Lavender Threads > Recent Status Updates

I've been given advice to stop when I got to a book in this series I didn't like. (The person meant the original 6 books which like, that horse was out of the barn decades ago, and would not have been good for me anyway as at the time I liked 1, 4, and 6, 3 and 5 to a lesser extent, and 2 did basically nothing for me.) But I feel like I would like a break from the style of the successors, so, pause.

I'm not going to go into details but for a book published in 2006 there is no excuse for not knowing more about human anatomy

I mean maybe the character doesn't but it still feels weird

Oliver is a messy disaster and I love him

Best fictional funeral oration ever probably. Not that I incline toward books that feature manybsuch scenes.

Main character is making French toast as a comforting gesture and I just scrunched up my face and clutched my forehead

I'm so slow, the Meaningful Name-ness of one of the characters being Bridge-short-for-Bridget just clicked. (She introduced the main couple in the last book.)

... there's a real life place called Coombe Valley how am I supposed to cope with this

MC's speech was sufficient but now to attend a different wedding a he and several others have to walk across a wet field in formal attire. This should go swimmingly.

It took me 5 pages to figure out that marigolds meant "rubber cleaning gloves" and not the flower. I've been called a stupid Yank before but now I feel like I really deserve it. (The context was a little confusing but not that confusing.)

Okay main character is about to give a wedding speech and all I can think of is the original Top Gear episode where Hammond loses the race and in his mud-splattered evening wear has to give a speech about environmental conservation to a bunch of posh people. I don't think this will be that much of a disaster though

Sure is something that Dune partly inspired Cyteen (IMO) and now Dune is doing the thing that Cyteen did

This is a really weird thing to come out of my ignore-books-fanfic-only binge for but it's for purposes of being able to talk about with my sweetie. "Child soldier clone we made of a famous general and raped into having his original's memories" hits differently now, 20+ years after first reading #6 (this is 7). No wonder Teg seems, um, anxious and like he might be headed for a mental break.

Well that was a bit of an infodump

Somewhat unexpected, but it makes me want to go buy another book I've been thirsting after

If Zelda is of Jewish origin (maybe) high chance she has discovered Kfitzat haDérech ... but maybe not (if only for plot reasons, maybe too complicated)

All nightshades contain nicotine? I'm shocked but inguessni shouldn't be.

Also I didn't realize or had forgotten that tobacco is a nightshade

I feel like being rather casual about hanging regimental chefs during the Indian Mutiny is extremely British in all the bad ways

Reading that cows cry when they eat too much hemlock and I am not fine

OMG this author posits that Napoleon got Yellow Wallpapered to death

(Arsenic made green and yellow dyes, used in wallpaper among other things, the arsenic gets out of the wallpaper sometimes in gaseous format for reasons, and ...)

(Anyway that's disputed but)

Oh, dear. —"As Mooallem moved through Genie’s boxes, time itself started to seem like a slow-moving natural disaster, imperceptibly shaking everything apart. Maybe nothing in our world is durable or stable. Maybe everything runs on pure chance. He wondered how we are supposed to live on the surface of such unbearable randomness. What can we hold on to that’s fixed?"

Okay wow this reporter covered a plane crash I've never heard of. (Shh I used to watch Mayday/Air Disasters.)

Ah here's me wondering whether he would get to incorporation. Eventually. But leaving it out was on purpose because it's complex.

"But, in case alien archaeologists are reading this book (please, O Great Singularity, let this be the tome on late-republic American law they find, and not some trash written by Antonin Scalia)"

Co-signed. Also, yep, I sure did pick a time to read this.

Okay I feel like an example that didn't require an incest mention could have been chosen

I realize it's a literary device but it's charming that the author thinks any originalists are still reading. (I mean maybe they had to read it for work or class and can't stop. But.)

Casual reminder not to ever be questioned by cops or prosecutors or any state agent without a lawyer

Getting a little hard to wade through the twitter tone.

Like, ammosexual, eyeroll—but then—"These people are willing to suffer the ongoing national tragedies of mass shootings, they’re willing to ignore the epidemics of suicides and violence against women, they’re willing to sacrifice the lives of schoolchildren"—painfully true

(I know, tone arguments are invalid wrt substance.)

Okay wow I just started this and I can already tell it's going to be fire (honorific) (rape mwntion in following quote)

"Conservatives are out here acting like the Constitution was etched by divine flame upon stone tablets, when in reality it was scrawled out over a sweaty summer by people making deals with actual monsters who were trying to protect their rights to rape the humans they held in bondage."

I feel like this is going to be so good, just from reading the sample. And that maybe they tightened up on the editing somewhat, which is good. Of course, I've been wrong before, and although I'm tempted I'm going to wait for the library and not pay full whack for the ebook. I try to avoid doing that 🤷‍♀️

Dandy has dropped bricks into so many conversations in this book, and I cannot recall her doing so before? Did the author learn the expression or did it become common around this time (1934) or am I just not remembering? 🤷‍♀️

This library book is in poor condition. I wonder if it's because previous borrowers failed to fight the urge to fling it with great force.

(No blame to the author, all she's done is quote primary sources but 👿)