Ex Libris Kirkland is my entirely self-centered way to keep track of what I read, what I enjoy, and what I want to remember.
📓 Recent Notes 📓
I could take or leave the subject matter, I said, but every book I read about a writer struggling to write, agonizing over their novel, sure makes me feel like I could... write a novel? (despite lacking any evidence whatsoever and zero attempts to do so)
a note about Writers & Lovers
Finally picked up one of Erika's favorite writers; I think I had the sense that this was going to be too chick-lit for me. But E was right, King is a great writer. Really a delight to read, and paced superbly. I could take or leave the subject matter but the craft is so well done.
a note about Writers & Lovers
It's not a very satisfying mystery; you can deduce some problems or weird things in the floor plans, but all the mystery comes from the author just telling you things. And most of it is conjecture and hearsay, which invariably ends up being correct. I appreciate the innovation of the floor plan approach, but I think it fails by any of the standards by which I evaluate a mystery novel!
a note about Strange Houses
This is exactly what it says: a mystery / horror / etc that is told with a lot of floor plans. A really interesting combination of image and text, even though I am very much not into horror/murder books. It's pretty shallow, and walks you through the specifics, but a very interesting format. It really does show you a floor plan, and then talks through the weirdness about it. The author speaks directly to you, but then also excerpts conversations he's had with characters in a screenplay format. It's weird!
a note about Strange Houses
Duping this comment: I read this at the same time as RF Kuang's Katabasis, and both books feature a young woman protagonist who is sort of emotionally stupid. Like in the Katniss Everdeen model of 'I don't know when someone is trying to help me' and 'that guy I can't stand also hates me, he is definitely NOT in love with me'. I think it would have been less noticeable if I hadn't been reading both books and comparing them at the same time.
a note about The Fountain
📖 Recent Quotes 📖
Nearly every guy I've dated believed they should already be famous, believed that greatness was their destiny and they were already behind schedule. An early moment of intimacy often involved a confession of this sort: a childhood vision, teacher's prophecy, a genius IQ. At first, with my boyfriend in college, I believed it, too. Later, I thought I was just choosing delusional men. Now I understand it's how boys are raised to think, how they are lured into adulthood.
an excerpt from Writers & Lovers
[this is technically a spoiler but I'm quoting it to give a sense of the stiltedness and artifice here]
The Katabuchi family has been murdering people for generations. I don't know why, but it has become a tradition. Your sister had to take up that burden.
But if you take someone raised in a normal home and tell them, 'From now on, you're going to use a child to kill,' they wouldn't be able to do it. And so, the successor to the Katabuchi name has to be kept close to the family head from a young age and brainwashed into going along with their murderous ritual. Of course, this is all speculation.
Just then, there was a knock at the door of the meeting room, and a voice said, 'Pardon me, time is almost up.' I glanced down at my watch and saw it was already well after six. We concluded our discussion and got ready to leave.an excerpt from Strange Houses
[ on the appropriateness of giving or accepting gifts in a business context ] The gifts are offered as an investment by those whose business it is to get full return for their investments, and they are accepted by those who desire possession and whose greed outweighs their self-respect.
an excerpt from The Honeywood File
It occasionally happens that a builder or specialist or merchant, yielding to a feeling of good fellowship or personal regard or gratitude for some friendly act will, as an individual, send an architect the kind of gift that passes between convivial friends at Christmas, but all such ingenuousness has been rendered suspect by commercial enterprise, which is ready to falsify the purest motives of humanity at sixpence a time, and which fouls everything it touches.
an excerpt from The Honeywood File
A small margin for error is the due of the most exact human machinery.
an excerpt from The Honeywood File