Wrapping up RIP VIII

I hadn't planned to do a wrapping up post for RIP VIII but when I saw them popping up all over the place I figured I might as well document how I went. I had a lot of fun with this challenge, it was nice and low key thanks to it being over two months instead of one. I was a little worried I'd get sick of reading horror/dark fiction constantly but I managed to include some non-RIP reading which I think was probably a good idea. I wasn't so great at the blog-hopping aspect. If I already follow you then I saw and read your posts, but I probably only visited a couple new-to-me blogs which is a little shameful, but oh well!

I ended up reading 6 books for RIP VIII and I liked them all, so woooo success! Of the books, Coraline was probably my favourite but I was also pleasantly surprised with how much I liked Warm Bodies. I don't think I'll bother with mini-reviews for these ones since I wrote full reviews for each, but if you want to see what I read and what I thought then follow the links.

The Pilo Family Circus - Will Elliott
Shadow and Bone - Leigh Bardugo
Warm Bodies - Isaac Marion
Coraline - Neil Gaiman
Skeleton Crew - Stephen King
Rape: A Love Story - Joyce Carol Oates

I guess maybe Skeleton Crew should be in this section since it's a book of short stories *shrugs* Anyway, I read way more short stories than I expected to, and it seems a little silly to pat myself on the back for reading short stories since their defining feature is that they're SHORT, but I really don't read too many of these guys so I'm going to pat myself on the back anyway. Anywho, my favourite was probably In the Tall Grass, but I liked all three. Sleepy Hollow wasn't really what I was expecting at all, way less horror than I anticipated but it's a really well written narrative. And UR was a lot of fun, although the Kindle stuff was a little blechh. Links and such below.

UR - Stephen King (short story)
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving (short story)
In the Tall Grass - Stephen King and Joe Hill (short story)

I didn't get around to writing any reviews for this part of the challenge, but I did watch 3 films that were mostly really good. It's a little too late for them to be Halloween watches now, but who says you can only watch horror on Halloween? I watched Sleepaway Camp, Poltergeist and Chernobyl Diaries and I'm going to write a little mini-review of each because that way I don't feel like I'm cheating by including them in the challenge.

Sleepaway Camp (1983). This film is ridic. It is the horror equivalent of The Room, it's poorly acted, poorly shot, poorly written and not at all scary. But it is HILARIOUS in how bad it is. From the clown-like mother figure, the Brechtian memory scenes, to the cropped shirts and tiny shorts (on hairy dudes) and absurd murders - this film will have you agape at how terribly awesome it is. It might sound terrible, but it's worth it for the ending. The ending is the most phenomenally insane thing I have ever seen and you need to watch the whole film to truly appreciate it. Definitely save this for a group movie night if you can, it's so much better with a lot of people. And it's on Youtube in its entirety, so you don't even have to worry about paying for this dreck!

Poltergeist (1982). Some movies are classics for a reason. This film is SO good. I am horrified that I had never seen it before, I've wasted so many good rewatch years! Some of the effects towards the end are a little hackey by modern standards, but the creative measures they used to try and depict and poltergeist-ridden house are really pretty fantastic and don't detract from the story at all. It's not a scary-scary film, but there's that perfect '80s mix of supernatural horror and comedy which makes up for the lack of pulse-raising spookery. Also, there's a clown doll. A CLOWN DOLL. That's 2 awful creepy things mixed together!

Chernobyl Diaries (2012). A friend bought this for Tom and I last Christmas, and we only just got around to watching it. It was fine, I mean it's nothing special, don't go and run out looking for it, but if it's on TV...maybe don't switch over right away. There are some really effective jump scares, but they don't happen until way too late in the film. Who wants to spend 40 minutes watching a bunch of 20 year old backpackers drink in the Ukraine and then sneak into Pripyat to check out the irradiated abandoned town? Not this lady, or at least, not this lady UNLESS they die gruesome deaths instantly. Oh oh oh, does everyone remember Jesse McCartney, the blonde singer from a decade ago who had like 3 songs? Yeah he's in this.

Book Review: Rape - A Love Story by Joyce Carol Oates

Rape - A Love story

Written by: Joyce Carol Oates

Published: 2003

Synopsis: Teena Maguire should not have tried to shortcut her way home that Fourth of July. Not after midnight, not through Rocky Point Park. Not the way she was dressed in a tank top, denim cutoffs, and high-heeled sandals. Not with her twelve-year-old daughter Bethie. Not with packs of local guys running loose on hormones, rage, and alcohol. A victim of gang rape, left for dead in the park boathouse, the once vivacious Teena can now only regret that she has survived. At a relentlessly compelling pace punctuated by lonely cries in the night and the whisper of terror in the afternoon, Joyce Carol Oates unfolds the story of Teena and Bethie, their assailants, and their unexpected, silent champion, a man who knows the meaning of justice. And love.

Challenges: RIP VIII

warning: potential rape triggers below.

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A month ago I decided to take a trip to my local library for the first time. I usually just go to my university library or the main Brisbane library in the city, but it seemed borderline insane that I hadn't been to my nearest library in the 3 years I've lived in the area. It's a weird (and wonderful) little library, there were three copies of The Dark Tower: Wizard and Glass but no other Stephen King books* and the entire collection of Joyce Carol Oates' were on the shelf. And since I had never read a Joyce Carol Oates novel - partly due to fear, partly due to lack of time - and the library was basically pushing them on me by stocking them all, I decided to give the smallest - and therefore least intimidating - one a go.

I've got to give it to Ms Carol Oates (Ms Oates?), the woman knows how to choose a provocative title**. It was the size that first caught my eye (a petite 154 pages) but the title that really pulled me in. And in the month that I had this book floating around my house, at least 4 people commented on it, mostly with an awkward laugh and a look of suspicious horror. And that's absolutely the reaction it's supposed to inspire, because it's what the narrative inspires. It might only be short, but it doesn't hold back or shy from forcing the reader to experience the full gamut of emotions. I swung from horror, to anger, to sympathy and back to anger as I progressed through the story. It was an unpleasant experience, it's a book I'll never read again but I'm still glad I did.

So as the synopsis above describes, the book follows Teena and her daughter Bethie before, during and after the brutal gang rape and assault (of Bethie, she was beaten but not raped) by local boys. While the book is told primarily from Bethie's perspective as she makes sense of the crime, the justice system and her perpetual fear of the rapists who live nearby, it also provides insights into the minds of police officer Dromoor, the rapists, and locals in the small town of Niagara Falls. The most disturbing and fascinating chapters were those that came from the perspectives of the locals hearing or reading about the case. One of the earliest chapters, placed before the horrific rape scene, lists the reactions locals had to Teena's rape, things like "Teena was asking for it" and "who would walk their 12 year old daughter through a dark park" and "I heard she was drunk and on drugs". And that's where this book really excelled, it really ground home how natural victim blaming is and how often we look for any excuse to explain why something this horrible happened***. It can never just be a group of 20-something guys high on meth deciding to force themselves on two females because they can. The woman must have done something, she talked back, she walked through a park, she wore a skirt, she's had plenty of sexual relationships in the past, she was drunk. And it would be bad if this was just a bunch of misguided locals being awful, but these arguments are routinely brought up in tabloids and in court by the defendants. In the case of Rape: A Love Story, rather than make the rapists look like model citizens who would never do such a disgusting crime, the plan is to tear down Teena to make her appear like someone who deserves to be raped and beaten and nearly killed. As you read this book it's not hard to believe that most rapes go unreported, because who wants to have their credibility attacked on every front while they try to repair physically, mentally and emotionally?

Alongside this sick and sad story, however, is a revenge fantasy. Officer Domoor, first on the scene, finds himself caught up with the case and angered by the lack of justice coming Teena's way. After the criminal case begins and the defense state that the men will all be pleading Not Guilty because they were engaging in prostitution not rape (RAGE) Domoor takes the law into his own hands. I won't go any further in describing it because, spoilers, but there is something satisfying about the victims being given the power (even indirectly) against their attackers. So many people don't get any true sense of justice or closure and while I'm not one to condone violence normally, the events of the book made me so mad - especially since they are so typical in the real world - that it was gratifying and cathartic to read about Domoor, Teena and Bethie's revenge.

The book's conclusion comes a little too quickly and neatly. After spending such a large chunk of the book looking at how damaging the criminal system is to the rape victim I wanted to read more about the healing process, if there even is one. However as a small peek into a horrifying and heartbreaking world this book does a fantastic job. Should you read it? On one hand it's a compelling and well written novella, and on the other the subject is hard to read and deeply disturbing. So I guess read it if you think you can handle it, or if you want to get angry about rape culture and need an excuse to write about it on your blog, but don't expect it to be a light read.


*I don't know if that means my area loves King so much he's always booked out, or if they like him so little the library doesn't even bother stocking him.

**My next Joyce Carol Oates will definitely be Because It Is Bitter, and Because It Is My Heart. That title makes me so happy even though I have no idea what the story is about.

***I was horrified last week when I read one of the Dear Prudence columns and a commentor attacked the woman who wrote in and admitted to being raped by her boyfriend's best friend. So much victim blaming, so much anger.

Short story Reviews: UR by Stephen King, In the Tall Grass by Stephen King and Joe Hill, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow

A few months ago I read Stephen King and Joe Hill's short story In the Tall Grass and had no idea how to review it. Short stories are always hard to review, because there isn't a lot to discuss without giving away some of the critical elements, but they usually (or the ones I read anyway) come in an anthology so you can bluff your way through by writing a couple of lines or paragraphs about each story and make up a full review that way. This was a singular story, something I found when I was searching the Stephen King tag on Amazon, and I just couldn't review it in any way that seemed worth it. Lucky for me RIP VIII came along and gave me the perfect platform to write about it and a couple of other short stories I'd been considering reading. So here you go, reviews to In the Tall Grass, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and UR.

Advertisement:  "I use Grammarly to correct grammar because 'ain't nobody got time for that*' 
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In the Tall Grass

Written by: Joe Hill and Stephen King

Published: 2012

Synopsis: In the Tall Grass begins with a sister and brother who pull off to the side of the road after hearing a young boy crying for help from beyond the tall grass. Within minutes they are disoriented, in deeper than seems possible, and they’ve lost one another. The boy’s cries are more and more desperate.

My thoughts: About a year ago I read a comic based on a Joe Hill and Stephen King novella titled Throttle. I really enjoyed seeing their different styles clash and meld, so when I came across this short story I snapped it up immediately.

I really love Stephen King's short stories. I think it's because they tend to be really experimental, either he's playing around with ideas that will later become full time novels or they're something so completely different to what I'm used to from him. At the time of reading this short story, the only Joe Hill I'd read was his comic series Locke and Key (which is a MUST read) and I had loved how much Joe seemed to pay homage to his father while never seeming like he was simply riding that wave of nepotism and fame (his obvious talent also helps immensely).

This story is very short and very quick. Brother and sister duo Becky and Cal DeMuth are driving through Kansas when they hear someone calling for help. They park on the side of a road near a church and look into the field of tall, tall grass and hear a child and his terrified mother calling out. Once they make their way in though, they get lost and no matter how hard they try, they can't get their bearings back.

The premise is all King. It's a quiet story, one that teeters on that thin line between panic and supernatural. Is the grass actually working against them, hiding a killer who is coming to get them? Or are they just overtaken by their own fears of getting lost and it seems like everything is working against them? Joe Hill, I would guess, brings the darker and more gruesome elements. It's not that King often shies away from these sorts of details, but it was, for want of a better phrase, more in your face than he typically writes. The blend of the quiet with the aggressive, the subtle with the dark makes for something of a schizophrenic narrative. It never felt like two people passing the keyboard from one to another as they wrote the story, but if you're as familiar with King as I am, the influence of his son is instantly recognisable. And I loved it.

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The Legend of Sleepy Hollow

Written by: Washington Irving

Published: 1820

Synopsis: Sleepy Hollow is a strange little place...some say bewitched. Some talk of its haunted valleys and streams, the ghostly woman in white, eerie midnight shrieks and howls, but most of all they talk of the Headless Horseman. A huge, shadowy soldier who rides headless through the night, terrifying unlucky travellers.

Schoolteacher Ichabod Crane is fascinated by these stories....Until late one night, walking home through Wiley's swamp, he finds that maybe they're not just stories.

My thoughts: I decided to pick up this novella when I watched the first episode of the new TV series Sleepy Hollow. As I watched it I was like "wait, wait, wait, the headless horseman was one of the four horses of the apocalypse?" and "Ichabod's wife was a witch, I didn't think he even had a wife" and I realised that while I know a bit about the Washington Irving story, I didn't know enough (and what I do know maybe came from the Johnny Depp film). I really enjoyed this read, although I'm a little embarrassed to say it took me awhile to get back into the rhythm of pre-20th century writing. There are so many adjectives and lengthy descriptions about absolutely everything, that tree over there, the school hall, the shape of Ichabod's face and when it's been as long between classic texts as it has been for me it's hard not to just be like "why Washington WHY". But once I fell back into the style, I enjoyed the hell out of it, even though it was nothing like I thought it would be.

Ichabod Crane is not the delightfully weird fellow I expected him to be. He's actually kind of despicable, not a bad guy per say, but he's hardly the person you root for in a love triangle. His "love" is basically motivated by Katrina Van Tassel's father's wealth and standing in Sleepy Hollow, which is made beautifully aware in a scene where Ichabod imagines all the farm animals as tasty meals that Katrina would cook him. The entire story seems to have been written by Washington with his tongue pressed firmly in his cheek, so while quotes like;

"Spare the rod and spoil the child - Ichabod Crane's scholars certainly were not spoiled"

and;

"Balt Van Tassel was an easy indulgent soul; he loved his daughter better even than his pipe"

Are a little "oh right, 1820 was really different," they're also kind of hilarious.

But It's the descriptions that Washington Irving writes about Mr Crane, or the town of Sleepy Hollow and the town's penchant for supernatural goings-on that really makes this story worth reading. They do border on the laborious from time to time, but the people are so wonderfully drawn and the setting so gorgeously painted that it's easy to motivate yourself to keep going past the bits that drag. I mean, tell me this isn't a wonderful description of Ichabod;

"...for he was a huge feeder, and though lank, had the dilating powers of an anaconda" 

See, it's great. So come for the ghost story about a headless horseman and a stuck up school teacher and stay for the gorgeous descriptions. And then recommend other Washington Irving stories to me, because I want more.

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UR

Written by: Stephen King

Published: 2009

Synopsis: Following a nasty break-up, lovelorn college English instructor Wesley Smith can't seem to get his ex-girlfriend's parting shot out of his head: "Why can't you just read off the computer like the rest of us?" Egged on by her question and piqued by a student's suggestion, Wesley places an order for Amazon.com's Kindle eReader. The [pink?] device that arrives in a box stamped with the smile logo -via one-day delivery that he hadn't requested - unlocks a literary world that even the most avid of book lovers could never imagine. But once the door is open, there are those things that one hopes we'll never read or live through.

My Thoughts: This was a spontaneous purchase on my phone's kindle app when I was waiting for the bus and had nothing else to read. It was, if wikipedia is correct, a short story King wrote exclusively for sale for Kindle, and that really shows. It hovers somewhere between being a long ad for Kindle and a cute little way of tying an exclusive deal into the narrative. When lines like "Wesley went to the Kindle shop and bought X" comes up a gazillion times I started to wonder if Amazon had written into the contract a minimum of references that needed to be in the story, and considering the whole story hinges on the Kindle, it grew a little tiring. If you've read Mr Penumbra's 24 Hour Bookstore it sort of felt like the Google references which almost overshadowed the story by the end. But all that aside, it was still an enjoyable little short story.

Basically, the kindle that Wesley buys to spite his sports coach ex-girlfriend -they broke up after a fight where he called her illiterate (oof) and she said he was out of touch with the world - turns out not to be a real kindle. It has the regular buy and read functions, but it's also pink and has some experimental functions. These functions allow him to search the multiverse for books that his favourite authors may have written elsewhere, and with a student and co-worker, Wesley spends a long night exploring the works of Hemingway, Shakespeare etc that don't exist in his particular world. While the three men have an uncomfortable feeling that they're peeking through a doorway they shouldn't, it mostly just seems like a harmless - albeit addictive - activity. However, things shift suddenly when Wesley explores other UR functions, one of which allows him to read news headlines from the future. It's here that Wesley finds out that Ellen, his ex, and her busload of college girls are going to die when a drunk driver runs them off the road. Wesley's faced with the decision, does he act on this knowledge and try and save his ex (who he still loves) and break the paradox laws, or does he respect those laws and let his girlfriend and a group of students die?

The story isn't particularly tense or scary, but it is fun and there are a couple of neat references to other King books (primarily Dark Tower references, because duh). There's a few interesting looks at the physical vs digital debate that take place during one of Wesley's class, and it's refreshing to have the students be like "who cares if it has binding, books are about ideas and emotions" rather than the typical garbage about us Millennials** only liking digital whatevers. So if you're a fan of King or looking for a fun short story about books that don't exist (but we wish did) then this could be for you. Also, if you're one of the The Corrections readalongers, Wesley is like a breath of fresh air compared to Chip's pretentious teaching style, so have at.

*I may have had this meme stuck in my head when writing this post.

**When did Millennials become a thing btw? What happened with being Gen Y?

Book Review: Skeleton Crew by Stephen King

Skeleton Crew

Written by: Stephen King

Published: 1985

Synopsis: In a bumper collection of tales guaranteed to chill the spine and freeze the blood, we meet GRAMMA - who only wanted to hug little George, even after she was dead; THE RAFT - a primeval sea creature with an insatiable appetite; THE MONKEY - an innocent-looking toy with sinister powers; the unspeakable horror of THE MIST. And there is a grusome host of other stories, each with th distinctive blend of unimaginable terror and realism that typifies King's writing.

Challenges: RIP VIII

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“Grab onto my arm now. Hold tight. We are going into a number of dark places, but I think I know the way. Just don't let go of my arm. And if I should kiss you in the dark, it's no big deal; it's only because you are my love.”

When it comes to Stephen King I'm pretty well-read*, but I'm not sure if I can say the same when it comes to his short story collections. I've reviewed two (Full Dark, No Stars and Night Shift) but I honestly can't remember if I read any in my pre-blog days. The silly thing is, I LOVE King's short stories, and in some cases I actually love them more than his full length books. King might be known for his horror, but the beauty of his short story collections are their eclectic mash of sci-fi, horror, family drama, fantasy, hard-boiled crime and nostalgic love story. I love finishing a story about a mysterious fog that seems to be hiding all kinds of prehistoric or inter-dimensional monsters and embarking on a bitter-sweet story of a man's love for a woman and that woman's love for finding short cuts. I guess some people would find this jarring, but I really enjoy seeing Stephen King's skill demonstrated in 20+ different stories that he wrote at different times in his life. I love to see him wrangle a supernatural sub-genre he hasn't tried before, or wrestle with his own addictions or express his love for his wife in abstract stories. They don't all work, but that's the luck of the draw with short story collections. You win some, and lose others.

Skeleton Crew is made up of 22 stories of varying lengths. The longest is The Mist, a novella 150-ish pages long, while Paranoid: A Chant is probably the shortest at a teensy 5 pages. But the majority of them probably hover around the 15 to 30 page length. Not every short story collection has an overarching theme, and considering this collection is made up of stories he'd had published in magazines at various stages in his career (from the mid-1960s to mid-1980s) perhaps it was silly of me to try and find one here. But as I read I couldn't help but notice how prominent relationships were in every story. Relationships between father and son, broken relationships that left people feeling hurt and abandoned, strained relationships between daughter and sick mother. But it wasn't simply a repetition of relationships that I noticed, each story seemed to be bathed in a nostalgic light, a mourning for relationships that were or could have been, for a childhood that had been bright and happy before shuddering to an end with the death of a parent. Some of the stories did take place in the future, with a narrator recalling the events of the narrative, but even the ones that took place in the present tense - this nostalgia or sadness for what was or couldn't be again lingered on.

I took a month to read Skeleton Crew, and broke it up with plenty of other books, and I think that this was the best way to approach it. Sometimes reading short stories feels like a chore, liking one doesn't mean you'll love the next, and sometimes you just want a narrative you know you're going to like from start to finish. But I've been warming to short stories more and more over the past few years and I've decided that I agree wholeheartedly with King that;

“a short story is like a kiss in the dark from a stranger.”

But since I took so long to read it, my memory is a little fuzzy of some of the earlier stories and my notes don't make complete sense to me anymore (let alone trying to decipher my shocking handwriting). So I'll just write up about a couple of the ones that I liked the most and are clearest in my memory.

The Mist
I really loved this novella. I saw the film adaptation a few months ago and I've come to the conclusion that films should only be adapted from short stories. The film was so close to the book, and because the story is just over 150 pages there was no need to crop out anything that was extraneous to the A-story. The one thing they did change though was the ending, and while I liked the ambiguous ending of the short story, I actually dug the hell out of the film's ending - it was so bleak and unflinching and even King has admitted it's perhaps a better conclusion. Regardless of the ending, I loved the subtle nod to Lovecraft with the tentacled inter-dimensional monsters and the whole story -which spans about 3 days in total - was infused with so much claustrophobic tension and memorable characters.

The Jaunt
This story is a really interesting - and really fantastic - sci-fi short story. Mark Oates and his family are heading up to Jupiter for his new job, and are using the teleportation "Jaunt" technology which leaves from a very bland bus-terminal waiting room. In order to stop his kids from panicking, he tells them how the Jaunt was invented and it's brief history, hoping that armed with knowledge they'll be much calmer when their turn comes around. It's a really clever narrative device to deliver the hard science fiction, and the ending... Dude, the ending is GREAT.

Mrs. Todd's Shortcut
This story took awhile for me to get into, but it was perhaps the first where that feeling of nostalgia really hooked into me. It's slow to build but there's a haunting quality to the writing which kept me interested even when I thought that maybe I should just skip it.

“I sit on the bench in front of Bell's Market and think about Homer Buckland and about the beautiful girl who leaned over to open his door when he come down that path with the full red gasoline can in his right hand - she looked like a girl of no more than sixteen, a girl on her learner's permit, and her beauty was terrible, but I believe it would no longer kill the man it turned itself on; for a moment her eyes lit on me, I was not killed, although a part of me died at her feet." 

Word Processor of the Gods
This was a fun little story about a man who is unhappy with his lot in life. He doesn't like his wife, his son or his career (he's still waiting to write the book that'll make him a millionaire) and he detests that his brother has everything he wants. So when the gift his recently-dead nephew had planned to give him is passed to him, and it turns out to be a word processor (Frankenstein'ed from a bunch of electrical junk) that has the power to delete and rewrite life, he does exactly that. It's a bit silly, and when you think about what he does it's a little sociopathic, but I liked it all the same.

Survivor Type
I didn't love the way this story was written, but the narrative was interesting enough to make up for that. A doctor-turned-drug-smuggler washes up on a desert island when the boat he was on goes down, and with no natural vegetation and very little living animals, the doctor turns to the only meat he has readily available. it was fascinating to read the disintegration of his rationality as time and hunger picked away at it. It gets a little gross, but nothing too graphic.

Gramma
NOPE. I don't even think I can talk about this one. I had heard it was terrifying so I went and sat outside in the bright midday sun next to a pretty creek with plenty of people walking their dogs around me and even then my hair stood up in fright! Poor little George is stuck at home with his ailing bedridden grandmother while his mum and brother head to the hospital. What begins with the active imagination of an 8 year old devolves into a terrifying story about witches and the Necronomicon** and a grandmother that wants to hug her grandson. *shudders*

There weren't really any stories in this collection I didn't like, although I did struggle a little with The Reach, Beachworld, and Morning Deliveries (Milkman #1). They weren't bad in any sense of the word, but they just weren't for me. But who knows, perhaps you'll hate the stories I loved and desperately love the stories that I couldn't connect with. You know, I often wonder if Stephen King short stories are more for well versed King fans than King neophytes, but I think this might be a collection I'd recommend for both.



*Not Laura well-read, but that's a given.

**I really love when Lovecraftian mythos is incorporated without direct reference to it. Stephen King, Joe Hill and Neil Gaiman do this a lot, and I really appreciate how well they do it without jumping around with signs saying "CTHULU WAS HERE". All you need is a neatly place "Hastur degryon Yos-soth-oth" and you're immediately taken into Lovecraft's world.

Monday Links

*^^Sinead O'Connor and Miley Cyrus mash-up. I kinda dig the hell out of it.

*Alice Munro won the Nobel Prize of Literature, so yay for lady writers! But then booo, because I haven't read any Munro and I feel bad about that. BUT, here's a handy introduction guide to her writing (Via The Millions)

*In case you were wondering if Bret Easton Ellis has already been a pretentious dick about it, yes, yes he has. (Via Twitter)

*A list of Buffy the Vampire Slayer's best 'little bads'. I really, really want to rewatch the series now (Via Buzzfeed)

*Stephen Spielberg is creating a lady astronaut TV show and Halle Berry is going to be in it. (Via Jezabel)

*These photos of Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen in New York make me really sad that I'm not best friends with them already. (Via Uproxx)

*Still need some short stories for RIP VIII? Here are 7 Poe stories you can read for free on the internets. (Via Flavorwire)

*Because Halloween, awesome costumes for little girls. Best costume? Teeny suffragette (#24) (Via Buzzfeed)

*I finally got around to signing up to Bloglovin'. You can follow through the linky on the side of the page or through this handy little link riiiiiiight here > (Via Bloglovin')

Book Review: Coraline by Neil Gaiman

Coraline

Written by: Neil Gaiman

Published: 2002

Synopsis: Coraline's often wondered what's behind the locked door in the drawing room. It reveals only a brick wall when she finally opens it, but when she tries again later, a passageway mysteriously appears. Coraline is surprised to find a flat decorated exactly like her own, but strangely different. And when she finds her "other" parents in this alternate world, they are much more interesting despite their creepy black button eyes. When they make it clear, however, that they want to make her theirs forever, Coraline begins a nightmarish game to rescue her real parents and three children imprisoned in a mirror. With only a bored-through stone and an aloof cat to help, Coraline confronts this harrowing task of escaping these monstrous creatures.

Challenges: RIP VIII
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“Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.”

When I sat down and started reading Coraline I thought I might have made a terrible mistake, because this book seemed really, really young. The language is simple, very "this is Coraline. She likes to explore. Watch her explore", which is fine if you're reading to an actual child but not so great when you're 26 years old. But because I know so many people who adore this book I persevered, and I'm glad I did because Neil Gaiman was being a big ol' trickster, tricking me into thinking it would be like BSC: Little Sister and not one of the scariest books I've read all year.

The book does begin very simply. Coraline is bored. She's a kid on holiday in a house-turned-apartments inhabited by old people with theatrical eccentricities. At first she passes the days exploring the grounds, going past the dilapidated tennis court, through the smelly fairy ring of mushrooms and out by the well. But since it's England, the weather is really foul and she finds herself stuck in the house, with nothing to explore and even less to do. And then things become a little less simple. As she heads through a passageway which had always been bricked up before, she comes into a house very similar to her own, only different. Her parents are there, except they're not her parents, they're her Other Mother and Other Father and they "love her very, very much". The book then basically becomes a quest where Coraline needs to beat the Other Mother in a contest so that she can save her real mother and father and go back to life on the other side of the door.

It's a book full of creepy fairytale fun, there's a sardonic cat (is there any other kind?) that can talk in the Other world, three ghost children who were captured by the Other Mother, a rock with a hole that shows through the Other World's magic, and a lot of black buttons for eyes. It reminded me a lot of A Nightmare Before Christmas, that same mix of creepy Halloween with harmless childhood aesthetics. And it really was frightening. In the same way clowns and ventriloquist dolls have been transformed into something malicious and horrifying, I will never be able to look at dolls with button eyes the same way again. Maybe it was more frightening because I was lulled into the children's tale at the start of the book, but as the tension ramped up as Coraline sped through her quest I was flipping pages as fast as possible, my heart halfway up my throat. And when I finished I actually wondered how I would have handled this book if I'd read it as an 8 year old. I'm almost certain I would have had nightmares, but I'm equally sure that I would have loved the thrill of the story and Gaiman's brilliant imagery.

Neil Gaiman does a wonderful job writing about a child. Sure I haven't been 8 for a few years now, but that didn't stop me from nodding sagely and saying "of course" when I read this passage;

“On the first day Coraline's family moved in, Miss Spink and Miss Forcible made a point of telling Coraline how dangerous the well was, and they warned her to be sure she kept away from it. So Coraline set off to explore for it, so that she knew where it was, to keep away from it properly.”

But more than that he does a great job of showing just how boring and lonely it can be being a child with busy parents. Coraline's parents may work from home, but they barely seem to notice her when she comes into their offices to talk or look for something to do. They repeatedly hand her a piece of paper and a biro and a curt suggestion to "count the number of doors in the house" or list the "number of blue things". To poor little Coraline their busyness and distraction is synonymous with a lack of love so it's no wonder she made her way through that door and down the corridor, and that the Other Mother was so successful luring Coraline over at first;

“Nothing’s changed. You’ll go home. You’ll be bored. You’ll be ignored. No one will listen to you, really listen to you. You’re too clever and too quiet for them to understand. They don’t even get your name right.”

So I'm going to join the crowd of people shouting at you to read Coraline and Neil Gaiman's other children's books (The Graveyard Shift was also awesome) because yes, you most definitely need to buy, borrow or steal a copy of this IMMEDIATELY. It's the perfect dark fairytale whimsy for an October read. But if you're thinking of reading this to your kids, maybe give it a look over first and check that it won't be too creepy for them.



*illustrations by Dave McKean, in the 2008 Harper Entertainment edition

Book Review: Warm Bodies by Isaac Marion

Warm Bodies

Written by: Isaac Marion

Published: 2010

Synopsis: 'R' is a zombie. He has no name, no memories and no pulse, but he has dreams. He is a little different from his fellow Dead.

Amongst the ruins of an abandoned city, R meets a girl. Her name is Julie and she is the opposite of everything he knows - warm and bright and very much alive, she is a blast of colour in a dreary grey landscape. For reasons he can't understand, R chooses to save Julie instead of eating her, and a tense yet strangely tender relationship begins.

This has never happened before. It breaks the rules and defies logic, but R is no longer content with life in the grave. He wants to breathe again, he wants to live, and Julie wants to help him. But their grim, rotting world won't be changed without a fight...

Challenges: RIP VIII
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"Once you've arrived at the end of the world, it hardly matters what route you took"

So it seems like 2013 is the year of YA reads. It's also the year of swallowing my pride and admitting maybe I was a little quick to judge. When I first heard rumblings of Warm Bodies online a year or so ago, I grumbled to myself about zombies finally being given the Twilight treatment. When favourable reviews started to come out I attributed it to people not really knowing the zombie genre too well, and therefore having pretty minimal expectations. In fact, I just went back to Alley's review (which is brilliant by the way, go read it and give her some love) and I commented saying:

I have this on my 'to read' list but it's definitely going to be a library book, because I still feel like it's going to be a universal joke to make me read a zombie Twilight story.

I was ready to write this one off without giving it a real chance. And considering I've been studying zombies for the past 2.5 years and have been burnt by shitty representations of zombies in literature in the past - I think I had a right to be a little wary. But when my PhD supervisor told me the film was actually pretty brilliant I had to reconsider my stance, because if Australia's best known and respected horror expert thinks it's a nifty take on the genre then maybe there's something to it. He was right, you all were, and I was very, very wrong. Warm Bodies is everything everyone said it was, it was funny and clever and a really solid YA read. It wasn't perfect, and I'll get to that later, but i'm definitely glad everyone wore me down and it was sitting on the "HEY! Read this immediately" shelf at the library.

So a lot of the reviews I've read have said "this isn't like any zombie story you've ever seen before" and that isn't entirely correct. Isaac Marion, who surely must be a pretty big fan of the genre, actually builds on the work of George A Romero. Romero's best known for the first two of his six zombie films, but if you follow the two trilogies there's a clear evolutionary path that the zombie takes. From mindless cannibalism and the reckless spread of their virus (Night of the Living Dead), the zombies slowly start to show recognition of household items (Bub and the telephone in Day of the Dead), to organised attacks against human oppressors (Big Daddy in Land of the Dead), to choosing to eat animals over humans (Survival of the Living Dead). What is new, however, is taking this idea and showing it to us from the zombie point of view. Whether Marion actually intended to build on Romero's work is up for debate (I can't honestly be bothered to see if he's said anything to this effect in an interview), it's clear he needed to take this approach to make the story work, because a story from a traditional zombie's point of view would be terribly boring. But Marion manages the difficult task of balancing this idea of consciousness with well-known zombie conventions. It's true that they think and maintain relationships and families, but they do still attack and eat the living, rot and decompose and can be taken out completely by a blow to the brain. It advances and adapts the genre without slapping die-hard fans in the face - something that Stephenie Meyer never managed to get a hang of.

I intend to throw Twilight under the bus A LOT more

I'm sure you've all heard the basic breakdown of the story, but here's a refresher just in case. Warm Bodies is based on Romeo and Juliet, although beyond the forbidden love angle and a scene on a balcony, it's a pretty loose adaptation. Did it actually need to be based on one of Shakespeare's most famous plays? No, but unlike Twilight it's not just a ham-fisted shout-out screaming "LOOK IT'S JUST LIKE GREAT LITERATURE". Romeo, or R in this case since he can't remember the rest of his name, is different to the other zombies. He seems to have retained more of his humanity and is constantly battling with the existential crisis that is life as a zombie. He goes through the motions, he kills and eats the living, "marries" another zombie and adopts a couple of kids,  rides an escalator around and around - but it never seems like enough. And then one day on a hunt he finds himself drawn to protecting a human, a girl named Julie. He covers her in blood, pretends he turned her into one of them, and takes her back to his home in an aeroplane.

And this is where my favourite part of the novel comes in. The reason R falls for Julie is that he eats her boyfriend. And in Marion's world, when a zombie eats a brain they get a brief flash of the life that their victim lived. Some flashes are stronger than others, and R seems to live (ha! sorry not sorry) for these brief reminders of life. So when he takes a bite of Perry's grey matter he experiences a flash far greater than he's ever experienced, and Perry's love of Julie is passed on to R. It's this initial flash of life and emotion that leads to the development of our two leads' relationship and the unfolding of the narrative. R becomes almost addicted to revisiting Perry's life (he keeps the rest of his brain in his pocket for snacks) and eventually it develops into something...more. And the small flashes of Perry's life and his struggle to find a reason to live in a post-everything, zombie-infested world were brilliant. It's not that R and Julie were bad characters per say, but they are both cut from well-worn YA cloth and didn't really deliver anything new. Perry on the other hand felt more human and less like an archetype, and I shared R's curiosity in unfolding the story of his life.

The zombie life mirrors the life of the living in Warm Bodies. Both groups have banded together into larger groups for protection, they train their young to survive in this apocalyptic world, and they struggle to retain a semblence of pre-zombie normality. There's not a lot of cheer and optimism in the living camps, but there's even less in the zombie hives. They live in groups, but given their inability to truly communicate or physically respond, they're always alone.

"We recognise civilisation - buildings, cars, a general overview -but we have no personal role in it. No history"

Their hunger isn't something they have any control over, and R isn't the only one who seems to detest what they've become. All of their attempts at living life, their marriages, attempts to have sex and fascination with eating brains are so sad and empty that it's hard not to feel sympathy for these people who were once us. And Marion manages to weave these small moments of levity into the greater romance plot in such a way that it never feels overly sad or philosophical, but it's impossible to completely ignore them.

Mild spoilers - Although I liked the book overall, I actually didn't love the central premise, namely that through meeting Julie R begins to transform. The execution felt a little rushed and it was a little overwrought and under-explained. I think it could have been a fascinating book if they had to learn to love and live with each other despite their differences, differences which are impossible to ignore. I understand that Marion is writing a sequel which perhaps will explore the cause of his transformation and the ramifications, and certain hints regarding the boneys give a cursory explanation but I wanted more about the how and why and less about the R&J love story. But then I'm pretty stone-hearted when it comes to YA romance stories. End spoilers.

I don't particularly like being wrong, but when it comes to a book exceeding expectations I'll happily accept it. Warm Bodies is a funny and sweet novel that I'm starting to think might actually be my new favourite zombie novel. And in case you're nervous about it being scary (it isn't) because zombies are always scary (seriously it isn't scary) you can actually read the short story that this was based on, which will 100% prove to you that I'm not lying about it being non-scary.

Book Review: The Pilo Family Circus by Will Elliott

The Pilo Family Circus 

Written by: Will Elliott

Published: 2009

Synopsis: "You have two days to pass your audition. You better pass it, feller. You’re joining the circus. Ain’t that the best news you ever got?” Delivered by a trio of psychotic clowns, this ultimatum plunges Jamie into the horrific alternate universe that is the centuries-old Pilo Family Circus, a borderline world between Hell and Earth from which humankind’s greatest tragedies have been perpetrated. Yet in this place—peopled by the gruesome, grotesque, and monstrous—where violence and savagery are the norm, Jamie finds that his worst enemy is himself. When he applies the white face paint, he is transformed into JJ, the most vicious clown of all. And JJ wants Jamie dead!

Challenges:  RIP VIII
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“The classic definition of slapstick runs along the line of, "Funny is someone else ramming his face repeatedly into a brick wall.”

When I decided to take part in RIP VIII I knew it was the perfect opportunity to finally read The Pilo Family Circus. Tom had bought it a few years ago and had raved about it, but for whatever reason it continued to sit unread on my shelf. Maybe it was the clowns thing, for some strange reason I've always found clowns terrifying.

Oh right, that's why.

So anyway, when RIP VIII was announced I immediately started this book so that I couldn't pass over it yet again. And while I liked it, I didn't like it for the reasons I thought I'd like it and it wasn't nearly the terrifying clown nightmare I'd been expecting.

But first a note about the author Will Elliott. Elliott is from my adopted home city Brisbane, so there's a certain level of squee for me reading this since I know the streets he's talking about and I can work out which hotel or club he's mocking based on the hints he gives which is awesome because I normally haven't been to the places in books I read. At the time of writing this book, Elliott had recently been diagnosed with schizophrenia and I think that adds a fascinating level to the novel. He's said that the book is in no way autobiographical, but considering the crux of the story is a young Brisbane male who "shares" his body and mind with a psychotic clown and has to try and find a way to extricate himself from the situation - I think it's safe to say that his own experiences aren't entirely divorced from the novel.

So if you read the synopsis up yonder, it seems like it has all the ingredients for a terrifying clown-filled horror novel that will have you literally shaking in your boots. It's actually a lot more of an absurdist dark comedy that plays with horror and thriller tropes than anything truly terrifying. And I actually think this played out a lot better than anything I expected to read. The real beauty of this novel is that so much is written matter-of-factly, "oh clowns wandering the streets? We are in New Farm afterall, no big deal" that it's only when you put it down to take a break or eat dinner that you realise how bat-shit crazy it actually is. The majority of the novel takes place in a circus that exists in some metaphysical space between Earth and Hell, where centuries-old circus folk put on shows for "tricks" (people on earth who wander into this show from an earth-bound circus or fair) because that's their job. Yes they're also doing it to collect the tricks' souls, but that's not nearly as important as putting on a Good Show. Add to this the co-owner of the circus, Kurt Pilo, who looks wolfish and eats teeth as snacks, one of the clowns is engaged to a fern, there's a yeti that eats glass which makes him sad, souls can grant wishes and murders are a regular occurrence. And while writing all of this makes me feel like I'm stuck in some kind of fun-house mirror room, in the book is just is. It's a circus that has something to do with Lovecraftian demon creatures, so of course things are crazy. Of course, everyone tries to kill each other. Of course the clown face paint transforms Jamie into the demonic JJ the Clown. Of course, there's a character called fishboy who is just lovely. Of Course, the circus is somehow responsible for WWII. It all just makes complete sense while you're caught up in the narrative, it's only back in the real world that the images start to seem warped and twisted.

While I say this book is more of a dark comedy, there are still instances of horror and suspense, so if you're horror-wary maybe don't run to your library for this book too quickly. The opening scenes that are set in Brisbane, where Jamie goes from hotel concierge to unwitting clown recruit, are brutal and tense. After picking up a bag of mysterious crystals that the clowns dropped (some kind of drugs, Jamie supposes), Jamie's house is destroyed, his housemate is kidnapped, he's poisoned and he sees the clowns in the basement of his hotel with a lit match preparing to blow the whole thing up. And this is only the first 20 or so pages. There are two more returns made to this above-world in the novel, and in both of these scenes the grotesquery and horror that seemed so normal in the circus was thrown into sharp relief. Will Elliott has a pretty sick and sinister underside, and considering this was his debut novel and he was in his early 20s when writing it, it's damn impressive how well he manages to accomplish all of this.

So if you're after a Halloween read that won't continue to haunt you post-Halloween, then I wholeheartedly recommend you take a closer look at this one from Will Elliott. Entertaining and well written with brief moments of pure horror, The Pilo Family Circus is still more likely to make you laugh than run for the bedcovers.

Book Review: Shadow and Bone by Leigh Bardugo

Shadow and Bone

Written by: Leigh Bardugo

Published: 2012

Synopsis: The Shadow Fold, a swathe of impenetrable darkness, crawling with monsters that feast on human flesh, is slowly destroying the once-great nation of Ravka.

Alina, a pale, lonely orphan, discovers a unique power that thrusts her into the lavish world of the kingdom’s magical elite—the Grisha. Could she be the key to unravelling the dark fabric of the Shadow Fold and setting Ravka free?

The Darkling, a creature of seductive charm and terrifying power, leader of the Grisha. If Alina is to fulfill her destiny, she must discover how to unlock her gift and face up to her dangerous attraction to him.

But what of Mal, Alina’s childhood best friend? As Alina contemplates her dazzling new future, why can’t she ever quite forget him?

Challenges: RIP VIII
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I can't remember where I first saw this book, it was probably on a Bout of Books or Top 10 Tuesday post, but I was instantly attracted to the Russian aesthetic of the cover and added it to my Goodreads TBR. On a whim last week I bought the kindle edition. After the giddy highs of Eleanor and Park I felt like I needed some light YA to negate a complete reading crash, so buy it I did and I ended up reading it in about two sittings.*

In a lot of ways it's a very traditional fantasy YA. There's a female protagonist who is strong in constitution, even though she's plain and wimpy looking. She's come up from nothing, so she's not afraid to fight for what she wants, once she works out what that is. She has a male best friend who she secretly loves but they seem to be drifting apart. There's magic, sort of, and a end-of-days type peril that hangs over the community. There's a mysterious and dashing older man, a grumpy trainer guy, and a beautiful girl who has trash for a soul. And yet, even though there were all of these overused tropes and characters crowding into this little book (the first in a trilogy) I actually kind of dug the hell out of it. Sort of.

In this Russian stand-in there exists a shadow fold. What is this shadow fold you ask? Well, dear reader, it is basically a giant black cloud that slashes down the centre of the country, isolating the two sides from each other. You can cross it, but there are creepy bird-like creatures that live inside it that delight in ripping your flesh from your body. So to cross it you need the Grisha. They don't guarantee your survival, but they do weigh the odds a little closer to your favour so that you can get across to do your trade and buy all of the supplies that your side of not-Russia can't produce. The shadow fold is an ever present shadow, literally and figuratively, looming over the country. Nothing can really progress while the country is split like this and much of their time is spent fighting not-China and not-(haven't worked out what this country's stand in is yet).

So who are these Grisha folk who can protect men from scary beasts? The Grisha are basically magicians. Some are healers, some are soldiers, and some are even dressmakers. Their magic is discovered when they're young (say 11...) and they're sent to a training school where they're taught to use their powers and are then enrolled into the army, where they protect the country. Their magic isn't really magic though, it's basically a manipulation of physics.

What looked like magic was really manipulating matter at its most fundamental levels. Marie didn't make fire. She summoned combustible elements in the air around us, and she still needed a flint to make the spark that would burn that fuel.

So maybe they aren't technically magic, but it still looks cool and it's not something just anyone can do. Which is where Alina comes in. When we're introduced to Alina she's a pale, weak map maker for the army who is not pretty. In fact, people seem to have a real issue with her looks, so much that it's like they're enduring some tremendous burden just to speak to her. But as it turns out there's more to our meek mouse of a protagonist, as a botched trip across the fold forces her to reveal a power she didn't know she even had.

Instantly Alina is thrust into the spotlight. As a sun-summoner (the only Grisha of this kind) she holds the power to eliminate the fold, and is therefore very valuable to not-Russia and all the countries who are using the fold for their own advantage. She's taken to the Grisha school, where everyone's treated like royalty - a far cry from her childhood as an orphan and adulthood in the army. She's treated less like a student and more like an equal to the Darking, leader of the Grisha and mysterious man who May Not Be What He Seems. She struggles with her lessons, comes to a realisation and then begins to excel while also starting a relationship with Mr Darkling.

Whether she's called Alina, Katniss, Triss, Lyra or Clary - this is a character you all know pretty well if you've read any YA. But maybe because my childhood was so empty of YA books full of young women coming to terms with their own identity and the world they live in (that weren't based in the 1800s) I'm happy to keep reading these characters for a little while longer. Sure I wish they'd switch things up a little, maybe expand on the whole premise and add some depth to it, but female protagonists were so rare in fantasy/dystopian fiction for so long that I think we're owed this. And while Alina herself is a little forgettable, I did enjoy the journey she went on. From trying to fit in with the fancy Grishas at the school, to coming to terms with her power and letting go of the past. She has a road to follow, and even if it's one that's well-trodden it's a pleasure to follow nonetheless.

There's a predicatable love triangle which I can't even bring myself to discuss because COME ON his name is The freaking Darkling, what do you expect? And a shadowy priest-to-the-king called the Apparat who immediately reminded me of Grima Wormtongue. Even now I can't work out how good or evil he was, but he set off all my creep alarms immediately, mostly thanks to the line about him smelling "faintly of mildew and incense - like a tomb" - so well done there Ms Bardugo. And there's some class war stuff within the Grisha, but also between the Grisha and the regular population which I expect will be covered in the next book. And don't take too much notice of the Russian-esque names, because none of it is based on actual naming conventions in Russia (Alina Skarkov should be Alina Starkova for instance) but who really cares since it isn't actually set in Russia.

Shadow and Bone felt like so many other books out there (HP, LOTR, His Dark Materials, The Chrestomanci series to name a few) but it oddly didn't ever feel derivative to me. Yes there are similarities, and it definitely relied on YA standards for the plot and character types, but it felt more like a book by a woman who has read and learnt from these books rather than someone just converting fanfic to a manuscript. This might work against it since it isn't really anything new, but it also adds a certain warm familiarity to the characters, or a natural weariness to others. The writing and pacing is tight, the world is colourfully described and the shadow fold is a thing of nightmares. It's unlikely to become your favourite book, but if you're looking for some light YA fantasy to pull you out of a reading funk then this might be the book for you.


*Partly because it was so short/easy to read, part because I enjoyed it.

RIP VIII

A couple of years ago Tom and I walked through Bookfest with a copy of Stephen King's Danse Macabre and bought all the books that he recommended. Well, maybe not all of them, but we bought a lot. Needless to say, even though I loved adding 30+ horror titles to our bookshelves, I still have plenty of them sitting there unread. Enter RIP VIII! If it hadn't been for a miscommunication on Instagram where I thought Laura was saying RIP to books she was chucking away, I probably wouldn't have known about this event (or at least, I wouldn't have known about it until today when I saw everyone's posts for it), so I'm chalking that up to fate and that I HAVE to take part. Because even horror books get sad when they sit unread on shelves. 

Since it's over two months I'm going to aim for 'peril the first', which means you'll be seeing at least four horror book reviews up around here. Since my shelves are so well stocked with unread horror I'm not going to have a definite read list but I did put a photo on instagram of possible reads.

Ira Levin -Son of Rosemary*

Stephen King - The Dark Half

Joe Hill - 20th Century Ghosts

Clive Barker - The Hellbound Heart

Ramsey Campbell - The Doll Who Ate His Mother

Will Elliott - The Pilo Family Circus

Bram Stoker - Lair of the White Worm

Various authors - Horror omnibus

I'm going to try and keep it from becoming an all out Stephen Kingathon, so between every King book I'm going to read two non-king books. This way I'll get to read some Will Elliott, Clive Barker, Bram Stoker, Ramsey Campbell as well as the King. And because I'm a firm believer of 'go big or go home' I'm also going to take part in 'peril on the screen' and 'Peril of the short story' - that way I can also knock out a bunch of those unread horror anthologies and unwatched horror films that I keep buying. Two birds please meet one stone.

And since I know that a lot of you aren't as into horror as I am, I'm going to try and keep my regular non-horror reading up as well. I've got at least two non-horror reviews written and ready to publish, so even if I don't technically read any non-horror over the next two months it'll seem like I have. And if you do super-like horror and have been sad that I haven't posted more of it in the past, may I direct you to my actual horror blog? I've not been too good at updating it recently, but I think this might change that somewhat.

*This is supposed to be TERRIBLE, but I couldn't help myself.