Bitter Scheherazade

Bitter Scheherazade

Boredom is a terminal illness that will one day kill me. 

 

Review
5 Stars
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Vol. 1 - Kevin O'Neill, Alan Moore

I tried reading From Hell and it ended up bothering the hell out of me + felt like a slower-paced version of A Treasury of Victorian Murder Compendiumand I'm not even a big fan of that work, either.   Although I am a HUGE The Watchmen fan, I was a little distressed to pick this up, worrying that this would be as unsatisfying as From Hell.  Boy, was I wrong!

 

Primal, tongue-in-cheek, campy, and bloody as all hell, this feels like optimal fun made especially for well-read fans of the ol' blood bukkake with discerning taste.  Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde takes the cake as my favorite character in the bunch.   Have fun, give this a read.

Review
0 Stars
Saturday Short-Story Round-up: Part 3
American Gothic Tales - Bruce McAllister, Joyce Carol Oates

So I found this, and that means that I now have a source of fanfiction that I can read that won't come off as being as unintentionally hilarious as a teenage girl writing herself into Harry Potter and making the entire conflict in the wizarding world condensed into the immortal war between the goths and the preps.  I swallowed some Once Upon a Time Rumplestiltskin fanfic like a whole case of BonBons like a total bastard last night, but I managed to finish off the last short story I will talk about here while taking a bath last night.  Oh, don't you try to envision that, you sick fucks.

 

Anyway, without further ado -

 

 

Afterward - Edith Wharton

 

A good idea that gets stretched on for too long with too little meat on its bones, much like "The Romance of Certain Old Clothes" - [spoiler] it becomes a dry ghost story, with the distinction of the ghost committing revenge murder due tot he unintentional help of the wife leading the ghost to her husband.  It's really quite silly and the dramatic reveal at the end is downright hilarious in its angst. [/spoiler]   Pass this one up, it's so long.

 

The Striding Place - Gertrude Atherton

 

 Mysterious, a good deal tense, Atherton's tale has aged, but the edge to its ending has not lost all of its edge, entirely.  The sense of desperate sorrow and anxiety towards the thought of the loss of a close friend is palpable - the problem lies mainly in its ending, which came off as being sublimely confusing.

 

Death in the Woods - Sherwood Anderson

 

"She was an old woman and lived on a farm near the town in which I lived.  all country and small-town people have sen such old women, but no one knows much about them."

 

Possibly one of the more subtlety soul-crushing stories that still carries the existential horror at the realization that a person's life is meant only to exist as a means of supporting others without thanks.  I have seen this theme used as a means of enacting only pity in an audience, but here it is wielded pitilessly, the POV of the story acting only to highlight the cruelty contained in the story.  A definite must read.

 

The Outsider - H. P. Lovecraft

 

"I know not where I was born, save that the castle was infinitely old and infinitely horrible, full of dark passages and having high ceilings where the eye could find only cobwebs and shadows."

 

My first run-in with Lovecraft, this story blazed my mind on fire when I first read it in high school.  Lushly descriptive with a distinctly old world flavor, the POV of the narrator is gnawingly enthralling.  Its short length works for its benefit; there is a distinctly nightmarish quality to the piece, and there is a sense of timeless in the struggle of the main character that, with the knowledge of Lovecraft's personal life, seems to add an extra layer of tragedy to the story as a whole.

 

A Rose for Emily - William Faulkner

 

"She did not ask them to sit.  She just stood in the door and listened quietly until the spokesman came to a stumbling halt.

Then they could hear the invisible watch ticking at the end of the gold chain. Her voice was dry and cold. "I have no taxes in Jefferson. Colonel Sartoris explained it to me. Perhaps one of you can gain access to the city records and satisfy yourselves."

“But we have. We are the city authorities. Miss Emily. Didn't you get notice from the sheriff, signed by him?"
“I received a paper, yes," Miss Emily said. "Perhaps he considers himself the sheriff... I have no taxes in Jefferson."
"But there is nothing on the books to show that, you see. We must go, by the-"
"See Colonel Sartoris. I have no taxes in Jefferson.”
“But, Miss Emily...”
“See Colonel Sartoris, (Colonel Sartoris had been dead almost ten years.) I have no taxes in Jefferson. Tobe!” The Negro appeared. “Show these gentlemen out.”"

What is there to say about this one, except that, for once, there is some real substance to a story that is a mainstay in schools.  With teeth so sharp that they still remain buried in the back of your mind months after reading it, this short story builds up to an amazing finish.

!!! spoiler alert !!! Review
3.5 Stars
A Unique Experience
S. - Doug Dorst, J.J. Abrams

Through sheer tenacity, I finished this "book" (I am not mocking it by putting it in quotations like this, as you are about to see, this is less of a traditional book and more of an experience in eavesdropping) and, five months later, I can safely say that I "finished" the material in the book, but I still think that, even being the smart girl that I am, a lot of it went right over my head.

 

Spoiler-free Portion

 

"Follow the monkey."

You want the quick n' dirty?  Very well; have you ever tried House of Leaves?   I ask only because, frankly, if you haven't tried THAT, then this one is going to be a question mark for whether you'll enjoy this concept or not.  That is not to say that if you haven't read HoL, that you are clearly a moron/ect./ect - really, this is, as I have heard people describe it to me, like the tv show Lost smashed together with HoL.  Mind you, I never watched so much as an episode of Lost, because by the time it was first airing, I was at school in the middle of nowhere, more concerned with establishing alliances with strangers and learning my place in the world than watching television (well, mostly).   I would say to put off buying this book if you feel even a smidge of trepidation towards its concept (I will get to that momentarily) and you would just prefer a straight-forward reading experience - this book might be something like what one of the citizens of Wonderland might create, if tasked to make a "book" - more of a experiment in the art, totally unique and created to envoke this feeling of voyeur-ism.  It kind of feels a bit like a parody of the whole concept of literature, especially the concept of literary critique, but on a far less level that HoL.  This time around, the criticism takes a back seat to a gushing, loudly professed love of mystery and hidden messages.

 

When you look up S., what you may be surprised to find that there are entire websites dedicated to interpreting how best to read the material in order.  If you think you're ready for that level of sheer commitment and borderline O.C.D insanity, then, again, I recommend HoL FIRST, because this is the sort of book that is difficult to do anything with, after you read it.  Mysterious!

 

For one thing, this is a book that it seems to be was created with the express purpose to be impossible to read on an e-reading device - you will need to buy the physical book, even though I have heard of ebooks of the book, it just cannot work in that manner.  I have heard that Dorst and Abrams wanted to create something, with this book, that is akin to a wistful love letter to physical books.

 

Saying that, as much as I howled about HoL back in the day, the experience of S. makes Johnny Truant's journey into the heart of darkness with his discovery of a manuscript which prefaces his slide into obsession look like Goodnight, Moon.

 

Here's a selection of pictures to illustrate just what the hell I am talking about:

 

This is all material that is in the book.  No, I do not mean reproductions of things discussed in-text - if you rifle through this book, this shit may fall out of you are not careful with handling the damned thing!

 

Note: The codewheel (!) and the "hand-written" notations in-book.   That is not just the one page in the book where you can read these notations, written by what are other characters who have read this copy of the book before you - they FILL the book en masse.

 

 

 

Now that I have explained the... eccentricities of the book at length, it may be a good idea to talk about the actual STORY, at this point.

 

So, what is S., exactly?   To be precise, S. is a book that is a copy of a fictional book, called Ship of Theseus that was from the 50's, taken from out of a high school library a good time ago.   During this time that a character has kept this book, he/she has been adding notes to it.

 

One day, this character leaves this book in the library, where it is found by a library worker, who begins to leave notes in it and proceeds to read the book.  They leave the book for each other to leave notes in (basically having full conversations via the white space in the book, sometimes spilling over the original text in it) and thus it is through the medium of a stolen book that these characters grow to know each other and talk about themselves at length.

 

The story of Ship of Theseus is an odd one - for one thing, to the two "readers", the mystery of just WHO the author of the book itself is ("V.M Straka") has never been properly solved.  A prolific writer of several other texts that the "readers" will talk about often at length, Straka was believed to have died prior to the release of this book. 

 

For someone reading the book, another interesting that is obvious is the fact that the text itself is often unclear and comes off as being heavily metaphorical.  The "readers" talk at length about how certain parts of the book are likely only really clear to people who have read Straka's other books, but even then, the book seems "cloudy", imprecise and hinting at something that we are just not privy to.

 

Adding to the mysterious nature of the book itself is the fact that the editor/translator of the book was notorious, in this book, for his/her usually nonsensical introduction to the book and all of the end notes in the book itself.  Seemingly useless, bordering on inane most of the time, it would seem to an initial reader that "F.X.C" was a loon - to a person who knew that "F.X.C" is yet another person who's true identity has never been discovered and that there has to be a reason for the nature of F.X.C's legendarily pointless notations, there is something else entirely happening in F.X.C's editing and notations.

 

Spoilers

 

 

I was quite surprised, when I looked up Ship of Theseus what I found - the title of the book itself is a reference to a "thought-experiment" regarding the nature of identity! Now, this book may be exceedingly long in the tooth, but when it uses the same device as John Dies @ the Endthen how much CAN I dislike the story? (Although, I must say, I really prefer the set-up and reveal of this concept in JD@tE a good deal more)

 

So what we should keep in mind, first and foremost, is the idea of identity and what it really means.  That in itself is the main driving force of the whole collection of material in the book - both the main narrative of the story that Jen and Eric bond over and talk about at length.  Hell, as we get to the letters in the book that constitute Jen and Eric's real "stories" that they had both previously lied about at some point, we can even see how both characters managed to construct their own versions of the other person based on both a series of lies as well as presumptions made about the other person - and the fallout from what all of those mistaken ideas of who the other person is brings about.

 

I was a little let down with the code wheel in the back of the book - I never saw an instance to use it!   To be fair, I am a dummy with codes and the like, so maybe it was just me. 

 

Then again, it may also be due to the fact that the book in itself is a work of mental overload; so much to read, so much to take in - just what IS important and what is unimportant?  Also, I have come to the conclusion that this book is as much as Mirror or Erised as it is a Ship of Theseus - whatever the reader is paying the closest amount of attention to, what matters to the reader in the book, is what they come out really focusing on, amidst the sea of information overload.

 

To that end, I am out of the book, disappointed by the fact that I must have missed about ten different things - what IS the S.?  Is there anything hidden I missed about Jen and Eric?  What happened with Filomela?  What is with the monkeys?  Who is Straka?  What is up with all of the obsidian and other missing artifacts?  What was up with the group financing Eric for no reason?    Is Jen right in her fear of men following her?  Who set Jen's parents' barn on fire - and left an S in the remnants?  What is the importance of the symbol S?  And, finally, where in the shit am I supposed to use the bloody code wheel?

 

Sometimes, I would go as far as to say that this book is far to clever for itself by a large means  "What are you talking about here?"  "Oh, you can't tell? How about you try and guess?  Maybe you just missed a clue imbedded in all of that cursive that you can barely read."  "You know what, S., you can shove your cursive and your smug clues right up your shitter."

 

You know what, else?  I unjokingly refer to all of the time I spend reading this "book" as time I could have spent reading at LEAST five "sane" books, from December to two days ago, time that I could have spent reading a massive amount of material, if I had really put my back into it.   Give me back that time, you ass.

(show spoiler)

 

 

Do I regret reading this, though?  Well, no; it's really the most unique book that I've seen since, again, House of Leaves, but if you press me, I would have to say that I prefer HoL to this.  I think a lot of it can be attributes to the fact that I can generally follow what is happening in HoL; with S., it seems to me that you have to put a lot into this damned narrative to get out most of your questions.

 

There's a part of me that is twee about that aspect of this story - oh, how unique, how creative! - but then I realize that this is the gluttonous type of book that, like the needy bitch that it is, wants to me dedicate more time to it to really "understand" it.  Really, S., this is simply unbecoming of you; Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets was never this clingy, and I got to find out what was going on with all of that mysterious "heir of Slytherin" stuff while also going on a magical, pre-teen adventure full of rooster strangling and a beating-the-shit-out-of-you tree.  Do you have a tree that can toss you like a football if a person were to try to go all lumberjack on its ass?

 

All kidding aside - yeah, on some level, I left unimpressed with the whole concept, but I also cannot shake off how much I admire the sheer ambition behind the art piece known as S.  And that happens to be exactly what S. seems, to me, to be, at the end of the day - less of a book and more of an ambitious art piece/sheerly experimental piece regarding the nature of the physical book.

Review
0 Stars
One Short Story Today Because I Spent all Week Working + Finishing up S.
American Gothic Tales - Bruce McAllister, Joyce Carol Oates

Bah, what did I manage to read this week?  Ambrose Bierce?  Good enough for me to warrant a full post!

 

 

 

Yep, I actually finished S. an hour or so ago, but I figured that I wouldn't miss out on a routine I'm getting used to.  Deal with it.

 

"The Damned Thing" - Ambrose Bierce

 

Fucking a.  A perfectly paced story with the exact right amount of description to really pull you into this just bizarre, borderline nightmarish story that is not unlike Lovecraft, but minus the frankly inane build-up.  Genuinely suspenseful and unnerving, this piece proves that Ambrose may have just been too far ahead of his time for his own good.

 

There!  And just like that, I slink away to enjoy a two day off period. 

Review
4 Stars
The Sandman Presents
The Furies - Mike Carey, John Bolton

I had an hour after work that I had to spend waiting for my ride to show up, so I got to read an entire piece of graphic literature all the way through.  I had packed this for today, hoping that it would jump-start my taste for The Sandman, so that I could resume reading all of it once more.

 

In that manner, this worked perfectly - I think that I am in the right place, mentally, to go back into the series, perhaps this time until I finish it all off.  Damn, my ankle itches where I twisted it two months ago!  Aggghh

 

Anyway, where was I?  Oh, right.

 

This piece does prove my point, that The Sandman includes a far better story, overall, than the whole American Gods book is.  Perhaps it is due to the strength of the fact that the series manages to include this amazingly expresses art or that the dialogue, the characters and the story is just much more engaging.  Even though this story is a little on the "moot" side of the overall tale, (I think so, at least) it still manages to be engaging, dark and personal.  Again - the unique art style that the series is known for helps in that manner.

 

I think, however, that I was not supposed to read this one before I finished off the series itself.  I felt for the main character, Lyta, through the story, in spite of the fact that I really am not in the position to really understand what she's gone through, by not reading her story in the main series.

 

I would recommend saving this one until after you've read the main series.  Much of what I saw while reading this will resonate with me (Cronus' soliloquy behind that terrifying Greek mask), but it's not a collection that I think, at the moment, that I will be rushing to own for myself.

!!! spoiler alert !!! Review
4.5 Stars
Mmm... Chocolate...
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets - J.K. Rowling, Mary GrandPré

"“Do I look stupid?" snarled Uncle Vernon, a bit of fried egg dangling from his bushy mustache.”

 

Reading this series, especially the early books in the series, is like eating chocolate.  Not garbage Hershey's, either - the good stuff that tastes amazing just by itself, or, shit, some of those chocolate truffles that leak cream with every nibble.   And, hey, I indulged in this book while I was supposed to be working during my last two weeks as though it were a sweet.

 

Take a bite; here is some wonder at the unknown, then here's admiration for the personal strength of a character who has stood up for what he - or, she - believes in.  Finally, you can even taste a large quantity of the bizarre, and, yes, even some of the macabre, in this bite.  It finishes with a sense of assurance that reminds me of the game series Persona - that through the bonds of loving closeness and friendship, almost nothing is impossible to protect, to save.  Delicious.

 

The good thing about high-grade sweets is that it's not all sugary and artificial, either - it's got deeper flavors in it that come out the more you concentrate and roll it around on your tongue.  Incidentally - sorry if I am making it harder with all of this talking about chocolate to stick to any diet you're on at the moment. 

 

In case talking about chocolate doesn't work, here's some visual torture!

 

I thought it was appropriate to compare this series to chocolate, due to the third book and its liberal use of the brown stuff all throughout it.  Also like chocolate, a lot of people rightfully like the series a great deal, but there's always that group in the minority who just doesn't "love" chocolate.  If you don't get hungry at the sight of that opening scene in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, I begin to think that you're a lizard person.

 

Speaking of lizard people...

 

Similarly, if the story of a seemingly powerless underdog trying to protect the first piece of stability and happiness that he has ever experienced, in spite of how many obstacles are thrown his way does not interest you, then you might be inhuman or something.  Just saying.

 

And it's got MAGIC in it!  Magic!

 

Where is your sense of childhood wonder, your belief that good can triumph over evil, even if at terrible odds? 

 

Bah.  Go ahead an BE a grouch; you probably only like to read the "classics", anyway; actual reading for pleasure may just be beyond you.

 

Spoiler-Free

 

In this edgier-sounding book title (a chamber of secrets!), Harry picks up from where he left off after the first book - back at the Dursley's the only thing that's changed is that he can vaguely threaten them with pretending to use fake magic.  Besides how frightened they've grown of him, everything else is basically the same for him.  Waiting to go back to Hogwarts is the main engine that drives him to get up every morning.  Although his first year was rather memorable (sometimes for all the wrong reasons, like that final, nightmarish show-off with Professor Quirrell) as it turns out, this year will beat the shock value of his first year - and it is an exceedingly good thing that Harry is going to be on his toes, because what is going to happen is going to require him to be cleverer and braver than he ever has before.

 

 

Spoilers

 

 

""No," Harry whispered.

"Yes. said Riddle, calmly. "Of course, she didn't know what she was doing at first.  It was very amusing... Dear Tom," he recited, watching Harry's horrified face, "I think I'm losing my memory.  There are rooster feathers all over my robes and I don't know how they got there... Tom, what am I going to do?  I think I'm going mad... I think I'm the one attacking everyone, Tom!""

 

The first sign of trouble actually invades the sterile, mostly boring and unwelcoming home of the Dursleys - a small creature that calls itself Dobby.  Dobby is a house elf - a slave to a wizarding family that seems to be cruel to him and, most importantly, seems to know of a plot to see something awful happen to Harry at school.  Mainly through a desire to protect Harry from what is something that is supposedly waiting for him at school, he does a stand-up job of really just ruining a lot of things for Harry.  This combines with the fact that Harry has been sad that seemingly everyone he cares for has forgotten to send him mail - which, he discovers, has been caused by Dobby attempting to make him not feel loved by his friends by stealing all of his mail before he can get it.

 

He warns Harry that he must promise to not return to Hogwarts, and when Harry refuses to promise that, Dobby does a stand-up job of wrecking whatever calm he has at the Dursleys, who, although they are frightened of him, will not abide him making fools of them.

 

Harry ends up locked away for a day, and he is awakened in the night by a flying car, manned by his best friend Ron and two of his brothers, the twins George and Fred.  They break him out of the barred prison that his uncle Vernon has erected for him just in time for Vernon to come crashing through the door and attempt to keep Harry in the room as he fails.

 

Harry arrives in the Weasley's homestead, where he sees how a poor Wizarding family lives.  He discovers that he vastly prefers the lifestyle of the Weasleys to the prissy lifestyle of the Dursleys.

 

Through a mistake in travelling through Floo Powder, Harry ends up in the wrong place - the black market area for Wizards in London, Knockturn Alley.  It is here that he starts to witness the suspicious-as-fuck behavior of the Malfoys - and he nearly gets caught accidentally eavesdropping on the skeevy behavior of Lucius Malfoy, Draco's snobby, obviously villainous father.   If he had been caught by Draco, who nearly discovered where Harry had taken to hiding while they spoke, Harry might have gone missing from Hogwarts that year!

 

 

From there on, Harry manages to run into Hagrid, who is rather suspiciously wandering through Knockturn.  After being reunited with the Weasleys at Diagon Alley, Harry then has a run-in with his future Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher, the greasy (and, possibly, a caricature of Rowling's ex-husband) Gilderoy Lockheart.  Lucius make a re-appearance to fight with Arthur Weasley in Flourish & Botts.

 

Once it's time to go on the Hogwarts Express with all of the Weasley children, Ron and Harry are horrified to discover that the gateway to the train station has been locked to them.  Exercizing the sort of logic that one would expect from twelve-year-old boys, the pair take the (illegally) enchanted car for a ride to Hogwarts.  Landing the car proved to be a good deal of trouble, though - they land in a very rare and old tree that proves that it can fight back with a fury when it's attacked.  They manage to escape and the car become autonomous, escaping into the Forbidden Woods before the tree can manage to destroy it.

 

Going into the castle, they are immediately discovered and miss out on the sorting ceremony and feast.  And, hey, we're not even at the Chamber of Secrets YET!

 

For a while, things are pretty normal for the three main characters - that is, until Harry comes across a brand of racism that was a reason for Genocide when Lord Voldemort was alive and well - the concept of Pureblood and Mudbloods.

 

This concept is brought up gently in this book, but as the series progresses, this supposed segregation of pure versus, well, mongrel becomes what is arguably the spinning center of the series.  A valid comparison would be the vile war crimes associated with racially motivated - and obscenely cruel - things such as apartheid and racial genocides that have occurred and are still occurring all over the world today.  For now, we will just point out that to people like the Malfoys, the Weasleys, although they are "purebloods", technically, are seen as Muggle "sympathizers". and are thus traitors to their race.  People like Harry and Hermione, who have Muggle in them, are only fit to be killed off.   Draco hurls the insult "Mudblood" at Hermione, and we can immediately see how shocking the insult is in the Wizarding world - Ron tries to damage Malfoy for saying that to Hermione, but instead manages to make himself begin vomiting slugs for a matter of days afterwards.

 

Harry hears a disturbing, disembodied voice threatening the life of someone or something while he is serving his detention with the self-obsessed Lockheart some time later.  Not soon after, something vile happens - someone has petrified the school custodian's beloved cat and has written a disturbing epitaph on the wall next to where the poor thing's been left to hang by her tail.  "The Chamber of Secrets has been opened. Enemies of the heir, beware."

 

 

It doesn't help in the least that Harry and Ron are found in front of this scene. 

 

This begins Harry's mistreatment by some of the student body (*cough, cough* frightened, pussy Hufflepuffs *cough, cough*) who think that he must be the supposed Heir, especially following the revelation that Harry is a Parseltongue - something associated only with evil wizards. 

 

This only gets worse when it is discovered that Colin Creevey, a fan of Harry's, is discovered petrified in the same manner as Mrs. Norris (the cat), Harry is nearly killed by an enchanted ball in a game of Quidditch that tries to drop him off of his flying broom throughout the game and the three main characters are caught up with trying to prove that Malfoy is this feared Heir.  Their detective work ends up proving that as oily as Draco is, he only wishes that he could be the Heir - and it ends with Hermoine in the nurse's wing, partially transformed into a furry (no seriously).

 

Things get hairier, as more people end up petrified - but things take a desperate turn when Ron's little sister, Ginny, is taken into the supposedly mythical Chamber of Secrets, and the school is set to be closed.  A magical diary from a boy names Tom M. Riddle is discovered by harry, and he learns that he can communicate with  the school prefect from fifty years ago by writing in it.  Tom reveals to him that fifty years ago he turned Hagrid in as the person who was involved in the Chamber of Secrets incident - Hagrid's obsession with a large spider. This lead to Hagrid being dismissed from school, and due to Dumbledore's kindness, he is kept on, instead, as the school's Gamekeeper.

 

When they decide to confront Hagrid, they arrive in time to witness him being shipped off to the fearsome prison of Azkaban.  Before he leaves, however, he tells the boys to "follow the spiders".  Dumbledore similarly seems to sense them, and he tells them that all those who seek help will always find it in Hogwarts.  Some time later, Hermione ends back up in the nurse's for the second time - petrified.

 

Some time later, they do manage to find a good deal of spiders, which they follow into the Forbidden Forest, only to discover both a brood of terrifying, large spiders - and a dead end that nevertheless proves that Hagrid had nothing to do with the incident fifty years prior.

 

To Hagrid, giant, scary-ass spider = fluffy best friend

 

Things get worse when Dumbledore is unanimously taken out of power in the school - thanks to Lucius Malfoy.  Now Harry feels compelled to save the school and all of the people endangered by what has happened.

 

The chamber, it is revealed, in in an abandoned girls' bathroom.  Harry is able to get in, because he speaks Parseltongue, and once in, he is separated from Ron when Lockheart, whom they have forced to come with them, attempts to attack them and it backfires, due to the fact that he tries to perform a spell with Ron's damaged wand, causing the spell to backfire on him.  Going further, he find Ginny near-death, and is surprised to discover that the Riddle boy is now physically there - and in control of the large basilisk that has been trying to kill people in school, but succeeded mainly only in petrifying people in the castle.  

 

"Tom Marvolo Riddle" - When mixed up, the letters in his name can also tead, "I am Lord Voldemort."  Some kids are too clever for their own good...

 

Tom, it is revealed, is very much like Harry, but they share one other similarity that is shocking - Tom Marvolo Riddle is the boy who would later become Lord Voldemort, and he had left a piece of himself in his diary to wreck havok later in life.  He was the heir of Slytherin and had used Ginny, who had gotten ahold of his diary, to do his dirty work. 

 

He sics the monstrous snake on Harry, who would have surely died, especially following the snake breaking off a poisoned fang into Harry, if not for the phoenix Fawkes who is the faithful companion of Dumbledore who appears int he chamber, blinding the monster snake, providing Harry the means to summon the sword of Godric Griffindor and then saving Harry from the poison of the fang. 

 

Destroying the Basilisk, Harry then uses the fang that almost killed him to destroy the charm of the diary.

 

All that is left is to escape the chamber with the three people who entered the chamber and Harry arrives in Dumbledore's office to see the Headmaster's returned - along with the Weasleys, grieving over the fate of Ginny, right before they enter with Ginny, well alive, in tow.  it is then revealed that Lucius engineered everything that happened, more or less directly, slipping Voldemort's old diary into Ginny's cauldron while in the bookstore.  Harry reveals this, and Dumbledore lets it be known that Lucius no longer has any place on the school's board.
 

Harry then recognizes that the house elf trailing Lucius is none other than Dobby.  Harry tricks Lucius into throwing clothing at Dobby - the presentation of clothing to a house elf in the way to break the binding of a house elf to that person's family.

Lucius, livid at the loss of his family slave, shows his true cards when he attempts to attack Harry - only to be blocked and retaliated against by the newly-freed Dobby.  Although it might have been best to report Lucius attacking him, it nevertheless in a good moment.

 

I know, it must be embarrassing enough to get your ass beat by this guy, but Harry should have STILL reported that asshole attacking him to SOMEONE.  The guy's a violent control freak - and he was the ENTIRE reason that Ginny spent the school year as a Voldemort zombie - get some sense, kid!

 

The book ends with things back to as normal as they would ever be - Hagrid is let out of Azkaban to return to Hogwarts and Draco is no longer a big as a shit as he was before, now that his father has been publicly disgraced. 

 

This sort of ending is a thing that is unheard of, as the series went past the fourth book later on, so it's best to enjoy this sort of win for Harry while it's here.

(show spoiler)

 

Much less focused on the day-to-day life of Harry still getting used to living like a Wizard than the last book, this one highlights how resourceful and brave Harry has grown, as he decides what is worth protecting and the way that he wants to live.   This book is special in the series, because it introduces both the notions that Voldemort both did not act alone back when he was in power - indeed, there is an entire demographic of hateful people who would do anything to return to life, pre-Harry Potter - and that there is a fragile ecosystem in the school which could topple at some point if it were not properly protected.

 

With each book, we witness the scope of Harry's understanding widened, and this works also with the reader.  Evil, in the first book, seemed to be a sort of vaguer concept, while in this one, we can see how evil can differ in strength and can be motivated by different means, desires.   We also see how evil is not that far from what is good - the old chestnut that the villain is not so different from the hero is presented here as well; Harry sees for perhaps the first time that Lord Voldemort was not so different from Harry in MANY respects.

 

Good, it seems, has to be a voluntary choice, as is to be evil.  Our choices are what makes us who we are.

 

Rowling, I love you, that has to be the only reason that I spent almost two friggin' hours writing this out.  Ugh.

Saturday Short-Story Round Up - American Gothic Tales, Part 1.5
American Gothic Tales - Bruce McAllister, Joyce Carol Oates

The internet spazzed out on me for a good, long minute, so my spotify turned on me like it's Cujo and he's been bitten by a bat and I had to reset everything once more - and then again.  I nearly forgot that today's Saturday, and thus it was time to change my profile pic once more as well as to host the one-paragraph challenge for the short stories I was supposed to have read this week. I woke up early to do the dirty deed of cruising some garage sales and whatever else was happening this morning, and it ended up leaking into my afternoon, and then my lazy ass slept through the evening.  I feel like I just woke up long enough to pour a slushie Strawberry Daquiri into a cup to guzzle down and I just crushed a totally gross Apartment Caterpillar, so let's do this and get it over with!

 

Well, this one will deviate from what I plan to do more in the future, due to the fact that I had already added some of the stories that I will be talking about shortly originally to the draft of last saturday's review.  Yes, that was not supposed to be nearly as short as it ended up being; I think it was supposed to be double the length that it ended up being, but BookLikes ate them up and I was stupid enough to not have installed Lazarus Form Recovery, so, there you go, you get what you deserve in the long run.

 

 

 "Young Goodman Brown" - Nathaniel Hawthorne

 

Can I just state, again, for the record, that it is skeevy as shit to double-dip on one contributor to ANY anthology that is supposed to be subject based, as this one is?  If I had to choose between the two Hawthorne shorts in this collection, my choice would undoubtedly be for "Young Goodman Brown".  It's terrifying on a religious as well as a psychological level, it's expertly paced so that it is nightmarish and it is elemental in its themes (Christian-focused, although they are) so that this short story is destined to stand the test of time.  This may actually be one of the top five stories in this collection that I would recommend a person to read. 

 

Although, Oates, you should have added another author to this book, instead of adding TWO Hawthorne stories.  Off of the top of my head, I would have rather seen the subtle and chilling short story, "The Willows", by later period author Algernon Blackwood than "The Man of Adamant", which feels as though it revisits the themes of "Wieland, or the Transformation" on a smaller scale.  Just sayin'.

 

"The Tartarus of the Maids" - Herman Melville

 

 "He took me up a wet and rickety stair to a great light room, furnished with no visible thing but rude, manger-like receptacles running all round its sides; and up to these mangers, like so many mares haltered to the rack, stood rows of girls. Before each was vertically thrust up a long, glittering scythe, immovably fixed at bottom to the manger-edge. The curve of the scythe, and its having no snath to it, made it look exactly like a sword. To and fro, across the sharp edge, the girls forever dragged long strips of rags, washed white, picked from baskets at one side; thus ripping asunder every seam, and converting the tatters almost into lint. The air swam with the fine, poisonous particles, which from all sides darted, subtilely, as motes in sunbeams, into the lungs."

(show spoiler)

 

Deep within the crevice of a freezing cold mountain lies a study in contrasts - deathly cold and the appallingly stifling heat of mechanisms that turn women into something akin to donkeys in coal mines, forever doing the same motions, day in and day out, with no respite or hope for freedom in sight.  And it is in the POV of a male who seems immune to the blinding cruelty of the men who work, enjoying a sort of "Paradise" deep in a tundra, an existence that is a far cry from the indentured existence of the women of the factory that we witness the lives of women who have been made the parts of the greater machinery of the factory.  Dark and well ahead of its time in terms of how aware the speaker seems to be of the cruelty that the women are forced to endure, this is a short story that cannot be forgotten about.  I REALLY prefer this story to "Bartleby the Scrivener", which just bored me,

 

 

"The Black Cat" - Edgar Allan Poe

 

I hesitate to talk at length about this story - what HASN'T been said about this shocking, disturbing work?  Well, working as either a psychological or a supernatural work of horror, it works exceedingly well in either focus on the story.  It is truthful to say that re-reading this was an experience that still managed to give me the awful creeps.

 

"The Yellow Wallpaper" - Charlotte Perkins Gilman

 

"...the floor is scratched and gouged and splintered, the plaster itself is dug out here and there, and this great heavy bed which is all we found in the room, looks as if it had been through the wars.

But I don't mind it a bit—only the paper.

There comes John's sister. Such a dear girl as she is, and so careful of me! I must not let her find me writing"

 

I do believe that is it a testament to just how AMAZING a tv show is when a character in it idly mentions Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper".  That is to say that American Horror Story is easily the best television drama, and to say that "The Yellow Wallpaper" deserves every accolade that it has earned - and more.  Unnerving and subtle, it feels like listening to a symphony whose sound is every so slightly discordant at first, and then manages to slip further and further into sheer insanity, until by the end we're firmly within the territory of the horrifyingly surreal.   It also works as a wonderful parable of how feminine creativity can express itself in a wide variety of ways when it is suppressed - sometimes in bizarre and disturbing manners.

 

"The Romance of Certain Old Clothes" - Henry James

 

I am just not in the "Henry James" fan club.  The Turn of the Screw was an experience in wanting to very nearly die of boredom throughout most of it, for me, and he proves yet again in this short story that that's just how he makes me feel - and, while I'm comparing the two, I also feel that both of them seem to make me feel cheated, with their endings.  Overlong, built like a ghost story that takes too damn long to get to the ghost, already!  I also sort of despised the supposed "moral" of the story, how one sister who was just as shallow as the other one is supposed to be better than the other one.  The ending bordered on hilarious, for how contrived it is.  It was almost a punchline to a joke that bordered on The Aristocrats in length.   Well, folks, I can't like everything that's supposed to be "amazing", so shove it.

 

Ooh, that was over before I felt as though I'd started!  It's nice to see that I am starting to get to the really good part of the anthology. 

Have a good weekend, everyone!

 

 

 

(To The Library) I Go!

 

So I went to the library - twice this week - and this is the result of that.  Geez!

 

I'm gonna need a system to get through these...

!!! spoiler alert !!! Review
0 Stars
Saturday Short Story Round-up - American Gothic Tales, Part 1
American Gothic Tales - Bruce McAllister, Joyce Carol Oates

I think that I need one day a week to talk, briefly, about the shorts I have been reading during the week.  So, in the spirit of that - I will introduce a new segment known as Saturday Short Story Round-Up! 

 

 

Wieland, or The Transformation (Chapter 19) - Charles Brockden Brown

 

 

 

I raised my hand and regarded her w/ steadfast looks. I muttered something about death, and the injunctions of my duty.  At those words she shrank back, and looked at me w/ a new expression and anguish.

(show spoiler)

 

Shit, man.  Shit.  this story is an eerie, disturbing piece of nightmare fuel - POV of a guy believing that his fate in Heaven is at stake, and the only answer to getting that coveted position back is by obeying an angel of God's commands - no matter how shocking they may be.   It's a bit girthier than it needs to be during the build-up, but, fuck it, it was the 18th century, whaddayagonnado.

 

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow - Washington Irving

 

A story as fundamentally misunderstood by today's audience (those who haven't read the story) as Frankenstein is, this is a bit of a local ghost story mixed up in a bit of a luxurious travelogue of the area of what is generally known as Sleepy Hollow.  Pay attention to my mention of the term "travelogue" - this is pretty slowly paced, up until the end part, which everyone GENERALLY gets right, but not the end of it.  Ichabod is a loveable ass who generally means well, and it is his penchant for aiming a bit too high up the social ladder and for his obsession with "goblin tales" that does him in.  Everyone should read this - and, hey, I babbled on about reading this while I was having my job interview, so the fact that I now have the job might be connected to this story in some fashion, so, this story rocks.

 

The Man of Adamant: An Apalogue" - Nathaniel Hawthorne

 

 

There was something so frightful in the aspect of this Man of Adamant, that the farmer, the moment that he recovered from the fascination of his first gaze, began to heap stones into the mouth of the cavern

(show spoiler)

Another religious tale of precaution, after we already went through with the cleanser of Sleepy Hollow.  Let me get this out of the way - Hawthorne IS an important figure in American literature, and doubly so for the gothic subgrenre, but come the fuck on - did he REALLY need two of his stories in this collection, especially when "Young Goodman Brown" would have sufficed, as an awesome example of his writing (and one that is infinitely better than "The Man of Adamant") - I think that another person's story could have fit in this collection, better than this story.  But I digress.   I was pretty unimpressed with this story, but the theme of mental illness directly causing a man to believe himself to be worthier than others is eerie - along with his physical transformation. 

 

 

URL
Reading Speed + Comprehension = The Reader's Superpower
S. - Doug Dorst, J.J. Abrams

 

I recently read that Theodore Roosevelt regularly read an entire book a day while he was busy.  While NOT busy, the man was said to read 3 - 4... ALONG WITH WHATEVER NEWSPAPER OR PERIODICAL THAT CAUGHT HIS EYE.

 

It's suffice to sat that I was jealous and shocked - well, more jealous than anything, mind you.  I have come close to burying us in a veritable tomb of books that I have bought but have not had the energy to speed through as I'd like.  I want to possess all of their knowledge NOW - I want all of that structure and writing knowledge to be trapped in my brain forever and make me the Akira of writing.  

 

I looked up the article that is attached to this post - and not only did it confirm the shocking claim that Roosevelt pushed while he was alive (2,000 books in a lifetime!) but it also did not leave my hanging high and dry, so to speak.  I actually read this article using this nifty tool - Spreeder.com - and I actually found that I was not fatigued after trying it a few times with a few other articles I copypasted.  

 

Before I read this article, I looked up speed reading for myself. What I found was that:

 

 

It is how Roosevelt claimed that he was able to read so much

 

  • It is most definitely the only way to eat a book in a day

 

and

 

It can be used wrongly and can be a big reason for why something that's been read is unmemorable at a later date.

 

Whoo.  Anyway, where I started on researching this is the relatively modest Subreddit for Speed Reading, where I came across Squirt, which has its downsides but can be useful if you're, say, reading something for school.  It's what's called a BookMarkLette and it scrolls the words on the webpage that it is used on at the top of the page.

 

I really did not find Squirt to be all that to my liking - I prefer Spreeder, but it might just be a point of personal tastes.  Anyway - this all helps a LOT with web pages (possibly e-books as well), but I have a very much PHYSICAL problem with all of my books.  So, what do you do when you can't plop what you're reading into a program to do all of the work for you?

 

I think the most important thing to consider is to know how much "skimming" and the like you can get away with.  When I'm reading S., this is the most important thing to take into consideration - what can you disregard and what must be paid close attention to?   This is a thorny issue when reading a book that is almost 2/3 of what Theodore might have referred to as "bosh", but you don't want to miss that 1/3 of important information.  It's also hard to read other people's hand writing.  (Ugh, that HANDWRITING has given me so many headaches since I bought it around Christmas!)

 

 

Secondly, I think that speed reading, when mixed with skimming, is crucial especially when reading nonfiction - it is in nonfiction that you are primarily dealing with facts, and you don't have to worry so much over missing something subtle and quick - I find that most nonfiction authors love to hammer a point in on multiple occasions, if they find it important enough to them in the first place.

 

The next (and last) consideration, to me, seems to be regarding methodology.  This is what I found most interesting about the article I'm sharing in this post - how to go about doing it for yourself.  This seems to me to be a skill that needs to be practiced - in some regard, I think that I HAVE been practicing it without really working on kicking up my speed.  I call it, "building a reading tolerance", and I can recall moments when I was a teenager when I really hit this very real wall when reading in a marathon.  Headache, mental fatigue - my brain resisted my attempts at shoving all of this reading into it to the point where I couldn't read another damn line - or any other word(s), for that matter, for at least an hour at a time.

 

At any rate, I can sum up the "methods" shared by Brett & Kate McKay as such:

 

 - Stop subvocalizing by counting (or, you know, focusing on breathing or drabble off the alphabet)

 

 - Stop backtracking by using your finger. (Push yourself to keep going, don't go back - I like to visualize this in terms of being a gamer: when you're playing Final Fight, you don't get to go backwards (to the left) once you've gone too far to the right!) - notably:  

 

"use your index finger as a pace car. Underline the text with your finger at a pace faster than you normally read. Only look at the text in front of your finger; once you pass it with your finger, you can’t go back."

 

 

 

 - Use your peripheral vision. Your brain can comprehend several words at a time. You don’t have to read every single word by itself. The key with speed reading is to start reading multiple words at a time instead of just one at a time.

 

So this is now a skill I will be seeking to better; if anyone has any tips or tricks for me, feel free to comment.  I encourage anyone else who's also a "hardcore" reader to look this stuff up for themselves - as long as you're not swindled into buying any software for this, what's there to lose by trying this out?

Review
0 Stars
Not Singing in the Choir
Small World - David Lodge

My 20th Century British Literature professor assigned this along with Possession and  Disgrace.  I would say that she went overboard with making us read books that focus on this intellectual community of Britain,  but now I feel safe to say that she must have grown to believe that upper class cunts with so much secondary schooling that they talk in some form of always in some manner of stuck-up referential moonspeak are what consist of the entire population of Britain. 

 

Case in point, this book is written so deep inside of the author's ass that to an outsider to the British 70's - 80's literary intellectual scene you have no clue what are the author's hang-ups and what are pieces of the actual culture.   

 

I won't fuck around here - I had to read this book,  and it is not funny or in any way relatable to me - I'll go out on a limb and say that this would hardly relate to anyone who is not in the small circle of people who are like the author. 

 

This also had the problem of being a part of a series - and it's not the first in it's series. 

 

Why would anyone set a person to read a piece in a series where it is not the first in the series?   Sigh. 

 

I would talk at length about this,  but even thinking about this book fatigues me.   I just don't care about  Lodge and the ilk he writes for - this book is sometimes funny,  but often leaves me cold for a variety of reasons.  

 

I don't think that I, much like most of the population, will ever really "get" this sort of comedy.   It's prissy and indulgent and it speaks to another,  older sort of person.   Therefore,  I refuse to rate this or to go into detail on it.   I just don't give a shit.

!!! spoiler alert !!! Review
4.5 Stars
Ball Peen Hammer - Adam Rapp, George O'Connor

Y'know - people who don't do horror sure have no idea on how to react to things that are from the genre.  It's all tawdry, it's irredeemable, it's as bad as Grand Theft Auto.  Not that there's anything wrong with that type of fun stuff - I grew up playing Vice City because I had cool parents.  I am not a fan of Troma, personally, but I get it - I have to stop myself from cheering while I'm watching Hellraiser because of the sheer mixture of the holy/the utterly desecrated and the contrast between purity - and a whole lot of fucking blood and gore.

 

But when something isn't PURE psychological and uses body horror to get its point across, you're bound to lose the dumber sectors of the anti-horror brigade.   I have a problem with this mindset, mainly because as a writer, I understand that the use of such visceral imagery can sometimes be used to the most amazing effect -

 

 

- and that is typically when the body horror says something about the less readily visible aspects of a person - their morality, their sins, ect, ect. This is even used to talk about the mores and the societal rules of a deomographic of people. Torture porn is something altogether different.

 

Now, why am I talking about body horror.gore before I talk about this, a graphic novel that breaks away from my streak of kids' books?  Heheheh.

 

 

Ball Peen Hammer - Adam Rapp, George O'Connor 2009

Do I Own This?: Hell Yes!

 

Spoiler Free Portion

 

This story is a plague dystopia that takes place a good while after the shit has hit the fan so hard that people's morality has become shrunken to fit just around their own safety.  The resistance has been crushed; the only hope (a vaccine) now lies, at least for these characters, just beyond the crushing boundary of a mysterious group that keeps people trapped inside and doing awful things for some unexplained reason.

 

Our four main characters are paired into two groups, one that are in this basement room where things in bags make the room smell godawful and the other are in a clocktower whose clock broke when "the bombs fell".  The person who maintained the clock is dead in the other, locked room.

 

The only thing to do appears to talk, to share - to share a human warmth that could very well be the last expression of such emotion for a good deal of the population that is lucky to escape the guns, the dogs, the insanity outside.  

 

This was a graphic novel written by a playwright, and that becomes immediately apparent - the powerful use of atmosphere built by the first few pages shows writing that understands the importance of silence, to allow body language and setting to become modes of expression, the language through which much of the story permeates.  There are very few instances where the characters are outside of the two rooms that they are holes up in for survival - this is the biggest sign that it was written by a playwright, and this is perhaps one of the best stories to ever be written with the medium of a play in mind.  The shock value of the title - and the cover art - is perhaps one of the best choices that I have seen for a first introduction to the mood of the story, but I find myself wishing that this cover was simply either the equally meaningful pigeon or the pink balloon (which is, admittedly, on the back cover).

 

Yeah; this is one of the most dire, sad works I have ever read.  Is there any hope?  What are the roles that they now must play?

 

 

Spoilers

 

 

"W-what happened to you head?"

"I got clunked.  It's okay.  It doesn't hurt anymore... Don't worry, you'll feel better soon."

This is a story that relies on deep levels of meaning, somber and ironic, to really convey this really just deep level of hopelessness, sadness and oppression.   A person on the verge of death (Welton) engages in one of the most horrific practices imaginable -

 

 

and aids another man (Underjohn), an author who is supposedly immune to the plague but is nevertheless trapped by the cruel regime that has overthrown the city (and, perhaps, more than that) to prepare for a job that is yet worse than what he does.

 

Children's fragility is a major theme in this work - perhaps it is the most meaningful theme, next to the endless extent to human suffering that permeates this work in such a manner that is it nearly a choking influence on the reader.  Although we never see inside of those stinking sacks that disappear and go who knows where, as Welton comes closer to death, the apparition of the most beautiful child appears in his room, promising an end to his misery and pointing out a bag that Underjohn has brought in as "her's".  Jeez.

 

And then there's Welton's symbol of his flagging life - the breaking of the strings of his beloved guitar as he continues to play it.   In the end of the story, similarily, there appears to be some sort of a death symbolized by Underjohn's "writer's block" - his utter inability to type on his typewriter, following the atrocity he has to commit.

 

There is no real discussion of the morality of the dead/damned actively engaging in the genocide of the city's children - and that's a reason why I LOVE this story, as dark as it is.  The voice of morality, at least for the beginning of the story (Underjohn) is silenced, when he is forced to contemplate his own mortality.  They both have loved - and lost - two different people in two different ways, and bond over this sense of lost loves that they have.

 

In contrast to Welton and Underjohn, we get an utterly tragic story of a (pregnant) woman (Exley) and a 13 year old boy (Horlicker) who find themselves, at first, grudging allies, but quickly bond over their optimism, even in the face of their horrible surroundings (the corpse of the clock keeper, locked in the next room).   Horlicker shows a good deal of bravado and lewdness, as he attempts to act older than he is - he tells Exley of his older brother, Dennis, who, it is readily apparent, is an all-around awful human being.  Exley sees past his lewd behavior and grows to treat him lovingly, motherly.

 

When Exley insists on washing Horlicker, she discovers the dire marks on his body of the plague.  Despite this, she embraces the boy without showing her horror at his bad fortune.   Very early on, Horlicker is symbolized by a pigeon who he wants to kill, but learns to appreciate through Exley.

 

Dennis enters the story, after Exley and Horlicker were out and he has sold all of their furniture.  And he shits in their sink, which still has the rarity of running water.  He has killed the pigeon.   Not soon after Exley meets him, she realizes that she has begun to bleed profusely between her legs - a sure sign that she will not be giving birth to a child, now.

 

Dennis orders Horlicker to pull out the teeth of the corpse in the other room, even after Exley tells him that she knows that his brother is infected.  Dennis then leaves them alone after proving himself to be the face of the cruelty of the outside world - "Exley will take care of you" takes on a completely different meaning.

 

And the story ends with these characters akin to ships passing in the night, during the end of the world, with the burning rain hitting Exley as she flees the clocktower unprotected.

(show spoiler)

 

I would recommend this as reading material to people with a strong disposition towards the saddest/darkest material imaginable.  A tour de force of tragedy, a musing on the worth of morality in the death rattles of the human race.

!!! spoiler alert !!! Review
4 Stars
Matilda: Broadway Tie-In - Quentin Blake, Roald Dahl

"It was pleasant to take a hot drink up to her room and have it beside her as she sat in her silent room reading in the empty house in the afternoons."

 

Spoiler-Free Portion

I'm deviating from my usual... I don't know, way of doing this by starting out on this foot, but first I want to express my loathing for the cover art that I had to settle with when I bought this book - new! - for my Childrens' Lit class.  Why should I care about the new musical (MUSICAL?  WHY?) that someone has used to make money from off of Roald Dahl's work.  So why did you decide to re-release the book, minus Quentin Blake's unique work that is as memorable and goes together with Roald Dahl's work as much as Dr. Seuss' own writing is just as well known as his own art? 

 

How would you react if the cover of Green Eggs and Ham were to be similarly replaced with some shitty new thing that people are doing with the copyright?  Assholes.

 

There we go; this is Matilda!

 

And that's just about as angry as I can get with Matilda.   Oh how I love the titular character of this book; if I love a girl character more than her, it would have to be Hit Girl or Harriet.  Usually, I am not one for the subtle, passive sort of female characters.

 

My tastes usually run towards the little girls swinging swords around and shooting guys indiscriminately.

 

- but Matilda as a character manages to do it for me so well that when I am not imagining myself killing dudes and doing backward flips all over the fucking place, I can often just as easily imagine being a bright optimist whose real superpower is the ability to swallow books and retain all of their information like a supercomputer - nay, Matilda's brain is something that I wish could replace Google as my search engine, I really believe that after she grew up, her brain must be the most amazing font of information you could possibly imagine.

 

And, let's be real here - if I had to choose between being aerodynamic and generally fighty as all hell and being able to read at a completely unrealistic speed and retaining all of that information, if I could steal one of their powers, it would have to be Matilda's.

 

Grudgingly - I must admit that when it comes to killing dudes = mo' bodies, mo' problems

 

Matilda is not only incredibly smart, she is an amazing problem solver, thoughtful, as well as kind and brave in her own, fragile little way.  She's more comfortable in her own skin than I will ever hope to be - echoing Harriet the Spy, she's set on the learning of as much knowledge as she can, and she does not have any more time to reserve for The Pink Aisle than Harriet does. She stands up to others, thoughtlessly protecting what she believes in because it's just the right thing to do.

 

Did I mention that she's tiny?  She's downright diminutive.

 

 

Unlike Harriet, Matilda's problem in her youth is not one of identity - for a child, Matilda knows who she is intimately.  The main problem of her life is both her family, the Wormwoods and the Trunchbull, and what they symbolize in her - and people like her's - life.

 

 

 

 

In order - the problems that Matilda gets from most of the adults (and some children) in her life is the cruel indifference, cruelty and vengeful attitude of the people in her life (especially towards her hobby) who should be the most comforting and warm towards her, and then the openly cruel actions of the personification of the school system that she goes to for enlightenment and instead it ("she") provides Matilda with threats of physical violence and a complete refusal to provide all children with the knowledge/skills that they attend schools to receive.

 

Yeah, this book is far deeper than it seems at first blush.   And I'll make it simple for you now - 4/5 of this book is simply amazing, worthy of its status as a classic.  If I have a problem with this, part of it is due to my nit picking, and I still hold this book close to my heart.    If you have a child, this is one of the great books to offer to you child - buy this and give this to them now.

 

Spoilers

 

 

Matilda is sent to school after she goes through the first portion of her life having to be around only her family and the kindly librarian who watches her pursuit of her hobby with amazement and the first real encouragement that she gets for having a hobby - read: I will bring up that reading is a HOBBY later on, so pay attention - and she soon realizes that with the exception of the truly amazing teacher, Miss Honey, the school is no much more encouraging and enriching an experience as the home that she returns to.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Among the children, Matilda uncovers the sad truth that even kind, intelligent adults are vulnerable to exploitative adults who value threats of physical violence and obscene cruelty via Miss Honey, the sweet-natured teacher who is shocked by Matilda's obviously apparant level of intelligence, leading to them bonding.

 

 

 

The Headmistress of the school, the Trunchbull, does not only threaten and actually harm children. but she has managed to (it is implied) murder Miss Honey's beloved father when she was but a child and has managed to retain the home that Miss Honey should own, becoming the heaviest influence hanging over Miss Honey's life.

 

 

 

After discovering the sad home that Miss Honey lives in, Matilda decides to help her.  By rescuing both Miss Honey and the school from the crushing cruelty of the Trunchbull, Matilda earned first a close friend in Miss Honey, but also earned a new home with the teacher when the Wormwoods' luck finally runs out and they have to escape the country, allowing Matilda to become Miss Honey's adopted daughter for the HAPPIEST GODDAMNED ENDING IN LITERARY HISTORY MOTHERFUCKERS.

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is not the right picture I wanted to use, but I can't find that heart-rending last illustration of them hugging, so this will have to do.  I am not going to lie - this illustration is one of the most tear-jerking sights I have ever seen in a book.

 

 

 

Now, here's the problems -

 

 

 

- Reading is a hobby.  Arguably the greatest hobby, but nevertheless a hobby.  I have to defend this hobby of mine to other people, who, for some reason, think that reading is not "cool".  I don't have to defend this to you guys - I am singing to the choir on this one - but Matilda manages to piss me right off with Dahl's sneering at the hobbies that other people may have.  I understand that the television of Dahl's day was filled to the brim with garbage, but that is not necessarily true of television today.   This comes across in the book as Matilda, as sweet and amazing as she is, nevertheless coming across as dismissive of other people's hobby of watching television.   She does not do a good job of being an ambassador for the hobby of book reading, with how readily she is dismissive of the Wormwoods' intelligence and their tastes.  Sure, she once offers Mr. Wormwood to read The Red Pony and he DOES tear her book up (awful, I will agree) but, following that moment, how does she try to make her family understand her hobby, explain it to them and have them try reading for themselves?    SHE DOES NOT.   Today this part of the book ages the story, in the age of amazing television and movies.  It hurts its supposed timelessness.

 

 

 

- Besides being well-read, what ELSE is Matilda known for?  That's right, telepathy.

 

Although it sounds fun, I found this to be a silly, downright useless plot addition whose only real addition to the story is providing Matilda with a means to save the entire school from the Trunchbull.  I would have preferred that she save the school through a means of uniting the school (especially the children) and really use her cleverness and resourcefulness to bring everyone together to either expose the Trunchbull's cruelty to the outside world or to chase her out of the school.   The telepathy seems like a contrivance, silly in a plot where Matilda deals with very real problems (well, with the exception of the surreal addition of the Trunchbull's great size and the punishment she doles out to children)  and I think it does her intelligence and the ability to gain the friendships of those around her a disservice.

 

(show spoiler)

 

It's by no means perfect, but it is in Matilda the character that we get an amazing, extraordinary and near-timeless archetype that provides a role model for not only young girls, but also adults of both genders.  She provides a great example of how you do not have to be passive to still be a person who stands up for what's right, what you believe in.

 

Even if it is without guns.

 

(I had to take away half a star, for this godawful cover art)

 

!!! spoiler alert !!! Review
4.5 Stars
Harriet the Awesome Little Pre-Teenager
Harriet the Spy - Louise Fitzhugh

""Listen to this," Ole Golly said and got that quote look on her face....

"What does that mean?" Harriet asked after she had been quiet a minute. 

"What do you think it means?"

"Well, maybe if you love everything... then... then - I guess you'll know everything... then.... seems like... you love everything more. I don't know.  Well, that's about it."

 

Spoiler - Free Portion

 

So my birthday's on sunday - can't wait to see what you all are going to get me.

 

I'm so hyped

 

Anyway, while I'm waiting to turn another shade of 20's, I thought I'd get to writing this out while I wait for that Gyro to digest in my tummy.  Mmm. Lamb meat.

 

I had to read this for my childrens' lit class - and I'm glad I HAD to read this, because I may not had the urge to read this, due to my only knowledge of this book being the godawful Nickelodeon travesty that turned the whole book into a giant dramatic thing.  Oh, and the straight-laced Ole Golly was played by a wuvvable Rosie O'Donnell.

 

So yeah, my childrens' lit class was actually the first time I ever heard of this book.  And here I was, with the mistaken impression that Nickelodeon had come up with their own ideas.

 

Next thing I'm gonna learn is that this travesty was based off of a child's search for his identity as he slowly freezes to death

 

So, what IS this book about?

 

Harriet has one of the coolest hobbies imaginable for a kid living in a city like New York - she likes to keep up a "spy route" and keeps notes on a hand full of people that she finds fascinating enough to make a routine of finding hiding places to watch/listen to them during their daily routines.  She also has learned how to keep frank notes of her own opinion on what's going on in her life and with everything going on around her.  She writes everything down in a plain Composition notebook, which she keeps until she fills up, buys another one - rinse and repeat.  No, this is not portrayed as a lonesome, neurotic habit - perhaps an attempt to control things around her in her own way - this is, refreshingly, portrayed as her form of personal artistic expression, a way to indulge in her overwhelming creativity while also using it as practice for what is what she says to be her future as - what else?  A spy.

 

Her parents are the opposite of Helicopter Parents - Harriet's family is not wealthy, but she does have a personal chef (who makes her her white cake and tomato sandwiches, more or less dutifully) and, most importantly to Harriet, she is watched over by a nanny who is wise enough to understand Harriet's need for physical as well as emotional space while providing for the young girl a soft place to land whenever she needs advice or warmth - Ole Golly.

 

Erm, this would need to be brought up sooner than later, but Fitzhugh's art borders on terrifying and grotesque a lot of the time, and this depiction of Ole Golly is one of the more.... distracting pieces.  I have found that the art has grown on me immensely, but oftentimes I wonder if some illustrations are supposed to be as disturbing as they come off as being.

 

Harriet is also not wanting for friends, as she is close to two children - a boy and a girl - from her school who have personalities vastly differing from her own.  although Harriet has a habit of constantly pausing whatever she's doing to write down her thoughts and reflections in her notebooks, it is implied that she is very much well-adjusted, albeit one rather ambitious girl.

 

Harriet likes sameness, is comforted by things being the same every day.  Despite the fact that her parents are mainly absent from her life, she is happy with the way things are.

 

What could go wrong?

 

Spoilers

 

 

It's a pretty hard pill for anyone to swallow that you cannot trust others around the sanctity of your most private thoughts - and it's almost impossible to make others understand that your private thoughts about them d not mean, simply, that you secretly think less of them or hate them.

 

Harriet's life is completely de-railed when the notebook she is currently writing in is discovered by another girl in her class who is not a fan of hers.  This girl does the absolute worst thing imaginable to such a private, shielded personality like Harriet has - she reads aloud from the journal and uses it as a wedge to drive Harriet out from her circle of friends and acquaintances in the school. 

 

This leads to Harriet's uncomfortable realization of what it feels like to be an outcast, due to the baring of her most personal thoughts to the entire school. 

 

Harriet's biggest aid in regaining her lost respect is the fact that the two girls who orchestrated her fall from school society are dismissive of everyone but themselves, and even though they create an Anti-Spy Club (aimed solely at alienating Harriet) that go do far as to walk past where Harriet tries to recoup her emotions, staging a mini Anti-Spy parade in a humiliating fashion, Harriet proves that through tenacity, creativity and trying her hardest to earn her friends' trust back, she manages to reveal the girls' snobbery towards the other children.

 

This is no easy task, however, and Harriet is put through the hard, painful work of learning personal responsibility that begins with her rights to write being taken away, when her "spying" behavior is brought to her parents' knowledge and she loses Ole Golly one dramatic evening when Harriet's parents attempt to fire Ole Golly for taking Harriet out past her bedtime to see a movie, and Ole Golly reveals that she has decided that she needs to leave sometime soon, because Harriet has outgrown her need for her to be there.   "But, Ole Golly," one of Harriet's parents finally manages to say, when Ole Golly reveals her plans to leave. "what will we do without you?"

 

Harriet also learns life lessons from the people she spies on, from a man who owns too many cats to a bedridden woman who refuses to leave the house.  Harriet is also introduced to Ole Golly's mentally deficient mother, who is likely to be Harriet's first exposure to a person like her.  All in all, the mood of the book seems to suggest that Harriet is overgoing the emotional and mental processes of becoming a teenager - the comforts of Ole Golly, white cake and living without consequences are over. 

 

I think the most important message in this entire book, however, is the reminder that those who love you may not always be there to plop you back on your bike when you fall off, but in the case of Ole Golly, Harriet has in her ex-Nanny a woman still capable of giving her very good advice that may not be the Disney-sanction type of advice about always being up-front and transparent with others, in that she seems to tell Harriet via a letter to her that the answer to her conundrum is to accept her small victories and when all else fails, in order to protect her personal opinions, she should, on occasion, lie to save other people's feelings.

 

Harriet learns moderation, if only to save her public persona and she adapts to change beautifully. 

 

Harriet is one of my favorite characters of all time, with her acceptance of who she is - she obviously is not intimidated by others' opinion of what a "girl" should look/act like, and she has a passion that she actively works to grow.  I also love her creepy little friend, Janie, who frightens the shit out of her overly-bubbly mother with her... bubbly vials full of what she claims is poison.

 

  This is one intense fricking girl

 

The kids in this book are great.  Yet again, I have to applaud someone for an accurate portrayal of children in literature - their emotional fragility and, unlike John Green's bizarre portrayal of teenagers, Fitzhugh manages to make children who can be quite brilliant but are not uncharacteristically so.  

(show spoiler)

 

 

Harriet is a magnificent little girl, and she is a character beloved by people who value females with a great deal of curiosity and have the courage to be themselves.  I have heard of a woman who did become a spy cited Harriet as her role model when she was a girl - which, I think is really just amazing.

 

I am not surprised that some dumb-asses have seen a wide variety of bullshit reasons to attempt to block children from reading this - oh dear, we couldn't have them reading something that tries to say something meaningful about growing up, providing a different style of growing up, contrary to the Seventh Heaven fuckfaces with their gross, Aryan children, now, could we?   It is an awful mistake to try to keep children from reading any book that they want to - as John Waters once mentioned, if a kid has the tenacity to go to a library to get a copy of Naked Lunch, what right have you to block that kid from reading it? - but this book, in particular, speaks to children in an intimate fashion that is admirable, especially to children whose personality is grown inwardly and not in an outward, socially motivated fashion. 

 

Girls in particular need more Harriets in the public canon, providing an example of a girl who wears the same old clothes when she goes spying and always makes sure to have a flashlight so that she can better explore the world around her.

 

Oh, this came out recently - fuck me, why?

 

 

Please tell me that the plot of this isn't that Harriet has naked pictures of herself floating around the internet...

On a Personal Note...

Okay, I don't like to do the TMI thing on this blog, but I just needed to say - I just got called for an interview at my absolute favorite place in the world!

 

 

OH MY GOD

 

 

 

 

 

 

And, finally, to my current job, who has my hours down to FIVE HOURS A WEEK:

 

!!! spoiler alert !!! Review
3.5 Stars
If You Stare too Deeply into Its Eyes, It'll Devour Your Soul
The Invasion - Katherine Applegate

As I have decided to start doing now, I'll gloss over everything you need to know about the book before I get into some spoiler territory, which I will mark as containing spoilers.

 

 

 

 

Spoiler-Free Portion

 

My Copy of the Book: I noted in an entry a month or two back how I got this book to begin with - I found the first ten in this series as a quarter a piece (the condition they're in does leave something to be desired, but in better condition Half-Price was selling them at a buck a piece, which is a bit much, for a nostalgia-induced impulse buy) at the Franciscan Center near where I live.  Out of all of the books I bought in the set, this one is in the absolute worst condition - so much so that I ended up selling it in the hopes that I can find another one in good condition if I can.  This one is, frankly, a bit gross.

 

Summary: Do you not know of the Animorphs series? In case you don't -

 

*intake of deep breath*

 

Animorphs is a 90's-riffic sci/teen series that revolves around the desperate struggle that is a group of pre-teenagers who are gifted with the power to Morph by a dying alien prince who warns them of an oncoming invasion by an alien race who takes over the bodies of all members of a species on a planet until all members of a species are essentially meat puppets that enhance the further cruelty of the alien race that pushes further into the universe, with the Adalites at their tail.  What this all essentially means in that the city that these children live appears to be the main point of entry for a subtle take-over of the human race on planet Earth, and as they were the ones who arrived on the scene of the dying Andalite prince, he gives the group of pre-teenagers a power previously known only to alien races - the power to change into anything that a being touches and creates a mind link with - in other words, living creatures.  This means what you would think it does - the children gain an ability to change into whatever they have managed to touch and create a mind link with, which they use in a variety of ways to spy and counterrattack om those who seek to take over the Earth(tm).

 

*Deep draw in of breath*

 

If you were not a kid in the 90's, you very well may have skipped past this series but if you didn't, then this all may sound all too familiar to you.  Hell, you might have been fanatical for this series back in the day.

 

The real question here, though, is does the first book in the series stand by itself right now.

 

Simple answer?  Well, this isn't the best written thing I've ever come across and I have moments in the story where I want to throw my hands up and yell, "Why? What!", but to be frank, I feel as though a part of that just adds to some of the fun - the campy, nostalgic kind of "bad quality" that just reminds you of those days when you wondered what a Reptar Bar must have tasted like and when you could watch any episodes of Goosebumps that was not The Haunted Mask or any of the Night of the Living Dummy without bursting into laughter.  Fuck it, I'm biased as hell, why deny it?

 

Still - there are very real problems, such as with continuity or your usual, "If the aliens are so scientifically advanced, why can't they tell their being fucked with by 90'S KIDS?", and I am therefore not saying that this book is not without very real issues that could be cleared up, if someone ever got around to waving money in front of Applegate with the caveat that she clean this shit UP.

 

I really like this book.  No, I mean it - all of the little details lead up to making me surprisingly fulfilled, happy.  I feel like Applegate really got the mindset of a kid eerily well, in a way that other writers just keep fucking up over and over.  If only for the fact that Applegate clearly knows how to write kids I think that this book deserves a read, if you want to read some middle school fare.

 

Want to know what I especially appreciated?  Although outdated, I think that with the way that Applegate describes Jake's liking of video games was so real and sincere, coming across as though he actually PLAYS them.

 

Ha ha, guinea pig, you have NO IDEA what you're doin' there

 

SPOILERS

"At that moment, something weird happened.  I was looking at Tom, and he was smiling at me.  But then his face twitched."

 

We join our heroes moment before their lives change completely.  As I have mentioned in a previous post, the aliens in this series all look roughly... Nightmarishly terrifying.   The worst - and what's stated as the most villainous alien species is a creature that crawls in your head and takes total control of everything you do - all that is, sometimes, able to be seen of your true self is an occasionally terrified look that you can at times gather the strength to project. 

 

 

 

The first major thing on the docket for the kids is to start touchin' things.  Cats, birds, ect., ect. - this leads to a chase in the Staff Only portion of a zoo where four of the characters try to get away from the staff before they: A. get caught looking suspicious in a city where the Yeerks have already aggressively begun their invasion and are on the look-out for these children and B. have a chance to gather the information needed from touching animals to turn into said animal.  

 

 

 

They already have the inkling that they might have to mix it up real well, having witnessed the terrifying/tragic death of the benevolent Andalite Prince Elfangor (see how Applegate managed to get "Elf" in his name?  Yeah, just be happy she didn't make Visser "Orc") by Visser Three, who transforms into something awful and eats him alive.

 

 

 

The pacing of this is really amazing, it's one of my favorite aspects of this book.  You won't be dealing with Jake moaning over a low score on a test - you want transformation and spying, and damn it if you don't get exactly that, as the story starts becoming more personal to Jake as he begins to understand that his beloved older brother is a Controller (those who are infested with a Yeerk), tries desperately to discover the location of the Yeerk Pool (the only place where it may be possible to free a person from their Controller, due to their Yeerk needing to swim around freely in the pool to replenish their necessary nutrients to continue living) and then becomes worried over one of their own as he (Tobias) grows increasingly out-of-touch with being a human.

 

 

 

I spent much of the book very VERY pleasantly surprised by the great, age-appropriate prose that moved quickly and spoke in the language of a child at Jake's age, but Applegate did not use the intended audience as a crutch to use sub-par writing or to dumb down the intensity of the science fiction aspect of this story.   I was waiting to see if the ending would prove whether this story was leading up to something great, or if it would die out, as so many other writers fall into doing.

 

 

 

Holy shit, guys, the INTENSITY of the scene at the Yeerk Pool is just... shocking.  I am not being sarcastic here - for a kid's book, Applegate seems to plumb some level of hell for the imagery described in the last scene of the book, with humans screaming in cages and awaiting for the eventuality of their bodies to be re-taken over by the parasitic monsters that have taken over their lives and the aliens watching them in this massive cavern sometimes operating with their own Yeerk as they make sure that people patiently allow their Yeerk to wiggle out of their ear for a nice swim and then re-allow the Yeerk to wiggle back into their heads through their ears.

 

 

 

Oh, and then the bloodbath begins when the kids fuck up (I gotta say, I love the realness of these naive kids royally fucking up what was supposed to be re-con and turned into disastrous rescue mission) and two innocent people (well, a lady and a Hork-Bajir) die when they attempt to flee like motherfuckers in their really awesome animal forms and Visser Three proves that there's a reason that he's this universe's Frieza when he transforms into a gigantic tube monster filled with rows of teeth that tosses fireballs at people.

 

 

 

Yes, this was made available to you, courtesy Scholastic Books, folks! 

 

 

 

I have no idea why I didn't stick close to this series to begin with - my mistake, obviously!

(show spoiler)

 

 

Who Should Read This: A Science Fiction fan who wants to read something for Middle Schoolers who has a dark streak.   This stuff is for kiddos with some real courage!

Stuff

currently reading

Progress: 198/544pages
How to Grow a Novel: The Most Common Mistakes Writers Make and How to Overcome Them - Sol Stein
When Lightning Strikes - Kristin Hannah