Umar Abdulmajeed > Recent Status Updates

Ms. Grey has more patience than me, I would've punched Tom's lights out by page 30. Really enjoying the book so far.

I've enjoyed this author's short fiction in the past and I loved his foray into the vampiric with Carmilla. Here's hoping I enjoy this one.

The only truly likable characters in this book are Sydney and Mitch. Everyone else is on a sliding scale of varying degrees when it comes to being an absolute POS (if you'll pardon the vulgarity).

Our two lead protagonists (Victor and Eli) are both pretty unlikeable and not always in a way that makes me want to keep reading. If my college assignment didn't require discussion of a 21st-century novel, I could be happily lost in my 1800s-fiction as always. But alas, here we are.

Victor is such an edgelord, it's starting to annoy me a little bit. 🙄

So far, the story is mildly interesting but I've yet to feel fully invested in any of the characters. I suppose that's to be expected when I'm only 60-something pages into the novel, though.

So far, I'm enjoying it. Dickens is exploring some interesting parallels in this book. Alongside the physical prisons the characters inhabit, this is also a story about psychological imprisonment. There's a kind of weary and melancholy complacency in at all.

Absolutely wonderful collection of poems so far.

Interesting to see an older, early 40's protagonist at the head of a Dickens novel. Normally, his leading men/women are in their mid-twenties at the most. To have a protagonist who's already lived so much of their life and lived it quite unfulfillingly is an interesting change of the usual trademark.

Here we go, my final Dickens novel. This feels hella bittersweet.

I'm really starting to hate Eustacia and Wildeve. Like a lot.

So much of the pain and misery in this novel has been caused by a series of completely avoidable misunderstandings. I normally can't stand that trope. But it's done pretty well here.

A part of me is worried that Clym's mother might be right about Eustacia....

Dressing up as a knight in a play that is held at a person's house just so you can get a glimpse of the guy you like is certainly a choice.

The plot thickens!

OK, I'm gonna finish this sooner than I thought. It's quite a story. Trigger warnings are in good order, though. Even in the first 100 pages, some of the content is heavy.

This one sounds promising!

Very excited for this!

Shelving this for now to read at a later date. The writing is beautiful but these characters are somewhat contemptible and not in an interesting way. Too many books out there that I'm more excited to read.

Tom Pinch feels like the Dickensian version of Prince Myshkin. This novel is not bad but I do think it would be significantly better if Tom was our protagonist. Curious to see what the last 239 pages will be like.

The setting of the story is described so richly that it is as much of a character as any of the people who appear in the first few chapters.

Only just finished Chapter 1 and I'm already in love with the writing. The prose is gorgeous.

Poor Mr. Lowborough. With friends like these, who needs enemies?

Consider who you're marrying before you marry them, folks. Anne Brontë knows "ball", as the kids say.

In my opinion, Mr. Huntingdon is the most thoroughly unlikeable male character I've seen in a Brontë novel. And that's really saying something considering how adept the Brontës were at writing men with less than ideal personality traits. But Mr. Rochester is Clark Kent compared to this guy.

So far, this novel is a manual on what NOT to do when looking for someone to marry. I suppose that is the point, though.