Julian > Recent Status Updates

oh these brainworms are POTENT

I really should have expected this to be mostly pop feminism going in but the chapter where we uncritically talk about the R&R program for US soldiers heading to Vietnam with essentially no mention of. anyone else in Vietnam. is maybe going to break me.

Oh it's so good to read something that makes me feel emotions again even if those emotions are the complicated morass of feelings I have about the South!

CUCUMBER??

You know when you're reading a book and you're like "ah I can see all the technical flaws that are happening here" and yet you still gobble it up? That's where I'm at. I haven't read epic fantasy in ages and dang. Turns out it's pretty good?

Staircast reread continues apace! Hoping for more plot movement in this one (which if I remember what happens in this book, I am going to get.)

DNF @ 40%. I can't tell if I don't like the audiobook narrator or if the book just isn't grabbing me, but I'm just not invested in the characters or the story. I might try this again on paper to see if it's a narrator problem.

yes I'm starting a fourth book I found on the free shelf when i already have three actively in progress, mind your business

Okay so the last three books I read in this subgenre (straight contemporary romance with a rich heroine and a splashy illustrated cover) didn't do much for me but maybe THIS one will be different.... I see it all the time in circulation and it showed up in lost and found so here we are. (My other current read, Bestiary, is kicking my ass rn so I need a palate cleanser in between.)

Staircast Patreon baby! this book is shaking my understanding of the Warriors universe

Are you ever stuck on writing and you read something and go "OHHHHHH this is what I was trying to do, but better." The prose is so sparse and lovely and the characters bounce off the setting in such good ways.

Finally making progress again after I had to return the ebook (checks watch) last August. I'm enjoying this but not as much as I loved (and I loved!) Lee's Machineries of Empire series. The pacing feels a little off and there's not as much of a sense of tension, even though the stakes are certainly high for the characters.

Getting through this a bit at a time but oof! it's slow going. It's a very good book but the first person (slipping into second person) POV of mental illness is a lot to handle. Not sure if I'll finish it right now.

Oh, I'm loving this so far.

staircast baby... hopefully this one won't take us three months to get through