Lillelara

Okay, it´s prediction time:

"Rihannon, listen, I can promise you this - this is absolutely cast iron. I swear on - on my grave, I am never, ever going to sleep with your father."

Because.

It was on the tip of my tongue.

I am never, never going to sleep with your father because -

Thank god I´m almost done with this book.

It was hard to believe that I had ever mistaken it for a regular garden. Now that I knew its history, the warning signs were everywhere. Fat, black laurel berries, the thin needles of yew, straggling patches of self-seeded foxglove, clumps of nettles, which I had taken to be weeds when I first entered the garden but which, I now saw, bore a rusted metal tag dug deep into the earth, labelled Urtica dioica.

 

[Source]

Put a name tag with its latin name in front of a nettle and all of a sudden it becomes the most deadly plant in the poison garden. Or Rowan is such a doofus that she doesn´t know what a nettle actually is. Gosh, this book is bloody stupid.

Jesus, I had confined myself mostly to tea since getting here, mainly because the coffee maker was so extremely intimidating - a chrome beast of a thing covered with buttons and knobs and dials. Sandra had explained when I arrived that it was WIFI-enabled, and app-operated - but Happy was proving to be the least intuitive system I had ever encountered.

 

Yeah, I don´t think the system is the problem. It´s more that the main character is the dumbest person ever. And btw, the sleep deprivation thing is about to set in.

His smooth, slightly sweaty thumb stroked the corner of my bottom lip, and I felt one knee nudge, very gently, between mine. 

For a second I froze, and a fluttering panicked nausea rose up, choking me. Then something inside me seemed to snap, and I slid abruptly down off the stool, barging past him so fast that the wine slopped and spilled onto the concrete.

"Sorry," I stammered. "So sorry, let me. I´ll get the cloth -"

"It´s fine," he said. He was not an iota discomfited, only amused at my reaction. He stayed in place, half sitting, half leaning comfortably against the bar stool, as I grabbed a dishcloth and mopped at the floor between his legs.

For one second I looked up at him, and he looked down, and the quip I´d heard a thousand times, always accompanied by ribald laughter, flashed through the back of my mind. While you´re down there, love...

 

Oh, my ... What kind of a nanny is she?

At this point I´m really struggling with the premise of this book. The whole story is told as a letter to a solicitor, a letter with 300+ pages! There is absolutely no way that a lawyer would sit down and have the patience to read the "life story" of this nitwit of a woman. This doesn´t make sense.

Thankfully, I´m still intrigued by the story. I have absolutely not the faintest clue what is going on, but one thing is for sure: the main character has to go down.

Okay, there is something off about the main character, besides her being an idiot, who is rambling on in her letter about not being able to turn on the lights and the fancy high-tech shower (no one cares, woman!), and a liar.

I don´t think a professionally trained nanny would have

"And the driving licence?" she asked as I finished my anecdote about the four-year-old. I put down my fork onto the smooth polished concrete top of the table and took a deep breath.

"Ah, right, yes. I´m afraid that´s a problem. I do have a full UK driving licence and it´s clean, but the actual card was stolen last month when I lost my purse. I´ve ordered a new one but they wanted an updated photo and it´s taking an age to come through. But I promise you, I can drive."

That last part was true after all.

 

The main character might be a run-of-the-mill plain Jane or a complete psychopath. This little snippet gives me more of a psychopath vibe, though. 

Btw, I´m really enjoying this book so far. 

Prompt: Read a book that has been published in 2019.

Thanks to the change of rules by Moonlight Reader, I can try my luck again today. This is very helpful. Thank you again, MR.

Starting off from square 23, this brings me to:

I have to spin the wheel decide:

Okay, there are three mystery-thrillers on my e-reader I´m interested in:

I´ve read the first chapter / couple of pages for each book:

The Family Upstairs: This book starts off with a 25-year-old woman, who doesn´t have a whole lot of money but who secretly is yearning for luxury and bright and shiny things. Thankfully, she gets a house out of a trustee fond in the best part of New York, so her money issues has been tackled succesfully already. I guess she gets more than she has bargained for with this house, though.

Am I going to read this book? I don´t think I can stomach this womans priorities in life right now. So that´s a no.

Lock Every Door: This book starts off with a 25-year-old woman, who wakes up in a hospital, because she has been hit by a car. Apparently, she desperately tried to get out of a house and when she succeeded, she got hit by that car. Tough luck, I would say.

Am I going to read this book? Yes, maybe. I´ve only read two pages of this book and I´m already intrigued by the mystery surrounding this building.

The Turn of the Key: This book starts of with a 27-year-old woman, writing a letter to a solicitor. She claims that she has been wrongfully accused of a crime, which she hasn´t committed.

Am I going to read this book? Yes, maybe. The fact that this book is set in Scotland is a huge plus and that this is supposed to be a The Turn of the Screw works in its favor as well. 

So, it all boils down to the question, whether or not I´m in the mood for child protagonists at the moment ...

And I think I am. My pick for this round is:

Pagecount ebook: 352 pages

Bank balance - 31.05.2020: $ 23.00

At this point I´m wondering if I´m going to be the person who will DNF every single book for Booklikes-opoly. 

This one was of to a promising start, but then it ventured very fast into the "whatever" territory. I couldn´t care less about what was happening in the book and what was happening to the characters. And quite frankly, I´m bored stiff at this point.

I actually had the same experience with the other Okorafor I have read. I liked the beginning of Binti, but towards the end I became completely indifferent.

Which makes me think that Nnedi Okorafor isn´t an author for me. I´m not particularly fond of her writing style and her stories simply don´t grab me like they should. It´s a shame, because I like the aspect of African culture in her novels, but I don´t want to force myself through books I´m clearly not enjoying.

DNF at 35% (79 out of 221 pages)

Money earned: $ 1.00

I decided to DNF Brideshead Revisited for the game. It´s not an overall DNF, though. I decided that I don´t want to claim the money for this book, I´m just treating it as a square not read.

So I´m allowed to roll the dice again. Which I did, three minutes past midnight:

Starting off from square 13:

For this I´m going to read "the Nigerian Harry Potter":

This is going to be a fast read. I already managed to read 20% last night / this morning and I didn´t stay up to late ... okay, a customer decided to torture me at two o´clock in the morning and I couldn´t fall asleep again. I did some reading then.

About 4 hours ago I have been told that I have to do an impromptu night shift at work. Ah, the good times. 

So I´m a little bit peeved. And I´m currently not reading anything light and easy. And I don´t want to start a bigger book today, because I want to throw the dice tomorrow. (As you can tell, I´m not in one of my better moods today).

But thankfully, I have the fourth Murderbot Novella on my e-reader. I hope it can cheer me up a little bit. Plus, I have to finish this novella before reading the full-length novel Network Effect.

Here is the thing about this book: I´m intrigued by it, but after having finished one chapter, I´m ruminating on it for about half a day.

Not only have I to digest the things that are happening between these eccentric characters, I have to wrap my head around the language and the whole Oxford college situation, which is confusing because I know absolutely nothing about the college system in Oxford, its customs and schedules.

All of this doesn´t make this a book fit for BL-opoly. It´s a book I want to read slowly, thinking about it for a bit after I have finished a chapter and don´t feel pressured into reading it. Which I ultimately do, if I´m reading it for the game. And I would really like to read a book alongside it, which isn´t such a demanding read as this one is.

So this might end up being a DNF for the game, without me actually DNFing this book (if that makes sense to you). That way I could throw the dice once more tomorrow, picking a lighter read and I can finish this book at my own leisure.

 Brideshead Revisited it is. After the prologue I´m really curious about the main character and his connection with this place.

I DNF´d my first book for this game, so let´s hope that my next book will be a better one.

Rolling the dice:

Starting of from square 9 brings me to:

I don´t have a single book on my shelves with a beach item on its cover. But I have a whole lot of books with yellow covers on my shelves and thanks to my TBR shelf on Librarything it´s so much easier to see at a first glance, which books have actually have a cover with more than 50% yellow on it.

Anyhow, these are possible books from my shelves:

Let´s see ...

I´m not at home over the weekend, so the book has to be on the longer side - Elizabeth and her German Garden is going back on the shelf.

I don´t want to read something too depressing - Edith´s Diary and Of Human Bondage are going back on my shelf

I´m not in the mood for a mystery - Lord Peter Views the Body and The Lost Man are going back on my shelf.

And I don´t think that I´m in the mood for a contemporary read either - The Amber Fury is going back on my shelf.

I have whittled it down to two books:

And now I don´t know which book to choose ...

Well, I think I will do some chores while listening to Truly Devious and then I will hopefully have made a decision. I really would like to read both of these books, though. 

Bank Balance 26.05.2020 (start): $ 20.00

Bank Balance 28.05.2020: $ 23.00

I´m DNFing this book. And my main issue isn´t that this book has a weak mystery plot, which it has. But the tone of this book, specifically in almost all of the scenes between the father and son, really grates on my nerves:

Mister Wilson picked up the two sections of the alabaster statuette, rejoined them and placed the complete article carefully back on the hall table. It is surprising how much amusement can be got out of the simple things of life. A statuette broken and placed together the wrong way round is a fairly good example. Mr. Wilson, junr., collapsed in a hysterical fashion against the opposite wall.

 

[Source]

It´s so not funny! 

And I don´t know what is worse. The fact that the inspector has his idiotic journalist son as a sidekick or that both of them are acting like clowns basically all of the time. I just know I really disliked these two characters and I can´t be bothered about anything in this book.

DNF at 135 pages.

Money earned: $2.00

The Friday clash of funeral and inquest was a much more serious affair. The Brandon Baker Gallery Club went practically delirious over it, and went so far as to present a petition to the Craven street coroner demanding that the inquest on their late idol be postponed until a quarter to one, in order to give them a sporting chance of doing both shows.

So far this book is a bit meh for me, but I really enjoy these wicked passages here and there.

"Dr. Pixwell is a specialist in bioarchaeology," she said. "She works on archaeological digs in Egypt."

"That´s right," Pix said. "You read my faculty bio?"

"No," Stevie said. "The teeth, your shirt, you´ve got an Eye of Horus tattooed on your wrist, the chamomile tea in the kitchen has packaging written in Arabic, and you have a tan line on your forehead from a head covering. Just a guess."

"That´s extremely impressive," Pix said, nodding. Everyone was quiet for a moment. A fly buzzed around Stevie´s head.

"Stevie thinks she´s Sherlock Holmes," her father said.

[Source]

I really do think she has read the faculty bio.