Batgrl (Book Data Kept Elsewhere) > Recent Status Updates

Canto XVI, 57
The sky grows dark as if a cloud were there
but the shadow is from arrows, dense overhead.
___
An example of a descriptive scene in few words.

Canto XVI, 50
...The blade seems not to stop
at anything - oak, leather, quilted cloth
are nothing. It is a cannical's butcher shop,
and Rinaldo is fearsome when he's extremely wroth.
Miscellaneous body parts that drop
onto the ground in such profesion are both
exhilarating and disgusting. The battle's
background music is grunts and loud death rattles.
____
It's another one of those gore moments...

When I first glanced at this I thought it was some kind of mashup of Jekyll and Hyde and Weir.



Of course I had no idea who Weir was. And now it's yet another To Read.

So when I first saw this I thought it was a mashup story about Jekyll and Hyde and Weir...


Note I'd not yet read Weir of Hermiston - but now it's on my list, now that I know of its existence.

Poe wrote an essay called The Philosophy of Furniture - wikipedia, essay itself - "The rage for glitter — because its idea has become as we before observed, confounded with that of magnificence in the abstract — has led us, also, to the exaggerated employment of mirrors."

On the plus side there are a lot of ebooks on sale today on Amazon - like some of Peter Ackroyd's - but on the minus side $2 off isn't really a sale in my book. Sorry publishers.

I should probably mention that the man transformed into the sofa can only become a man again when the two right people have had sex on him. Er, him as a sofa. Thank you Poe for introducing me to more weird literature. I am all amazed.

I was shadow reading these 3 stories when I had an omg moment - Poe references a writer, I looked up said writer, writer has written about a man who is transformed into a sofa and I had a big I MUST READ THAT! moment. Now to look all that up and pop it in the review...

Wuthering Heights quotes posted numerous times on tumblr as examples of true love - that I find disturbing: 1, 2, 3

If you haven't seen this on social media yet, you should really check out the epic post on Fore-Edge Book Paintings, thanks to Colleen Theisen, at the Special Collections & University Archives, University of Iowa. Photos, gifs, and video, and a secret art I'd never heard about before. Very cool.

I use E Reader IQ to keep track of Kindle sales, but I have learned a lot about ebook pricing. If you follow popular authors you learn how often their book prices are tweaked - not always huge sales, often just $2-3 off, which you wouldn't think would matter. Sometimes you also learn which days are suddenly SALE DAYS EVERYONE IS PRICE CHANGING. Doesn't always much much sense.

One of the most reassuring things about packing up your books is that so many things are now on Gutenberg that I don't need to worry about not being able to immediately access something. You know, just in case I suddenly get an itch to read something in particular. It's oddly comforting.

Note to self: in future if anyone asks why I never read any of the 50 Shades books just quote -"His eyebrows widen in surprise." - 50 Shades Darker

Really though, we should be so thankful for 50 Shades - think how much fun we've had reading all the humorous book reviews and satires! Comedy goldmine.

Random Gutenberg find: multiple volumes of Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States
From Interviews with Former Slaves. Ages ago when I was doing research on that I would have been so pleased to find all of them, online and easily accessible.

Er, NO, wait, re-twist to that twist end! Damn you book, which ending is it?!

NO WAY! ...It's a twist ending. Which I did not see coming because I was totally into Team Pike. Must add what this is later, under spoiler tag in the review...

Apparently Mike has been living with The Aura of Failure. And his Love Interest has sensed that presence hanging around him, because she can sense things like that. (Pause for more eyerolling.)

"Incredible! That guy hit the ball from a hundred yards. With a longbow!"

Grant: "He's odd. Weird. Ah never came across a pike or any other fish that could out-think me. But that one does. ...No amount of advice is goin' tae help ye tae catch him."
- Oh and because the pike ate his dog? Yeah, this means It's Personal. Grant needs to kill that fish.

Ulysses Grant: "The fish ye're on about has all the strengths of a typical pike, but he has habits and patterns that are strictly his own."
- And he's called Strongbow because he uses a bow and arrows. Yes really. And the pike ate his dog.

"God alone knows what you'll be up against. This creature attacks boats. It has the strength to rupture a hull and the anger to make it want to. If it attacks don't resort to subtlety. Your job is to kill it, but your primary duty is to keep it from harming yourselves."

So the bartender tells them he knows a local who's a pike expert. Whose name is Ulysses Grant, but his nickname is Strongbow. And he's a "big, dour Scotsman." (If I roll my eyes any more they'll detach and come out of my skull. Still, this REALLY needs to be a SyFy movie.)

"'The old scientific dilemma again. Theory refusing to mesh with fact. The bee, I'm told, can't fly. Not in theory.'
'Quite,' Wilmslow said. 'It's aerodynamically impossible...'
- I remember being told that. Debunked here. Also here.

After a giant pike mutilates and kills someone and then attacks a boat, it's completely normal for a journalist and The Scientist (we only get one) to hang out in a bar afterwards discussing things. Because in these situations journalists are usually the ones to Solve The Problem. Also the Scientist thinks it's weird that the pike is acting like a shark. And it may weigh more than previously supposed.

...and now the pike is attacking a boat. Because of course it would. It's probably bored because it hasn't had enough screen-time, er I mean pages. And good for it. Now if only the pike was able to use a rocket launcher it could take over the entire lake.

Mike, the dude with the "special antennae," is in love. That's all very well but unless his love interest is somehow the pike in disguise, I wish the two of them would hurry on and get this scene over with...

Hello unlikable character becoming more unlikable. Though we already know from the spoiler on the back of the book (it's always weird when books do that) that this person is Destined to Become Fish Food.

"...with a wider than average range of binocular vision, it could judge angles and distances with great accuracy. 'He makes his calculations very quickly, and they're seldom wrong. When those big yellow eyes focus on the prey, it's halfway to being dead.' "
- The pike will kill you - with math. And geometry. And teeth. Rawr.

"The creature was not simply a quarry to be hunted down and eliminated; it was an adversary, a powerful one, with as much cunning and skill as any hunter."

Ah ha, here we go. Our scientist feels it's all about "man's tampering with the environment":
"Pesticides, certain blends of oil, these and other things in sufficient concentration could trigger changes in the marine life. I'm speculating, of course, but I hope I've helped everyone appreciate that the changed state of this pike has a scientific explanation. ...No evil forces, no witchcraft."