Christine
Finally accepting that this goes in my DNF pile.
If you want a spooky, nostalgic adventure by a pack of generic white tween boys on their bikes, just go read some Bradbury. He does it way better, and while poetic is infinitely more concise.
If you want a non-supernatural nostalgic adventure by a pack of distinctive white tween boys, just go read “The Body” or watch Stand by Me.
If you want a spooky, nostalgic adventure by a pack of tween misfits (including a girl and an African American boy) who are all well-drawn and distinctive characters, just go read IT. Try to ignore the SUPER WEIRD and uncomfortable event at the, uh, climax that I still don't understand King getting away with. The rest of the story is pure gold.
My recommendation is not to bother with this one. Why?
- The characters are dull and largely interchangeable. The closest it comes to painting unique characters is designating The Smart Kid, The Dumb Oaf, The Little Brother, The Catholic One, and so on. Even though the Smart Kid was the most interesting, I found myself constantly confusing him with the main character (who has no discernible personality traits) because they have similar names.
- It's not scary. The story meanders a lot, with long stretches of gee-whiz nostalgia punctuated with sudden interpolations of horror cliche set pieces. Things that should have had me squirming were dulled because they're secondary to the lengthy naturalistic backstory. They pop up and then are forgotten in favor of something ludicrously mundane. Moreover, the horror is neither left mysterious enough to be scary nor explained well enough to be satisfying. We're left in the completely bland place between, where one starts to ask questions like, “Are the ghouls just trying to gaslight these kids?” “Why do these supernatural creatures attack in broad daylight but then hide when a grownup comes around?” “Seriously? It's an evil . . . bell?”
- It's annoyingly sexist. The female characters are present enough around the fringes of the story to create a misogynistic undertone absent from the Bradbury and King stories where the main characters simply don't have girls on their radar. When one boy mentally reviles his mother for being an irresponsible slut of a bad mom, it's not super clear if the author means to show the boy in a bad light, or agrees with his assessment. The Bev-analog has no point of view and serves only as a sex object on the bare periphery of the story. It's made more frustrating by a tantalizing aside painting Mike's grandmother as a badass, complex character whom I'd much rather read about. But within the current story, she's literally mute and paralyzed.
This was disappointing. I really, really tried to like it. But now I just get more annoyed the more I read, so better to stop.
Very entertaining - I wish I could have read it without knowing the spoilers, since it's basically presented as a creepy mystery story, with us only getting Dr. Jekyll's point of view at the end.
In reading this, I unlearned a lot of things I thought I knew. I discovered:
- Jekyll rhymes with treacle. This is the normal Scottish pronunciation, and probably ties into the punnish names (Hyde-hide; Jekyll-seek all).
- Dr. Jekyll isn't the good and pure half of the duo. He's just the normal guy, with both good and bad characteristics. But actually he's pretty evil when you think about it, since he decides it's no fun indulging in baser instincts when you have that pesky conscience, and thus creates an utterly selfish version of himself so he can be a bastard without feeling bad or tarnishing his reputation. So weirdly, of all my pop culture brushes with the story, the time when Ren is split into Evil Ren and Indifferent Ren may actually be the most faithful to the source material!
- Hyde isn't a giant Hulk-style monster. He's short and little, and appears younger than Jekyll. He's also not physically ugly or deformed in any way - he just gives an impression that something Is Very Wrong with him in an indescribable way.
Anyway, I was impressed by Stevenson's artful depiction of evil, from its most banal to full-on murderous violence. I'm sure Hyde is salacious too, but his evil is represented in a much more effective way.
When we first hear a story of him, it's about him bumping into a little girl on the street. She's thrown to the ground and he calmly walks on, stepping on her without a thought. With the difference in mores between Stevenson's culture and ours, he might have chosen a vice that seems quite silly and tame to us, but this account is still chilling, even in 2018.
In fact, I couldn't help draw a connection between Stevenson's idea of anonymous indulgence in baser instincts, and the modern-day internet troll. This story is absolutely fresh and applicable in an age when we have “normal” good citizens going to work, hanging out with friends, parenting their children, volunteering for charities, and then sitting down at the computer and sending people messages like “You deserve to be raped to death, but you're too ugly” behind the safe concealment of their Internet avatars.
All in all, this was a great story - a quick read that retains its creepiness even when you know what's going on from page one. It also provokes thought about what it means to be a good person, how addiction can destroy people, and the usefulness of societal restrictions like reputation and criminal punishment.
I really enjoyed this - it's very much a cozy mystery, set in a charming Quebec village with lots of fun and interesting characters. But there's a certain level of emotional heft as well. There were enough clues along the way to let me puzzle out who I thought the culprit was, and enough misdirection so it wasn't obvious.
I'm looking forward to reading more Three Pines mysteries soon!
On reflection, this story winds up being rather silly and implausible, but it's a fun read in the meantime. And it epitomizes the “cozy” mystery. I found myself really yearning to eat “real muffins” and old-fashioned seed cake at proper afternoon tea and then accompany Miss Marple to shop for crisp bed linens and non-tacky kitchen towels.
I've never done this with any other book - when I got to the end, I went back to the beginning and immediately started over.
Nothing has clarified for me more why I feel so burnt out so much of the time, why I kick myself for constantly failing to make all the improvements I want to in my life, and why productivity tricks and systems weren't the ultimate answer.
The real answer is simple but far from easy: You must say no to most things. You must say no most of the time, even to very good opportunities.
This book truly helps you understand what is essential in your life, and how to eliminate non-essential activities and commitments. It acknowledges that the choices will often be hard, and helps you figure out your own best path through that difficulty.
This approach has already paid off for me - I have less stress and a feeling of space and ease in my life. Some upcoming plans that were starting to feel like a dreaded chore have regained their joyful tone because I cut out the nonessential things that were overloading me and thus making me view all my commitments as burdens. It isn't painless, but it is worth it.
This book clearly wants to be The Turn of the Screw, but makes the mistake of imitating all the trappings without harnessing the ambiguity that is the essence of James's spooky atmosphere.
We have a naive governess in a creepy country manor, two children who evoke both protectiveness and uncertainty in her, and ghostly presences. Disturbing history is slowly revealed.
I'd say this book is at its best when it undermines convention - for instance, the exploration of a female figure that vanishes when pursued was a nice element. The motivation for the haunting is an interestingly novel, yet Gothic factor. The author clearly loves classic English weird fiction, giving a prominent shout-out to Dickens' “The Signalman” and obviously paying homage to Henry James, as noted. I felt kinship and affection for the author on this score.
What drags this story down is its impulse to explain, categorize, and tie up all plot points. After a fairly effective (if derivative) depiction of tight-lipped locals grudgingly revealing bits of background, the story eventually devolves into a tell-don't-show wrap up that dissolves any sense of mystery or dread, and results in a lackluster action-scene climax.
I'm giving this two stars instead of one, since I actually do want to run through it once more (on 2x speed playback) to jot down some of the more interesting quotes and ideas. However, overall this thing is a mess.
The author promises an intriguing concept: a non-linear approach to time management. What exactly he means by this gets lost in his poorly structured, stream-of-consciousness writing. I gather that he means one should focus on the current moment, rather than fretting about the future.
Generally, he's trying to meld zen mindfulness concepts with some cognitive behavioral therapy approaches, with an (un)healthy dose of self help pop-psych guru BS. His devotion to the execrable Byron Katie (who is infamous for stating that an 8-year-old can be partially to blame for his own molestation) is a huge red flag.
If you want to learn about mindfulness practice, check out Thich Nhat Hanh and Jon Kabat-Zinn. For a very practical walk-through of cognitive behavioral therapy, read Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy, by Stanford professor of psychiatry David Burns.
If you like, you could check Time Warrior out of the library and flip through it for some inspirational quotes and a few intriguing ideas, but I would definitely recommend this for skimming, rather than actually reading!
This had an interesting concept, but the pacing felt very off to me. There's far too much exposition and background, and then the adventure seems rushed and truncated. Yet despite a boatload of setup, the main character still felt underwritten, as do most of the characters.
When I got to the end of the book and discovered that it was written around real vintage photos, it made a lot of sense. That's an interesting idea, but it seems like this needed better editorial guidance to turn it into a functioning story.
I'll be really interested to see if the movie manages to clean up the pacing and make the story more engaging. I adore Eva Green, and the upcoming movie is what inspired me to read this. I suspect this is one of those cases where translating to the screen may improve the storytelling.
Philosophical reflections on the nature and power of stories.
A delightfully snarky jab at midichlorians.
Adventure! Intrigue! Violence!
A nested choose-your-own-adventure story, that returns back to philosophy and deep thoughts about the value of truth versus stories, and how blurry the line can be between them.
This was a ton of fun, and pulled me in considerably more than the previous book (which was no slouch itself). Highly recommended!
This wasn't really my cup of tea. The genre isn't “haunted house” so much as “torture porn” - so if you delight in spooky more than bloody, I don't recommend this.
I also feel like it was pretty amateurish in its style - very much airport-shop level writing. Which is not necessarily a bad thing, if you're in the mood. Hell, I have a couple of favorite Dean Koontz novels. But in this case the silliness became distracting for me.
I think the height of absurdity came when (spoilers follow): during the climactic battle, there's a pivotal fight between super-intelligent battle monkeys. Yes, really. And it's not approached tongue-in-cheek at all. Dead serious super-intelligent battle monkey fight. The other thing that leaped out at me was that one character's traumatic backstory involved her being stranded on an island with a bunch of cannibals AND a serial killer. I don't know - maybe this IS all meant satirically after all? But still, the bad guys are ciphers or downright absurd (so boring), and all the good guys survive and pretty much live happily ever after (also boring).
It had a few scary or funny moments, and if you want something lightweight and dig violent horror, you might want to check it out. Just not a great read for me.
This was for my PopSugar reading challenge, and fulfills the “A book at least 100 years older than you” requirement - in fact this is almost exactly 100 years older than me, and I finished it on my birthday. Appropriate!
This was a lot of fun. Anyone with a passing knowledge of vampire fiction will see exactly what's going on in short order, and it might be tempting to complain that this uses a lot of tired tropes. But of course, this was preceded by only a few examples of vampire literature, and was a key point in the development from vampire folklore to modern vampire fiction. So it's not derivative, it's seminal! OK, the anagrammed names were silly - I'm glad that “rule” of vampires didn't catch on.
Surprisingly readable for something written in 1872, it was quick to get through, and didn't overstay its welcome. I definitely recommend this for anyone with an interest in the genre.
This requires patience - it's in the vein of the other Mitchell I've read, which means it's really a single short story seeded among a group of other short stories. This frustrates me sometimes because I'll want to know what happens next in the psychosoteric war, but I'll run up against the introduction of a new story that pauses the overarching plot for a good long while. Each story is perfectly lovely and interesting, with plenty of great turns of phrase, but they can take their time meandering back to the main theme.
I really enjoyed this - the prose is nicely crafted without being overly self-conscious, and the story is creepy and unusual. The narrators are vividly drawn, and even if you don't like one as a person, you get their perspective and sympathize with their plight.
This falls short of a fifth star because it's a little too eager to explain everything that's happening. Norah and Jonah seem to have a compulsion to drop exposition in every conversation. I feel this would have been scarier and a bit more engaging if the reader had the opportunity to work things out, rather than having it dropped in your lap.
Still, I hit “critical mass” with this one about 50% of the way in. So if it had been more engaging, I might have had to take vacation days from work and neglect my children until I was done! Definitely recommended.
Hmm, feeling very puzzled after finishing this up. Perhaps this is the best way to express my feelings: I think I just read three different stories: a short, fairly effective adventure-romance story, a less successful war and romance story, plus a rather disturbing inferred story that I guess the author never intended?
Spoiler tags from here on out. So first story - two people thrown together in a survival situation, who develop a relationship even though they hate each other at the beginning. Think anything from Enemy Mine to Romancing the Stone. It's pretty well done - you can see how each of them starts noticing qualities they admire in the other, and their predicament is intriguing. There is a bit of off-key telling rather than showing when Cordelia explicitly narrates how she is finding him attractive, but I suppose you could chalk that up to the author still getting her feet under her, as this was her first book.Second story - here it gets a little weird and often contrived. There's a bad guy who literally idolizes the Marquis de Sade, and monologues his eeeevil plans up front. There's an escape that's dependent on a wildly implausible coincidence. Followed by an even more implausible coincidence. The character traits that made Vorkosigan appealing in the first act get muddied, even as Bujold seems to be trying to underline them. Nevertheless, there's a reveal that's quite satisfying and does set up a tension around "honor" and what it means, and it's still mostly a fun ride.Then Cordelia goes home and the whole story goes rather bonkers, and kind of limps over the finish line.Third story - I take it from a quick Google that Bujold intended this story to be face-value. It's a romance with a happy ending (with enough complications to set up the further story).But from the time Cordelia is heading home until I turned the last page, I was increasingly suspicious. There seems to be plenty of textual support for the notion that Cordelia is a totally unreliable narrator, and all the facile, clunky, and convenient notes early in the story are tells that hint at her successful brainwashing. We're told the Barrayar military can wipe memories and manufacture false memories to replace them. The Beta officials are convinced that Cordelia is a victim of this process, and perhaps that she's been made into a mole without her knowledge. Her behavior becomes more and more erratic, with symptoms that could be explained by paranoia and exhaustion, or could hint at something darker. Eventually she becomes so removed from herself that she almost murders her doctor, having strange, sadistic flashes of thought that could indicate a meditation on what war can do to good people, or could indicate programming by the enemy.Taking the latter view makes some earlier "mistakes" and strange details fall into place - the weirdly emphatic internal monologue notes about her attraction, the sudden marriage proposal, the mustache-twirling villain, the convenient reappearance of known characters, the issue of where Vorkosigan got his intelligence, the "benevolent and self-sacrificing" reason why she must resist Betan psychological probing at all costs, and finally her sacrifice of her entire identity without a look backward. Please tell me I'm not the only one seeing this?
A little bit of really important, helpful content, padded out with a ton of biblical references.
I think my husband received this from a work colleague, and it was floating around our house so I thought I'd check it out. So I grant that this is a book directly intended for heavy-duty conservative Christians and I'm not the target audience.
But even taking that into account, this would be better as a brief blog post than a book. Here's the key content:
1. No one has time to do everything they would like to or that others want them to.
2. You will probably never be “done” at work - there's always some additional task calling for attention.
3. All working people with families decide whom to “cheat” (i.e., draw a line where your commitment and investment stop - on a daily basis or overall).
4. We tend to unthinkingly commit to work while leaning heavily on our families' willingness to be patient, when our priorities really ought to be reversed.
5. Feelings of loyalty and love are meaningless if we don't reflect them in our actions and our schedule.
6. If you want to make changes in this work-family balance, you have to make specific commitments (be home by 5 every day, work no more than x hours per week, etc.) rather than vague efforts to “be home more” or “spend more time with the kids.”
7. It feels scary to draw a line with work, because they don't love and care for you and might not cut you slack the way your family does, but if you have confidence in yourself and have room to be a little daring you can set boundaries and carve out a work life that doesn't cheat your family.
8. When approaching this with your boss, he suggests asking, listening to the boss's concerns, and offering a trial period with the new boundary.
One thing that really bothered me was the repeated statement that if you make the “correct” decisions, Yahweh will reward you with success. The dark side of this sentiment is that someone who tries to dial back work and suffers serious economic problems or any other burden as a result is just doing it wrong and is to blame for their own suffering. The truth is most people may have more flexibility with their work life than they think, but there's no guarantee that you can tell your boss 6 days a week doesn't work, walk out the door, and miraculously build a successful business of your own.
While it's not perfect, I have to give it 5 stars for quickly igniting the Gaiman Theory of Great Stories: “... and then what happened?”
If you like weird fiction, definitely check this out. Its mysteries are often more mysterious to the characters than the savvy reader, but glimpsing where things were going didn't dull my enjoyment at all. In fact, it had me marveling, “If we know all this at 30% in, what's going to happen NEXT?”
I'm definitely going to check out more of Bennett's work after this. He created some amazing characters and a lot of engaging ideas. At its heart, this is an emotional story, despite sci-fi trappings and action sequences, and he absolutely nailed it.
Not a bad read - particularly in the early chapters, there are some really spooky elements. I feel like that mood is somewhat undermined later when events feel rather contrived to allow a neat ending that answers all questions and wraps up the story in a nice little bow.
Also, I felt like the male characters were given the great bulk of the point of view, with the female characters more often functioning as objects to drive the action of the male protagonists. That started to grate as I got into the second half of the book.
Having read two of Cottam's novels, I think I'll seek out any shorter fiction he's done. I think he could maintain a creepy mood better over a short story, and perhaps that form would also be more amenable to an ambiguous conclusion?
Hoo boy, is this blasphemous! If you revere the Bible, maybe you shouldn't read this. (Or maybe you really really need to?)
This book portrays Yahweh as vulgar, foolish, perverse, juvenile, and above all insecure - and it is absolutely 100% consistent with the Bible.
It's also quite hilarious, and has a certain pathos as well. God practically face-palming himself after calling bats birds, or telling himself in the middle of a tirade, “Stop talking. STOP. You're making it worse!” can evoke a sympathetic response from anyone who's suffered foot-in-mouth disease. But ultimately, we get a point of view that underlines (with Satan's help) just how self-deluded God is about his perfection.
The one complaint I have is this could have been a bit more fleshed out. It's rather short, and the pacing falls off when we get to the new testament (understandably, given the length of the Jesus story compared to the old testament). I would have loved to see Satan developed more, and while I like the idea of the ending, it felt a little underwritten.
Still, when your only complaint about a book is you wish there were more of it, that deserves at least 4 stars.
