Amelia Halgren > Recent Status Updates

I kept losing my place reading this and now I need to return it to the library. It’s a decent world history but not quite what I was expecting based on the title.

I’m trying to track Yonah’s journey. So far I think his route is approximately:
- Toledo (hometown)
- Ciudad Real (auto de fé)
- crossing the Guadiana River
- Cordoba (a guess based on his fleeing *north* into the Sierra Morena foothills)
-small towns along the Portuguese border
- Salamanca (Iglesia de Saint Martin)
- Plasencia
- Grenada (via Seville? Because it’s south of Plasencia?)

This book is an excellent example why I follow a modified version of Nancy Pearl’s advice (read the first fifty pages until you’re over fifty) and try to always read to the 15% mark. This story really begins to pick up for me about page 60.

I’m very interested to read this but just listening to the audiobook means I miss out on the visual content that helps make everything comprehensible.

Aaack! This is intense! May be too much for me…

Living with her parents and complaining about taking out the garbage??? *side-eye*

“Simon…can’t fathom the idea of leaving at leaving at 11pm to see friends… his idea of entertainment is pouring himself a glass of sherry and catching up on the latest BBC documentary.”

Lol! Her stepfather (who is reading during these observations) sounds like my kind of guy!!!

Yeesh… I’m already turned off by the comments about Raj and Adnan who “are nice enough although they’ve never gone out for drinks after work and can’t accept a simple ‘Good Morning’ …without their faces turning beet-red,” and complaining about May who eats what sounds like Kimchi at her desk…

I wondered if I was reading too much into this but I notice other reviewers commenting upon it…

“You must realize that in-laws were designed by God to aid us in developing our character.”

🤣🤣🤣 I’m dead.

School lunches— “Mama would never let me eat that stuff.”

Is it just me or does that sound a bit judgmental?

🤦🏼‍♀️

I thought they were risking their lives by attempting to take the cores in the first place. After what just happened this seems stupid!

I don’t know if I’m going to make it. This feels like it’s going to turn on a miscommunication and I’m not happy about that. My interest is diminishing as the story progresses; too bad because there’s definitely some things I like here.

I read a criticism recently of white writers with black characters who never address black hair… well, this author at least succeeded there…

The Starbucks monsters are hilarious… being from the Starbucks hometown, I’m always amused how much vitriol New Yorkers have toward the chain. People here often have similar attitudes toward the now massive company, but at the same time many of us have a local “home” Starbucks where we probably know the baristas and will frequently run into friends and neighbors. Starbucks, the Seattle frenemy?

The white male characters in this book are all such blatant stereotypes that I suspect this is an artistic choice….?

Lol… “buttered child cannon.” 🤣

“…not that she really thinks it’s possible to make good art when you hate so many people, art requires empathy…”

Wow. Jemisin does an AMAZING job introducing each of her characters with a unique voice.

“What good does it do to be valuable if nobody values you?”

I’m reminded of an anecdote from *If God is Love Don’t Be a Jerk.* John Pavlovitz inadvertently started a twitter debate simply by declaring that a child on the other side of the world was just as valuable as the one sleeping in the next room. People got disappointingly defensive.

“There used to be a couple of great cities on this continent, but that was before Columbus fucked the indian shit up and we had to start over.”

😅