Helen Fleischer > Recent Status Updates

Abandoned and returned to library as the level of violence exponentially exceeded my tolerance for ferocity.

Finished the second book in the trilogy. Liked it a bit better, especially the epilogue that listed the fates of the suspects, Dragnet style.

Finished the first book of the trilogy, A Deadly Dividend, and not really eager to continue immediately.

{Cheap hotel owner} "Old Don" wore an ill-fitting suit that had never seen the hand of a tailor over a body that bulged beneath it and strained it at the seams... He was clearly half bald, but had contorted his remaining hair into a bizarre pompadour, so stiff with pomade it looked like an arrangement of brass wire... He had teeth like a horse... and to it all top off, his skin was a strange shade of orange." --LOL!

I'm actually enjoying an older, pre-ISBN edition. I am obviously not reading steadily but rather keeping it on the coffee table to enjoy at odd moments. I really bought it for the illustrations by the wonderful artist from Time Team but the text is delightful as well.

"Smart folks don't give them a ride. Smart folks don't pick up living hitchhikers either, though, and they seem to get around just fine."

"There's fighting a monster and then there's becoming one. The first should never be enough of an excuse for the latter. "

"Your mother disappeared? " I said.
She nodded. "Yeah. I was just a kid when it happened, so I guess that messed me up more than it would have if I'd been older. But I doubt it's ever an easy thing to deal with. "
I wouldn't know. There'd been a lot of times I'd have given anything to have my mother disappear.

"I am an individual," Ayabe broke in, "just as we are all individuals, though you seem to forget that, or why would a herd mentality have you all following the foolishness of whoever has the loudest voice?" -- Hoo boy! Does that resonate now or what?

"Someone told me once, 'Curiosity may have killed the cat, but I'll bet she had a really interesting life up until then.' I'm like that cat. I do have a really interesting life."

"Survivors can't always choose their methods," she said.

"Generally speaking, if you fiddle with something, it will break. Don't."

"My friends were horrified, expressed low-to-moderate outrage that I should be treated this way and proclaimed that they would have started a petition if they could have troubled themselves to look for a pencil.

Beautiful places described in the driest prose imaginable. I mostly seem to be reading it as a sleep aid. Just a page or two at a time as there is no way to gain more momentum than that.

"Imagine if life was fair," she says to me one time. "I think that maybe that'd be worse."
"How do you figure that?"
"Well, then we'd deserve all the awful things that happen to us, wouldn't we? It'd mean that at some point in our lives -- or maybe some life we had before this one -- we were creepy people."

"I'm willing to keep an open mind," Zeffy said. "I just don't want my brain mistaken for Swiss cheese, that's all."

Finished part two. Even better! And again a story that ends satisfyingly rather than a cliffhanger.

Finished the first book and skimmed its appendices. Quite a ride!

This has become a real slog on the order of, "I did a mountain of research and bedamned if I won't make you read it all." Mean while I've had to put off two more library holds. I can't fathom why this is so highly rated, though the introduction started off by gushing. I skipped the rest of that when it started to slip into spoilers. Still hoping for some progress on the plot, though.

I won't spoil it but the term poetic justice barely does this page justice. Delicious.

Dexamethasone. Hoyt is sneaking a dose of dexamethasone. The same stuff they gave Trump. Now that's a jarring coincidence!

"That was what white magic really was: additive, the power of many working together. Black magic was subtractive, sucking life away from one or many in order to feed itself."

I liked the title and it was free, but oh my gosh, I think flash fiction is not for me! I read half at bedtime last night and almost can't bring myself to pick it up again. Even the ones from author whose novels I love were disappointing.

"He had to be in the town anyway and that was the only window in his day. That was the way he talked: buzzword bingo brought to life.

"I stop listening when academics start mixing their Greek and Latin roots. That never leads anywhere productive. "

"Beatrice: Did you ask me to teach you Latin just so you could insult people?"

"...silk was a potent insulator of magic, and it didn't matter if was the slub-filled, heavy, raw sort or finest of transparent veils." -- Not the first mention of silk that I've seen in stories about magic but suddenly it fascinates me. Especially since I have been raising and spinning slub-filled silk for years now.