Warwick Stubbs > Recent Status Updates

Just not getting into this book. I like the character of Jane, her attitude is great, but the writing style isn't really jumping out at me, and I really can't motivate myself to slog through any more without skim reading.

But no sooner had the Romans come into contact with the fleshpots of the East, [cooking] came to be regarded as a high art. [...] oysters did not lack for rivals in the culinary stakes. Scallops, fatted hares, the vulvas of sows, all came suddenly and wildly in vogue...

The Romans lacked a specific word for 'baby'... a child was never too young to be toughened up. ...boys would have their foreskins yanked to make them stretch. [Included was] a savage regime of dieting and cold baths. [...] It has been estimated that only two out of three children survived their first year, and that under 50% went on to reach puberty: 'If an infant dies in its cradle, its death should not be mourned'

Brilliantly done, except the confession. There was no build-up, no desperate or arrogant attempts at avoidance of responsibility.

But this book still has over 100 pages to go, despite the listed copy's 302 numbered pages.

What the hell REALLY happened to Rebecca? That is the question! Is it as Danvers has just explained, or is there something more sinister going on?

All this time the reader is completely caught up in the protagonist's thoughts and reflections about how out of place she is, but the detail is never fastidious, yet still draws one in with her fears and anxiety about never living up to the eponymous predecessor.

Good!

What can it mean? you ask. I answer not
For meaning, but myself must echo, What?
And tell it as I saw it on the spot.

The "Biography" conceit of the main character's time on the planet during and after disestablishment is wearing thin. Like Umberto Eco's The Island of the Day Before, I wish I was hearing it all directly from the main character. There feels like a lack of tension and mystery, and events happen without much plot driving.

So far, this ain't no action-packed blockbuster. It's all slow character-building so far, but at least I've made it to Part 2 still invested. I look forward to more wonders of the planet being described.

"The whelp went home, and went to bed. If he had had any sense of what he had done that night, and had been less of a whelp and more of a brother, he might have gone down to the ill-smelling river [and] gone to bed in it for good, and have curtained his head for ever with its filthy waters."
- P.169, last paragraph of 'The Whelp'

This is Dickens talking about one of his own creations. Disturbing.

Pretty meh so far. Characters are just as lively as ever, but often the book feels like it could do without Dicken's own voice intruding - there's a cynicism that almost feels snide in its commentary. And bloody hell, imagine marrying your daughter off to a man twenty years older as though that's going to be "good" for here.

"Gutenberg took a machine designed to get people drunk and turned it into an engine for mass communication."

"Perhaps the history of the errors of mankind, all things considered, is more valuable and interesting than that of their discoveries. Truth is uniform and narrow; it constantly exists, and does not seem to require so much an active energy, as a passive aptitude of soul in order to encounter it. But error is endlessly diversified." - Benjamin Franklin

"the phocomelus grimaced. He had a thin, flexible face, with a sharp nose and extremely white teeth, a face ideal for the emotion which he now showed our Eldon Blaine."

"When the first market towns emerged in Italy, they didn't magically create some higher-level group consciousness. They simply widened the pool of minds that could come up with and share good ideas. This is not the wisdom of the crowd, but the wisdom of someone in the crowd. It's not that the network itself is smart; it's that the individuals get smarter because they're connected to the network."
- pg. 58

One latest, solitary swallow flies
Across the sea, rough autumn-tempest tost,
Poor bird, shall it be lost?
Dropped down into this uncongenial sea.
With no kind eyes
To watch it while it dies,
Unguessed, uncared for, free:
Set free at last,
The short pang past,
In sleep, in death, in dreamless sleep locked fast.

- excerpt from 'Autumn'

"The trick to having good ideas is not to sit around in glorious isolation and try to think big thoughts. The trick is to get more parts on the table."

The book isn't slow - I've been traveling and living in a car, had a laptop and guitar stolen, finding work and working 40-50hr weeks to try to build bank balance up again. But each time I pick the book up and start reading, I never feel as though I've missed anything. Each character is alive with feelings and desires that drive the story on each page.

Where are the songs I used to know,
Where are the notes I used to sing?
I have forgotten everything
I used to know so long ago;
Summer has followed after spring;
Now autumn is so shrunk and sere
I scarcely think a sadder thing
Can be the winter of my year.

- The Key-note (p.293)

Toba erupted 74,000 years ago in a catastrophic blast a thousand times more powerful than the eruption of Mount Saint Helens. In the aftermath global temperatures dropped by 10°C and created a multi-year volcanic winter nearly ending the human species. Sometime between 70,000 & 80,000 years ago human population on the planet plummeted to just 5,000-10,000 human individuals.

Roman gladiators perfumed their bodies before battle. A Latin proverb states "Never think of leaving perfume or wine to your heir. Administer these to yourself and let him have your money."

"Even if the whole island disappears, this room will still be here," R said. His tone was even and calm, filled with love, as though he were reading an inscription engraved on a stone monument. "Don't we have all the memories preserved here in this room? The emerald, the map, the photograph, the harmonica, the novel - everything. This is the very bottom of the mind's swamp, the place where memories come to rest."

A compendium of interesting facts. Sometimes the paragraphs feel like lists written out in sentences, as there's rarely and actual narrative direction. But the reading is still quite enjoyable.