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0778310574
| 9780778310570
| 0778310574
| 4.02
| 80
| unknown
| Sep 24, 2024
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Aug 29, 2024
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0593728726
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| 0593728726
| 4.00
| 13
| unknown
| Sep 17, 2024
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Aug 29, 2024
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1324086033
| 9781324086031
| 1324086033
| 4.40
| 155
| Sep 24, 2024
| Sep 24, 2024
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Aug 29, 2024
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1668011662
| 9781668011669
| 1668011662
| 4.20
| 4,916
| Mar 26, 2024
| Mar 26, 2024
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really liked it
| Her husband died in the water in 2015, and her son was suffocated with a dry-cleaning bag in 2019.----------------- Her husband died in the water in 2015, and her son was suffocated with a dry-cleaning bag in 2019.--------------------------------------- …this is maybe the one thing I believe in in the whole world: that when it’s your time, you don’t run from it—you stand against it, you keep your eyes open, and you rip and claw your whole way down, hope you can at least be a worthy trophy.Don’t even try to read this unless you have been through Volumes #1 and #2 of the series. There is a lot going on in volume #3. Strap in. [image] Stephen Graham Jones - image from Library Journal Seventeen in what is now called The Independence Day Massacre, having served undeserved time after the most recent mass slaughter, centered on Dead Mill South, now twenty-four, Jade Daniels is back in town. Did her time. Paid her debt to society and has a job as the history teacher in the local school. Her wealthy bff Letha Mondragon’s sponsorship may have something to do with that. She carries scars both physical and emotional from her tribulations in the first two novels of the trilogy. And plenty from before even that. …you know the first one is third person of course, but it’s really tight on Jade. I think when people remember My Heart is a Chainsaw, they always say Jade is a narrator, and that’s always weird to me because she’s like our narrative focus, but she’s not actually the one speaking except for in her “Slasher 101” essays. Then when I figured out I was going to do a sequel and then a trilogy, I realized I’ve got to modulate the delivery throughout these three books.She is our Virgil through the rings of Proofrock hell.We get the take of the ultimate final girl, (although she does not see herself that way) as she tries to figure out what is going on, as the bodycount rises. As part of that we hear her talk with her much-admired, and quite dead, history teacher, Mister Holmes. We are given access to the weekly sessions with her state-mandated shrink, Sharona, in which they both wear ghostface masks and sit on a swing set, as one does. In addition, we are treated to reports from a seemingly omniscient security agency tracking Jade’s every word and action. A dad makes the mistake of hanging out in the local school’s hug-n-go lane, as it turns out to be more of a hug-n-get-decapitated lane. More heads will roll. Kids using VCR tech to produce a piece charmingly titled The Savage History of Proofrock, Idaho are lured to a discovery their friend had made, some long-lost victims. Another student makes use of drone tech to support a documentary, turning up some very interesting shots. Fiction soon gives way to fact. And, oh, there are footprints extending from a grave, which is very suggestive. (although odd only in that the risen dead emerged from a grave and not a lake) Speaking of graves, they play a significant role throughout the tale, as Jade visits her favorite late residents with some frequency. There is another graveyard commemorating a particular sub-set of the lost. And an unwanted commercial repurposing of land considered hallowed. [image] Devery Jacobs - image from Vanity Fair. SGJ could see her playing you-know-who. There are enough bloodbaths in this town that someone could make a killing by opening a place called ProofBaaden, offering free towels, and wet places in which people could conduct unpleasant business. There are forest fires, herds of panic-stricken animals, a mad recluse set on avenging the loss of his wife, and evil dead who will enlist a host to their ranks. There are many ends, loose and otherwise, that need to be tied up in this 465 page novel. There are murder mysteries to be solved and cold cases to be made warm, including the biggest mystery of them all, What the hell is all this killing about? There are many substantive elements that poke their heads up from among the carnage. SGJ pays homage to the slasher genre. Jade is not the only character who sees life through the slasher-mask perspective of an afficionado. Appreciators of the form will find plenty to cheer for here. The third installment of a trilogy always has to up the stakes and kill people we thought couldn’t die. I knew this going in, knew I’d have to do all that. In Chainsaw, Jade was fighting for herself. In Reaper, she was fighting for her friends, for this family she’d cobbled together. In Angel, she’s having to fight for her community—for Proofrock. And of course I had to adhere to Randy’s rules for the third in a trilogy, too. They were very helpful. This is my first time doing this, I mean. I needed a lot of help. - from the Nerd Daily interviewClass comes in for a look, as those who enjoy the advantages of those means are also responsible for much of the destruction that takes place in Proofrock. There is also a very feminist tilt here, as the final girl has always been a hero, but the baddies take on the feminine form as well. There is also an ongoing struggle of ill-treated women fighting back against their abusers. And there is a final twist that will resonate, culturally. For many, there is pleasure to be had in recognizing the references, the many, many references to slasher films. There might actually be references to every slasher film. While I have seen a fair number of these, I am by no means a maven. This made it a bit of a challenge appreciating the shout-outs in the book without having to constantly google the titles, not to mention the stand-alone character citations. The pleasure of this book is traveling along with Jade as she tries not only to survive but to get to the bottom of the entire unholy business, while saving her community. No dead ends here. Final girls rule, whether or not they survive. …justice doesn’t extract itself, you’ve got to pull it bloody and pulsing from the chest of whoever wronged you. Review posted - 08/30/24 Publication date – 3/06/24 Next up from SGJ is The Buffalo Hunters, due out March 2025 I received an ARE of The Angel of Indian Lake from S&S/Saga/Press in return for a fair review. Thanks, folks, and thanks to NetGalley for facilitating. [image] [image] [image] [image] [image] [image] This review will soon be cross-posted on my site, Coot’s Reviews. Stop by and say Hi! =============================EXTRA STUFF Links to Jones’s personal, Twitter and FB pages Interviews -----Paste - Stephen Graham Jones on The Angel of Indian Lake, Slasher Tropes, and Saying Goodbye to Jade Daniels by Matthew Jackson -----Cemetery Dance- The Cemetery Dance Interview: Stephen Graham Jones by Cabriel Hart -----Nerd Daily - Q&A: Stephen Graham Jones, Author of ‘The Angel of Indian Lake’ by Elise Dumpleton -----Library Journal - LJ Talks to Horror Writer Stephen Graham Jones, Author of ‘Don’t Fear the Reaper’ by Becky Spratford – From 2022, but fascinating, by Becky Spratford -----Off Book - Off Book: Stephen Graham Jones - video - 14:58 - at 6:45 There’s probably 12-14 beats of the slasher. You got to have the opening blood sacrifice. You got t have the red herrings, you’ve got to have the third rail body dumps. You’ve got to its like you’re going around a carousel and reaching out and hitting 12 or 14 bells as you go around. You got t hit all those bells for sure. But what I think makes a really good slasher movie is if you’re doing a revenge slasher of a mystery slasher, I guess they get called both, delaying knowledge of who the slasher is. That’s the most pleasurable, such that everything crashes to a head at the reveal when the person pulls their mask off and gives their big speech about I did this because you did this to me, or whatever it is. My reviews of (sadly, only four) previous books by Jones -----2023 - Don’t Fear the Reaper -The Indian Lake Trilogy #2 - -----2021 - My Heart is a Chainsaw -The Indian Lake Trilogy #1 - on Coot’s Reviews -----2020 - The Only Good Indians -----2016 - Mongrels Item of Interest from the author -----CrimeReads - Excerpt Item of Interest -----ScreenRant - Randy’s Rules The rules in Scream are a basic set to survive any horror film: you can never have sex, you can never drink or do drugs, and never (ever, under any circumstances) say “I’ll be right back”. Ironically, Randy explains these rules during a party, with half the attendees already drunk. Still, they hold some truth: Sidney has sex with Billy, and although she’s later attacked, it’s Billy the one who ultimately dies. Tatum (Rose McGowan) goes to the basement to get more beers and is killed there, and Stu says “I’ll be right back” right after Randy explains the rules, and is later killed (albeit in self-defense) by Sidney. In Scream 2, the rules for a horror sequel are: the body count is always bigger, the death scenes are more elaborate (“more blood, more gore”), and the third rule is not explained in the final cut, although it was revealed in the teaser trailer to be “never, ever, under any circumstances assume the killer is dead”....more |
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not set
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Aug 20, 2024
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Aug 26, 2024
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Hardcover
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1668075083
| 9781668075081
| 1668075083
| 5.00
| 1
| Mar 18, 2025
| Mar 18, 2025
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Aug 23, 2024
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Hardcover
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1250863856
| 9781250863850
| 1250863856
| 3.10
| 1,302
| Mar 26, 2024
| Mar 26, 2024
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really liked it
| A woman wearing a CNN shirt tells a man holding a clipboard to find a way to crop the other crews out of the shot. Adjacent to the riser, CNN has s A woman wearing a CNN shirt tells a man holding a clipboard to find a way to crop the other crews out of the shot. Adjacent to the riser, CNN has set up the barstool and the table littered with makeup, brushes, and hair products. Lots of hair products. There’s no riser for Entertainment Tonight’s reporter, but there’s a king-sized mirror secured to a step stool. A thick container rests on the top step. It reminds me of the attache case that travels with the president in doomsday movies. A man clacks open the lock, and pulls out the drawer loaded with shadows, blushes, and lipsticks.-------------------------------------- Attention is the drug of choice in local news.And attention will be paid. Good Evening world. This is Will Byrnes reporting live from my computer. (Well I was live when I wrote that) Our lead (and only) story tonight is breaking news. Phoenix-based TV reporter Christina Estes, has written a whodunit. Set, of course, in The Valley of the Sun. An odious, Rush Limbaugh-radio-talk-show sort has been cancelled with extreme prejudice. Seems he ingested something toxic and went off-the-air for good. Given that he was such a sweet, charming individual, there is no shortage of people who might have wanted to see him gone. [image] Christina Estes - Image from her site Jolene (named for the Dolly Parton song) Garcia is an intrepid TV news reporter looking for the truth and a good story. She is under relentless pressure from her bosses to produce something, anything, that they can put on air. She has an edge, as she had interviewed the happily departed just a few days prior. We follow Jolene as she follows the breadcrumb trail of clues, and comes up against resistance of all sorts, from her competitors, her police contact, and all the suspects. Payload is the real-world information one gleans from fiction. There are two major pieces of that here. In fact, Phoenix counts as a character in the book, as places often do in mysteries. Estes takes us around the place, offering looks at many aspects of Arizona life, and culture, and pointing out many local spots. (Sadly, Chase Field, where the Diamondbacks play, was not among them. But, as Estes is working on sequel, there is still hope. Maybe bring in Arcosanti as well? Or some Cactus League baseball?) Off the Air includes real locations and businesses with special significance. For example, two of my favorite photographers introduced me to Rito's Mexican Food and Harlow's Café. I included Chicago Hamburger Company because the owner allowed me to follow his journey during the first year of the pandemic. He was open and honest during a frightening time, and I appreciated his transparency. Food City chips and salsa are my favorite snack and I made them my main character's favorite. I included the history of the former Phoenix Indian School, which many people may not know about. Three historic buildings remain in what is now Steele Indian School Park. There's a walkway with columns depicting the school's history and a bridge that leads to a garden with Native American poems etched into concrete. It's a jewel in the heart of the city. - from the Los Angeles Public Library interviewThe other non-story major element here is TV reportage. Estes makes excellent use of her two-decade-long career as a TV reporter to inform a depiction of what that life is like. It was one of my favorite elements in the book. One can feel the huge stresses these folks endure with ever-decreasing resources, and ever-increasing demands from management. Film at Eleven. We’ve got film, right? Right? I think some people who have never worked in local news do not understand how much the industry has changed and how challenging it is for journalists who care about their communities to earn a decent living and stay in the business for more than a few years.Jolene is a good egg and easy to relate to, particularly as she faces conflicting demands. She handles all with aplomb. Secondary characters come and go, given enough detail to either laugh at them (this is a satire), be repulsed, or just watch them skip across the stage. Gripes are few. Some attributes noted early on were not utilized later, at least not nearly enough. The secondary characters sometimes felt a bit too secondary. I would have liked a bit more on one or two of them. Jolene follows clue after clue, placing herself into dangerous situations, sometimes very dangerous situations. As with any mystery, there will be red-herrings. Estes’ portrait of the local TV news reporter’s life will give you some reason to sympathize with hard-working TV reporters where you live, and maybe reason to feel scorn for some others. There is a single mystery, and it will be solved. Off the Air is a fun read, perfect for the beach, next to a pool, or maybe lounging in or near a cabin in the woods. Be sure to tune in next week (really two weeks) for the next installment of WB-Reviews. From all of us (that would be me, my wife, the cats, and a dog) here at the news center, goodnight, and stay cool. Review posted - 08/02/24 Publication date – 3/36/24 I received a hardcover of Off the Air from Minotaur Books in return for a fair review. Thanks, folks. [image] [image] [image] [image] [image] [image] This review will soon will be cross-posted on my site, Coot’s Reviews. Stop by and say Hi! =============================EXTRA STUFF Links to Garcia’s personal, FB, Instagram, Goodreads and Twitter pages Profile - from Criminal Element CHRISTINA ESTES is an award-winning reporter who has spent more than 20 years covering crime, public policy, and business in Phoenix, Arizona. Her reporting has been heard on National Public Radio (NPR) and appeared in the Arizona Republic, Arizona Business Gazette, and Phoenix Business Journal. Christina’s career inspired Off the Air, which won the Tony Hillerman Prize for Best First Mystery Set in the Southwest. Interviews -----Voyage Phoenix - Daily Inspiration: Meet Christina Estes -----Arizona Horizon - Christina Estes releases first book | Arizona Horizon - by Ted Simmons - video – 8:28 -----KJZZ - Reporter Christina Estes debuts 'Off the Air,' her first mystery novel by Lauren Gilger -----Arizona Family - Beyond the Next Chapter Podcast: Christina Estes on her new book "Off the Air" by Whitney Clark – video – 33:56 -----Criminal Element - Q&A with Christina Estes about her mystery debut, Off the Air -----Los Angeles Public Library - Interview With an Author: Christina Estes by Daryl M. - print Item of Interest from the author -----Criminal Element - Excerpt ...more |
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Jul 28, 2024
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Jul 31, 2024
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1250853699
| 9781250853691
| B0C1X7JYZ6
| 4.11
| 31,478
| Oct 24, 2019
| Mar 12, 2024
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it was amazing
| While she may be capable of functioning several levels into the future, her mind is no crystal ball. She may have the ability to visualize dozens o While she may be capable of functioning several levels into the future, her mind is no crystal ball. She may have the ability to visualize dozens of disparate pieces of information simultaneously, but her brain doesn’t work like in those movies where you see a whole string of letters superimposed on the face of the protagonist as they’re thinking.-------------------------------------- Antonia is afraid of almost nothing, apart from herself. Afraid of life, maybe. After all, she relaxes by imagining for three minutes every day how she could kill herself.The Black Wolf is the second in Juan Gómez-Jurado’s Antonia Scott series. If you have not read the first, Red Queen, I would take a break, read that one, then come back. Also, if you have not read the first book in the series, there are some items in this review that might be spoilerish for you. Caveat lector. Red Queen is a super-secret international anti-crime organization. They specialize in finding and developing a small number of exceptional human beings to become the mental equivalent of super-soldiers, assigned to look into Europe’s worst crimes. Antonia Scott is the Red Queen in Spain. She has an amazing mind, but also some issues, as you might suspect, given the two quotes at the top of this review. She has a pill she takes when it all becomes too much for her. Sometimes she takes too many. Jon Gutierrez is an erstwhile cop from Bilbao who was recruited to assist Antonia with matters of a police sort, and with more baby-sitting types of responsibilities. He is a large man (but not fat) with red hair, and a very good guy. The pair had a nasty adventure in book #1, with a primary villain who remained beyond their reach. [image] Juan Gómez-Jurado - Image from Expansión – photo credit – Luis Malabran We begin with the extraction of a very water-logged body from a river. Antonia wonders if it might be a major nemesis from the prior book, Sandra Fajardo. She has been on the lookout for this baddie ever since. The story continues with an assassination attempt at a shopping mall in Marbella, a city on Spain’s southern coast. A mafioso has been killed. His beautiful wife, Lola Moreno, who travels with a bodyguard, is set upon by a professional assassin or two, but the lady has skills, and manages to escape. She will provide one of the two major story lines of the novel. Antonia and Jon are sent to have a look by their boss, the mysterious Mentor, which made me think of M in the Bond novels We alternate, more or less, between Lola’s flight from henchmen directed by a Russian mafia don, and Antonia’s and Jon’s tracking of clues. This is Antonia’s domain, seeing, or sensing things that others miss. She is somewhere between Sherlock Holmes and Lisbeth Salander of the Millenium series. There will be blood, unpleasantness with cars, an infuriating discovery, close calls, and twists. We get some backstory on both Lola and Antonia, helping explain how they became who they are. And then there is a killer, the famed assassin, the Black Wolf, feared even by other professional killers. [image] Vicky Luengo as Antonia and Hovik Keucherian as Jon - image from Amazon UK Many of the chapters begin with fairy-tale-like recollections. This one is typical. There was once a little girl who grew up in a sad, loveless home where the food tasted of ashes and the future was black, she tells herself as she waits.Jorado offers paralleling of characters. For example, the mob boss Orlov with Mentor, and Antonia with the Black Wolf. It is satisfying to see excellent craft like this on display. He also regularly offers up a collection of interesting foreign words, that describe a particular situation or feeling better than Spanish or English. Here are a couple: Kegemteraan is in Malay. In Malay it would mean "the joy of stumbling". The simultaneous feeling of pleasure and grief when you know that you have done something that you shouldn't.Gomez-Jurado did this in the first book in the series. It is a charming element. [image] Alex Brendemühl as Mentor - image from Amazon UK One thing that irks in tales of this sort is the perpetually stupid local authority. Here the area captain seems to be blaming A&J for the carnage that they are investigating, as if they had somehow caused it. But the author has some fun with this trope, which I will not spoil here. Antonia’s and Jon’s personal relationships come in for examination, enhancing their appeal, but it is kept to a minimum, so adds color without interfering with the story. And the story is great fun. A rock’em sock’em thriller, pitting the best mind against the darkest evil, with plenty of conflict, and lots of clues (and some red herrings) to tease you into guesses and theories. Humanizing of (some of) the baddies combines with offering appealing, quirky, leads and a story that speeds along way over the limit. The Black Wolf is an excellent follow-up to Red Queen, leaving one panting for the third entry in the series. That need will be satisfied on March 12, 2025, with the publication in English of The White King. I can hardly wait. She has a black belt in lying to herself, and only a yellow one in expressing her reality. Review posted - 07/26/24 Publication date – 3/12/24 – in English First published in Spain – 10/24/2019 I received an ARE of The Black Wolf from Minotaur in return for a fair review. Thanks, folks, and thanks to NetGalley for facilitating. [image] [image] [image] [image] [image] [image] This review will soon will be cross-posted on my site, Coot’s Reviews. Stop by and say Hi! =============================EXTRA STUFF Links to Gomez-Jurado’s personal, FB, and Twitter pages Profile – fromWikipedia Born in Madrid, Spain on December 16, 1977, Juan Gómez-Jurado, is a Spanish journalist and author. He is a columnist in "La Voz de Galicia" and "ABC", distributed in Spain, and he participates in multiple radio and TV programs. His books have been translated into 42 languages and he is one of the most successful living Spanish authors, along with Javier Sierra and Carlos Ruiz Zafón. His writing has been described by critics as "energetic and cinematographic". He worked in various Spanish media outlets, including 40 Principales, Cadena Ser, Cadena Cope, Radio España, Canal + and ABC, before publishing his debut novel, God's Spy (Espía de Dios) in 200Interview -----Radio New Zealand - Spanish author Juan Gomez-Jurado on his best-selling - audio – 23:32 – by Kathryn My review of Gomez-Jurado’s prior book -----2023 - Red Queen Music ----- Joaquín Sabina - 19 Days and 500 Nights - Jon listens to this Item of Interest -----Arganzuela Footbridge - appears in Chapter 3 ...more |
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Jul 18, 2024
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Jul 24, 2024
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Kindle Edition
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1250875471
| 9781250875471
| 1250875471
| 4.05
| 320
| Oct 01, 2024
| Oct 01, 2024
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Jul 23, 2024
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0593727142
| 9780593727140
| 0593727142
| 4.44
| 214
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| Feb 06, 2024
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it was amazing
| The GOP is a threat to your freedom, health, wealth, and safety. If they gain control of the federal government they plan on passing a national abo The GOP is a threat to your freedom, health, wealth, and safety. If they gain control of the federal government they plan on passing a national abortion ban, gutting Medicare, destroying Obamacare, raising taxes on working families, and stealing a lifetime of YOUR Social Security money.--------------------------------------- Partisanship creates a convenient shortcut that low-interest and low-information voters can rely on to make their vote decisions, and it colors our entire perception of the political world.There are two things that should never be discussed in polite company, religion and politics. Well, presuming you, gentle reader, to be a reasonably polite person…sorry. Rachel Bitecofer is a PhD in political science and international affairs. In 2017 she wrote The Unprecedented 2016 Presidential Election, a book analyzing the 2016 US elections. She made her reputation by being one of the few political analysts who correctly predicted Biden’s 2020 victory with impressive specificity, and the size of the Blue Wave in 2018. She has come to some conclusions about why Democrats so frequently lose to Republican candidates whose interests are in opposition to those of their constituents. In order for Dems to make inroads with voters, they will have to take some pages from the GOP campaign playbook. Hit ‘Em Where It Hurts lays out what the other side is doing, and extracts from that lessons to be learned to improve outcomes. [image] Rachel Bitecofer - image from The Telegraph - credit Christopher Newport University What is it that they do? Well, demagoguing issues and playing the politics of division, lying relentlessly and repeating their lies ad nauseum, of course. Not news. But Bitercofer digs into the specifics of how the GOP goes about this. She also offers analysis of voting groups, with an eye to how one engages different populations. Ordinary people hate losing, or losing out on things we like or think we might like--with more intensity than we like gaining those things. A simpler way to put it is losing makes us feel twice as bad as winning makes us feel good.Instead of the usual Democratic campaign of demonstrating to voters why a candidate is better able, better prepared, and maybe a better person, Bitecofer urges Dems to engage in impactful criticism of their opponents. Or, why the other candidates will be bad for you, applying the blame of truth not just to the down-ballot candidates, but to the party as a whole. Voters may or may not recall a candidate’s name, but they’re likely to remember how they feel about Rs and Ds. Where I live, for example, it is not just GOP senatorial candidate Dave McCormick who is a terrible person with terrible plans, it is the entire Republican Party. Frankly, it is not a tough case to make. Not to the exclusion, of course, of promoting better ideas and humans, but with maybe a shifting of campaign resources from all positive to more attack-mode. When, at the 2016 Democratic convention, Michelle Obama first said, "When they go low, we go high," it was a rousing moment which spoke to people being and becoming their best selves. Good values matter. But from a tactical perspective it is self-defeating. In basketball, these days, it is called undercutting (back when I was a terrible player, it was called low-bridging), when a defender hits an airborne shooter, causing a dangerous crash to the floor. Going high when the opposition is spending millions going low is a surefire way to ensure a broken back or a losing campaign. There are two things that low information, and low interest voters (and they are legion) rely on in deciding who to vote for. Most important is party affiliation and second is their familiarity with the names of candidates. So, as a rule, a Republican will vote for the Republican on the ticket, regardless of the candidate’s merits. We can, for example, fully expect that, in addition to his core supporters, Donald Trump will receive tens of millions of votes from people who simply do not care about his 34 felony convictions, his attempt to stage a coup, his stealing of classified documents, his relentless lying and his considerable hostility to democracy. Nope. If he’s got an “R” next to his name, he’s our guy. To be fair, there are some Dem voters would vote for a cheese sandwich if it was on the ballot with a “D” next to its name, but I expect fewer than the “R” non-MAGA voters or leaners. Core voters for both parties will support their team. But there is a middle ground, comprised of voters who lean and the truly unaffiliated, a small number. This is where the battle is engaged. Campaign ads must portray not only the candidate of the opposing party, but the party he/she represents, in a bad, but honest light. And do it relentlessly. She calls this Negative Partisanship. Instead of proclaiming only the virtues of our candidate, we must also portray the darkness of our opposition, something that has worked quite well for Republicans, but which has met with resistance from many Democratic candidates. Also, this should not be limited to the candidate in a given election, but applied across the board to the Republican Party. It is the party that will see to it that our rights and freedoms are pared back, while the rich get richer, not just the candidate. This has the benefit of being a worthy broad brush, as all Republican pols do whatever their Dear Leader wants. There are barriers to Democrats progressing in political warfare tactics, primarily money. The right has a well-funded, (by billionaire oligarch sorts like the Koch brothers and mahor corporations like the big oil ) well-oiled machine for spreading their message. Think tanks provide academic cover for nonsensical or dark policies. Check out the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 for maybe the best example of this, certainly the most alarming, and probably the most dangerous. The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) is a central clearinghouse for the creation of rightist legislation. It is no accident that the same text is used in state bills across the nation. Dems do not have a comparable entity. Neither do we have Fox News, the primary purveyor of political misinformation, even if it does cost them the odd billion dollars or so in court settlements. It is an uneven playing field. In the absence of that sort of infrastructure, Dems must rely on improving messaging, making it more pointed. When it comes to public policy, the majority of voters side with Democratic positions, on sensible gun control, abortion rights, the inviolability of Social Security and Medicare, and more recently on the need for Obamacare. It is important, Bitecofer says, to point out to voters just what they are in danger of losing, highlighting the differences between Dems and Republicans. What are they trying to take from you? Pretty easy re SS and Medicare, which have huge national constituencies. Republicans are eager to gut both. People are more likely to respond to a campaign that points to Republicans trying to take away your medical choices, your literal freedoms, than they are to a detailed message about how a religious belief should not be made into public policy. How about the safety of your children? Are they likelier to come home from school in one piece if we allow military grade weapons to be bought by just about anyone? Are you ok with schools having to run active-shooter drills? It is not necessary to get into the corruption of the NRA or point out that that organization has become a funnel for Russian money to right-wing politicians. Simplify, show contrasts, and point out potential personal losses. In most political books the analysis of why we are where we are is all fine and dandy, but what does it mean for addressing it, given that the dark side has, effectively, limitless funding to spread their lies, the mainstream media has shown itself to be highly resistant to calling out liars, and most voters simply do not give a shit? Are we doomed to relentless right-wing propaganda and spin through their pervasive media capture, aided of course by Putin and other foreign allies of American fascists? What can be done to get people to recognize the existential threat posed to our democracy? Turns out there are some things we can do. This is what makes Hit ’Em Where It Hurts different from most political analyses, and a must read for anyone engaged in political campaigns. This is not unplowed earth in which Bitecofer toils. There have been plenty of books written about political tactics. Rick Wilson’s wonderful 2020 book, Running Against the Devil, offers advice on how to go about campaigning against Trump. One book that stands out the most for me is Saul Alinsky’s look at how to organize a movement for change, a community organizer guide, based on his decades of experience. In the 1970s many progressive and liberal activists studied his now classic 1971 political strategy book, Rules for Radicals. The benefit of these, and surely many other books is that they offer specifics re how to move forward. While Bitecofer’s book differs in focus from Alinsky’s the intention of both works is to show people how to seek and gain power over their own lives through democratic means. Bitecofer’s Hit ‘Em Where it Hurts is a Rules for Radicals for the 21st century. We have already seen some application of her approach in current and recent campaigns, whether inspired by her or someone else. The tactics she espouses have found their way into the real world and we will see in 2024 if candidates are willing to accept her counsel and do what it takes to win. I truly hope that most of them do. think of all elections, big and small, as battles in a much larger and far more consequential electoral war, whose victors will determine the future of this nation.Review posted - 07/12/24 Publication date – 02/06/24 [image] [image] [image] [image] [image] [image] This review is cross-posted on my site, Coot’s Reviews. Stop by and say Hi! =============================EXTRA STUFF Links to the Bitecofer’s personal Substack, Threads, FB, Instagram, and Twitter pages Profile - from SALT Senior Fellow, Elections, The Niskanen CenterInterviews -----CSPAN - Washington, DC – Prose & Prose bookstoreHit 'Em Where It Hurts - How to Save Democracy by Beating Republicans at Their Own Game by Adam Parkhomenk – video – 1:04:00 -----Salon - Rachel Bitecofer's tough-love lesson for Democrats: Time to fight dirty by Paul Rosenberg -----The Al Franken podcast - Democratic Strategists Rachel Bitecofer and Justin Barasky on Democratic Messaging - video – 48:00 -----Morning Joe - Democrats Seek to Recreate Midterm Success in 2024 “Roe is a concrete way to show people you have a right and the Republicans stole it from you” Items of Interest from the author -----ResearchGate - A list of her publications from January 2018 to January 2023 -----Web site for the book Item of Interest -----PoliticalCharge.org - An Elections Specialist You Should Get to Know by Tokyosand ...more |
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9798989689200
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it was amazing
| Harmony thought about cats as she rolled out of bed and staggered to the bathroom. Her favorite cat was the one that used to get stuck on top of a Harmony thought about cats as she rolled out of bed and staggered to the bathroom. Her favorite cat was the one that used to get stuck on top of a telephone pole in front of the house where she grew up. At least once a month in the warm weather, she’d hear the neighbor kids yelling, “Cat’s on a pole!” as they gathered around to taunt the poor thing.-------------------------------------- When he was forty-three, he met Judy. By then, construction work had taken second seat to massage therapy, where he discovered he had a gift.Harmony and Joshua have special abilities. You might even call them superpowers. As with most such talented people, that has not necessarily led to them being happy. Joshua makes a living running healing classes at his own studio. He has always had what seems a pheromonic gift for attracting women. Woof! But commitment has never been a strong suit. Until he married Judy and they had a baby, Emily. Still, it is tough to resist all those longing gaze from his students and assistants. [image] Betsy with pooch - image from her site Harmony is forty-something, works at a gardening magazine, is of uncertain ethnicity, having been adopted and having no real memory of her birth parents, and is different from the rest of us. She sees colors around people, auras, and has a sense of smell that allows her to tell about a person’s health, among other things. It is understandable that being in a relationship can be tough if you can pretty much read the other person’s thoughts and feelings. Insightful? Yes, very literally. She thinks of it as being about energy, hers, others, an experiential milieu no stranger to her than seeing the usual colors or hearing the sounds of the world are for most of us. But can you live through every day seeing, sensing the world like that? Harmony is in mourning for her best friend, her late pooch and beloved companion of 18 years, Delilah. Each believes they are unique, and are destined to remain that way. It is pretty clear that these two crazy kids are destined to get together in one way or another. In this magical rom-com, they meet cute on a Manhattan bus, and we are off to the races. The story centers on their relationship, which, surprisingly, never gets truly physical. Maybe metaphysical? With or without physical touching it is intensely sexual. They are both, because of their abilities, outsiders. Joshua manages by running a school, trying to help people find the abilities they have, but do not recognize. He is able to direct his energy to healing as well. ”We all have this capacity,” says Robinson in her video promo for the book. She has been involved for a long time with spiritual psychology and healing arts, so brings an interesting perspective to Joshua and Harmony’s capacities. [In therapy] I was talking about how I reacted to various people in the office. There was one guy there who wanted an office wifey. I couldn’t stand this guy. Every time he would approach me it was like I was getting slimed with ectoplasm. Etheric gunk would come over me. I wanted to take a shower.Harmony gets more ink of the two, with a large piece of that her interactions with her therapist, Doctor Thompson. These are fabulous. Spectral beings are also a considerable presence. Ghosts? Angels? Something else? Like Julie Jordan in the musical Carousel, Harmony’s favorite musical, both Joshua and Harmony see or sense presences, which sometimes become active to the point of issuing directions. Keep an eye out for mirrors, an image that pops up multiple times. Can you actually see yourself? Or does truly getting to know yourself require another person? There are a few cockroach POV scenes that are hilarious, even to a native of NYC who had to contend with them for a lifetime, sometimes in large numbers. Lord knows, those of us who have spent much of our lives in city apartments can well attest to their persistence, and share Josh’s frustration at their ability to mockingly skitter away from our attempts to extinguish them. Robinson is a funny writer, so there are plenty of LOLs throughout the novel, not all related to bugs. Cats on a Pole is a moving story about people searching for…something, love, companionship, understanding, truth, connection, release. There will be tears as well as laughs. The novel also offers a deeper perspective on spirituality and the meaning of death. It all builds up to a surprising climax, so buckle in. These cats may be stuck atop a pole, (or multiple poles?) getting some temporary safety, but they also gain a broader view of the world, and so will you. What was extraordinary were her colors—raw red and orange energy around her torso, a deep indigo, bluer than the bottom of the ocean with radiant purple wafting through it vibrating so fast above her head it made him feel faint just to watch it. But watch it he did. How could he not? Her desire was direct and raw. Review posted - 07/05/24 Publication date – 07/02/24 I received an eBook version of Cats on a Pole from the author in return for a fair review. Thanks Betsy. [image] [image] [image] [image] [image] [image] This review is cross-posted on my site, Coot’s Reviews. Stop by and say Hi! =============================EXTRA STUFF Links to Robinson’s personal, Twitter and FB pages (Partial) Profile – from her site Betsy Robinson was raised an atheist and went on to make her living as a writer and editor of spiritual subject matter: as managing editor of Spirituality & Health magazine for six and a half years and as an editor of spiritual psychology and books about shamans and traditional healers.She is or has been an actor, a playwright, an essayist, an editor, a freelance writer, messenger, paralegal, legal secretary, chambermaid, IHOP hostess, fortune cookie writer, novelist, and more. Cats on a Pole is her third novel. Plan Z was published in 2001 and The Last Will & Testament of Zelda McFigg came out in 2014. Interviews ----- Ectoplasmic Inspo + Publisher at 73: Betsy Robinson - mostly on becoming a publisher ----- Why Publish "Cats on a Pole" and "The Spectators" Now? self-interview - video – 4:25 My review of an earlier book by the author -----The Last Will & Testament of Zelda McFigg Songs/Music from Carousel – Harmony buys a CD of the 1987 revival It does make one wonder if Harmony’s last name was an homage to the composer. -----What’s the use of Wond’rin -----The Carousel Waltz -----You’ll Never Walk Alone -----If I loved You Items of Interest from the author ----- Her promo video -----Book trailer -----Betsy reads from the book ...more |
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059344938X
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| 3.66
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| Mar 01, 2019
| Feb 27, 2024
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really liked it
| History doesn’t allow itself to be rewritten that easily.-------------------------------------- One single night: A house burned down in Tolarp. History doesn’t allow itself to be rewritten that easily.-------------------------------------- One single night: A house burned down in Tolarp. There was someone inside, on the kitchen floor. One instant, a before and after: the stillness before the spark appeared, and the inferno that followed. One single event: That was all it took to redirect the path of a life. Like the filament of a root moving through time.Or, in this case, two lives. How do you deal when the thing that obsesses you interferes with your life? Isak Nyqvist is seven years old in 1994. Vidar Jörgensson is a young cop, four years in the police. We will follow them through the next twenty-one years. Both their lives are largely defined by the fire that takes place on a cold night in November. A young woman is found dead inside a torched house. It was not the fire that killed her. [image] Christoffer Carlsson - image from Frankurter Rundschau – credit Emelie Asplund Isak loves his uncle Edvard, 25, who has spent a lot of loving time with him, but Edvard has a history of rage, much of it provoked, and a lot of it ascribed to him because his father was a violent person. He had been dating Lovisa Markstrom, was seen leaving the scene of the crime on the night of the fire, and is presumed to have been the one who killed her. There is circumstantial evidence supporting that belief. The town is certain of it, given his family history. The person who had seen him that night was Vidar. But Vidar has his doubts, or will. Vidar has many local connections and uses those to help his investigation. Isak’s family is known by everyone, not in a good way. Gramps was known as a violent person. Isak’s uncle Edvard was also painted with that same brush, so it is easy to believe that he killed his girlfriend. Isak is only 7 when the murder take place but local biases, and bullies pile on Isak, assigning to him the snap-judgments that were affixed to his uncle The story is told in three parts, the first being when the death occurred, 1994, the second in 2003 and the third in 2015. Even though Isak has doubts, he still cannot believe his loving, kind uncle could be responsible for a murder. Vidar becomes aware of some problems with the evidence, sees alternate explanations for the crime and becomes obsessed with it for the rest of his police career and beyond. It even threatens his marriage (Wait, didn’t she know this about him when they got together?) The trope of the investigator’s non-understanding significant other gets on my nerves. Isak is impacted both internally, wondering if Edvard really was a killer, and wondering if genetics are destiny, and externally, as bullies constantly remind him that his uncle is serving time, and provoking him to violence. (Why are provoking bullies never held to account? Is the world really that dumb? Don’t answer that.) The long expanse of the tale gives us insight into the main characters, how they feel and behave in the world, and what has gone into creating those feelings and behaviors. It is both heart-breaking and illuminating. The parallelism of Isak and Vidar works well, showing how history ripples forward into the future for both of them, albeit in very different ways. Carlsson offers many specific ways in which their paths run in the same direction. Both their lives are crap, in a way. Both have boxes of clues to their mysteries. Vidar’s wife’s assumptions and lack of understanding re Vidar mirrors the community’s view of Erik. Vidar imagines himself as a child, akin to a dream of Isak’s In Carlsson’s previous novel (at least as far as USA release dates go) Carlsson had used a similar structure, with Vidar’s father tracking a crime from 1986 to 2019, stopping off at several intermediate years to track the characters and advance our understanding of the very cold case. This original Swedish language book was released in 2019, before Blaze Me a Sun (2021). Vidar Jörgensson features in this one. But in the later book, it is Vidar’s father who stars, with Vidar being introduced later in the tale. I do not know if Under the Storm was intended as a prequel, or maybe was written later but published earlier. I read the pair in the order in which they were published in the USA, #2, then #1. There is a third, which was released in Sweden in 2023, Levande och döda (The Living and the Dead). I do not know when an English translation will be available. Family is a major concern, as it was in Blaze Me a Sun. How does the cop’s obsession (or deep commitment to truth) impact his friendships, his work life, his marriage? (“You seem so far away sometimes,” she said at last.) How does Isak’s affection for and connection with a much-loved uncle affect his ability to have a normal social life, to have a family life? How is the rest of Edvard’s family impacted by his travails? As with Blaze Me a Sun, there is mention of a local superstition. That one had to do with fortune, good or bad, being caused by how one saw a particular bird. Here it is a place where a legendary rich man is buried, a place where ghostly apparitions are said to appear. Under a bridge in Anarp is where The Old Man sleeps, a boogie man who is death to anyone who meets his ghost. Non-superstition-based history is also addressed, as Carlsson tracks town history back to sundry events, like the introduction of manufacturing in the town, its loss and attempt to revive it. A persistent motif throughout is secrecy, as one might expect in a procedural murder tale. Vidar and Isak, while not alone in this, are robust practitioners. Isak keeps two things to himself from the night of and a short time after. It is never particularly clear why he fails to tell what he knows in time to have an impact. Vidar does not tell his boss what he is working on in the latter parts of the novel. Schtupping a local married lady is also kept on the down-low. Talking separately to Edvard and Isak while not informing either of them of his contact is another. Vidar keeping secret a challenging work-based relationship also requires deceit. The noir atmosphere gets jiggy when a major hurricane, Gudrun, blows through. Homes are destroyed, people displaced. This was a real storm that caused major damage in Sweden. Details of the experience of such a beast are chilling. Maybe not the same as the assassination of the Prime Minister in the psyche of the nation, but it had a real impact. A heat wave also adds to the tension. Carlsson succeeds in presenting both detailed character portraits and in giving us a sense of what life was like in this area, a place in which he grew up. He is a PhD criminologist for his day job, publishing papers and teaching. He grew up around things criminal, as mom was a police dispatcher. It is clear that a lot of the conversation on which he eavesdropped at home as a kid made an impact. He knows crime, both real and fictitious, and writes with authority about it. This is a procedural, however lengthy the duration of the investigation. You will enjoy Vidar picking up on clues and following through, as he spends a lifetime attempting to find out the truth about that night. In the beginning it is a hot, fiery case that becomes a cold-case in the following parts of the novel. (In Sweden are all cases cold cases?) But not to Vidar. He is a flawed guy, but is determined to find out what really happened that night. Under the Storm is a triumph of the genre, tickling your brain with the mystery, engaging you emotionally with the characters, and offering up informed looks at a place and time, well, times. As a smart, accomplished example of Swedish noir, Under the Storm is out of this world. The world had shown what it was truly capable of. As if a lifeline was suddenly severed, it could take your loved ones away. The world watched without blinking as you fell.Review posted - 06/28/24 In Sweden - 3/1/2019 English Translation - 2/27/24 I received an ARE of Under the Storm from Hogarth in return for a fair review. Thanks, folks, and thanks to NetGalley for facilitating. [image] [image] [image] [image] [image] [image] This review will soon be, cross-posted on my site, Coot’s Reviews. Stop by and say Hi! =============================EXTRA STUFF Links to the Carlsson’s Instagram and Twitter pages Profile - from Penguin Random House Christoffer Carlsson was born in 1986 on the west coast of Sweden. He holds a PhD in criminology from the University of Stockholm and is one of Sweden’s leading crime experts. Carlsson is the youngest winner of the Best Swedish Crime Novel of the Year, voted by the Swedish Crime Writers’ Academy, and has been a finalist for the prestigious Glass Key award, given to the best Scandinavian crime novel of the year.Interview -----The Occasional Bookwitch Christoffer Carlsson – neither pink nor fluffy - It’s close to where he grew up, where he and his brother used to play. And then, halfway through writing the book, his parents sold up and moved away from his childhood home, moving into a flat in town, enjoying their new life on the 13th floor with marvelous views. ‘The novel became some sort of farewell. It was pretty hard. It’s as if part of my past has moved out of reach.’My review of another book in this series -----Blaze Me a Sun Item of Interest from the author -----With the Dead - this is a must-read item, as Carlsson details how he became a writer. You will see how his books incorporate elements of his life. Item of Interest -----Cyclone Gudrun ...more |
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9798212194297
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really liked it
| Nerd Nite is an event usually held at a bar or other public venue where usually two or three presenters share about a topic of personal interest or ex Nerd Nite is an event usually held at a bar or other public venue where usually two or three presenters share about a topic of personal interest or expertise in a fun-yet-intellectual format while the audience shares a drink. It was started in 2003 by then-graduate student (now East Carolina University professor) Chris Balakrishan at the Midway Cafe in the Jamaica Plain neighborhood of Boston. In 2006 Nerd Nite spread to New York City, where Matt Wasowski was tasked with expanding the idea globally. - from Wikipedia-------------------------------------- Be There and Be Square - Nerd Nite logoThere was a nerd magazine in 2012, a Youtube presence, and occasional podcasts. This is the first Nerd Nite book. Misophonia can attach itself to any repetitive sound, but the most common ones are things, like chewing, breathing, sniffing, and throat clearing. It can be hard for sufferers to talk about because of how difficult it can be to tell someone politely that the sound of them keeping themselves alive is repulsive to you.There are 71 entries, taken from live presentations done by the authors of each piece. (TED talks for those with short attention spans and a need for alcohol?) Nerd Nites have been held in over 100 cities across the globe. The material here covers eleven scientific areas. (see below) All the entries are brief, so if one does not appeal to your mental tastebuds hang on a couple of minutes for the next one, or just skip past. [image] Chris Balakrishnan and Matt Wasowski - editors - image (from some time ago) from Facebook You can digest this book a few morsels at a time, and not have to worry about the fate of a fictional hero or put-upon victim. Nope. The heroes here are the scientists, the presenters. One of the great failings of popular science books, IMHO, is the absence of humor, or poor attempts at it. Not here. There are many moments in this one, and humor in almost all of them. That made me very happy. Of the 71 pieces, almost all are very pop-sciency, understandable by most readers, even me. There were only one or two that made my head hurt. It makes an excellent bed-side read. It was an upstairs book for me, to be read before nodding off, hopefully. Sometimes that takes a while. This is not an all-inclusive list of the articles, but lets you know what might be in store in its eleven sections 1 - Creature Features - on weird animals 2 - Mmmm...Brains - strangeness with how we learn and adapt 3 - Bodily Fluids - on things like coping with poo in space. (In space, no one can hear you fart?) 4 - Doing It - like it suggests, on sex, human and non-human, (no, not with each other. Don't be weird.) 5 - Health and (un)Wellness - human smells (See Paul Giamatti in The Holdovers) - on therapeutic maggots, adolescent medicine, et al 6 - Pathogens and parasites - on birds, bacteria in birds, zombies, the scotch tape test (don’t ask), viruses 7 - Death and Taxes - mass extinction, cancer, algae 8 - Space, the Big and the Beautiful - ignorance, asteroid avoidance and use, life on Europa?, artificial gravity, studying a pristine meteorite, Webb telescope 9 - Tech (High and Low) - GMOs, dating app, human powered flight, cyborging humans, domesticating bacteria, nuclear fusion 10 - Math is fun - a seminal experiment, the math of gossip, the golden ratio, infinity, cryptography 11 - Careers – things removed from dogs, useless inventions, myths about death, animals CSI, amputations, fermentation, flames. there are approximately 100 trillion microorganisms (mainly bacteria), representing as many as 30,000 different species, living in every crevice, nook, and mucosal cranny of your body that you can imagine.I would include a list of my favorite articles, but it would wind up as long as the parts list above. But ok, because I have the sense of humor of a twelve-year-old, the one that made me laugh the most was To Boldy Go: Dealing with Poop and Pee in Space. Apollo 10 astronauts were gifted with the visual, and no doubt olfactory, treat of a turd meandering about in their capsule. This begins a talk about how one handles bodily waste in zero G. Another on bladder control, or the absence thereof, was sidesplitting. Others, on camel spiders and hangovers, generated a fair number of LOLs. Some were fascinating, like one having to do with making a brain on a chip. (Can it be served with Salsa?) The pieces on bacteria and their importance to human life, heck, to all life on Earth, were fascinating. There is plenty of weirdness, about diverse forms of milk, the proper use of maggots in healing, zombie parasites, asteroids, artificial gravity, and here we go with another bloody list. Sorry. Take my word, there is a wealth of material here that will broaden your knowledge base, and serve up plenty of conversational hors d'oeuvres for cocktail party chatter. It worked quite well for me. There is a downside, though. Because all the articles here are very short, one is often left hungry for more. On the other hand, that limitation might provoke you to sate that desire with a bit of extra research, which is always a good idea. So, never mind. If science piques your curiosity, if learning new and diverse things makes your heart race, or if you like to laugh, then this book is for you. How to Win Friends and Influence Fungi is a very filling read, one nibble at a time. Review posted - 06/14/25 Publication date – 02/01/24 I received a hardcover of How to Win Friends and Influence Fungi from St. Martin’s Press in return for a fair review. Thanks, folks. [image] [image] [image] [image] [image] [image] This review will soon be, cross-posted on my site, Coot’s Reviews. Stop by and say Hi! =============================EXTRA STUFF Author/Editor links Chris Balakrishnan - Program Director at the National Science Foundation - His personal and FB pages A list of his articles Matt Wasowski - Director of New Business and Product Development, Events at SAE International – His FB, LinkedIn and Twitter pages Items of Interest from the authors (really editors) -----Soundcloud - excerpt - 5:01 -----Birdsong: How the Twittering Set Learns to Speak -----"Nerd Nite Published a Book!" by Matt Wasowski - Nerd Nite Austin 155, January 2024 ...more |
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it was amazing
| The oldest monsters are unnamed. Unnamed monsters, Dennis learned before he even knew his own name, were the worst kind of all. When you gave a mon The oldest monsters are unnamed. Unnamed monsters, Dennis learned before he even knew his own name, were the worst kind of all. When you gave a monster a name, you had it in hand. There, that one was anger. Rage. Sexual abuse. Dennis learned the names of all these before he was four, as items the child psychiatrists crossed off on their checklists. They were looking for answers. They were looking for monsters to blame.-------------------------------------- …all the boys here were throwaways. It was like being in a giant wastebasket filled with dirty tissues. You knew you were lost.The road to hell is paved with good intentions. - Aphorism, origin unknown [image] Renee Denfeld - image from her site Rene Denfeld, author of several novels (see links in EXTRA STUFF) dealing with criminal justice, and in particular the abuse of children, has returned to familiar territory, with a story about a boy ill-treated by the child-protection system, the torturous methods used to control him and others, and the impedimenta of foster care secrecy laws, designed to protect, but often used to cover up. The idea for the scene depicted on the cover came during a trip to an Oregon beach for a mental health day when she spotted a little boy charging into the water - from the Spokesman (print) interviewIn Chapter One, we are introduced to nine-year-old Dennis Owen as he races toward the ocean, a frothy, treacherous body of water bordering Oregon, a place not conducive to family outings. [image] Mist struck his face with force, and the wind tore at the institutional shirt he wore…Behind him, signs littered the dunes by the beach road: WARNING: TREACHEROUS CURRENTS. WARNING: HIGH TIDE. WARNING: SHARP DROP-OFFS AND SNEAKER WAVES.Dennis plunges into this perilous Pacific, pursued by a man. The novel looks back at the boy’s meager life and at that of the man who had been chasing him. The backstory will eventually explain all. As part of that, we see Dennis from age four. Already having been bounced from foster home to foster home, he is relegated to Brightwood, a place with a new director, Martha King, fresh off directing another group home in Arizona. Think Nurse Ratched of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest or Delores Umbridge from the Harry Potter series. Killing you with kindness. She has ways to be mean where everyone around her stands up and claps. That’s the worst kind of meanness, son. The kind where everyone says it’s for your own good.Martha’s ability to be everywhere and see everything is too extreme to be believed, but suspend that disbelief, as her awfulness provides a strong counter to Dennis’s strength and character and the kindness of others. Renfeld does give Martha a backstory that explains, while not forgiving, her dark behavior. It seems likely that Martha King was named for Martha Welch, author of a book on Holding Time. “Holding time” is a draconian, punitive method of treatment that sounds nicer than it is. It’s basically a physical and psychological torture that’s designed to break children down to the point of psychological collapse by physically restraining them. Some children have actually suffocated to death by this treatment. The idea is that children will somehow “start fresh” afterward, like rebooting a computer, which of course is not how humans work. If you destroy someone psychologically, they’re not reborn. They’re destroyed. Holding time has been thoroughly rebuked by scientists, and yet somehow it’s still used. - from the ZED interviewThe methodology of the novel is a contemporary investigation twenty years after Dennis disappeared, by his sister. Amanda Dufresne, adopted as a child, now twenty-six, had survived the foster care system much better than had her brother, whose existence she only recently discovered. She works as a keeper to an orphaned polar bear (Molly) at the Oregon Zoo. She is smart and dogged in trying to find out what had happened to her brother. Denfeld brings her real-world skills as an investigator to this tale, yet again, giving Amanda’s quest plausibility. She gets a boost from a retired detective, Larry Palmer, who is still living in Eagle Cove, even though his wife, who had been the one to move them here, had passed. Helping Amanda gives him a sense of restored usefulness, and a daughter figure to nurture and protect. It was important to Denfeld that her prime investigating character not be a detective, but an everyday person in search of the truth. Amanda does take the lead, but Larry helps considerably more than the prototypical police expert who helps the leads in cozy mysteries. This is a world Denfeld knows all too well, both as an abused kid, homeless at fifteen, and as a loving foster and adoptive mom. The novel features a strong cast of supporting characters, among them employees and other children at Brightwood, residents of Eagle Cove, and the local constable. She also offers a side-mystery. There is something hinky with the story of how Molly found her way to the zoo. Amanda conducts her solo investigation of that, because of her love for the bear. No Larry involved in that. It is a heart-warming tale, paralleling the human investigation, and will leave you in need of tissues. [image] The Blythe intaglios were created on the desert floor hundreds if not thousands of years ago by Native people for an unknown reason. - Image from AZcentral Denfeld is a master of imagery. The story takes Amanda and Larry to Arizona, where they learn of a remarkable (real) local feature. In the novel, sleeping giants are massive stone age carvings…But the real sleeping giants are the secret, hidden pains, and anger inside us that can come out in misdirected rage. In my experience, when these sleeping giants are awakened with a cause—especially one driven by white supremacy, misogyny, or other biases— a permission slip to commit harm is signed, sealed, and delivered. - from the Crimereads articleThey might also be the fierce waves into which Dennis plunges. Renee Denfeld will break your heart. By page six, I was already feeling a welling up. Thankfully, I am not faced with the sort of sorrow Larry must endure, having retired to a remote, coastal town, and then losing his wife. My spouse is doing quite well, thanks, and is likely to be around long after I am gone, but Denfeld so captures the sadness of loss that it is no trick to summon the feelings, the awful mourning that accompanied the passing of my sisters. It makes me wonder what Larry would do with his pain. She will also bring you to tears of rage at the treatment Dennis experiences at Brightwood, and feel affection for him as human being with no control over his life. She then tugs your heartstrings again as Molly’s story is revealed. There is a core intention in this novel of raising consciousness about the plight of thousands of children in the foster care system, (Renfeld estimates that there are over 20,000 children who have gone missing) and the legal limitations that make it so hard to help, find them, or even know that they are missing Sleeping Giants is a masterwork by one of our finest novelists. It took her several years to write this one, a longer stretch than is usual for her. It has been worth the wait. For a book that comes in under three hundred pages, it is a giant of a read. Most crime fiction focuses on the outliers—the outright, obvious sociopaths, usually unexplainably brilliant—or else criminal underworlds, like gangs or drug cartels. This is all interesting stuff. But I think it has the effect of othering violence. It assumes there is a world full of normal people who are blameless, who couldn’t fathom the idea of committing harm even if you suggested it. This creates a false dichotomy, an us vs them that is troubling and honestly, kind of disingenuous. Review posted - 06/7/24 Publication date – 3/26/24 I received an ARE of Sleeping Giants from Harper in return for a fair review. Thanks, folks. [image] [image] [image] [image] [image] [image] This review will soon be cross-posted on my site, Coot’s Reviews. Stop by and say Hi! =============================EXTRA STUFF The author’s personal, Twitter, Instagram and Facebook pages Profile - from her site Rene's novels are influenced by her work as a licensed death row investigator. She is the past Chief Investigator for a public defenders and has worked hundreds of cases, including exonerations and helping rape trafficking victims. The survivor of a difficult background, Rene regularly speaks on social justice issues, as well as writing and overcoming trauma.Previous Denfeld books I have read and reviewed -----2019 - The Butterfly Girl (Naomi Cottle #2) -----2017 - The Child Finder (Naomi Cottle #1) -----2014 - The Enchanted Interviews -----The Spokesman-Review - Rene Denfeld hopes to inspire change, reflection with new book ‘Sleeping Giants’ by Emma Epperly -----The Spokesman-Review - -Northwest Passages Book Club: Author Rene Denfeld, "Sleeping Giants" - by Stephanie Oakes – Video – 47:23 -----ZED – The Zoomer Book Club - Rene Denfeld Reveals the Sad Truth About American Foster Care in ‘Sleeping Giants’ by Rosemary Counter -----Beyond with Jane Ratcliffe - Addressing Harm, Helping Others, and Embracing Hope: A Conversation With Rene Denfeld - there is a pay wall here Items of Interest from the author -----Crimereads - WHEN GOOD PEOPLE DO BAD THINGS: EXPLORING EVERYDAY EVIL IN CRIME FICTION - 3/27/2024 -----Ravishly - Born Again: Rene Denfeld on the Birth of Love - 10/25/2019 -----Washington Post - After a childhood of wishing for a new family, I found my dream in adulthood - 8/30/2017 – on her challenging upbringing -----NY Times - Four Castaways Make a Family - 8/11/2017 Items of Interest -----Wiki on Holding Time - Attachment Therapy -----AZCentral - Blythe Intaglios: The 'sleeping giants' of the desert by Michael Chow and Thomas Hawthorne -----Wiki on One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest -----Harry Potter Wiki on Delores Umbridge ...more |
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Jun 2024
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0593547004
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May 30, 2024
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1250830850
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liked it
| I had the unpleasant feeling that I was riding straight down a giant throat.-------------------------------------- …the woods of Gallacia are as I had the unpleasant feeling that I was riding straight down a giant throat.-------------------------------------- …the woods of Gallacia are as deep and dark as God’s sorrow.T. Kingfisher, nom de plume of Ursula Vernon, introduced Alex Easton, the Sworn Soldier of the series title, in her 2022 novella, What Moves the Dead. Easton is a native of the fictional nation of Gallacia, a place with its own language, nasty weather, and plenty of reasons to stay away. Alex travels with Angus, erstwhile batman from military days, and overall assistant these days. It is the late 19th century. The pair managed to survive the creepy challenges offered in the first book in the series, a particularly original and alarming take on Poes’s, The Fall of the House of Usher. They are looking forward to a holiday at Easton’s hunting lodge. But they do have a penchant for finding the unusual and unpleasant. [image] T. Kingfisher, aka Ursula Vernon - image from Edubilla.com Easton invited Eugenia Potter to be a guest at the lodge. Potter is Beatrix’s aunt, a personage from the prior book, and a love interest for Angus. Easton is hoping that the lodge has been well maintained, as a local had been hired to see to that, but had proven unreachable. Is the place ready? Is it even standing? Who knows? The focal point on the spectral scale in this volume is an obscure regional spook. According to wiki, a moroi is a phantom of a dead person which leaves the grave to draw energy from the living, so, not a paying guest. Vacation plans are foiled, in fact, replaced with mortal perils The initial volume in the series introduced Alex Easton as a person with female physical attributes who is established in a traditionally male role. The author even takes on pronoun-ing in the created culture that incorporates such a person into the extant culture. It was an interesting element in the first volume, but is only lightly addressed here. Kingfisher has fun setting the creepy stage with grim descriptions of Gallacia, and the particularly dreary part of it in which Alex and company find themselves. For examples, see the two quotes at the top of this review. But she also peppers the tale with humor. …I recognized the smell of livrit, our beloved national paint thinner, made from lichen, cloudberries, and spite. No Gallacian soldier would be without a bottle, in case we ever need to remember what we’re fighting for. (Mostly the opportunity to be somewhere that has better liquor.)-------------------------------------- The greatest city in Gallacia is fine, I suppose, but I didn’t feel the need to linger. Imagine if an architect wanted to re-create Budapest, but on a shoestring budget and without any of the convenient flat bits. While fighting wolves.And Potter butchering the local patois is quite fun. Alex and company try to figure out what is going on, then how to address the problem. The local woman, whom they hire to take care of the household, should come with a surgeon general’s warning. The most interesting element in the story is the fuzzing of the lines between reality and the dreamworld. Are battles fought in an unconscious state still deadly? The struggle for self-control, for self-awareness is as significant as the physical (or is it spectral) harm that is risked, and even suffered. But frankly, this one was a bit of a dud for me. Only occasionally scary at all. I always enjoy a bit of humor and Kingfisher offers up a fair bit here. But there seems far less richness to this book that there was to its predecessor. An enjoyable read but far from a compelling one. It has the benefit of being a short one, a novella, not a full novel, so you can inhale it in a sitting. Kingfisher/Vernon has a third Sworn Soldier volume in the works, set in the USA, and featuring Dr. James Denton from What Moves the Dead. Hopefully the digging she has been doing for that project will yield a motherlode of fun and horror. The silence didn’t feel peaceful. It felt thick. Like a layer of fuzz on your tongue after a hard night of drinking, which you can’t see or touch but you can damn well taste. There weren’t even any birds singing. Review posted - 04/19/23 Publication date – 02/13/23 I received an ARE of What Feasts at Night from Tor/Nightfire in return for a fair review. Thanks, folks, and thanks to NetGalley for facilitating. [image] [image] [image] [image] [image] [image] This review will soon be cross-posted on my site, Coot’s Reviews. Stop by and say Hi! =============================EXTRA STUFF Links to Kingfisher’s personal, Goodreads, and Twitter pages Profile - from the Fantasy Hive T. Kingfisher is the adult fiction pseudonym of Ursula Vernon, the multi-award-winning author of Digger and Dragonbreath. She is an author and illustrator based in North Carolina who has been nominated for the Ursa Major Award, the Eisner Awards, and has won the Nebula Award for Best Short Story for “Jackalope Wives” in 2015 and the Hugo Award for Best Novelette for “The Tomato Thief” in 2017. Her debut adult horror novel, The Twisted Ones, won the 2020 Dragon Award for Best Horror Novel, and was followed by the critically acclaimed The Hollow Places. My reviews of earlier books by Kingfisher -----2022 - What Moves the Dead -----2023 - Thornhedge Items of Interest -----Wiki on moroi -----Stone Soup - The Mess That the Editor Fixes: What Feasts at Night by T. Kingfisher - really only so-so ...more |
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Apr 17, 2024
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0399590129
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| A forty-minute drive from the volcanic Mount Etna, Becchina should have been alive. A forty-minute drive from the volcanic Mount Etna, Becchina should have been alive.-------------------------------------- A low scritching noise caught his attention, and he swung the flashlight beam down to the right, where the natural tunnel and the man-made wall formed a dark and jagged corner. Tiny, putrid-yellow eyes glittered in the shadows.A deal that is too good to believe. Ownership of an abandoned hilltop house in a Sicilian town (Becchina, a made-up town, - buh-kee-na) for a single euro, as long as you agree to live there for five years and invest 50K euros fixing it up. What could possibly go wrong? Tommy and Kate Puglisi see this as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. A chance for a much better future than they could ever afford in Boston. [image] Christopher Golden - Image from MichelleRLane.com The world seemed to be unraveling every day. American culture seemed to be rotting from the inside out, manipulated by an amoral oligarchy whose worst enemy was young people who didn’t want to play their game, and Kate and Tommy were happy to be counted in that category. The irony had not been lost on them, that the nineteenth and twentieth centuries had been defined by people leaving the so-called Old World to seek their fortunes in the New World, and now she and Tommy were doing the opposite, seeking new life in the Old World. But they both believed that earlier generations had it right—a slower life, a smaller circle, a focus on home.That Tommy's family had come from Becchina gave it an additional draw, a chance to spend time with his grandparents, whom he loved and very much wanted to see lot of in their final years. The importance of that is magnified by the fact that both of Tommy’s parents are dead. Tommy and Kate are on extended time off from work, so can attend to getting things fixed up before returning to their jobs, remote jobs, which allows them the freedom to live anywhere. And they do not yet have children. Of course the house comes with some unadvertised extras. The book opens with: The rats are like fingers.Uh oh. Squatters. Toss in being within commuting distance of Mount Etna to shake things up. Oh, and that lady down the hill who is always staring daggers at them whenever they pass by. And the family, who is warm and welcoming but not altogether forthright about the history of the town or the house. On the other hand, there is a group of other new arrivals, lured by the same opportunity. They call themselves The Imports. It’s fun seeing Tommy reconnect with famiglia. He and Kate slowly get to know the town and some of its residents, make friends, and come up with a plan to boost the local economy. Can-do Yanks in action. But things keep happening. Kate thinks she sees someone in the house, but did she really? A tremor arrives soon after they do. There is a part of the house that the R/E agent somehow managed to overlook when showing the place. A door that was locked, but then is mysteriously open. Golden makes generous use of Gothic fiction features (see abbreviated list in EXTRA STUFF) to give you chills. Tommy and Kate are actually a happy couple. Many horror books use spectral events as manifestations of underlying relationship problems. Not the case here. This is also not a case in which better-off sorts gentrify an old area, forcing out the locals. Instead, they are trying to save, replenish, and reconstruct, infusing new life into a withered, crumbling, forgotten town. The houses The Imports bought were already abandoned. The newbies are looking to build up not just the houses they occupy but the community as well. So, the dark forces here are not cutouts for obvious social criticism. They are pretty much straight up malignancy coming at you in sundry ways. One way is our visceral reaction to vermin. The rats that feature in the opening lines persist throughout, gaining in their power to induce fear and loathing. It was a specific choice. In the Book Nook interview, Golden talks about how he believes we mortals have a race-memory fear of rats, the result of plagues that wiped large portions of humanity from the planet multiple times, akin to the natural fear most of us have of snakes, from the days when they were in our immediate environment and posed a mortal threat. Rats give us the creeps. What you get in The House of Last Resort is a likable pair in peril, with a plentiful supply of scary, a cauldron of creepy, and a shipload of shivers. If you think your basement is a mess, you have no idea. There are nifty twists, some local color and action aplenty to keep you turning the pages. Depending on your susceptibility to such books, you may get a sleepless night or two out of this one. A fun read, a pure entertainment, uncluttered by larger sociopolitical concerns, a fabulous summer read. But probably a bad idea to take this along if you plan to visit Sicily. A voice crying out. Tommy frowned, wondering if that had been a dream or if it had been what woke him. Review posted - 04/05/24 Publication date – 01/30/24 I received an ARE of The House of Last Resort from St. Martin’s Press in return for a fair review, and some DNA samples. Thanks, folks, and thanks to NetGalley for facilitating. [image] [image] [image] [image] [image] [image] This review will soon be cross-posted on my site, Coot’s Reviews. Stop by and say Hi! =============================EXTRA STUFF Links to Golden’s personal, FB, Instagram, and Twitter pages Profile Golden is a monster of an author who got started, and found success, very early. He has a gazillion publications to his credit and an army-size host of teleplay credits from his years writing for Buffy with Joss Whedon, and plenty more. And then there are the comics. You may have heard of Hell Boy, among those. Here is a list of what he has published, from Fiction DB. I personally think he has elves, or more likely, goblins, chained to computers in his basement helping him crank out such volume. My reviews of Golden’s two prior books ----------2022 - Road of Bones ----------2023 - All Hallows Interviews -----Paul Semel - Exclusive Interview: “The House Of Last Resort” Author Christopher Golden ----- WYSO - Book Nook - ’The House of Last Resort,’ by Christopher Golden by Vick Mickunas – audio – 50:04 Checklist – Partial Characteristics of the Gothic Novel See my review of While You Sleep for more of this sort Setting - castle or old mansion - oh, Yeah Secret passages or creaky doors - of course Atmosphere of mystery or suspense - fuh shoo-uh Ancient prophecy or legend - sort of Omens, portents, visions - tremors, hints from neighbors and family Supernatural or otherwise inexplicable events - ghost sightings? High, overwrought emotion - you betcha Women in distress - actually not so much. Both Tommy and Kate are beset Women threatened by powerful, tyrannical male - see above ...more |
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