Echo > Recent Status Updates

AAAAGHGH

This book man. This book. Agh. Samuel my goat. Jane my goat. Holy hell. I could hear the gears clicking into place in my head. Man is this a slow read for me but I’ve seriously been enjoying all of it.

The incredible specificity of this book is really helping me out here

Every book girlie needs a dog ig

I picked up the book after a weekend of not reading it and forgot I was on the surgical tongue removal implied scene

50 pages in a day and I wasn’t even making time for it. This book is very easy to read in terms of writing. I had to stop because of emotional damages, and I skimmed the ending (I haven’t done that since I was in middle school) just so I could be sure there was a happy enough ending. Will keep reading though.

I picked this book up as an advance readers copy from the school library and then find out it’s about early colonialism and has a content warning for cannibalism

85% of the way through the book is when the plot remembers its supposed to happen. 85% of the way through a 512-page book. The romance subplot gets stalled for no reason until chapter 30 of 39, and the war plot gets a stalled by the romance subplot until chapter 35. This book is actually at least 75% useless filler.

Reading this in any other way than through an audiobook on 1.6X speed would be a veritable method of torture

The tiger balm is personal

The romance subplot is kicking in, but it’s actually sweet. So far, I’ve enjoyed the depictions of the surgical practices back in the day. Normally I’m not interested in historical fiction, but this one is engaging with its plot and characters.

I’d say Raskolnikov needs to get a grip, but he’s just murdered someone

I think classics are taking me over

The fuck
Called it

Bobak is my favorite character.

Never once did I think about how long this book was, although listening to the audiobook version at points definitely helps me get through it. I’m a fan of terrible protagonists when it’s done on purpose. It reads as dense as all other classics I’ve read, with sprawling paragraphs for descriptions and long monologues.

Gotta add, like… Eva, I know you’re going through a rough time, but that doesn’t give you cause to call every other woman a bitch and sleep with your ex even though you’re so broken up about your husband allegedly sleeping with someone else too? That’s like, textbook hypocrisy.

I’m reading this for the March 2023 “Together We Read” on Libby. So far the plot is definitely interesting— murder mystery, magic, and a mother’s mental health— but the mother in question, the titular protagonist Eva, is really hard for me to like. I’d have to get through the book to find out whether or not this is on purpose, but it doesn’t feel on purpose.