Laura > Recent Status Updates

I feel like I have been reading this forever. It doesn't need all these stories, although some of them are quite good.

I don't read or enjoy short stories for the most part. But I have been pulled into these, one after another. Maybe it's the experience of covid that makes this hit so hard. This is really an amazing collection so far.

I am roughly two-thirds of the way through this very long book, and I am really enjoying it. Old-style horror about demonic possession that just keeps getting weirder and weirder. Not everyone will have the patience for it, but I amhaving fun.

This is a very complicated, dense text. On the surface, very little happens. And that's the challenge. I know only the outlines of early 19th century intellectual trends, which you need to at least recognize, otherwise this just seems like a book about some annoying men walking around pontificating and regularly erupting into the most horrifying misogyny. This could all go so many ways still.

This book is really, really good. Compelling characters in an incredible situation. I even like the dual timelines, which I usually hate with a fiery passion.

Been feeling a bit under the weather so it's hard to concentrate. The books in this series are perfect for a time like this.

I read this not long after it first came out in the early 90s and remember really enjoying it. I've been meaning to get to it again for quite a while. See what difference thirty years makes.

This is a re-read. I swallowed it whole when it came out. I remember liking it, but I don't remember a thing about it now. Typical.

Something light while my brain chews over the book I just finished.

I am just gulping down these old country house murders. I rarely solve the mystery, but that isn't even the point. The characters, the elaborate plots - that's what I love!

Time for a reread. It's been years.

This book can end anytime now. I am so tired of the romance portion of this tale. Fifty percent too much emotional torture and mooning around after each other. The author's take on vampires is excellent, however. This book needs more vampires and far less interpersonal dramarama.

Another one which is taking too long to get anwhere. I am enjoying the satirical elements of the story but they are working hard to cover up a distinct lack of plot and tension. Everything which happens seems to be only in service of the narrator's cynical point of view, but I have hopes that something which hasn't been telegraphed will happen soon.

This is kind of a slog. It moves from one ultraviolet atrocity to the next in such a way that they just bore me. It's taking too long to get anywhere in this story, just different people moving across the landscape in and around this one town that will be where the final showdown takes place at some point, I presume. If I can make it that far.

This book is crazy. Relentless. Exhausting. I really like it a lot, but I need a break because I think it's about to go quite around the bend again. Hitchcockian set-up of an average guy, clueless in the extreme, who gets caught in a hallucinatory series of events, presumably because of a book he read. This book. Wah! No real idea what's going on yet. Him or me, both.

I can feel my eyes bugging out of my head while I read. The most suspense in anything I've read recently, because the characters are all so perfectly drawn.

This is really slow-moving. I am not sure I am going to finish it. The plot seems mechanical and I don't care much for the characters so far. I am not a huge fan of the dual timeline trope, either. It will depend on how much I want to solve the mysteries, I guess. If I get too bored, I will just read the last chapter, which I almost never do.