Ren Warom's Blog, page 3

October 30, 2015

2015 Reading Challenge: Shirley Jackson Marathon: Week 2

Week two of this Shirley Jackson marathon is all about what some people consider to be her masterpiece (others think it’s THOHH) and that is ‘We Have Always Lived In The Castle’. This book is about the surviving members of the Blackwood family: Merricat, Constance and Uncle Julian. What did they survive you ask? Mass poisoning. One night at dinner the entire family (bar those three of course) is poisoned. Constance is arrested for this crime and subsequently acquitted and since then she, her...

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Published on October 30, 2015 05:52

October 19, 2015

MHM Recovery 13

This time around on mental health Monday I’m tackling the subject of frustration. Specifically the frustration deriving from that gap between where you feel you should be with your recovery and where you actually are.

When you start to feel better you want to start doing all the things you missed out on when you were at your most ill and you think it’s okay to jump in to activities you may have avoided for a long time because you’re feeling so well and so strong. But when you actually try, yo...

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Published on October 19, 2015 02:12

October 16, 2015

2015 Reading Challenge: Shirley Jackson Marathon: Week One

AKA The comparing and contrasting of The Haunting of Hill House and its two film adaptions

Otherwise known as: Why is Eleanor portrayed as a B-movie hysteric?

Yeah, so, I’ve seen both movie adaptions, and I saw them before reading the book. I saw the 1963 movie in the early to mid 90s, and the 1999 movie in maybe the early 2000s on TV. I had the same problem with both: Eleanor, or Nell. With the 1963 movie I had no idea about the book and thought that this was just your average B-movie ‘hyste...

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Published on October 16, 2015 06:14

October 9, 2015

2015 Reading Challenge, Book 36: We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler

This was a book that hooked me on the blurb but then almost lost me in the initial reveal. Rosemary is in college, she never talks about her family so no one knows how dysfunctional her parents are, or that her brother has been missing for years, or that when she was little, she lost her sister, Fern, under tragic circumstances.

Now I’m not going to tell you the nature of the loss or anything about Fern. Suffice it to say I was non-plussed at first to find out and considered stopping as my ex...

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Published on October 09, 2015 12:24

October 8, 2015

Fantasycon 2015 – Where on earth will I be?

I didn’t write one of these when everyone else did as, well, I’m a neophyte and rather imagined it wouldn’t be necessary to shout out either the fact that I’m actually at the con, or that I have a panel. But hey, I’M ACTUALLY AT THIS CON, and I’m both super excited and pants-wettingly terrified to be on a panel, so I thought I’d shout about it here, just in case anyone fancies turning up for moral support, what!

Come one, come all and witness me um, ah, and generally make a buffoon of myself...

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Published on October 08, 2015 03:11

October 5, 2015

MHM Recovery 12

Well… this one is about memory, the day to day of living with the memory problems that come along with mental illness and with complex PTSD’s shrinking of the hippocampus and amygdala (I only assume this is behind some of my difficulties – I do not know for sure). It got a bit real if I’m honest, not that the rest of these aren’t, but I can usually keep a lid on my shit. I didn’t here. Got a tad upset. I think it’s because this one terrifies me. I feel diminished and useless and stupid.

That’...

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Published on October 05, 2015 11:39

October 2, 2015

2015 Reading Challenge, Book 35: Signal To Noise by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

So this week’s book is magical realism for the modern age, and it’s delightful. Meche returns to Mexico City in 2009 after the death of her father, to attend his funeral and to sort his personal effects. She’s not seen him or spoken to him in twenty years, and hasn’t been back to Mexico City in eighteen. She left in 1988, and the circumstances surrounding that and her reluctance to return are explored in a series of flashback chapters as she deals with her family in 2009 and runs into the two...

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Published on October 02, 2015 12:43

September 25, 2015

2015 Reading Challenge, Book 34: The Causal Angel by Hannu Rajaniemi

Following on (of course) from The Fractal Prince, we find Jean le Flambeur and Mieli off in separate directions and a whole load of trouble brewing. Jean feels he owes it to Mieli to find her and rescue her, and in his machinations manages (big surprise) to make even more trouble and mess everything up.

Not going to spoiler at all, but this book throws more at Jean and Mieli than anything the other two books have. Especially Jean, he finds out some truly unpleasant things about his role in th...

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Published on September 25, 2015 04:00

September 21, 2015

MHM Recovery – 11 – Self Harm

Today I’m tackling the issue of self harm. I went through a period of self harming that had something to do with being given the wrong medication, something to do with a feeling I needed to externalize my illness to see it legitamized and a long-standing Mexican stand-off with the idea of self harming in order to cope with what goes on inside of me.

I’d toyed with the idea of self harm in my teens. I had a kit in the back of my wardrobe I would go back to every now and then and think about us...

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Published on September 21, 2015 12:14

September 18, 2015

2015 Reading Challenge, Book 33: The Fractal Prince by Hannu Rajaniemi

The Fractal Prince is the second book in Rajaniemi’s brilliant post-humanist trilogy, following on from the Quantum Thief. In TQT our protagonist Jean Le Flambeur is trapped in a Dilemma prison after attempting to break into the mind of the Maelstrom. He’s rescued by Mieli (an Oortian – by adoption) in her spidership Perhonen (who is AWESOME btw – there’s so much I had to cut from the video as it was aaaaaaggggeees long). They’ve been sent by Josephine Pellegrini, another like the Maelstrom,...

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Published on September 18, 2015 14:24