Rachel Smith's Blog: Guinea Pigs and Books, page 84

The suspense in this book was a lot like the suspense in Parasite by Mira Grant.

14. The Fever – Diane Hoh

This book was a bit of a cross between the hospital episode of Buffy way back in the second season with Der Kindestod and Emergency Room , that oh-so-specific tale from Caroline B. Cooney. Duffy Quinn has enemies, apparently, and she’s sick. And she’s confident and has no trouble finding boys despite being in the hospital and apparently very ill, unlike her chubby best friend. Duffy is bed-ridden, but she still makes time to pity her pretty faced-chubby best friend…what a peach. She also uncovers a scandal in the hospital and is plagued by delirious dreams of weirdly squeaky noises and a malfunctioning wheelchair and all the volunteer workers she knows don’t believe her! Well, maybe they do. Especially after she makes her chubby best friend do the work to prove there is a scandal afoot. I guess it is helpful to have a friend who isn’t sick and isn’t so busy trying to hit on the hospital staff.

Mixtape 6:

1. Top Floor, Bottom Buzzer – Morphine

2. Fast Fuse – Kasabian

3. Sidewalking – Jesus and Mary Chain

4. The Sanity Assassin – Bauhaus

5. Naked Cousin – PJ Harvey

6. Aneurysm – Nirvana

7. So Long Goodnight – Eighties Matchbox B-Line Disaster

8. Running Joke – Queens of the Stone Age

9. D.R.U.G.S. – The Raveonettes

10. Eleven O’Clock – Morphine

11. Drain You – Nirvana

12. Hang Wire – Pixies

13. After Hours – Electric Six

14. Vomiting Mirrors – Clockcleaners

15. The Difference Between Us – Dead Weather

16. Ulysses – Franz Ferdinand

Shortly after Danger Crumples made it to my house, I found that Thaddeus had symptoms of pneumonia…it was massively stressful. Six weeks of medicine later, all six pigs who took it pulled through and baby Danger never showed any symptoms. Now he’s three and a total beast.

My log saw something that night.

43. The Lost Mind – Christopher Pike

I never read Christopher Pike’s books when I was in middle school. They were rampant, and shelved right next to all kinds of 1990s YA pulp that I did read, but for some reason I thought they would be “too adult” for me or “too scary.” I now know that I was clearly deranged in my thinking after reading The Lost Mind. I’ve acquired several Christopher Pike books now and I intend to read them, despite my experience with The Lost Mind, which was terrible to say the least. Next to nothing in this book made sense to me and for the most part I thought the story was constructed using a blender and some random ideas that seem like good ideas until you put them together: girl wakes up covered in blood not knowing who she is – good idea; girl turns out to be a total asshole – sort of good idea, I do like Laura Palmer; random Egyptian mysticism – bad idea…because although it starts with amnesia and maybe this girl could have been an asshole and a practitioner of mysticism, these elements never really come together in a sensible way in this book.  It needed Special Agent Dale Cooper to sort it out in a dream.

Mixtape 9:

1. Bang! – The Raveonettes

2. Twist of Cain – Danzig

3. Crying Lightning – Arctic Monkeys

4. Jennifer’s Body – Hole

5. Hank is Dead – Red Fang

6. Secret Plans – Eagles of Death Metal

7. Warsaw – Joy Division

8. Naked Cousin – PJ Harvey

9. The Bat’s Mouth – Bat for Lashes

10. Turn My Blue Sky Black – The Mooney Suzuki

11. You Think I Ain’t Worth a Dollar but I Feel Like a Millionaire – Queens of the Stone Age

12. Who Was in My Room Last Night? – Butthole Surfers

13. Lithium – Nirvana

14. Idle Hands – The Gutter Twins

15. Gone Forever – The Raveonettes

16. Walkin’ with the Beast – The Gun Club

17. Everybody’s Under Your Spell – The Duke Spirit

18. Ablivion – UNKLE

Look into Belvedere’s eyes – if you can – you will find the ability to coherently develop a plot about mind switching there.

Her library card and the books she checked out and needed to return became her best means of escape.

Welcome to my YA Thriller Megamix Summer! All Summer I will be barely reviewing the works of authors on the Point Horror & Point Thriller imprints and they will come with mixtapes, if you wished to create a sixty minute  cassette tape of these tunes you totally could, as long as you have the songs and a double cassette deck. These will be some of the most useful reviews I have ever written.

20. Mother’s Helper – A. Bates

This is the first book I’ve been able to locate by the elusive A. Bates, one of the luminaries of the Point Horror novels. It features a character named Cleve. Yes, Cleve. That’s an unexpected name for the male love interest/potential psychopath, so I approve. Also, reading this made me glad I’ve never had to live with anyone that I work for. Finding that balance of “I have my own needs as a human and they involve not being at work 24/7” and “I’m paid to take care of your child who is alive 24/7” is apparently very complicated. It was hard for protagonist Becky to find the time to hang out with/be suspicious of Cleve and his potentially murderous/amorous nature. This was a book of dualities.

Pammy is on the lookout. If anyone, Cleve or otherwise, sneaks up on this chair in my former living space, she will see and they will not get to her towels.

 

Mixtape 1:

1. Kiss Them for Me – Siouxsie & the Banshees

2. Love Song – The Cure

3. 867-5309/Jenny – Tommy Tutone

4. Dance Hall Days – Wang Chung

5. Nightcall – Kavinsky & Lovefoxxx

6. Velvet – The Big Pink

7. To Never Know You – The Black Ryder

8. So Alive – Love and Rockets

9. Atari Baby – Sigue Sigue Sputnik

10. Stop Me If You Think… – The Smiths

11. Lips Like Sugar – Echo & The Bunnymen

12. Just Like Heaven – The Cure

13. Antmusic – Adam and the Ants

14. Our Love’s in Jeopardy – Greg Kihn

15. Black Sheep – Metric

16. Interchangeable Knife – Electric Six

 

 

Skin tags, the Pacific Trash Vortex, and a nuclear standoff cannot stop the pursuit of a vintage Cure t-shirt

13. Worst. Person. Ever. – Douglas Coupland

The department I’m currently a part of is stationed in the basement of the main branch of the 11th largest university library system in the country (last I checked). I spend most of my time in the main branch searching either virtually or physically for books and articles and one of those searches led me to a reshelving room where I found this book peeking out from underneath the Diary of Edward the Hamster 1990-1990. I didn’t even know he had one coming out this year! So, I promptly stole it away and checked it out. Finders keepers and also, sorry, person who was trying to secretly keep these two books in the second floor reshelving room, but now I’m done with it so I might just check it in and return it right back to that spot like library magic.

Anyway, this is the second Coupland book that I was a mite disappointed with. I adore Generation X and there was some level of flashback to that in this with all the little explanatory aside paragraphs – some did mimic what I was wondering and that was sort of fun. My problem with it is that although I get the book’s purpose and was generally having a good time reading it, I don’t understand the purpose of bringing in pristine sixteen year olds. Also, the poop fixation was not my cup of tea. I also found nothing useful about any of the female characters, but at least there were several – although there’s a problem with the best one and that problem is a little annoying when considering this book is written by a man. I guess that’s the only way to be a relatable character, be a man. Neal was great and the description of Neal in the beginning was one of the most disgustingly tangible smell scenes I’ve ever read. I usually don’t review anything remotely close to when it came out – just City of Devils and this one, maybe a Charlaine Harris, um, tangent- and so I’m trying not to spoil things, sort of, technically I don’t care if I spoil literary fiction for anyone [maniacal laugh] (if I was in this book, I’d now be explaining why a ‘maniacal laugh’ is the right end to that sentiment).

“Ozymandias’ World” A photo in which Ozymandias the guinea pig contemplates living in a world where women are fully allowed to explore the same range of ideas in their writing that men are and be published without impunity. There’s a reason why his rump is positioned toward the camera.

Glamorama

6. The Sentinel – Jeffrey Konvitz

There’s this model – I pictured Katharine Ross because I thought I was reading the book version of that movie with the cat head coming out of a hand on the cover (The Legacy) but The Sentinel has its own film version – and she moves in to this brownstone. She has issues with both her religion and her father and her father died and she left Indiana for New York City and now she has this boyfriend who vacillates between creepily invested in her issues and avoidant and she wanted to move out so she found the apartment in the brownstone. Some super creepy people live in the building and she spends a lot of time fixing the apartment to her liking and ragging on the paintings the owner or previous tenants had chosen (this was very odd to me, but no one really loves anyone else’s decor). It reminded me that it doesn’t seem like the altering and the “this is not to my liking in this tiny space owned by not me, have it painted” happens as much now – it’s kind of take it or leave it in the finding an apartment game these days- at least for me. I hate apartments but current finances and space availability won’t allow me and the pigs to have our own house; I would especially hate living in a building where people often came to my door, to me neighborly=spooky and if main character not-Katharine Ross aka Allison the model was like me, maybe things would have gone differently for her.

Anyway, Allison the model has headaches and dizzy spells and she gets stuck in that fun loop of “this is happening/oh no, that’s not really happening you must be nuts” that happens in horror stories. I thought she had been previously possessed and that’s why she didn’t want to tell her boyfriend about her childhood trauma because this book clearly links religion and horror and when I think adolescent religious horror, I think possession. Plus she keeps messing with her cross necklace and her boyfriend asks her why she’s wearing it and constantly badgers her about what happened with her father. I was wrong, but I wasn’t on board with the resolution to this story either. In theory, everyone wins, but also no one wins.

Apparently this was a bestselling novel. It also has one of the creepiest covers I’ve ever seen.

Twiglet is hiding from the uber-creepy priest image on the cover of The Sentinel. It was a good choice not to use that same image as the movie poster and it really surprises me that something with that cover was a bestseller.

Russell Stover Red Velvet Eggs, unexpectedly glorious.

43. Carrie – Stephen King

I was probably one of the last people of my generation not to know that this is an epistolary novel. It’s not the example that’s usually used in high school English classes when explaining those, although it would probably be more relevant to the students than Samuel Richardson’s Pamela (which I do not like, thanks very much 18th century satire class I took in college and totally hated-I like satire [especially Shamela the satire of Pamela from the same century], however, the class mainly dealt with my professor’s interest in Indiana and basset hounds, strangely not major topics in 18th century literature so I barely learned anything). Carrie apparently has been the target of book banning attempts in schools, though, so maybe my idea wouldn’t work so well. I just remember that in my second semester freshman English class everyone was reading Stephen King books for their book reports. Everyone except me, I chose Silence of the Lambs (time well spent). Some people accidentally (I say accidentally because I doubt any of them bothered to open the books before choosing them and one person complained to me directly because I was “a reader”) chose King’s short story collections, which were my gateway to Stephen King’s books, and I found that kind of funny. It’s hard to write a book report about a short story collection…especially if you are a high school freshman. It turned out that many of my fellow students weren’t able to finish their books in the allotted time before the report was due. If anyone had chosen Carrie, it would have been easily finished AND I would have known what I was getting into when I picked it up.

The things I enjoyed most about Carrie were the descriptions of Carrie herself. All the bovine language really struck me. I’m so used to reading about beautiful nerds and damaged characters that just need to remove their glasses and shake out that ponytail that it was refreshing to have a main character like Carrie. She wasn’t just bovine, she was unredeemable and she had a dark purpose. She didn’t make many choices that were on the up and up and seemed to be well aware that she was doomed just based on how she came into the world. It feels weird to say that’s refreshing, but it is. She’s telekinetic – but she’s nobody’s chosen one.

If Duncan had been telekinetic, I believe my produce bill would have been much higher for the year 2009.

I don’t think we’re going to save the community center in this case.

21. April Fools – Richie Tankersley Cusick

Check it out – timeliness! Oooh. That’s probably the last time I come up with something relevant to the month in which it is posted. Mostly because I’ve spent too many words pointing out my timeliness. It’s time to stop. So, April Fools, published via the Point Horror imprint, one of my favorite imprints of all time. The cover has awesome, jagged neon orange relief letters spelling out the title – man, I miss YA having painted covers, kick ass relief lettering, and being distributed in conveniently sized paperbacks. I may have covered these feelings in previous posts…I truly feel them. If I could make raised letters with my silkscreen for my covers, I would, but I don’t have the ink that does that or an appropriate cover subject for that ink yet. Anyway, this is getting less and less reviewy as I keep going, guess I’m distracted by congratulating myself for posting an April themed book in April. The only loser in this is anyone still reading this paragraph – the next one will be relevant, promise.

The story follows a bit of a familiar pattern: a group of teens does something horrific with their car, the one with a conscience watches as terrible retribution starts to happen and gets threatened, the ones without consciences have a bad time (they French fry when they should have pizza’d), and someone else in the story has a secret. A terrible secret. Or was it terrible? I can’t quite remember. Mostly I remember the angst pouring off the Adam character and that many things happened in the dark at his house while the teen with a conscience (Belinda Swanson, no relation to Ron based on her actions) tried to tutor him. It was like Beauty and the Beast without the rose. I think he had a snake. Anyway, having a conscience is definitely a good way to survive these teenage nightmares.

Belvedere was not intimidated by doll heads. Or stuffed turtles. He conquered stuffed turtles and then posed with his chin up and foot out like a teeny conquistador, as seen in this photo.

I will forever wonder if Liz, narrator and eater of mostly pudding, has ever had $240 worth of pudding.

77. Eleanor Rigby – Douglas Coupland

There’s something about Douglas Coupland’s books that feels empty in an off-puttingly helpful way for me. Whenever I read his work I find something that I can relate to that I didn’t know I needed when I started reading and sometimes I’m not even aware that I’m getting all existentially conflicted before I pick up one of his books and after I read them I feel better…about something or some things and it’s never easy to pin down why or what happened in my brain. He doesn’t write the most relatable characters or situations and sometimes he doesn’t even use words like in JPod with those pages of nothingness (I haven’t finished JPod. I started it in 2008 while working customer service for a gigantic and horrible retail conglomerate – three weeks in I found out I wouldn’t be joining the email team and would only be providing service over the phone, I said I had a migraine and never went back. I don’t regret that.). That said, Eleanor Rigby did not provide me with any existential assistance and I found that very disappointing. I’ve spent significant periods of time alone and there was all this talk of loneliness on the inside cover and it’s named after the lonely people song and I got nothing out of it except for mild irritation about the ending. I guess that’s what I get for going in with hopeful expectations based on previous experiences.

I was looking at reviews of this one and it was mentioned that Liz the narrator made decisions that didn’t make sense, didn’t “ring true” as writing critiques tend to say and I have to agree. In fact, I agree with that from practically the first chapter on. I don’t really expect Coupland books to follow any kind of linear, sensible trajectory, but it still seemed off and then slightly more off and then suddenly we were in Europe and it was even more off than before. Now I want to read The Gum Thief and now I’m all nervous about it. Life After God is turning out to be really useful though, so we’ll see. Maybe I read this one at the wrong time; I don’t think that realization changes anything. Ahh!

Pammy, Pammy, Pammy. She’s been lonely without Thaddeus. Danger Crumples and Ozymandias have been annoying her as much as I’ll let them, but neither of them has proven to be a suitable constant companion for the little empress of my herd.

Rites of Spring

2. Walkers – Graham Masterton

Druids! Lunatics! Lunatics who think they are Druids because they harnessed the power of ley lines by reading about them while cooped up in an insane asylum versus a muffler shop owner – this book was not what I expected. I also did not expect it to be set between Madison and Milwaukee, Wisconsin. It was wacky. And strangely vulgar in places. I now know things I did not want to know about fishnets. I can now visualize what it looks like to find a drowned two headed dog in a bag floating in a pool. Eek.

The main strength of this book can be found in the many, many descriptions of gross things and its full commitment to the wacky premise. The main weakness of this book is that the characters sound like British people imported into their setting when I’m supposed to believe they’re American. For example (and I’m currently reading another Masterton book set in the 1950s U.S. that bothers me for the same reasons) no one born in the U.S. has ever said “Hallo” (that’s just not our tone) to me in Wisconsin or referred to their trunk as a “boot.”  A different kind of boots tend to take precedence in Wisconsin, especially during the freakishly cold, neverending winter that happened this year. Masterton is a British author and he has the same problem that was repeatedly brought up to me while finishing my MA in England – we use different words for things – it’s not a huge problem…but because of my experience, everything that didn’t ring true to U.S. custom stuck out like a pack of sore thumbs waiting to be scraped on concrete. I spent quite a few workshop sessions explaining what things like “twin beds” were or explaining how we can buy two liters but don’t regularly use the metric system and that hindered my ability to receive a critique that had something to do with my writing instead of my culture. Of course, I was there during the Iraq War and U.S.icans were not popular, and that put me at a disadvantage in more situations than I expected. I was also twenty-two, which seemed like a good secondary excuse for some people not to take me very seriously. One thing that I can take away from that experience and reading this is that translating cultural norms was not as important to the editors of this book as it was to my workshop and I, like many readers, would appreciate someone going the extra mile in terms of cultural research – I certainly would never confuse a biscuit with a cookie if I was writing a novel set in England and I’d put the spare tyre in the boot if need be. So, you can be as wacky with your premise as you like, but if your dialogue sounds wrong every time people meet, it’s going to hurt my ability to believe in homicidal maniacs having the ability to move through the walls and make that “Sssssssshhhhhhh” sound as described.

Danger Crumples, his own brand of Druish princess.

At the least, you can get cochinita pibil in O’Hare.

19. Prisoner of Time – Caroline B. Cooney

When I started this book nearly a year ago, I was sitting in the depressingly low lit semi-basement of O’Hare, waiting to get on the tiny plane that would take me back to Moline, Illinois. There was a woman behind me who was speaking very loudly on her phone about how she wasn’t sure if she should be flying into Moline or Cedar Rapids, Iowa in order to allow her son to conveniently pick her up. Her son lives in Davenport. Davenport happens to be across the Mississippi River and a little to the left from Moline, but she clearly did not know the area well (Cedar Rapids is about an hour and a half from Moline) and made sure that everyone around her knew she didn’t know how close she was to the border between Iowa and Illinois. What I don’t get is why her son didn’t make her aware of how close Moline is to Davenport before she even left to visit…perhaps she wasn’t listening or didn’t care at the time. I felt very much like the title of this book was appropriate to how I was feeling listening and waiting to get on the plane. This whole conundrum, and the other helpful people who tried to point out to her that she was very, very close to Davenport in Moline, distracted me from realizing that I was reading a book that’s the fourth in a series. To be fair, it’s perfectly acceptable to stop explaining who everyone is and what’s going on when you get to the fourth book. If you tend to acquire books in a random fashion like I do, well after their publication dates, this can escape you and hinder your ability to get into the story. For the trip I was taking, I chose books based on their size (and all of them were by Caroline B. Cooney, 90s YA is an excellent size for travel).

Prisoner of Time is pretty melodramatic and there are a few logic jumps that just don’t ring true – I’d like to think there’s a process for hosting foreign exchange students that doesn’t involve bringing them home like stray cats and saying, “Hey, Mom, this girl from England’s going to live with us!” as that doesn’t seem organized- but time travel is time travel and sometimes it’s the only thing that will guarantee a progressive girl from the 1890s her independence. Or not, I think she went back, I can’t quite remember – I hope that lady’s son managed to get her across the river into Iowa without incident.

Murderface managed to get from Mississippi to Iowa on several occasions, which also involves crossing the Mississippi River a few times. Thankfully, we didn’t have to caulk the wagon and float across.