Rahel > Recent Status Updates

Whatever brand of coffee they have must be as weak as the average American beer if everyone is constantly drinking it well into the night 3

man, the sections get real tough here and there, huh… not that plainsong was all that cheery but that one feels borderline breezy in comparison. still very good and engrossing, as was to be expected. haruf knows how to paint a picture and flesh out a town without ever doing more than needed

gee, that was a bandwidth of not very nice plotpoints in a row :(

i think haruf continues to be an author that younger me would be immensely confused i enjoy as much as i do. but there is just something about the sparseness and the tenderness of these stories that pulls me in every time. also i am still looking for my great american novel, so perhaps this is a step in that direction.

i haven't read a murakami in so long (definitely DNFed the last ones i read), but i do have to say that his nonfiction work is stellar. maybe i just have to limit my reading of his works to ones i know i like and his nonfiction books 🥴

baseball mention!!

the work bookclub is back in action and i have… five days to read this entjre section. ah, well.

girl don't do it!!!

I wish we had more scenes in the woods and in nature, actually :(

Horrible horrible people one and all!!!!!!!!

didn't think we'd be getting an homage to pip (from moby dick) in here but we sure did! ouch.

haven't been this hooked on an audiobook in ages, ahhhh. sadly this does just increase my desire to be in upstate new york around fall time (preferably without disappearances and crimes around me, thanks)

i think the rereading experience for this will be great, eventhough i am sure i will have forgotten everything that happens save for the scary mosquito women by the time that opportunity rolls around

Loon mention!!!!!

Will i finish reading this this weekend? Place your bets now! Jokes aside - this had the same issue as Perdido where there is just one scene that my brain at some point tunes out of at around 70/80%. But it's been a great ride so far regardless; a perfect reminder as to why I love long books, even if I have forsaken them as of late.

it's been 10+ years since i last read this and more than a few since my last murakami. i'm assuming that i'll get more out of now that i didn't quite get in high school, especially as i am in the midst of some writing deadlines at work. i have to say: i've missed murakami's writing style <3

I continue to be surprised that I can read this without issue despite how tired I am on most days. Miéville writes so well and I think you could probably even read this and Perdido Street Station independently...
Not that you should! Please don't!
But I don't feel like the fact that I didn't reread Perdido ahead of time was much of a hurdle. Some lore isn't probably going to stick in my head but that's okay!

i like this unwritten rule that a miéville should ideally include something moby dick inspired in its narrative

excited for the day where i can read more than a chapter and a half again, boohoohoo :(

That is NOT how international flights from Beijing (?) to Pittsburgh work

Jade Song I think you're doing too much 🫠

reaaaaally not sure about/convinced by this one (sorry isaac 🥲)

Heute erfahren, dass Goodreads Direktnachrichten gekillt hat :-(

Menno.

(Muss ich jetzt immer so Updates bekanntgeben? Schlimmo.)

Truly have never seen a more creative and weird world on the written page. The mosquito people island crossing was absolutely, viscerally harrowing. And I just love Miéville's writing - it's so descriptive and he loves his thesaurus and, damn, does he make it work.

that blue eyes white dragon comparison will haunt me for the rest of this book

Depressed? Get a goat 🐐

Scrappy 😭

(Also: voight-kampff scale? More like void-kampff scale am I right? Ha... Haha....)

Man, I should have read David Gunkel last year, because I think that there's a lot to probe with how this book juxtaposes human intelligence with artificial intelligence and where the lines of intelligence blur in the "eyes" of tests to differentiate between the two.