Erin > Recent Status Updates

I first read this book 20 years ago or so. I wrote down so many little bits and pieces from it that I’ve long forgotten they came from this book, so it’s very weird to come across them again while reading it. It’s not a great book—It’s kind of dull—but there are pieces of a sentence, or sometimes a few sentences, that make me say, “Ah yes, it’s exactly like that.” But I mean life, not heroin.

I’m so fucking sick of women who are turned on by being hurt or being submissive. SMACK 👏🏼 HIM 👏🏼 AROUND 👏🏼

I liked this book so much the first time I read it, 20+ years ago, but now I find most of it boring.

It feels like Chuck didn’t want to give any of the same writing advice that others have given, so all of this stuff is different (for the most part)—but, because of that, most of it is unusable. It’s overly clever. It would make you feel like you’re reading an overly clever book, which is annoying if the author isn’t Chuck Palahniuk.

😫

Re-reading this, which I originally bought in 2000 according to Amazon, but I can’t find my copy anywhere, even though I remember it being very good and not the kind of thing I would get rid of.

Interesting, but I’m almost 60% off the way into the book and this all still feels like the setup, with very little advancement of the plot. There are three stories being told, and two clearly overlap, but the third is something completely different and odd.

I like birdwatching and I like Amy Tan, but this has gotten kind of boring at this point. I don’t need a whole book of observations about Amy’s backyard birds, it turns out. I like flipping through bird books, but having to read a library book like this from cover to cover in three weeks kind of sucks. This is more of a coffee table book.

I’m 7% into this and don’t like it at all. The reviews say it is a dense slog but worth it. Now the question is: abandon it, and start it over from the beginning in a few years (if ever), OR force my way through it so that I don’t ever have to re-read these four chapters?

I have no idea what’s going on. This is really difficult to follow. Sci fi authors really love the smell of their own farts sometimes.

So far, there is almost nothing in this book that is new or surprising to me. If you’re familiar with Andrew Tate and his fans and have seen the kinds of comments people like that leave on social media, this book (so far) is probably going to be kind of dull.

Sometimes, in a bad book, there is one line or one paragraph or one page that is useful enough to have made it all worth your time. one good bit you can carry around for a day or a lifetime, that can get you one step or one leap closer to where you want to be. So I always try to finish the bad books. Sometimes they redeem themselves in a single page.

There’s a very long piece in here about the accessibility of archives (like historical documents) and it’s just another example of how it feels like this collection of essays is just a collection of whatever was submitted that was at all about disability, with no real regard for THE TITLE OF THE BOOK, quality, tone, subject, etc. This is a frustrating book.

“When you are writing, your characters will do anything you tell them to.” Ok, I already didn’t like this book, and now I also think she isn’t a very good writer, because this is the exact opposite of what most great writers say in THEIR books about writing, which are better than this one. Good characters do what is true to their character, not what is convenient for the plot.

Oh, the “villain explains it all” scene. Lazy writing.

PLOT TWIST. This has been a pretty stupid book, but there’s no chance anyone saw THAT coming.

I really dislike this book but feel determined to finish it. There’s been maybe two good essays, a lot of bad ones, and many that were completely forgettable. Almost half feel like they have NOTHING to do with intimacy unless you stretch the word to just mean “friendship.”

A woman wakes up on the shore of a lake with a bump on her head and no memory, goes to the closest house, and does not think, “This house could belong to the person involved in what happened to me”?!?!? And the guy has a closet full of his dead wife’s clothes that are all—surprise!—in Ms. No Memory’s size?!?? GIRL.

I’m never going to get through this book because the goofy writing exercises go on forever and I feel obligated to read each stupid prompt, and after reading five pages of them, I’m irritated and exhausted.

God I needed this. Right book, right time. I have words I can print out instead of words I need to come up with myself.

Another free book. Better than the last one, at least.

I should not be posting another “This book sucks” update, but… this book sucks. The writing is bad and frustrating. The author always feels the need to describe what’s going on, even when it’s not interesting or relevant, and it completely interrupts the flow of dialog. I don’t need to know all of the steps to eating breakfast! It’s background noise! Share the bare minimum! Ahhhh

Extremely tempted to abandon this book and add it to a “Did not finish” pile, but I want my 40% progress to count for something