Rachel Manija Brown's Blog, page 68
August 16, 2021
On Stranger Tides, by Tim Powers. Audiobook read by Bronson Pinchot.
I've read On Stranger Tides before, but not recently. The audiobook was getting rave reviews and I was in the mood for something light and action-filled, with lots of accents. It delivered.
As is typical for Tim Powers, this involves a completely batshit premise, with even more batshit complications, all of which are worked out with meticulous logic and thematic unity, and not only has (completely batshit) explanations for actual weird historical events, but doesn't contradict anything in the historical record as far as I could tell.
This is the sort of book in which a French marionette artist comes to the Caribbean on a mission of revenge for his dead father, is forced to become a pirate cook, learns magic (there are at least two different magic systems), gets entangled in an elaborate plot to discover the Fountain of Youth because a mad professor wants to revive his dead wife and Blackbeard wants to get rid of the ghosts that have been haunting him ever since his first trip, and has multiple fights with zombie pirates. And that's just scraping the surface.
Nobody's mother is incarnated as a marmoset. But it's the kind of book where that 100% could happen.
Oddly, the scene which I had remembered most vividly doesn't happen at all. I had remembered that a sorceror could be regenerated if their blood falls into the sea. This is correct. I remembered a vivid, tremendously eerie, dreamlike scene in which a pirate sorceror's head is cut off, tied to a rope, and trailed behind a ship. The blood that oozes from his neck congeals, slowly grows into a large blob, and over a period of days or weeks, develops human shape and finally becomes the complete man again, at which point he climbs back aboard the ship, ready to take revenge...
Someone does in fact regenerate in the sea. But we don't see it happen, and all we're ever told about it is that the sorcerer regenerates in "a kind of egg." My version is better, right? But the thing is, this is the kind of book where my scene would fit right in.
Caveats: Anne Bonny appears only as a pirate's wife, not a pirate in her own right, and does nothing but hit on the hero. The heroine (not Anne Bonny) has some of the the least agency of a heroine in anything I've ever read. She is controlled by men, kidnapped, under a spell, drugged, or unconscious for literally the entire book short of the last few pages; she makes a couple attempts to escape, but they fail immediately. Tim Powers gets better at writing women later; this book is probably his nadir in that direction.
In more YMMV areas, there's a fat villain who's very very fat. However, there are also sympathetic/heroic fat characters. It contains white people doing magic with vodoun; also black people, and it's made clear where it comes from. But the main characters are white.
That being said, overall this was a ton of fun. The marionette thing is not just a quirky detail, but essential to the plot and comes up in multiple clever ways. There's great action sequences, excellent spooky horror sequences, and it really leans into the premise of "What if Blackbeard was a sorceror and had a ship crewed with zombie pirates? And also ghost pirates?" If you would like to read a book where a living crew of pirates fights a zombie crew of pirates while a pair of wizards are having a telekinetic duel in midair, here you go!
Bronson Pinchot did a great and very enthusiastic job with a million accents and voices.
[image error]
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As is typical for Tim Powers, this involves a completely batshit premise, with even more batshit complications, all of which are worked out with meticulous logic and thematic unity, and not only has (completely batshit) explanations for actual weird historical events, but doesn't contradict anything in the historical record as far as I could tell.
This is the sort of book in which a French marionette artist comes to the Caribbean on a mission of revenge for his dead father, is forced to become a pirate cook, learns magic (there are at least two different magic systems), gets entangled in an elaborate plot to discover the Fountain of Youth because a mad professor wants to revive his dead wife and Blackbeard wants to get rid of the ghosts that have been haunting him ever since his first trip, and has multiple fights with zombie pirates. And that's just scraping the surface.
Nobody's mother is incarnated as a marmoset. But it's the kind of book where that 100% could happen.
Oddly, the scene which I had remembered most vividly doesn't happen at all. I had remembered that a sorceror could be regenerated if their blood falls into the sea. This is correct. I remembered a vivid, tremendously eerie, dreamlike scene in which a pirate sorceror's head is cut off, tied to a rope, and trailed behind a ship. The blood that oozes from his neck congeals, slowly grows into a large blob, and over a period of days or weeks, develops human shape and finally becomes the complete man again, at which point he climbs back aboard the ship, ready to take revenge...
Someone does in fact regenerate in the sea. But we don't see it happen, and all we're ever told about it is that the sorcerer regenerates in "a kind of egg." My version is better, right? But the thing is, this is the kind of book where my scene would fit right in.
Caveats: Anne Bonny appears only as a pirate's wife, not a pirate in her own right, and does nothing but hit on the hero. The heroine (not Anne Bonny) has some of the the least agency of a heroine in anything I've ever read. She is controlled by men, kidnapped, under a spell, drugged, or unconscious for literally the entire book short of the last few pages; she makes a couple attempts to escape, but they fail immediately. Tim Powers gets better at writing women later; this book is probably his nadir in that direction.
In more YMMV areas, there's a fat villain who's very very fat. However, there are also sympathetic/heroic fat characters. It contains white people doing magic with vodoun; also black people, and it's made clear where it comes from. But the main characters are white.
That being said, overall this was a ton of fun. The marionette thing is not just a quirky detail, but essential to the plot and comes up in multiple clever ways. There's great action sequences, excellent spooky horror sequences, and it really leans into the premise of "What if Blackbeard was a sorceror and had a ship crewed with zombie pirates? And also ghost pirates?" If you would like to read a book where a living crew of pirates fights a zombie crew of pirates while a pair of wizards are having a telekinetic duel in midair, here you go!
Bronson Pinchot did a great and very enthusiastic job with a million accents and voices.
[image error]
comments
August 14, 2021
For those of you who've bought a house?
Were you still inundated with house and moving-related tasks a month after moving in? Just checking.
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August 10, 2021
Book Review Poll
I have unsurprisingly gotten behind on book reviews, and spent a lot of time driving and listening to audio books, ditto. I'd like to catch up, even in very short takes.
View Poll: I would like to hear your thoughts on...
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View Poll: I would like to hear your thoughts on...
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Question for California Voters
Once again, California is having a strange and stupid election. If you're a California voter, or if you're not but are aware of this situation, I would like your opinion on an element of the vote to recall Governor Gavin Newsom.
To catch up anyone who isn't aware of this idiotic situation, our governor Gavin Newsom pissed off basically everyone this last year for a multitude of reasons I won't bore you with. (Me included. I voted for him and regretted it.) However, on a scale of US governors, he's not that bad. Honestly we could do a lot worse. And we might be about to do a lot worse.
Republicans launched a recall effort in an attempt to replace him with a Republican. This succeeded, and we're going to have a special election on September 14 to determine whether or not we'll vote him out. Here is where things get really weird.
There are two questions on the ballot. One is "Should Governor Newsom be recalled? Yes/No."
This part is straightforward. I'm voting "No, do not recall him." So should you, no matter how much you dislike him. We'll have a chance to vote for someone better (please God) in the regular governor election in 2022.
The next question is "If Governor Newsom is recalled, who should replace him?" Then there's a list of candidates. You can leave this part blank or vote for one of them, regardless of how you voted on the first question.
Here comes the fucking insane part. If Newsom is recalled, whoever gets the most votes on the second question becomes governor. So if 51% of Californians vote to recall Newsom, and the candidate with the most votes only gets, say, 18% of their total votes because the votes were spread out among the other candidates or most people didn't vote for another candidate at all, Mr. 18% is now governor of California.
WHAT THE FUCK, CALIFORNIA??? WHY CAN'T THE RECALL BE ITS OWN VOTE, AND THEN HOLD ANOTHER ELECTION IF AND ONLY IF HE LOSES?
The other candidates doing best in polls are Republican Larry Elder, a Trumpist radical right-wing radio host, and Kevin Paffrath, the only Democrat getting any traction at all, a landlord vlogger with with no political experience.
Republicans are unsurprisingly very excited about voting in this election. Democrats are unsurprisingly not. Lots of people don't understand how this election works, because it's so fucking bizarre. Newsom is polling badly and may well be replaced by one of these jokers.
My question is this. Like I said, I'm voting no. But should I leave the second question blank, or should I hold my nose and vote for Paffrath on the basis that he's less bad than Elder?
Newsom and the CA Democratic Party is advising everyone to leave the question blank. But since the questions are independent of each other, what's the advantage of doing so?
ETA: via AP: Cox has sought to gain attention by campaigning with a 1,000-pound Kodiak bear, which he said represented the need for “beastly” changes in the state.
comments
To catch up anyone who isn't aware of this idiotic situation, our governor Gavin Newsom pissed off basically everyone this last year for a multitude of reasons I won't bore you with. (Me included. I voted for him and regretted it.) However, on a scale of US governors, he's not that bad. Honestly we could do a lot worse. And we might be about to do a lot worse.
Republicans launched a recall effort in an attempt to replace him with a Republican. This succeeded, and we're going to have a special election on September 14 to determine whether or not we'll vote him out. Here is where things get really weird.
There are two questions on the ballot. One is "Should Governor Newsom be recalled? Yes/No."
This part is straightforward. I'm voting "No, do not recall him." So should you, no matter how much you dislike him. We'll have a chance to vote for someone better (please God) in the regular governor election in 2022.
The next question is "If Governor Newsom is recalled, who should replace him?" Then there's a list of candidates. You can leave this part blank or vote for one of them, regardless of how you voted on the first question.
Here comes the fucking insane part. If Newsom is recalled, whoever gets the most votes on the second question becomes governor. So if 51% of Californians vote to recall Newsom, and the candidate with the most votes only gets, say, 18% of their total votes because the votes were spread out among the other candidates or most people didn't vote for another candidate at all, Mr. 18% is now governor of California.
WHAT THE FUCK, CALIFORNIA??? WHY CAN'T THE RECALL BE ITS OWN VOTE, AND THEN HOLD ANOTHER ELECTION IF AND ONLY IF HE LOSES?
The other candidates doing best in polls are Republican Larry Elder, a Trumpist radical right-wing radio host, and Kevin Paffrath, the only Democrat getting any traction at all, a landlord vlogger with with no political experience.
Republicans are unsurprisingly very excited about voting in this election. Democrats are unsurprisingly not. Lots of people don't understand how this election works, because it's so fucking bizarre. Newsom is polling badly and may well be replaced by one of these jokers.
My question is this. Like I said, I'm voting no. But should I leave the second question blank, or should I hold my nose and vote for Paffrath on the basis that he's less bad than Elder?
Newsom and the CA Democratic Party is advising everyone to leave the question blank. But since the questions are independent of each other, what's the advantage of doing so?
ETA: via AP: Cox has sought to gain attention by campaigning with a 1,000-pound Kodiak bear, which he said represented the need for “beastly” changes in the state.
comments
August 9, 2021
Calling all horror fans!
King of Exchanges, the exchange for Stephen King works modded by myself and
![[personal profile]](https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/hostedimages/1491408111i/22407843.png)
scioscribe
, is open for nominations! It's a small but disproportionately enjoyable exchange, if I do say so myself.
In other horror news, I wrote two stories for Multifandom Horror.
Annihilation (Movie). Refraction, for Prox (Amber). The Shimmer seduces Lena.
Original Fiction. Creepy Dollies Creeping on Little Dollie Feet, for sweetcarolanne. Die Hard, but with haunted dolls.
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scioscribe
, is open for nominations! It's a small but disproportionately enjoyable exchange, if I do say so myself. In other horror news, I wrote two stories for Multifandom Horror.
Annihilation (Movie). Refraction, for Prox (Amber). The Shimmer seduces Lena.
Original Fiction. Creepy Dollies Creeping on Little Dollie Feet, for sweetcarolanne. Die Hard, but with haunted dolls.
comments
August 7, 2021
Half a living room floor
The floor guys just now informed me that they are four boxes of wood short. Contrary to what they said today or ever, my floors cannot be finished today. In fact they're not sure when they can be finished, since the wood people are closed for the weekend. On Monday they'll find out whether they had enough wood to finish my floors, so maybe they can finish them Monday or Tuesday or who knows, really.
Meanwhile, I'm having five large, heavy bookcases delivered tomorrow by people who can put them in place for me...
...only they can't, because large portions of both the living room and the bedroom are bare concrete. The floor guy says he'll come back and move everything into place for me when the floors are done, whenever that is. But meanwhile I'm stuck unable to make any plans for anything because I have no idea when people are going to come in an work on my floors all day.
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Meanwhile, I'm having five large, heavy bookcases delivered tomorrow by people who can put them in place for me...
...only they can't, because large portions of both the living room and the bedroom are bare concrete. The floor guy says he'll come back and move everything into place for me when the floors are done, whenever that is. But meanwhile I'm stuck unable to make any plans for anything because I have no idea when people are going to come in an work on my floors all day.
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Cats: Threat or Menace?
Both cats repeatedly escaped my previous barricade, so I gave up on keeping them in the loft and instead constructed this elaborate barricade to keep them off the WET CONCRETE. If you can't tell what it is, it's the open front door (there's also a glass front door which is shut and locked), a folding table, a step-ladder, and a bunch of water traps.
To hammer in the DON'T GO THERE, I repeatedly showered water on them every time they went near it.
This morning I went downstairs to guard the barricade while I waited for the floor-layers. I took a photo of it to post here...
...and with no warning whatsoever, Alex took a flying leap, at least six feet high, and sailed over the barricade.
THANK GOD, the concrete had dried overnight.
Even better, the fact that the concrete is dry means that once the guys return, I can lock the cats safely in the laundry room. I couldn't before because the only access is via the bedroom, which had its floor ripped up and covered in concrete.
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To hammer in the DON'T GO THERE, I repeatedly showered water on them every time they went near it.
This morning I went downstairs to guard the barricade while I waited for the floor-layers. I took a photo of it to post here...
...and with no warning whatsoever, Alex took a flying leap, at least six feet high, and sailed over the barricade.
THANK GOD, the concrete had dried overnight.
Even better, the fact that the concrete is dry means that once the guys return, I can lock the cats safely in the laundry room. I couldn't before because the only access is via the bedroom, which had its floor ripped up and covered in concrete.
comments
August 3, 2021
Source for updated covid info in text form?
Please rec me sources for regularly and ideally daily updated high quality Covid info in TEXT format, like a blog. Ideally, not Twitter.
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Multifandom Horror Recs
Multifandom Horror is open, and it's full of great stuff! It's been especially fun for me to go through the collection as I haven't had much fic-reading and art-viewing time for the last few months. Here's some recs.
Carrie - Stephen King .
Reunion. Sue hears stories about Carrie White. Amazingly versatile pastiche of many styles.
1982 was the first year any company made Carrie White masks for Halloween: rubbery pale flesh streaked with fake blood, long dishwater blonde wigs, and sparkly tiaras. Gore-spattered prom dresses sold separately.
The company rode out the outrage and—any publicity is good publicity—raked in the cash. By 1985, every major costume vendor had an equivalent, with some generic fig-leaf of a name like BLOODY PROM QUEEN or BAD PROM DATE.
Dark Tower - Stephen King
Green Glass. The ka-tet tries traveling by boat. They shouldn't. One of my wonderful gifts! Beautifully written and extremely eerie.
The river lay low in its bed. Its current was lazy and gentle, like since there was only a little of it and it was sure where it was going, it didn’t really care how fast it got there.
Sometimes it would look so still that, out of the corner of their eyes, they’d almost think they saw their reflections in it. Always a little misshapen and discolored, warped and greened by the water, like they were seeing themselves on the curve of a glass Coke bottle.
The Falcon and the Winter Soldier.
If You Get Lost. Sam, Bucky, and Zemo explore a forest that suddenly appeared overnight. They get considerably more than they bargained for. Great character development, great creeping horror, great dialogue. Bucky punches a tree.
“I’ve got wings that won’t have room to operate, and Bucky’s going to, what, stab a tree?"
Night Fishing. There's something killing people in the swamps behind Sam's childhood home. And he and Bucky are going on a hunting expedition. You can practically breathe the Gothic swamp atmosphere; unusual angle on Bucky and Sam as city boy/country boy. Bucky punches a swamp monster.
"Your neighbor has a harpoon gun just lying around?"
"Welcome to Louisiana."
Sharks! “Sharks?! There are sharks now??” What it says on the tin. Bucky punches a shark.
Bucky looked where Sam was looking and spotted a fin in the distance. It didn’t look that big to him, but he had to admit that he didn’t actually know anything about sharks and, specifically, their fin to body (or really, mouth) ratio.
Snap. Sam gets lost in a hall of mirrors. Unsettling, eerie, ambiguous. I think Bucky punches a mirror.
He struggled to reconcile the video, his own face spouting such hate filled garbage. “It’s gotta be fake. A deep fake? Or something.”
“Sure,” his therapist said, boots clacking as she walked around him in the filming studio and turned off the bright ring light. “But if it was you, and I’m just saying those dimples don’t lie, you probably had a good reason.”
Jurassic Park -
ART. The Queen's Crown. Clever girls always take trophies from their victories! Could not be more delightful.
Us (Movie)
stretch out your hand and take it The borders between who is who is always most porous at night. In the dark, they’re both shadows. One of my wonderful gifts! Beautifully written, intense, and epic-feeling in a short space.
Everything breakable in the tunnels was broken long ago. What remains is sturdy barrack furniture built for bomb raids and wire cages and scissors. The others down here have no idea how breakable the world up above is.
WandaVision
Syndication. In this week's episode, Wanda and Vision help the boys with their history homework, and Wanda worries about the quality of education they're getting. [Rerun.] Pitch-perfect sitcom dialogue, and grief and terror underneath. If you've seen the show, this is a must-read.
“You’re sure there’s no science fair project this year?” Vision said. He sounded disappointed. “Maybe a working model of the solar system? A clean energy source?” He added to Wanda, “I miss the days of dioramas. Small-scale matter manipulation… the smell of Play-Doh…”
The Wilds (TV)
ART. Haunted Even in the spa Gretchen keeps seeing Linh. It's getting harder and harder to remember that it's all just in her head. Haunted and haunting.
perilous in the wrong conditions Nora’s fight-or-flight response is triggered as Rachel’s life is endangered. Intense, well-characterized, beautiful imagery.
The pool had looked so big, and her sister so small all the way up there. The water below lying in wait for Rachel’s sacrifice.
And that's only from what I've had a chance to read! I haven't even started on Original Works, for instance.
What have you enjoyed in the collection so far?
comments
Carrie - Stephen King .
Reunion. Sue hears stories about Carrie White. Amazingly versatile pastiche of many styles.
1982 was the first year any company made Carrie White masks for Halloween: rubbery pale flesh streaked with fake blood, long dishwater blonde wigs, and sparkly tiaras. Gore-spattered prom dresses sold separately.
The company rode out the outrage and—any publicity is good publicity—raked in the cash. By 1985, every major costume vendor had an equivalent, with some generic fig-leaf of a name like BLOODY PROM QUEEN or BAD PROM DATE.
Dark Tower - Stephen King
Green Glass. The ka-tet tries traveling by boat. They shouldn't. One of my wonderful gifts! Beautifully written and extremely eerie.
The river lay low in its bed. Its current was lazy and gentle, like since there was only a little of it and it was sure where it was going, it didn’t really care how fast it got there.
Sometimes it would look so still that, out of the corner of their eyes, they’d almost think they saw their reflections in it. Always a little misshapen and discolored, warped and greened by the water, like they were seeing themselves on the curve of a glass Coke bottle.
The Falcon and the Winter Soldier.
If You Get Lost. Sam, Bucky, and Zemo explore a forest that suddenly appeared overnight. They get considerably more than they bargained for. Great character development, great creeping horror, great dialogue. Bucky punches a tree.
“I’ve got wings that won’t have room to operate, and Bucky’s going to, what, stab a tree?"
Night Fishing. There's something killing people in the swamps behind Sam's childhood home. And he and Bucky are going on a hunting expedition. You can practically breathe the Gothic swamp atmosphere; unusual angle on Bucky and Sam as city boy/country boy. Bucky punches a swamp monster.
"Your neighbor has a harpoon gun just lying around?"
"Welcome to Louisiana."
Sharks! “Sharks?! There are sharks now??” What it says on the tin. Bucky punches a shark.
Bucky looked where Sam was looking and spotted a fin in the distance. It didn’t look that big to him, but he had to admit that he didn’t actually know anything about sharks and, specifically, their fin to body (or really, mouth) ratio.
Snap. Sam gets lost in a hall of mirrors. Unsettling, eerie, ambiguous. I think Bucky punches a mirror.
He struggled to reconcile the video, his own face spouting such hate filled garbage. “It’s gotta be fake. A deep fake? Or something.”
“Sure,” his therapist said, boots clacking as she walked around him in the filming studio and turned off the bright ring light. “But if it was you, and I’m just saying those dimples don’t lie, you probably had a good reason.”
Jurassic Park -
ART. The Queen's Crown. Clever girls always take trophies from their victories! Could not be more delightful.
Us (Movie)
stretch out your hand and take it The borders between who is who is always most porous at night. In the dark, they’re both shadows. One of my wonderful gifts! Beautifully written, intense, and epic-feeling in a short space.
Everything breakable in the tunnels was broken long ago. What remains is sturdy barrack furniture built for bomb raids and wire cages and scissors. The others down here have no idea how breakable the world up above is.
WandaVision
Syndication. In this week's episode, Wanda and Vision help the boys with their history homework, and Wanda worries about the quality of education they're getting. [Rerun.] Pitch-perfect sitcom dialogue, and grief and terror underneath. If you've seen the show, this is a must-read.
“You’re sure there’s no science fair project this year?” Vision said. He sounded disappointed. “Maybe a working model of the solar system? A clean energy source?” He added to Wanda, “I miss the days of dioramas. Small-scale matter manipulation… the smell of Play-Doh…”
The Wilds (TV)
ART. Haunted Even in the spa Gretchen keeps seeing Linh. It's getting harder and harder to remember that it's all just in her head. Haunted and haunting.
perilous in the wrong conditions Nora’s fight-or-flight response is triggered as Rachel’s life is endangered. Intense, well-characterized, beautiful imagery.
The pool had looked so big, and her sister so small all the way up there. The water below lying in wait for Rachel’s sacrifice.
And that's only from what I've had a chance to read! I haven't even started on Original Works, for instance.
What have you enjoyed in the collection so far?
comments
August 2, 2021
Cottagecore dream
As I post this, I am sitting on my deck, drinking coffee and eating fresh-picked blackberries, watching bluejays and reading Multifandom Horror.
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