Sasha > Recent Status Updates

I've just finished reading the first chapter, and I seem to be hyperventilating: It's so good, so detailed, so deliciously detailed. And the next 720 pages expand before me.

The homophobia is making me feel nauseous. This has been a vile, vile couple of pages.

It's not unlike what I've read of Ali Smith: Always the sense that the narrative is not anchored as firmly as I would like. (And then it pisses me off by launching into an extended, "Sometimes I feel like the internet" spiel. What.)

Minutes after telling myself I should set this aside because it'd only be regrettably sacrificed to my restlessness: I settled down and read it. A hundred and three very inebriating pages of it. Thank you, otherwise flaky mind.

Because long weekends are for reading books I've been "reading" forever (when not napping the day away), it's about damned time I returned to the Overlook Hotel.

We've been getting along, Queenan and I. His humor occasionally slogs toward Okay, Dad, I Get It territory, but for the most part, I'm very much liking his non-defense of peculiar-particular reading.

I'm always so glad for it, the distress that comes after finishing a pretty affecting—an almost always devastating—book.

I understand that I am a terrible Goodreads contact: I hardly ever cross-post reviews from the book blog, I don't rate my books because I am flaky that way, my shelving is completely self-serving, I blink dumbfoundedly when GR decides it likes to shit on all of us. Here's to the revolution. And shelves. And this status message. And sugar-glazed donuts too, donuts are the best. Right up there with bacon.

Why do I have work tomorrow.

There are surprises, with how Hill tells his story — certain narrative routes that I hardly ever see, would almost dismiss to be poor decisions. Can't quite put a finger on how things have gone for me so far. (Then again: Telling that I've made it this far.)

I admit to being curious about Joe Hill because of my Stephen King fuzzy feels. And then I just kept hearing more and more good things about him, and then I um accidentally bought this book a few days ago. Right. Going well so far: At page 20, we're already knee-deep in the premise. YAY FOR NOT WASTING TIME, MR. JOE.

I set it down a few months ago, because my brain refused to be in a biddable mood. While the habagat raged and the cups of coffee piled up on my desk (and the emptied cigarette packs bloomed in the trash bin), I was also [trying to find the calm for] reading about sadness. And there's also the more astounding logical leaps in the history of medicine, and how peculiar we tend to be in insisting on defining the body.

I ripped through GONE GIRL and SHARP OBJECTS, stayed up all night for them. There's no urgency to this one, though. I am, in fact, rather bored.

This is the third book of Flynn's that I've read. It really is admirable, how adept she is at creating loathsome excuses for human beings, no?

Breakthrough! I've figured out why I've been so resistant to this book. [TL;DR version: Bitterness re roblematic real-life application.] Aaaand with that knowledge, the reading's going smoother.

You've been in the black hole that is the Currently Reading pile since the start of May. I'm going to take you to bed now.

There are too many reasons for me not to read this book (among them: I'll have no more Rainbow Rowells left on my shelves), but what the bibliophilic heart yearns for, it gets.

Ahem. It's been a little over three months since I started this one. Until recently, it was in the stack beside my bed—aka The Bibliophilic Land of No Return Because There's Other Shit To Read & Life's Too Short Anyway. The NYRB Classics group has this up for the August read, so it has been rescued!

I've been reading romance novels almost exclusively the past couple of years—and even when I do venture into contemps, it's not as intensive (or as sprawling) as this one. But Phillips has a special place in my black, black heart. Even though I've forgotten the many ways she can put a heroine through hell and back. Jesus, SEP, lay off 'em a wee bit.

Two stories down, and I've realized how precarious this theme—as natural as it may appear—could be for the works anthologized: A Manila overly romanticized, a Manila too sheeny, or too gritty, a Manila that aims to be blow to your conscience. [Dare ye question the realism, lassie?]

True, Madame Hagedorn: Manila *is* the very definition of noir. How many iterations of this over the years? And why does it make sense every single time?

I've grown rather fond of how Lethem manages to be both rambly and erudite and funny and wickedly intelligent—even though I don't always agree with him. That essay on plagiarism! His piece on the top 5 depressed superheroes! That thing on Donald Sutherland's buttocks!

I am not prepared for the cruelties of Monday. So I'm sneak-reading this [and um listening to the PACIFIC RIM soundtrack] to get me through the day.

It's got the feel of those Chicken Soup for the Soul things I devoured when I was in my early teens, in the misguided notion they'd make me a credible human being. I need more science!

Odd to have a hero and a heroine years my junior. Which is, you know, saying a lot. Anyway: Enjoying their friendship so far, although – for reasons that will not be elaborated upon — there's a distressing familiarity [found relevance?] to it. (Yes, yes, overthinking this; off I go.)

I’m fairly certain it’s my first time reading Lethem, and I am excited for the whole awkward-erudite ramble he’s taken on [that preface was gold, love it]. We’ll see, we'll see, we'll see.

Switched editions — bought a copy for myself, as it had become excruciating, the struggle against marginalia. And this new edition is thinner, slighter — I am much closer to the book's close. I'm fighting the urge to reread the past 236 pages, and not just to delay the inevitable.

The past seventy-seven pages have really just been me going: "Oh, wait, I was supposed to find that bit funny."

"She was like a small animal that has popped into the world with the coming of spring." Awyiz, Midori, you little nut job, you at last.

Taking a break from Murakami. I'd been looking for this Beattie ever since it came out — and I chanced upon this at a secondhand shop a couple of days ago. Yay, then?