Brandi > Recent Status Updates

I am genuinely loving the storytelling so far, but it will never not be weird to read about Appalachia from a perspective that makes it seem so absolutely *other.*

There HAS to be a better way to communicate the killer's motivations than a long, emotive phone call to the primary detective on the case... :/

"...but it's humbling to find he's been scooped by a Lexapro-dependent neurotic." This is about the thousandth time this character has been defined by the fact that she takes an SSRI - a VERY common type of medication used to treat depression and anxiety - and that she's CRAZY. :/

"Connell's initial assessment of the reading was not disproven. It was culture as class performance, literature fetishized for its ability to take educated people on false emotional journeys, so that they might afterward feel superior to the uneducated people whose emotional journeys they liked to read about."

I just finished writing an article on Bateman's Starkey series, but now I'm dying to write on this one, too. So far, each novel begins with a different slanderous graffiti and I have no idea what to make of that, but I'd love to spend the next 6 months ruminating. Someone stop me. Please. 😂

The narrator of this audiobook kiiiinda sounds like Joel McHale, and I think that's making me like the main character more than I should. 😂

I LOVE a novel with an unlikeable narrator, and this is probably the fastest I've ever hated a fictional character: objectifying a woman he's just met like he's giving her his stamp of approval WHILE being patronising about others' reading habits.

"Blood makes me faint, as do severely cold temperatures, rotting fruit, tulips, and injustice." 😂

This narrator is making me uncomfortably aware of my own anxiety-induced paranoia, as well as how often I talk about my own health issues... O.o

A sci-fi mystery thriller set in Belfast? I mean, I *had* to read it, and not just so I can reference it in half a sentence in the article I'm currently writing, haha.

Sounds suspiciously like John Banville ;)"He was already a much-garlanded author of literary fiction when he decided to write crime under a pseudonym before being 'accidentally' unmasked. He gives the impression that it is just something he dashes off while waiting for divine inspiration to strike his real work. In reality he contributes nothing new to the genre and instead merely rehashes some of its worst clichés."

"... the same generic drum and bass slam that seems all you need now to make an impact on the charts. ***Well, that and a willingness to show off nine and a half tenths of your ass and then act outraged when someone brands you a slut or a prostitute***." I'm sorry, but I'm going to need a hell of a good reason for this kind of bullshit to pop up as a random aside in this novel's narration.

"The lie caught in my throat and thrashed there some before I swallowed it back down."

One thing I have so enjoyed with this book is its use of very simple diction to describe the impossible. I'm also occasionally astonished with the poetic imagery McMahon creates with this kind of bare-bones language. ❤

Ugh. I really enjoyed the first two books in this series, but this one is annoying me to no end. As much as I hate abandoning a novel halfway through, life is too fucking short. I'm just rage-reading at this point.

"It was bizarre beyond expression, being suddenly forced to bow low for the man who had broken into my home."

This novel is, so far, my ideal comfort reading: a detective novel with sarcastic social critique. In some respects, it reminds me of Oscar Wilde, though the comparison only makes me appreciate anew the clarity and wit of Wilde's criticism without the benefit of 100+ years of hindsight.

I am flying through this series at an obscene pace for two key reasons: (1) this is exactly the kind of supernatural police procedural that I have dreamed about writing for years, and (2) Kobna Holdbrook-Smith, who narrates the audiobooks, has a *mesmerizing* voice.

Rereading because I committed myself to giving a conference paper on this (the academic version of fangirling?) and the deadline's approaching but I've barely started because I'm also finishing my thesis and another conference paper. #alwayswriting

Okay, things are coming together and it's starting to get interesting.

The way this book was described - a psychological thriller with an unlikable narrator - I assumed it was precisely my kind of novel, but I'm neither engaged nor intrigued. I barely care at this point, and if I weren't listening to an audiobook (minimal active effort), I probably wouldn't finish.

"Her need to quibble and find fault is so strong, she'll do it with herself if there's no one else around." This is an uncomfortably accurate description of having a "difficult" personality and an anxious mind. I literally do argue with everything, including (and most often) myself. Once again, I'm overidentifying with Sophie Hannah's "unlikable" heroine...

This is so much like Sebastian Barry's The Secret Scripture.

"How lonely it must have been for him, waiting for me to be reasonable." Omg, yes girl! Every time I read a review complaining about one of Sophie Hannah's "unlikable" heroines, whose sass and "difficult personality" I've fallen in love with, I remember why I have no friends. ;)

"...what Joseph calls the 'Mag' and the 'Nunc': the Magnificant and the Nunc Dimittis. Before Saviour College... he didn't know the street names of any liturgical pieces of music." LOL

So much suspense I'm reading faster than my brain can process the words.

The fact that it's taking me SO LONG to finish this novel is no comment on the book itself. It's just that the way the characters treat each other (being so cruel with their words) is making me reluctant to read more than a few pages. While this cruelty is thematically significant & no surprise to readers of Ryan's, I've been reading so much upsetting stuff for my thesis lately that I need to give my heart respite!

"Am I trying to perform some kind of exorcism? Can you do that by writing things down?" This book is such a thoughtful take on all my favourite topics: the supernatural, psychology, the past, class consciousness, exploration...

I'd originally intended for this to be a scholarly source for an upcoming conference paper, but it's not really rigorous enough for that, I don't think. However, it is really fun reading, and I'm already brainstorming ways to use it in an undergrad classroom... :)

Ah, the old boring accountant stereotype... Until I married an accountant, I never realised how much of our cultural narrative relies on the assumption that "accountant" is a byword for normal with all the worst connotations. ;)

So, I keep picturing Antoinette as Rosa from Brooklyn 99, and Aislinn as Harmony from Buffy/Angel.