Rachel Smith's Blog: Guinea Pigs and Books, page 49

Deviant behavior

24. Luckiest Girl Alive – Jessica Knoll

I think that if you grew up in the same area as this character, the Mainline area of Pennsylvania, perhaps this was more relatable. Or maybe the narrator’s goals and trajectory post-high school were relatable. Or if I cared about the world of women’s magazines and having expensive things that aren’t pop culture related it would’ve been more interesting to read this. Even as someone who has suffered more than one kind of trauma and was in high school during the Columbine shooting, I couldn’t find anything to value in this depiction of responding to the multiple traumatic events of the narrator’s life. It read like the writer was using the narrator’s trauma like it gives the narrator a reason to be such an insufferable shit and that’s lazy af, as the kids probably no longer say. And the insufferable shit dimension was the only one TifAni’s got.

I understand where the narrator is supposed to be coming from, but her goals were so reprehensible and her significant lack of redeeming qualities in adulthood just made it harder to find anything worthwhile in the story.

As you can see here, Pickles was very concerned about fashion and what she gnawed on.

Sail away

47. @expectations – Kit Reed

The title of this book is perfect. Expectations are what keep people hanging on to online relationships that are quite possibly bullshit when they don’t feel like they have anything to look forward to in real life (same thing in real life, really, although not speaking from personal experience, of course…). And being lied to by your fiancée about his suddenly-there children who hate you right before you move from a place you feel comfortable to a place you don’t know anyone with little to no support and those same kids who still hate you, well, what else is there to do but try and reach out to somewhere- and online, there are options.

Performative utterance creates those options in the StElene chat room and frankly, several aspects of this are very 1990s. I kept seeing fluttering curtains and dramatic lighting in an empty house in my head ala the “I’d Do Anything for Love (But I Won’t Do That)” and “It’s All Coming Back to Me Now” videos on MTV. But, obviously, the soundtrack is Enya’s “Orinoco Flow” or Enigma’s “Return to Innocence.” I trust next to nothing, so, anyone who claims to “understand” without ever knowing what my true vocal tone is would be suspect, but to Zan and Lark and Reverdy and Mireya, it seems to be their only outlet and they do not want to be alone enough to overlook many, many red flags and ruin their real lives too.

The ending is not perfect, but, in some respects reflects the appropriate ending of expectations. People who take their online life in a chat room (basically) way too seriously and then bring the formerly anonymous involved parties into real life are bound to find out it was never going to meet their expectations.

While I’m working on this, Thorfy is in this exact position, but after watching me for a while he is now asleep. I have not met his expectations of an exciting afternoon out of his house.

“Pop quiz, hotshot.”

81. The Midnight Witness – Sara Blaedel

The first of the Det. Louise Rick novels deals with the intersection between the media and police investigations a lot. In part, because a journalist is one of the murder victims, and also because Det. Louise Rick’s best friend is a journalist, Camilla Lind. While everyone is concerned with solving the case, the pushing because of the journalism angle really threatens the legitimacy of the investigation. As much as the public wants to know what’s going on and deserves to, something has to be kept back so that the killer can be identified based on the details only they know or the ones that might be a red herring and lead the public to one person when it’s someone else. Part of investigating is looking at everything one can, which leads in different directions sometimes, not just straight to one person. However, The Midnight Witness is more of a conspiracy/drugs/relationships sort of police procedural in a way that can be a little trying at times. Trying for the characters as they run into a lot of sexism and “you’re off the story” kind of stupidity as well as what’s really going on and for the reader as they might wonder why this department seems, um, a little all over the place in their tactics. I’m not sure they’d do well in a Speed-scenario with this investigative team.

Murderface looks on as Belvedere contemplates a career in Danish law enforcement for almost a whole second.

Maybe not

10. Yes, Please – Amy Poehler

Apparently, the audiobook of this is quite good. I have not heard that, so I only have the paper book to work with and it was not that good. I really like Amy Poehler (or maybe I just really, really like Leslie Knope, to be fair, in the Amy-Leslie battle I’m going with Leslie even though in an Ann Perkins-Rashida Jones battle I would go with Rashida, preferences are weird sometimes) and so I wanted this to be a very enjoyable reading experience but I got a little eye-rolly.

When you tell me that it’s hard to write a book, well, I know that. Even if I hadn’t technically finished writing six novels, I would still know that and maybe I don’t want to hear it from people who get real paid to write if you know what I mean. Maybe it’s just a bit of a downer to be reminded that you need your other famous friends to help you write a book you’ll get paid a lot for when I can’t even get people to stop stealing mine when it’s $3.99.

I imagine that the audiobook is a very different experience and since the talents of comedians are much more easily experienced through audible media, maybe that takes the annoying edge off the necessity of collaborating to finish one book and makes it fun. That just wasn’t my reading experience.

Ozma has fun in her willow tunnel with her stuffed ice cream sandwich. She sounds a lot like a tiny, soft chicken when she wheeks so I imagine it would be more fun for everyone to experience her out loud but I’m against fun, clearly. I even have a Fun Police badge.

“You’re right. No human being would stack books like this.”

106. Night Rounds – Helene Tursten

A hospital about to go under in Göteborg has what seems like a haunting going on, staff are going missing, and Det. Inspector Irene Huss is on the case. This is the second in the series about Detective Inspector Irene Huss and was my favorite so far (I’ve read several of these completely out of order) in terms of the story. I did expect it to be a lot more about working at night, which it is not, but I was surprised in a good way by the personalities of the characters and the way the mystery comes together in a somewhat unexpected way.

The tertiary characters related to the investigation came from very different perspectives, which was nice to see in an investigation. Since this involves a potential ghost and a hospital and not drug dealing or suddenly finding a crime ring that’s really international and linked to the government or trafficking children, it has a very centralized feel, which makes things a bit tighter in the story and it’s not being told for super darkness or shock value. It’s also nice to read about detectives who are committed to having a home life, even if it’s not so easy, and Huss’ family are good characters – she also takes care of the dog and worries about scheduling and the dog Sammie, so, respect. Det. Inspector Huss is committed, but not married to her job, not so obsessed that she can’t see anything but “the case,” and that’s for the better.

Snuffy works at night with me when I get to work at home, so she knows her night shift stories

Who better to start a new year with than people you secretly despise?

4. The Hunting Party – Lucy Foley

Ah, toxic group dynamics. If you spend every New Year’s Eve together for like 10 years, after a while you start to realize that you should maybe not spend time together anymore ever, let alone on New Year’s Eve. Noting all of this, is it really any wonder if someone dies?

In The Hunting Party all those types of evolved friends no one wants anymore are invariably represented – the “fun” one who can’t stand that she’s aging and was never actually that fun, her attractive but shit husband, the guy who settled for a shadow of the “fun” one, the shadow – she’s new and trying very hard, the couple who now have a baby and brought it on vacation, the American boyfriend of everyone’s clever male friend, everyone’s clever male friend who really seems stuck in this group, and the one who wants out because she’s the punching bag of the “fun” one (according to the fun one, she has thick thighs). All of these wonders of humanity are being tended to by two people who wanted to escape the hell out of their pasts full of pain, and yet, they are very helpful. Very helpful. Oh, and they’re at the remotest of remote resorts in Scotland where it is super hard to get police or emergency medical services.

Anyhoo, this is a fun thriller. It’s got terrible people and their weird friendship tensions, deer, too much champagne, stalking, a lot of bad smells, some red herrings, drugs, and some solidly professional service.

Baby Finny and Horace’s friendship didn’t last either. Not once Finny met Ozma.

“And turn it into something that you never thought that you need”

75. Skullcrack City – Jeremy Robert Johnson

Like a combination of Brain Damage and Re-animator if the only song on the soundtrack of either was Swimming Pool Q’s (this is a terrible band name because of that apostrophe which hurts me to type and is there when they’re not even possessing anything[!]) “Corruption.” That song ran through my head as soon as I thought of Brain Damage, which wasn’t hard with the drug hazes and the constant pursuit of the drug Hex and the sleaziness like Henenlotter’s New York and well, the whole brain shenanigans for Shenanigans Patrick Doyle, the main character, are a little like the brain shenanigans in Brain Damage.

I thought of Re-animator later, when there were more injections and scientists with questionable motives and then some other science that’s supposed to be, like world saving against the other science, but it all seems to involve brains and goo and living in an altered state.

Anyway, I’m sure Jeremy Robert Johnson has seen Brain Damage and Re-animator, even if he wasn’t referencing them directly, which he’s really not. The content of the novel is more interested in unraveling interwoven science and money conspiracies, which is not actually of interest to me so much.

However, I do know he’s seen Blade Runner (or he read Philip K. Dick, but, I’m on a movie angle) because he named the turtle in the novel Deckard. This imaginary addict’s devotion to his imaginary turtle was the most inspiring thing in the novel. I like seeing people devoted to their pets. Even if the pet ends up eaten off page by a paranthropus boisei (big grindy teeth, very strong jaw) – gigantopithecus – gorilla hybrid, he still wrote poems about it and fed it and changed the water while he was high out of his mind earlier on. I worry about literary pets, because most of the time the purpose they serve is to spur some sort of action when they die or to demonstrate true devastation. Deckard’s posthumous contribution was about longevity, which, good.

Yes, the takeaway from this book is that it’s important to take care of your pets. It’s the real reason for the season.

“The dark Gothic manor, the omnipresent low fog hugging the thicket of overgrowth… Wait. Is that a hound I hear baying out on the moors?”

27. The Vanishing – Wendy Webb

If there was such thing as a cozy horror novel, this would be a cozy horror novel. It was very easy to read, not scary, and had a big gothic house with a lot of scared-falling in love. I kept wondering how exactly I ended up with it and then realized that I had been looking for haunted house books that were owned by the library and that’s what this is and there is a horror writer who disappeared involved, and a seance. And like I said, very easy to read. It’s not trying to be something it’s not, it’s more so that I’m just not the right person to super enjoy it. If I was the main character, I’d have been repeatedly asking everyone else if they brought me to this nice house to kill me or if it’s really moldy and they’re trying to mess with my allergies and slowly kill me since there wasn’t actually a way to leave.

The house is huge and very thoroughly described. It sounds like it was a fun estate. There are horsies and fluffy dogs and a library with a signed first editions shelf. The dude who takes care of the horsies is attractive and into ladies and there are no other eligible women around for miles and miles, so when the woman leaving her entire life behind to come to this estate shows up, she has dibs automatically. And, yes, too good to be true, it’s haunted, she freaks out several times, there’s a secret reason why she’s there and in the very, very end there’s a little twist that I thought had been coming for quite some time, but I also thought it would be, like, negative, and it’s more like that one X-Files Christmas special. Yes, that one.

Hen Wen demonstrates how to be cozy and skeptical of said coziness because ghosts are supposed to be around.

“Well I suppose we better look the little criminal up.”

62. Spirit Bound – Richelle Mead

Trials! Graduation! Jailbreak! Vegas! Death Watch! College visit! Rescue mission! What? In some respects, it feels like everything but the kitchen sink is being thrown at the wall in this penultimate book of the Vampire Academy series. It’s like once the main characters graduated from the academy and were sort of technically on their way to their prescribed destiny at court, instead they went super haywire. Rose is all over the place, finding out the new ways she can be punished as an adult, including shoveling dirt and super-intense heartbreak.

And as much as the focus of this book is on the possibility of curing a Strigoi, one in particular, when that potential cure is being put into action, it’s very rushed as to whether or not Lissa actually learned how to do the charm or not. She never got the chance to learn it from the dude that did it before, she can barely charm a ring at the beginning but gets exponentially better all of a sudden to the point where she can disguise her and Rose as humans, and as much as I like Dmitri, his actions as a Strigoi are the main thing in the book that make sense. His post-Strigoi actions do not really make as much sense, but they do put Rose into an Empire Strikes Back kind of super-depression right before she gets accused of murder. Guess she should be glad she didn’t lose a hand and she is just developing her relationship with her dad, who wears cool scarves.

Murderface plows ahead through the blankets with Pickles on her heels. They will get to the bottom of this blanket and resolve all these plot threads.

“Mayhem on the Yule.”

74. Voices in the Snow – Darcy Coates

I didn’t know what I was getting into with this snowstorm/possibly on the verge of the apocalyptic breakdown of society novel. And yet, I did not expect a spider monster matron in a high necked dress at all. I did expect a devolution into romance once the main character realized the rich weirdo who saved her life and stitched her back up wasn’t like Annie Wilkes of Misery and was more of a socially awkward gardener with a traumatic childhood and a bevy of beige sweaters. But it didn’t stay there, like, “Oh, I not only forgot the world was falling to pieces and now I don’t care because I met you in your isolated giant house with a generator and plants,” and I’ve read some books I believe would have stayed there. She never forgot her family and once she remembered why she was trying to get to her family, it once again became a priority, she just picked up Dorran along the way, like the Scarecrow but more focused on gardening and maintaining his familial punishment.

Thaddeus got Pammy the ladypig to love him without beige sweaters or a big house, so anything is possible.