A. > Recent Status Updates

Thrilling, not entirely believable shootout. Hijacking a car ride. Shiva Shpilman, one of Chabon’s best creations as a writer.

Interlude in Lakeside. Small-town life. The knitting circle. Quickscene in Las Vegas.

Reappearance of Bina.

End of Part I. Shadow kidnapped, then released. Interlude with Jacquel & Ibis. Mad Sweeney’s death. Mr Wednesday returns.

Like most nonfiction books, the last chapter is the best—meaning that instead of being putrid, it’s merely terrible.

“Hold steady! But also adapt!” Ugh. A curse on this book and everything it stands for.

Robbing a bank. The House on the Rock. Marvelous descriptions of the gods. Mister Nancy. Tiger balls. Community organizing.

The Boundary Maven. It’s not Emmanuel Lasker, it’s Mendel Szpilman, the potential Messiah.

This was the section on sex. Painful. What in the fuck does this have to do with leadership?

The prose is great. The plot is...just an excuse to explore Sitka?

End of Part II. Still hate this book, but grudgingly respect their wry observation that leadership is the art of disappointing people at a rate they can absorb.

Chicago. The fateful game(s) of checkers. Essie Tregowan. This book is officially getting good. It unfolds like a dream, with its inscrutable inner logic, as even Shadow points out.

Chabon is now filling in the backstory--how Sitka came to be, Landsman's extended family. A circuitous incorporation of chess into the elements he's juggling.

Opening chapter.

Creepy dream sequence. Conversation with Laura. Flashback to the first Viking massacre.

“Nickel Boys were fucked before, during, and after their time at the school, to characterize the general trajectory.”

Hate hate hate hate hate this book

This book makes me feel so dirty; like I’m whoring out my ability to read and I’m not even getting paid for it.

Oh, brother.

Elwood’s gone down. He’s being loaned out. He’s made friends with Turner. Feel like the whole point is that Nickel is a prison for kids.

Wondering how McCarthy decides which lyrical passage describing monotonous ash and devastation in a landscape goes where in the book.

Yes, still brilliant. But McCarthy has a very erratic policy on apostrophes and I would just like some consistency.