Eileen > Recent Status Updates

(Cardiff Library - in biography section on the main floor)

Can't concentrate at Swansea library. Disappointed that female MC isn't the main focus of this book. Still enjoying the wordplay

Swansea Library is too noisy to concentrate and I want wifi to check some definitions.

And I browsed the pictures, which are lovely.

Still charming. I think I'll read it slowly though.

Just dipped my toe in. He's obviously a lovely person. I'll come back to this one, which I think I can get in Spain.

(Swansea Library)

Started reading in the wrong publication order. I like the idea but there's too much exposition. Assuming you know the characters already works because I do but unbalances the prose.

I talked so enthusiastically about this author that when I found this title in a little library box in Seattle my little sister claimed it. (She declared it weird and never gave it to me.) I'm making fast progress at the Aberystwyth library. Not entirely relatable, but still compelling.

Enjoying this but needed to return to the library because I'm traveling. Might return to it some other time. Walking in a Nigerian immigrant's shoes.

Finding this one kind of tedious. Needed to return to the library because I'm traveling. I might pick it up again because it seems to short to DNF but might not get back to it.

Enjoying this author again although sometimes she drives me crazy, as when taking the space to describe pub food (the sauce on the chicken is 'wet' like all sauce) but saying, "He made breakfast." with no details the morning after Eileen and Simon have sex about what he made her. I'm pausing to note some books I've heard of but not gotten around to reading. Who knows perhaps they're the key to everything ;)

Enjoying this well enough, but I don't think the Wizard of Oz-like cover is warranted.

Yuck. Pretentious and vulgar simultaneously. The MC unapologetically 'raped his way across Europe' with the Russian army during WWII. He lusts after the memory of his brother's wife with an entitled 'I hounded her first' during their time in a prison camp. (She's a sexually-liberated Jewish woman who is routinely reduced to a collection of body parts when described living constantly under threat of death by pogrom.)

This books starts strong and offers some 'Engagement' affirmations that I need:
You are allowed to ask questions you want the answers to. You are allowed to show signs of the emotions you are feeling. Your enthusiasm is a gift, and the right people will cherish it. You are free to move toward things you are curious about. You are free to step away when you feel uncomfortable or disrespected.
Let's see where this goes

About three chapters of this feels like it might be enough for me. I think I have the main ideas. I'm resistant to the jargon - especially the term 'tor-mentor' although exile, neo-exiles, and basement children aren't exactly subtle either. My 'protector' says the anonymized wife in chapter 4's example should run before her husband murders her not wait for him to comfort his inner 'baby' and let him come home.

I've heard so many good things about this book but I'm finding early chapters annoyingly unscientific. I know that the term Asperger's has fallen out of popularity (because of connections to eugenics - Hans was a Nazi, it's a little more complicated than that, but AS is just part of autism these days.) I believe in heightened sensory profiles, but not that we're psychic. The chi, anima/animus bit rubs me wrong too.

I'm trying to keep an open mind but am already turned off by some aspects of the earliest portions of this book. The tendency to refer to the author's solutions as 'the secret to...' is off-putting as so far he hasn't said anything especially revolutionary. There's also already a degree of stereotyping about what men/women experience and how they behave. Men as 'stonewalling' women as negotiating change...

Suits my interests but it's a bit saccharine or sanitized or something (?) Author was a public figure on a UK television show and a competitive athelete in addition to his farm interests. Talks a little about his dyslexia and includes some of his sketches and family photos. Reads a bit like a memoir of a charmed life.

Starts slow. Reads young. Granddaughter of Dutch survivor refers to the Netherlands as Holland.

More of the same. Still has a YA feel with teen protagonists and wizard school setting, but "fuck" pops up in dialogue a couple of times and there's more discussion of sex and contraception. Regretting this choice for my 10yo although M was no doubt all about the monsters.

A promising beginning. The children's dialogue in not believable, but if you remember that they're growing up in Paris in the 1940s it is forgiveable.