Becky Hunter > Recent Status Updates

Damn only 35 pages in and I’m so filled with loathing for Connell that I don’t know how much longer I can carry on

“She was a woman of strange boundaries and careful systems…” hello I guess I’m secretly Alisiana

Just reading the fly leaf, pretty funny that this library hold came in right after These Burning Stars. Two books using the same plot device to vastly different ends.

Not sure if reading this is good for my mental health. Especially the chapters from Esek’s point of view—her sociopathy is occasionally entertaining, but mostly I find it just depressing. We have so many sociopaths in power right now that maybe it just isn’t as much fun to read about powerful sociopaths in fictional universes as it used to be.

Hello, first-act guns! I’ve been waiting for your third-act reappearance.

Having a suspension-of-disbelief issue. Not that academics wouldn’t do unethical things—I’m sure it happens every day—but that this particular professor seems so oblivious to the level of unethical research she’s conducting here. What she considers borderline ethical is clearly way past that line, even with just a minimal exposure to IRRB standards.

At this point, whether this ends up a 3-star review or a 5-star review all hinges on the ending. I’m praying Axel lands it solidly.

It’s tempting to rush right on through to the end, especially now that I’m only having to look up a few words per chapter, but I need this to last until I can get my hands on the Swedish edition of Backman’s latest.

So you know it’s fiction when the characters start doing marijuana and somehow lose weight.

“Millie Cousins was born in Joplin, Missouri, in 1993.”

So, if my first thought is, “Oh, she’s the same age as all of my favorite Finns in Eurovision!” I might have a Finnish Eurovision problem, right?

(For the record: Erika Vikman, KAJ, and Kaarija were all born in 1993. Glad to get that trivia out there.)

“…the figurative language of David was not very intelligible…” James, it’s in poor taste to blame your innocent characters for your own ridiculous wordiness.

This book is making me so tired. Fighting through the prose is as exhausting as physical labor.

“Now she was immersed in Anna Karenina and was surprised by how much of the book was about farming. She read those parts over and over.” Which makes her the exact opposite of me, since I tend to just skip those parts entirely.

With a bank account and nearing five figures, this guy should really take out a few hundred and get a decent tent. But no one ever accused teenagers of having common sense..

“They were the sun when they bloomed, the moon when they formed seed heads, and the stars when you blew on the fragile globes.” Best sentence I’ve ever read about dandelions.

Another satisfying sentence to read from the future, regarding Sweden: “Det förlovade landet, populärkulturens vagga för varje österbottning.” (“The promised land, cradle of popular culture for every Ostrobothnian.”)

“She loved Hugo with that superb kind of love a mother has for a male child, a love that is deeper and more pure for knowing that he’ll more than likely turn out a fool.”

I am never going to be able to keep track of who all the people at this book club are.

“Her dad, as usual, was still in rehearsal for a community theater production somewhere…” oops now I seem to be reading two novels simultaneously with community theater involvement.

Getting all dusty in here or something (sniffle)

“‘How’s The Leg?’ his father asked gruffly whenever he saw Ben.” Does Kate Atkinson know that “ben” means leg in Swedish & Danish or is this just a really funny coincidence? At any rate, I’m glad I’ll have no difficulty remembering who Ben is.

Glimpse of a stereotypically Finnish worldview: ”Den segaste och djupaste vänskapen, den man brutit ett helt liv, klarar av tystnaden.” (The toughest and deepest friendships, the ones that last a whole life, can handle silence.)

“He supposed she was the sort of woman who thought he was an idiot from the get-go, although he seemed to meet no other kind these days.”

Goddam I left this on my TBR pile way too long, I needed this feistiness in my life

“They almost never talk about 2020…” Ok is this some alternative universe 2020 where COVID didn’t exist, or is it too early in the year for it to have shown up yet? Because it’d be hard for anyone not to notice something different about 2020 otherwise…

The trouble with a main character named after a month is that sentences beginning like, “Classes exit the drop period, and it’s August..” really throw me for a loop.

Taking my time to learn the new words— in the event that someone wants to have a conversation in Swedish with me about what happens behind-scenes in Finnish community theater, I could now almost do it. If only I weren’t so shit at pronunciation.

Fun passage here about the mixed feelings that come with being something of a local celebrity—if Axel ever has time/interest to write another book, now he could include a bit about being something of an international celebrity

New summer Swedish project!

It’s embarrassing how much I paid to have this shipped from Finland, but I was driven to it by post-Eurovision depression.

Author has definitely spun yarn before, the authenticity is nice