Monday, October 2, 2017

Wake Me Up

When September ends (does anyone remember this song?)
  1. The Incorrigible Children of Ashton Palace: The Mysterious Howling by Maryrose Wood, illustrated by Jon Klassen
    • Alright, I admit it: the main reason I picked this up was because Jon Klassen illustrated the novel. But I'm glad I did! It's tongue-in-cheek, and while I never read the Series of Unfortunate Events, I'm willing to bet that this would be a pretty good read-a-like for those. I'm interested to see where this series goes with the mystery that surrounds Ashton place.
    • The children learning how to speak... well. Of course, there's a fantastical component to all this - it's a novel after all, and a children's one no less, which requires a certain suspension of disbelief (which Wood discusses within the novel!). I am willing to suspend my disbelief a while further and continue on this series!
  2. I Saw the Devil (2010)
    • Amazing film, but I lost interest somewhere halfway because it felt incredibly long (2.5 hours) and I was baking bread at the same time. I loved the cat-and-mouse dynamic, and was glad to see that Soo-hyeon didn't escape from his actions without any consequences, at the end. I'm confused as to the role of the wife of the second serial killer, who ate his victims, apart from having her there to throw Soo-hyeon off and have him injured, though.
  3. The Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place: The Hidden Gallery by Maryrose Wood, illustrated by Jon Klassen
    • Things are getting more interesting in this volume: Lord Frederick seems to be exhibiting signs of... wolfishness; the Lumleys are alive and sending mysterious postcards to their daughter, who happens to have the same shade of auburn hair as Agatha Swanburne and the three Incorrigibles. Then there's still the attic in Ashton place, as well as the Ominous Landscape painting in both Gallery 17 and in the attic, and what connection does Agatha Swanburne have with the Ashtons, the siblings, and the Lumleys? Then there's the fact that Judge Quinzy isn't a judge at all; and how does Madame Ionesco figure into the entire thing?
    • For all the excitement and action, though, I do hope that the children falling into every set-up (the Christmas party, the Pirates play) doesn't continue as predictably into the next couple of chapters. And this volume feels more like a setting up of all the mysteries, where the first book was an introduction to the main characters, so I'm looking forward to seeing how everything either comes together all at once, or is resolved volume by volume?
  4. The Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place: The Unseen Guest by Maryrose Wood, illustrated by Jon Klassen
  5. The Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place: The Interrupted Tale by Maryrose Wood, illustrated by Jon Klassen
    • Does Frederick remember that his father actually is Quincy, whom he had asked to impersonate his supposedly dead father? He seems to appear the rest of the night, so why is there some sort of selective recollection happening here?
  6. The Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place: The Unmapped Sea by Maryrose Wood, illustrated by Jon Klassen
    • Well I'm going to go ahead and assume Miss Mortimer is Penelope's mother. But does that mean the three Incorrigibles are her children as well? And that something's going to happen at sea to make them all turn back to England. As for how to make it so one of the branches of the family tree gets wiped out altogether so that only one remains, wouldn't marriage take care of that problem? There would only be one branch remaining, and it's far enough down the line that concerns of genetic similarities should no longer be an issue. I can't wait for the final installment of this series to come out next year!
    • Lord Frederick & Lady Constance's characters have changed quite a bit from the start, though not overly much, for which I'm glad. And Penelope & Simon are coming along well, too.
    • Wood's take on the drama and ridiculously complex love shapes (for they are usually in more complicated shapes than simply triangles, and don't always connect back to actually form a shape at all) was quite funny, in a good-humoured way.
    • I love that there are little lessons peppered throughout the books, such as a gentle reminder to actually read the terms of whatever contract you sign, as that became a rather major plot twist! All of the asides are quite amusing, too, the "as some of you might be aware" and the like.
  7. The Willoughbys by Lois Lowry
    • I'm not really feeling it for this one. Which is a pity, because this would probably have been a great read-a-like for the Incorrigible Children series. I think this story might have benefited greatly from choosing a specific old-fashioned story rather than a rickety amalgamation of a variety of what Lowry considers to be old-fashioned stories.
    • I actually just gave up on reading this. There's no two ways about it: it's boring. And there simply isn't enough time in a life to read everything that interests you, let alone books you have no interest in finishing!
    • There's an interesting article on LitHub: There's No Such Thing as Historical Fiction that seems to me to be related somewhat to what I'm thinking with regards to all these references to old-fashioned stories. They were just stories.
  8. Maresi by Maria Turtschaninoff
    • While it's great that Turtschaninoff doesn't turn away from the grim realities of what happens to women and children when invasions or surrenders occur, and there was certainly a huge sacrifice that Maresi had to give (almost, but not quite, her life) in order to play her part in saving everyone, I do think it all went a little too smoothly. The novel faces the difficulties and fears that accompany becoming an adult, replete with all the responsibilities that come with getting older, but having lived for four years at the Red Abbey, I kept feeling as though despite Maresi being only 13 years old, she really should be better equipped to handle emergencies. All the more since Mother herself informally asked her to take care of the children. I suppose it's more that the entire novel reads as though it's written for children (with an especially young teenage protagonist), but has content that's rather inappropriate for younger ages (e.g. burying people alive, rape, abuse). I wonder who the target audience is? Children? Teens?
    • I had some hopes that this was going to be a long series, with a number of different characters that make their own way in the world after leaving the Red Abbey, and then somehow merging together into one huge plot where these women are able to enact significant change in the outside world, but alas! According to Goodreads, Naondel, the next book of the series, serves as somewhat of a prequel to Maresi. It doesn't seem like it's going to go the way I hoped.
  9. Crimson Peak (2015)
    • Well that was terrifying.
  10. Bird Sense: What It's Like to be a Bird by Tim Birkhead
    • Birkhead does a wonderful job balancing results from scientific research with anecdotal evidence, either from himself or from others - in the field of ornithology or otherwise - all the while noting the progress in our understanding and knowledge of bird senses - what they are and how they differ from the "same" senses in humans - in (incredibly recent) history. I would recommend this volume in a heartbeat!
    • Personally, I would have preferred the book be a bit more in-depth, with even more references to further articles to look into, but that's not what Birkhead's objective is with this book, so he has done a wonderful job in rousing the curiosity and interest of the reader - me - in how birds experience the world around them. A similar book is The Thing with Feathers by Noah Strycker, which I've read many moons ago and which I wrote about in brief (a little too brief when I look at it now) in this post here.
  11. Waiting for Godot (Soulpepper)
    • I've owned a copy of the script for several years now, though I've yet to read it. From what I remember though, it's quite a slim volume, so how the play itself took place over 2hrs 40min with a 20min intermission is beyond me. Which is not to say that I didn't think the experience was worth it, so much as that it felt like the play was interminable, and I could feel myself wanting to nod off throughout. I suppose the audience is taken along for the ride waiting for Godot with Vladimir and the other guy. Golgo?
    • Was reading this article from Lithub about Waiting for Godot before I actually went to go see the play.
  12. Caniba (2017)
    • I tried; I really did. I had to leave around the one hour mark because I was about to faint, but not because the documentary was gory or what was being portrayed made me queasy: the entire film more or less being in closeups, many of the scenes unfocused, or focused but not really moving much (but not not moving) made me motion sick and I couldn't stay for the last half hour or so. I'm not sure what happens in that last half hour, so I don't think I can speak to this documentary, unfortunately.
    • On that note, I'm not sure if I made a note of Leviathan on this blog, but I did try to watch that as well, to no avail. I couldn't make it through for much the same reason, though I watched it at home, so I simply couldn't make myself sit still and watch it without going off for food or drink or just a change of visuals. The idea of both of these documentaries gets me really interested, and I want to watch them. I suppose there are just some things I'm not made to watch though.
  13. Crow Planet by Lyanda Lynn Haupt
    • The (admittedly self-imposed) weekly blogging deadlines for work are starting to creep up on me. In hindsight, I really should have read a few more books into the series before starting it, especially knowing that a series would have more than one book being featured (usually) per post, but I thought I'd be able to keep up! And that all of the books would just be available! Alas! Anyway, a few of the reviews/summaries in the series have already been based only on half-read or skimmed books, but this is the first post I'll be doing where I've really only read one or two of them and am basing another one completely off of Goodreads to do my virtual book talk (book write? I'm not really talking about it). Of course, I'm not even talking about this book in particular, because I could get my hands on this one, and I've read enough of it to give my impressions of it. I'm talking about Corvus: A Life with Birds by Esther Woolfson, which I'd love to read (truly), but we only have one copy and someone has it. I simply didn't plan far enough in advance, and it's killing me a bit inside. Anyway, back to the book at hand: Crow Planet.
      • I ended up not even writing about Corvus in any detail, only passing over it as a possible recommendation in place of Crow Planet for those interested in actually reading about crows, so phew!
    • Wow do I ever have some gripes about this book! For a book with a title like "Crow Planet", you'd expect the main subject to be crows, right? Not so! I'm almost willing to bet that Haupt could replace about 85~95% of the crow references with some other common bird seen around town, with some exceptions that are repeated a million times over the course of these 200 or so pages (e.g. crows specifically being native birds) and the overall book will remain unchanged. The subtitle of the book could become its main title and there will be much fewer complaints and disappointments all around.
      • In a later chapter, Haupt talks a bit about how vision is the main sense birds rely on, and that the reasoning that the robin cocks its head to hear the worms burrowing under the ground is pure myth: they are clearly looking for the worms, not listening for them. Which... after reading Bird Sense, makes all of the information Haupt presents a bit more suspect.
      • There's also the fact that I'm starting to think Seattle simply has more crows than Vaughan/GTA does, because no, I have never seen a crow suntanning. I've only ever encountered one murder of crows ever, and that's coming from someone who loves crows and looks out for them basically whenever I'm out and about. I've also never had crows drop their babies in front of me to watch my reaction, nor been dive-bombed during nesting season by crows (though I've been dive-bombed by an Arctic Tern in Iceland). Or perhaps the crows in Seattle are simply less cautious around people. I don't know.
    • Now in the author's defense: I understand where the one star comments are coming from on Goodreads, that complain about how this book is basically a book about Haupt and how she's holier than thou. But I don't think she takes it as far as these comments make it sound. Approaching this book as an exhortation to become an urban naturalist and to really notice and see what nature we have in the concrete jungles that are our cities will likely decrease the amount of ire a reader might feel towards Haupt and her seemingly mistitled book.
  14. She Persisted: 13 American Women Who Changed the World by Chelsea Clinton, illustrated by Alexandra Boiger
  15. I Am Not a Witch (2017)
    • What an amazing film! I got to hear a Q&A with the director, Rungano Nyoni, who said that she was aiming for a mix between the real and a fairytale, based upon Zambian fairytale structures. Part of me wishes that the witch camp portrayed was more true to life in terms of what was used to keep the women imprisoned and prevent them from leaving, but I do understand that it would have made the entire story rather difficult to understand.
    • So do they all become goats, or do they all die? Or do they simply cut themselves free and wander off to live in the world as people rather than as witches? And in a way, Shula did become the witch that the Queen heard about, that could bring about rain - it took her life, but the rain did come.
  16. We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson
    • More of the uncannily sinister story I have come to associate with Jackson based on the short story collection in The Lottery & Other Short Stories. This one read much like a fairytale, in a way that reminded me somewhat of The Little Girl Who Was Too Fond of Matches by Gaétan Soucy. I enjoyed it, but not quite as much as I thought I would - something about the ending didn't ring quite right, or rather it wasn't as complete as I wanted, I suppose? Though as it is, Merricat and Constance continue to live on in the dilapidated house, living off the guilt of the townspeople and becoming mythical characters insofar as tales associated with the town go, acquiring magical prowess, as though they were witches capable of enacting revenge when really they cannot even bring themselves to take a step outside.
  17. Shark Drunk: The Art of Catching a Large Shark from a Tiny Rubber Dinghy in a Big Ocean by Morten A. Strøksnes
    • Strøksnes takes you right on the trip with his friend Hugo as they make their way out into the Vestfjorden on their tiny rubber dinghy in their quest to capture a Greenland shark. I've got some reservations about capturing a creature that might have been living for the past few hundred or so odd years in the ocean (as Strøksnes himself notes), but you barely even get started on your moral high horse while reading this because that's not the point. The journey is what makes this book, not the end result.
    • Strøksnes is given to exploring varied ideas and taking us away from the actual sitting in silence beside one another inside the tiny rubber dinghy: he transforms what might otherwise be a rather boring narration of the events as they came to pass (consisting of many hours spent waiting for the Greenland shark to bite) into an opportunity to reflect upon their surroundings and the history behind both the place and what they are doing. The dynamic between Strøksnes and his friend Hugo is at times funny, at times illustrating perfectly how they complement each other to work their way to safety (though I suppose Hugo is doing the majority of the work when the snow obstructs their view after they went out on a bogged-down boat that they then filled up with cod), but I get the feeling it's a pretty accurate portrayal of their friendship: the comfortable silences, dry humour, and the realistic portrayal of the building up of tension between them as they have to stay on dry land, the boat out for repairs.
  18. It (2017)
    • This was scary.
    • What happened to all the children who floated back down, in the end? And do they represent all the children who weren't afraid of It? Or did he keep those children whom he ate as well, floating?
    • I felt like the little speech Bill gave to his friends about how if they don't do anything about it, they'll be just like the previous generation and everything will repeat itself, and how would they be able to live with themselves, came out a bit strong and in contrast with the rest of the film. I'm wondering if it was like that in the original, or if it's also in light of what's going on around the world that the message became a bit stronger?
  19. Eileen by Ottessa Moshfegh
    • This was... interesting. The back insert mentions how Moshfegh writes similarly to early Nabokov and Shirley Jackson, but I feel like it's quite a bit different from what I've read of Jackson. I don't know about early Nabokov writing, since I've only read Lolita, but with Jackson, what you get is more a surface look at what's happening, with the odd wrinkle here and there to let you know not everything is as it seems - or perhaps what strikes you as uncanny is that everything is precisely what it seems? - whereas with Moshefegh here in Eileen, you get an incredibly self-conscious narration by the titular character that you're not sure to trust fully precisely because of its self-consciousness. But that's exactly the part that feels true to life, because although Eileen might be more neurotic than many of us, there is something in it that still rings true. (Or perhaps it's just me and I'm revealing more than I realize?)
    • I'd probably put this in a list with Boy, Snow, Bird by Helen Oyeyemi; I'm pretty sure that I got all these titles (Flowers in the Attic/Petals in the Wind by V.C. Andrews being another of them) from a list either from Hazlitt or LitHub, so no wonder that I'd put them all together. Whether Jackson's novels would belong in the list, I think, is a decision more on the fence though. White Oleander by Janet Finch might also make the cut for a read-a-like, I think!

Working on:
  1. Birding with Yeats: A Mother's Memoir by Lynn Thomson
    • My first thoughts upon reading this were, in this order: 1) it's not quite the same Yeats I was thinking, and 2) oh dear. Is this boy going to be dead by the end of the memoir? Everything's written in such a way that his death seems a very real possibility.
  2. The Red Market: On the Trail of the World's Organ Brokers, Bone Thieves, Blood Farmers, and Child Traffickers by Scott Carney
  3. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson
    • Reading this on recommendation.
  4. Writing Reviews for Readers' Advisory by Brad Hooper (with a chapter by Joyce Saricks)
    • I know I've been writing reviews for a while, but most of them are for myself, really, to trigger my memory and my impressions. (That is to say: everything on this blog, in contrast to stuff I post on the library blog.) And while I do post regularly on the library blog, and make sure to modulate my voice so that it's less caustic and repetitive than one might find here, I couldn't not pick this publication up once I saw it!

Gave up!
  1. A Year On the Wing by Tim Dee
    • I'm not sure I'm ever going to pick up a book that has had comments of "lyrical prose" again for a while. I know I probably do the same thing in my own writing sometimes, but this was just overkill! I can't bring myself to finish it. Part of it is due to the writing, which isn't actually bad, just not for me right now, but part of it is also because I've got so many other books I've got to finish in order to keep up with the posts (for work) that I haven't got the time and leisure to read everything: there simply isn't enough time in a life to waste on books you don't truly want to read! Or so I feel right now.