Bonnie > Recent Status Updates

En La Noche
Sun and Shadow
The Meadow
The Garbage Collector
The Great Fire
The Golden Apples of the Sun

Hilarious

“You ought to use a memory.”
“I have the new kind of memory,” I said. “It’s a cranial implant. You don’t have to speak out loud. You just think, and it talks to you in a quiet little voice in your head.”
“Oh,” she said. She thought about that for a minute. “It sounds very convenient.”
"It’s great"

"The building around us was quiet, deathly quiet, and outside my window the night was like a dark nullification of the existence of the city. But underneath night’s skirts the city lived on. Disconnected creatures passed through the blackness, towards solitary destinations, lonely hotel rooms, appointments with death. Nobody ever stopped the creatures to ask them where they were going—no one wanted to know."

DUDE. YOU ARE NOT BEING CELIBATE.

I can not wait for our book club discussion on this next year.

This colony seriously needs a restaurant. Half the adults in the place spend hours each day prepping, cooking, and washing dishes.

"He climbed a hill overlooking the town, carrying the components of lunch in three covered dishes. All three were stacked up neatly in a cage of canvas straps that hung from his left hand; this convenience had been a gift from Ru."

" 'I will go home and make some advance preparations for dinner, then' "

Too bad this guy didn't train to be a chef, rather than a medical doctor

Over millennia, 'backpack' technology was eventually lost to humans.

"...rope, cut off two lengths, and put them in. He thought with these he could contrive a kind of harness that would let them carry their burdens of water on their backs. One could not use such a makeshift for long periods—no doubt it would be brutally uncomfortable—but for short times when both hands were needed for climbing, it should suffice."

What is the deal with all the paranoia regarding poisoning?

She hesitated. “I feel like you need tips on surviving the Earth people more than the snake-trees, but I don’t have any.”

Not the Star Trek future 😭

"Then I’d run through all the possibilities of that, and I had a baby to take care of. It was like that all over the colony. Men had the time to learn and adapt to new roles, women didn’t. By the time we got ready to focus on work again, we were stuck with the leftovers. Like teaching part-time and helping run the educational farm."

Not the Star Trek future

"...at first we were all working in our specialties. But then we started having children, and surprise surprise, it turned out that the burden of providing that home life I mentioned fell on us. There was no older generation to help—not even any teenagers to babysit, at first..
Men had the time to learn and adapt to new roles, women didn’t. By the time we got ready to focus on work again..."

[rubs hands together] This ought to be fun!

"... if he was left alone with a married woman she would surely agree to a visit, in defiance of her vows. It was interesting to see that even they knew that monogamy was unnatural. Why else would they expect it to crumble so easily?"

Ok starting to creep me out

"I really did try to do this the nice way...
... if only they hadn’t freaked the fuck out. Now I’m left with no choice."

The liiiiieeess, noooo

The Murderer
The Golden Kite, The Silver Wind
I See You Never
Embroidery
The Big Black and White Game
The Great Wide World Over There
Powerhouse

"In one room she saw life wither; in another, a mile away, she saw wineglasses lifted to the newborn, cigars passed, smiles, handshakes, laughter. She saw the pale, drawn faces of people at white deathbeds, heard how they understood and accepted death, saw their gestures, felt their feelings, and saw that they, too, were lonely in themselves, with no way to get to the world to see the balance, see it as she was..."

interesting
“The Continentals were thinking, however peripherally, about expansion. It is patently obvious to anyone that they feared exhaustion, starvation, & moreover they began to feel that they deserved to expand, & take ownership of new places. The Divinities, however, were not thinking about expansion—Kolkan was starting down the train of thought that would begin with his period of open judgment, & Taalhavras”

Oo, a Poirot-like reveal scene. Fun!

"Before I ask any questions, however,” said Ana, “I would like to review all we know about the circumstances thus far—about the movements of Jolgalgan, your father, Kaygi Haza, and even Commander Blas—for I have had discovered many revelations in the past few days. Only once the nature of those crimes is established might the threat to you be made clear, madam..."

Heh
“I just have one more question.”
“Of course.”
“What color was the clay?”
Fayazi blinked, confused. “Clay? What clay?”
“The clay you must have stuck in your eyes and ears,” said Ana, grinning, “to remain so amazingly fucking ignorant of everything about you.”

I had heard of Princess Donut.
"The advance team arrived in your 1930s, I believe. Whenever that book came out, The Hobbit. I left the last system and entered the prep phase in your year 1964. I know this world and your customs just as well as you do. I even once got to shapeshift into a human and go out into the world. I went to a Blockbuster Video and stole a bunch of James Bond tapes."

"Until I came to Brandham Hall the world of my imagination had been peopled by fictitious beings who behaved as I wanted them to behave; at Brandham Hall it was inhabited by real people who had the freedom of both worlds; in the flesh they could give my imagination what it needed, and in my solitary musings I endowed them with certain magical qualities but did not otherwise idealize them. I did not need to."

Very British.
Come a cropper, "Pax," "the mater," cricketers in white flannels, wasn't cricket, the villagers seemed like Boers...

The Fog Horn
The April Witch
The Wilderness
The Fruit at the Bottom of the Bowl
The Flying Machine

Tess of the D’Urbervilles, Thomas Hardy wasn't ever forgotten, was he? Why would that be in the Cemetery of Forgotten Books?
Also, does the 'magic' work if you tell someone else what to find there rather than let the person discover a book on their own?

"The noise from the rookery was louder, even though the daylight was beginning to die. They could see the dark birds thronging over the treetops, more agitated than before, flapping and turning to and fro."

Oh yeah, that's the ticket! This was by far my favorite of the series. Ravens, iron, snowfall, animals scared of him, a mysterious "Walker" tramp... Many disturbing omens and then great evil to overcome.

Caspar David Friedrich scene there >

"What gives me pleasure then is to climb a very steep mountain, force a path through a harsh wood, through hedges that hurt me, through thorns that tear me. Then I feel better—somewhat. And when along the way for thirst and fatigue I can’t go on, deep in the night sometimes with the high full moon above me, in a lonely wood, on the bough of a malformed tree, I sit..."

“Dear God, did even one of the powers of my soul go unused then? In her company could I not open up all of the wonderful faculty of feeling with which my heart comprehends Nature? Our conversation was a ceaseless weaving of the finest sensibilities, and in the play of our wits, going further and further, even to the point of licence, we expressed our unique selves.”

"'You do not appreciate, comrade, the mighty thing that we have done. The enemy was in occupation of this very ground that we stand upon. And now—thanks to the leadership of Comrade Napoleon—we have won every inch of it back again!'
'Then we have won back what we had before,' said Boxer.
“'hat is our victory,' said Squealer."

The Strait is open!

"Even in the farmhouse, it was said, Napoleon inhabited separate apartments from the others. He took his meals alone, with two dogs to wait upon him, and always ate from the Crown Derby dinner service which had been in the glass cupboard in the drawing-room. It was also announced that the gun would be fired every year on Napoleon’s birthday, as well as on the other two anniversaries."

"On Sunday mornings Squealer, holding down a long strip of paper with his trotter, would read out to them lists of figures proving that the production of every class of foodstuff had increased by two hundred percent, three hundred percent, or five hundred percent, as the case might be."

Medication costs are down 700, 800, in some cases even 1500% !