text enters into some sort of "post-war memoir/new clipping text" is intruiging. Not sure if it works yet, but we'll see as I keep reading. I'm back in my element: historical fiction! World War II! This was high school Shane's bread and butter.

"People could say things about Owen. They could, but they don't. We don't. Words are strong. The strongest. Worse than bruises on gravel."

I am really appreciating this book. I see the blossoming relationships coming, ebbing and flowing, etc.

"When it comes to doing golf for charity, it really seems that Canada's parliamentarians are... above par." Oh, Charlie, please,,,,,,

"It's an offence to call things in Ottawa 'Parliament Hill' if they're not actually on Parliament Hill ...

"While the 1970s were a wild decade, don't worry -- the origin story of this [law] isn't some shag-carpeted-lit-by-lava-lamp-disco-playing establishment of ill-repute setting up shop in Ottawa and calling itself the 'Parliament Hill Boudoir.' That said, it is a someone quirky one."

"A bookstore is a bookstore ... Everyone is welcome in bookstores and all types rub shoulders in them, the wealthy and the poor, the highly educated and the self-taught, the old and the young, the adventurous and the conventional, and others still. You might even bump into the Queen."

"An excellent way to climb back into yourself is to read a book... an entirely private experience. When you are reading, your guard needn't be up. You can be entirely yourself."

"My argument is that literature—as opposed to factual non-fiction—is an essential element to a deeply thinking, fully feeling mind in our complex twenty-first-century world. A mind not informed by the thoughtful product that is the novel, the play, the poem, will be capable perhaps of administering the affairs of a people, maintaining the status quo, but not of fully leading that people."

erm

meh