Ellen B. > Recent Status Updates

Just in a mood to plow through a million pulp romance novels, I guess.

Struggling a little to be interested, unfortunately.

Did I say I was going to stop starting new books until I finished some? Ha ha OOPS. I was down in Portland last week and Mom suggested a stop at the library second-hand store. Instead, I went in and raided the free paperback shelves for Regency Romances and came away with 8.

I should stop starting new books until I finish Chronic City, sigh.

The Last Command was published in 1993. I am having a hard time acknowledging that this book is 20 years old. (Admittedly, I probably didn't read it until '96 or '97...)

There's a certain surreality in reading this again (I don't know how many times I've read it - many) after probably 10 years. It's like... remembering the future. Things come to me as I read, but from ahead of where I am in the trilogy.

I still wish I knew what happened to the Grand Admiral Thrawn action figure I had in high school...

I guess in print this is over 600 pages of short stories. Daaaang. (Nice for short little bursts of reading.)

Nnnnnggggh so many historical inaccuracies. (Let's start with "Women didn't attend funerals in the Regency" as a solid fact and progress to "I'm pretty sure the kind of music hall entertainment described didn't exist then," "Regency funerals weren't like that," "What the fuck no gentleman would wait in a lady's bedroom just to talk to her, that's reputation annihilating" and... and... UGH.

I am enjoying the heck out of this book.

I bought this right after David died, which made it too sad to read, initially. I picked it up again after listening to an old TAL episode where he talked about coping with the changes his cancer had wrought and decided it was time to sit down and finally read it.

Close to the end!

I have no idea what page I'm on (book is at home) but poor, delusional Miss March, good for Nan (why did she marry him in the first place, though, ugh) and fuck Lady Churt, seriously.

Edith Wharton Presents: Wealthy Women from New England Are Sad in the 19th Century. (Okay, that's every Edith Wharton novel I've ever read, anyway... except Ethan Frome, which just removes the "wealthy" part. And of course, there are sad men, too.)

Lost momentum, returned it to the library. Hopefully I'll finish it someday in the future.

Gah, I misplaced this for a little while and then lost my momentum... I don't DISLIKE it, but it may go back to the library unfinished.

Man, the stars aligned just perfectly for Miscavige and basically horribly for every other scientologist, though LRH's own... slow decay wasn't making things great either.

I've been fascinated/horrified by Scientology for a few years now, and the current mass exodus of top execs and allegations of human trafficking have rekindled the interest.

In limbo - this is sitting in my car after I left my old job, where it was my "I have nothing better to do on my break" reading.