Rue Baldry > Recent Status Updates

Lots of positives about this book for children, but the middle section, all Heracles’ trials, is told out of order for no reason I can see

Some great stuff in here, and some lists of heroes and places which must have been a delight when this was written but which have become totally tedious without context

This is great. I’ve been reading this gradually over the course of the year, as an occasional treat

I’ve managed to drag myself through the first 2 of the 9 stories. Lots of verbose lack of anything happening. All tell (& repeat a lot) and no show. I thought Poe was supposed to be a master of short stories. I might DNF

I’m enjoying the footnotes device, but unfortunately the asterisks are so tiny I have to keep stopping to scour the page to find out what word the footnote belongs to

The beginning of this book was interesting, engaging, unique. The middle is dragging, though

I am loving the ‘no names thing’. The ‘no chapters’ thing, not so much

It’s been a strange experience reading about deep Siberian winter during a scorching heatwave

This has been great so far, I’m just hoping the ending won’t let me down

Alexander’s perfection is getting close to ridiculous. Apparently his sweat didn’t stink like everyone else’s

“That seriality necessitates some principle of characterology seems important …”
I’m finding the academese as opaque as the obscure cultural references

I finally made it to chapter 4, which is all content which makes sense to me and in which I am interested! I love this chapter

“Oh plot developments. Plot developments, how badly we need you and yet how much we flee from your clanking boxcars. I don’t want to ride that train. I just want to sit and sing to myself.”

I mostly don’t understand what I’m reading. Some of it is too theoretically academic, lots is about pop culture with which I’m not familiar. Every so often I know what a paragraph means & it’s quite interesting

It’s only now that I’ve (finally) finished the 1st chapter that I discover that of the many words I didn’t understand in it, the one which it might have helped me the most to look up, was “juggalo”. I don’t think that would have entirely dispelled my constant feeling of not getting the point while reading, but it would have been a start

“female homosexual love was obviously less widespread than male, as it is in modern times.”
Really?

“The concept that strength, courage, knowledge and virtue can pass down from the older and more experienced to the younger and inexperienced, but also that the vigor of the young can be conveyed to the older through a close relationship, is primordial. Cannibalism in primitive societies rests on the same principle.”
Ridiculous book.

“It is logical to wonder today, whether women were indeed unhappy leading that particular style of life. The answer is quite obvious: this was the only kind of life an honourable woman could live, and what one doesn’t know one doesn’t miss!”

“The Greeks gave to their women the roles nature had prescribed to them - that of the mother and that of the courtesan. Nothing more, nothing less!”
Ancient Greek society was misogynistic, but Nikos Vrissimtzis is even more misogynistic

I am really hoping for a big twist because, as it stands, I don’t have any sympathy for anyone so I don’t care what happens to them and it is all rather tedious

This book is absolutely ridiculous. It’s mostly melodramatic, self-pitying justifications for sexual predation and selfish infidelities

I’m enjoying these stories far more than I expected to. A real treat, so I’m rationing myself and taking them one at a time

The tone of this highly overwrought. And I’ve just worked out that the thing which makes it most exhausting is that it’s mostly telling, not showing, with more analysis than action. I’m stressed out waiting for some actual story to happen

Beautifully written, of course, but there are too many too long lists, too many characters, too many too long documents quoted in full

No chapters as well as no paragraphs. Why can’t writers just make reading easy?

This book has quotation marks, which is nice. But no paragraphing, which is rather overwhelming