Probably 3 Too Many Posts But....

And here we go, yet another solid outing with the Illiterate as I rip apart "A Lady's Guide to Marvels and Misadventure." I'm close to self reporting myself to the Bar because I'm reasonably sure my IQ has collapsed enough to disqualify me as an attorney. Yet, here we go, off to another fun filled blog post about this gem.

For this totally superfluous blog entry, I'm going to dissect a single paragraph. I struggled not to cry for humanity as I read it. Chapter 11....yes, I've completed 10 chapters, and so it begins....but before I do I’d like to take a moment to thank my dear aunt — a woman whose literary standards are apparently shaped by expired Hallmark cards and half-remembered episodes of Little House on the Prairie.

|“She smoothed her black hair with a brush and then plaited the length, leaving a few natural curls loose to frame her face.”

Ah yes, the ceremonial hair ritual. Because nothing says “narrative momentum” like an in-depth tutorial on 19th-century grooming. I was riveted. Really. I definitely didn’t look up and start counting ceiling tiles halfway through the sentence nor did I slowly pick sock fuzz out of my toes. Maybe I should have, as either one of those things would have been a better use of my time.

| “Twisting the plait into a simple chignon that would tuck snugly into her bonnet...”

Simple chignon. Tuck snugly. Honestly, this sounds like the kind of YouTube hair tutorial that promises “5-minute elegance” and ends with you looking like you lost a bar fight with a squirrel.

| “Her gray eyes strained to focus on the task, so weighted were they by crescents, shadowy and stark.”

I believe this is code for “she looks tired,” but instead of saying that, we took the scenic route through some teenage girl's goth adventure. I won't lie, I had one of those (kind of) so no judgment here.. Crescents? Shadowy and stark? This woman doesn’t need sleep — she needs an exorcist.

| “Sleep might have brightened her complexion, if it had come.”
I’m shocked she didn’t follow this with a longing glance at a rain-streaked window and the ghost of a first love who died in the Crimean War.

Honestly, if this paragraph were a dessert, it’d be dry sponge cake dusted with regret and served on a doily. My aunt, bless her soul, must’ve read this and thought, “Ah yes, real literature — finally!” Meanwhile, I’m over here googling “how many pages must one read before legally allowed to DNF.”

Yet . . .
I’ve made it to 28%. That’s right — twenty-eight percent of bonnets, sad eye crescents, and emotionally fragile sentence structures. So yes, I’m still here. I’m still reading. And I’m patting myself on the back so hard I might throw out my shoulder.

Auntie, I hope you’re proud. Because I’m basically doing CrossFit for the brain over here.

Unfortunately my annual goal is slipping away again as I'm 954 pages behind . . . that's ok, we live in an era where A for effort is as good as A for result.