Chris > Recent Status Updates

"With age, many men come down with testosterone autism, the symptoms of which are a gradual decline in social intelligence and capacity for interpersonal communications, as well as a reduced ability to formulate thoughts. The Person beset by this Ailment becomes taciturn and appears to be lost in contemplation." and etc. This is fantastic.

Though the astrology is unbearable.

"...I am a great proponent of 'better'. In the absence of 'best'.
Which is how we live now."

These statements - so direct, but at the same time so circumspect. The economy of language is just striking in all that it communicates.

Sofa king good.

It's really singular, when you need to describe how your broader circumstances have deteriorated as a society - it's just so shameful and depressing and profound.

Something about this feels... safer.

There are so many unknowns in Gilead that are becoming known. The terrors and the oppression and the fear just seem to have fallen away.

This really doesn't feel like a sequel. It feels like something written in the same universe, from different perspectives, without such a heavy sense of consequence.

That being said, Testaments is exceeding my expectations thus far.

I am nervous about Testaments - I was very reluctant to read it after my more recent experiences with The Heart Goes Last and Maddaddam (both subjectively bad novels, in my opinion). It also feels like a sequel that just wasn't necessary. Handmaid's Tale has a PERFECT conclusion - I am skeptical that Testaments is really going to be... Erm. Supplemental? Additive? It feels like a bad idea.

We'll see shortly, eh.

"One of the gravestones in the cemetery near the earliest church has an anchor on it and an hourglass, and the words 'In Hope'.
"'In Hope'. Why did they put that above a dead person? Was it the corpse hoping, or those still alive?"

There is such a bruised, aching sadness to this novel.

God, it's just so visceral and so fucking devastating.

"The Guardians aren't real soldiers. They're used for routine policing and other menial functions... These two are very young... The young ones are often the most dangerous, the most fanatical, the jumpiest with their guns. They haven't yet learned about existence through time. You have to go slowly with them."

I'd love to see Atwood's taken on ICE here in Minneapolis. But she already addressed them, basically...

Re-read before I start The Testaments.

I've not read this since college - 2002 or 2003, I think? Absolutely fucking nuts how the world has descended into fascism since then.

I miss those days. I miss college, too.

Pretty slow build-up, but lots of fun, surprising stuff going on!

This is very, very silly. It feels a lot more like a return to Texasville than a sequel to When the Light Goes.

It's fun, but doesn't have much substance thus far.

I get the sense that, much like Carl and Donut themselves, Dinniman has a little more leeway to fuck about in this book.

It's a fantastic romp thus far - simply all of the catastrophic explosive delight I might possibly have asked for.

This is extremely slow. Possibly just relative to what I've been reading lately, but the pace is just crawling. None of the war and personal combat seem to occur in real time. Hrm.

Not to say that it's not good. It's Le Guin afterall. But it's still not my favorite thing ever.

It has this certain sense of inevitability and dark fatefulness. It's quite sad in that way.

But ugh, it's so fucking slow.

Uhhhhhh.

Wait a sec, wait. What the helllllll.

This is a journey right here.

Curious.

I'm starting to pick up a genuinely anticapitalist sentiment in this novel. Perhaps I'm late to the party, this being the third book and all. I've certainly been accused of being slow before.

Regardless. This gets the nod of approval. If anything - I'm even more in to it now.

Kill, kill, kill!

I have mixed feelings about this novel so far.

The premise is a little out there. The number of moral and ethical quandaries proposed by the ensuing narrative is a bit staggering.

And that whole pleasant, joke-y atmosphere dried up in Ghost Brigades. What a drastic change. There's still a boring jocularity to some of the characters (Lt. Cloud, Wilson).

This is a bit of a let-down. The inventiveness is absent. Etc.

This take on the United States is just so comically bad.

I didn't say it's unrealistic, mind you... but, it's so poorly written that it's difficult to consider it anything but satire.

I'm nearly ready to give up on this book. It's fairly awful.

The immediacy of absolutely fucking everything going entirely off the rails here is a bit ridiculous. This feels like one of those articles about how Milennials struggle to tie their shoes if mommy and daddy are on vacation.

Did the adults just fuck off to die without any cares at all? "Bye forever, kids - we're all dead, so have fun, IDGAF." Feels right for Boomers.

The absurdity is kind of peak.

Jee-zus, the review hype of this one...

I'm not very impressed thus far; the world-building is fine, but the characters are dull and cliche, and the writing leaves a lot to be desired. It's just not particularly refined, and the word repetition alone is tedious and awkward.

At ~500 pages in this first of a trilogy, I'm going to quit this one pretty hard if the pacing and plot don't rapidly improve.

All of 12 pages in to this fucking thing.

Chriiiiiiiist. This whole "whimsical clever tragedy porn masquerading as fiction," thing needs to cut it out - and the broke-ass pseudo self-help bullshit can fuck right off, too.

While we're at it, the writing can get fucked as well; use a goddamn semi-colon, for fuck's sake.

Won't finish. Relieved I thrifted this - and back to the thrift it goes!

The narrative has slowed considerably. Perhaps what's being addressed is of consequence, but gott damn is it taking some time.

But, this is one of those Southern lit things in my experience: things slow down, and then explosively violent events occur from nowhere.

Sonofabitch though, this part of the story is just ponderous and unnecessarily detailed.

Yowza - this really picks up quickly. The violence is already startling, and the economy of language is somehow elegant. I picked this up last night before going to bed - it had my heart racing a bit, and I'm still thinking about it.

Thus far? Impressive.

Fuck, this is so fucking bleak and dehumanizing.

"...we is all in the grip of crazy old men thinkin' they can still make history happen. History isn't going to happen anymore, Chuck."

Updike's prose is just so fucking poignant and always relevant.

Updike is toying with a lot of themes here. I'm not super comfortable with where this is going... it feels awfully meandering at the moment. And, erm. Transparently racist? Yeah, that.

Slow reading.

Haven't read any Faulkner for a few years - Sanctuary and Light in August have a lot of my love and admiration, so I'm always happy to return.

Absalom, Absalom has been on my to-read list for a spell. The insight in to Cormac McCarthy's Suttree is very curious - it may demand a re-read soon.

I'm enjoying this so much - it's exactly the heavy distraction I've needed while prepping my house for sale.

Reading tragically slowly lately - prepping to sell my house - but this is such a bizarre, shocking, entertaining little treat.

Fucking Harry Crews - a mad genius with a pen.

I'm really liking this one - PKD was such a gem. Brilliantly critical of government, capitalism, and war - Penultimate Truth is a bit scatterbrained, but poignant and direct.

Okay, so I don't think I was entirely aware of what a literal death slog I was signing up for.

I thought it might get tedious eventually - the endless prattle and rollcall of dead and dying men - but Simmons still has me hooked.

Everything and everyone seems to have hit this Point of Inevitable Doom and Futility, which feels a bit predictable. But that fucking Beast is still out there.

200+ pages to go? Whaaaat???

I might finish this someday now. Fuck's sakes, Mr. Simmons. Brevity!

In a terribly clean, civilized tongue - The Terror is savagely violent. The pacing isn't all that consistent, but - it's Dan Simmons. It's extremely well-crafted, and quite hard to put down.