Did you know that sparrows are closely related to T Rex? (The Poke told me) (no pun intended) However logistically difficult shagging a T Rex might be a sparrow would be arguably harder (again, no pun. Really)
I am such an innocent in these things. I still side-eye a longstanding Mumsnetter with whom I was in a spin-off a million years ago, who spent her weekends being a "furry" These days (possibly menopause connection-of which in a mo') I can't even be done with doing it with a normal human man, let alone having to wear a costume and stand on a ladder.
@EineReiseDurchDieZeit and @RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie (or The Keanus, as I like to call you) fucking hated Silkworm even more than the others I reviewed with hatred and spitting bile. Don't think I finished it. I think I can do a RG maybe every 18 months or so. (I think with Silkworm it was the clumsy shoehorning of fetishes- dear God hope she's not reading this thread and the dinosaurs)
PS @RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie Kindle Unlimited- it's mainly shit. By definition I suppose. They're giving it away. It's not going to win a literary prize. A lot of it is "number 1 in a 39 book series featuring the detective Blandy McBlandface from Blandtown solving (singlehandedly) Blandcrime. The rest is self-published shit that Amazon can't even dare ask 99p for.
However much I hated Silkworm, it's not nearly as much as I hate the fact that Davina and co have succeeded in doing the polar opposite of what they intended. I'm sure the laudable goal was to highlight that hormonal shit happens, at all ages, and doesn't stop us from being valid members of society. Instead it's turned every woman over the age of about 22 into a "my left toe itched, am I peri?" utter fool, and every unpleasant woman over the age of 23 into a "but I'm menopausaaaaaal. And do not get me started on the fucking face cream in pink boxes. Whatever Davina (and everyone else on her bandwaggon, which, frankly, must be a bloody pantechnicon by now) wanted to do, what they've actually done, is set women back thirty years if not more. I'm not talking about HRT or medication, I'm talking about the whole "blame it on the hormones" thing, which is coming from both sexes.
@BaruFisher I also read A Room With a View on the back of the film, on the back of Tom Crabtree in Cosmpolitan (for those who remember) talking about "the answer to the everlasting why is yes, and yes, and yes" which I had on one of my kitchen cupboards and which, to no small degree contributed to me deciding to leave my secure and well-paid job in the civil service and come to Italy to live in poverty. Hmm. I am glad both Emma Thompson and Helena BC have moved on from "posh women being posh" though as they were both as irritating as fuck in the film.
Since we last spoke and you all got pervy, I've read:
23 Death Deserved Thomas Enger
Scandi noir, same fella that writes a lot of screen adaptations (and Lene Wisting is Easter Egged into a press conference for those who know her) (for those who don't, a cross between fucking Lucy niece of Scarpetta and Cully Barnaby- not quite as irritating as Lucy- though that would, admittedly be hard, but, like Cully, present and involved in far more violent crimes than would be normal) Anyway, this was fine, a nice Scandi homicidal police procedural. Bit of shoehorning in of red herrings, but a decent quick read. First in a series and I'll read the others if they come up at 99p.
Now reading two at once: Summerwater by Sarah Moss- I'll put my thoughts here now, as they aren't going to change. Sarah Moss writes very very well. It's her job (obviously) also as a teacher of writing. And herein lies the thing. I don't think her heart and soul are in any of it. I think she plays with language, and style, and takes a subject (lockdown, repressed and ultimately unhappy families etc) and runs with them to see what she can do with them stylistically. Her writing makes me feel that I'm looking down, from a great height, on something "technical". I don't know if that even makes sense. I don't think she believes in any of her characters, or situations. I like her writing, I'll continue to read her writing, but she doesn't convince me and I'm not sure she even wants to, which ultimately is fine.
Also reading Frostquake by Juliet Nicholson. Really enjoying this though it's not what I thought it would be. The (tenuous, as it turned out) premise is that 1962 was a shockingly bad and brutal winter in the UK and this fact engineered social change. What it actually is, is a social and political snapshot of that year and the ones following. The connection with the bad winter is, frankly, absent, but the rest of it is excellent.