Liz > Recent Status Updates

Unfortunately, I still hate Niclays

"We’re lucky to be here, witch. We should be grateful. If you stand by the values of the Isle, live by its values, you can find hope and glory here that you would never find Elsewhere.”

A little on the nose as an allegory, but I suppose I can't disagree with the messaging.

"She thought she would not mind being a knife, so long as it was this hand that wielded her."

absolute banger of a line only 1% in -- Alix E. Harrow does it again, I fear

"But there are none so frightened, or so strange in their fear, as conquerors. They conjure phantoms endlessly, terrified that their victims will someday do back what was done to them—even if, in truth, their victims couldn’t care less about such pettiness and have moved on. Conquerors live in dread of the day when they are shown to be, not superior, but simply lucky."

oof

I confess I've been putting this off because I
1) don't want it to end, and
2) I saw a review calling it "an emotional OSHA violation" and I'm not prepared

I’ve pushed through and now it’s good again so. A roller coaster.

at about 45%, I thought this would be the sleeper hit of 2025 for me, but now there's a character who is so obviously a villain that I'm not sure if I want to keep reading ¯\_ (ツ)_/¯

is this overwritten? yes. am I rolling my eyes? yes. am I going to keep reading it? also yes.

every character in this book is SO DUMB

Every character in this book is so dumb

How much more childish arguing masquerading as banter will I read before I abandon this

I am not loving the interstitials

Because this is written by the same author as I Keep My Exoskeletons To Myself, I am hopeful that I will like this despite it being (in part) a basketball book

"...the opposition...regards Christians as the most significant remaining obstacles...bearers of the cruel and outdated beliefs that keep the people from being free and happy. Wherever we hide, they will track us, find us, and punish us if that’s what it takes to make this world more perfect."

The DRAMA!

"Loyalty to an ideology over expertise is no less disturbing than loyalty to a personality."

The inclusion of "over expertise" here is doing some heavy, heavy lifting. Especially in the context of this sentence, which is to justify Donald Trump's preference for underlings who carry out his whims rather than adhere to any ideology whatsoever.

I swear I'm not going update about this book every 2 percent I read, but I'm so wary of a perspective that insists on using George Orwell's 1984 as any kind of analogue to today.

I'm also reading this book to make myself mad, I guess.

I heard about this book because I heard that JD Vance spoke at the premier of the film based on this book and said "...we’ve gone from a country where we would harass and threaten and investigate and even arrest pro-life protesters to one where we’re encouraging pro-life activists to do what they can to persuade their fellow Americans."

I'm reading it to try to understand where this mindset could possibly come from.

"It’s hard enough to live, she sometimes feels, without also having to think about it. Hard enough, amid panic and boredom and drastically shortened horizons, to simply treat a person nicely, put your hands into their hair until they shiver, until they push their face into your chest."

love to read a book that somehow manages to make me more disappointed in the united states

the number of wealthy and/or influential people who believe in qanon is really one of our strongest arguments against the idea that the US is a meritocracy

I guess I'm in my conspiracy theory era

does this book ever stop being 37 sets of 5-word sentence exchanges?

wary of someone who would trace the punk lineage back to "that beaten, robed figure standing in front of the fifth procurator of Judea, Pontius Pilate,...quietly stating the enormous and uncontainable idea that all authority is a form of violence" but the subject matter and writing style are tickling the part of my brain that's still a morbid, melodramatic teen anglophile

I wish every book in a series had a recap of the previous installments at the beginning (shoutout Mark Lawrence's Library Trilogy). pls it's been 2 years.

my audiobook expired so I'm reading with my eyeballs for the first time (including the first book) and these names are not spelled how I thought they would be hahaha