Joey Anderson > Recent Status Updates

Always stellar. I love the wit, the characters’ paranoia, and the change of narrative perspective that causes the reader to view the world and/or reality in a different way.

So far, this episodic presents men trying to create life while they pursue women who outfox them unless the men find their better natures. Odd archaic language projects an otherworldliness.

Ultimately, a war novel, filled with physical conflict and political cynicism. Good for the cynic, but not for me.

Trouble in the Dorothea—Causabon marriage due to D.’s previous belief that her husband is a better man than he actually is and C.’s growing jealousy.

Something’s brewing, but I can’t tell what it is yet.

Leisurely and calm. No great highs, but no great lows.

The narrative begins to drag. Nothing new: the horror of the evil that men do continues. Something different needs to occur.

The stale argument that war is tragic and noble is justly refuted.

On Ada’s chapter: not only is her story moving, but the voice is soothing and the style lyrical. I’m completely engaged.

Civil War novels always make me sad. Right from the outset, I know Inman’s experience will be one of hardship and despair, but I hope that something will shine brightly even if it’s only for a moment.

The parallel stories of the spiders and the humans along with the rise and fall of civilizations is beginning to become tiresome. Something new has to happen.

Maybe it is just me, but the novel still meanders. The only element that holds it together is the narrative voice.

A kaleidoscopic opening as the narrator glides from place to place, person to person, and comment to comment without seeming rhyme or reason. But you know there is. It is a manner in which we come to know his "search."

“Hector hated Freddy with the deadly hate of a man who been made a fool of by a petty gangster, and who was now, twenty-four hours later, being made a fool of by a child.”

Still marvelous. No lagging at all.

The spiders rise up the evolutionary ladder; the humans devolve.

Charming. Witty. And any writer who can combine mathematics, coconut chiffon pie, and a role in Shakespeare’s The Tempest into a single character is nothing short of genius. And that doesn’t even consider the Floating Island (chocolate chiffon pie).

The spiders have attained the intelligent ability to send messages to another species: a digitized megalomanical human. Kern tells them she is their God.

Great fun as the characters prepare to produce “The Tempest.” Thoroughly entertaining, but I know a tempest-tost is coming.

Great fun as the characters prepare to produce “The Tempest.” Thoroughly entertaining, but I know tempest-tost is cming

We always seem to get used to the prison. It isn’t even hopelessness since that emotion implies that hope does exist. Hope just doesn’t exist as if it were the thirteenth floor in a twelve story building.

“Women can’t hold property anymore, she said. It’s a new law. Turned on the TV today?”

When civil rights end for one group, they will eventually end for all.

I hate to admit this, but I’m losing interest. The novel is weak on plot: very little happens. No contrast, very little conflict. Just a series of incidents.