Don > Recent Status Updates

Stopped at about 1/3 of the book. Just too silly once he goes down the well…

Did not finish. It’s a young adult novel with a lot of interest in who’s cool in school. Good story but slow moving and very long. I quit half way.

!!! This is flipping all my good switches on! If you are a fantasy/sci-fi fan, don’t read anything about this. You want to start cold for the fun!

I put it down at 30%. The genre mashup is fun, but it’s too much about gender politics, it overwhelms everything.

"But if I can bear the nights, the days are a pleasure. I walk out; I see something, some event that would otherwise have been utterly missed and lost; or something sees me, some enormous power brushes me with its clean wing, and I resound like a beaten bell."

Finished Book 1 and I have not a clue what’s happening. So many characters. Is everyone important to the story line, or are they just there to represent some idea? The language is beautiful. I do hope this poetic stew comes together soon.

This book, "These Truths", so readable, so good!

“Priestly initially embraced asylum in America with his typical enthusiasm: he was, at long last, in his own element, surrounded by intelligent peers who also happened to be, amazingly enough, the political establishment.”
A different world in 1794 America: the founding fathers were all intellectuals, and celebrated for it.

“A nice clean shipwreck might have started to seem appealing after a few days dining on black warm water and spider’s eggs.“ I like this book!

This is gripping!

“Most children will, at some stage, try mixing all their favorite paints together expecting to make an extra special color... That such a mixture results not in something beautiful but in an irretrievably murky dark gray is one of life‘s first hard truths.”

“There are pits of grief obviously that only the grieving know. It is a voyage to the center of the earth, a huge heavy machine boring down into the crust of the earth. And a little man growing wild at the controls. Terrified, terrified, and no turning back.”

Bleak, violent, misogynist, racist storytelling. Not my cup of meat. This is very much like the miserable world of Cormac McCarthy.

"Memory believes before knowing remembers. Believes longer than recollects, longer than knowing even wonders. Knows. Remembers. Believes."
What does all this verbiage mean? He loves to get tangled up in language without a care for the reader. The eyes read in spite of knowing, read to spite knowing itself, which never blooms into understanding.

On wakefulness: “ But, alas, sleep did not come so easily to our weary friend.
Like in a reel in which the dancers form two rows, so that one of their number can come skipping brightly down the aisle, a concern of the Count’s would present itself for his consideration, bow with a flourish, and then take its place at the end of the line so that the next concern could come dancing to the fore.“ p 267

On friendship: “Some might wonder that the two men should consider themselves to be old friends having only known other for four years; but the tenure of friendships has never been governed by the passage of time. These two would have felt like old friends had they met just hours before.“ p.333

"Amidst the mists and coldest frosts he thrusts his fists against the posts and still insists he sees the ghost."

"Amidst the mists and coldest frosts he thrusts his fists against the posts and still insists he sees the ghost."

This is such a page-turner, I'm putting it aside to finish at the beach next week!

I'm re-reading from 20 years ago but I don't remember the details. This book is gripping! I'm loving it. It's fun to read about pre-internet. A character connects a cd player to his laptop to research an encyclopedia using a cd-rom! High tech!

‘Who invented the human heart, I wonder? Tell me, and then show me the place where he was hanged.’