Well and so! Every year over on Goodreads I pledge to read a certain number of books; last year, for example, I shot past my goal of 75–with a total of 91 books read! This year I was lazy and just went for 50.
I’m at 43 books read now, so I thought I’d make a mini goal (I’m sort of thinking about it like a side quest…like maybe stopping in at the Gold Saucer in FF7). At any rate, my mini goal, if you’re interested–or, if you’d like to join me– is old school summer reading, like they gave you in high school. Over the next three months, that is to say, what’s left of June, July, and August, I shall read twenty five books! And FYI, graphic novels and small books of poetry totally count.
Of the titles I’ve read so far, I’ll share several favorites with you; I loved these books so much, in fact, that I am having a hard time coming up with a few words to say about them. It’s funny, if I hated them I’d be at no loss for scathing thoughts and unkind things to share (which is kind of shitty and I am trying to be better about such this.) But with something I truly love? Language fails me and I can’t even give you the slightest detail. But I will tell you that there are thrilling tales of terror and adventures, and people who look like monsters and monsters who look like people, and romantic love and self love, and sadness and shame and fury, and loads to think about.
Fingersmith by Sarah Waters // Bad Feminist by Roxane Gay // Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman // Borne by Jeff Vandermeer // My Favorite Thing Is Monsters by Emil Ferris // Saga by Brian K. Vaughn and Fiona Staples // Bird Box by Josh Malerman // and a graphic novel adaptation of Octavia Butler’s Kindred by Damian Duffy
But now…off to bet on the chocobos in Chocobo Square! Er, I mean…off to read some of my side-quest books, a few of which are pictured above. I am especially looking forward to Gilded Needles (which Kate and Jack will be talking about soon on Bad Books For Bad People), as well as Black Hole.
What are your reading goals this year, if you have any? Were there any titles you particularly enjoyed? Do you have any summer reading planned? I want a full report!
Curious about my reading challenge in previous years? 2016 // 2015
✥ comment
Sturdy spines enveloping stories and secrets yet untold, gilt-embellished covers, glimmering and hinting at undiscovered worlds, the rasp of papery promises as one by one the pages turn and the tale unfolds! No one, I think, has a better understanding of how to create the perfect vessel for these mysteries and adventures, than Nate McCall of McCall Company.
In case you missed it last month, and of interest to bibliophiles, bookbinders, and lovers of beautiful things: my recent interview with Nate McCall of McCall Company from Haute Macabre.
✥ comment
It’s that time of year again. “Beach Reads” lists are making the rounds, and no doubt they’ve got all the bestsellers: feel good books with inspirational titles, geopolitical tracts, pop-culture rags, and action hero stories. And you know, there’s nothing wrong with any of that. I’m not here to shit on things that other people like! But there’s also nothing wrong with you, if those books just aren’t your bag. If you are anything at all like me, you’ve a melancholic disposition and you prefer your choice of reading material to reflect your morose, sometimes maudlin mindset.
It’s June. It’s inevitable. Some of your normie friends are probably going to invite you on a picnic or to a day at the beach, and hey– having friends is great. It’s difficult to make friends and maintain friendships if you’re a weirdo introvert reader who sometimes prefers pages to people; but you understand the power and importance of human connections, and you actually like spending time with these people even if they abnormally revere the sunlight and sometimes listen to Top 40.
You know they’re going to gently poke fun at your perilously overstuffed black tote bag when you show up for the party, but you also know that no one’s going to give you a hard time when you slink off behind a shadowed sand dune for some peace and quiet to dig into that book stack that’s been calling your name for the past hour while you were catching up and eating vegan hot dogs or whatever your friends are into. You might be an anti-social weirdo, but you don’t pass up free food!
What’s in my bag this year? Well, firstly, I don’t necessarily believe that newer is better, so I may have a few titles that were released more than a few years ago. Hell, maybe the authors are even dead! That’s okay. Nothing wrong with contemplating your own mortality on a sunny, cloudless, midsummer afternoon.
Secondly, while these are all either bleak or dreary, that has nothing to do with how good they are. Each of these titles, in my opinion, are thoroughly engaging, compelling reads–they’re not merely good, they’re pretty fantastic. There’s just not going to be many chuckles of mirth while you’re reading them (okay, except maybe for Megahex). You might find that you have actually forgotten to smile after you’ve finished them (maybe especially with Megahex). That’s fine, you’re fine. Our friends are like, twenty feet away and they’ve just made a pitcher of margaritas and we can drink until we forget.
But for now, let’s wallow.
The Late Works of Margaret Kroftis, a novella by Mark Gluth, is a series of vignettes, a chain of separate lives connected by death. Themes of loss and grief and daydreams and stories within stories within stories. It begins with a personal tragedy in the titular Margaret’s life and chronicles the heartache and sorrows that follow the other characters as the book progresses. Written in spare, atmospheric, dreamy prose that simultaneously breaks your heart and leaves you sighing wistfully the whole time, you will recommend The Late Works of Margaret Kroftis to every bookworm you know but then too late you realize your suggestion should have come with a trigger warning. Steel your sweet hearts–devastatingly beautiful and seeping with insidious sadness, this is a rough one for sensitive readers.
In the reading of Caleb Curtiss’ A Taxonomy of the Space Between Us, you will become aware of what it means to be close to someone and to also be very far away from them. Written in the aftermath of Curtiss’ sister’s death, these are poems attempting to make sense of moments and memories, loss, and lost time. Radiant elegies that present as both revelatory and contradictory in the way that grief, when distilled and examined, can both clarify and confuse–especially when stalked at the periphery by ghosts. Hug your beloved sibling after you read this and remember that your life and everything you know in this world can change in the blink of an eye, in a heart beat, and we will never have all the time we need with those we love.
True, The Tenant, a surrealistic, psychological nightmare by French writer, illustrator, and filmmaker Roland Torpor was originally published in 1964, but, with themes of alienation and pervasive loneliness while living in close quarters with other jerks in an urban environment, it seems astonishingly relevant today. The story follows Trelkovsky, a seemingly average guy, who moves into the recently vacated apartment of a female suicide. Hilarity ensues! Not really. With an atmosphere awash in suspicion and paranoia, we watch our protagonist travel an almost pre-determined path from obsession and existential crisis to sociopathic misanthropy and madness. Your shitty neighbors won’t seem nearly so bad after reading The Tenant, I assure you.
Megahex by Simon Hanselmann follows the darkly humored, depressing as hell, and sometimes pretty fucking disgusting stories of ennui-infected, perpetual stoner witch Meg and her cat familiar/lover Mogg, along with their various degenerate friends. This collection of strange beings, despite their otherworldly appearances, spend their time engaging in mostly mundane rather than magical activities, consisting mainly of dopey shit and bad decisions. Intensely relatable, frequently hilarious, and surprisingly poignant–while reading it, I at one point found myself quietly weeping, without even realizing it.
House of Psychotic Women by Kier-La Janisse is an “autobiographical topography of female neurosis in horror and exploitation films,” that, despite its title, doesn’t read at all as a dull, dense treatise on horror theory–and it is not exactly criticism so much as it is intensely enthusiastic film appreciation. An examination of neurotic, hysterical, and oftentimes bonkers bat-shit crazy women in genre film, interwoven with fascinating autobiographical elements that parallel her own, often troubled past, Kier-La Janisse’s House of Psychotic Women is an accessible, powerful, utterly unique creation, and undoubtedly the exact opposite of a fun, light-hearted beach read.
(This article was originally posted at Dirge; the site is no longer active.)
✥ comment
I have been stricken by a sudden sickness; a miserable spring cold that arrived out of nowhere and has rendered me scratchy-throated, fuzzy-brained, and with a wretched, wracking cough. All I want to do is put on some fuzzy socks, curl up under the covers and prop myself up on a fluffy pillow, sip a lemony hot toddy, and lose myself in the restorative properties of good book. And if I’m not cured by the last page, well, at the very least, I’d like to think that from these beloved books and treasured tales, I will have been inspired in some small way.
Sometimes my mind wanders as I am reading, and I find myself wondering all kinds of ridiculous things. But things which certainly require answers, I am sure you will agree! What sorts of clothes were the tenants from the grotty apartment building wearing, in that thoroughly unsettling tale? What sort of fabulous frocks might the witches from that mystical manifesto caper and cavort in? Did that invisible wind-based demon who tormented lonely travelers wear a sweater to keep warm?
See below for the culmination of these feverish thoughts involving sartorial suggestions for selected sick-bed stories. Some of them, because my nonsense cannot be contained, even have accompanying soundtracks!
As, always, click the image for a detailed listing of the items used, and links to books and texts and music have been provided as well.
What Is A Witch by Pam Grossman and Tin Can Forest
Salt Is For Curing by Sonya Vatomsky
“Near Zennor” by Elizabeth Hand (in the collection Strange Errantry)
Near Zennor playlist on 8tracks
The Tenant by Roland Torpor
The consistency of empty space playlist on 8tracks
Revenants by Daniel Mills
Don’t you recognize your own daughter? playlist on 8tracks
The Sea Priestess by Dion Fortune
The tides of all men’s souls belong to me playlist on 8tracks
“The Carrion Gods in their Heavens” by Laird Barron (in The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All.)
In a voice rusty and rugged playlist on 8tracks
“The Birds” by Daphne du Maurier A madness seized them playlist on 8tracks
The House On The Borderland by William Hope Hodgson
That fragment of ruin playlist on 8tracks
“Into The Woods” by Robert Aickman (in the collection The Wine Dark Sea)
It is something I have long known playlist on 8tracks
“The Wendigo” by Algernon Blackwood
The merciless spirit of desolation playlist on 8tracks
Wanna see some more ridiculous ensembles? Go nuts!
👁🗨 How To Wear: A Winter Getaway
👁🗨 How To Wear: Your Favorite Horror Film
👁🗨 How To Wear: The Arts
👁🗨 How To Wear: The Spring Equinox
👁🗨 How To Wear: The Winter Solstice
👁🗨 How To Wear: The Autumn Equinox
👁🗨 How To Wear: A Jean Rollin Film
👁🗨 How To Wear: A Gothic Romance Novel
👁🗨 How To Wear: Your Favorite Tarot Deck
👁🗨 What To Wear Upon Greeting Death
👁🗨 How To Wear: A Melancholic Holiday
👁🗨 How To Wear: A Date With A Monster
👁🗨 How To Wear: Dramatic Jewelry
👁🗨 How To Wear: A Tee Shirt
✥ comment
I don’t know how spooky I was as a small child. Not very, I guess. My cousin’s KISS posters scared me so badly that she would have to shut her bedroom door so that I couldn’t see her walls when I was in the house; the monsters of the week on Scooby Doo gave me nightmares (even though they were usually, like, old man McGillicuddy under a mask or something), and I had actually a fit of hysterics after a particularly upsetting episode of Benson with a dream sequence murder. Scary things and monsters were not my bag until all of a sudden they were. And then, hoo boy. It was vampires and werewolves and zombies and elder gods and Lovecraftian horrors 24/7. And I still haven’t grown out of it.
Russel Nohelty, publisher of Wannabe Press (a small press that makes “weird books for weird people”) has a similar fierce love for the monster in all of its myriad forms. You might even say he’s a bit obsessed with them — psychological monsters, horrific monsters, religious monsters, mythological monsters, fantastical monsters, and everything in between. He’s never met a monster he didn’t like.”What if,” he thought, “I went to my favorite creators, ones that I knew loved monsters as much as me, and put together an amazing monster anthology where all of us could tell our favorite monster stories? It would be a love letter to monsters.”
Created by monster-lovers for monster-lovers, Monsters and Other Scary Shit celebrates everything awesome about monsters. And when else to present to the world your glorious ode to the things you love best in life? Valentines Day, of course! Monsters and Other Scary Shit was launched via Kickstarter on February 14th, Valentine’s Day 2017. (The campaign has reached its goal, but runs until April 7th–so there’s still time to grab a copy for yourself, and to fill that monster-shaped hole in your own heart.)
The 224-page monster anthology is organized and edited by Russell himself, is printed on high quality, glossy art paper and bound in beautiful hardcover, with cover art by Aaron Alexovich, indie comic creator and artist for Invader Zim. The comics are “…written and illustrated by one of the thirty different professional teams who have credits ranging from Marvel, DC, Vertigo, Oni, and Image, to brands like Star Wars, The Simpsons, Transformers, Invader Zim, and more. ” As well as an entry from Unquiet Things favorite, Christie Shinn!
Even though monsters are in every form of storytelling on the planet, they are often lumped into the horror genre. But monsters are so much more than horror. They are sci-fi, fantasy, comedy, drama, and everything in between. Notes Russell, “I love monsters because they can represent ANYTHING. They can represent people, places, things, or ideas. You can use them to tell a deep story or a fun one. I love Monsters Inc as much as I love Hellraiser, and I wanted to curate and anthology that showed my love of all types of monsters.”
The monstrosities that stalk these pages range from over the hill Sesame Street type monsters to demonic robot overlords to world-swallowing beasts; humorous and unsettling and sometimes creepy as hell, there is literally something in here for everyone. In reading through the tales, there are quite a few that I would have liked to continue reading, there was a definitely feel that there was more story to be explored; some that felt just exactly right, and of course, as in all anthologies, there’s always a few that left me scratching my head, or simply ambivalent. On the whole, though, I am reminded of two other somewhat monstrous anthologies that I’ve read in the past few years and found myself enjoying–The Sleep of Reason and The Other Side: An Anthology of Queer Romance …so, if either of those titles appealed to you, you’ll probably dig Monsters And Other Scary Shit, as well!
See below for a handful of images from the book, and get on over to the Kickstarter page for more details and a closer look!
✥ comment
: Over at Haute Macabre you can peek to see what Samantha, Erin, Maika, Sonya and I have been reading over the past 28 days! While I thrilled to every word of one of the books I read, the other piqued my ire frequently. Curious as to my thoughts? Visit Haute Macabre to read more! And be sure to tell me what you’ve been reading, in the comments.
{image: Bill Crisafi for BloodMilk Exquisite Corpse “The Comfort of Dust”.}
…and also, while we’re at it, Haute Macabre rolled out my favorite new feature this evening, in which we all blather on about the sounds we currently have on heavy rotation:
{art provided by Becky Munich}
✥ comment
{In which I am pleased to introduce a new monthy (ish) feature wherein my sister writes about a book we have read for our “sister book club”. Full disclosure: I just got this book from the library today. Don’t laugh! I’ll be better prepared next month. In this month’s discussion we are featuring Susan Hill’s Howards End Is on the Landing: A Year of Reading from Home. We hope you will join along!}
In less than a month, I will be moving to a new place, and so will be packing up about 20 boxes of books. As I do, I know I will come across several titles that I think, “Why haven’t I read that yet?” or “Why am I still hanging on to this?” And then I’ll toss the books into their respective boxes and dutifully lug them to my new home, unpack them, and completely forget about them for another year or so.
I’m not the only one guilty of this–talented and successful author Susan Hill (whom you may know as the author of The Woman in Black, which was then made into the movie starring Harry Potter) went on a hunt through her house one day, attempting to locate one book, and came across several others, long forgotten, instead. Then and there, she promised herself to only read what books she already had, for one year. No shopping, no libraries, nothing new. Just pillaging from the previously-purchased piles. And thusly was born the premise for Howards End Is on the Landing: A Year of Reading from Home.
Now, I don’t know about you, but I am a voracious acquirer of books. Fortunately for my wallet, I work at the Library, so I check out most of the books. Yet for every one book I check out and read, there are two more that I check out and don’t read–my eyes are bigger than my stomach (or perhaps, my brain) so back to the library those unread books go. However, from time to time, I still do purchase, or am gifted, a book. And I KNOW Eldest buys far more books than she has the opportunity to read. Ergo, we can relate to Susan Hill’s situation. Excitedly, I texted Eldest, and before long, we had hatched a plan (bringing Middle into it, of course) to read it together and discuss it. You know, like a long-distance book discussion group on Skype. With wine, of course.
I cannot place too fine a point on this: I love books. I love reading. There may, in fact, be little else in the world I love to do more than read. Unless it’s wandering around in Half-Priced Books, my library (or any library, really), or Barnes and Noble. Or talking about books. Or meeting a favorite author. Do you see a theme emerging? So to read a book about books and reading…and then to talk about it with my sisters? WITH WINE, OF COURSE. Holy cow.
And what a book this is! Susan Hill is a damned fine writer, particularly if you are a reader who enjoys descriptive writing. Consider the line from page 11:
“Now on a golden day in late September, I took two books out to a deckchair in the garden, The first apples were thumping down. The last swallows were dipping and soaring, dipping and soaring over the pond. A dragonfly hovered, its electric-blue back catching the sunlight.”
It’s not all fun and games and a bucolic English idyll, no fears on that count…
“Outside my window, the trees are bare. It is early dark but a silver paring of moon is bright in the sky, with a thousand frosty stars. The air smells of cold. A fox barks from the field.
Dickens for winter.
Throw another log on the fire.”
A memoir of books and reading books. A book about books. (I think this is where I insert a sentence with the word “meta” in it, but let’s just skip that part, okay? Oh, wait…) Some of the books that Hill reads, she has actually read before, and so she plunges headfirst into her recollections of them, and so it is that we are immersed in the literary world of London in the 1960s, and what a world it is. With a vague sense of giddy voyeurism, I found myself immersed in a London library, nodding somberly to E.M. Forester and C. Day Lewis as Hill runs into them in the stacks.
Towards the end of the book, my attention started to lag, perhaps due to my anxiety that the book was overdue. (Hehehe, the irony, had I purchased this book!) And it seemed like this was a book that was less about the year Hill spent reading and more about the role books and authors have played in her life. You come away asking yourself questions like: What are the 40 books YOU could not live without? If you had to write up your life story, framed by books that you read at various times in your life, what would the books be, and how do they relate to your life at that time?
Ultimately, I found this to be a thoughtful, descriptive meditation on the reading life–a memoir of a life in books.
✥ comment
At Haute Macabre this week, I talk about some very important things: my cookbook collection. Let no one say that I don’t have my priorities straight!
TL;DR The cookbooks listed in this article are: Feeding Hannibal: A Connoisseur’s Cookbook, Damn Fine Cherry Pie: And Other Recipes from TV’s Twin Peaks, Death Warmed Over: Funeral Food, Rituals, and Customs from Around the World, The Decadent Cookbook: Recipes of Obsession and Excess, Death & Co. Classic Modern Cocktails, Chas Addams Half-Baked Cookbook, The Dark Shadows Cookbook, Son of the Martini Cookbook
✥ 6 comments
Currently I am having a rough go of it. I find myself shuffling from one end of the house to the other, without thought or purpose or even memory of doing so. I cannot focus or concentrate, so work is all but impossible, and yet I haven’t taken any time off, either. I find it difficult to justify time off when I already work from home, you know? So I’ve just been sitting at my desk, dazed, thoughts both a million miles away and no where, and desperately hoping that the phone does not ring. Inevitably it does. And so, a week has passed since we lost our Mawga.
“A readjustment of reality, ” is how a friend summed up some of what I am feeling. I spent so many years worrying and fretting over my grandmother, paying her bills, keeping up with her house, handling all the what-ifs and emergencies as they arose, paying her a visit after work every day…now that I no longer have these things to do (these things that sometimes I was honestly quite bitter and resentful of) I am feeling unmoored, adrift, purposeless. Instead of having to sneak my knitting or reading into spare pockets of time, stolen and emptied from other portions of my life, I now am at leisure to do these things as I please. But for the moment (and I do know it is a momentary, passing thing) …I just …can’t.
But I do feel the compelling, compulsive need, as I do every month, do vaguely document the things I have been doing–and so to keep to a routine and regain a sense of normalcy, here is some photographic evidence that there was life and liveliness over the past month. And I suppose, even though it doesn’t feel like it now, there will be again.
A fantastic box of Vegan Treats morbid chocolates from my beau. This has become our Valentine’s Day tradition. Somehow we manage to make these delectable morsels last a month or more; I think three years in, we have managed to become pros at it.
Also honor of Valentines madness and treating myself, I took a break from the No-Buy to grab the Fire Walk With Me soundtrack from Mondo and this gorgeous antique print of The Young Widow by Henry Hutt.
A few weekends ago we sat in the afternoon sun and planted all kinds of seeds–marigolds, morning glories, carrots, radishes, squash. It will be a miracle if any of them make it. I also planted a few little succulents in the hollowed dome of this cranial planter, an osteological-inspired marvel sculpted by the phenomenal Kermit Tesoro.
Last Saturday I got my got my bangs cut. My hair has been all one-length for the past twenty years, so this is a weird adjustment. And I probably won’t keep it this way forever (sweaty humid bangs on my forehead in July? Ugh) but for now, I think I really dig it. It’s got a sort of Stevie Nicks or Ann & Nancy Wilson vibe. And it’s certainly an improvement on this, a photo which was taken a day or so before the big chop.
Currently reading Something In The Blood: The Untold Story of Bram Stoker. I was so excited to read about the author of my very favorite novel, but I am finding that while it is not dry reading, exactly, it is certainly dense and packed with information and taking me a rather long time to muddle through. Much more than just a biography, it immerses the reader in the culture and the history of the Victorian era, encountering various celebrities and characters along the way. It’s enjoyable, it really is…but there’s just so much of it. I broke up the monotony of it with Fingersmith by Sarah Waters, which is something I’d been meaning to read for awhile as I loved all of her other books, but for whatever reason, I’d never gotten to it. After reading a few chapters I was sorely lamenting watching Chan Wook Parks film adaptation of it, The Handmaiden, just last year. It was exactly the same story (but you know, London, instead of Korea) and I knew what to expect! I was disappointed that I already knew the twists and turns before they could surprise me. Ahhh, but not so. I read on and after a while I was glad of having seen the film first. And I ended up adoring the book as much as the film. I cannot recommend them highly enough. Make them both priorities on your to-watch/to-read lists.
One word movie reviews!
Absentia–maybe (on amazon prime)
Trouble Every Day–perhaps (on amazon prime)
Blair Witch–skip
The Love Witch–Yes
The Editor–YES
The Village–ugh
VHS–probably (on netflix)
The OA–absolutely (on netflix)
✥ comment
Somehow the last month, give or take a few days, feels several decades long. I suspect that has much to do with the upheaval of the holidays; we hosted my beau’s family for Christmas this year, so I believe there were at least two weeks alone which were lost to the commotion of getting our slovenly butts in gear to make the place look presentable and figure out how to cook a dang prime rib. (If you’re curious, we served prime rib with roasted asparagus, garlic-parmesan mashed potatoes, and creamed spinach, and if I don’t have to do that again for another year, that will be fine with me.)
Also, I have never had a holiday thing/event/whatever in my own home, so I was freaking out. Quite honestly, I had volunteered responsibility for the holiday dinners because I was tired of feeling awkward and out of place/in the way at someone else’s house. If I’m going to feel uncomfortable, I’d rather it be in the comfort of my own home, you know?
Houses were lit, skeletons and bats were fitted with Santa hats, and a thousand star cookies were born, only to die bravely in several gulps. I can say beyond the shadow of a doubt that I made the world’s most amazing gingersnap cookies and that may never happen again because I don’t remember which recipe I used. At Jack’s suggestion, though, I under-baked them, which did away with the menace of the tooth-breaking “snap” and produced a cookie that was intensely chewy and full of delectable spices. I suspect under-baking any gingersnap recipe will yield a far superior result.
This past weekend was a bit of a whirlwind. On Friday night I ventured into Orlando for dinner at Dandelion Cafe with some like-minded lady friends (whom I both met through Death Cafe!) and a jaunt to Etoile Boutique in the Milk District for the bloodmilk trunk show. It was so nice to meet the incredibly lovely Jess, whom I’ve known online for years now, as well as her whirling dervish, effervescent right-hand gal, Jen. And of course it was pretty spectacular to see glittering stacks of bloodmilk talismans and amulets on display. I may have purchased a thing. Okay…maybe two!
The next day I tagged along with my brother-in-law on some errands, during which we took a quick drive through Greenwood Cemetery which is utterly gorgeous, and which I had somehow never visited. Afterward we visited South Seminole Farm and Nursery and I poked along, haunting the herb shelves and spying on all the blooms and blossoms, while he checked out the boring stuff, like native ground cover.
On Sunday we went to Disney World. Though I am a FL resident now and have been for the better part of 30 years, I can count on one finger the times I have been to this theme park. When I was much younger, I was obsessed with it, and of course, with the various Disney princesses, but as I grew older I came to really resent it. Full disclosure: that was because I was a scumbag who was dating an even more horrible person who was married (with kids) and I grew to detest anything that smacked of Disney or children’s fantasy.
It took me several years to get over that. I’m still not super rah-rah jazzed about all things Disney, but I genuinely did have a wonderful time staying at the Polynesian resort, drinking all of the tiki drinks, watching spectacular night time fireworks across the water, and spending the next day eating too much sugar and going on all the rides with my Viking. I guess it all depends on who you spend your time with, right? And I have been spending time with this particularly excellent human for five years now (as of this Friday the 13th!) and that’s sort of what this trip was all about. I even got the sequined Minnie ears to commemorate the occasion! Although he’ll tell you it’s because he wanted to see robot-Obama speak before the Hall of Presidents is closed down for the next six months, but I know what’s what.
Currently knitting: the German doily inspired Blue Dahlia shawl. I’ve been coasting on socks and mitts for the past six months, so I thought I would start of the year with something a little more challenging and infinitely more fiddly. So far so good!
Currently reading: all of the library books! There’s this problem with borrowing library books, though. You can’t really read them at your leisure, so you either race through them, trying to finish them before the due date that you’ve already extended two or three times already, or you just let them pile up because you get involved in other things and then you must return them unfinished. There’s always one or two from my stacks that remains sadly unread and most likely not revisited.
I just finished The Magicians, which despite wanting to punch the main character in the face, I totally adored. There’s something about the magic of ordinary folks being transplanted into unfamiliar worlds that makes for some of my favorite storytelling. Unspeakable Things, though intensely edifying, is a bit of a slog, so I’ve been breaking it up with the equally feminist How To Be A Woman (which, while hilarious, it’s the sort of humor that might grate on one’s nerves after a while.) I also checked out every Carrie Fisher book that my local branch had to offer but so far I have only finished Wishful Drinking, which was a quick and wonderfully witty read. Note to self: still need to see her stand up version of this.
And of course, some one word film reviews. I am not sure how I got in so much in the way of movie watching since the 13th of December, but somehow there are 20+ titles on this list!
Beyond the Gates Yes (but mostly for Barbara Crampton)
Krampus Maybe
The Greasy Strangler DearGodNo (I didn’t even finish it)
Antibirth Yes!
The Magnificent Seven Maybe
Ghostbusters Maybe (don’t kill me, I didn’t love it)
SiREN Skip
The Autopsy of Jane Doe YES
The Handmaiden OMGYES
Fury Road HELLYES
Gone Girl meh
The Girl On the Train Maybe
The Good Neighbor Probably (it’s on netflix)
I Am Not A Serial Killer Definitely! (it’s on netflix)
The Fearless Vampire Killers Wheee!
Rusalochka Pretty! (it’s on youtube, in six parts)
Train to Busan Intense!
The Skeleton Twins yesyesyes
The Happening meh
Zootopia yes!
Tangled um (if you have mother issues, this is a little triggering)
Goosebumps hrm
✥ comment