Nut Meg > Recent Status Updates

And dnf. No way am I putting myself through another 400 pages of this

The repeated use of "mystery man" is an immediate turn off, so not sure I'm gonna make it through this. I'll give it another 20-40 pages before I make up my mind

"He was a man who had made his own hell." What a line

While I think she's being a little silly at this point, her genuine terror of the prospect of sleeping with her husband does work well in the context of this being a beauty and the beast retelling. It's refreshing to see the issue being handled more explicitly

Given how often bodice ripper heroines survive attempted assault, it's amazing any of them leave their homes. Men lie in wait for them at every turn! You'd think they'd have PTSD

"Fruit of my seed" ugh I could have gone my entire life without knowing that phrase...

Ok, there's no question that the mysterious Lord Saxton is in fact the handsome Christopher in disguise. The question is how long can he possibly keep the charade up?

Considering Woodiwiss is one of the OG bodice ripper writers, I was expecting a little more action by now. Our love interest has saved the MC from falling down stairs, and catching fire, but otherwise it's just been 3 chapters of them eye fucking each other

"As their legatee, the modern intellectual inherits the vulnerability of the aristocrat to the animus of puritanism and egalitarianism and the vulnerability of the priest to anticlericalism and popular assaults on hierarchy."

"The meaning of his intellectual life lies not in the possession of truth but in the quest for new uncertainties."

"In so far as Anti-intellectualism becomes articulate enough to be traced historically or widespread enough to make itself felt in contemporary controversy, it has to have spokesmen who are at least to some degree competent. These spokesmen are in the main neither the uneducated nor the unintellectual, but rather the marginal intellectuals, would-be intellectuals, unfrocked or embittered intellectuals"

"Right-wing hostility to universities was in part a question of deference and social status, but in part also a reflection of the old Jacksonian dislike of specialists and experts."

"Anti-intellectual is a resentment and suspicion of the life of the mind and of those who are considered to represent it"

Why is this clearly labeled "A Novel" when it is most definitely a collection of short stories? Setting them all in the same universe doesn't automatically make it one story

If authors are going to write about marginalized people using period-accurate language, can they at least tell the reader what the period is from the beginning??? Spent 23 pages trying to figure out whether the story was transphobic before the authors note finally explained it was set in the 19th century.

"What's a husband? What are we married for? To carry sumpters? Are we not one piece with you, and as worthy our own intentions as you yours?"

"I'll make ye know, and fear, a wife, Petruccio; there lies my cause. You have been famous for a woman-tamer and bear the feared name of a brave wife-breaker; a woman now shall take those honors off, and tame you."

"Social-distancing" !!!!

"Epidemiologists have computed that measles requires an unvaccinated population of at least half a million people living in fairly close contact to continue to exist."

"...they were called to Camp Upton in Long Island." It's ON Long Island. This was published by Penguin, a NYC house. There's no excuse for this

DNF I just can't do it

Nancy Pearl said life is too short to read bad books...but I paid money for it

"Coronaviruses cause an estimated 15 to 30 percent of all colds and, like the influenza virus, infect epithelial cells."

I am filled with regret, but I spent money on it...

And of course there's a little casual racism. I suppose I should be grateful he at least didn't use any epithets

"Miss Pole began a long congratulation to Miss Matty that, so far they had escaped marriage, which she noticed always made people credulous to the last degree; indeed, she thought it argued great natural credulity in a woman if she could not keep herself from being married"

"The rest of the pretty sitting room--- looking into the orchard, and all covered over with dancing tree-shadows--- was filled with books. They lay on the ground, they covered the walls, the strewed the table."

"Science had first contained smallpox, then cholera, then typhoid, then plague, then yellow fever, all through large-scale public health measures, everything from filtering water to testing and killing rats to vaccination. Public health measures lack the drama of pulling someone back from the edge of death, but they save lives by the millions."

3rd title reference