Michelle > Recent Status Updates

SIGH. I'd have utterly DNF'd this slog by now if it wasn't a)audiobook and b)my book club's pick. At more than halfway through I still DGAF about any of these people, each wrapped up in their own little world, doing their own little thing without regard to the others, sweating and pissing and fucking listlessly.

Actual literal shivers down my throat

Absolutely ZERO idea why this is in development hell, because it's easily one of the most cinematic stories I've read in a long time. Literally trying to cast this as I read.

BUCKLE UP science friends, because this book is neither an introduction to animal behavior nor to intersectional feminist theory. Both guns fully ablaze, we're starting from the assumption that you know the conceptual basics of each and are ready to proceed with a 300 level seminar. Come to geek out on animal sexual selection, stay to shout "amen sister" while listening to some fresh ideas being laid down.

First-person narratives, better or worse, are about spending a lot of time in the head of one person. It's a drag to for that person's mind to be full of a lot of aimless musings on what a drag life is.

That moment when you realize how sadly mediocre your past few reads have been because WOW this one is not.

I am utterly smitten. I want to hug this book.

Who the heck was it that recommended this book to me? Because it's a hearty hell yes. The blurb reads as a cute, sweet Hallmark movie, but it's written in that ineffably compelling way that has your eyes racing down the page and "just one more chapter"-ing your way through the whole time.

Since the book wasn't yet available for the library, I started the 2016 movie version with Charlie Hunnam and hooooboy it's real bad. Thankfully the book starts quite differently!

She's SITLL
SO
F'ING
STUPID.
To the point where I'm going to be annoyed that this heroine lives until the end.

SIGH. At what point do you determine you're hate-reading? As feared, there is no delicious fun in this banal re-tread of sordid "dead teen in a ditch" serial killer stories. The PhD shrink heroine could have been written smart and toughened by her childhood trauma, but nope! She's whiny, weak, and shaping up to be TSTL with a bit of non-consensual sex ick on the side. Whee!

Soooo is this just a rehash of Hannibal season 1 + Prodigal Son, only with a female protagonist? Here's hoping this remembers to be as deliciously fun as its overt references, and not just a slog through Very Serious Issues (tm).

WOW, reviews are with love it or hate it, so this should be interesting...

I simultaneously kinda love and kinda hate this book. The history and the setting and the idea are all so interesting... but wow I feel the plot tropes coming from a few miles away and sheesh that's annoying.

It's been literally years since a book threw me enough to earn a spot on the "OMG WTF" shelf, but at 50% in I'm shouting "oh JEEZUS!!" and startling the dogs.

The most auspicious of beginnings us an opening sentence that's an homage to Mary Renault

OMG laugh-out-loud hilarious. One of the best fish-out-of-water comedies in forever comes into being when our intrepid road-tripping brits wander into a midwest ren faire and desperately attempt to figure out the unifying theme.

So far, interesting only because this guy is famous. The rambling, loosely connected anecdotes of his childhood waver between vulnerable honesty and look-at-my-vocabulary pretension.

Fun science facts abound here, like the debunking of the theory that one hemisphere of your brain "dominates" the other (i.e., we are not all **either** right- or left-brained), and a study that shows when identical twins are raised separately they still have significant similarity in their major personality traits.

To love something isn't to put it on a pedestal of perfection, but to be honest, to examine and critique to know ALL of it, not just the pretty parts. "How much easier America would be to understand if it conformed simply to all our snootiest, snobbiest and most sneering expectations. Instead it does conform, but not simply. It conforms with ambiguity, contradiction and surprise. Maybe that is why I love it so."

Either the most deliciously charming thing I've read in ages... or utter trash. Absolutely unable to get past the 4th chapter without my own glass of champagne, proceed with caution/abandon.

"Testicles like twin Astrodomes" hahahaha

Amazing. The kind of beauty in words that has you just at the edge of tears... at only 2 chapters in.

That moment when you realize that it's not just fictional people, but also you're freaking out over made up physics on a made up plane of reality defined by mostly made up terminology... is there anything better than beautiful sci-fi?

The entire chapter detailing a litany of torture against the citizens of Timbuktu kinda dilutes the message that mere objects, no matter how antique, are important.

sweet baby monkeys, the narrator of this here audiobook is super annoying. diction is hyper-precise, with pauses mid-sentence that make Shatner's acting approach look naturalistic