Birdie > Recent Status Updates

Alright, I'm finally reading this.

[...]as the dress cinched me in again, I thought of a soldier going to war. Different armor but the same idea.
Tonight I was taking down a man.

NICE.

"You look trashy."
"Well, you look jealous."

Second time reading and I still love this line.

Book 3 of my Selection re-read. I remember reading this one really quickly the first time around, so, fingers crossed for a second time?

[...]she had no idea how we had to work around the clock to make ends meets.

...meets? ...come on... proofreading... do... do your proofreading...

He shook his head, irritated, and stood. "Fine." He walked across the room in quick, angry strides. "I'll just go see what Kriss is doing."

This is so manipulative and shitty which is really bizarre because it seems totally out of character for Maxon, who has been a fairly good guy up until this point.

Holy shit. Best book I've read this year. This totally seems like an interconnected universe of books, which I am so down with.

I am absolutely flying through this book. It's the first I've read of Quinn's, and it's dark, original, and my kind of funny.

It is an avalanche of a laugh, a zephyr wind that sweeps me back with its warm surprise [...]

Uh, haha, what? That... that was... what?

We finish the rest of the pizza and enjoy a rousing round of Mock the Worst-Fitting Swimwear. Not even the grand prize winner, a nine months-pregnant woman in a string bikini, gets so much as a glance from Notebook Boy.

Um, maybe because he's a decent fucking human being?

Now onto the second book of my re-read. I remember that I really enjoyed this book the first time around.

I don't care about Ry.

Uh-huh.

But that doesn't stop me from obsessively re-creating his eyes in my memory, and trying to figure out if there's any sort of non-crazy way to take a picture of him.

There isn't, and you're clearly in insta-love.

So far, Isadora has been an insufferable brat who hates pretty much everything. Then, this dude looks up and suddenly she can't stop gushing about how amazing his eyes are.
I haven't seen insta-love this bad or cringe-filled in a long while.

I wasn't going to fall in love with the Prince Maxson. From what I'd seen on the Illéa Capital Report, I wouldn't even like the guy.

Snicker. This is why re-reads are obvious fun.

I'm doing a re-read of the Selection series because, a) I now own all of the books, and b) I think I can appreciate them a little more this time around.

So far, so good.

I gave up on doing a page by page read because it was too ridiculous. Oops.

Dear Lord, she's one of those, "I was born in the wrong time period" people!

"Thalia, we discussed this. You can't keep wearing old stuff like that." She points to my corduroy mini. "What's it made of, anyway?"
"A vintage natural fiber called cotton, thank you very much."

UGGGGGGGH. It's page eight and I hate her.

Thalia's grandmother on her mother's side is Vietnamese, and her grandfather on her mother's side is African American. It'd be some nice diversity, but there's this line--
I'm convinced there must be a humorless gene that comes sraight from my mother's Vietnamese side because Grandma Grace is the most serious woman I've ever met[...]'
And that line really rubs me the wrong way.

Terms like 'Silkese', 'Reenactor', 'the Relics', 'Synthamil', and 'Just-Like-Skin' are thrown at us on this page with reckless abandon. And that's just this page.
I know this is a dystopian, and I know that world building is hard, but this is ridiculous. This seems more like a cartoon than a book.

Christ, their personal computers-- that everyone has but only Thalia finds so annoying-- are legit called 'Gizmos'. Really? Gizmo? Like, "What's that gizmo?" "Oh, this? This is a Gizmo!"
It sounds like a lazy placeholder name Swain just decided to keep in the end.

Thalia's mother is a doctor. Apparently doctors don't touch people anymore; it's all machines now. Wouldn't that make them engineers rather than medical professionals?

This book doesn't have chapters, it has "parts", which go for about 100 something pages apiece. This is a huge pet-peeve of mine.

So it's a dystopian novel about a world witout food, and her name is Thalia Apple. Oh, pun-tastic.
Also, the prologue is a dream sequence that reads like a poorly directed avant-garde movie where she's trying to eat an apple (but does not know the word for it) but it falls out of a hole in her stomach.
This is not a good way to start a book.

Alright, as I write this status I am actually on page 85, but I have to go back and liveblog the beginning because this book is fifty shades of what the fuck. Okay? Okay.

I keeping (sic) running, pushing myself to move faster.

Keeping running? What?

I read Ryan's debut Nerve way back in January 2013. It's now January 2016 and I'm ready to tear into her second book.

HOLY SHIT.

Everyone so far seems evil and old fashioned, so I guess there's some sort of time shenannigan going on.