Belinda > Recent Status Updates

Looks like we might be in for another tangent, and it's almost 1.30am, so I'm stopping here for the night.

...aaaand we're back to the actual story!

This is where I got distracted last time I tried to read Les Mis, but so far, so good for this attempt. Hugo's off on one of his little tangents at the moment, but since it's about the Battle of Waterloo, and I love nothing more than a good battle commentary, I'm finding it interesting. No idea how this relates to the actual plot, but whatever. I'm genuinely looking forward to the tangent about the Parisian sewers.

I'm shocked by how much I'm not enjoying this. I've never read an Agatha Christie book that I haven't liked before!

I guessed that this where this was going already, but DAYAMMMM the tyres are screeching!

So far I'm enjoying it! Especially loving the positive but realistically drawn disability representation.

I've noticed a lot of words and phrases that wouldn't have been said by an actual English person, especially during the Regency period. It's not terrible, but it's enough to feel jarring.

I WILL finish this book. I will. I just have to wade through the tedium. It's such a patchy book - some passages and chapters are amazing, wonderfully written and poignant. You just have to plod through the rest of it to get there. Bourne is a cardboard cutout of a character, and I can't make myself give a damn if he lives or dies at this point. 

If nothing else, it's great for curing insomnia. 

I love the parts when they're in the trenches. Occasionally there's a fantastic passage. But to get to that, you have to slog through a whole lot of middle management-esque tediousness. Bourne simply isn't a character I like or connect to. He's too perfect, and I feel like he doesn't have very much depth beyond being noble.

"Miss Avon," she said. "May I make the tiniest of suggestions?”

"I suspect you shall anyway," Miss Avon replied, not quite willing to test the balance of power between a desirable debutante and a wealthy widow.

"I shall. My recommendation is that you give serious consideration to heading down to the Thames and drowning your head in a bucket of eels."



ICONIC.

While I am enjoying this, it feels very much like Fawcett has picked up the character of Emily Wilde, named her Agnes and dropped her into a cat shelter without making very many changes at all.

I feel like this is the sort of humour you're either going to love or hate, and somehow I'm still landing right in the middle. It's been funny at some points, but not anywhere near as funny as The Lightning Struck Heart, which I was hoping this would have a similar vibe to.

Also, fuck St. Patrick. Biggest wanker in Christendom
(...though not really. St. Paul and St. Augustine of Hippo suck just as hard. Mummy issues on main!)

I don't know how these women put up with Brigid for so long. She's bloody infuriating. One second she knows bloody everything, the next she's the most maddeningly oblivious person in the world.


This isn't a reflection of how I'm enjoying the book, just of Brigid herself as a character. The book is really good!

Maithgen is basically my father in law at every family wedding. All Maithgen needs now is a stereo blasting "Helicopter" by XTC, so he can run around the dance floor like a madman and make everybody laugh.

""Are we having fun?" Maithgen leans over and shouts into Brigid's ear. "Are we having fun?" He shouts again, this time to the gathering, waving his over-full goblet around and spilling wine into Brigid's lap."

Well that wasn't on my bingo card 😳

So far, this is the installment I've liked the least. I'm just not connecting with either protagonist very much.

I'll go back to reading more serious things soon, I'm just not feeling either Forster or Manning right now. They've been too dreary for the last few weeks, after losing another loved one. I'm not that keen on Forster in the first place, so that doesn't help. Mike's funeral was today, so I guess we find what our new normal is going to be without him now.

I would die for Tramp

"There will come the time, Gwendoline, when you will be drenched with my seed."


I... What?!
*Runs away with cartoon skedaddle noises*

Yet again, Neville is about as appealing as a wet sock.