I was kind of into book one and fairly indifferent to book two, so it seems my expectations were perfectly adjusted for book three, in a way. It was ok and I was ok with it, it didn’t wow and not every book ought to. It entertained quite sufficiently as presented.
This series, despite what the awards and acclaim say, isn’t the latest word in scary comics. It’s a word. A decent enough of a word, something like Boo. The concept is very, very, terribly familiar. There are monsters out there, carnivorous and terrifying and only kids can see them. Well, kids and this special group of monster hunting killers. One of them peels away on a solo mission and finds herself defending the citizens of a small town where a monster momma and monster babies have recently materialized into a hungry existence. So it’s about this kickass young woman monster slayer. She knows someone’s killing the children and intends to do something about it. Yey. It’s fairly well drawn, reasonably well written. Yes, not the most original thing out there, but decent enough overall. The best thing about it is how dynamic it is. Action scene after action scene, not too many words, goes by very, very quickly. I’m not hugely invested in where it goes next, but would most likely read the next volume if our library continues to acquire them. Short and entertaining is perfectly good in its own way.
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I’ve been in the mood for some good new science fiction and this book fit the bill perfectly. It’s a hip, fresh and fun space adventure with just the right balance of action, science and humorous touches. Very entertaining production.
So, meet Mickey7…the seventh reiteration of the same person, but no mere clone, he retains all the memories of his previous forms, he just gets reprinted, over and over again. Because he gets dead over and over again. Because he signed up for a crazy mission and now that’s his life. Mickey is an Expendable on a colonization mission to a distant planet, in a distant future where colonization efforts are all the rage. This particular planet isn’t especially habitable, but has a lot of potential, and it’s up to a team of nearly 200 people to categorize and optimize this potential, so that it can be seeded with all the embryos they brought with them. Mickey’s crucial to the mission, a sort of royal tester, in space. Mickey’s also the only one mad enough to volunteer for this position. Some of the colonists, the Natalists, including the mission’s commander, don’t even consider him a real person anymore, but are still aware of his inherent worth. The thing they don’t want, though, the thing no one really wants, including Mickey himself, are two Mickeys, and yet, following a mission snafu, that’s exactly what occurs. Mickey7, written off for dead, survives and comes back to find a freshly printed Mickey8 in his bunk. Shenanigans ensue… The book is really too elaborate to describe as a mere clone comedy, though it did remind me of that recent blink and miss it Paul Rudd tv show where he also found himself sharing life with a clone, after a snafu. That production wouldn’t even be saved by Paul Rudd’s considerable (and doubled charm), but this one works and works well. It hits all the right notes in all the right respects, follows its internal logistics tightly and spins a fascinating and compelling narrative of wildly imaginative, well crafted future. Very respectable world building, very fun, dynamic writing. There’s so much to like here. I enjoyed reading this book very much. Recommended. Thanks Netgalley. If you are at all reluctant to read this book thinking that it’ll just be one of those maudlin weightless and meaningless things like Manjit Thapp’s recent book, don’t be. This is serious, substantial and very, very good.
A profound meditation on loneliness as a social condition, from its psychological ramifications to its overall deleterious effects on individuals and the fabric of society at large, Seek You, titled after the phonetic rendering of a CQ radio call, talks about the disconnectedness that so permeates the modern society, despite all the performative connectivity that social media affords. Chapter by chapter this book deals with serious themes, substantiated by research, empirical evidence and facts and time and time again it shows that loneliness isn’t just a state of mind, it’s a much more serious thing, more like a state of being, the kind of isolation that isn’t merely sad, but can in fact be dangerous. Lonely people, it seems, don’t last as long in nature, and this has nothing to do with being alone as such, it’s more than that, a state of disconnect from the world. Once upon a time we needed others to survive. Literally. But then as the civilization progressed, it gave us the grand delusion of self-sufficiency, especially in the US, where such mentality is practically enshrined. It’s meant to produce proudly self-reliant people, but often results in profoundly lonely ones. The culture of individuality is its own evil, but that would be a long digression and I ought to spare you. Suffice it to say, this book is a pretty exhaustive guide on loneliness, rendered through both personal reflections and scientific perspective. It’s well written, erudite, emotionally and otherwise intelligent and very, very well drawn. What more can you ask for? Long, but doesn’t read like it, bleak, but what did you expect, this one is absolutely worth a read. It also, it stands to mention, introduces the readers to a research scientist who puts Pavlov to shame, so beware of some serious monkey abuse. Really horrific to read about. Almost makes you think about a possibility of the apes rising up and taking over to avenge themselves. Or wait…has that been done? Anyway, a very good read to stir up some thoughts. Recommended. This book was exactly the sort of engaging etymological guide to idiom that nay word nerd can…well, nerd out over. It’s light and fun and gallops through different modern mediums, from books to tv to sports to present the readers with origins for the popular (and some not so popular) sayings.
It is heavily skewed in British direction, but a good idiom is a good idiom, irrespective of its place of origin. I actually learned some of new ones, including the titular one, which sounds like some kind of a great surfing adventure but actually refers to the time when a quality of creative work drops down in and the creators behind it get desperate, this is most popularly used for tv shows, when their makers resort to drastic measures to revive public interest in them. For that and more, check out this book. It’s etymology lite, informative and entertaining, without ever getting bogged down by pedantism or taking itself too seriously. It’s also charmingly slim, so it goes by like a proper quick fun without ever overstaying its welcome. Things were learned. Fun was had. The amateur linguist in me was delighted. Recommended. Thanks Netgalley. An excellent debut novel slotted right for the higher tiers of the rural noir genre. Not a typical favorite of mine, to be honest, but when done right (and this one very much is) there’s a certain almost musicality to it. Mind you, it’s a sad tune, a lament in a way, there’s bleakness here, grime, desperation, but it’s haunting in its own way, a haunting melody of a story.
1960s on the coast of Mississippi river is the setting for this cops chasing criminal story. The basic premise of it is actually very basic indeed. There’s a local creep who dilapidated residence gives the book its title, a creep who turns murderous when his desires can no longer be contained by manikins and peeping, and now there’s a proper crime to solve. A crime serious enough that requires outsourcing assistance in form of a city detective. The detective, a man haunted by the untimely tragic death of his wife and child seven years prior, a man who tempts death because he doesn’t get much joy out of life, arrives, teams up with the local sheriff and together they proceed to solve the crime. Ok, strictly from a police procedural perspective this isn’t the most satisfying of tales, because you know who the perp is, they all but know who the perp is, but fail to apprehend him or make the case stick, time and again. But from a character driven dramatic literature perspective, this is excellent. It draws you right in and holds on tightly to you until the ride is over. I read the entire book in one sitting, it wasn’t even a long sitting either, it just sped by. There was just something to the writing, a mesmerizing sort of darkness. Noir at its finest. So yes, a very enjoyable, albeit a pretty dark, heavy and disturbing read. Recommended. Thanks Netgalley. This book has become iconic in both comic and memoir circles and for a good reason. It’s a terrific accomplishment in both fields. I’m not even really into memoirs and I can appreciate this.
Bechdel has made a career out of getting up close and personal with her readers and, though on a personal level that sort of dirty laundry airing terrifies me, as a reader I can appreciate it, in a very voyeuristic sort of way. I was prepared for this book. Not only have I read Bechdel’s most recent biocomic about her lifelong obsession with fitness, but actually I saw the musical adaptation of this a while back. And yes, the fact that someone read this book and then thought, you know what, this would make a great musical, absolutely boggles my mind, but the thing is I didn’t even like the musical all that much. It felt kind of forced, like it wasn’t a story that needed to be sung. And sure enough, upon reading the actual book my conviction stands. The thing is, as much as I don’t like the public indiscretion of look at me genre that memoirs tend to be, some lives just naturally land themselves to that sort of exposure, if only as a therapy to the people who lived them, which might very well be the case here. There was no fun in Bechdels, though the title also plays on the abbreviation of the fact that the family operated a funeral business, it’s clever like that. Bechdel grew up with a downright repugnant father and an at best withholding mother, two people who had no business being together, let alone bring three kids into the world. The main theme here is that the father was a closeted gay, a thoroughly provincial man of airs and pretentions and predilections for teenage boys. The duality of his nature, the pressure of living with the secret, the balancing of his two selves might be to blame for how crappy of a father and of a person he was or maybe he just was that way and didn’t need the excuses. At 44 he walked out in front of a truck and was killed, either careless or suicide. Either way, his family survived him, his children survived him and one of them went on to write about it, over and over and over again. As if exorcising her demons. A childhood that messed up would scar anyone, even the (arguably more resilient) older generations. The book is stunningly well written, terrifically drawn and completely (terrifyingly) immersive. It’s so wild and so well observed as to almost be fictional and you’ll have to remind yourself that no, this was someone’s life. You know that Tolstoy’s thing about all unhappy families being different, well, this is a portrait of a very different unhappy family and it merits attention. Bleak, absolutely, but then again what did you expect? Fun? Very good read. Recommended. Now, here we have a book that touts itself to be Ripper Street meets Sherlock and is in fact something like that. It isn’t a Jack the Ripper novel as such, it’s. Ripper adjacent novel. It takes place a few years later in the same area when similar horrific crimes are being revisited upon the Whitechapel’s ladies of the night.
An ambitious detective and his Watson like sidekick (although a much more active one at that) set out to solve the murders, a journey that takes them from the darkest dankest alleyways to the poshest plushest society dens. I’ve read the author before just recently, another thriller, albeit a very different one. It was entertaining so I downloaded this one purely on name recognition and it didn’t disappoint. Ayre certainly proves himself once again as an indie author to watch. Yes, he did mess with historical facts to the extent that some devoted Ripperologists might take umbrage, he admits to as much and yes, he plans to serialize these characters, which is…well, depends on how much you like serializations. For a book that compares itself to two tv shows, one ought to expect no less. Overall, entertaining, as dark and atmospheric as such a tale ought to be and with an excellent plot twist. Recommended for thriller fans, especially historical thrillers. Thanks Netgalley. This was a book I selected almost entirely by the title, a word I strangely adore. Although, to be fair, the concept was also intriguing and the Czech Republic providing location as a character for a lot of the story was nice too.
This is a story of a family that tends to have a…let’s say complicated relationship with gravity. They take tumbles and spills, they stumble and they careen. They believe themselves to be doomed by an ancient ancestral legend, but are they? Or is just life itself that causes them to fall, time and again? The story follows the main protagonists, twins named Marta and Nick, the youngest in their fall prone family line. After their highly religious mother banishes Nick upon finding out he’s gay, the twins relocate to Prague and find themselves drifting through the ancient city, failing to make any real connections outside of one another. And then Nick falls, like so many of his ancestors before him, and Marta stays by his side until he recuperates. And meanwhile both of them, especially Marta reminisces, heavily, about their past, their family’s past and so on. It’s a novel comprised of reminiscences, a rear view mirror of a novel primarily, a highly literary and almost poetic in style narrative of familial connections and quotidian disconnects of life. For some reason with a title and a cover being as they are, I expected a quirkier read. This wasn’t quirky. It was serious, heavy, somber. Much like the family in the book, the narrative had its own gravity, it seems. It invites you in and it glides along at a decent speed, strangely compelling, so that you can fall for it but not necessarily in love with it. It’s poignant, its sadness is lovely, but there’s a certain remove here, a distance between you and the characters, characters that are not exactly easy to emotionally engage with or even like. They have that special twin connection, that almost presupposes an exclusion of outsiders. They also take a really long time to figure their sh*t out, like proper millennials. Prague comes across as bleak and depressing. It might just be the twins projecting. Or it might be the old world’s weight as experienced by the new world tourists. Which is essentially what they are, Marta barely has enough language to get around, they stay, they graze, but they don’t engage. Overall, there’s a definitive loveliness to the style that might not always be there for the characters, the writing is so eloquent, so…writerly. It’s definitely a literary work and it knows it. It isn’t pompous with it, though. And every so often there’s an absolutely striking turn of phrase. There was one sentence that absolutely blew me away with its beauty. But overall, it wasn’t a blow you away book. An interesting literary family drama, certainly an accomplished debut, but kind of muted, too rambling, too meditative, too enamored with its own concept to properly wow. Much like a proper fall, though, it had a proper velocity and sped by very quickly. Thanks Netgalley. Once more into the dark and twisted world of the black barn universe. This book is more of a set up for the ending, which I believe is what's next in volume six. Volume five sees the protagonists dispersed to different wicked worlds following the destruction of the infamous barn...wild Wild West, authoritarian dystopia and Victorian cyberpunk. It's all very exciting, terrificaly written and as gorgeously rendered as ever, this book is a stunner. The story is fascinating and its interwoven so cleverly, but it's just an intermediate step on the road to something grand and I can't wait for volume six.
Céka did a lamentable job with Michael Jackson bio, but this one was pretty decent. Which is to say I learned a lot about the band. These are such strange books, they appear as graphic novels, but content wise they are a mix of biographical essays, quotations and photographs. In fact, the graphics are just a small portion of the total, created by a variety of different artists in a verity of different styles, each one to reference some significant juncture in Rolling Stones’ life. Because of the variety, some of this comic art entries land nicer than others. Some veer too far into cartoonism. Although all have fun interesting colors.
This was a commemorative read, of sorts. RIP Charlie Watts. The band itself has exhibited a striking longevity, a very lively and kicking bunch of senior citizens and the book is actually from a few years ago, when Watts was still alive. Mick Jagger is pushing eighty and is still at it, not too shabby for a guy who once said he wanted to quite the business at 33. So, what do we learn from this book outside of the admiration society style biographical narrative? Well, from a modern hyperwoke perspective one can say that a bunch of Englishmen got together, appropriated a variety of black music such as blues and jazz, took a name heavily associated with black culture (slavery link, didn’t know about this at all, very interesting reference) and spun it into decades worth of musical gold, fame and fortune. But really, the more music biographies you read (or watch the cinematic adaptations of), the more you realize it’s literally the same story over and over, just with different players. The exact same curves on the narrative trajectories. Tragically predictable, but those who ride them out apparently become legends, so…who can resist. Overall, a decent book for someone who wants to learn about the band quickly, overview style. Nowhere near as much fun as a Rolling Stones concert, but you know, medium limitations. |
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December 2023
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