Burburchan > Recent Status Updates

Back & forth:
“Scarlett wanted to believe him. After everything that had just occurred, she ached to break down and fold into him, to trust him again like before. But the words he meant as reassuring forced to the surface a question she’d been too afraid to think about since he had made his earlier confession as to why he was there. She peeled away from Julian’s hand, forcing herself to create distance.”

I’m midway through and I think Scarlett is an idiot. She’s like this helpless heroine that jumps and screams at everything and rushes into things without thinking. Eugh. The world building is great, a fantastical world that’s as magical as a Willy wonka factory but I wish the heroine had a brain.

The book feels like one big mystery room game.

Only 5% into the book and I see a lot of promise. There’s a glimmer of how interesting the main protagonist is going to be based on her grit and determination to fight her fate, the world building is promising although loosely based in china’s war, and the writing is straight to the point without the ramblings that sometimes grip authors who try too hard to make a book sound verbose.

“These things just exploded in a geyser of purple yuck that smelled like stale lilacs”

It seems like she’s ran out of nouns at this stage.

Struggling through this book. How is it so well rated? Help!

“That night, as Asha tucked her two children into bed, she finally acknowledged what her world had become. In the morning, her husband would pick up Jack and Olive to spend the weekend with him. Asha would remain in the house. She would wander through the empty rooms. She would sort through her husband’s belongings. She would grieve for the person who no longer existed to her but who was still alive.”

“Sumitra closed her eyes now, and in the darkness of her mind, she saw a helicoid spark growing into a free-wheeling tarantula of light that was maybe the self in renewed formation, or whatever the self might look like without the body; whatever the soul might actually be. And the light it was made from was the same light in everything else; in every body; even inside every object.”

Just started this book and I’m finding it a little painful to read. The author has a tendency to focus on the inane like a couple of pages at the start talking about bath salts and bath bombs while the character takes a bath. She tries to hint at some deep pain felt at her brother’s absence by reflecting on some memory that body oils are giving her but I’m not feeling it. Eugh.

I. Cannot. Continue. This. Book. It’s so aimless.

20 pages in and I’m already imagining this as a movie, with Lena Headey as Mama.

So many words to describe the blue of a suit.

“But most of all: the blue. Chosen in haste from a wall of fabrics: not an ordinary blue. Peacock? Lapis? Nothing gets close. Medium but vivid, moderately lustrous, definitely bold. Somewhere between ultramarine and cyanide salts, between Vishnu and Amon, Israel and Greece, the logos of Pepsi and Ford. In a word: bright.”

"He takes a drink, closing his eyes as he swallows, savoring it. I do the same, and it burns a little less this time. I suspect scotch is something you have to convince yourself to enjoy, like sushi or the last few Radiohead albums, but I can't deny the result is nice."

This reminds me of Neverwhere. I'm half wishing it's a graphic novel instead.

"For all Japanese soldiers, especially low-ranking ones, beating was inescapable, often a daily event. It is thus unsurprising that camp guards, occupying the lowest station in a military that applauded brutality, would vent their frustrations on the helpless men under their authority. Japanese historians call this phenomenon "transfer of oppression". I know of people who do that in real life.

"the prefrontal cortext - the part of the new brain that talks us out of sending ill-considered e-mails and eating too much chocolate cake." THANK YOU PREFRONTAL CORTEXT!