Katherine Nabity's Blog, page 242

Book #26

Courtney Crumrin and the Night Things by Ted Naifeh

Presenting the initial Courtney Crumrin miniseries in a new digest-sized format. Courtney’s parents have dragged her out to a high-to-do suburb to live with her creepy Great Uncle Aloysius in his spooky old house. She’s not only the new kid in school, but she also discovers strange things lurking under her bed.

I picked this up from NetGalley as a means of testing their ability to handle graphic novels. Let me just say that Adobe Digital Editions is not the best way of reading a comic… I didn’t have any familiarity with Ted Naifeh’s comic previous to this.

Courtney Crumrin is…well, charming isn’t quite the word. She’s contrary and ill-tempered and decidedly her own person. And that’s the point of her. She’s not the most well-liked, but is resourceful enough to find friends in…other places. Through sorcery learned from her creepy uncle (or is it great-uncle? or great-great-uncle?), Courtney dabbles in popularity and finds that it’s not for her. That, of course, doesn’t make being the new girl at a new school and new town any less awful.

Story-wise, the individual sections do not flow together particularly well. I grant that this is a collection, but I wish that there was some interstitial connections and maybe more of an over arching plot. Naifeh’s art is interesting. While some of his characters and settings are very well detailed, Courtney and her peers are drawn in a somewhat unfinished style. I assume that’s intentional. These are unfinished people. In contrast, the most detailed character is Uncle Aloysius.

Format: Adobe Digital Edition

Procurement: NetGalley

Throwback Thursday (09/06/12)

Throwback Thursday is a weekly meme hosted by The Housework Can Wait and Never Too Fond of Books!

Noting that book blogging onften focuses on new releases, here’s how Throwback Thursday works:

Pick a book released more than 5 years ago.
Write up a short summary of the book (include the title, author, and cover art) and an explanation of why you love it.
Link up your post at The Housework Can Wait or Never Too Fond of Books.
Visit as many blogs as you can, reminisce about books you loved, and discover some “new” books for your TBR list!

The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith

From my original post, 01/30/02:

…why do I like this book so much? It’s about a total amoral putz. Usually I don’t care for fiction in which the main character is unsympathetic. But…is Tom Ripley actually unsympathetic? While he has his “oh woe is me” moments, I can kind of see where he’s coming from. He’s an intriguing character. I do have to agree with one of the blurbs on the book cover though Highsmith’s world is slightly irrational. Things happen that wouldn’t logically happen. The movie tried to make things more logical I think, and strangely that is where it went wrong. Because in the book, even Tom Ripley is amazed at how things are working out for him, irrational as the events seem to be. Bottom line, liked the book, want to read the others.

Why read it today? I think everyone has an occasional moment of “What can I get away with?” For most of us, it’s a white lie or shirking a task we don’t want to do. For Tom Ripley, it’s lying and murdering into the life he wants. Upon further reflection, I think there are two things that make Ripley a palatable character. One, he’d be a great dinner companion. Oh, you’d probably have an inkling that all his stories are lies, but he’d be entertaining, solicitous, and know all the best restaurants. Two, he’s not a super-villain. His plans are flimsy. He’s good at deception, but luck has much more to do with his success than talent. And Ripley knows it.

Book #25

We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver

I’ll admit that I’ve never considered, never held responsible even in my mind, the parents of young mass murderers. This might have to do with my general view of the world: we are formed by our biology and all of the experiences we have. Parents matter, but before them are genes and the environment of the womb.  By the time a child is twelve or so and has interacted with people other than their parents, parents begin to matter less.

We Need to Talk About Kevin is narrated, through letters to her estranged husband, by the mother of a mass murderer. The titular Kevin meticulously planned and carried out the murder of nine people at his school. Eva Khatchadourian is left wondering exactly what part of her son’s actions are her fault.

Eva is not a sympathetic character, yet I actually feel slight affinity with her. At age 37 (the same age I am now), her career and marriage are not as satisfying as they once were. Her friends have exchanged their freedom for children and all seem happier for it. Her husband, too, wishes for more family. Despite reservations, Eva convinces herself that having a child is the answer. I’m not saying that I’m personally dissatisfied with my life or pressured in any personal manner to have children, but I understand that much of our society doesn’t understand a woman that doesn’t want to have children. Children are seen as a biological imperative, a religious imperative, and a cultural norm. The statement “you’ll feel differently when it’s your own child” seems to me to be a dangerous gambit. What if you have a child and you don’t feel differently? That’s the situation that Eva finds herself in.

Now, it could be that she is not the world’s most reliable narrator. Kevin is depicted as a horror of a child. Maybe he is, maybe Eva is a delusional. That’s left for the reader to decide. We only have Eva’s version of the story to go on.

Lionel Shriver is a fairly adept writer on a word/sentence level. Plot-wise,  Eva having a second child, her daughter Celia, seemed like an add-on. Unless I missed it, Celia isn’t mentioned or alluded to in the first half of the book. That plotline expands the book and makes steaks higher, but it feels forced. The book is described as a thriller, but to me “thriller” implies that the characters have the ability to change a perceived outcome. While there is something of a twist to the end of the book, the outcome is set.

I read this book as an antidote for the YA fiction I have been reading. Boy, was it.

Format: Kindle Cloud Reader

Procurement: Greater Phoenix Digital Library

R.I.P. VII – Progress Post #1

The purpose of R.eaders I.mbibing P.eril VII is to enjoy books and movies/television that could be classified (by you) as: Mystery. Suspense. Thriller. Dark Fantasy. Gothic. Horror. Supernatural. Or anything sufficiently moody that shares a kinship with the above.

I’m going to post my R.I.P. progress on Tuesdays during September and October and link them to the review site if they contain reviews of short stories, TV shows, or movies. Books will get their own posts.

“The Adventure of the Noble Bachelor”
“The Adventure of the Solitary Cyclist”
Arthur Conan Doyle

Steven Moffat has teased the three word for series 3 of Sherlock. They are rat, wedding, and bow. Of course, with the premiere a year away, speculation abounds. What canon stories could these words allude to? Which tales will be liberally adapted? Both “The Adventure of the Noble Bachelor”  and “The Adventure of the Solitary Cyclist” have been bandied around for “wedding,” but don’t I think either are likely aside from maybe an allusions-in-passing.

Regarding “Noble Bachelor”: I forget how crisp and untagged Doyle’s dialogue sometimes is. This is one of Doyle’s one-set stories. While characters come and go from Baker Street, all the action occurs in the sitting room. Not the most exciting of Holmes stories, but probably responsible for many of my people-in-a-room-talking-and-eating scenes.

In contrast, “Solitary Cyclist” takes the show on the road. Doyle is as adept at describing the countryside as he is setting a meal a Baker Street. Tor has seemingly picked this story for “wedding” if wedding doesn’t refer to Watson’s wedding. The story is fairly sensational, but doesn’t really engage Holmes/Watson (apparently a criticism that the editor of The Strand had as well).

Murder Rooms

Murder Rooms is a BBC series. It is a *very* liberal dramatization of the mentorship/friendship between Arthur Conan Doyle and Dr. Joseph Bell. The first movie-length episode was listed as Dr Bell and Mr Doyle (2000) when I first rented it from Netflix. I didn’t know there were four other episodes (each 90 minutes in length and released in 2001) until recently.

The series is much closer to a Sherlock Holmes pastiche than a historical drama. That’s certainly not a bad thing. Doyle, played by Robin Laing in the first movie and Charles Edwards in the further episodes, is a more intellectual Watson and Ian Richardson is more of a tough-love grandfather figure than a Holmes. In fact, Dr. Bell reminds me of THE Doctor; humorous and eccentric.

As with Sherlock, the stories are not adaptations of canon, but allusions to canon. For example, “The Patient’s Eyes,” the episode I watched this past week, heavily relies on “The Adventure of the Solitary Cyclist.”

Movies

The Toybox (2005) – I think I vaguely remember Mondo Movies or Mark Kermode talking about this movie as one of numerous English horror movies that involve children/youth culture vs. adults. I’m pretty sure that this isn’t the best of the lot. It wasn’t particularly scary, but the hand-held camera was occasionally nauseating.

The House on Haunted Hill (1959) – I rewatch this William Castle classic every couple of years. Despite the schlock, it’s so earnest. Vincent Price’s character is a bit loathsome. His wife, played Carol Ohmart, is chilly and queenly, and Carolyn Craig completely sells her mounting hysteria. It’s a Scooby-Doo of a horror movie, fun and contrived. I watched the colorized version and had to wonder whether there were production notes to follow during the process. Everyone was so drab aside from Annabelle Loren (Ohmart). Her wardrobe is purple, maroon, and baby blue.

I read 13% of 77 Shadow Street by Dean Koontz before setting it aside. It wasn’t creepy enough. The characters weren’t interesting enough. I thought about continuing to see if anything good was going to happen plot-wise, but honestly, that doesn’t happen often. I have too many other things to read.

It’s Monday, What Are You Reading? (09/03/12)

It’s September! Sure, the forecasted high temperature today is 104F and our lows haven’t been lower than 88F in several days, but I can feel autumn in the air! Okay, not really. That’s just the AC kicking in, but I’m good with delusions. There is college football, fall frisbee league, and a whole queue of creepy, mysterious books to read. Autumn can’t be too far away.

This Week I’m Reading:
The Italian Secretary: A Further Adventure of Sherlock Holmes by Caleb Carr

Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson are summoned to the aid of Queen Victoria in Scotland by a telegram from Holmes’ brother, Mycroft, a royal advisor. Rushed northward on a royal train—and nearly murdered themselves en route—the pair are soon joined by Mycroft, and learn of the brutal killings of two of the Queen’s servants, a renowned architect and his foreman, both of whom had been working on the renovation of the famous and forbidding Royal Palace of Holyrood, in Edinburgh. Mycroft has enlisted his brother to help solve the murders that may be key elements of a much more elaborate and pernicious plot on the Queen’s life. But the circumstances of the two victims’ deaths also call to Holmes’ mind the terrible murder—in Holyrood—of “The Italian Secretary,” David Rizzio. Only Rizzio, a music teacher and confidante of Mary, Queen of Scots, was murdered three centuries ago. Holmes proceeds to alarm Watson with the announcement that the Italian Secretary’s vengeful spirit may have taken the lives of the two men as punishment for disturbing the scene of his assassination. Critically acclaimed, bestselling author Caleb Carr’s brilliant new offering takes the Conan Doyle tradition to remarkable new heights with this spellbinding tale. (Goodreads)

I’m in a Holmes mood. Honestly, I haven’t read too many pastiches.  Hoping this won’t disappoint.

Short Story of the Week:

I’m also reading some classic Holmes and I’ll be raiding The Chiaroscuro‘s archives for the next month or two for some good scares.

The Usual:

A poem, a section of Poetic Edda. I think I’m going to put A Clash of Kings aside until the Tor read-along catches up.

What I Read Last Week:

Courtney Crumrin and the Night Things by Ted Naifeh, review will be posted Friday. Gave up on Koontz’s 77 Shadow Street, more on that tomorrow in my R.I.P. VII update.

Book #24

Steampunk! An Anthology of Fantastically Rich and Strange Stories edited by Kelly Link & Gavin J. Grant

It took me a little while to warm up to this anthology. To me, steampunk is a very specific thing: science fiction of the Victorian era. That is, what kinds of technologies could you extrapolate based on steam power? The stories in this anthology stretch the definition of steampunk in a lot of different directions, not many of them sticking to the steaminess of steampunk.

For example, Libba Bray’s “The Last Ride of the Glory Girls”  revolves around one very high tech gadget being used in a traditional Old West setting. “The Summer People” by Kelly Link is contemporarily set and fae centric. These fae have a tenancy to create clockworks. Once I stopped saying “Well, *that’s* not steampunk,” I enjoyed myself a whole lot more.

My two favorite stories are both homages to other, er, sub-genres.  Ysabeau Wilce’s “Hand in Glove” reads very much like a slightly skewed sequel to Poe’s “Murders in the Rue Morgue.” With a little Frankenstein thrown in for good measure. I would love to spend at least a novel-worth of time with Detective Wilkins in dreary Califa. “Steam Girl” by Dylan Horrocks is a love letter to cinema cliffhangers with the brilliant and beautiful Steam Girl as our perpetrator of derring-do. Or maybe Steam Girl is just the alter ego of a young girl trying to make the best of her ugly situation… Either way, Dylan Horrocks (better known as a comic writer and artist) presents a great debut story.

Format: Kindle Cloud Reader

Procurement: Greater Phoenix Digital Library

Throwback Thursday (08/30/12)

Throwback Thursday is a weekly meme hosted by The Housework Can Wait and Never Too Fond of Books!

Noting that book blogging onften focuses on new releases, here’s how Throwback Thursday works:

Pick a book released more than 5 years ago.
Write up a short summary of the book (include the title, author, and cover art) and an explanation of why you love it.
Link up your post at The Housework Can Wait or Never Too Fond of Books.
Visit as many blogs as you can, reminisce about books you loved, and discover some “new” books for your TBR list!

Rope Burns by F.X. Toole

From my original entry, 09/30/08:

From the back of the book:

“F.X. Toole was a trainer and licensed cut man in the world of professional boxing. He was seventy when Rope Burns, his first book, was published, and had been writing and battling rejection letters for forty years. He died two years later, in 2002.”

Something to keep in mind next time I’m I bemoan being in this profession a mere 10-ish years with more paper incoming than outgoing.

My edition of this book was put out to coincide with he release of the movie Million Dollar Baby. Toole wrote the short story/novella and it’s included in this collection. And while it is a very good story (and the movie was faithful to it), “Rope Burns,” for which the collection was originally entitled, is the crown jewel of the book. Toole weaves the story of a black Olympic-hopeful boxer and his white trainer against the background of the LA riots.

Toole’s writing is solid. He knows his stuff and he does a wonderful job of putting actions into words. From a craft point of view, I’m going to spend some time in the future picking apart his fight scenes. I’m terrible with action and there’s much to learn. My one criticism of the collection was that some of the details surrounding the fight business are repetitive. It was a relief to hit “Rope Burns” which is more about the fighters and less about the fights.

Why read it today? I agree with the blurb from Dan Rather: this is “not just fight fiction at its finest, it is excellent fiction, period.” What was said about documentaries/non-fiction last week pretty much goes for fiction too, in the end. Good fiction should take you into a world you don’t think you care about and make it compelling. Which is why “I don’t read that genre” should never be an excuse for not at least giving a book a try.

R.I.P. VII

I’ve been in a certain mood lately. It started sometime last week after a few days tolerable Arizona summer temperatures and a fairly impressive, if brief, nighttime thunderstorm. The three episode Dexter marathon. AddingThe Italian Secretary and 77 Shadow Street to my TBR list. Rewatching Sherlock and dusting off my Conan Doyle anthology. Or maybe it stretches back to earlier in the month when I bought Lunar Park, or to my very nature. Whatever the case, I’m in the mood for horror and mystery. Enter R.I.P. VII.

R.eaders I.mbibing P.eril is a reading event hosted by Stainless Steel Droppings, lasting from September 1st to October 31st and focusing on mystery, horror, gothic, thrillers, the supernatural and all manner of things that go bump in the night.

I’ll be participating at a couple of levels:

Read four books that fit R.I.P. My reading pool:

77 Shadow Street by Dean Koontz
The Italian Secretary by Caleb Carr
Lunar Park by Bret Easton Ellis
Let the Right One In by John Ajvide Lindqvist
Courtney Crumrin, Volume 1 by Ted Naifeh
Hannibal Rising by Thomas Harris
The Descent by Jeff Long

Sherlock Holmes, various stories
Much of Shadow Show and associated Ray Bradbury tales probably apply.
Two and Twenty Dark Tales edited by Georgia McBride & Michelle Zink
Not ruling out Poe

There’s Dexter to watch and Sherlock to pine for. Eventually  American Horror Story will return (though I’m not sure it will during the span of this event). I even want to catch Elementary when it premiers because,  well, Sherlock Holmes is Sherlock Holmes. Speaking of which, there’s Murder Rooms as well. Good stuff all around.

It’s Monday, What Are You Reading? (08/27/12)

I’m still hung over from a Bout of Books. Continuing to reading last week’s picks, but here’s what I added over the weekend.

This Week I’m Reading:
77 Shadow Street by Dean Koontz

The Pendleton stands on the summit of Shadow Hill at the highest point of an old heartland city, a Gilded Age palace built in the late 1800s as a tycoon’s dream home. Almost from the beginning, its grandeur has been scarred by episodes of madness, suicide, mass murder, and whispers of things far worse. But since its rechristening in the 1970s as a luxury apartment building, the Pendleton has been at peace. For its fortunate residents—among them a successful songwriter and her young son, a disgraced ex-senator, a widowed attorney, and a driven money manager—the Pendleton’s magnificent quarters are a sanctuary, its dark past all but forgotten.

But now inexplicable shadows caper across walls, security cameras relay impossible images, phantom voices mutter in strange tongues, not-quite-human figures lurk in the basement, elevators plunge into unknown depths. (Goodreads)

Came across 5 Contemporary Horror Novels You Must Read ASAP yesterday. Which means that there was one book I was kinda sorta interested in. I haven’t read any Koontz in a few years and I’m always up for haunted hotel.

The Usual:

I’ve already finished up my “usual” reading aside from the chapter of A Clash of Kings.

What I Read Last Week:

Read “The Girl in the Funeral Parlor” by Sam Weller from Shadow Show and “The Swan” by Ray Bradbury. The former is a nice echo of the latter. “Wolf Trapping” by Kij Johnson, not quite as good as some of her stories, but still solid. Poem o’ the week was “The Staff and Scrip” by Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Great throw-back to courtly love literature.

Friday Free-for-All (08/24/12)

In the wake of a Bout of Books, I haven’t been in the mood to read on the internet. My Google reader has been pretty much ignored most of this week with occasional fits of  marked-as-read.

From this week, Girl XOXO is doing a reading challenge. And I’m going to do it too:

GOALTo read books set in each of the countries that won a GOLD MEDAL in the 2012 Olympics, or written by authors from these countries – all prior to the start of the next Olympics scheduled for August 4, 2016. (Girl XOXO)

That ends up being 50 countries. 50 books in four years? I can do that, right?

Africa

Algeria
Ethiopia
Kenya
South Africa
Tunisia
Uganda

Americas

Argentina
Bahamas
Brazil
Canada
Colombia
Cuba
Dominican Republic
Grenada
Jamaica
Mexico
Trinidad and Tobago
United States of America
Venezuela

Asia

People’s Republic of China
Iran
Japan
Kazakhstan
North Korea
South Korea
Uzbekistan


Europe

Azerbaijan
Belarus
Croatia
Czech Republic
Denmark
France
Georgia
Germany
Great Britain
Hungary
Ireland
Italy
Latvia
Lithuania
Netherlands
Norway
Poland
Romania
Russian Federation
Serbia
Slovenia
Spain
Sweden
Switzerland
Turkey
Ukraine

Oceania

Australia
New Zealand

From a couple of weeks back: The Wall Street Journal had an article on the metrics being gathered by connected ereaders. On one hand, I love this concept. That your ereader could keep track of how much you read (both in words/pages and time spent), how fast you read, what books are “easy” reads, etc. appeals to the part of me that loves to know, in numbers, how things are. As a writer, my feelings are mixed. Yes, I’d love to know, especially in the draft process, where a reader might lose interest in what I’ve written, but I also see the potential for publishers to be a little too concerned about formula that creativity might be stifled.

From the beginning of the month: Jeff O’Neal on prequels, sequels, and extended universes. Which kind of asks, is fandom a bad thing? What might we miss out on by spending time on more Star War or more Star Trek or more Sherlock Holmes? Some of fandom is habit. It’s saying, “I’ll go see the next X-Men movie because it’s an X-Men movie, even though the last one wasn’t worth $7 or two hours.” That’s very much like finishing a terrible book just because you always finish books. There should be a moment of re-evaluation every-so-often. I’ve put books down. Just because a TV show might have held my interest for five seasons doesn’t mean I owe it my time if the sixth if awful. And I’ve also rewatched episodes of Doctor Who when my Netflix queue had 200+ other thing in it. Spend time on the things that are good and enjoyable, don’t worry about the rest.