Ali > Recent Status Updates

In my decades of reading, especially in the romance genre, I have come across any number of truly dreadful descriptions of body parts. More often than not they just strike me as funny, as bodies often are. But this Booktok suggestion known for its supposedly lyrical writing has truly gone above and beyond with “inflated peg” to describe the clitoris. Mother of god, y’all.

This isn’t clicking for me and I don’t really know why. I’ve been reading it for weeks and I’m barely a quarter of the way through.

I’ve read The Wife of Bath several times without ever reading any of the other tales. I have now learned that her prologue is -even better- in the context of the other tales. Alisoun of Bath is the best Alisoun.

Unless something changes dramatically, my Booktok Recs list is getting another DNF. It reads YA but the characters are late 20s, big pet peeve for me.

Nicola Coughlan is a delight, Gwyllim Lee is a delight, this story is a delight, but how I wish this was in print so I could read it faster!

The opening of this is an absolutely horrifying, hilarious delight.

I feel too much guilt about the work I’m not doing when I read for pleasure, so the workaround is audiobooks on my commute and when I’m walking around on campus. The downside is that a) I have to stop abruptly when I arrive, and b) I’m a huge picky nerd for voices. I’m on the fence about these performers, y’all.

I have a hot take: Henry Crawford is the protagonist of this story. I will defend this position in my review when I finish.

I’ve made a terrible mistake. I googled the voice actors and it has ruined everything. Also - and maybe this is less of a thing in print, maybe? - I think this book might be suffering from Tessa Bailey Syndrome (TBS) where it’s a fun and emotional plot interrupted with porn transcripts from dubious sources. I have no beef with explicit sex, the beef is the writing here.

I’m listening to the audiobook version. Rowan is voiced beautifully but I’m not enamored with how Sloan is personified.

I have thoughts and feelings.

I’m switching back and forth between the book and the audiobook, and what a delight to find Rosamund Pike does a dead-on impression of Brenda Blethyn as Mrs. Bennet in the 2005 P&P movie

Here is what I’m going to say for now: yes, tremendous achievement; yes, some wonderful use of enjambment and prosody for effect; yes, such clever use of slant to avoid the terrible cliche of end rhymes and the sonnet; yes, lines to celebrate abound. But a lot of it is, as my professor says, “absolutely bonkers.”

I swear to God if men aren’t thinking about the Roman Empire they’re thinking about Gilded Age American finance in New York.

Shades of Fargo

I now have to reread this book which I first read more than 20 years ago because my friend and I were talking about malaria vaccines and I had a sudden flashback to Trevelyan.

Fellow HR readers, have you been watching Bridgerton? I saw a few episodes of the first season and it wasn’t working for me, but I loved Colin and Penelope’s book and I’m considering giving it another shot. What are your thoughts on past and current seasons?

First, it’s so nice to read something for pure pleasure, and JAL always delivers. I don’t think I’ll review it because I don’t want to analyze anything, just enjoy it. Also, I’m convinced Kirke has Benedict Cumberbatch’s voice and will accept no other interpretation.

“One has to tell people what to think. There’s no alternative. Otherwise someone else will do it.”


More layers than an onion!

Not this book, but Don Juan in the Norton Anthology. I’m tickled by Byron in this mode - She Walks In Beauty is all fine and good, but Byron for me shines when he’s playful. Canto I gives 19th century Lin-Manuel Miranda with a little Randy Rainbow, like he’s trolling the beau monde and social mores with deliberately informal and loose rhyme and some very funny sly and ribald pettiness subtending the whole.

“Winter mornings are made of steel; they have a metallic taste and sharp edges.”

I continue to be touched, delighted by this book and deeply envious of Meloy’s masterful balance of tone.

I still think this is about as approachable as narrative theory can be, but I still can’t keep fabula and sjuzhet straight.

I feel like you can trace my academic journey by the degree of soul-sucking density of the required texts. Thankfully this prof is a creative writer and sandwiches chapters of Keen’s book - which, to be fair, is as accessible as narratology can be - with really interesting short stories that demonstrate the concepts.

Delighted by this collection of essays.

“I already had a shelf full of these Gospels of Wrath, their battered spines and corners reinforced with duct tape. The pages of each book were fat with scrawl about weather and personal anguish and quotes like this one from Ezra Pound: “At 70 I realized that instead of being a lunatic, I was a moron.””

Why does the Goodreads app only crash when I’m halfway through writing a good comment and never when I’m just running my mouth?

Ren is a stronger woman than I, I would have 100% thrown myself at the Rook. I hope it’s who I think it is.

I think it takes a gifted author to make a caped, hooded, unknown figure so charming.

I can only assume this book is delightful because I am enjoying the irony of having my pursuit of an English degree keep me from reading books. :|