Kelsey > Recent Status Updates

it's giving "Vita Nostra" vibes, and I'm here for it

This is wild, very hard to put down (although I have been switching b/w several books). It's like an episode of Black Mirror meets The Hunger Games meets The Most Dangerous Game/Apex lol. Where does King come up w/ this stuff? Esp in the 80s

SPOILERS:





'What are you doing for her . . . Your son is dead, but your daughter is not. What are you doing for her?'

'Lous looked away. There was nothing he can do for her, not yet. She would have to swim in her grief as best she could. His thoughts were too full of his son.'

Well now King officially referenced the story "The monkey's paw"

I must be passed where I DNF'ed this the first time, because I don't remember this funeral scene....and hot damn...Mike Flannagan must have taken inspo for this for his version of haunting of hill house (which to me is clearly "shining" inspired as well)

love this first paragraph of ch 36 discussing the horror of grief

'They [the natives] are too poor to escape the reality of their lives; and they are too poor to live properly in the place where they live, which is the very place, you, the tourist, want to go - so when the natives see you, the tourist, they envy you, they envy your ability to leave your own banality and boredom, they envy your ability to turn your own banality and boredom into a source of pleasure for yourself.'

'This house was not haunted, it was infested.' pg. 251

so far I'm enjoying this. I read this around the time i was in middle school. def didn't understand it and remember nothing except the premise.

pg. 250-51: "You are fond of the sea, captain." "Yes; I love it. The sea is everything."

"Ah monsieur, live in the bosom of the waters. There alone you will find independence; there I recognize no master; there I am free!"

pg 155- 'My heart is a quicksand biding it's time to swallow me up.'

I read somewhere that Collins said to read her books in publication order, as the themes expand on each other. I do feel that what was more subtly hinted at in the OG trilogy is more explicit here, but I don't think that's necessarily bad for a YA series:

'...wondered if he would soon perish of natural causes. If starving to death was a natural cause . . . Was it natural if hunger had been used as a weapon?'

The Capitol continuously dehumanizing the tributes:

'Jessup . . . was a good person. He threw his body over mine to protect me . . . It wasn't even conscious. He did it reflexively. That's who he was at heart. A protector. I don't think he would've ever won the Games, because he'd have died trying to protect Lucy Gray.

'Oh, like a dog or something? . . .'

'No, not like a dog. Like a human being.'

I'm glad I'm giving this one another try. It's clicking this time.

'I don't think children ever forget the lies their parents tell them.'

....

pg 44 "There's nothing natural about death.'