1/18/15 - 100 out of 384 pages.

I don't know if I can read any more of this book. I wish I could have been live streaming my consciousness while reading this on a flight. Granted I was/am sick and have a shorter limit for bullshit, but still. Honor is one of the most unlikable heroines I have ever read. 

She is a spoiled, selfish, manipulative, self-centered, scheming bitch. And I mean bitch as a descriptive word. Let's recap of what I have read in these 100 pages. 

Honor has three younger sisters, a step-brother, a ailing mother and ailing step-father. Honor is 24ish, likes to party, does not want to give up the freedom she has to marry. Fine. But the earl is dying and her step-brother (who she likes and likes her... he is not even evil in this scenario) is about to marry her former best friend of whom she had a falling out with. Said best friend, Monica,  is totally going to throw her family out on their asses for being freeloaders of the earls money (Honor thinks) if she doesnt break up her step-brother and former bff (whom actually both really like each other). She doesnt want to marry to save the family or do anything that will take away her freedom or her ability to spend money. 

The way Honor and Monica who supposedly grew up together as friends treat each other is ridiculous. And mostly on Honor's side. Monica commissioned a hat and couldn't afford it so Honor bought it knowing Monica wanted it and flaunted it around like a child. 

Her scheme, which is the plot, is to get George something, the unclaimed bastard of a duke, to pay attention to Monica and get the idea in her head that there are better fish in the sea than her step-brother. What. A. Bitch. 

We even get in Monica's head and find out she genuinely is a good person! Honor is the horrible stuck-up debutante villain in every other romance novel I have read, but here she is supposed to be the heroine? What? Her and George's (hell is his name even George?) romantic interactions are nothing special either. He comes to talk sense into her but then is swayed by her beauty or her eyes or some such nonsense. 

Urgh. I had to stop reading this on the plane... I honestly dont know if I'll try to start it again. It's that frustrating to me. I honestly dont care if Honor ends up happy... so why should I read about it. 

I have the second sister's book in an ARC and I hate reading things out of order, but I may have to make an exception. Grace (sister two) is infinitely better than Honor the few times she has been on screen. 

10/18/14 - 149 out of 266

I am just going to put a few of the turns of phrases that I have jotted down as I have glomped through 150 pages tonight. There were more that I didn't stop to write, but these I liked for various reasons:

"That idiot went and got himself shot last week. He’s taking a dirt nap and won’t need the place."

...

The wealthy women pretended it singed their tongue to say whore. They’d whisper it and raise their eyebrows. Then they’d fake an expression of shock, like the word itself had crawled into their pants with a case of the clap

...

"God, I need that coffee. I feel like a bag of smashed assholes"

7/30/14: I've read 33 out of 330 pages.

Men's minds are messy places and Noise is like the active, breathing face of that mess. It's what's true and what's believed and what;s imagined and what's fantasized and it says one thing and a completely opposite thing at the same time and even tho the truth is definitely in there, how can you tell what's true and what's not when yer getting everything?

 

The Noise is a man unfiltered, and without a filter, a man is just chaos walking

Reading progress update: I've read 242 out of 326 pages:

A section of the story that has almost nothing to do with the story, but I just love it.

Plato once said that human beings were created with two heads, four arms, four legs, until Zeus split them in half. Ever since, humans have spent their lives searching for their other half, the one person who could complete them.

 

What a narrow-minded, messed-up, asinine system.

 

Do the math. There are more than seven billion people on the planet. Say you do a lot of traveling, and manage to meet a million of those people in your lifetime. That gives you a mere 1 in 7000 chance of finding "the one."

 

Maybe that's why they created me. To be their other half, the answer to the myth. Easier than scouring the planet for an impossible dream. Easier, too, than learning to set aside the dream and embrace a human being who is as flawed and imperfect as you.

 

Humans are so obsessed with true love, the perfect relationship. They imagine that one elusive person who fits their quirks and foibles and desires like a puzzle piece. And of course, when a potential mate falls short of that perfection, they reject them. They were too old, too young, too silly, too serious, too fat, too thin. They liked the wrong TV shows. They hated chocolate. They voted for the other guy. They didn't put the toilet seat down.

 

They invent a million excuses for rejection, a million ways to find others unattractive. Their skill at seeing ugliness in others is matched only by their ability to see it in the mirror, to punish themselves for every imagined flaw. No matter who I've become, I never understood that facet of humanity.

 

I remember when Isaac introduced me to Doctor Who. In the episode, the Doctor met a man who said he wasn't important. The Doctor replied, "I've never met anyone who wasn't important before."

 

I've never met anyone who wasn't beautiful. People have simply forgotten how to see.

 

Frank Dearing was a selfish, petty, controlling bastard, but when he was working in the field, the hard muscles of his body shining with sweat as he coaxed life from the dirt...the man was an asshole, but he was a hot asshole.

 

Nidhi Shah was softer. She dressed to minimize the physical. Age and stress had mapped faint lines onto her face. And she was gorgeous. Even before you stripped off her clothes and kissed your way down her neck...

 

Then there was Isaac Vainio, a skinny geek of a man who lugged his pet spider around everywhere he went. But he had such passion, such raw joy and excitement. That passion transformed him into something sexier than any rock star. 

 

The more we narrow the definition of beauty, the more beauty we shut out of our lives.

 

Originally posted on GR in January 2010... and I am not quite sure what I meant... maybe I found it so hilarious, if I ever heard it I would perish from the lulz? I don't even get the first quote... guess I need to reread this one.