Chris Bissette > Recent Status Updates

This just isn't doing it for me. Started well but it's become interminably dull. Feels like Let The Right One In but not as good. DNF.

Obsessed with the image of tying a policeman to a bear and throwing them in a canal

Incredibly early thoughts: I didn't expect this to be so funny.

Some of the best use of the second person I've ever read. Obsessed.

Halfway done and I love it. If I read a better SF novel than this in 2025 it will be a good year.

Really into this so far. It has the pace of a much shorter book which is really nice.

Really enjoying this but it's a book that demands you read it slowly. Each chapter is like a prose poem, and I find myself pausing to think about them after finishing. Definitely not a book you binge read.

Right now it's The Secret History by way of Mean Girls and I'm 100% on board.

Right now it's The Secret History by way of Mean Girls a and I'm 100% on board

The least Booker Prize longlist book I've ever read. Loving this so far.

Having one of those moments where I'm not really getting on with a very well-reviewed, universally acclaimed book. I'm struggling to separate the characters from one another and it's all a bit too flat for me. If it wasn't a novella and if I wasn't trying to read all of the Ursula K Le Guin prize shortlist I'd be thinking about DNFing around about now.

Matthias is meant to be hurrying back to Redwall to help with the ongoing siege but instead he's had a nap in the forest. He's so real for that.

"Rats are notoriously bad at bowmaking and the fletching of arrows" is one of the best sentences I've ever read

I feel like a basic task of historical fiction is to get basic details right, so when the main character talks about the London library she worked at and it turns out to be Chetham's I'm giving it the side eye. Not off to a good start here.

If I read the word "locomotive" one more time I may expire

"Thad had just shot a black bear out of season. It was a small yearling sow, and the rancid stink of it settled like a fog over the clearing where it died. The smell of a bear, Thad thought, had the flavour of nightmare about it."

Feeling a bit misled by the blurb of this book right now.

This is the worst-formatted epub I've ever encountered.

I'm enjoying this but I'm beginning to get a little bored, as the plot so far is essentially "Anna Maria gets exactly what she wants, feels a little remorseful about something, then continues to get what she wants". Hopefully there's something new coming soon.

This has done something I usually hate, which is introduce important new characters very late into the narrative, but it actually works here.