Martha☀ > Recent Status Updates

Set aside for now. I feel like I've already figured it all out.

Absolutely loving the audio version of this but it will be sucked back into the library system tonight. To be continued...

setting aside for now. Somewhere around Reagan. Lots more opinion than fact

setting aside for now. Too much coming-of-age and not enough apartheid

Please let this end.

Hating it so far. There is far too much flowery language and very little plot. Each chapter begins with a setting and description of characters but then Ackerman gets off-track with her endless lists and forgets to create any action or dialogue. As far as I know, Antonina is still in her nightdress but she has not moved beyond the bedside.

"People are not like bees. We do not work together. We have no real sense of a greater good. I've come to realise this now." [Mustafa]

A conversation between a daughter and mother while on a smuggler's boat, crossing the sea into international waters:
"When we get to that place, will you let me know?"
"So that you can cry?"
"Yes. I need to cry loudly" the girl said. "Because that's how scared I am"

I'm trying this one again. I think I got 250 pages in last time before abandoning. I'm hopeful that the audiobook will make it more enjoyable.

So beautifully written. I wish it were longer so that I could savour it.

A slow burn. It has taken 40% of the book to get to the point but I am enthralled.

Pausing here at pg 250. My running is on hold due to injury so I have put this aside for a while.

I have reached my commitment limit of page 50 but am not yet interested in the characters or plot. Why is this book so highly rated? It seems like the flowery, southern language is way too overdone. Should I carry on?

I am enjoying this lesson in history so far but, already, I have spent more time on the computer doing my own follow-up research about women runners. Although this American-focused history has women being limited to a maximum of 200m distances in 1960, Europe has its first female 100km road racer that same year. This book is a limited history as the USA had prohibition-type rules for women athletes for decades.