Lisa Eckstein > Recent Status Updates

"New York had a shocking way of spiraling into chaos whenever met with precipitation, as though the entirety of its infrastructure was actually made of sugar, and the water triggered dissolution."

"None of the older Symphony members knew much about science, which was frankly maddening given how much time these people had had to look things up on the Internet before the world ended."

Nice to revisit the pieces of the Before story that the TV adaptation didn't have room for, or took in different directions.

Enjoying seeing signs of how the different situations are going to collide, and watching through my fingers for the crash!

Reading this again, after watching the excellent but rather different TV adaptation. Enjoying getting to the moments I remembered from the book that weren't part of the series. "No more Internet. No more social media, no more scrolling through litanies of dreams and nervous hopes and photographs of lunches, cries for help and expressions of contentment and relationship-status updates..."

"...the renters were almost always relations, someone in need of a reasonable place to lay their head while they finished school or got on their feet after a divorce or simply tried to make their way in a difficult world. As such, the block took on the nature of a long-running telenovela, with series regulars and guest stars, multigenerational feuds and intricate plot points."

Interested to see how many different POVs we're going to get and how this will all be structured.

Interested in this sister and brother, curious to see where their stories will go!

I love all the human connections in this story about a goddess.

"Later, years later, I would hear a song made of our meeting.... I was not surprised by the portrait of myself: the proud witch undone before the hero's sword, kneeling and begging for mercy. Humbling women seems to me a chief pastime of poets. As if there can be no story unless we crawl and weep."

I loved the chapters with Daedalus, and it's a shame that the mortal characters can get only a brief role in Circe's immortal life.

Compelling character and story, wonderful prose!

Off to a fascinating start, following Circe's childhood among Titans and gods and other names I recognize from mythology.

A lot that's hard to read about, but all well done, and I care deeply for these characters.

"I was being a mom. Only I was doing it as a buffalo mom--banging my head on my calf, trying to stomp out a place for her, butting her along whatever path I thought would keep her safe or get her somewhere. I was being awkward and aggravating. I had no finesse. But I had love. Always had."

A fascinating mix of small bookstore vignettes and wild supernatural events!

"Five days after Flora died, she was still coming to the bookstore." This book is full of so many excellent sentences, appropriately!

"I have no idea that in less than a week, Evelyn Hugo will finish her story, and I'll find out what this has all been about..." I'm not loving the setup of the character withholding the big secret simply to build suspense, but it's an entertaining enough story.

Glad to see the first piece revealed before getting dragged out way too long.

Interesting enough start, but I can already sort of see where it's going and I hope it's going to be more than that.

"slackbot
I searched for that on our Help Center. Perhaps one of these articles will help:
- And what rough beast
- Its hour come round at last
- Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?"

This book is so weirdly funny!

Ending my reading year with this quick, fun read, workplace comedy written in Slack messages.

While I have figured out some of the twists before they were revealed (brag, brag), that has not decreased my enjoyment.

This is great. I love all the book world insidery parts.

This opening is just as fun as I hoped. The premise certainly sets up a very high bar for a good payoff.

"My ethical vision degraded, or perhaps I'd been wearing the wrong moral prescription for so long that my mind's eyes had adjusted, and now without those scriptural glasses, I couldn't tell where good and bad ended and began."

Exciting developments! I so feel for the main character.

Well, that was long, too long I think, but the conclusions left me with much satisfaction and a few happy tears.

Great child narrator, yearning to understand things but having so little to go on.

Intriguing opening threads, and I'm eager to find out what happens to this child who is told he's the tenth human incarnation of Vishnu because of his blue skin.