Melani > Recent Status Updates

So many problems would be solved in this book with the introduction of polyamory. And look, I'm not saying it's for everyone one, and it could create new problems. But it's not even brought up as an option when Emma is so obviously polyamorous.

Brief mention of "the obesity epidemic" as a result of marketing selling us things we don't need telks me this author hasn't really investigated herself for her own biases that lead to cultish behavior. Despite being very well researched, I'm still left with the impression this is a shallow work and not quite as deep as the author wants it to be.

Hrmmm... I don't know. I think there are some good ideas here, but she gets too far over her skies and takes her metaphors too far beyond believability. I'm gonna need a lot more back-up for a lot of her claims. It's a good podcast or even essay, but I don't think she's got enough for a book. May DNF this one.

Just read a sentance that had me look up and say out loud, "A man wrote this book." I've been struggling with the book for a while now, but that whole passage just might have been the tipping point. Isolde is the most "woman written by a man" character I've come accross in a while, and I'm not sure I have the patience for that when the plot seems pretty blah.

Contemplaning DNF this one. I really do not like the love interest, she's kind of awful. That may be the point, to show saphic romance that's as toxic as popular hetero romances, but not something I want to read.

So I will finish, because I think there's room to reverse this, but I think that in a book about how powerless women were pre-Roe V Wade, and the things that teenage girls were subjected to when abortion wasn't an option, that using the horror archetype of female empowerment-witches scary because they're powerful women- as the villain to be defeated isn't the feminist message the author thinks it is.

I hate when a book tingles my "I don't think this author is familiar with the region he's writing" sense. I know very little about Oklahoma. Except that Osage county is a pretty flat region in the north/north east of the state. So telling me that the setting is in the southeastern part where there are mountains (true) but also calling it Osage county is pinging my "INCORRECT" sense. And yes, that impedes my enjoyment

I think this book just lost me with the chapter that tried to argue that Perseus should have just let his mom get raped by the king, cause it wouldn't have been that bad actually.

This was written by someone who has never dealt with nerve problems. Touch is such an important part of being human, but nowhere is it mentioned that the VIEPS(?idk, I'm audio) FEEL things. In fact there seems to be evidence that they don't. And Scalzi has no idea how fucking awful it is to not feel the world around you, or feel it in a decreased way.

I like the idea of Jayne Eyre in SPACE, but I'm not really sure importing 1830s social mores whole into the future works fully. Some of it, yes, but still having valets and maids? errrrrr not so much.

IDK 65ish. But I needed to get a summary from wikipedia because oh god it's still going, is it going to go for much longer? And the fact that the first half HALF of the book is the first sentence of the summary is just.... well, it's indicative of why I'm not a Pratchett fan.

I thought maybe having someone read it to me would make me like Pratchett's work. I'm still meh on the whole of it. I think it's because the line between funny and dumb is very fine and very dependent on the person and for me, it just goes over into eye-rollingly stupid too often. I get why people like this, I do, I just don't like it personally. I'll finish this audio book, but I think that's it for me and Discworld

Do I care a whit about Darth Maul? Not a single one. Did I get this solely to appreciate Sam Witwer's voice work? Yes, yes I did. Is said voice work worth it? 10000000% I think I would listen to just about any audio book he does, it's fabulous.

Kate's voice actor kind of grates, it's a fake kid voice that doesn't work. Also, Neil Gaiman, who I do normally like, is not the right person for the narrator here. This is going to sound weird, but he has the wrong voice for humor. It's especially noticeable when he reads next to Wil Wheaton. There are a couple of jokes that honestly I can hear in Wheaton's voice, but it doesn't work coming from Gaiman.

ARGH. You know how sometimes you get very frustrated with a book because so many problems would be solved if the characters just TALKED to each other. Well I'm there. BUT IT'S WORSE because the characters all have valid character driven reasons NOT to talk to each other and it's driving me batty. But like, in the BEST way.

I don't know why this is taking me so long to finish. I legit enjoy reading it, but for some reason it doesn't call me back to it when I put it down resulting in long periods where I'm not reading.

I keep needing to take breaks, long breaks, with this one. It's good, but it pulls no punches when it comes to what war is and does to people.

I really do not like the protagonist here. He is a legitimately awful person and I'm not really rooting for him to find love and happiness. It's funny cause when I think about it, the protagonist of Cerulean Sea wasn't really a great guy either. But his evil was passive, he did evil because he followed the rules and once he learned, he changed. This guy is ACTIVELY an awful person and I don't want to root for him.

It's amazing what will throw me out of an urban fantasy novel. This is a book that has a talking dog. But you mention giving said dog coffee and I screech, COFFEE IS POISON TO DOGS. Good grief, the reason chocolate is bad is the caffeine content, and coffee which has like SO much more is worse. So reading about your dog drinking coffee doesn't endear me to the protagonist because HE'S SLOWLY POISONING HIS DOG. UGH.

IDK how accurate that % is. I just want to make a quick note that this is NOT a good book for e-reading. Hard copy or audio, and even the audio gets confusing. But on my kindle you had to reach up, open the footnotes to get the annotations (which are the whole point of this book), and the asterisks for footnotes were hard to see (it took me like 3 chapters before I saw them.

The author speaks of the contradictions in Wilder's work, but it's harsher then that. She flat out lies or omits inconvenient truths to the worldview she's building in her writings (from the newspaper columns to her children's novels). And its a world view that keeps getting sold to Americans today, and bought hook line and sinker.

You can't say something portentous like "and the dead always kill" to close out a chapter and then two paragraphs into the next chapter talk about harmless ghosts. That's just bad writing. Which is it, do the dead always kill, or are there some ghosts that are harmless?

oof, this is giving rather amateurish writer vibes. Like it's fine, but there's some eyerolly stuff very early on. Gonna lower expectations waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay down.

This is less a biography and more a detailed history of the midwest during Laura's lifetime. It's absolutely fantastic though, and I think worth reading (well so far) even for people who aren't fans of the Little House books. So much of how the American character developed can be found in that first quarter of the book.

I don't know. Tis might end up being a DNF. I appreciate what Emrys is doing, I'm just not enjoying it.

..a magical girl who spoke to the river and lit a newspaper with magic. I appreciate the symbolism, I think? But I'm not sure how I feel about the symbolism replacing reality? IDK, I'm really conflicted.

..she added magical powers to the lives of real people. Neither one of these options really sits well with me. And I'm not quite sure why? I have enjoyed historically based fantasy in the past, but I think the addition of real people, or the replacement of real people is where I draw the line. There were real students who gave 16 demands to the Communist Government in Hungary in 1956. I do not think one of them was..

I'm starting to feel kind of weird about this one. It's fabulously written, and an interesting look at a part of history I'm unfamiliar with. However, I don't know that I like fantasy in my historical fiction. I don't know (and google isn't turning anything up) if the characters in this novel were real people- but the student revolt did happen- and that means either Locke replaced real people with her characters or..

hmmm. I should have known this wasn't going to be for me. I tend to prefer my Arthurian legends with magic and medieval weirdness. This has medieval weirdness, but it's trying too hard to be 'historical'. IT'S KING ARTHUR. FFS. Just give me a sword in the stone damnit. Also, the rapes and sexual assault tossed around like nothing, not great.

Have I read too many of McGuire's books or is she just telegraphing particularly hard here? It's already been well established that in this world that power comes from distanced traveled, it stands to reason that interdimensional travel would amplify that. SO WHAT IS HAPPENING TO ALICE'S SKINS? That is most definitely coming up before the end of Alice's story. And if it doesn't, I will be most disappointed in McGuire