xylatra > Recent Status Updates

Oh boy. This is gonna be a DEEP READ.
There is so much more going on here than I had geared myself up for. I'm only 13 pages in so far, but I already have SO many notes!
Feeling like this may well become one of my favourite vegan / animal rights / morality books yet...

People get accused of anthropomorphising animals or projecting "human" emotions upon them, like love, loyalty, grief, but why wouldn't non-human animals feel those things too? Love, after all, is the glue that bonds mates, and bonds parents to offspring, encouraging them to care for, feed them, guard and protect them with their lives.

I realised earlier tonight that some of my DNF's this year were showing up on my reading challenge list, so I had to edit each of them to get them off the list as I only want books I fully read this year to be on there. Just a heads-up as it looks like I have recently just HATED a whole lot of books on my status updates. 😂

Good gosh I wish I had the appetite of a teenage girl in a Point Horror.. who saw a shadow move and now is off her dinner. 🤣

Sigh.. it feels like it's been months since I last saw rain here in England. There's so much rain and grey, dreary weather in this book it makes me miss "English weather" all the more.

Poor little lamb :'(

"It's clear enough that factory farming is more than something I just personally dislike, but it's not clear what conclusions follow."
GIRL WHAT?
Foer, you've written a book about the horrors, the nightmare fuel of an industry that tortures billions of living beings each year for nowt but human pleasure and IT'S NOT CLEAR what conclusions follow?!
Outlaw it to the ends of the Earth. This pissed me off.

Idk how much longer I have the will to keep reading about corn and grass, man...

Guy who bought a cow just to observe it's descent into becoming beef, turned up in same top he saw the cow in first, seems disappointed cow did not recognise him. No shit, sir. You're just another human being who is using him. Steer "534" is not celebrating your return to him. Idiot.

Beauty as a monstrous thing/curse; feminine horror. Being in hospital, and STILL worrying about how cute/ugly you are (relatable, haha).

NOOOOOOOOO!!! What . The . Heck? No no no nope.. This is so chilling, agh!

I was not emotionally prepared for this.. I'm not even half-way through and it's getting worse and worse, and I'm wondering good god, how much worse can this possibly get?

He's such a nice man but he's too much of a flip-flop for me. I'd be livid about the repeated "u can find someone else, I won't stand in your way" crap.

Omg Kirie girl fr? You know better than this now

"Even B.R. - Before Rick - she couldn't resist casting Caroline in a Titanic episode, in which, too busy drying her long blonde hair, she'd missed the last lifeboat." 💀
I'm so here for the next level teen girl bitchiness going on in these Point Horrors!

"I am a forgettable girl, thought Devnee, and this time the jealousy sliced her heart into thin ragged strips of pain."
Goddamn, well I wasn't expecting such a brutal level of teen-girl-experience hyper realism in a Point Horror, but here we are!

Oh.. I wasn't prepared going into this for "vampire as slave-owner" thing; I wince whenever I read the racist stuff.
I REALLY don't want this to be the 2nd book in a row that I DNF, but honestly don't know if I can power through a book where that stuff keeps coming up.

I do not enjoy being in this woman's head so far - she is so conceited yet so self-pitying. Why? She's rich, privileged, beautiful, but she's talking about all of these things as though I'm supposed to feel sorry for her, because...?

Ohh this feels darkly magical already... All of the nature and outdoor scenes are described so beautifully. It reminds me of midsummer evenings as a child, playing in the garden, and feelings that fairies might be real.

I have ~chills~

"Come, sir, bethink yourself"
Idk why that made me laugh but it did. 😂

Ha, the odd sexist comment still bugs me. Women are spoken of by the men as being such fragile, hysterical, empty-headed "little girls" in this book, that whenever Mina just behaves like a regular, functioning adult person, it's like the men are all going to either faint with shock, or kiss the ground she walks on, or both. The specific kind of sexism this book has is weirdly saccharine, infantalising and worshipping

The whole blood-lust thing aside, this partially reads to me as an interesting commentary on antiquated ideas of what women "should" be in terms of their character, and which (perfectly normal and human) traits outside of a particularly narrow scope are deemed "unsavory".
I particularly like the use of words like "sensuous" and "voluptuous".

Trying to keep this spoiler-free, but is it bad that I actually like and relate more to certain characters when they become vampire, more than when they are a human? It's like they are way too perfect as a human, almost uncannily so, but there seems to far more range of expression (and room for "uncomfortable" (sensual, anger, forbidden emotions)) in vampire form...

Dr Seward is like that guy who puts out a big Facebook status declaring "I'm leaving Facebook today, it's been a long journey but ultimatey I need to do this for the best. Love to you all." and is back the very next day.

Van Helsing is kiiiiind of a creep...? Idk. I don't like how he talks to women. He gives off a creepster vibe.

This is actually SO GOOD I don't want it to ever end...