Clare > Recent Status Updates

More T Kingfisher!

Read the Godzilla story, still have to tackle Godzilla Raids Again

Not the usual characters, but the familiar classic O'Brian style. I was giggling by the third page - the part about the salamanders. I'm only on chapter 3 but so far it's a lot of fun.

I'm such a sucker for Tana French's writing. The story is inching along, conversations take several pages, only a few days have passed in the story, and I'm sucking it down like room-temperature water on a hot day. The way she writes makes it so easy to get into the characters' heads and the sense of place; it's an effortless reading experience.

I love it when you start reading a new book and by the bottom of the first page there's a sentence so good it makes you snort.

The age difference in this book is gross. Fortunately it's not romantic at all - so far its a really funny buddy comedy/road trip + shenanigans in early 19th century england. The dialog is excellent. I wish more authors wrote period dialog with this attention to detail.

I think the author's premise is interesting and worth exploring, but so far this is pretty dull. Protagonist thinks words are important, protagonist notices edwardian society is sexist and classist...that's it so far. Still waiting for the "delightful" and "lyrical" parts from the book's official description. Also the complete lack of visual description is driving me nuts; there's no sense of time or place.

This cookbook is full of interesting ideas: fried lemons with pasta, seaweed sprinkles on fruit, panko crumbs fried with lemon, cauliflower chopped up and cooked like ground beef in a sauce. The ingredients are everyday items I have just never thought to cook in these ways. So far I've made the bean soup (delicious), the cauliflower pasta (even my picky teenager had 2 helpings) , and the weird seaweed sprinkles.

Listening to the audiobook Patrick Tull version for the 4th or 5th time. Funny dialog and characters, interesting historical settings, exciting action, natural science and military strategy ... just extremely entertaining.

Well written: creepy, and funny. The slow disintegration of marriage and sanity is a bit darker than I'm in the mood for, so I'm setting it aside for something more upbeat or exciting.

I'm a few chapters in and I really like it. The setting and characters - 1950s mexico, upper class - are unfamiliar, but the plot and setting are absolutely classic. References to The Yellow Wallpaper, Victorian novels, classic tropes from horror movies and video games....this is great fun.

Like The Girl With All the Gifts, this starts out great and then bogs down. I'm at the middle now and it's pretty slow going. The protagonist is interesting and sympathetic, and the supernatural(ish?) stuff is fun, but there's a lot of tedious detail about the doings of secondary characters. Same problem I had with TGWATG: great protagonist, deserved a more exciting story.

Like The Girl With All the Gifts, this starts out great and then bogs down. I'm at the middle now and it's pretty slow going. The protagonist is interesting and sympathetic, and the supernatural(ish?) stuff is fun, but there's a lot of detail about the doings of secondary characters that's just tedious. Same problem I had with TGWATG: great protagonist, deserved a more exciting story.

Murderbot goes to evil Hogwarts. Hilarity ensues.

An explosion and a sniper, and still so boring. Maybe if it was from the viewpoint of the mother I'd be more invested? The narrator is such a dull little girl.

Having a hard time getting into this book. There are some exciting events - assassination, helicopter attack, etc - but most of the characters are lifeless and the protagonist is boring. The depiction of living conditions for the different classes of people is well done.

Reading this to calm myself down after finishing I'm Thinking of Endung Things. It's a wonderful book, full of accidental poetry.