Rachel Smith's Blog: Guinea Pigs and Books, page 87

I didn’t think the movie had as much punch

20. It’s Kind of a Funny Story – Ned Vizzini

So the other day I was discussing bookage with SJ and writing about books we like came up. It’s more complicated to write about books I like than books I don’t like because often I can’t come up with a reason I like them that’s articulateable. Or that I can write about using real words. It’s not like I don’t want to read books that I like, it’s that most books have an obvious flaw. And as someone who has been through art and writing workshops in college and grad school, I am lazer trained to point out things that could improve over things that I like – because, if you like something, you are supposed to justify it. Why do you like it? Who cares if you like it? What are you trying to say by liking something, that the reader is just supposed to accept that something is good because you say so? And so on. You’re also supposed to find things you like to pad things you don’t like – that’s called constructive criticism…maybe not the straight up definition, but that’s how it usually works out in practice. Anyway, for the rest of this month I’m going to get to the books on my list (I read this one in 2011) that I’ve been avoiding because I like them so much. Maybe. I already wrote about Ruined , that’s my favorite New Orleans ghost story that I’ve read thus far. Specific!

Anyhoo, I like reading about mental illness, especially somewhat sanitized – they’re going to get out of the institution – mental illness. Like watching Hoarders, it articulates that everyone has something wrong with their brain and so if you’re high-functioning, you should be proud of yourself and let some pressure to be even more high functioning go. I adore One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (both book and film) and I have this autobiography about OCD that I’m sure will be helpful. I also initially liked Prozac Nation when I read it as an angsty college student, although I feel different about it now that I have guinea pigs and depression to take care of.

Speaking of guinea pigs, one of the reasons I like It’s Kind of a Funny Story so much is that its protagonist discussed the concept of having anchors. His anchors keep him tethered to this reality or interested in living, they’re what he uses to keep himself connected. I’m sure it’s deeply personal for him, but it let me in on something about myself. I also do this with my guinea pigs. When I read about his anchors, I immediately thought of Twiglet (of course pictured below). When I started keeping guinea pigs again after an eight year absence from their presence, it was like a fireworks display set to the “Funky Fanfare” from the beginning of Quentin Tarantino movies went off in my head. Why the hell had I gone so long without keeping guinea pigs? They’d only been totally important to me since I was ten. They only make my favorite noise in the universe. I’d been relying on my shifty-eyed Big Boy banks and my way too happy Rose O’Neill Buddha (the lawn ornament, non-licensed version) to keep me afloat with little happinesses. There’s more to it than that, but seriously, if you look at the Big Boy or Ho Ho the Buddha, it’s hard not to be amused no matter what mood you started in, especially if you’re me or me-like.

Moving on, Twiglet was a bonus pig. I acquired her mother Pammy, she’s still with me (for now, phew), and soon it became clear that she was knocked up. Depending on where you find your pigs, there’s a chance you will end up with a two month old teen mother. I wasn’t too worried about it beyond not knowing what kind of nutrition she’d been having up to the point when she came to me and how that might affect her ability to give birth or the health of her baby. I thought it was going to be two babies, it felt like two were kicking here, and, I mean, Murderface had three. That’s a lot for a first litter of guinea pigs. And so on August 16th, I set Pammy up in her little exercise run with some parsley to make sure she was staying active so birth wouldn’t be super hard on her and that she had snacks, took a ten minute shower, and came out to find Pammy hiding (never shocking, that’s like her job). I pulled the Mug Root Beer box off of her when it rustled, found two guinea pigs there, and promptly screamed. Pammy ran away. I may have told this story on here before, it was a pivotal moment. Twiglet stayed put. She was leaning to the right super hard, which was weird and I thought she might be dead. I probably scared her to death. I picked her up and saw that Pammy hadn’t finished cleaning her off, so I swiped the mucus away from her nose and her eyes and she was breathing. And leaning. Another very pivotal moment for me.

After the first couple of days I could see that she had a wonky foot (also pictured) and that’s why she leaned. She could sit up straightish eventually, but she could never walk like an adult guinea pig, she always hopped the way baby pigs do. Pammy never let me see her nurse, but Twiglet didn’t stop growing either. Twiglet became a pig who would sit with me and not always try to go off exploring. She hated everybody else in the herd and lived happily with her mother, until she developed symptoms of ovarian cysts and was spayed. Then she only wanted to hang out with her mother sometimes. She fell asleep a lot when I had her out, eyes fully shut (somewhat unusual for guinea pigs), with her little ears twitching away in her sleep. Because she was okay with just sitting there, I often had her out with me while grading, her little weight kept me from going nutballs. Anyone who cares about what they’re grading and/or their students’ potential to improve should be able to understand how nutballs it can make you.  One night, mid-class, I was sitting down with her to grade and I noticed she was breathing harder than usual. Two hours earlier she’d been absolutely fine. I took her to the vet, and then I took her again at four AM when I started to realize that she was going to die and that I wished they would have given her stronger medicine the first time I took her…and that was two years ago yesterday. Choose your anchors wisely, they will die of rapidly onsetting pneumonia on you. That took a turn. I’m going to hang out with Pammy and will probably never read that book again, even though I liked it.

Twiglet. Anchor pig.

It’s okay to eat fish

2. The Snowman – R. L. Stine

The other day I was doing some editing while watching Halloween H20 on television, which seems metaphorical… I’m not sure who or what symbolically takes the place of Michael Myers, though, the stuff I was editing because of how hurtful it was to my brain or me with my hack and slash capabilities. Anyway, I got up to get some water and the famous theme song began playing. I happened to look into Danger Crumples’ piggy dwelling to find him perched on his little wooden archway, staring at me. It was super creepy and we had a moment. I asked him if he was a serial killer and he didn’t break his stare.

If you have never experienced a guinea pig staring at you in a murderous way, well, good for you. It’s a very odd feeling to know that the one eye they’re focusing (their eyes are on either side of their head, they can’t look up…) is directed at you, and some of them are really good at glaring, like Murderface. She intimidated people who had virtually no experience with guinea pigs with her glare. And their emotional states (hee hee, some people think animals don’t have emotional states) are occasionally hard to interpret. Danger Crumples has had strong reactions to approximately three pieces of music now – “Goodbye Horses” aka the song from that scene from Silence of the Lambs (he popped his head up very happily for that one), “Listen Like Thieves” by INXS (he whistled at me and jumped up on his perch for the length of the song, I like Michael Hutchence’s voice too but I have yet to climb on top of anything over it), and now the theme from Halloween-induced creepy staring. He also happens to be the only guinea pig I have that doesn’t run under a blanket and chutter whenever I listen to music without my headphones. So, he could be a changeling, or evil. He does have a heart condition, perhaps that’s because he hasn’t eaten or murdered anyone. The hooting means he needs to murder. Maybe not. I will be suspicious until he eats me and leaves the soundtrack to Candyman on the record player. It was always you, Helen.

Speaking of words that end with “man” and creepy situations I never read The Snowman in the 90s. It was a tale of stalking and extortion instead of sweatshirt cuffs with blood on them and hungry kisses. Actually, it may have had hungry kisses in it. Either way, it was not what I expected. I believe it is pre-Fear Street and it doesn’t show up in those lists of “other books you will enjoy” in the beginning of my early Fear Street volumes. Yes, I am a connoisseur of 1990s YA. Actually 70s, 80s, 90s, and today YA. I am a collector. Another aspect that can be attributed to its “pre-Fear Street” quality (besides looking at the CIP) is the character development. The characters were people! Mostly developed people! And it was a little bit ridiculous, but also a little bit actually-intimidating. Quit waiting outside her work with your sob stories and your moocher ways! I’ve never liked controlling boyfriends or stalkers, I don’t know who does, but I don’t even enjoy reading about them at this point.

 

The terrifying Danger Crumples. I don’t care what Big Al says, he’s coming for me. With or without visible eyes.

I was expecting some sleuthing escapades

33. Nick and Nora’s Infinite Playlist – Rachel Cohn & David Levithan

Lies!  I wasn’t really expecting any sleuthing escapades when I read this, I just wanted to reference the reference the book is making to classic couple Nick and Nora Charles from the Thin Man series of films, which I have not seen. I have shelved the films many times and I can say that as a result when I first looked at the cover of the movie version of this book I thought about that series of movies. I’m on to you, Cohn and Levithan! But very few mysteries are solved in the book – damn those bands and their secret shows – however, the screwball elements that are supposedly a hallmark of the Thin Man series I still haven’t seen are definitely a part of this book. And the movie. I’m not sure that Michael Cera was the right choice for Nick. Scott Pilgrim, yes. The book version of Nick was much more interesting than movie Nick and I blame Michael Cera. The trade off being that movie Caroline was more fun than book Caroline (but being in Nora’s head and hearing about her friendship with Caroline throughout the book might have influenced that opinion, I felt bad for both of them).  And, now that I think about it, movie Tris was much more of a one-note than book Tris. Book Tris did appear to have a bad case of narrative-moving decisionitis, though.

Anyway, I really dig the one night, music fueled concept. Some nights are just electric. I did want to hear a little more about the shows they were seeing, but music is very hard to write about without resorting to shitty clichés.

 

Belvedere and Pickles disliked music. They might have liked sleuthing. I often consider my guinea pigs as little investigators regardless. There’s something about their constant quest for smells and sneaking abilities, well, not Pickles. She ran like a rhino. She was incapable of being sneaky. Bel could have joined the G-Force. If it was legitimate.

Look at the wall!

11. Damien: Omen II – Joseph Howard

It turns out that I now have little paperbacks of the entire Omen series. I started this blog writing about the novelization of the Omen and admitting that my feelings about taking care of my pigs could easily be summarized by that scene in the original, more awesome, Omen where the nanny jumps off the roof after happily declaring, “It’s all for you.” I won’t be jumping off the roof anytime soon, but considering the way people look at me when I answer their questions about frisee with, “It’s for my guinea pigs, and I believe it was $1.99.” I might as well be. Does anyone know what frisee tastes like? I just know they like it. A lot.

In the original Omen, the father character’s name was Jeremy. And when I read the novelization I was confused because not only did I finally understand that Damien’s mom was a jackal (totally blew by me when I saw the movie, I think they did not say jackal enough times in comparison to the number of shots of Rottweilers), I also knew something was wrong in the naming department. Turns out, in the movie they changed his name to Robert. And in Damien: Omen II (there’s no “the” in there on the paperback and I added the colon for clarity), there’s a note explaining the name change which finally put me at ease. They continued on with calling him Robert.

Anyway, the main issue with the Omen series (and probably the movies, I have only seen the first one more than once, hopefully some channel will help me out with that this October) in the first two installments is that they follow the same story line with different aged Damiens. Damien finds out who he is, which I guess is important, but I already knew who he was from the first one so that realization was cheap for me. As were the scenes of him weirdly shivering while psychically killing people. And he killed so recklessly! Just about everyone bit it. He was thirteen in the book, so I guess that explains some of that but I think the anti-christ is kinda touchy. Once again, the book included sensational photos from the movie, True Crime style. And I have to say, the most memorable scene from the movie for me (which is included in the sensational photos) was the journalist being killed by the raven on the side of the road in her totally red outfit, which is not powerfully rendered in the book. And I know it’s just a novelization of the movie, but still, I have expectations. Maybe The Final Conflict will fulfill them, it’s the last one, presumably it has some sort of resolution.

Obey my Mortemer!

Area Teenagers to Continue Endless, Irritating Romance

3.  Beautiful Redemption – Margaret Stohl & Kami Garcia

The end of the series. Lately, I’ve noticed that some series are moving to quadrilogies…this one, Maberrry’s Rot and Ruin series… and I’m still working on my trilogy. Always behind. But at least trilogies are classic. There are a few trilogies that hold up. Anyway, I just sometimes feel like the kind of stories I write are either too far ahead or too far behind to be published legitimately. I’m probably not the only one who feels that way and it really just enforces the whole dead-in-the-gutter before respect thing that happens to writers sometimes. Well, that was uplifting, I guess I’ll get on with the rest of it. To be fair, my mood has not been the greatest lately. Ozymandias’s bladder stone issues are back-exactly one year after he came to live with me which is shitty and totally unfair. They (stones) always come back though, even if they’re surgically removed. And I’m grading papers again, it’s always super fun to read a paper that’s completely devoid of subject-verb agreement in which the writer claims they want to be a teacher. Why didn’t they pay attention in middle school English if teaching was their chosen career field? Why? My brain screams at these inconsistencies like Leonardo DiCaprio in that field in Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo and Juliet. Oh look, I’ve made it back around to the topic I should be discussing. Yay for me. It’s looking up. Whatever it is.

I definitely respect the concreteness of the ending. The last page was essentially a “no, seriously, it’s over” declaration. Thanks for not leaving loose ends! I mean that sincerely. I’m not really going to discuss anything that happens because if you haven’t bothered with the other books, there is no reason for you to read this one, it won’t be useful for you, it will just be confusing. The recurring aspects of these books worked out nicely in the last entry and as someone who has done many crosswords with their grandmother, I appreciated crossword puzzles having an important function in this book.

I do want to talk about the upcoming movie though. I have seen it decribed very lazily as “Twilight with witches” and the latest attempt to capitalize on Twilight’s success. Twilight’s first page made me want to throw up with boredom and despair. It was super lazy writing. And then, the movie demonstrated the laziness with which the characters were conceived – shells of humans (and vampires) with very little going for them beyond being audience surrogates for those who want a creepy stalker or two. Now, I like fully formed characters, they’re very important to me as a writer and a reader. I also like earned storylines. In Twilight, Bella and Edward seem to fall in love because they must, as they are both present in the narrative. In this series, as annoying as I found Lena and Ethan to be at times, they read as real. Real teenagers. Real annoying teenagers. Who have real, annoying teenage romance. But that isn’t the entirety of what happens. And as frustrated as I got with the first two books being slightly different mirrors of each other, they more than made up for it in Beautiful Chaos and Beautiful Redemption. This series is not Twilight with witches (or casters), I don’t even really think of it as solely being about the main romance between Ethan and Lena. It’s more like a less-ridiculously sticky and purple version of the Mayfair Witches. Which I enjoyed as an annoying teenager. And maybe, just maybe, Macon is a less manipulative version of Julian. Everyone loves Julian.

Ozymandias. He is the Mercutio of my herd. Or the Tybalt. He’s pivotal, that’s all I know.

Maybe if I gave it some salted nuts it would return to its home.

34. Prom Dress – Lael Littke

I sometimes enjoy reading about cursed objects. When I was younger and read The Restless Dead by Daniel Cohen the story about the evil chair freaked me right out. As did the story about Esther and her poltergeist. I was legitimately terrified of acquiring a poltergeist throughout my adolescence (because that’s apparently when they’re most attracted to you and willing to exacerbate your angst with shit you can’t prove you didn’t do). I’m pretty sure both those stories are in The Restless Dead, I had this habit of reading and being utterly wigged out by ghost stories in elementary school, so it could have been another book by Daniel Cohen, but I’m sure it was one of his…they seemed innocuous because they weren’t absolutely terrifyingly illustrated by Stephen Gammell. I have shaken my fist at the sky out of frustration over how scary Stephen Gammell’s illustrations are! Super scary.The least scary way I have seen cursed objects discussed was on the show Haunted Collector. That was relatively useless watching for me and I enjoy objects and paranormal wackiness. I sometimes worry that one of the antiques I purchase regularly will end up being haunted. I don’t want to be haunted by a chalkware cow or a Big Boy bank, but there’s a possibility that I will be. It is unlikely that I will be haunted by clothing, well, unless some cowboy farmer ghost gets pissed about me wearing his shirt…

Anyway, this Point Thriller about an actual cursed dress: Prom Dress by Lael Littke, was very engrossing. The story starts with one girl who makes a bad decision – taking the cursed dress from its home in a lady’s attic – and it wrecks her dancing skills. And then it moves on to another girl…and then another…before everything comes full circle and the dress’s original owner is insane. The most fun parts of the book were the moves from person to person, the way the dress lures them in using its girly mind games and making each girl think they’d look really awesome in it or that it’s just right for some upcoming occasion and then – it causes different horrible things to happen. It’s like the dress knows their insecurities. Just like my chalkware cows know when I’m vulnerable. Good luck getting off the fridge! As young adult stories go, it’s not that deep but it moves and doesn’t feel like it’s missing something. Sometimes, these thrillers could use some character infusion; Prom Dress has some well fleshed out narrators, despite covering so many different perspectives.

Duncan and Murderface maintain vigilance against curses, wherever they may come from. Or they could be collecting them- it’s hard to tell with these girls.

The barrier was not meant to be crossed. The ground is sour.

72. Overwinter – David Wellington

This time, Cheyenne has a purpose. And more things to do than worry about harvesting clothing from her surroundings. It seemed like Wellington realized that he wasn’t as interested in writing about werewolves and decided to put in some action to finish off the pair of books instead of going on relatively indefinitely like his vampire series does (Mr. Cheese has read all those, I have not, but he was occasionally very frustrated by plot points) or creating a satisfying trilogy of zombie stories. I appreciated the increased action and I like journey stories so the idea of having to go somewhere mysterious and snowy to fulfill mythological obligations and/or find a lycanthropy cure appealed to me. And like I said, more action, less clothes hunting, and there was a crazy, old werewolf in it too. Unfortunately the crazy old werewolf did not explain that “sometimes dead is better” in the voice of Fred Gwynne.

Twiglet and Pammy journey across the white towel to fulfill their teddy bear pig destinies, which appear to be to their right.

Something to rival those giant “MISSISSIPPI” letters from Django Unchained

39. Methland: the Life and Death of an American Small Town – Nick Reding

Methland is not a very fun book to read for many, many reasons. It is a very fast, depressing read. Iowa, like many other states, is not having a good time with methamphetamines. I know many people who have used meth, some who have had their lives entirely ruined by it, one who hasn’t, and I will never forget my grandparents telling me that after they put up a camera by their anhydrous tank they watched a man breaking into it in the middle of the night on one of the coldest nights of that year. I’m talking seriously negative temperatures, check on your elderly neighbors, turn on the tap so your pipes don’t freeze, don’t leave the house or you’ll lose the tip of your nose (maybe an exaggeration, slightly) kind of cold. Nick Reding’s account of what meth did to Oelwein, Iowa, and how it’s spread through Iowa in general because of some savvy dealers and distributors, the mass of people who “need” it, and some un-savvy approaches to curbing it meant to help out pharmaceutical manufacturers rings true. And I wish it didn’t.

 

Ozymandias and Danger Crumples are not allowed to investigate drug epidemics. Or go outside, mostly, so it would have been complicated anyway.

Now the kids are all standing with their arms folded tight

1. The Mummy – Caroline B. Cooney

Welcome to the year of potential unluckiness! 13! So my year has started off weird, at least, when I returned to the Great White North (per se) from Mississippi it got weird and it’s only been six days so I haven’t sorted through how confused I am about the weirdness. That’s vague. Moving on, this book was also somewhat confusing in that I kept wanting to know when the story was actually going to start. Emlyn wants to do bad things, in fact, she seems like the kind of girl who would pop in a tape of Chris Isaak’s “Baby Did a Bad Bad Thing” while driving in order to seem more edgy. She steals a mummy from the local museum as part of an attempt to be edgy and bad and also to get some group of malcontents to be her friends…but then…they disagree about whether or not they should unwrap the mummy and steal her gold! Sounds thrilling, doesn’t it? Well, I was expecting slightly more thrilling actions. The whole description of tensely stealing the mummy and tensely trying to get out of the museum during a fundraising event was not tense enough to justify me using that word to modify in the early parts of this sentence. In fact, the furrowing of a brow while trying to figure out what the hell I just said would be more tense. And I was a little surprised. I expect more from Ms. Cooney as I know she’s done some great work, but I’m on the outside on this one.

In other, non-relevant to this review but relevant to teen literature (sort of), news, that book I mentioned that I wrote at the end of last year ( Night of the Squirrels: Dawn of the Interns ) that begins my squirrelpocalypse trilogy and will have a sequel out by the end of May…is free for five days starting today. Of course, it’s only on the Kindle thus far and when I looked to see if anyone was interested in it right now it was number 13 in the Teen Literature & Fiction category of the Kindle store. Very specific category, I know, and it surely has dropped in popularity by now, but I’ve never advertised it anywhere but on here nonsensically or if you saw me in person and it came up. That’s a relatively rare occurrence. I didn’t even talk about how bleakly humorous it was while playing Cards Against Humanity after Christmas with other real humans, so, you know I’m very slow about trying to sell out hard. Hey, this is almost as long as my review! How rude to the more successful author.

Murderface! And Pickles. End the year with Murderface being confrontational, start the next one with Murderface’s noncommittal expression and all will be magnificent.

Admirable or Impish?

It’s snowing super hard while I am typing this. I guess the first storm of this year is making up for the majority of the Iowan winter last year. Dick. Anyway, back to my epic coverage of search terms:

13. Search terms of the apocalypse (sigh) : jugged boobsstranger

I’ve got no idea how this lead to me. It’s one of the most interesting sets of words I’ve come across and I have read some seriously ridiculous writing. Plus “boobsstranger,” a new compound word. Is it a mistake? Is someone trying to re-write Finnegan’s Wake from a pervy perspective?

14. Duh, of course this would lead here: very cute guinea pigs

I may be biased, but mine are ridiculously cute.

It is tiring being so damn adorable.

Was there ever even a question of their cuteness?

So cute she’s getting checked out by her brother. Yep.

15. Really? Spelling! : essay summery about the thrill club by r.l. stine

I guess I covered that: The Thrill Club, a true classic of our times

How is that even necessary? I guess it might be if “summary” is getting hard to spell. – Murderface

16. Yes, yes she was: twiglets funny

Twiglet.

17. I’ve had several: baby boy ginny pigs

There’s that “ginny” again.

Baby Mortemer by Mr. Cheese’s side, as usual.

Baby Belvedere nursing from Mama Murderface.

Baby Bel with his father Mortemer.

Baby Danger Crumples

18. I can’t believe how many people are looking for this quote: two trappers find human feet in a pile of mush. this is one job the carpet cleaners mess up badly

Deadly Women is one of my favorite shows, I still want to watch the episode about Amy Archer-Gilligan . The one that quote is from is called “Love You to Pieces,” and apparently the carpet cleaner/killer is of much interest. If more feet are found in the desert I won’t be surprised.

Have a confrontational holiday from Murderface and baby Duncan Hills!