Rachel Manija Brown's Blog, page 137
June 1, 2018
Solo: A Star Wars Story
I didn't think this was very good. Squee-harshing below cut; no major spoilers but probably don't read if you liked the movie. For calibration, the Star Wars movies I like best are A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back, The Force Awakens, The Last Jedi, and Rogue One. I think the prequel movies are terrible and Return of the Jedi largely meh (not big on Ewoks.)
This is literally the only movie I've ever seen in which I hated the lighting so much that I couldn't resist whispering complaints about it to the friend I saw it with. Except for a sequence near the end, every single location is lit so dimly that I struggled to make out the actor's faces, and all the locations look gloomy and depressing and samey. There was obviously a deliberate decision to dim out the actors' faces specifically, because at some points windows, knick-knacks, etc would be lit so they could be seen clearly, but the actors' faces were always deeply shadowed. It gave the entire movie a general air of gloominess and not being fun, which is about the opposite of what you want in a movie about Han Solo.
I was so perplexed by this baffling decision that I looked it up afterward. Apparently the cinematographer is very highly regarded for his use of dark lighting. Apparently it actually looks good if presented absolutely perfectly, but in many or possibly the average theatre, the projection quality isn't up to the job and the result is muddy, gloomy, and a strain to view. Okay, but I've seen lots and lots of movies at that theatre, and none of them had this problem. If your technique is going to look dreadful in tons of theatres and only looks good at the absolute best ones, maybe it's not the best choice for a blockbuster movie that's going to be shown everywhere.
So, if you haven't seen this yet and want to, it's probably best seen in a prestige or IMAX theatre.
( Read more... )
comments
This is literally the only movie I've ever seen in which I hated the lighting so much that I couldn't resist whispering complaints about it to the friend I saw it with. Except for a sequence near the end, every single location is lit so dimly that I struggled to make out the actor's faces, and all the locations look gloomy and depressing and samey. There was obviously a deliberate decision to dim out the actors' faces specifically, because at some points windows, knick-knacks, etc would be lit so they could be seen clearly, but the actors' faces were always deeply shadowed. It gave the entire movie a general air of gloominess and not being fun, which is about the opposite of what you want in a movie about Han Solo.
I was so perplexed by this baffling decision that I looked it up afterward. Apparently the cinematographer is very highly regarded for his use of dark lighting. Apparently it actually looks good if presented absolutely perfectly, but in many or possibly the average theatre, the projection quality isn't up to the job and the result is muddy, gloomy, and a strain to view. Okay, but I've seen lots and lots of movies at that theatre, and none of them had this problem. If your technique is going to look dreadful in tons of theatres and only looks good at the absolute best ones, maybe it's not the best choice for a blockbuster movie that's going to be shown everywhere.
So, if you haven't seen this yet and want to, it's probably best seen in a prestige or IMAX theatre.
( Read more... )
comments
FF Friday: The Cage, by A. M. Dellamonica, and some books I didn’t finish
Jude, a carpenter, has a meet-cute with Paige, a single mom with a baby who needs her basement retrofitted to make it soundproof by the next full moon. It also needs to be well-ventilated and comfortable. And indestructible by, say, an energetic baaaaby wolf. Not that she has a baaaaaby wolf! It’s for, uh, band practice. For her garage band that not only trashed the basement last full moon, but also peed all over the floor.
This is the lesbian werewolf novelette that is everything I wanted Humanity For Beginners to be. It has likable characters, a plot that’s just the right size for its length, nicely worked-out details, and a lesbian community which, while definitely on the wish-fulfillment side, also feels very realistic; it’s like dropping in an actual community on one of its best days. Interestingly, it shares an aspect of worldbuilding with Humanity For Beginners that I don’t see much in contemporary werewolf stories, which is that you become a wolf during the full moon rather than at will, and that when you do, you have a wolf mind rather than a human mind. Also a world in which werewolves are known to the public and have varying legal statuses depending on local jurisdiction.
You can read it for free at Tor.com.
Or you can buy it for 99 cents on Amazon: The Cage: A Tor.Com Original[image error]
Has anyone read anything else by A. M. Dellamonica? I see that she has a YA portal fantasy trilogy and a pair of fantasies that are maybe about magic based on color? Those all sound interesting.
I also started and failed to get very far into several FF novels.
Runaway, by Anne Laughlin. The premise is that a PI who grew up in a survivalist compound falls for her new boss while searching for a missing girl. It has a killer prologue in which, at age 16, she escapes the compound by SHOOTING HER FATHER. Then it jumps ahead to her present and becomes a romance about her and her boss, who is cheating on her girlfriend. Cause of stallout: I dislike infidelity storylines and do not find this romantic in any way. Also, I wanted the book about the fallout of having been raised by survivalists, but the actual book appears to be primarily about the cheating romance. Discard.
Firestorm, by Radclyffe. Smokejumpers in love. This does in fact seem to be about the premise, with the twist that the new smokejumper is the daughter of a famous homophobic politician. Cause of stallout: the prose is really clunky. I might get back to it eventually.
Desolation Point, by Cari Hunter. Two women are stranded hiking in the Cascades with a killer on the loose. Cause of stallout: an offputting encounter with stereotypical teenage Latino gangsters in Los Angeles, which in addition to everything else needed an Ameripicker. Otherwise it was reasonably well-written and readable, so I might get back to it eventually.
comments
This is the lesbian werewolf novelette that is everything I wanted Humanity For Beginners to be. It has likable characters, a plot that’s just the right size for its length, nicely worked-out details, and a lesbian community which, while definitely on the wish-fulfillment side, also feels very realistic; it’s like dropping in an actual community on one of its best days. Interestingly, it shares an aspect of worldbuilding with Humanity For Beginners that I don’t see much in contemporary werewolf stories, which is that you become a wolf during the full moon rather than at will, and that when you do, you have a wolf mind rather than a human mind. Also a world in which werewolves are known to the public and have varying legal statuses depending on local jurisdiction.
You can read it for free at Tor.com.
Or you can buy it for 99 cents on Amazon: The Cage: A Tor.Com Original[image error]
Has anyone read anything else by A. M. Dellamonica? I see that she has a YA portal fantasy trilogy and a pair of fantasies that are maybe about magic based on color? Those all sound interesting.
I also started and failed to get very far into several FF novels.
Runaway, by Anne Laughlin. The premise is that a PI who grew up in a survivalist compound falls for her new boss while searching for a missing girl. It has a killer prologue in which, at age 16, she escapes the compound by SHOOTING HER FATHER. Then it jumps ahead to her present and becomes a romance about her and her boss, who is cheating on her girlfriend. Cause of stallout: I dislike infidelity storylines and do not find this romantic in any way. Also, I wanted the book about the fallout of having been raised by survivalists, but the actual book appears to be primarily about the cheating romance. Discard.
Firestorm, by Radclyffe. Smokejumpers in love. This does in fact seem to be about the premise, with the twist that the new smokejumper is the daughter of a famous homophobic politician. Cause of stallout: the prose is really clunky. I might get back to it eventually.
Desolation Point, by Cari Hunter. Two women are stranded hiking in the Cascades with a killer on the loose. Cause of stallout: an offputting encounter with stereotypical teenage Latino gangsters in Los Angeles, which in addition to everything else needed an Ameripicker. Otherwise it was reasonably well-written and readable, so I might get back to it eventually.
comments
May 25, 2018
FF Friday: Fair Play, by Tove Jansson
Tove Jansson was the author and illustrator of the delightful and deceptively deep Moomin books, about adorable (sometimes a little creepy or weird) creatures. Her significant other was the artist Tuulikki Pietila, and the inspiration for Tooticky in the Moomin books. They lived and worked together for over fifty years, and spent their summers on their tiny Finnish island.
Fair Play is about a writer, Mari, and an artist, Jonna, who live in separate rooms of an apartment building that are connected by a long attic, and also in a house on a tiny island. They’ve been together for forty years, and are now in their seventies. In chapters which are perfect little short stories that add up to a greater whole, they make their art, travel, have guests and students (both categories tend toward the eccentric, and Mari and Jonna always seem a bit relieved when they leave), squabble, make up, and balance the need for solitude in order to work with the need for each other.
It’s beautifully translated by Thomas Teal, who also did The Summer Book. The prose has a stripped-down, translucent quality, like the evanescent moments in time that Jonna keeps trying to capture on film; there’s always more than initially meets the eye. The relationship between people who have been together for forty years both is and isn’t like their relationship when they first met; you can see the young women they were, and though they know each other incredibly well, they’re not immune to jealousy or misunderstandings. But they are also clearly much better at getting past them.
A perfect little book about love and art. It’s funny, perceptive, and moving, with an absolutely wonderful ending. I highly recommend it, and also Jansson’s The Summer Book, which is similar in tone and structure but has different though somewhat overlapping themes, about a girl and her grandmother on a small island.
They never asked, "Were you able to work today?" Maybe they had, twenty or thirty years earlier, but they'd gradually learned not to. There are empty spaces that must be respected - those often long periods when a person can't see the pictures or find the words and needs to be left alone.
When Mari came in, Jonna was on a ladder building shelves in her front hall. Mari knew that when Jonna started putting up shelves she was approaching a period of work. Of course the hall would be far too narrow and cramped, but that was immaterial. The last time, it was shelves in the bedroom and the result had been a series of excellent woodcuts. She glanced into the bathroom as she passed, but Jonna had not yet put printing paper in to soak, not yet. Before Jonna could do her graphic work in peace, she always spent some time printing up sets of earlier, neglected works - a job that had been set aside so she could focus on new ideas. After all, a period of creative grace can be short.
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comments
Fair Play is about a writer, Mari, and an artist, Jonna, who live in separate rooms of an apartment building that are connected by a long attic, and also in a house on a tiny island. They’ve been together for forty years, and are now in their seventies. In chapters which are perfect little short stories that add up to a greater whole, they make their art, travel, have guests and students (both categories tend toward the eccentric, and Mari and Jonna always seem a bit relieved when they leave), squabble, make up, and balance the need for solitude in order to work with the need for each other.
It’s beautifully translated by Thomas Teal, who also did The Summer Book. The prose has a stripped-down, translucent quality, like the evanescent moments in time that Jonna keeps trying to capture on film; there’s always more than initially meets the eye. The relationship between people who have been together for forty years both is and isn’t like their relationship when they first met; you can see the young women they were, and though they know each other incredibly well, they’re not immune to jealousy or misunderstandings. But they are also clearly much better at getting past them.
A perfect little book about love and art. It’s funny, perceptive, and moving, with an absolutely wonderful ending. I highly recommend it, and also Jansson’s The Summer Book, which is similar in tone and structure but has different though somewhat overlapping themes, about a girl and her grandmother on a small island.
They never asked, "Were you able to work today?" Maybe they had, twenty or thirty years earlier, but they'd gradually learned not to. There are empty spaces that must be respected - those often long periods when a person can't see the pictures or find the words and needs to be left alone.
When Mari came in, Jonna was on a ladder building shelves in her front hall. Mari knew that when Jonna started putting up shelves she was approaching a period of work. Of course the hall would be far too narrow and cramped, but that was immaterial. The last time, it was shelves in the bedroom and the result had been a series of excellent woodcuts. She glanced into the bathroom as she passed, but Jonna had not yet put printing paper in to soak, not yet. Before Jonna could do her graphic work in peace, she always spent some time printing up sets of earlier, neglected works - a job that had been set aside so she could focus on new ideas. After all, a period of creative grace can be short.
[image error] [image error]
comments
May 21, 2018
Misery, by Stephen King
I’ve re-read this quite a few times but apparently never talked about it here. So here are my thoughts on Misery.
A lot of King novels are great but have very striking flaws. Misery isn’t one of them. It’s a practically perfect novel, an extremely well-plotted and thematically coherent exercise in sustained tension, long enough to be meaty but without flab, featuring multiple great set pieces, a hugely satisfying climax followed by just enough “what happened afterward,” a pair of compelling characters who easily carry the novel all by themselves, excellent black humor, and a great exploration of the power of story – for better and for worse. I could do without a couple of the gross-outs, but for one thing I’m not sure those are actual flaws rather than just elements I dislike, and for another they are short and easy to skip.
It’s a technical marvel that’s well worth studying but is also just plain fun to read. I’m sure some readers find it too brutal/intense to be fun, but to me Paul’s basic predicament – write a new romance novel resurrecting the heroine he gleefully killed off, or his psychotic number one fan will feed him to the pig she named after that same heroine – provides a low-level but constant current of dark hilarity. I often find myself griping about books that don’t follow through on their premise. Misery 100% follows through on its premise.
King has said that in retrospect, he sees Misery as a metaphor for addiction (beyond the fact that Paul is literally addicted to painkillers) and that Annie Wilkes represents the drug/the power of addiction. I can see that interpretation, but it neither particularly resonates nor spoils anything for me. It’s one lens through which to see the book, but to me Misery is deeper when you look at what’s right there on the surface.
I see Annie Wilkes as a reader, Paul as a writer, and Misery as a story about storytelling. It’s a gender-flipped update of the frame story of the Arabian Nights, with Paul as Scheherazade trapped in the castle, desperately spinning out his story to stay alive one more night, and Annie as the murderous sultan who has killed many times before, and will kill again if the story doesn’t satisfy her.
If Annie was just the writer’s nightmare of a stalker fan, she wouldn’t be half as interesting. But she’s also a good reader. When Paul initially tries to placate her by half-assing Misery’s return, Annie rightly points out that it’s an unsatisfying cheat and makes him rewrite it. She doesn’t just want Misery back; she wants Misery back in a way that’s artistically satisfying and believable. And that demand, in addition to Paul desperately needing an escape, leads him to do something he never managed to do on his own: write a Misery book that’s not only heartfelt, but actually good on its own overheated terms.
Before Paul crashed his car (while celebrating Misery’s death) and got trapped by Annie, he felt trapped by his own career. He was contemptuous of his books, his fans, and himself, but went on writing stories he didn’t value and didn’t enjoy writing. Then he took a break to write a great literary novel… which seems like it was also bad, just in a different way. The Misery books were written out of greed and to satisfy readers whom Paul held in contempt, and the literary novel was written out of ego and to impress critics. Neither were written because they needed to be written – because the story demanded to be told.
But Misery’s Return was. Paul had to satisfy Annie to save himself, which put him in the odd position of writing for someone he feared and hated. But fear and hate are powerful emotions, more likely to produce vital work than contempt or greed. And Paul ended up writing the book much more for himself than for Annie. In writing it, he rediscovered the purity of writing a story simply to tell a story– writing as escape and joy. It’s a sort of addiction, but a positive one: it kills pain as well as Novril, but revitalizes rather than numbs. At the end of the day, rather than fewer pills, there’s more pages.
The climax is a wonderfully well-constructed machine of irony and fitting punishment: Annie never gets to find out what happens at the end of the book – the worst possible punishment for the worst/best fan – is forced to watch the destruction of the book she helped create in the same way she forced Paul to burn his literary novel, and is literally brought down by a typewriter and manuscript pages. But Paul has safely hidden away the real manuscript, which he couldn’t bear to sacrifice.
In the very end, he’s taking another stab at a literary novel, not another Misery novel. The hero is a young New Yorker named Eddie Desmond – some relation of a young New Yorker named Eddie Dean? It seems like a positive resonance, anyway, especially since he’s encountering an odd furry creature. It’s too soon to tell if the book will be any good. But he’s fallen through the hole in the page, writing to tell the story, and that’s the important thing.
The “hole in the page” is a lovely expression of writing at its best, when it flows and you’re writing to find out for yourself what happens next. I tend to re-read the book when I’m at a really low point in my life, and I find it very inspirational. Especially because King really did end up writing as a refuge from the pain of injuries very similar to Paul’s, after he wrote Misery. So it was fiction, but it was fiction that was also the nearly-literal truth.
It’s also comforting in a “at least it’s not me” way. No matter how much my life sucks, at least I’m not being held hostage by a murderous fan with an axe and forced to write on smudgy paper on a typewriter whose keys kept falling off. But also, it points out that no matter how much my life sucks, I can still go in search of that hole in the page. It won’t fix my life, but if the choice is between staring blankly into space while my life is falling apart, or writing while my life is falling apart, I know which I’d rather do.
[image error] [image error]
comments
A lot of King novels are great but have very striking flaws. Misery isn’t one of them. It’s a practically perfect novel, an extremely well-plotted and thematically coherent exercise in sustained tension, long enough to be meaty but without flab, featuring multiple great set pieces, a hugely satisfying climax followed by just enough “what happened afterward,” a pair of compelling characters who easily carry the novel all by themselves, excellent black humor, and a great exploration of the power of story – for better and for worse. I could do without a couple of the gross-outs, but for one thing I’m not sure those are actual flaws rather than just elements I dislike, and for another they are short and easy to skip.
It’s a technical marvel that’s well worth studying but is also just plain fun to read. I’m sure some readers find it too brutal/intense to be fun, but to me Paul’s basic predicament – write a new romance novel resurrecting the heroine he gleefully killed off, or his psychotic number one fan will feed him to the pig she named after that same heroine – provides a low-level but constant current of dark hilarity. I often find myself griping about books that don’t follow through on their premise. Misery 100% follows through on its premise.
King has said that in retrospect, he sees Misery as a metaphor for addiction (beyond the fact that Paul is literally addicted to painkillers) and that Annie Wilkes represents the drug/the power of addiction. I can see that interpretation, but it neither particularly resonates nor spoils anything for me. It’s one lens through which to see the book, but to me Misery is deeper when you look at what’s right there on the surface.
I see Annie Wilkes as a reader, Paul as a writer, and Misery as a story about storytelling. It’s a gender-flipped update of the frame story of the Arabian Nights, with Paul as Scheherazade trapped in the castle, desperately spinning out his story to stay alive one more night, and Annie as the murderous sultan who has killed many times before, and will kill again if the story doesn’t satisfy her.
If Annie was just the writer’s nightmare of a stalker fan, she wouldn’t be half as interesting. But she’s also a good reader. When Paul initially tries to placate her by half-assing Misery’s return, Annie rightly points out that it’s an unsatisfying cheat and makes him rewrite it. She doesn’t just want Misery back; she wants Misery back in a way that’s artistically satisfying and believable. And that demand, in addition to Paul desperately needing an escape, leads him to do something he never managed to do on his own: write a Misery book that’s not only heartfelt, but actually good on its own overheated terms.
Before Paul crashed his car (while celebrating Misery’s death) and got trapped by Annie, he felt trapped by his own career. He was contemptuous of his books, his fans, and himself, but went on writing stories he didn’t value and didn’t enjoy writing. Then he took a break to write a great literary novel… which seems like it was also bad, just in a different way. The Misery books were written out of greed and to satisfy readers whom Paul held in contempt, and the literary novel was written out of ego and to impress critics. Neither were written because they needed to be written – because the story demanded to be told.
But Misery’s Return was. Paul had to satisfy Annie to save himself, which put him in the odd position of writing for someone he feared and hated. But fear and hate are powerful emotions, more likely to produce vital work than contempt or greed. And Paul ended up writing the book much more for himself than for Annie. In writing it, he rediscovered the purity of writing a story simply to tell a story– writing as escape and joy. It’s a sort of addiction, but a positive one: it kills pain as well as Novril, but revitalizes rather than numbs. At the end of the day, rather than fewer pills, there’s more pages.
The climax is a wonderfully well-constructed machine of irony and fitting punishment: Annie never gets to find out what happens at the end of the book – the worst possible punishment for the worst/best fan – is forced to watch the destruction of the book she helped create in the same way she forced Paul to burn his literary novel, and is literally brought down by a typewriter and manuscript pages. But Paul has safely hidden away the real manuscript, which he couldn’t bear to sacrifice.
In the very end, he’s taking another stab at a literary novel, not another Misery novel. The hero is a young New Yorker named Eddie Desmond – some relation of a young New Yorker named Eddie Dean? It seems like a positive resonance, anyway, especially since he’s encountering an odd furry creature. It’s too soon to tell if the book will be any good. But he’s fallen through the hole in the page, writing to tell the story, and that’s the important thing.
The “hole in the page” is a lovely expression of writing at its best, when it flows and you’re writing to find out for yourself what happens next. I tend to re-read the book when I’m at a really low point in my life, and I find it very inspirational. Especially because King really did end up writing as a refuge from the pain of injuries very similar to Paul’s, after he wrote Misery. So it was fiction, but it was fiction that was also the nearly-literal truth.
It’s also comforting in a “at least it’s not me” way. No matter how much my life sucks, at least I’m not being held hostage by a murderous fan with an axe and forced to write on smudgy paper on a typewriter whose keys kept falling off. But also, it points out that no matter how much my life sucks, I can still go in search of that hole in the page. It won’t fix my life, but if the choice is between staring blankly into space while my life is falling apart, or writing while my life is falling apart, I know which I’d rather do.
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comments
May 18, 2018
FF Friday: Humanity for Beginners, by Faith Mudge
Gloria is a 40-something woman who used to be in the army, and now runs a halfway house for lesbian werewolves. (It’s self-supporting as a B&B; they just don’t book guests on full moon nights.)
The chef, Nadine, is a refugee from a controlling/abusive pack, and has been there for six years while they both refrained from acting on their attraction for reasons that I have already forgotten even though I am writing this review literally hours after finished this novelette. Something to do with not being sure the other was into them and/or not wanting to disrupt their friendship, I think. This is the book where they get together – again, I have already forgotten exactly what sparked that. Meanwhile, there is an unexpected family visit or two, and a pack of sexist male wolves is moving in on them. But it all works out okay.
I ought to have loved this – the premise is great, and I enjoy stories about day-to-day life in a specific community – but I only mildly liked it. The rival wolves didn’t ever feel like a real threat, and the family drama was not very dramatic. There’s past trauma, but too lightly sketched in to give the book a deliciously iddy/angsty tone or to give the present healing an emotional punch.
That leaves what should have been the real draw, which was the depiction of the community. But the characters felt thin, and other than the delightful bit about them all having to lock themselves in the basement with a kiddie pool and chew toys when they wolf out, there weren’t enough specific details to bring the setting to life or make the day-to-day aspects compelling.
However, it has universally rave reviews on Amazon and Goodreads, and I’m sure some of you would absolutely love it. It has a female alpha who’s decisive and compassionate, most of the characters are female or queer or both, and it contains many elements that people often say they want in fiction, such as characters who articulate their feelings and communicate clearly with each other rather than having stupid misunderstandings or unnecessary conflict. Humanity For Beginners is extremely wholesome and full of good values—too much so, for my taste. Without being preachy, it still has a “good for you” atmosphere, with extremely valid issues phrased like the human relations section of Ask MeFi. Personally, I wanted more bite.
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comments
The chef, Nadine, is a refugee from a controlling/abusive pack, and has been there for six years while they both refrained from acting on their attraction for reasons that I have already forgotten even though I am writing this review literally hours after finished this novelette. Something to do with not being sure the other was into them and/or not wanting to disrupt their friendship, I think. This is the book where they get together – again, I have already forgotten exactly what sparked that. Meanwhile, there is an unexpected family visit or two, and a pack of sexist male wolves is moving in on them. But it all works out okay.
I ought to have loved this – the premise is great, and I enjoy stories about day-to-day life in a specific community – but I only mildly liked it. The rival wolves didn’t ever feel like a real threat, and the family drama was not very dramatic. There’s past trauma, but too lightly sketched in to give the book a deliciously iddy/angsty tone or to give the present healing an emotional punch.
That leaves what should have been the real draw, which was the depiction of the community. But the characters felt thin, and other than the delightful bit about them all having to lock themselves in the basement with a kiddie pool and chew toys when they wolf out, there weren’t enough specific details to bring the setting to life or make the day-to-day aspects compelling.
However, it has universally rave reviews on Amazon and Goodreads, and I’m sure some of you would absolutely love it. It has a female alpha who’s decisive and compassionate, most of the characters are female or queer or both, and it contains many elements that people often say they want in fiction, such as characters who articulate their feelings and communicate clearly with each other rather than having stupid misunderstandings or unnecessary conflict. Humanity For Beginners is extremely wholesome and full of good values—too much so, for my taste. Without being preachy, it still has a “good for you” atmosphere, with extremely valid issues phrased like the human relations section of Ask MeFi. Personally, I wanted more bite.
[image error] [image error]
comments
May 17, 2018
Stephen King Audio: Blood and Smoke; The Gingerbread Girl
I've been listening to some audiobooks on long drives, and discovered that audio short stories and novelettes are the perfect length for my attention span for listening to a narrative while driving. And also, that Stephen King has a lot of short stories on audio, and my library has a lot of them on CD.
Blood and Smoke. Three short stories loosely linked by the theme of someone being absolutely desperate for a cigarette, read by Stephen King.
"Lunch at the Gotham Cafe." A man who's just quit smoking meets his wife, her new boyfriend, and her lawyer to discuss their upcoming divorce at a French cafe just in time for the maitre d' to go insane and start murdering the hell out of everyone. I'd read this before and nearly skipped it because I hadn't been impressed, and in fact only started listening because I wanted to see how King did the voice of the maitre d', who spoke in a bizarre fake accent. I think a professional actor could have done a better job with the voice of the maitre d' (King's wasn't bad; just, I think it could have been better) but I liked the story way more in King's reading, which brought out the black humor and the way that the narrator and his wife were, in their much more low-key way, very nearly as obsessed and maniacal as the maitre d'. Very enjoyable.
"1408." A writer of books on urban legends checks into a haunted hotel room; it's exactly as legend says. Really atmospheric and creepy, more surreal Lovecraftian horror than traditional ghost story. I liked this a lot too.
"In the Deathroom." A man in a South American prison turns the tables on his captors with clever use of a cigarette. Good suspense, but the setting really doesn't suit King; cliched.
"Stationary Bike," read by Ron McLarty. A middle-aged painter gets doctor's orders to start exercising. He buys a stationary bike, paints a repair crew from The Lipid Company on the wall of his basement to help him visualize his arteries being repaired, and gets going; he's so successful that the men from the Lipid Company are put out of work and start menacing him to make him accumulate more cholesterol and give them their jobs back.
I don't know if it was the slow pace of the story or the slow pace of the reader, but this one was a bit dull, and the central conceit was too ridiculous for me to take seriously at all, when it was clearly supposed to be funny but also genuinely spooky. There's a nice subtext in which we learn that he was recently widowed, and has buried his grief to an extent that his wife and her death are mentioned very late, and in literally one short paragraph, and so the whole thing is really about his ambivalence about fear of death vs. extending life at the cost of enjoying life. Good theme, but the story didn't work for me.
"The Gingerbread Girl," read by Mare Winningham. In the aftermath of her baby's crib death, a woman takes up running, leaves her husband, and takes a long break from her life at her father's beach vacation house, where she runs into a serial killer and must summon all her wits, courage, and ability to run to escape. Exactly what it says on the can but well-done and suspenseful.
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Blood and Smoke. Three short stories loosely linked by the theme of someone being absolutely desperate for a cigarette, read by Stephen King.
"Lunch at the Gotham Cafe." A man who's just quit smoking meets his wife, her new boyfriend, and her lawyer to discuss their upcoming divorce at a French cafe just in time for the maitre d' to go insane and start murdering the hell out of everyone. I'd read this before and nearly skipped it because I hadn't been impressed, and in fact only started listening because I wanted to see how King did the voice of the maitre d', who spoke in a bizarre fake accent. I think a professional actor could have done a better job with the voice of the maitre d' (King's wasn't bad; just, I think it could have been better) but I liked the story way more in King's reading, which brought out the black humor and the way that the narrator and his wife were, in their much more low-key way, very nearly as obsessed and maniacal as the maitre d'. Very enjoyable.
"1408." A writer of books on urban legends checks into a haunted hotel room; it's exactly as legend says. Really atmospheric and creepy, more surreal Lovecraftian horror than traditional ghost story. I liked this a lot too.
"In the Deathroom." A man in a South American prison turns the tables on his captors with clever use of a cigarette. Good suspense, but the setting really doesn't suit King; cliched.
"Stationary Bike," read by Ron McLarty. A middle-aged painter gets doctor's orders to start exercising. He buys a stationary bike, paints a repair crew from The Lipid Company on the wall of his basement to help him visualize his arteries being repaired, and gets going; he's so successful that the men from the Lipid Company are put out of work and start menacing him to make him accumulate more cholesterol and give them their jobs back.
I don't know if it was the slow pace of the story or the slow pace of the reader, but this one was a bit dull, and the central conceit was too ridiculous for me to take seriously at all, when it was clearly supposed to be funny but also genuinely spooky. There's a nice subtext in which we learn that he was recently widowed, and has buried his grief to an extent that his wife and her death are mentioned very late, and in literally one short paragraph, and so the whole thing is really about his ambivalence about fear of death vs. extending life at the cost of enjoying life. Good theme, but the story didn't work for me.
"The Gingerbread Girl," read by Mare Winningham. In the aftermath of her baby's crib death, a woman takes up running, leaves her husband, and takes a long break from her life at her father's beach vacation house, where she runs into a serial killer and must summon all her wits, courage, and ability to run to escape. Exactly what it says on the can but well-done and suspenseful.
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May 14, 2018
Books set in Women's Shelters or other group homes
Can you mention some novels which are largely or entirely set in women's shelters or other types of group homes in which a group of unrelated people are staying there temporarily as a refuge from something and/or in order to have a space to get their lives back together? Right now I can only think of two, Rose Madder and Thendara House.
I'm not looking for books set in the type of institution where people are not allowed to leave, such as jails or mental hospitals where at least some people are involuntarily committed. I'm also not looking for something like Tales of the City or Spider Robinson's Callahan stories where people in a regular apartment building or hotel or bar or something find that it functions as a place of healing/introspection/community - those types of stories are much more common. I'm looking for ones where the explicit purpose of the institution is to be a refuge.
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I'm not looking for books set in the type of institution where people are not allowed to leave, such as jails or mental hospitals where at least some people are involuntarily committed. I'm also not looking for something like Tales of the City or Spider Robinson's Callahan stories where people in a regular apartment building or hotel or bar or something find that it functions as a place of healing/introspection/community - those types of stories are much more common. I'm looking for ones where the explicit purpose of the institution is to be a refuge.
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May 13, 2018
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May 11, 2018
FF Friday: Pegasi and Prefects, by Eleanor Beresford
Welcome to FF Friday! If you want to join in, just review something FF on a Friday; the tag has more details.
Pegasi and Prefects is a girls’ boarding school book in the tradition of Enid Blyton, plus magic, magical beasts, and girls explicitly in love with girls. As opposed to a great many other books in the genre in which girls are implicitly in love with girls.
Charlotte “Charley” comes from a magical animal ranch in Australia, owns a fiery pegasus named Ember (except when he’s typo’d Ebony), has the magical Gift of communicating with mythic animals (including, intriguingly, the non-sentient… or are they?... fairies), and is in a state of naivete/denial about her attraction to girls and lack of such to boys, though literally everyone else at school is well aware of this. In her homophobic world, it’s forbidden, though some people are more understanding than others and she’s not the only one.
When part-elf Rosalind transfers in, along with an extra-homophobic mean girl Charley gets saddled with as a roommate, Charley falls for Rosalind and is forced to face her desires. Charley and Rosalind ride pegasi and unicorns, and rescue an injured alicorn foal, which they must keep secret as it apparently escaped from hunters who have the legal right to it. Meanwhile, the homophobic mean girl is mean and homophobic, one of Charley’s other friends is clearly in love with her, and there is a lot of talk of exciting games but a suspicious lack of detail on them, to the point where I was often not sure what game they were even playing at any given point.
While the details of the magical creatures and the world are inventive and charming, the horse-mad pair of Wilhelmina “Bill” and Clarissa from Blyton’s Malory Towers worked better as a subtextual romance for me than the textual longing of pegasus-mad heroine Charley for alicorn-mad Rosalind in this book. They were fun while interacting with or discussing their hooved friends, but a bit dull otherwise.
I was WAY more into the “rescue the alicorn” and “ride the magical horsies” parts of the book than I was into literally anything else: the romance, the games, the homophobia, or the WTF bit where Charley decides the best solution to her troubles is to get Rosalind to marry her (Charley’s) brother so at least she’d still be in Charley’s life. I realize that this last plot point was also in Hamilton, but all I can say is that Hamilton did a better job of selling it.
I wish I’d read Pegasi and Prefects when I was ten. I bet I would have adored it. Back then I would forgive any flaw if there were pegasi involved, and Charley’s inability to see what was under her nose would have been more sympathetic and less annoying. I’d rec this to a kid if they were into the tropes, but the clunky writing style, distracting typos, and tedium of many of the scenes not involving magical animals are likely to be more of a dealbreaker for adults.
It ends with a “to be continued” rather than any story resolution, though Charley has at least admitted that she’s in love with Rosalind. There is a second book and a prequel, but though there seems to have been a third book planned, it doesn’t exist and I’m not sure whether or not it’s forthcoming.
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Pegasi and Prefects is a girls’ boarding school book in the tradition of Enid Blyton, plus magic, magical beasts, and girls explicitly in love with girls. As opposed to a great many other books in the genre in which girls are implicitly in love with girls.
Charlotte “Charley” comes from a magical animal ranch in Australia, owns a fiery pegasus named Ember (except when he’s typo’d Ebony), has the magical Gift of communicating with mythic animals (including, intriguingly, the non-sentient… or are they?... fairies), and is in a state of naivete/denial about her attraction to girls and lack of such to boys, though literally everyone else at school is well aware of this. In her homophobic world, it’s forbidden, though some people are more understanding than others and she’s not the only one.
When part-elf Rosalind transfers in, along with an extra-homophobic mean girl Charley gets saddled with as a roommate, Charley falls for Rosalind and is forced to face her desires. Charley and Rosalind ride pegasi and unicorns, and rescue an injured alicorn foal, which they must keep secret as it apparently escaped from hunters who have the legal right to it. Meanwhile, the homophobic mean girl is mean and homophobic, one of Charley’s other friends is clearly in love with her, and there is a lot of talk of exciting games but a suspicious lack of detail on them, to the point where I was often not sure what game they were even playing at any given point.
While the details of the magical creatures and the world are inventive and charming, the horse-mad pair of Wilhelmina “Bill” and Clarissa from Blyton’s Malory Towers worked better as a subtextual romance for me than the textual longing of pegasus-mad heroine Charley for alicorn-mad Rosalind in this book. They were fun while interacting with or discussing their hooved friends, but a bit dull otherwise.
I was WAY more into the “rescue the alicorn” and “ride the magical horsies” parts of the book than I was into literally anything else: the romance, the games, the homophobia, or the WTF bit where Charley decides the best solution to her troubles is to get Rosalind to marry her (Charley’s) brother so at least she’d still be in Charley’s life. I realize that this last plot point was also in Hamilton, but all I can say is that Hamilton did a better job of selling it.
I wish I’d read Pegasi and Prefects when I was ten. I bet I would have adored it. Back then I would forgive any flaw if there were pegasi involved, and Charley’s inability to see what was under her nose would have been more sympathetic and less annoying. I’d rec this to a kid if they were into the tropes, but the clunky writing style, distracting typos, and tedium of many of the scenes not involving magical animals are likely to be more of a dealbreaker for adults.
It ends with a “to be continued” rather than any story resolution, though Charley has at least admitted that she’s in love with Rosalind. There is a second book and a prequel, but though there seems to have been a third book planned, it doesn’t exist and I’m not sure whether or not it’s forthcoming.
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