Batgrl (Book Data Kept Elsewhere) > Recent Status Updates

"With one train from the West came several hundred of the morbidly curious, bent on all the horrors which they could stomach." - disaster tourism.

"...because pestilence stalks in Johnstown, and the bloated, disfigured masses of flesh cannot be held much longer." - bodies were placed in many temporary areas, like the schoolhouse. A lot of the book is about bodies, their recovery, burial, worries about disease, etc.

"He closed with a bitter attack on the lazy Huns and Poles, who refused to aid in the work of relief and yet are begging and even stealing the provisions that are sent here to feed the sufferers." - hey look, it's not just the Hungarians, it's the Poles too this time. Has been mostly anti Hun so far.

Soldiers originally voluntered their services to Adjutant General Hastings to help with policing, protection from looters etc. - the Gen sent them away, apparently with rudeness. Now soldiers are ordered back in to help. Soldiers angry in that the need was there earlier as well as this pt days later. I'm now really wanting to read another (more reputable) source on this bit of military history.

Another reference to Hungarians and "outrages" - lots of stories about groups of this specific ethnicity and how they had been looting dead bodies. As this author is not great with the facts I wonder whether this group did indeed do a greater share of the looting or were already disliked locally.

"Men take queer souvenirs away sometimes. One came up the bank a short time ago with a skull and two leg bones, all blackened and burned by the fire." - judging from the previous chapters he's lucky no one shot him for looting.

"...swept from one end to the other as with the besom of destruction."

Whenever there's a sentence along these lines: "The destruction of life in this district was too awful to contemplate." - you know that in the next sentences/paragraphs the author will indeed continue to explain/discuss/contemplate/describe the deaths.

Here's an example of why I'm skimming: there are 6 furnaces. One paragraph is devoted to which ones make up a complete plant. Which have blast stoves, which have cylinder boilers. If words like bosh and stacks were defined earlier I missed it, but still, all very tedious.

Ch. 7 is all about the local steel industry. I sense I will be skimming a lot of this. Not that manufacture can't be interesting, if written well. Here its wildly dull.

Why is when I'm off traveling I suddenly wish I was able to organize some of my books at home? This mood doesn't hit me enough when I'm at home or the apt would be SO much neater. Currently I'm wishing I could add my film books to the GR shelves (most of them aren't in here).

"The terrible situation on the second day after the great disaster only intensifies the horror. As information becomes more full and accurate, it does not abate one tittle of the awful havoc." - I was with you until the word tittle. Now finding it hard to be serious.

"This is all a bit Innsmouth for my liking"

"Travis, if this were a film, who do you think would be the main character?"

"Everything's gotten so ironic lately I just don't know where I stand anymore. Travis, do you ever get the feeling you're just... going along with things? Without really thinking about what you want?" - yep, that pretty much sums up Travis.

random in travel update not related to this book but! so we taxi in and they let cell phones on but NO other devices. so I can't use my kindle, but can read the same thing on my kindle phone app. THIS is why flying makes us all confused/eyeroll/need chocolate or a stiff drink.

Just noticed that somehow GR has me as reading this since July. I only started reading it in Dec, though I put it in my bookshelves back then. Odd.

"Mother, as it happened, was extravagantly seasick throughout the voyage..." - I think everyone can imagine what the extravagant part entails. Also men who call their wives Mother have always creeped me out.

"In that flash of time, I realized as never before how complex a heart beat beneath that flowered waistcoat."

Actually it sounds like something out of a very cheesy monster movie: "The velvet caress of the skins was like a million lips on my naked body."

"William Pinkerton upheld the law, but in a highly personalized way, and he was not above bending the rules if circumstances or individuals required it. On such shifting sands was the rock of Victorian morality built." - Um, you don't build rocks?!

"Hillary Farrington, an enormous backwoods outlaw whose mother appeared to have mated with a grizzly bear, was restrained in a pair of custom-forged manacles..." Later, he learns that it's a bad thing to get caught under a boat's paddle wheels.

"When the talented, and plainly insane, train robber Oliver Curtis Perry stole $8000 by sawing through the side of a moving train, William [Pinkerton] made no secret of his awe. "There are few if any men who posses the daredevil courage to accomplish what this train robber did." "

Austen hattip!: "It is a truth universally acknowledged that a successful criminal in possession of a good fortune must be in need of a wife."

"He grew portly, and his mustache evolved in shapes ever more luxurious and rococo..." - immediately had to pause and imagine rococo mustaches. I immediately think Dr. Seussian type designs. Victorians did go a bit crazy with the facial hair.