Kristi > Recent Status Updates

"Marley's face. It was not an impenetrable shadow as the other objects in the yard were, but had a dismal light about it, like a bad lobster in a dark cellar." 🦞

I'd like this better if it were actually a story about women becoming dragons. Instead it seems to just want to keep pointing out that it is a feminist allegory. I mean, I get it. I'm interested. But I'd like an actual story. Maybe from the women's/dragons' point of view, if that isn't too radical if a request. I mean where is the story?

"He stood there, immobile, in the shafts of sunlight, and they struck down on his darkness and could not lighten it."
[Description of Sarek at the Vulcan secession hearing]

Almost halfway through before Bigfoot shows up. Main character has been too sweet and Pollyanna for me but she's beginning to toughen up. It's getting better.

I don't usually do light and fluffy mysteries, but why not? A bit of body-shaming diet talk in the beginning ("I took a huge bite of buttery hot cinnamon pastry trying not to imagine globs of cellulite swelling my thighs."). So that's annoying. But the scenery is nice...yoga retreat in the Pacific Northwest. And the lady is highly strung and very anxious about her pet, so I can relate.

Um, I liked the parts with the protagonist, but now it’s launched into several sections with other characters and then the actual murderer. That’s not my bag, man.

"I wish..." she said, and stopped. There was nothing that could be gained by wishing for it. A final deep shaky breath, and she was ready to go on.

"She felt proud beyond measure to sit beside her friend Iorek Byrnison under the Aurora as it flickered gracefully in the polar sky, and join the conversation of the bears."

"The idea hovered and shimmered delicately, like a soap bubble, and she dared not even look at it directly in case it burst. But she was familiar with the way of ideas, and she let it shimmer, looking away, thinking about something else."

"We are all subject to the fates. But we must all act as if we are not," said the witch, "or die of despair."

It's been nice visiting Lyra again.

Cory Doctorow's Epoch is the best so far.n

I had to stop. I've read nearly everything by SK but this was just too gruesome. Perhaps the audio made it too real. I can't take the description of murder from the murderer's POV anymore. It's just too much. I think his next one I'll stick to print version rather than audio.

"The surf lashed the beach like a Roman flogging a Christian.". ... "'Today, I'll take care of you,' she would say, then smile, ivory teeth suspended between pink cheeks." 😜

I love this schlocky writing: "The gruesome screams of men and women dying in pain reverberated through the tropical air like the baneful wail of the last dinosaur."

Oh and this gem: "The island jutted out of the sea like a mole on the perfect face of the Virgin Mary." What? Haha I think I love this over the top description. Really calls attention to itself in a distracting but humorous way. I don't *think* the humor is intentional, but who cares?

" eyes as black as the period at the end of a death sentence." LOL!

"The not - real girl's hand felt like a memory of being held, but oh - oh - it was close enough! Something all knotted up inside Jane's chest let go. She squeezed her hand, the made-up hand squeezed back. Holding hands was *good* -- more good than not being hungry, more good then she knew how to say."

Well I burst into tears after reading what became of the extraordinary Sacajawea. It's hard to imagine what that woman endured.

"When I was growing up, my teachers and guidance counselor talked about 'the real world' as if it were a distinct existence, something separate from school.... I never understood that. What is the real world if it's not the world one exists in? How is being a child less real than being an adult?"

"Janet got shriller and pushier about the game, and her shrill pushiness became less endearing. She couldn't help it, it was just her neurotic need to control everything coming out to play, but that didn't make it any less of a pain in the ass for the rest of them." That kind of makes me want to leave a shrill, pushy review.

At which page the protagonist (a highly educated Ph.D., definitely NOT a 9-year-old boy) interrupts someone in this delightfully erudite and sophisticated manner:
"They're the De'il, the are, but--"
"Butts are for crapping!"