Shannon > Recent Status Updates

"I don't get it any more than you do. Cameron Lusk hasn't said two words to me since he stopped Joss Duffy from pasting my eyelids shut in kindergarten."
"Joss Duffy tried to paste your eyelids shut in kindergarten?"
"Only that one time. So why—?"
"With actual paste?"
"Yes."
"Wouldn't it take a really long time to dry?"
I'd lost her.

"Okay, so I was wondering, if Cameron kidnaps you, kills you, then buries your lifeless body in a shallow grave in the desert where your remains lay decomposing for several decades until they're accidentally discovered by some guy on a journey to reawaken his spirit at the Salinas Pueblo Missions, can I have your iMac?"

Stepping back into the hall, I glanced around in search of the dark-headed boy, to no avail. Disappointment washed over me. For one thing, I wanted a better look. For another, I wanted a better look.

:D

"Glitch," Brooklyn said, a warning edge in her voice, "I will stab you in the face if you ever speak to me again."

I already love this girl.

I highlighted a bunch last night and ended up reading about 20%, but I'll update later. I just wanted to quickly say that I love that the cover actually matches up with the characters. (Her eyes are even the right color.) Pale, feisty, redheads FTW!

I haven't been able to read much over the last week but NetGalley approved me for this today and I WANT TO READ IT RIGHT NOW.

*ahem*

Sorry ... I just really, really like her books ...

I really like this book but it feels so LONG. I don't think I'm a slow read by any means, but I swear, if this was a print version it would feel like it's 600 pages.

Just read the first chapter where she works in a Walmart in Kalamazoo. I worked a lot of retail so nothing she brought up was new to me. It was interesting that she brought up "shift work disorder" - feeling tired and angry from working the late shift and not seeing the sun or being able to socialize. She's relocating to a Walmart closer to Detroit now, and I'm really curious to see which one ...

Finished the part on farming and it was really interesting. I like the way this author writes; it's almost like a novel instead of non-fiction. I think a lot of people would probably find it annoying that she constantly reminds readers that she's a white girl and not really poor though. And all the Mexican men want her and all the women want her to teach them English. Not sure if she's exaggerating or not.

I only read like, 5 pages of the ARC ... but my hardcover copy should be here today so I'll be switching to that. I think it needs to be photographed with my cat when it arrives. Yes, yes it does.

Ok, I was nowhere near ready for that. Those last two pages were brutal and I had to stop reading because of how hard I was crying. Not just tears rolling down; ugly scrunched-up face, snot-nosed, sobbing. Reminded me of A Monster Calls all over again.

Once, Mom came home from work and discovered that he had turned all the books around so that the bindings were against the wall and the pages faced out. He said it was calming not to have all those words floating around and "creating static." Mom made him turn them back. She said that it was too hard to find a book when she couldn't read the titles. Then she poured herself a big glass of wine.

In the morning, the cafeteria smells fried and sweet, like fish sticks and cookies. But after lunch, it's different. There's more kid sweat and garbage mixed in, I guess. Or maybe, it's just that, after lunch, the cafeteria doesn't have the smell of things to come. It's the smell of what has been.

Cover your eyes, Jay.

Food deserts are one result of this agnostic approach to food distribution, and as a city of 700,000 without a single national grocer, Detroit has become that problem's reluctant (and in some ways undeserving) poster child.

Ah, but both Whole Foods AND Meijer broke ground in Detroit. (ACTUAL Detroit - Meijer is on the corner of 8 Mile and Woodward and Whole Foods is by WSU.)

"It's kind of hard to eat healthy around here," said Vanessa, and we went for a walk to Burger King, where she got a Whopper and washed it down with seven half-and-half creamers, grabbed for free out of the bin and squirted, one by one, directly into her mouth.

D:

I'd grown resigned to this annoyingly intractable debate over my meals. Fancy food was for the rich; box meals were for the rest of us, and there was no point in making a fuss about it. This idea was so ingrained in me that I never even bothered to see how much it would cost to cook better meals from scratch.

I definitely think that's one of the main reasons people are so fat and unhealthy.

I checked out way too many books from the library again. Whenever I do that I always look at the giant stack and I want to read them all, right away, at the same time.

Ooh, this author grew up outside Flint.

This sounds really interesting ...

Finally finished this up and I have to say I was really disappointed. The magic and creatures were flat and throughout this whole story I couldn't help but feel something was missing, and I also really hated the rat sidekick. It just didn't have that special spark that Liesl and Po had, which is a shame.

This was like a Japanese Shakespearean tale. Sparsely written but deeply moving. I mourn for some of the characters that didn't make it to the end of the book and feel a touch of Takeo's rage for how things played out. The end was definitely full of tension and suspense and made up for the lackluster beginning. Definitely going to continue with this series.

"Am I going to be blessed with the pleasure of hearing your voice, or have you resolved to be silent for the duration of our journey?"
"I'm afraid your questions didn't merit a verbal response."
Dorian bowed low. "Then I apologize, my lady! How terrible it must be to condescend to answer! Next time, I'll try to think of something more stimulating to say."

Hehehe.

Here's hoping this doesn't end up like Shadow and Bone ...

Damn you, Kenji.

"No more crazy wenches!" Kristin said, as she always did. Yet somehow the next girl was usually even more insane. "So," she added. "How's your love life? I have reports from a very reliable source that you now have one."
"You mean Lottie," I said.
Our brother is not a reliable source of anything except amazingly terrible farts. And ridiculous gossip, apparently.

"When a guy says 'I'll call you,' it means they're not going to call you. It means they're dumping you."
"What?" Kit said. "I said I was going to call because I was going to call. Why would anyone say that if they weren't going to? That's completely insane! How do humans even function as a society?"

"When a guy assumes a girl wants to have sex with him on the second occasion they meet, we humans generally regard him as an enormous jerk! In fact, that goes for any guy assuming a girl wants to have sex with him anytime before she says, 'Yes, sex sounds terrific!'"
My mood was not improved by the realization that I'd just yelled "Sex sounds terrific" loud enough for everyone within shouting range to hear.