Lisa Eckstein > Recent Status Updates

Liking the dialogue, the characters we're getting to know, and the promise of creepiness!

Finally made it past the big reveals that the characters were contrivedly withholding.

Page turnery, for sure!

I'm enjoying the sensationalism of the novel, appropriate for depicting a family who live out their lives in a reality show carefully curated and manipulated for sensationalism and ratings.

Exciting and intense, and the plot is thickening!

A trio of Black women in 1922 fighting KKK who transform into literal monsters? Intriguing!

This remains a lot of fun, though a little slow in parts. I love the many characters on the team and the developing hijinks.

I put off starting the title novella until I had time to focus on it. Now I've read half, and it's just as good as all the shorter stories that precede it, but with the added benefit of more pages to sink into the story and characters!

"In his estimation, getting picked on wouldn't have been quite so bad if only his tormentors were a little more original. Really, was the well-placed bon mot too much to ask? Will someone not rid me of this meddlesome troglodyte, he heard his inner voice bemoan. Indeed! The parts of his day spent around his peer group made Boy Cory feel like he was trapped in a particularly awful after-school special."

I looked back over last year's reading, picked some favorites, and wrote about them on my blog!
https://www.lisaeckstein.com/2021/01/...

Loving these characters and can't wait to see where their worship of the devil/darkness/Emilio Estevez is going to take them.

Wow, "Anything Can Disappear" is an emotional ride, and a story that's going to stay with me.

"Why are you like this? the Daughter wanted to ask everyone involved, but she sensed on some level that the question would be hypocritical, that she too was like something and just didn't know what yet." From "Why Won't Women Just Say What They Want," a great story about apologies and non-apologies.

From "Alcatraz": "I'd invited a group of practical strangers to meet us on a boat, and now here we were--instant family, just add water.” Great writing, and great, complicated stories that keep me thoroughly engaged and often in suspense over what will develop next.

"Wednesday, our senior year would start. We would be at the top of the pecking order. We would command every table in the cafeteria. We wouldn't know the names of anyone beneath us. There was a new genre of teen movies built around senior year, stuff like Pretty in Pink and Some Kind of Wonderful. We would be the stars of our own lives. We would wallow in every glorious second of being the biggest fish in the pond."

In "Boys Go To Jupiter", a college student goes viral for casual racism, and the story unfolds her complicated past.

Like the characters in this novel, I was a Massachusetts high school student in 1989, and while I didn't play field hockey or engage in witchcraft, I am quite drawn in! (I might have been open to witchcraft for better volleyball skills.)

The second story, "Richard of York Gave Battle in Vain", is just as good as the first at threading together a whole bunch of elements in a way that feels completely natural. These stories are very alive and organic in a way I admire.

The collection starts strong with "Happily Ever After". Lyssa works in the gift shop at a landlocked replica of the Titanic, she has a difficult health decision to make, and these threads and others are woven together into a compelling narrative.

"I was absolutely great. It wasn't like this situation needed to get any more emotionally fraught, or anything. I said, 'I am functioning optimally.' (This was a line from Valorous Defenders, which is a great source for things humans and augmented humans think SecUnits say that SecUnits do not actually say.)" So much of this book is about feelings and how much trouble they are, and I love it!

I am so excited about all the pieces that are getting set up!

A beautiful, powerful book, strong on character, story, and language.

"The good thing about being a construct is that I can have a dramatic emotional breakdown while still running my background search to find the drone key commands."

"I’d watched family dramas before, but I’d never spent much time around human families before coming to Preservation. (Data suggests family dramas bear a less than 10 percent resemblance to actual human families, which is unsurprising and also a relief, considering all the murders. In the dramas, not Mensah’s family.)"

Wow, cool perspective shift, and I continue to enjoy how the different pieces of the story are being revealed.

Murderbot <3

I remain engrossed in this story, and I'm glad we're getting some different points in time to fill out what's happened.

This is certainly an old-fashioned story, with long, convoluted sentences and overwrought character reactions, but the slowly building creepiness holds up!

Really enjoying this, and pleased that we're getting different pieces of the story. Great, complicated characters and situations, and gorgeous writing!

A friend recommended this classic when we were discussing horror. Interesting so far!