Paulina > Recent Status Updates

Starting to re-read this since it's my book club's April book. I've read it once before, in college, and remember liking it well enough, and way more than I liked the LoTR trilogy. But it's just not what I'm in the mood to read right now so I'm having to force myself to keep coming back to it. Here's to continued progress!

I'm giving up and moving this to the DNF shelf. I expected to like it because so many of my book club friends sing its praises, but for me it is too much like reading an account of the COVID-19 pandemic. It's just too close to reality now -- I don't know how Max Brooks could be so prescient! It's not a bad book, I just can't get into it because I'm too constantly seeing scary real-world parallels.

This is where I left off several months ago when this book was just not holding my attention. Now I'm sick with Covid and decided to try to finish it off while I've got nothing else really to be doing. Maybe I can get the stack of unread books on my nightstand to be just a little bit shorter....or at least have turnover!

I picked this one back up after abandoning it several months ago about three chapters in as too much of a slog and not grabbing my attention at all. I'm enjoying it more now. An actually interesting event happens in the very next chapter after I quit and it's picking up the pace now, and even starting to make a bit more sense. Will keep going.

Happy to be diving into something more compelling than the last book I read!

This book has a character named Paulina!! First appearance is on page 80. Well, technically it's earlier, but she doesn't get a name until page 80. It's so unusual to find my name in a book!

I started reading this last night and my husband glanced at the cover and immediately asked why the spider has 10 legs. Sure enough, it does!

Is that important to the story somehow, or is it an error on the part of the cover designer? I've not read enough yet to be able to answer the question.

Vale goes through his newspaper clippings and field notes and as he is flipping through, he reads off: "Grant: the Covent Garden riot and flood. Guernier: the perfume murderess...."

Is the Grant reference a reference to Rivers of London (Ben Aaronovitch)? Now I am curious what Guernier might be referencing.

Still plugging away at this one.

I'm starting another non-fiction book. I wonder how far I'll get this time -- will this one make it off the "currently reading" shelf?!