Jill > Recent Status Updates

I've learned so many interesting things from this book, but I think it speaks to my psyche that one of the highlights thus far was the chapter about standardization across an empire.

I know monolingualism is endemic in this country (and I'm really only receptively multilingual) but being impressed by "oui" and not knowing "ciao"???? Don't PMO this girl is so dumb lol.

Every chapter is me going, "Don't PMO," but it happens anyway!

Still reading but at a much slower clip now that I'm getting through a ton of book club books in a row. On the bright side, I've learned that I've moved on from being a mood reader and can stick to a TBR, so I guess that's one of my self improvements of 2026.

I feel like I'm living in this book because of how long my brain has engaged with it due to its topical and physical heft. Constantly feel sick to my stomach!

The struggle of reading a multiple POV book and having them not all be equally compelling 😮‍💨

EATING this up. Abrasive but confident and competent FMC? Never having a MMC POV? Hell yeah.

The audiobook also adds SO much to the experience. I love hearing the narrator's voice as Kiki's inner monologue.

I really wish I were reading this in summer because that's my peak season for litfic, but if I put this on pause, I will simply never pick it up again 🥀. Slow and steady.

The first and only time I'd consumed this story was through The Favorites, a modern retelling of Wuthering Heights. The whole time I read that book, I ate it up, but I also did NOT like Kat and Heath. I thought them both incredibly toxic, selfish, mean, and immature.

Turns out their source material are really just Like That lol. But I am still so fascinated by them.

Listening to this one. Bourdain narrates it, so it feels like I'm listening to one of his shows. Such an interesting guy! Although, I'm sorry, I will never get rid of my jarlic.

Currently enjoying Wuthering Heights but everyone is actually so horrible. Not currently enjoying Work Nights AND everyone is actually so horrible. Needed a go-to for a book that I know I will enjoy with characters I like, and this is a once-every-few-years read for me.

WHY ARE THERE TWO CATHYS. WHAT??? Not noticing there was a genealogy chart at the beginning of my edition of the book REALLY messed me up lol. But then again I guess Ms. Bronte just wanted to give us the full Lockwood experience.

Picked this up again and having a blast. It really reflects the peak of the 2010s dystopia era in the best way.

One of these was my "Bran" pov for such a long time... oof.

Okayyyy we are trying to get back on track. I definitely have a ranking for the POVs but it's so fun, regardless!

I really love Daniel and Alexis, but it just occurred to me that this is my second romance novel this year where someone in the medical field is romantically interested in someone who makes furniture--and I really hated the other book lol. Very much hoping Alexis doesn't leave her career as an ER doc behind for ceramics. 🫩

Went into this one blind not knowing Alexis, the FMC, works in emergency medicine, and I'm still deep in my ER watch. Is Neil now George Clooney in my head? You bet.

REALLY jarring to me that not only did Jacinda Ardern study abroad at my university, but she also stayed in my hometown during that time??

Got to a part of the story arc that I thought would be a natural conclusion for this first book, but there's still more???? I'm not built for historical romances longer than like 400 pages max, I'm realizing. Lowkey burned out on this book, but sunk cost fallacy strikes again.

Oof, the next book on Alice Law's list should be The Exceptions by Kate Zernike. Said as a woman who also needed to read that book.

Very interested in the questions about the afterlife, less interested in the self-indulgent product-of-the-ivory-tower sprinkles in the narrative, but I did know to brace myself for that going in LOL.

I respect the preservation of Scots as a language, but it also almost sent me into a reading slump having to parse out the dialogue... 😭

I can't believe how little I've seen about this book in my online fantasy spaces. Only a hundred pages into this tome but so invested in this persnickety woman and this court intrigue. I've found myself horrified, embarrassed, irritated, and sympathetic, and the plot hasn't even started rolling yet.

I sometimes forget how annoying [redacted for spoilers] is, but I'm also her. Except she's a little rat, so I will continue to hate her. Maybe on some future reread, I will find her sympathetic (but not this one, so far).

From what I've consumed of Andy Weir's stuff (The Martian movie and half of this book), his stories contain hardly any interpersonal conflict and have a utopic level of international cooperation. But I'm not mad about that. Sorely needed stories where the driving forces of resolution are humans coming together to unite in solving a scientifically difficult problem.

This would have been SUCH a good book to read in October. The vibes are vibing.

This is lowkey a love letter for educators. I'm being thrown back to junior and senior year physics reading this.

I do love a fantasy with some sort of competition involved, but I also almost always hate the mountain I have to climb of the exposition and lead up to said competition. I have reached the summit and am, after months of putting this on hold, finally enjoying myself. Time to finish this thing.

I didn't realize this would be the summer of reading stories about an older person telling a younger person stories about their youth and lost loves in a dual-timeline narrative, but here we are with my third book in a row??? This was not intentional.

Sick and twisted for this book to make me yearn for Michigan when I never followed through on planning a post PE exam Michigan trip.