colleen the convivial curmudgeon > Recent Status Updates

I'm a little irked that this seems to be one of those books which sets up the trilogy instead of being a solid story in its own right...

It's pretty quick going, though I'm not exactly enraptured. I'm interested in the characters, and I'm enjoying the changing PoVs between the 2 mains, and the moral ambiguity... but I also feel like I'm still waiting for something to actually happen.

I have had a book on hold since June 2nd.

My library, unfortunately, only got 2 copies of said book.

One copy was due back July 28th, and has never been returned.

I would like to find that person and give them many paper cuts... 😠

"They never took an interest. It was just money. They didn't know how anything *worked*. And then suddenly they needed to know, and you had to use baby talk."

"What kind of man would put a known criminal in charge of a major branch of government? Apart from, say, the average voter."

"Why do you go away? So that you can come back. So that you can see the place you came from with new eyes and extra colours. And the people there see you differently, too. Coming back to where you started in not the same as never leaving."

"She was embarrassed, of course. But not for the obvious reason. It was for the other one, the little lesson that life sometimes rams home with a stick: you are not the only one watching the world, other people are also people, while you watch them they watch you, and they think about you while you think about them. The world isn't just about you."

This book has Neil Gaiman as a character. He was the Sight. At first he just seemed to have a bit of exposition, but now it seems like he's going to be important to the plot.
It's weird.

"Because the opposite of fascism isn't anarchy, it's theatre."

I have come to hate the word "respect".

Far too often it's used when what people really mean is "obey".

"Though any species on any dumb gobworld may develop sentience (the poor bastards), no government ever does."

Plodding along...

I don't hate it, but I also don't care nearly enough about the characters of the politics to feel like I want to be in for a 5 book series. Currently pondering the likelihood of it ending in a cliffhanger...

"All words are made up." ~ Thor Odinson

OMG, I can't believe they killed off Batman in Infinity War! o_O

Oh, and lest I forget - Marissia is the Prism's ROOM SLAVE whose loyalty he has somehow won (now details), and is only too happy to help him "release his stress" which, apparently, happens a lot...

But, yeah, I'm sure she's totally into you and it's not because *she's a fucking slave!*

So, last chapter we had the female elite guardswoman wake up with bruises and wounds from being in an explosion and then momentarily become fixated on the fact that she - *gasp* - has a PIMPLE to top it all off!

And now we have this: "For as pretty as she was... the most surprising thing about Marissia was how competent she was."

Really, Weeks? REALLY?!?!

Fuck you, too, dude.

It's definitely the hallmark of a well written book that it becomes much more enjoyable once you start skipping large swathes of description and narration...

"Only Lila stayed with Alucard and watched him translate the pirate's cipher, all the while thinking she had so much left to learn."

Well, fuck me. Lila finally admits she had shit to learn. O_O

70% in and so far the most interesting thing in this book has been a brief history of postage stamps...

"Charles Darwin has once pointed out that the fiercest competition for survival came from one's own tribe... To me it seemed a matter of elementary chemistry. I knew that a substance tends to be dissolved by solvents that are chemically similar to it."

No one likes us, no one like us, no one likes us, we don't care!
We're from Philly, fucking Philly, no one like us, we don't care!!!

Fun random fact: I like to dress thematically when I go to the movies or the theater. Also for holidays and other sundry events. ^_^

“Should haves and could haves are the poetry of regret.”

"And so, now, things were back in that uneasy, rather cool state where they spent most of their time, in the tiny little family that ran on dysfunctionality.
Maybe, she thought, that was a normal family state in any case."

"The bag of soggy tissue behind the eyes worked away independently of its owner. It took in information from the senses, and checked them against memory, and presented options. Sometimes the hidden parts of it even fought for control of the mouth! Humans weren't individuals, they were, each one, a committee!"

IN MY EXPERIENCE, SUSAN, WITHIN THEIR HEADS TOO MANY HUMANS SPEND A LOT OF TIME IN THE MIDDLE OF WARS THAT HAPPENED CENTURIES AGO.

I've always liked the 3 Musketeers - and by liked I mean I've liked the movies and shows and idea of the thing, though I've never read the book, so I decided to finally give it a go. I'm picking it up very sporadically, so it's slow going... My main impression is that I'm finding it very amusing, but not in ways I feel like I'm meant to. The writing/dialogue is just so silly, I can't take it seriously... o_O

Ok, I'm bailing on this

"Specificity wouldn't make it any truer, only more factual."

"They're called niceties, sir," I said. "People say them."
"They're stupid. And people are stupid." He paused at the front door. "Come to think of it, the word nice used to mean stupid, so I suppose that's apt."