Abigail > Recent Status Updates

This book took a few wild turns. I really enjoyed the beginning and then it sort of teetered into a strange direction with the plants talking. It was interesting, but I don’t know that I will continue the series. We’ll see, Pax, we’ll see!

“But time never stops breathing, and I couldn’t refuse to sing, and death couldn’t stop the sunrise . . .”

“We cheered and drank—killers and proud of it.”

“Dualism lies at the core of reality.”

Ugh I think it’s near criminal to teach a whole generation that what they think doesn’t matter. You have 25-30 year olds that can’t think for themselves and feel like they have no say in their own community.

The “gift” center 😆

“We stopped Napoleon, we stopped Hitler, we can stop a killer houseplant. We will not fall to siege.” 😆

“I was a fool. This was no Earth war, just Darwinian struggle. The cycle of life always reuses the dead, and I had succeeded only in despoiling the graves.”

“The bittersweet scent of the air and hoots of the lizards did not quite feel like home, but Earth had long ago stopped feeling like home, too.”

Considering my last read wanted to see it’s future “rooted among the stars” I thought this an apt follow up. I know precious little about this past it takes place on another planet. Onward!

“I dreamed of doing great, heroic things, but all I really try to do is hide, vanish, make myself invisible.”
Jane Eyre all over again, poor girl.

This is hard to take. If she KNEW they had these kinds of vehicles how, HOW did she not plan for this? Arrogance. Ignorance. Both things she preaches against.

“We can,
Each of us,
Do the impossible
As long as we can convince ourselves
That it has been done before.”
- Earthseed: The Books of the Living

“I know when she talks about God, she doesn’t mean what I mean. I’m not sure that matters. If she stays with us, obeys ours rules, joins in our joys, sorrows, and celebrations, works alongside us, it doesn’t matter. And in future, when her son says ‘God’, I think he will mean what I mean.”
First time Earthseed has sounded culty to me 👀 I hear, “We don’t need you. Just your son.”

“Amid all this somehow, the United States of America suffered a major nonmilitary defeat. It lost no important war, yet it did not survive the [apocalypse].”

I loved the first book. I chewed through it within a few days. Excited to start this one and see how the story continues with her daughter. Onward!

This book had me in its grip most of the time. The prose is straight forward, smart, and agonizing (in a good way). I have a few things I find unbelievable. Regardless, 4.5 from 5. I will round up and shall be reading the next one. Thanks for the ride Butler!

“But cities were always dangerous. More gangs, more cops, more suspicious, nervous people with guns. You tiptoe through cities. You keep up a steady pace, keep your eyes open, and try to look both too intimidating to bother and invisible. Neat trick.”

There is a lot I want to comment, a lot that I would love to quote. I just can manage to tear myself away to do it. This is one hell of a terrible, disturbingly realistic, dystopian future.

Dystopian first person. Not the first or last I’ll read but I have heard excellent things about Butler. I’m excited to dig in. Onward!

This was a delightful read. I love the movie and luckily forgot a lot of the details so there were no huge differences. About to rewatch the movie and that will likely change my mind lol. Love this story!

“There’s something about the darkness that invites confidences, of course, or draws them forth without one realizing.”

“Sometimes I feel that the dead are more alive than the living, and that this life is just a preparation for another one, long gone by.”

He’s a better person than I am. I would have been utterly furious.

“As in life, it was the ones who were keenest to make themselves heard who invariably had the least to say.”

“None the less, there’s something peculiarly comforting in reading about events that have already happened. This as opposed to those that seem to hang, half-formed, above one’s head.”

Couldn’t agree more 🤓

Loved the movie, so have to read the book. If I could go back in time I might have gone in to archaeology. Onward!

I’m bowing out. I BARELY made it through Mrs. Dalloway that was a quarter of the length of this book. This is the same, Virginia Woolf, stream of consciousness, say every little thing on your mind prose the almost killed me. Thanks but no thanks!

“Is this because the room on the fourth floor is too small, because Charles Street is too narrow? Because one’s horizon must stretch till it takes in the world?”

The pressures of needing to be “worldly” and “cultured” amongst certain circles is ridiculous. The fact that we fall into it? More so.