Wednesday, November 1, 2017

(Not so) Spooky Reads

  1. The Red Market: On the Trail of the World's Organ Brokers, Bone Thieves, Blood Farmers, and Child Traffickers by Scott Carney
    • I didn't realize that the donation of eggs was meant to be an altruistic thing, and that people are only supposed to be compensated for their travel fees... I mean, did anyone actually think it was going to work that way? Honestly? Honestly. As a whole, I found the stories and information fascinating, and I agree with the afterword/epilogue, where Carney discusses how to move forward (either revise how we think about human bodies as essentially sacrosanct and free from commodification, or face the reality of altruism not quite abounding and change the regulations on how we compensate people for their organs), urging transparency above all.
  2. Writing Reviews for Readers' Advisory by Brad Hooper (with a chapter by Joyce Saricks)
    • I'm quite motivated at this point to revisit all the reviews I've done for the library over the course of this year (or thereabouts) and - for lack of a better word - review them all for myself. One of the things I'm terrified of finding is the dismissiveness or sarcasm Hooper advises against, though I generally try to avoid it, as I'm sure it does slip through.
    • Truth be told, I think most of this was not new to me, apart from maybe the audiobook section, and that's mostly because I simply don't listen to audiobooks, thus not having created an opportunity for myself to review one before. It's nice to see it in writing though, laid out in terms that are simple to understand, with exercises and examples of both good and bad reviews.
  3. Candy: A Century of Panic and Pleasure by Samira Kawash
    • This has been on my list for a while, and it seemed thematic given October.
    • The tongue-in-cheek style Kawash writes in is such a great fit for the subject matter, and the text moves inexorably forward through the century as perspectives on candy change, doing a 180, then seeming to repeat history all over again this second century's worth of history in the making around.
      • Before there was the fear of poison candy that had been tampered with being handed out on Halloween, there was the fear of "poison candy" that came with the unease accompanying the rise of industrially produced food - and alongside that fear, the propagation of headlines that were unproven, but made to play with existing suspicions about candy and its wholesomeness or purity. Kawash points out that the $100 prize for bringing to light an undeniable case of candy causing death went unclaimed throughout all these headlines claiming yet more children had died and the culprit was candy, and notes that in more recent times (1984, so not quite so recent - not sure whether times have changed and the dangers have become ever more real or simply the paranoia), there was simply no evidence to show that Halloween candy had been tampered with by people handing them out; in fact, she presents two cases where the children themselves are the ones making their candy poisonous or dangerous (one involving ant poison and the other a pin in a Tootsie Roll (p.274)).
      • I never knew how much of the food we consume is actually just corn or corn derivatives, and I think Kawash actually makes a pretty good point about candy at least being upfront about being of no particular nutritional value.
    • As a whole, I found this history quite comprehensive in that Kawash doesn't just present the history of candy as separate from its context, but goes into detail about the times and the perceptions, and how those perceptions changed throughout the years. The war between Lucky Strikes and the candy industry was quite amusing, and the overview of how current Halloween traditions came to be was new to me. (No one that I know of would be prepared if they rang up a house and the occupant say they would prefer a trick than give a treat to appease the trick-or-treaters.)
  4. 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.
    • That's what I wrote last month. And now that I've finished the memoir, I can actually say that #2 felt like it would happen even towards the very last chapter. In a way, I suppose the Yeats we meet at the beginning - the child - no longer exists, and Thomson does seem to mourn the loss at the end, though at the same time taking some measure of calm in knowing that he's simply finding his own way in the world and gaining independence, but it kind of felt like we were gearing up towards a moment at the end of the book where, when Thomson reminisces about the two anniversaries, you feel as though one of them would be the death of Yeats.
    • I really had to push myself to finish this, in part because I had already written a review about it and I felt as though my work was done, but also because at some point halfway or maybe about two thirds of the way in, it felt like a laundry list of things Thomson had done and seen. There was too much of a remove: it felt as though she wasn't really writing about her own life from her point of view, despite the intimacy it appears to provide to the reader. According to a friend who has seen her in person - I believe at a book talk? - she speaks in much the same way as well, so perhaps I shouldn't feel that it's suspect.
    • Those parts where she talks about George, the birding guide, seem to give ever more credence to - wherever I read it - the disappearance of middle-aged women in the public sphere, or perhaps it was in literature? It's as though women, once they hit a certain age, cease to exist in and of themselves, taking on roles in which they are identified in relation to someone or something else (e.g. a husband, a child, their work), rather than being seen as themselves.
  5. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson
    • I almost quit after 20 pages in. I kind of wish I did? The writing's just not quite up to snuff, the issue in part I'm assuming due to translation, but in a word or two, the writing is boring. Dull. There were a few different threads that came together and once the investigating part came into full force and things started popping up, I did enjoy the pace, but there were a lot of things that smacked of a lack of revision to me. There were also the million Vangers that you had to keep track of - maybe it's just me, but when no one stands out in particular and all the introductions are being made over the course of maybe a page or two, it's kind of difficult to remember who's who.
      • Again, a matter of translation, I'm assuming (or hoping, rather, I suppose): the repeated use of the word "retard" or "retarded". This wasn't published that long ago, and I'm about certain that it wasn't politically correct when it was published. And there's no good reason for the use of that (rather outdated) term, either, which is what really rubs me the wrong way: if there were a good reason for it, like maybe if the entire novel was set a number of decades back when that was the term the psychiatric community used, then at least I'd understand.
      • Then there's also what appeared to me like blatant advertising for certain things, like the iBook and Photoshop? Or maybe Larsson just wanted to show that he knew what he was talking about? Not sure. Maybe it's a matter of a lack of editing.
    • I feel like this entire novel is in part a critique of Swedish society, especially because the parts are all introduced with a statistic about women being subjected to abuse in Sweden, but I don't think Lisbeth's character does a good job in that regard (if that's the aim).
      • I'm still confused as to why the entire thing with Bjurman and why it was necessary to include that scene? I guess it helps cement the idea that Lisbeth doesn't take any shit from anyone, but I mean... that's such a strong scene that it really needs another tie-in. Maybe that comes in the later books?
    • Can we talk about why Lisbeth had to fall in love with Blomkvist? Honestly? Honestly. And that ending? (I realize it's a series, but that ending is still reminiscent of a high school creative writing assignment. By which I don't mean to demean high school writers so much as to suggest it's juvenile.)
      • Why is Salandar so undeveloped as a character? It's like Larsson had to have her as this fantasy female character - you never get the feeling that she could be anything close to real. There's no fleshing out of her character, and what character development does happen is still flat.
    • Vanger's obsession over the years of detailing one specific day in which a possible murder happened reminded me greatly of Uncle Julian from We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson. Except nothing else in this novel is quite as good.
  6. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2009)
    • I watched the Swedish one since I was told it's better than the English one, and given my not-so-glowing review of the book it's based on, I figured I should go for as good as it got. Fortunately, the movie rounded out a lot of the things that made the novel such an abject horror to trudge through:
      • They're no longer advertising specific hardware or bragging about their knowledge: the Mac is just there, no explanation needed, and the explanation about how much film reporters went through was given by a character rather than through the narration.
      • A lot of unnecessary details are cut out, such as the whole thing with Cecilia Vanger. By the way, in the novel, Cecilia was supposed to look a lot like Anita, who in turn was supposed to look a lot like Harriet. Except no one notices the similarities between all three of them and makes any connections? Let's talk about overlooking details.
      • A lot faster paced, and it focused on the investigation.
        • Many of the digressions or subplots (e.g. Millenium & Vanger dealing, Cecilia Vanger arc, etc.) were skipped, and everything came together a lot better than in the novel.
      • Lisbeth is a much more fleshed out character in the movies. Whereas in the novels, I almost want to say she almost presents as a fetishized character (doll-like, thin, looks prepubescent, badass with emotional scars... need I go on? I don't know if the tropes existed before this character, but in written form, she just doesn't work well, at all. Might be translation; might be Larsson's writing.) I suppose the director also had the benefit of having access to all three of the books, so they were able to draw background information from them to help build Lisbeth's character.
  7. Business or Blood: Mafia Boss Vito Rizzuto's Last War by Peter Edwards & Antonio Nicaso
    • One of my coworkers also has an interest in reading about the mafia, so when I made a mention of my reading list a couple of months ago, he gave me a couple of recommendations.
    • All in all, it felt like the book was poorly organized and not compellingly written. Not to say that I distrust what Edwards & Nicaso wrote, so much as that the plot - if I can refer to it as such - isn't driven forward at a good pace at all, and the people that are mentioned, with nicknames and all, aren't woven into the big picture as well as they could probably have been, which would have made the entire thread easier to follow. That being said, I read this over the course of a week or so, with a couple days of not touching the book at all, so  that might have also contributed to it? But the chapters were short, and I think many of them could have been better organized. The same people get multiple chapters as we move through the book, but I almost always have to take a moment to remember who they were to begin with before continuing on with the chapter.
      • I think part of the reason for the organization of this book and what sometimes felt like short newspaper articles or snappy taglines is because Edwards is a Toronto Star author, but I would think that Nicaso being in academia would balance that back out?
    • I would have loved to read more about how Libertina acted as the effective don after the death of Nicolò, also.
  8. Lo (or Dear Mr. Wells) a Crow's Theatre Production
    • I missed Asking for It, so this wasn't my first choice, to be honest, but I did enjoy the play, and think it brings up important issues surrounding consent. It's made all the more uncomfortable because yes, both parties are saying "yes" to the relationship, and yet it's clear that what is happening on stage is not something we can accept. I suppose it more opens up the question of what constitutes consent, and how the narrow definition of consent as obtaining a "yes" from all parties involved can lead to disastrous consequences.
  9. The Sixth Family: The Collapse of the New York Mafia and the Rise of Vito Rizzuto by Lee Lamothe and Adrian Humphreys
    • What's with the sudden interest in the Rizzuto family? Business or Blood suddenly had 4 holds on it, and now The Sixth Family is on hold by someone else.
    • I'm going to go ahead and assume this was written before Business or Blood, because it sounds like Vito Rizzuto was still alive at the time Lamothe & Humphreys were writing and when the book was published in 2006. Business or Blood being in 2015. So that makes sense.
    • Pretty much a rehash of Business or Blood, with some details that weren't in the other book. I did get the feeling that Lamothe & Humphreys are rather pessimistic about bringing down the Mafia as a whole, though. Even in Business or Blood, to be honest, the note it ends on is, well, there's a new leader now to pick up where Vito left off, and his vendettas were still being carried out - there's no end to it; it's like a hydra.
  10. Guillermo del Toro: At Home with Monsters at the AGO
    • So... does del Toro just have Poe and Lovecraft hanging out at home?
    • Really enjoyed the live accompaniment - that was a nice surprise. And all the additions from the AGO collection as well, especially that really creepy corner of the wall with the hidden mother baby photographs.
A selection of articles:
  1. THIS. I read the books in Portuguese once upon a time last year and Brain Pickings published an article about the first book of the series just this month! Exciting times. It's usually the other way around (i.e. I see something I like on Brain Pickings and go find it to read).
  2. Demand your cup of stars and accept no less. I have yet to read The Haunting of Hill House, but what I have read of Jackson really gets under your skin.
  3. Philip Pullman and Milton? I've never read either, but that first line of the article reminded me of FMA.
Working on:
  1. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez
  2. Poisoned Pens: Literary Invective from Amis to Zola by Gary Dexter
    • The quotes are kind of hit and miss, but when they're a hit, they are beyond hilarious!
  3. The Gift of Reading by David Bouchard