Reading progress update: I've read 163 out of 304 pages.

6:46 pm 25 March 2019

How much do I love Valente's explanation of wormholes (and what they have to do with cows)? A lot.

At just before the halfway mark, I think I might have hit the draggy bit BrokenTune mentioned, though it's not horribly draggy; I can't imagine how you'd make an 11 day trip through space any more exciting and still have all the players survive until performance day. The chapter as told from the cat's POV, however, while definitely not exciting (you're just getting the snippets Capo hears between napping), is particularly brilliant when you think about it. Valente found a perfect way to impart information needed for character development without boring the reader into stasis.

In this bit, I think my favorite part is Goguenar Gorecannon's General Unkillable Facts.

First General Fact: Life is beautiful and life is stupid. [...] You can only ever fix one of these at a time, and wouldn't it be nice if anyone could agree on which one was the bigger problem?

I want this on a t-shirt. I'd wear this t-shirt all. the. time.

and her Second Unkillable Fact:

For everything that exists, somewhere in the universe, there is a creature that eats it, breaths it, f*cks it, wears it, secretes, perspires, exhales or excretes it.

Valente certainly has a way of putting things into perspective, doesn't she?

march 2019