Forrest > Recent Status Updates

Butterflies. I forget all about butterflies in winter. I need more butterflies and I need them now!

Olivia?!? I'm usually pretty good about figuring stuff out in a novel before it's revealed, but this one totally caught me by surprise.

Wha? Foyle? Burning man on the beach? What the??? Is this some kind of psychic manifestation? A future ghost? What???

I take back what I said earlier about this not making a good movie. The high-society scene was as good as or better than any high-society scene I've seen in any movie. I'd have Ron Perlman star in it.

Foyle>cyborg. That was . . . sudden.

Can anyone tell me why my review of Reggie Oliver's Mrs. Midnight just up and disappeared??? What the heck?

Brutal. Foyle is a sociopath, no doubt. Reading this generates feelings of excitement for the events mixed with disgust for the main character. Another reader-Rorshach test.

"The weather ruled all . . ." - Being a city-dweller now for some years (right on the wild edge of a major city), I do miss that connection, or at least a fulness of it, that one feels when one lives in the landscape. Some of this has to do with not having the time to wander like I did as a child, to feel the land in you.

Baker's zoo is something straight out of an Angela Carter story. Utter strangeness, and I love it! I want to jaunte there now!

Probably wouldn't make the best movie, since so much of it takes place in utter darkness. But as far as reading material, Bester gives one the sense of a suffocating void.

I don't know why, but the mental image of Foyle in Gouffre Martel is exactly the same, in my mind, as Nabakov's Invitation to a Beheading. Weird how we make those associations. Maybe it's easier for the brain to collate if it just maps on to itself?

Proceeding apace. Plot thickens. Foyle is ruthless and dogged. Curious to see if Presteign is equally as ruthless and dogged.

Stamped on the inside front cover of this used book:

William Howell
620 N. Oakhill
Janesville, WI
PLEASANT 2-0543
MAY--1961

Who was this? He owned and likely read this book 8 years before I was born. He might be older than my father, if he's still alive. Is he? My daughter and grandson live in Janesville. Do they ever see that address? Does he still live there? Is any of this relevant to the book? Maybe . . . maybe

Well, that is an intense beginning. And I don't mind the info-dump in the intro, since it is separated from the main body of the story (because I normally dislike too much info-dumping). An auspicious start!

I've been meaning to read this for a long, long time. I saw this at the local used book shop and snatched it up!

A most sympathetic view of madness. Not what I expected from a piece of writing from this period. It is touching, but not maudlin, decadent in its subject matter but more practical in its portrayal, and seething with existentialism but not buried in fatalism. An extremely interesting, surprising read.

Note to self: reference Aloha's excellent review for her awesome summation.

The trippiness of the second part of this pretty little novella is a nice contrast to the bland domesticity of the first.

Curse short lunch breaks! I'm so close to the end and the suspense is killing me. Augh!!!

Writers interested in giving a realist bent to post-apocalyptic fiction should read this chapter about Murray's war against the rats. There is grist for the mill here. Now I see why giant rats were a thing in Dungeons and Dragons.

This is far more interesting than Walden. Less philosophical and better-written. Next: The War on Rats. This should be entertaining!

The more I read, the more I am enjoying this mildly hallucinogenic story.

This life sounds tempting. If I was single, I would be very tempted by such an undertaking, risk and all.

Insanity? Pollen-induced hallucinations? Remote memories of a past life or a soul caught between states of existence? I cannot yet fathom. Nor can she. But it is beautiful, sad, and languid, whatever the source.

After all the ugliness (including Tamaru's latest actions, which took me by surprise) this is planning out to be a love story. It's quite an intriguing contrast, like coming out of winter into a lovely spring. But we're not done yet . . .

Wait a minute . . . was Kumi Adachi Tengo's reincarnated mother?!? I mean, it's just a theory I have but, if so . . . that's really, really interesting. Another unrevealed mystery.

I am so glad for the section on Aomame where we learn that she has a part in creating the story, in creating the world, through her own agency, even if she can't fully understand (nor can the reader) exactly how this happened. I don't always need all the whys and wherefores, like some readers, but I do like to know that the characters have agency, in this case the ultimate agency of forming the story itself.

Nothing quite like reading a short history of structuralism and post-structuralism while listening to John Coltrane. My brain was just in a different era and I've only now returned to 2019.

Interesting, but not absolutely compelling mix of biography and philosophical explication.

This has now become much more intriguing. Still, there6a danger that Judy becomes "domesticated" or portrayed as an indecisive ditz. I hope neither of those things happen. I like her too much as she is.