Emiel > Recent Status Updates

The writing is really charming. It is REALLY similar to Gaiman(his books! his books!)/Barker, but they are great so I don't mind. Cautiously optimistic about this one.

I don't know why I ever stopped reading Discworld, it rules. A funny, smart, low stakes christmas story where the guild of assassins is commissioned to take out Santa.

Reading 1000 pages about cows for something different. It is amazing.

I think the writing here is good (especially in comparison with certain other books 🙂), but holy fuck she needs to stop spamming metaphors and similes every other sentence, chill.

This is the one; I can feel it.

I read this one 13 years ago in school and remember absolutely hating it. This year I read Franny and Zooey and From Esmé with Squalor, also by him, which were both among the best books I have ever read (certainly with the best dialogue). I am excited to see how much of a fucking moron I was back then (and still am to be fair, but with some more books under my belt). I can't even imagine it actually being bad.

This book is giving Stardew Valley for lonely mentally ill women, like next level demographic pandering.

"a lush cottagecore tale full of stolen spellbooks, unexpected friendships, sweet jams, and even sweeter love."

God have mercy

Naaaaaaaa, but it was so good until Murray decided to stop using punctuation at the 25% point. Give me back my commas you pretentious piece of shit; this is unreadable.

It reminds me a lot of my favorite movie of all time (Yi Yi): different points of view from the same family all having their own crises. Hope the punctuation comes back again...

This is getting pretty high up on the "What the fuck is going on scale", from human bone soup to immortal group boning and uhh necrophilia. I am pretty sure the flashback chapters are implanted memories to give Harrow a fake account of what happened in book 1 in order to stop her from remembering Gideon. The absence of Gideon is felt (positively), the moment she inevitably gets brought back I instantly DNF.

So many names for different bones...

What the actual fuck. If the first book was anything like this I would have given it a 4+ Why is the writing, especially in the second person chapters, suddenly fantastic? It also leans way heavier into the weird parts of the first book, abandoning any semblance to generic sff. The dialogue is still horribly written but there is less of it, so I can stomach it (for now). Interested to see where this goes.

This is way better than I thought it was going to be. I might actually have positive things to say for once.

Resurrect this man and have him write a 1000 page book about Franny absolutely losing her shit about her shitty boyfriend and meaningless life; what an amazing short story, absolutely perfect. Style makes a book and this has all of it. You can write about anything with dialogue this good and it would be a 5/5.

I have been trying to get through this godforsaken book for 6 months now. Why an author already infamous for being borderline unreadable decided to write his book in 18th century English no one knows. Pynchon is the first author I have ever come across that makes me feel genuinely mentally impaired. No one mixes genres like he does though (why is there a talking dog in my historical fiction?) so I will finish it!

That was a quick one, fun though

I definitely remember why I gave this 3* but the story is good fun so it reads away quite quickly.

Chapter 18 How I Let My Little Sister Drown
Chapter 23 Prostitutes on Madagascar
Chapter 26 The Best Way to Smoke Crack

Some character development right there, one of the wildest things I have ever read, what a life.

This is emotional torture, please a good ending 🤧 (I will accept either Robbie and Cecilia getting together or Briony getting punted off of a mountain)

Whoever designed these covers should never have a job again.

A book club first for me; I am giving up

ستة من الغربان

Yearly reread of my #1 favorite book(s). Love the smooth writing, love the cast of older competent characters, love that the main character is not in any way special, just a good mosaicist. Love the sense of empathy and friendship present throughout the book, love the action scenes; battles? no: horse races. Love the usage of unconventional one-time point-of-view characters to build the world.

Lots to love.

No one knows more 1950s slurs than James Ellroy, truly impressive.

Might just be the best book I have ever read.