Rachel Smith's Blog: Guinea Pigs and Books, page 28

Sometimes even your favorite types disappoint you.

18. Bloodline – Jess Lourey

There is a certain kind of story about moving to your fiancée/new spouse’s hometown and finding that all is not as it seems. In many cases, I like that because I have moved many times and found lots of places are not what I thought they would be for a variety of reasons. I like subversion and I like secrets in stories and this kind of story seemed to work really, really well in the 1970s when the 1950s ideals were broken or in the process of breaking. Thankfully, I have never moved to a new potentially creepy town run by a secret society while pregnant or into a place that is weirdly trapped in those 1950s ideals (for appearances, anyway) like that one episode of Supernatural or Bloodline.

Joan is a journalist who gives up her potentially interesting and enjoyable life reporting to move to Lilydale, MN with a guy named Deck. On purpose. She got mugged, what do you want her to do? And it doesn’t go well. As one would expect, her journalistic instincts get triggered by the facades of the townspeople, no one wants her to go anywhere, and she’s also looking into some mysterious disappearances (as if there are another kind). The problem is, despite the inherent interesting qualities of these kinds of things that Joan’s willingness to investigate, and the fact that this is somewhat based on a true story, it’s pretty boring. It took me forever to read it and I could not get immersed in the story even when they were doing research.

 

Peregrine’s instincts are telling her Horace is not confident that he should be king of the pillow. She will investigate and conquer the pillow quickly and with pluck.

 

“In case it slipped your mind, this show opens in just one week from now, and as you can see, those people up there literally stink.”

133. Megan – Mary Kay Simmons

A campus novel from 1971, which to me reads older but that might be because these girls were the ones in a sorority, Megan is a whodunnit centered literally around people going to clandestine meetings at the theater building while the set for some show is being struck. I have no idea what show, I missed that if it was stated because it was never stated again. Liz, though, this show belongs to Liz Walton. You see, someone doesn’t like Liz Walton and steals her gloves, her bookends, her golf club, makes phone calls in her name, and basically wants to make sure she looks like a total murderer. In the meantime, Liz starts dating a dean of the college and delaying conversations with the police to make it easier to frame her…

The first murder, though, which looks like a drowning, is Megan’s. Megan was not very popular and it seems quite melodramatic. She blamed Liz for a relationship that wasn’t even happening being destroyed, she blackmailed a fragile man into lying for her, and she also used to write Liz repeated notes that claimed she was going to commit suicide, but then wouldn’t. Liz got in trouble because of Megan and then managed to do the thing that stalking letters tell you to do, she stayed away when that was the condition of staying in school. And then Megan dragged her back in by getting murdered.

I’m not sure I would say it really seemed like Megan was committing any of the subsequent murders, even though the back of the book wants you to think that and it was a selling point for me wanting to read this. I’m always keen on vengeful ghosts.

Megan was not really a vengeful ghost. Spoiler.

 

Ozymandias is shocked – shocked – to find that Megan is not a vengeful ghost who steals bookends and takes them to the theater department.

I did learn there could be allergy cars on Finnish trains, which would be awesome, but after how confusing this was, I’m not sure that’s real.

7. Norma – Sofi Oksanen

After reading this I can’t really say I learned much about Norma with the supernatural hair. She can tell if people are sick and tell emotions and her hair reacts to those and for some reason doesn’t protect her from Alvar, who is part of a human trafficking ring which provides babies that is also a hair import business except that Norma’s mom was passing off Norma’s hair as Ukranian hair. Somehow, he’s not bad, but Norma’s also been smoking her hair and there are several other characters who are either on the definitely bad side of the providing babies ring and then Marion, Norma’s mom’s partner in trying to get out of crime through hair, who thinks Norma’s mom was killed. And some family history of the hair and a ghost, sort of, who has tormented some of the women in the family, and I am still not really sure what I was supposed to be getting from this story exactly. It didn’t feel like a mystery or a slice of life or like there was any resolution to anything. The pacing of how information was distributed was both slow and apparently too quick, as at the end Norma was saying she understood her mother’s business with her hair and whatever else she was doing and my thought was, I don’t though. To be fair, there are things to be said about the commodification of women’s bodies, lots of them, but I’m not entirely sure what was being said here in Norma exactly.

 

No one will be smoking or selling Danger Crumples’ hair. Not ghost Danger Crumples’ hair either.

“I would find a such an unusual paradox of tremendous appeal terribly stimulating, if I were a sleuth.”

14. The Nightmare Man – J.H. Markert

Ben Bookman grew up with his grandfather, a prominent asylum runner and taker of nightmares who also had a lot of creepy aspects that no one in the family or the town really wanted to talk about. However, when Ben’s latest book, a murder in town, and a suicide at a book signing all come together with the same plot – it’s time to sort some things out. Things Ben doesn’t remember, like most of the writing of his last novel. His brother’s disappearance when they were young. The rest of the town’s disappearances. His marriage.

The local police force’s elder statesman and his daughter, Det. Blue, also have family issues to sort out while solving weird murders that come straight out of Ben’s latest book, and the father, Winchester, is in pretty bad shape despite his supernatural powers of helping people with their nightmares, so they need to do it soon.

A mix of horror and police procedural is always welcome for me and this one had a lot of twists and turns and thankfully did not spend tons of time on a skeptic character who won’t shut up and gets killed. It does seem strange that much of this would just be accepted, but part of that comes down to it being accepted because everyone knows there’s something weird and wrong happening in the town that’s been happening for ages and they’re just ready to get to the bottom of it instead of “I know it sounds ridiculous, but you’ve gotta believe me.” I liked that a lot and this was a fun, fast read for me.

 

Thorfy knows how to destroy his nightmare, i.e. fake trees and that poor gnome whose hat is visible.

 

 

Not coming soon to your local Waldenbooks…

In part because they aren’t complete books, but they do tell a complete story appropriate to each guinea pig I’ve had. Here are some upcoming book cover paintings that will be available on my Threadless and Redbubble pages “soon” barring catastrophe:

Yes he does. Many tapes. Thorfy’s into his cassettes.

 

This is a horror author parody within a horror movie parody within an enigma, the only thing worthy of a Hen Wen napping next to her axe image.

 

Belvedere is doing mischief on the phone. He’s so good at mischief.

 

No AI here, all artist using her crinkled hands. I don’t agree with AI training itself on my work either. That will cause more confusion than the matrix is ready for, I’m sure of it.

Trilogy of Terror was on TV in 1975, it was nominated for Blockbuster Movie of the Week at the TV Land awards in 2006.

125. Harrow Lake – Kat Ellis

This almost threw me right away because they say a horror movie won two Emmys in the first couple of pages and then never establish that it was a made for TV movie. It was then that I knew I was reading a book which had not been fact checked thoroughly for its US release. It would have been easy to say it was made for cable or a specific streaming service, with horror movies that works better in relation to what is considered TV. Just be clear, don’t act like an Emmy is an Oscar when these people are supposed to be established in the US film industry. Ringing true tip.

I did also have a hard time believing the whole town and the world was that into this Nightjar movie when I still don’t know what the title means or have any context for why it’s so beloved by fans. It sounds like a young woman is chased and eaten by her community, which is the kind of thing that women relate to as happening metaphorically all the time, but not something that causes a group celebration with parade. The entire town is involved in this festival for a horror movie and it’s not The Wicker Man? And it was a made for TV movie? And it’s a gruesome horror movie? And no one who worked on it shows up to sign autographs normal convention style? Really?

Anyway, I do think it had an interesting and creepy mythology for the Mr. Jitters character and it is interesting to me how horror stories can make things like tapping or any little noise very suspenseful. I recently watched The Cellar, a not slasher horror movie which involves math, and it made counting pretty creepy while also reminding me of The Beyond in a pleasant way, so good on them. And I was interested to find out what really happened to Lola’s mother, for a while I thought she had become Mr. Jitters’ apprentice or something along those lines, I’m both glad and not that wasn’t the story.

I usually like small town creepiness and I love horror movies, but the world of this story wasn’t very well established, especially with the glaringly nonsensical parts that had no explanation so I could ignore them.

 

Twiglet had no nonsensical parts and was too cute to be real, like a fuzzy hallucination at times.

“I’m a doctor, and I won’t accept irrational explanations.”

15. Deadly Friendship – Candice Arkham

This is the first book I’ve read where lycanthrope means vampire or werewolf and not just werewolf, even though this is set in Louisiana and they’re talking about a loup-garou, which is not a vampire…here it is a taste for blood and hereditary and Charon is either going mad or has the hereditary disease now that she’s inherited her family home and is living there. And she wants her college roommate and modern gal Cary to come down. Cary, who doesn’t want to have anything more to do with Bob, the married guy she was dating who she didn’t know was married and wants to leave Cleveland because of this and how bored she was at her job. What a shit Bob is.

Anyway, that horrible ending leaves her free to come to the swamp and watch her friend descend into madness while surrounded by three elderly ladies and a young guy who is just creepy enough to try and hit on an older woman and also get butthurt about her talking to another man. I get the impression Jerico is 14, which is not a good age to date a woman who finished college, even if he has a boat and a sordid past of getting kicked out of school.

Charon and Cary investigate the giant house on the swamp while Marie scowls, Janette seems really sweet, and Flora drinks – and while those three do Obeah rituals which are not clearly intended to help or hurt Charon’s ideas about how she’s becoming a loup-garou. Charon is in part super worried because children keep going missing throughout the area and her house has, of course, been the scene of many an atrocity and cruel family member, some who may still be around.

However, Cary will also still have a chance to find love in the swamp with a doctor named Jed who is from the area. She even helps him with a home birth while he’s translating the weird little book in Latin for her that tells them a lycanthrope is more a vampire than werewolf, which was where I got the impression the author doesn’t know much about horror or Latin, so disbelief not suspended.

 

Until you know what monster it is, Murderface isn’t helping. She knows how humid it is out there.

I did not expect this to read so quickly.

112. The Black Path – Asa Larsson

Somehow, this third entry in the Rebecka Martinsson series made a mining-related murder compelling enough that I read a lot of paragraphs about financial crimes and corrupt business practices in Uganda and how rich people do things and was still continuously interested. Even when Rebecka was mooning over her old boss Mans and analyzing his every word in emails that were one line long, I was still interested enough to stay up and finish the last couple hundred pages in one night. I think that says a lot for the series and the translation being effective.

There are a lot of good chapters with Anna-Maria and Sven-Erik from the police to move things along though. They’re really great detective characters and always have funny insights and definitely aren’t mooning over anyone, they’re a bit more bent on action.

One of the characters they didn’t get to talk to, and who didn’t seem to like talking at all, but was the reason for the title and very interesting, was Ester. She seemed to be a bit psychic, seeing people’s deaths or other parts of their life if she touched them. She was the main mining executive’s half-sister and lived on his property mostly weight lifting after previously having some success with painting. She was quite unexpected.

 

Also quite unexpected, Ozma.

 

Twiglet Is Shelving…

This year is going to have a lot of book covers (preferably) added to my art sites because I’m doing a rather large project involving my pigs past and present…

Original Twiglet

And their very own book covers… I’m finally living up to my title as fully as possible.

Twiglet Is Shelving…

 

Twiglet is living up to any guinea pig’s little library dreams of getting to stand on a Kik-Step and straighten, a big part of shelving books that of course everyone would want to participate in. I mean, who doesn’t look at the endless rows of stacks and think – let’s put everything away and I could make that look better?

It’s also pretty perfect for a tote bag to get one’s library books in and impress the librarians and library assistants in your own life as I plan to do later this very day.

And, each book cover painting will be available on my Threadless, my Redbubble, or both. My personal tote came from Threadless.

 

“Children can be nasty, don’t you think?”

53. Little Star – John Ajvide Lindqvist

If you find a baby in the woods, even if it has perfect pitch in its infancy, you should alert the authorities instead of taking it home and raising it in a basement so you can finally stop being a failed musician vicariously. Seriously. Eventually, said Little One might get ideas about murder based on the weirdo shit you told her to keep her in the basement (like that “big people” will eat her), and then go on a talent show and become very successful and start her own terrible girl gang that all eat baby food. And she definitely will not develop a conscience.

Little Star made me think of a reverse-changeling situation. I never considered what would happen if the parents in a changeling situation accepted the trade instead of trying their best to get their own child back. In this case, there is no lost child, and it’s like Little One never got her chance to replace someone else’s child so she’s going to play with her hammers and become a pop star. Apparently, changelings have their own dreams besides replacing people’s children and Little One is the one who gets to realize those while also retaining all the disturbing qualities of a replacement human who isn’t supposed to be in the world.

 

Technically, Snuffy, you are not the only one with the talent of eating veggies really fast, so it might not be talent show-worthy and that’s fine.