Greg S > Recent Status Updates

Ugh. — “electric connection”

What a funny game of gamesmanship.

The wish-fulfillment is off the charts.

The anachronism is ridiculous but whatever

I recently took a frivolous quiz and it was right: I do enjoy enemy to lovers (but it must be a healthy read).

What a way to put it. — “Hence Sir Leicester yields up his family legs to the family disorder as if he held his name and fortune on that feudal tenure.”

Sometimes I tire of Dickens sexist condescension, even if it is well-intentioned.

Dickens loves his pitiful creatures. On Mrs. Blinder’s question, Mr. Casby would have no issues charging them rent, but he’s in a different Dickens story.

I like Dickens using these absurd characters to illustrate something absurd in the world (despite its lack of purpose in the plot).

Richard reminds me of the kids that go into college undecided. But to be frank, Mr. Dickens, that’s the job of a therapist not school. — “He had been eight years at a public school and had learnt, I understood, to make Latin verses…But I never heard that it had been anybody’s business to find out what his natural bent was, or where his failings lay, or to adapt any kind of knowledge to HIM.”

Chapter 12: I imagine Dickens got bored with himself here. He’s made this point and satire many times in his other books so now it’s more Lewis Carroll than Dickens with all the Lord Boodles, Goodles, and Joodles, followed by Lord Buffys, Cuffys and Juffy, Kuffy, Luffys. You could completely cut this tangent from the book.

chapter 10 was painfully descriptive. and I wanted to quit this book —“She believes the little drawing-room upstairs, always kept, as one may say, with its hair in papers and its pinafore on, to be the most elegant apartment in Christendom.” — But it ends with the best page I’ve ever read.

This book is best enjoyed not by reading, but by being read to, along with a warm cup of tea and an unhurried state of mind.— “Mr. Tulkinghorn has seen the entry, found it before the law-stationer, read it while the forefinger was coming down the hill.”

I think I love Victorian novels because they read like fantasy fiction at this point. You think to yourself, “this is wonderful world building!” and you have to remind yourself that, no, the world really was like this once. — “The middle-aged man in the pew knows scarcely more of the affairs of the peerage than any crossing-sweeper in Holborn.”

I was not expecting a ghost story from the English Civil War.

Ugh. — “…Rose is shyer than ever—and prettier.”

Ugh with the tired metaphor of young women being flowers.

Dear Dickens, this is the longest metaphor I’ve ever read. Also, who cares about pigeons?

I would like to note that it’s been 80 pages and I still don’t know what the problem of the story is. There’s plenty of strange happenings and mysteries, but everything seems fine to me.

Harold Skimpole sounds like a terrible manchild.

I’m disappointed in these long paragraphs of dull descriptions.

After reading so much Shakespeare, it’s strange to read a story with problems but without a scheme or a plan. This old lady seems more like Waiting for Godot.

I was wondering why Dickens had Richard, Ada, and Esther follow this random old lady.

It’s no surprise to see delightful descriptions by Dickens. There is a difference in pace and adjusting to 19th century story pacing gets some getting used to. Every description and action can’t be marvelous, and so patience is needed in certain places. But so far there is an intriguing mystery between Mr. Kenge, Miss Summerson, and the other two mysterious orphans whom have all been summoned to one place.

Well, the author has created a countdown clock, and a heist. I’m dreading this long predictable set up to the climax.

I’m not too excited about the two characters dipping into archetypes and creating a very uneven power structure. Sophie takes these dips into being a helpless church mouse, and Maddie into this bold teacher leader type.

I can’t help but notice that men are inventing these machines that will replace the work of these women. A machine that does the work of 100 women is probably not a great slogan for women.

Sophie-no-fear.

I find that nobody is ever poor in a romance book.

Lol. — “irresistible lust”