Shannon > Recent Status Updates

So, wait. They're saying the guy who was sleeping in the library before ended up going crazy and running out into the sun. But then, when the guy was showing the main character around the library he said the sleeper holds were just installed. It's starting to feel like someone didn't do a final pass-through to make sure all the little details added up. Plot holes are annoying.

Vampires wouldn't have freckles unless they were born human. Freckles are caused by exposure to the sun, and the sun kills the vamps in this book. And from what I gather, once a human is bit they die, they don't change. So, either Fukuda missed this detail or this chick is human and nobody noticed she has freckles which still seems like a missed detail.

Fukuda really likes the word "mercurial."

Also, why are they doing this Hunt if they only have one female? Why include a female at all? I would think they'd keep her as a broodmare.

Very interesting that in the small human village the lone female is the leader, and I'm curious to see why but also hoping that it's not to set her up as a perfect and gorgeous love interest.

So, yes, the elbows-jammed-into-armpits "making out" is a bit odd, but not as off-putting or stupid as I thought it sounded at first. I guess with all of the other weirdness already incorporated into the story I've just decided to go with the flow. This book kind of feels like a YA bizarro version of Daybreakers, albeit without the advanced technology.

Ah, I bet she's a human too.

And these are my numbers: 3 16 72 87.
I could care less.

-__- Why can't anyone use this expression correctly?

You live too long trying not to be something, eventually you wind up hating that thing.

When I pulled the lid off again I dropped the box and screamed.
I pointed at the floor. There, along with the spilled cereal, was a army of teeny-weeny, wiggling-squiggling, wormy-looking bugs and beetles trying to hide under the flakes of oatmeal.
Mother said, "Deza Malone, do you have any idea how much a box of oatmeal costs? Sweep that cereal back into the box this instant."

D:

The last thing in the bag was just like the mist. It was a lovely, soft blue gingham dress! I ran my hand over the dress. This was what it must feel like to ride the Maid of the Mist under the falls.
I pressed my face into the gingham and found out how new smelled.

This book is making me feel like an unappreciative and spoiled brat.

"Once upon a time ..."
If I could get away with it, that's how I'd begin every essay I write.
Those are the four best words to use when you start telling about yourself because anything that begins that way always, always finishes with another four words, "... they lived happily everafter."
And that's a good ending for any story.

Such a great book.

People feared snowstorms once. Hazel read about this all the time. Pioneers opened their front doors and saw they'd been entombed in snow overnight. They walked across malevolent swirling whiteness and did not know if they would survive. Nature can destroy us in a blink. We live on only at its pleasure.

She was so busy thinking about the one she needed to rescue she didn't think at all about the one she was leaving behind. She was supposed to take care of her mother, too. She was not supposed to be sipping honey tea with people who are just like the parents you think you are supposed to have. Her mother was what she had.

Jack believed in white witches and sleighs pulled by wolves, and in the world the trees obscured. He believed in palaces of ice and hearts to match. Hazel had, too. Hazel had believed in woodsmen and magic shoes and swanskins and the easy magic of a compass. She had believed in these things, but not anymore. And this is why she had to rescue Jack, even though he might not hear what she had to tell him.

She lay there, shaking. It was all too much, the monstrous woman and the monstrous fear. She could feel the woman's hand squeezing her, her nail in her cheek. Hazel was such a small, breakable thing.
She squeezed her eyes shut. For a moment, she imagined she was home in her own bed, the hum of her mom talking on the phone in the background. For once Hazel was fantasizing about the real world.

Last year her class had taken a field trip through a state park. There was a guide who'd taught them how to spot poison ivy and look for water and find shelter, and Hazel had been too busy dreaming of centaurs to pay attention. The only thing she remembered was the guide passing out whistles and showing everyone how to blow three times for an emergency signal. Hazel had been afraid they would scare off the centaurs.

A creature made an enchanted mirror. The mirror shattered in the sky.
You might be swimming in a lake and come upon a spot that is cold and murky, and it feels like you have swum through a ghost. You might be walking in a grassy field and find a hard bit of dirt where nothing grows. You might be in a forest and find yourself in a patch of silence, as if no birds dare sing there. This is where the splinters fell.

You have to think very carefully about whether you want to cross it, because once you do it's very hard to get back to the world you left behind. And sometimes you break a barrier that no one knew existed, and then everything you knew before crossing the line is gone.
But sometimes you have a friend to rescue. And so you take a deep breath and then step over the line and into the darkness ahead.

The house felt strange. Altered. Like someone had come in during the day and shrunk all the furniture just a tiny bit. Or she'd gone through a closet door and come out in the living room of her button-eyed Other Mother.

I loved Coraline too. : )

She opened up the new library book she'd brought for the bus ride and willed her thoughts to disappear in the pages. The girl in it was reading A Wrinkle in Time. She was best friends with a boy who lived in the apartment below. And then one day the boy stopped talking to her. Hazel closed the book.

Hey! I know that book! It's When You Reach Me.

There were so many real places in the world, and they had so much weight to them. There were front hallways and bus stops and the space on the other side of classroom doors. There were lonely big slides and microscopically out of line desks and lunch tables that survived gravity shifts. How could anyone ever make something up?

She considered pretending to be sick, but her mom would never buy it. Even if she were actually sick, her mother wouldn't believe her. She could be seriously ill, she could be doubled over with an exploded appendix, and her mother would say that sometimes we have to do hard things in life and that she had to face Jack eventually anyway, so she might as well do it with an exploded appendix.

"I believe that the world isn't always what we can see," he said. "I believe there are secrets in the woods. And I believe that goodness wins out." He gave Hazel a serious look. "So, if someone's changed overnight—by witch curse or poison apple or were-turtle—you have to show them what's good. You show them love. That works a surprising amount of the time. And if that doesn't save them, they're not worth saving."

I feel like Stacia Kane couldn't be more awesome and then she ends up posting something that proves me wrong.

He climbed into the sleigh and the woman appeared next to him. She took hold of the reins and looked down at him with a sly smile.
"Would you like some Turkish delight?" she asked.
"Huh?"
"Just a little joke," she said. "Let's go."

I love all of the literary references sprinkled throughout this book.

"We're going to the Briggses' tomorrow, remember? You had fun with Adelaide, didn't you?"
Hazel felt the tears come again, and she put her head in her hands.
"Oh, sweetie," her mom said, hugging her. "This happens. I'm so sorry it happened to you."
And Hazel could see that she was sorry. She meant everything she said. But her mom didn't know. She didn't really know Jack. Jack was her best friend.

:'(