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The last 50 pages is an in-depth account of social practices of the Typee with all the compassion that Melville can give, denouncing colonialism while hedging his criticism of missionary culture—absolution is commendable, but he was despairing of the exploitation of the South Pacific Islanders that the missionaries committed, purportedly for the benefit of the natives.

Tommo getting the tribe to relax the taboo on women in canoes for Fayaway and Marnoo’s appearance as one of the taboo couriers gives you a broader sense of the culture of the Marquesas. The birth of the pop-gun and its proliferation among the natives is one of the more amusing anecdotes, if a bit eerie considering how its invention relates to colonialism.

Melville getting only a slice of understanding as to the motives of the tribes of the Marquesas is, well, as much as a full anthropological detailing would be out of place in this novel, I’m missing it. The intro sort of gives you a better idea of the motives behind why the Typee are assisting “Tommo” and Toby, rather than doing whatever they expect the “savages” to do to them.

It’s interesting to read the intro and see the critique of Melville as pansexual, with Typee being something of his autobiographical exploration of his own sexuality among the natives of the Marquesas as well as being a narrative on how colonialism ruins this community that Melville the author was finding himself in, the flaw (the human element) being that Melville was not able to commit himself to the Typee.

So close to the end!! Lots of side-plots being wrapped up. Poirot is match-maker per usual. I’m not entirely sure who the murderer is supposed to be, though, unless it’s… Cornelia, because Linette’s father ruined hers in business? Maybe??? I’m still not convinced that the fight in the saloon wasn’t to set up an alibi.

well now idk. Was joanna working together with Tim to steal the pearls? Is Louise Joanna? Or, uh, WAS she? I assume we’ll find out, lol.

Colonel Race!!!

My gut instinct is that Johanna shot Linnette, the scene in the saloon was meant to establish an alibi for two of the conspirators, and Jacqueline was upset because she wasn’t trying to shoot Doyle as badly as she did, broke leg and all. But there are a bunch of other interesting motives!!! And Christie does such a great job of laying things out and then calling back to them.

Hey, we are spending a lot of time building up interpersonal relationships before the murder! That’s pretty cool. But, where’s Joanna?? I assume that her appearance will be a major plot twist considering the economy of characters in books like these. Is she… in disguise?? Also LOL at the communist ideologue.

At this point, there are a huge number of possible suspects but it’s apparently obvious that Linnette is going to be the victim. The forerunners is that this is some sort of romantic scam between Simon and Jacqueline to get the fortune to pass to Simon, but there are also personnel from American as well as English banks with a vested interest, and other satellite socialites with something to be revealed.

Okay, I’m desperately confused as to what I thought, and what the early parts of this book, have lead me to believe. Hopefully Crichton ties it all together at the finale; I’m sure that he will.

It’s a thriller! And it moves pretty fast, in spite of how much of it is bogged down with scientific concepts and information. It’s got to move VERY fast in the next 90 pages considering that we barely know anything about the bacteria except that it apparently now eats human tissues or compounds similar to them, at least as shown in the crash scene.

Like Stephen King, Crichton pulls back just enough of the curtain to tell you what you’re ultimately going to find out. Also, HOLY WOW with this odd man hypothesis, LOL. single men are the best-equipped to make rational command decisions? GAG ME

The initial investigation of the town is pretty spooky between people who suddenly died from what appears to be the complete clotting of their circulatory systems to the host of folks who elected to commit suicide in the wake of the mass dying. If there’s one point of emotional manipulation that will get me it’s helpless babies and Crichton scores one over on me here with one of the survivors.

So, this is a book about a plague, ostensibly from space. It had some spooky overtones thus far but it’s an interesting perspective considering the only other real plague book that I’ve read, The Stand. The differences in the two tones are clear; the extent to which Bradbury has influenced King is clearly evident when juxtaposed with Crichton’s informative but tight, tense writing.

The bachelor arriving and besting Don Quixote as he had intended to at the beginning of the second book is obvious but it happens so abruptly that it shocks the entire novel. There’s a shadow of the interwoven side stories here as the moor escape narrative reappears but with some twists in the telling.

The whole episode of the Duke and Duchess ends a lot better than I was assuming, especially given how poorly some of the practical jokes were on two basically good hearted character. The novel has now sort of settled back into its groove of the wandering knight and his squire meeting mishaps as well as people who have read the book that tells his personal history (and bagging on the unauthorized first sequel)

As fun as the Duke and the duchess indulging in the Quixotic antics is, there’s a certain mean-spiritedness about the whole thing, but it’s a complex tapestry as Don Quixote and Sancho are simultaneously being made fun of while at the same time the people making sport of them are basically roleplaying along with knight errantry and the governorship as a chance to have some adventure in their lives.

There is a hilarious farce where the two are blindfolded on a wooden horse and get a sensory experience to fool them into thinking they are flying through outer space, and it turns out the horse is loaded with fireworks???, and people be constantly testing Don Quixote and Sancho’s reasoning, amazed at both their wisdom and their foolishness.

Don Quixote and Sancho Panza stumble upon a wealthy noble couple who indulge in the pair’s insanity for their own amusement—they’ve read and loved the book—and are in the process of manufacturing knight errant adventures. So far they have given Sancho a ridiculous task to free Dulcinea from enchantment and are now gearing up for some new bizarre side story.

Some wild and weird stuff in this stretch of prose. Don Quixote lowers himself into a cave and has a hallucinatory fantasy regarding a well-known Spanish legend; Don Quixote destroys a puppet show run by a convict who he freed in the first volume; there’s an absurd story regarding a village known for being able to bray with the best of them; and Don Quixote steals a boat and almost gets chewed up by watermills,

there is a tone change with the beginning of this book insofar as there is less bawdy comedy with regard to Don Quixote’s misadventures, and he is on a track of being in the right place and at the right time where circumstance backs up his efforts at knight errantry and while most people realize his madness for being a knight they see that he is otherwise crammed full of sage wisdom and intelligent advice.

I kind of spoiled myself on the plot twist of the Knight of the Mirrors, but since Cervantes isn’t keeping it up for the whole book, I’m less disappointed. The satire and adventure of this half of the novel has been a bit more focused thus far, at least the last fifty pages or so (the first 50 had that critique of the first half of the book). Sancho seems to be a wiser character this time around.

The first fifty pages of the second book contain a bit where Don Quixote finds out that he is a character in the previous book, and that the book exists, and that people in their world have read it, and includes a lot of positive and negative criticisms of the novel at the time, going so far as to address plot holes that were pointed out over the intervening 15 years between the two publications. It’s awesome.

idk what I was expecting but this has been a very different book than I was imagining. You have very “real” romantic dramas going on around Don Quixote, with Shakespearean twists and revelations, and then the title character and his squire are bumbling around like comedic relief, though their random walk has provided the solution to some of these dramas, just not by any intelligible motivation.