White Fog (Nobody Spiral Book 1)

The Mist in the Mirror has ratings and reviews. Rate this book . There was no one. as I looked up I could see more book stacks that rose behind the gallery, up to which iron spiral staircases led at intervals.” . I read The Woman in Black last year, and it was easily one of the scariest ghost stories I have ever.
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People have different preferences. Rain is too loud, fog encurages sneks and bush-camping. Both are more random. Hated the fog map. Rain I usually left server if I got it, but mainly due to the volume in sound the rain makes. Sucks that they changed this. I liked how the weather had the possibility to switch up the meta. Will definitely miss the fog games especially. I think what they need to do maybe is add a set of check-boxes for preferences. Seems like that would allow people to enjoy them without splitting the player-base.

Its all people want nowadays. May as well make the game for fucking PS2. Every fog game starts with 50 or less people and rain games aren't far behind.

Those who genuinely enjoy the fog and rain maps will be able to play them with a full server as opposed to a half full server. Weather condition is amazing in this game because it changes everything.. Please maintain a randomized and different weather in the game. A player can choose which weather conditions he wants to play or something like that.. They will probably be readded once we get the map selection feature. Before they were disabled on test fog games would be like 30 players. Fog was fun but the performance was super bad so we'd always leave.

Rain was just aids expecially volume wise. Everyone laves the server when these modes are played. Last time i played squad on rain, it started with 43 people alive. But this game is built on the fact that the only decent combat is medium-long range, which the fog eliminated completely. It certainly slowed down the first half of the game, but the last half is crazy when there's 35 people in the second to last circle.

They've already confirmed they'll be doing that well, kinda, for maps only, maybe then they'll reenable weather. Those hours could have gone towards something else more worthwhile. I don't believe its gone forever they mentioned awhile back when vaulting was first announced that dynamic weather effects were being worked on. Fog is always fun for me, whether it's single, duo or squad, but rain is for me only playable in single mode. The rain is just too damn loud, especially when I need to talk to my squad mates.

White Oleander

We always leave in rain. This is going the same way as Rocket League. Psyonix made some interesting arena variations, people who couldn't adapt complained, then they standardised everything to be flat and generic. Foggy was my favourite! If everybody leaves early then fuck 'em. That shouldn't ruin a fun way to play the game for other people.

Maybe they should just open up the queueing time a bit more and let more players join so if somebody leaves when 40 players are around, it's drops down to 39 and that number still counts to , not It should be an optionnal map for people longing to play this specific game. I, for myself, couldn't stand rainy map, but foggy were absolute beast hahaha.

Didn't mind fog, was slow paced at times, but I can appreciate how different the fog games played out closest thing we will ever get to organized pro-play. Rain games I normally just quit, the sound was just too deafening, to the point that it was untolerable for my ears and I would rather play with the sound off.

But in my mind that would have been an easy fix to just reduce the rain volume. The fog was fine. The rain was too fucking loud so I'm glad it was removed. You literally couldn't hear footsteps at all. I for one don't have an issue with the fog maps, those were some of the best and most tense games I've ever had! Even I started to join the bandwagon and quit in the lobby because the rain is louder than life. You can't hear people on Skype or Teamspeak. The rain was just too damn loud, if it were quieter and maybe rained on and off or moved accross the map in waves like storm fronts with rain reducing visibility aswell, that would be cool.

But I might quit if get them times in a row. Rain was horrible, not only my PC didn't like it but the sound was terrific. Very loud, misleading imo and just annoying. I also liked these maps and their change in gameplay. Hopefully they are reworking it so people who wish not to play them opt out. I can get people being a fan of fog games, I liked them too. I don't think I've seen a rain game start with more than 50 people in it in months.

Like literally half of people playing instaleave from rain games. I completely agree with OP. The weather effects brought great atmosphere and fog actually made you adjust your strategies. I'm extremely disappointed if they did this move to appease the handful of people that bounced out of weather matches. If that was affecting overall performance of the game, then fine. If that is the case, I would they reintroduce this later. I loved the rain maps, but the sound was too much I'm with you, love fog.

Gives a very different feel to the game, makes sniping less of a thing. I hope they put it back in. While I wasn't a huge fan of either gametype, I'm also surprised they removed it, I assumed a large part of the player base enjoyed those gametypes. Can't satisfy 1 person out of thousands for one map weather type. I agree on the option of having it but personally was not a fan. Especially when half of the server drops before it begins. I never had a problem with the performance on them. The problem with the rain is it was far too loud.

Plenty of clips you can see where people can't hear vehicles flying in behind them and dying from it. The game always performed better in the rain for some reason. FPS was a lot more stable. Fog I've never liked. You can't see anything and the grass is so dark people can easily camp in it. Rain was my favorite. I'd actively try to get into rain games.

Shame to see them gone. Hopefully they're just being improved and will be back later? Sure, the person coming in at 0: Make everyone happy, except the very edge case of someone joining but not having an opportunity to drop from the match in the lobby. Most of the times people left before it starts or get killed by a camper abusing the fact that you can't see shit. Don't get me wrong, patrolling a zone or some houses is a perfectly fine strategy, but staying in a corner with a shotgun for 20 minutes to get a single kill is not what I call "fun".

The rain map was simply a shit. And the only reason was the sound, it was too loud and too constant. I liked the idea of different maps requiring different skill or messing with your senses but the implementation was pretty poor. I hope they rework those concepts, I would love a rain map with lower volume but sporadically some kind of noisy wind that mess you not constantly. The fog map could be awsome if fog weren't equal in every terrain, like higher terrain should have more visibility but lower terrain being really hard to spot anything.

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So I'll just say, go ahead and read it! Title Demystified Did you know that white oleanders are poisonous? My knowledge of botany is at the very bottom, so this particular fact was quite new to me. White Oleander is all about the poisons in the human spirit. There is the frequent mention of "sin virus", when someone yearns for something wrong - sex, drugs, or anything that is frowned upon. There is the reference to Ingrid's poisonous tentacles that sweetly lures everyone and then jumps in for the kill. White Oleander is a strong tale of how the many poisons in a person can overcome the good feelings and undermine a relationship.

Cover Art Demystified I was initially captivated by the cover of this book, way before reading its synopsis. The beautiful woman slowly unzipping herself, gives me the image of human temptations and manipulations. Human poisons, in other words, that much laces and interleaves the whole story of Astrid and Ingrid.

View all 14 comments. Jan 11, Megan rated it it was amazing Recommended to Megan by: My aunt bought me this book for Christmas one year and at first I was really disappointed. I thought "Oh, that's nice Not to be all cheesy and over-identify with something that isn't about me; but this book REALLY hit home for me in describing my relationship with my mot My aunt bought me this book for Christmas one year and at first I was really disappointed.

Not to be all cheesy and over-identify with something that isn't about me; but this book REALLY hit home for me in describing my relationship with my mother. This story is emotionally harrowing and beautifully told. The climax is gut-wrenching though subtle, and honestly made me cry. The movie didn't come close to doing any of this justice. This is one of those books that even if you had great parents, you can probably identify with, just because of how excellently the characters and story are rendered, and it's hard to believe that this author didn't live through anything like this herself.

She makes a special point of noting in the preface or back cover or something that her and her mother get along great and are very close; to me that just makes this book more amazing because, well, damn. That's some powerful and realistic fiction. View all 3 comments. Her role models change over the years, but always in the background is the icy influence of her mother, through letters and visits. The knock-out opening two lines: Eliot and Dylan Thomas, drank Lapsang souchong out of a porcelain cup.

She had lived in Paris and Amsterdam. How could she be in prison? It took me forever to sit down and write this review. I never wait this long after finishing a book to post some sort of review. This one wrecked me, it wiped me out, it was gut wrenching. Thanks to GR friend Caroline It took me forever to sit down and write this review. Thanks to GR friend Caroline for periodically recommending that I read it.

I hope the next books I read are anywhere as close to engaging. It was a page-turner for me. The writing is gorgeous. I mostly appreciate the many complicated, realistic, interesting, and memorable characters, especially Astrid. Some of the circumstances seemed almost extreme though still believable but nothing about the characters rang false to me. I loved reading how Astrid adapted to her many different circumstances.

Each move turned into a whole other world. I rooted for and worried about Astrid all the way through. The book is deeply melancholy. I found myself getting more and more depressed as Astrid goes through some of her placements. The main character has a highly unconventional upbringing even until age 12 and then experiences chaos and disruption from ages Every placement I found interesting, only one would I consider more than barely tolerable. I appreciated how she could often be so tender and generous with some of the other people she lived with in almost all her foster homes.

Even for a foster child, some of the placements were notable for being unusual. This is a great Los Angeles story.

RECIPES BY BIOTYPE

If I had a Los Angeles shelf, this book would go on it. I loved taking a tour through L. This would be a great book club book because there is a lot to think about and discuss. Highly recommended for readers who like beautifully crafted novels, those interested in foster children, those who enjoy atypical coming of age stories, readers who like reading about dysfunctional families and family relationships, those who appreciate how art can be healing, and people who are familiar with L.

Two of the quotes that I loved: I wished my life could be like that, knotted up so that even if something broke, the whole thing wouldn't come apart. The only thing you could do was stand in awe of it. It wasn't a question of survival at all. It was the fullness of it, how much could you hold, how much could you care. Mar 08, Britany rated it really liked it Shelves: White Oleander packs a powerful punch to your emotional psyche. Almost as soon as I started this book, I was swept away by the writing. Astrid Magnussan- just a beautiful wisp of a newly minted teenager watches as her mom spirals downward and loses control, ending up in prison.

Astrid finds herself in Foster care and the story takes us on the path that soon defines Astrid's life. Home after home, fancy prostitues, starvation, to suicidal thoughts. This book does not shy away from the dark and gr White Oleander packs a powerful punch to your emotional psyche. This book does not shy away from the dark and gritty places. I was horrified yet found myself wanting more. I wanted to rescue Astrid from the delves of the barrel, and mostly from the poetic grasp of her mother. The writing was powerful-- I don't have the words to express how lyrical the writing was considering the dark subject matter.

I found myself searching for hope and rooting for Astrid more than anything else, I just wanted her to be "Ok" by the end of the book. For me, the book was a little too lengthy in prose and may have made a bigger impact if some of the bulk was edited down a bit.

View all 13 comments. Apr 03, Skye Skye rated it it was amazing. Exquisite, provocative, melodious novel spun by author Janet Fitch, artistic with the English language. It is hauntingly amazing like a beautiful sunset and manipulates the reader's conscience while penetrating and seducing all five senses. Aug 18, Niya rated it it was amazing. This is my all time favorite book. I love the character Astrid, and enjoyed seeing her played by Alison Lohman in the movie.

I wish there were more books like this one. View all 6 comments. Feb 13, Nateah rated it it was amazing. I can't forget her story. It's like a precise etching tatooed on the center of my brain. Her pain is my pain, her fears are my fears, her life I take every word from her illustrated existance, using it as my own bible to crawl through this enraged wilderness where the grass is made of needles, the trees are crawling with serpants, and the water is too tanged to drink I taste the saltiness of her tears as they stream down her face, burning, leaving behind scars of inevitable I can't forget her story.

I taste the saltiness of her tears as they stream down her face, burning, leaving behind scars of inevitable pain. I feel every emotion that blisters her soul. I look deep into her eyes and see the rips in her heart. I touch the engravements on her thoughts.

I'll never forget your story. I first read this book when I was seventeen for an advanced writing course and it touched some part of me so deeply that I wrote this passage in my journal about it.

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Since then I've read this book countless times. The story never gets old and the writing is always refreshing. The most beautiful piece of fiction I've ever read. Janet Fitch has a truly authentic writing style that incorporates soft hues of poetry into the story. Jul 09, Kelly rated it did not like it Recommends it for: I only wish there were a star less than one. I wish I could remove stars. I wish there were a star deficit rating. This book almost made me give up reading all together. It is definitely the last book I trusted from Oprah.

I still think she owes me money and those days of my life back. It was page after page of the most depressing writing I've ever read with absolutely no pay off. View all 11 comments.

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Jul 10, Cat rated it it was ok Shelves: And while the story line did manage to keep me up and at it until 2 am last night, I must say: I don't review books to keep them a secret from people who haven't read them; I review them to share my opinions with people who have. The heroine is a supposedly precocious 12? Astrid, the daughter, worships her mother based as we find out later in a kind of tangental and almost unnecessary addition to the denouement on some major abandonment issues. Her mother, Ingrid, a "poet", is wildly self-absorbed and disregards her daughter except when convenient.

Fitch's job at the beginning was to show us Ingrid through Astrid's eyes, and while she does a decent job of alluding to some of the disillusionment that begins to blossom when we hit pre-adolescence, she never lays a real foundation for understanding or feeling of Astrid's desperate, almost hysterical attachment to her mother -- Astrid worships her mother's physicality enormously sensual , her appreciation of aesthetics somewhat Cali and cliche and her poetry just bad, actually.

After the murder, trial and subsequent imprisonment, Astrid is carted off to -- wait for it -- foster care! As the reader of any late 20th century novel knows well, this bodes the beginning of the "real" story. Because foster parents are all just terrible, messed-up people, either in it for the money or to fulfill some other need. Astrid trails destruction and debris through three or four various foster homes, developing complicated and doomed relationships along the way that only serve to reaffirm her abandonment complex. The only sympathetic person of color in the whole story -- a high-priced call girl named Olivia Johnstone who lives an impossibly rich life laced with jazz, jewelery and jet-setting -- establishes one of Astrid's oft-returned-to realities: And yet, Fitch riddles the female characters with so many intensely tragic flaws that halfway through the book one can't help but wonder if she's implying that women are too fucked up to make it a woman's world themselves.

Each of the female role-models Astrid finds is almost a caricature of some fatal flaw: Astrid learns the ropes, as the reader might expect, and in the end bargains with her mother to exchange her tweaked testimony and potentially her mother's freedom for tidbits about the past. By this time, so much has happened and Astrid has made so many streetwise decisions that it's difficult to see how the plumbing of the depths of her past especially the whole thing about Annie Whether Ingrid was there or not, Astrid was emotionally abandoned the whole time will really resolve any of her conflict.

The final result is simply that Astrid should probably see a therapist or five. I won't deny that it was, but I've grown more and more conscious of the fact that there are two separate Californias and I have a hard time with LA authors who behave as though the only California is the California south of San Francisco. It just seems very short-sighted to me. I am normally exceedingly wary of anything that Oprah puts her mark on and avoid it like the plague. However, after years of being recommended this book by many people who's opinions on such things I respect I finally pulled it off the bookshelf.

Let me be the first to tell you: I have never been more appreciative of my friends. This book was phenomenal! Finch writes astonishingly well and makes sure that the reader feels every hunger pang, every slap in the face, every demeaning detail right in the core of their being.

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I went into this book expecting a quick and melodramatic read. I came out deeply moved and with tears streaking my cheeks, not so much from the writing but from the thought that all of the hells that Astrid is subjected to in house after house are actually being experienced by children in foster care every day. Astrid's struggle highlights the existence that a vast amount of this nation's children live, and that is the most horrifying thing of all.

Jul 01, S. Grey rated it it was amazing Shelves: Edit--re-read March One of the best books I've ever read The writing is very descriptive, lyrical and poetic. The metaphors and there are a lot are spot on-perfect. I highlighted s-o-o-o many passages, and they hit me every time I re-read them. The story itself is dark and often depressing in the examination of a young girl's relationship with her disturbed mother, and her subsequent journey through the foster care system. And though her mother is cruel, I swear she has Edit--re-read March One of the best books I've ever read And though her mother is cruel, I swear she has some of the best lines dialogue and in her letters in the novel.

White Oleander is not fluffy and light, it's not an easy read, but it's well worth checking out when you're in the mood for an emotional journey that is told beautifully. Sep 02, Madeline rated it it was amazing Shelves: Janet Fitch has an amazing gift for writing novels centered around protagonists that are flawed and scarred, while at the same time making her audience identify with and even love these characters because of their imperfections.

Take Astrid, the main character of White Oleander. At night, they relied on moonlight, easily recognized stars and, after the creation of lighted airways, evenly spaced rotating beacons and flashing markers between major cities. But rapidly forming fog and clouds could quickly rob them of these references. If they became trapped in clouds or fog, potentially fatal vertigo often swiftly followed.

Even if they did not crash, fog and clouds often forced them to chance risky emergency landings. In one year, the U. Post Office recorded nearly such landings by its airmen, approximately one for every 20 flying hours, a national average of more than two a night. Disorientation and subsequent loss of control made any long-distance flight potentially hazardous, for in the course of a journey of several hundred miles an airplane was likely to overfly clouds or enter obscuring conditions. In May , the crew of the U.

The NC-4 slipped into a spiral dive, prelude to a fatal spin. Fortunately the pilot, Coast Guard Lieutenant Elmer Stone, aided by providential glimpses of the solar disk, recognized the direction of rotation, and recovered control. Flying through clouds between Newfoundland and Ireland, they lost control of their twin-engine Vickers Vimy, which abruptly stalled, mushed oceanward and began a slow spin.

Luckily the cloud deck did not descend all the way to the sea, and they spun out of the base of the clouds with barely enough altitude to recover. In , flying from New York to Germany, Clarence Chamberlin and Charles Levine became disoriented in clouds, stalled their Bellanca WB-2 and then lost 17, feet before safely recovering and continuing onward. As he was passing over Ireland in thick weather, a rising howl warned him that his Junkers W33 monoplane had dropped into a spin. Existing instruments were of little help, so imprecise that instructors told students— Charles Lindbergh among them—to trust their senses instead.

In extensive Air Corps tests of hooded pilots sitting in rotating gimbaled chairs proved that the mind, its perceptions governed by the inner ear, is notoriously unreliable in the absence of visual cues for judging motion, acceleration and position. No matter how great their previous skill and experience, with their vision obscured all the pilots routinely mistook rates and directions of rotation, missed reversals of direction and changes in seat angle or could not even tell if they were moving at all. Under such conditions pilots risked not only losing control but, miscued by their senses, actually putting their airplane out of control.

What was to be done? After arriving in America in , the family had made millions in mining and mineral investments, turning much of it to public benefit by supporting various charities and foundations. Such generosity, combined with scrupulous honesty, earned the family high marks from reformers. In World War I he became one of the first naval aviators.

It subsequently undertook a wide and influential range of educational grants, scientific research, technical evaluations and practical commercial aircraft demonstrations. The Model Air Line included an experimental radio and weather service along the route. A chain of reporting stations issued bulletins and weather updates, and balloons were launched at various points to measure winds aloft.

Telegraph, telephone and teletype machines speeded surface communications across the airway and airport network. Still, the blind-flying challenge remained.

The Mist in the Mirror

Now the emerging technology of radio navigation, coupled with new cockpit instruments, would soon make fog flying a practical reality. Though these were not perfect, they had already proven their value. Flying in a particular quadrant, the pilot would hear one of these two letters. As the pilot approached the beacon, the signal would build in strength until the airplane passed directly over it. The signal would abruptly end, then resume again as the pilot flew away from the beacon. The radio beacons worked only sporadically; updates from passing ships, classic dead reckoning and sun-and-star sights proved more reliable.

Radio played one important role: Nearing the islands at 10, feet, Maitland and Hegenberger used signals from a beacon on Maui to make final course corrections. The Dole Air Race fiasco a month later underscored the risk of not having radio.