Ms. Smartarse > Recent Status Updates

You know you've got a YA masteripece on your hands when:
- every bully is either fat, meaty or troll-like
- the teen-aged main character is quite literally a special snowflake with her mostly white hair and overall extreme paleness
- has a beloved mother who died among mysterious circumstances
... and that's just at the 4% mark (yes FOUR, not forty).

"Do you think every face is a mask, Billy?"
"Do you?"
"My deaf grandmother, as gentle and kind as any saint, still had her secrets. They were innocent, even charming secrets. Her mask was almost as transparent as glass - but she still wore one."

I've been wondering about the horror label, that people have attributed to the book. I think I get it now. I would even venture to say, that I'm hooked... or is that a terrible pun?

This was suprisingly... dull.

"How do you call among you the little mouse, the mouse that jumps?" Paul asked, remembering the pop-hop motion at Tuono Basin. He illustrated with one hand.
A chuckle sounded through the troop.
"We call that one muad'dib," Stilgar said.



... this is more or less where the 2021 movie ended.

Morino's Souvenir Photo - ***

"Icon venerators declare that icons are not used with the intent to worship the image itself, but rather to call to mind that which the image expresses."



Yes, that is the theory... *points at image*

Voice - ***

Grave - *** 1/2

Memory/Twins - ****

Dog - ****

Wrist-Cut - ****

So I've seen the 2021 movie, and now I have a whole host of questions about the world building. So far so good.

How to let oneself be glimpsed the polite way:
"Could you bring the mocha out?" asked my mother, who came to me in the kitchen. "And when you do, don't look at the cups but rather at a fixed point on the wall. Put the guests' cups down first, then your father's and mine, and immediately go back to the kitchen".

When I first fell in love, I wrote they guy a page-long e-mail, that ended with :"I burn and burn, and yet you're so hard to fire up".
His reply came promptly and unimaginatively: "We could get a drink sometime."

Incidentally, I've yet to find the right Hans. A Hans who'd be passionate and chivalrous enough to hold the car door for me on the first date (like in Turkey), a Hans with so-called spicy sauce. And Turkish men no longer dare to approach me.

Goth - ***

Verity set out a small lidden tin box that sugared violets had come in. "No one will buy this."
"That's where you're wrong," I said [...] "People will buy anything at jumble sales. At the Evacuated Children Charity Fair a woman bought a tree branch that had fallen on the table."

She stroked the wings of the wooden bird. A bird that's never flown before. It would fly now. With her.

My favorite don was Claude Jenkins, whose house was so messy it was sometimes impossible to open the front door, and who had arrived late for a meeting and apologized by saying, "My housekeeper has just died, but I've propped her up on a kitchen chair, and she'll be alright till I return."

I remember having taken part in a class observation at the [National University for Theatre and Cinematography] in my 2nd year of high school. When the teacher saw my gestures, she said to me: "Young man, you want to apply here? We have either boys or girls, and no in-betweens."

I've been feeling so guilty for not getting to this book sooner, but I can totally appreciate it differently now... not to mention laugh mirthlessly at the doctor who was hoping for a vaccine to be developed and administered to people in 2 weeks. 🥲

"I would've found Keir months ago, had I been able to hire Ethan Ransom, but he gave me some excuse about fighting an international conspiracy."
"From what I understand, he saved England," Merritt pointed out gently.
The duke waved away the comment like a bothersome gnat. "Someone's always plotting against England."

Fortunately, a woman of common sense always knew when to throw caution to the wind.

"How do you know I won't insult her virtue?" The Scotsman demanded in outrage.
Luke lifted his brows, looking mildly interested. "Are you going to?"
"No. But I could!"