books – Page 4 – Aphotic Ink: Words by Frances Rowat

August 17, 2013admin No Comments

Shock and silence.

Well, I submitted a story.

I… well, let’s be generous and say I haven’t done this much. I actually think I’ve submitted one story in the last two years, and not for years-that-get-into-double-digits before that and… well, let’s say I hold no malice whatsoever for the rejection and move along.

On a semi-related tangent: I keep using the phrase “mule puke” to refer to bad writing, as long as it’s my bad writing. “Oh god, I thought it was mule puke.” “It’s okay if this is mule puke, just keep typing. I can edit later.” “Why do I bother if it’s all mule puke?” This amuses me, a little, since I know exactly where I picked up the phrase–it’s from Dean Koontz’s Lightning.

This is a little funny, because… Seriously, I read that book about twenty years ago, it has twisty plots and dramatic death scenes and time-travelling Nazis, for crying out loud, and what do I remember? The author finding that her husband has gone out after reading her first novel and being convinced that it’s mule puke and he’s gone out to get enough liquid courage to tell her.

(He actually went out to buy her a (Lalique?) crystal bowl with leaping frogs for handles, which he was certain they could afford because her book was awesome and would sell millions. “Would you for god’s sake stop being the shattered young artiste and open your present?” He was right.)

August 9, 2013admin No Comments

Disconsolate but lovely.

The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories by Angela Carter

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

As usual, four stars is my “recommend to anyone who’d like the genre” marker, but I’m not sure what the genre is. Dark and lovely and exquisitely written adult fairy tales I suppose, although it feels a bit odd to call them adult. (I mean, there’s clearly sex going on, but it’s a little distant, hardly ever explicitly referred to, and the emotional entanglements and compulsions are sad and/or creepy four times out of five.)

(It reminds me of Engines of Desire: Tales of Love & other Horrors a fair bit, actually.)

Ultimately, I think it’s the sad distance in the tone of so many of the stories that keeps me from going for four stars; the writing was amazing and beautiful and evocative, but so many of the stories left me feeling a little like I was having a sad day, and couldn’t tell anyone why. Definitely worth looking at, if fairy tale retellings are at all your thing, but be warned of possible disconsolation.

Wow, I’ve been talking a lot about the stuff other people write here lately, haven’t I? Will try and mix that up a bit; starting to feel a little like an echo chamber.

August 6, 2013admin No Comments

Statistically, I give this rating to less than 3.5% of books I have rated.

A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is the story of a boy whose mother is sick, and the monster that comes to call.

It is a sad book, and a true one (in that it speaks a truth, not the truth; I think it is smart enough to realize that the topic it is addressing is not one it can fully dress down in words). I have not decided if it is a kind or a cruel book; if it is kind, it is a terrible sort of kindness.

I wrote, once, privately, seven-months-and-change ago, about how there is a dearth of narratives for accepting that you have finished grieving. This is not about that, but it speaks to the shunning–of aspects, of truth, of a person entire–that arises in response to apparently terminal illness, and I think the topics are related.

It strikes me as very worth reading, and I recommend picking it up most strongly.

July 29, 2013admin No Comments

I didn’t use to believe that the past could reach cold hands out towards the living…

Funnily enough, I used this for a post title nearly two years ago, too. It’s a line from Stephen King’s Christine, which I have been thinking about rereading lately.

Anyway. I’ve been thinking about Kyle Murchison Booth, a character from an interlinked series of stories written by Sarah Monette (many of which were collected in The Bone Key. I love the stories very much–they remind me of MR James–and I am just quietly amused that two fairly significant things didn’t occur to me on the first read-through.

(This may be a side-effect of going through them with great enthusiasm, and therefore great speed.)

First, the past is never kind to Booth (I think he may have actually been called Cousin Kyle in one of the stories, and I still can’t imagine doing it; he is Booth, to me, or Kyle Murchison Booth, but not Kyle). No-one who knew him from before, or who knew of him from before, ever seeks him out to do him good. There is Radcliffe, who is specifically a break with the patterns of the past, and did not go looking for Booth, and is very nearly still cruel to him anyway.

Second–and this is one the light of my life pointed out to me–the Samuel Mather Parrington Museum is not a safe place. It is haunted. But it is safe from other haunts. They may chase Booth, and they may press against the outside of his window, and they may wait for him at the bottom of its stairs… but they do not go into the Parrington.

Whatever walks there, walks alone.

May 24, 2013admin No Comments

Books, again.

I’ve been culling our bookshelves for a couple of weeks now. While I’ve collected a fair number to get rid of, perhaps fifty, it hasn’t made a huge difference. I have a lot of books. Most of them still aren’t in Goodreads (and I get that funny guilty twinge whenever it recommends a book I’ve already read and have on the shelves to me). And given that Goodreads lists about six hundred books on my “owned” shelf, and yes, I really did mean most of them still aren’t in the system…

…I have a lot of books.

It’s easier to cull them this time than it was in times before, and it’s nothing to do with not wanting to read. On top of the books, I have a particular attitude: I don’t want to be the kind of person who gets rid of a book. I have had this attitude for a long time.

I’ve had it since before we bought our house.
I’ve had it since before I rented my own place.
I’ve had it since before I moved out and went to university.
I’ve had it since before I went to boarding school in Switzerland[1], and that was for ninth grade.
Like some of the books I still own, I’ve had it since I lived in London as a kid.

I think it’s very easy to embrace absolutes when you’re a kid. And it’s easy not to question those absolutes, especially when they’re not overtly harmful. I don’t want to be the kind of person who lets go of a book. Because books are awesome, dammit. I mean, that hasn’t changed for me–books are amazing, books make me happy, new ones can be a wonder and old ones are a comfort and I don’t see this changing. I love (the best of) my books, and I love the idea of books, and I have a respect for the physical integrity of books (even ones I don’t like) that’s… quite hard to override.

When I developed this attitude, I didn’t understand certain things that I understand now.

The fact of limited space in housing, and how sheddy long-haired cats can be, and how books can pile up and collect dust.
Shared space, really shared space, and the importance of not having someone you live with made uncomfortable by your housekeeping.
The low-level cringe that a cluttered room induces.
The embarrassment of finding you already own a book you just got[2]–fortunately I’ve never bought one and had that happen, but there’ve been friend loans and library loans and… yeah, it’s not a good feeling.

I’m still not the kind of person who gets rid of books casually. But I don’t want to look at myself and say I’m the kind of person who won’t get a book out of her house if it’s making her unhappy to have it there. There’s nothing noble or devoted about that.

That’s damaging, albeit in a low-level constant-background what-weight-do-you-mean-oh-this-weight-I’ve-been-carrying-this-weight-so-long-I-don’t-hardly-notice-it-no-more, and I am, finally, too old for that shit.
—
[1] In a former tuberculosis sanitarium.
[2] This is totally different from buying a replacement for a battered copy, or deliberately picking up a second copy for love or loaning purposes. On this note, you should all read Days by James Lovegrove, Stand on Zanzibar by John Brunner, and Mystic River by Dennis Lehane. Seriously.

January 1, 2013admin No Comments

First book finished of 2013

Johnny Halloween: Tales of the Dark Season by Norman Partridge

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Perhaps oddly, I liked the one of the two straight-up non-supernatural stories in this collection the best. The titular “Johnny Halloween” is something I’d expect to run across in a decent noir anthology.

“The Man Who Killed Halloween” was well-done; it didn’t fit with what I was expecting from the book (non-fiction!), but it’s a decent and evocative piece. Together with Partridge’s introduction, it provides a thoughtful basis for the contrast between Ricks and the October Boy.

Actually, now that I’m thinking about it, this may be why “Three Doors” and “Treats” (which I’ve read before, along with “Black Leather Kites”) didn’t stand out for me quite as much, although they’re both good stories and would normally be the kind of thing I’d expect to be my favourites. The trio of Hallowe’en/Jack o’Lantern-titled pieces echo each other on the question of masks, and real monsters, and the deceit that lets the latter go unpunished, and their supporting each other makes them stand out above the rest.

(Please pardon the fact that this is both terse and a bit shaky; I’m trying to practice writing reviews, and I clearly need to practice writing reviews.)

December 23, 2012admin No Comments

/The Bleeding Edge/

The Bleeding Edge is a 2009 limited-run (500 copies) horror anthology published by Cycatrix Press. Since I’m having trouble writing, and managing to read, I thought I could at least use my reading as grist for some writing:

A solid collection with one weak point and a few very good ones. There was a distinct disunity of style and format (teleplays and scripts) that was actually rather appealing.

Monsters and monsters and monsters, oh my.

Dinner out tonight (was lovely), involving a fluffy drink and a wonderful lamb shank (which I think was actually a bit light on the thyme, but then I am very partial to thyme) and much discussion of the Laundry Files series by Charles Stross. It’s British humour/horror, involving a government organization defending the world from eldritch monstrosities which are attracted by complex equations. Like spells. Or mathematics. I’ve read the first book, three of the four short stories, and some notes. The first book is the rockiest, but I think that’s actually pretty common–I can’t think of a series where I recommend the first book written as a good place to start.

Except the Narnia books. (Even with The Lord of the Rings, I would not recommend starting with the first book of the series. I would recommend starting with the prequel–that is, The Hobbit–and just… trying not to think about the jolly elves.)

Stopped at Chapters on the way back. I picked up Dodger and The Killer Inside Me on the same trip and am mildly amused by the contrast.

In case of needing some assistance unwinding for the weekend, I have found that this image (completely work-safe!) is very helpful. May not be suited for ailurophobes, but then again, I don’t think I know any.

November 20, 2012admin No Comments

Black and white and read all over.

I noticed a certain common colouration in the books I had to hand:

Covers of /Lies and Ugliness/, /Bedlam/, /The Weird/, and /Breed/.

I’m cheating a bit with this picture, since both the hardback cover and the dustjacket of Breed are shown. (I took the dustjacket off because something about the paper just feels subtly repellant–some weird combination of sooty and greasy.) On the flipside, I’m not including The Rivals of Frankenstein, which continues the black-white-red theme, so it all balances if anyone’s keeping score, which I sort of doubt.

Am mildly amused by this, especially since the other books I am reading, or have just finished, or have just started, have a black-and-white thing going for the covers. (Apparently the subtraction of red takes you from horror to crime, who knew? Although Bedlam is an exception to that.)

Not feeling well today; I’m hoping it’s just after-effects of the flu shot, since those should clear up more quickly than anything I might have actually caught. Managed to get a little cleaning done, though, and get out of the house to pick up groceries and return library books. (Mildly annoyed that one of the books I have on hold has been in transit for just over a week, now, and is still not at the local branch. It’s a Lovecraft collection, so I suspect I could find the contents on Gutenberg, but I find I really prefer physical copies of anthologies and collections. Screens and ereaders work best for single works, for me–novels or novellas or standalone short stories, any length is fine, just not several short stories.

Probably turning in early tonight; the nap after the vet’s was nice, but I’m still wiped.

September 17, 2012admin 1 Comment

Ignorance and mass media.

My ignorance, to be clear. That title sounded a lot less snippy in my head.

Rather quick, rather flip notes, as I down coffee before work…

First; There are movies I haven’t seen. Quite a lot of them. Two that came up this morning were Scarface and Johnny Got His Gun (because the morning drive music included “Jack Sparrow” and “One”).

What else am I missing? What movies are really worth seeing (and trust me, the expectation that I’ve already seen it is not to be trusted)?

Second; So I’m on goodreads (as that widget in the lower right-hand corner may have indicated). It allows for a five-star rating system, and for me that basically seems to boil down to (1) I’m rating this because I want to establish I thought it was terrible, not that I just didn’t bother to rate it; (2) pretty bad to not-great, but with redeeming moments; (3) decent way to spend some time; (4) everyone interested in the genre or subject matter should try reading this; (5) everyone should try reading this.

There’s a whole lot of things falling into the three-star category, including some things that I’m feeling a little bad about, because they’d be four-star books if five-star ratings weren’t reserved for truly amazing things. And I’m wondering if I should reorganize, give everyone-should-try-this books their own shelf and stretch my ratings out so that there was a middle ground between “decent” and “everyone interested in the genre or subject matter should try reading this”.

I may be putting a bit too much thought into this, but I wondered.