Betsy > Recent Status Updates

So tempted to not finish this book. It’s problematic on a number of levels, including the portrayal of teenage girls all lusting over dirty middle-aged men, and almost all of the villains being people of color. Hoping the ending will be a welcome surprise, but I’m not counting on it.

LOVE. I need to start reading more Juvenile Fiction.

“I believe that plague was a great sign to us, and we refused to see it and take its meaning, and since then we have had war continuously.”

“I understand that joy is inappropriate these days and still, we feel what we feel.” ❤️

Reading a description of someone having parts of their intestines removed while I have the stomach flu was…unpleasant. But I only have myself to blame.

“I’m fun to watch from a distance in that I give you a sense of superiority.”

Relatable.

Love this: “The world seemed on the verge of some monumental change, and this change, whatever it was, hung over everyone around the globe like a new season no one had ever experienced, wedged somehow between winter and spring.”

Just a chapter and a half in, and Ove reminds me of several library patrons. Not in a good way.

This is such an amazing description of the feeling right before everything shut down and all hell broke lose with Covid, “But I had such a strange sensation as I looked around the soft-lighted patio and people were laughing as they ate together. It all seemed to be happening in an old photograph.”

It appears I have a mutual “ancestor trouble.” I too am a descendant of the Parsons family of Springfield Massachusetts, featured in Chapter 21. “I asked forgiveness of the land and its Native people, living and dead.” Also, support Indigenous organizations.

Relatable:
“Just the process of having my blood pressure checked makes my heart beat faster. So I knew that having a sonogram would make my heart really pound. Possibly resulting in a misdiagnosis, and then an emergency heart-lung transplant, which would fail.”

“If anything could lead to the downfall of public libraries, it would be a resistance to reckoning with truths. Continuing to adopt personal or institutional attitudes against discussions of safety concerns in the library will do nothing to improve libraries for the communities they serve or for the librarians who work within them.” 🙌

The racial stereotypes are cringeworthy.

“...Vorontsov made an effort to tell her that she should not be taking up arms against her husband and sovereign. Catherine’s response was to lead him onto a palace balcony and point to the cheering crowd below. ‘Deliver your message to them, sir,’ she said. ‘It is they who command here. I only obey.’” https://images.app.goo.gl/KM5iFjdzJ16...

“Have you heard of those thunder shirts for dogs to help them stay calm during loud storms? They should be made for people, to help us stay calm in situations when we have to listen to someone explain at great lengths why they are too busy to own a TV set.” YES.

Ruth Ware books are one of my guilty pleasures. Predictable, yes, but also utterly enjoyable (for me, anyway).

Uh oh - the main character just described her father as heroic for crossing a picket line. Not sure I’ll be able to finish this one...