Christine > Recent Status Updates

He shares his guilt over things left undone. The fight for Helmand in Afghanistan. The misery in Syria. The crumbling foundations of our own home. He talks about how there were successes, but at times it felt like they were just there to fix a machine they broke.
There is nowhere his guilt won’t stretch to. It is a blind, enraged minotaur in a maze of his own making.

The things that keep him awake at night are on this boat with us now. They curl up during the day, but hunt in the dark, when his mind softens and turns porous. Now, though, they have more space to roam. They have the open sky and the ink of the ocean and the wood of the docks. They’re not trapped in a room with him, a tangled mass writhing in the shadows. They’re here, but they can breathe now. And so can we.

I had seen the change in increments every time he stayed with me during his leave. The experience had been reminiscent of playing a game of Statues. Every time my back was turned, he would shift. Every time I turned back, he would solidify into stillness, changed into a different form…
it hit me in more than a vague, abstract way that maybe his living body would come back to me, but his soul wouldn’t.

I have never met myself without him…
I wouldn’t have known how to stop it, until I too was the malleable earth, shaped by that feeling. I am who I am because of Isadoro, pushed into a form by the friendship that was solidified in the impressionable years of childhood until being without the feeling was unthinkable. By the time I was sixteen, I knew every angle and curve of this unreciprocated feeling.

Not loving the pacing; nothing really happened in the first 35%. It’s cute but repetitive.

As I was retrieving the paper airplane, considering some design modifications—in elementary school, Melany McClure had been queen of the paper airplanes, and she’d always gone with long, slender wings. Mine had the little stubby ones that I thought looked quite futuristic but were, apparently, not serving my passengers well—my phone rang.
Thank God, I thought. This must be how the Wright brothers felt.

It was like the dirt bike, and my first broken arm. It was like hide-and-seek in a construction site, my toes hanging off the edge of a girder, all that open air beneath me. It was like the first fight I’d been in, a playground scuffle, because Kris wouldn’t hand over the dodge ball, how I’d picked pea gravel out of a scrape on my elbow.
I could close my eyes and see him, six years old with the same wild grin.

“Hello, Luka,” he said.
I nodded. My toxic trait is I talk too much.
For some reason, that made him smile. “I thought I’d see you at the mailboxes today.”
…Even the best nod in the universe couldn’t cover this one, so I said, “Sorry.” And then, my face heating, “I got busy.”
They’ve got a society for bright guys like me. I’d be a shoo-in at Mensa.
But Jude’s smile only got bigger.

Phew

I should finish audio for Jane Eyre before I start this, but I own that so I have time and this’ll come due soon. I’m juggling a bunch of books right now.
I associate narrator Scott Brick with James Elroy and that sort of hard boiled noir crime voice, it’s cool to hear him narrate so differently in this book to better fit the tone and era.

Back to back scenes of identical relationship feelings progress make this so bland. Literally back to back chapters of them telling Kip/Scott that they’ve caught feelings but the other could never feel the same, and Kip/Scott giving IDENTICAL recommendations to talk about because they might feel the same. It’s so much less interesting when there’s zero tension or variation in feelings.

They shoved through their apartment door.
“I won,” crowed Levy.
“Yeah, right. I won—you just have a giant head.”
“First of all, rude. Second of all, if my fat head went in first, I won.”
“Everybody knows that your whole body has to be in for you to win,” Alonso countered.
“Everybody knows? Who the fuck is everybody? Do you think this is a popular game people play with each other?” Levy laughed

I got burnt out on Lily Morton a while ago but trying her again after a year or so I’m having a lot of fun. Disappointed we didn’t get even a smidge of proper angst though; these too sexually adventurous single guys didn’t so much as flirt with another man despite their reputations and an actual orgy occurring where they were staying.

Didn’t recall how late Rochester comes into this story!

Not as into it as Role Model or Heated Rivalry, but miles better than Game Changer. Listening to it while I play games and do chores is fun.

Jane is going through it

One of those books lots of people have read that I never have, and I figured since it’s not too long or complicated it would be an easy one to listen to while I work, and tally toward my goal to read some more well-known literature and classics.

Reading this for Ilya content since they are on the same team. The writing has improved SO MUCH since I suffered with Game Changers a few days ago. Thank goodness. I’m having a great time.

This will be my next listen! I really liked the first two and one of my vague goals has been to catch up and/or finish some series I like but never finished. I tend to jump between genres even if I’m really enjoying an author and hadn’t gotten back to book 3 for a while.

Just the coolest book

If Scott is out of town and busy with playoffs, why are you just spending day after day alone in his apartment being sad about it!
Go see your parents you live with. Do something besides sit there and be sad about it if you aren’t going to tell your friends. I get it’s a hard situation but sitting in an empty apartment isolating for weeks for no reason doesn’t help.

“Scott smiled at it. He loved him so much. Scott: Thank you. I love you.”
Please you can’t even show not tell Scott saying he loves Kip!?! JFC no wonder this is 400 pages

Why is this 400 pages? They fell in love immediately and nothing has happened but the bone zone in the first 200. Please where is the pacing?

“I clenched my teeth to keep the bad words from slipping out. Then I decided to hell with it and said a few of the best ones…
It would have been nice to be able to say that I’d given myself worse shaving, but for that to be true, I’d have to start shaving with a cleaver. Or a nine-millimeter.”
(Love the sort of modern take on noir writing style in this series)