fulfilling my 2022 goal to read one book each month that was not published in my country that i wanted badly enough to have NOW AVAILABLE STATESIDE!!!
fulfilling my 2022 goal to read one book each month that was not published in my country that i wanted badly enough to have a copy shipped to me from abroad and then...never read.
stretching the parameters of the goal a little bit, since this book isn't one that's been languishing on my shelves for years, like many others, but one i JUST RECEIVED from my gr secret santa this year. still, it ain't published here (yet), so i'm counting it!
Dear Reader - enclosed are all the documents you need to solve a case. It starts with the arrival of two mysterious newcomers to the small town of Lockwood, and ends with a tragic death.
Someone has already been convicted of this brutal murder and is currently in prison, but we suspect they are innocent. What's more, we believe far darker secrets have yet to be revealed.
We believe that the killer has given themselves away. It's there in writing, hidden in the emails, texts, and letters. In the events surrounding the charity appeal for little Poppy Reswick, and the question of whether that money was truly being used to fund her life-saving cancer treatment.
Will you accept the challenge? Can you uncover the truth?
what a fun shape for a murrrrder mystery: a book where all the clues are given to the reader in the form of ephemera, emails, and texts between its huge cast of characters, along with the notes and exchanges of two law students who have been given the same info-dump and tasked with finding any information that will exonerate the wrongly-accused party—but who have not been given the identity of that individual. the victim, the motive, the accused, the real killer—all of that is for the reader to uncover alongside these intrepid investigators as they wade through SO much correspondence full of gossip, red herrings, secrets, lies, unreliable witnesses, and the everyday bitchery of people who never expected their private communications would be seen by anyone other than the intended recipient. and boy, is it illuminating. spoiler alert: people are hilarious and terrible.
it's a juicy and inventive read and it sucks you in immediately. it could perhaps have been shortened a bit to reduce some of the drag of its bloated middle, but that's just a minor quibble for a book that is otherwise so, so much fun.
as a final, shallow note, i'm an incorrigible coverlover, and i am SO grateful i was gifted this lovely UK edition, because this:
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is so much more APPEAL-ing than the cover of the soon-to-be-published US edition:
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i was drawn to that UK cover before i knew anything about the book, whereas that snoozy US cover looks like so many other books, i would probably have white-noised right over it on the bookstore shelves and never discovered what this little gem has to offer.
1) i liked it a LOT 2) i needed to honor SPOOKTOBER, and i wasn't seeing anything else in my stacks that qualified and 3) bestbear melki sent me a stack of kiesbye's books recently, and i am so very grateful to her for that kindness.
SO, unsolicited explanation concluded—let's get spookin'!
fulfilling my 2020 goal to read (at least) one book each month that was given to me as a present that i haven't yet gotten around to reading because fulfilling my 2020 goal to read (at least) one book each month that was given to me as a present that i haven't yet gotten around to reading because i am an ungrateful dick....more
oh, man - this could either be GREAT and RIGHT UP MY ALLEY, or it could be A PRETENTIOUS NIGHTMARE. i flipped through it and it looks like great fun, oh, man - this could either be GREAT and RIGHT UP MY ALLEY, or it could be A PRETENTIOUS NIGHTMARE. i flipped through it and it looks like great fun, but it is so long and so expensive, i don't want to risk it yet. HOWEVER, if i see enough GLOWING reviews on here from TRUSTWORTHY SOURCES, i will gladly cave.
fulfilling my 2020 goal to read (at least) one book each month that was given to me as a present that i haven't yet gotten around to reading because ifulfilling my 2020 goal to read (at least) one book each month that was given to me as a present that i haven't yet gotten around to reading because i am an ungrateful dick.
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this BARELY counts, since it is a present from THIS YEAR'S gr secret santa, but i'm getting a head start on not being a dick in 2021, yeah?
fulfilling my 2020 goal to read (at least) one book each month that was given to me as a present that i haven't yet gotten around to reading because ifulfilling my 2020 goal to read (at least) one book each month that was given to me as a present that i haven't yet gotten around to reading because i am an ungrateful dick.
okay, i almost can't believe i'm about to spend time reviewing this book with the same sincere and thoughtful consideration as i give any other book because
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but i am what i am, so here i go, giving this trashy media tie-in book my undivided attention and whatever critical faculties i got left after months of isolation, smashing you sweet pearls with my swine.
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PERSONAL BACKSTORY: i only started watching grey's anatomy a couple of years ago, when i was prowling netflix looking for something to background binge while i did other stuff. i'd never been drawn to it before, because i'd already watched ER and thought surely that was the definitive medical drama, but—since i'd already vacationed in shondaland with Scandal AND How to Get Away with Murder, i figured why not see what all the fuss was about, suspend my disbelief that the dude from Can't Buy Me Love was believable as a sex symbol, and maybe get to see some cool-gross medical mishaps.
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here's the thing about grey's anatomy—it is not a fantastic show, but it is powerfully addictive. i know this because i binged the 14 network-length seasons available on netflix at the time in well under a month. sean of the house made fun of me for watching it, caught a couple of episodes, and then he began watching it on his own, starting at the beginning and actually getting ahead of me at one point. greg ALSO made fun of me for watching it, before giving in and he not only burned through all the episodes available on netflix (15 seasons by that point), but he began having dreams about the show every single night and feeling bereft when he ran out of episodes.
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season 16 just dropped on netflix, and he's so relieved.
it gets its hooks in you, even though there's so much about it that's an eyeroller's paradise. it's teevee popcorn, and while it's not as satisfying now as it was when it was fresh and hot (to me), there's something comforting about it even when it's stale and terrible.
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so. greg got me this book for my birthday.
it takes place during seasons 1-2 of grey's anatomy, but reading it feels more like the experience of watching the past 4-or-so seasons: it's not great but you do it anyway.
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it's two books in one—the events of the first season told from the POVs of joe the bartender
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and nurse debbie
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who—we are to believe—spend their downtime blogging gossipy tidbits about the staff of seattle grace hospital AND gossiping with each other in daily IM sessions about the very same topic.
both joe and nurse debbie get their own half of the book (in a read-half, flip-upside-down, read-other-character's-half format), and each half alternates between their respective blog posts and joint IM convos, mostly just regurgitating the highlights of the season's goings-on, but fleshing it out a little. a very little. if you're reading this book to discover seeeeecrets and easter eggs and deleted scenes, like the mystery of cristina's missing shoe
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it's not gonna give you much of that.
it's fluff, but it's not painful to read, despite some things that bugged me because i don't know how to turn off the part of me that thinks even junk food books should be given a cursory edit before sending it off into the world (although i see now that this is a FIRST EDITION—thanks, greg!—and maybe any errors were corrected in subsequent printings, of which i am sure there were MANY because who wouldn't want this book?)
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because although i appreciate the editorial challenges of structuring a book like this, (tho' probably not as challenging as editing the new kimmy schmidt interactive movie, which you should go watch now because connor is in it!), there are some continuity issues and timeline gaffes. there are occasions where someone will mention something in the blog part (say, debbie talking about meredith and mcdreamy co-owning a dog) and then seven pages (and four blog posts) later in her IM-with-joe part, debbie becomes outraged that he kept from her this oh-so-juicy gossip about meredith and mcdreamy co-owning a dog.
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debbie will casually refer to what happens to men when they explode as "pink-mystifying." which, while the callousness and neologizing are on brand for the show, i do not think it would be spelled with a y.
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there are sentences like this, in one of joe's MANY blog posts about karev:
Thanks to him, the entire hospital now knows exactly what's underneath Izzie's pretty blue scrubs.
someone needs to come along with a 10 blade and remove that malignant modifier! izzie may be pretty
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what's underneath her blue scrubs may be pretty
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but the scrubs themselves?
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eh, not my type
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oh, those aren't big deals, you say? i am a nitpicking grammar monster who doesn't even know how to use capital letters, you say? what about the fact that dr. derek "mcdreamy" shepherd is referred to, MORE THAN ONCE as "mcsteamy."
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I KNOW, RIGHT?
those of us infected by grey's anatomy know there is a mcdreamy
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and there is a mcsteamy
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and you do NOT mix them up. although, and i'm just realizing this now, this was written in 2006, and i'm not a big enough grey's geek to remember the first instance of sloan being referred to as "mcsteamy," but considering he is only in one episode in seasons 1-2 (which i just googled, that wasn't bone-deep grey's knowledge), and even though he IS in this book, it is likely this book predates that appellation and maybe the show grabbed it from the book?, and i don't know what to do with this knowledge, because it sure as shit won't impress anyone at a cocktail party. not that cocktail parties will ever exist again in this covid-riddled world of ours.
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WHICH GREY'S ANATOMIST WILL SAVE US FROM THE 'RONA??
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last complaint: one of the more annoying trademarks of grey's is the pitterpatter nonsense cadence of roughly 70% of the characters' speech patterns, part of which is driven by the need to give everyone from co-workers to love interests to patients some sort of cutesy nickname: evil spawn, mcWORDOFYOURCHOICE, really old guy, heart in the elevator guy, cardio god, the plastics posse, etc etc.
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oh! which phenomenon is apparently something the internet-gang has been memeing for the entire run of the show and i am too late to this fandom to have noticed, but here, internet supplies a multitude of grids showcasing an assortment of primary and secondary nicknames, so here are a couple:
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all of which i am posting for the excuse of posting THIS ONE which cracked me up because burke:
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hahaha no nickname for you, mcboring!
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i will say that one of the only good things on this past season was koracick referring to owen as "strawberry shortcake," which caused me to guffaw and the last time i laughed during a grey's episode was at this:
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BUT, while it is an across-the-board trend, (and the shoulders-back, chin-up rapid-fire speechifying is a shondaland tee em) the cutesy repetitive nicknamey cadence isn't something i remember joe ever doing on the show. he was the calm and reason in the storm
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but his voice in this book is grating and sounds much more like a breathless izzy-george word-dump, punctuated ONE MILLION TIMES with grey's most overused word.
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seriously.
for example, here is joe's blog account of meeting a new patron, who he immediately nicknames Crazy Psycho Dude. for those of you watching along, this meeting would have taken place in season 2, at the very end of ep. 25 (17 Seconds), while the character would actually appear in ep. 26 (Deterioration of the Fight or Flight Response).
It was then when I let my imagination run wild. I'm telling you, all I could think about was the idea that this guy could very well be the kind of guy who keeps women in a man-made well in his basement and says things like, "It rubs the lotion on its skin before it gets the hose again." Seriously? Seriously.
The possibility that Psycho Crazy Dude could actually be psycho and crazy began to dawn on me. Now, I knew I had been lucky enough to survive a standstill operation. But what if I didn't have any luck left? What if I ended up in the well? What if I ended up having to rub lotion on my skin? What if it was me, Joe the Bartender, about to get the hose again?
elephant in the room, YES, joe is misquoting the silence of the lambs and we are all deeply disappoint. but we are also deeply skeptical that joe would say any of that, or much of the other stuff attributed to him in this book.
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i have spent so much time reviewing this book and i'm sure no one's even reading to this point oh my god my decisions are BAD.
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anyway, to say some nice things about the book, i love that joe's section includes recipes for character-specific cocktails, like Meredith's One-Night Stand and Bloodhound Yang.
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i also love that bokhee gets a mention in here (even though they misspell her name as "boki"); a character often-addressed, rarely-seen-sans-mask, my personal posterchild for our times.
liz climo was concerned that we'd all be bored and moody in quarantine, so she made a little coloring book and put it io those quarantine blues
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liz climo was concerned that we'd all be bored and moody in quarantine, so she made a little coloring book and put it into the world for free which is the nicest thing anyone has done during this pandemic.
the second nicest thing is what greg did, which was to print out that coloring book and mail it to me because i don't have a printer and i love liz climo and now i am neither bored nor moody so thank you for making everything better, greg!
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these aren't the best photos because this isn't really coloring paper, but that sounds like i'm a shitty person who punches gift horses in the mouth and i'm NOT. it's just a tip for those of you who want to print out your own copy—be mindful of your paper choices.
it isn't a 'rona-based coloring book, but some of it definitely speaks to our now.
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and you can always help it along if you'd like.
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thank you liz climo, i adore your books and this is a much-appreciated kindness! i will repay you by buying your new mother's day book (You're Mom: A Little Book for Mothers) despite neither having nor being a mother.
fulfilling my 2020 goal to read (at least) one book each month that was given to me as a present that i haven't yet gotten around to reading because ifulfilling my 2020 goal to read (at least) one book each month that was given to me as a present that i haven't yet gotten around to reading because i am an ungrateful dick.
AND
fulfilling book riot's 2020 read harder challenge task #13: Read a food book about a cuisine you’ve never tried before.
i want to love this book, but it is not meeting me halfway. these covers and titles DELIGHT me,
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the photo of the author with the i want to love this book, but it is not meeting me halfway. these covers and titles DELIGHT me,
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the photo of the author with the real-life terrrence and his wife with the real-life izzie delight me even more.
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but it wasn’t my favorite doggie book. i’m not sure if this is meant to be satire or allegory or if it's just…words. there are definitely jokes and references i’m missing here, requiring a more granular familiarity with specific regions in the UK, but there’s also a lot i'm not understanding in the finer points of stone's animal/human distinctions as they manifest in both his imagined social climate and the animals' biological capabilities.
in this book: all animals can talk and be understood by humans, they can hold jobs and own property, be arrested and be captains of industry, but despite all this, they remain "animals" in the social hierarchy; there are zoos, and dogs are pets whose poop is picked up by their ‘owners.’
they can also operate heavy machinery, corner the construction market, do cocaine and smoke pot, use a knife to stab someone, etc.
to say it leaves questions unanswered is an understatement.
i’m fine with treating it as a fantasy or representational writing, but in order for that to be effective, there needs to be a clear message or purpose, and there isn’t one here. it’s a kind of all over the place loopy animal adventure that is messy and confusing and i wanted so badly for it to be more fun than it was. yes, it is ultimately about animal rights, but it's not about, i wanna say *real* animal rights. their "wins" don't gain them equality with humans—they can vote, but there are still zoos, just...bigger zoos? and this: All zoo animals would be entitled to enjoy a West End show, a trip to the seaside, and a swim in the Thames at least 4 times a year.
is that a win for all animals?? is a zebra gonna appreciate the seaside? is a camel gonna swim?
also perplexing, dogs are granted:
...the right to bark at any time...the right to lay down and snooze or have a wee at any time, night or day, in any car park, parking space, local park, or petrol station, and the right to gather in groups of up to 1,000 in any churchyard, train station, theatre, cafe, cricket pitch, bowls lawn, football pitch, church, mosque, or restaurant.
most of those are "rights" dogs already have, but can you picture 1,000 dogs in any restaurant? i love dogs, but 1,000 is far too many!
and this:
Boats that overfished on any sea would be torpedoed without warning.
i am no fan of overfishing, but it's not like trophy hunting—those fish are being caught as food, so that law means a whole lotta creatures died for nothing. very wasteful. better to wait for the boat to come back to shore, distribute the already-dead fish where they were gonna go anyway, and feed the offending parties to sharks.
and this new law is silly and wrong-headed:
Cats would HAVE to be nicer to birds or face having their cat flaps sealed forever.
birds should be nicer to US. and cats are fine living out on their own. they scoff at our cat flaps.
etc etc etc. i'm spending too much time and overthinking what is probably intended to be a fun book of light escapism, but a lot of this just made no sense to me.
that’s not to say there was nothing fun to me—i like that there are at least three different dating websites for crocodiles, and that one of the crocodiles mentioned in this book, although not himself an active player, is named “Croc Monsieur.”
and this is a hell of a chapter 2 closing line, right?
No one would have believed that the persecution of these pathetic dogs by a murderous Mayor would in time lead to world revolution.
dun dun DUNH!
it’s got clear cinematic influences—there’s an Apocalypse Now sequence in vietnam, a Godfather sequence in new york, probably more if i stop to think it through, but there’s too much that’s simply…muddy.
it’s not bad enough to be ridiculed, which i wouldn’t do anyway because in my whole history of reviewing, i’ve only ridiculed a couple of assholes and those two supervolcano books harry turtledove wrote which were totally asking for it, although i’m sure harry turtledove is a really nice guy and a perfectly good author when he stays in his lane and doesn’t go off into cli-fi. this mike stone feller seems like a sweet and adorable chap, and it's a well-meaning book although there are some things that would probably make an american millennial squirm—there are some characterizations that seem a little…broad. and it’s disconcerting—although lexically accurate—to have the ladylove referred to as a bitch all the time. although i did laugh at terrrence’s disastrous dating adventures, and his pooch-preferences: Terrrence adored big bitches.
i appreciated a lot of the author’s intentions, i just don’t think they always came together successfully.
also, that cover gives away a lot of third-act drama, and the title is such a liar. keeping in mind i have never read The Man Who Would Be King and know zero about it beyond "it was written by rudyard kipling" and "it was a movie," this book doesn't even get terrrence close to becoming prime minister. six-and-a-half pages from the end, this line occurs: Many cried out that Terrrence should become Prime Minister at once. four-and-a-half pages from the end, terrrence explicitly declares, "Nor am I going to be Prime Minister."
so that's that, then.
anyway. this wasn't as much fun as i had anticipated, but i'm probably being an unreasonable noodge.
fulfilling my 2020 goal to read (at least) one book each month that was given to me as a present that i haven't yet gotten around to reading because ifulfilling my 2020 goal to read (at least) one book each month that was given to me as a present that i haven't yet gotten around to reading because i am an ungrateful dick.
this is a bit of a cheat, because while it WAS a gift (thanks, michelle ! ♥) it is a gift of < a week, so it hasn't been sitting here triggering my molten-guilt core for very long. don't care, ppbbbllltt!
three and a half in my heart, review to come!
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okay, here it is: THIS BOOK: is it fun? yes. is it a fast read? absolutely. is it…convincing? weeeeeeelllll…
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but hey—when it comes to these kinds of twisty psychological suspense page-turners, satisfaction doesn’t necessarily depend upon plausibility; you suspend your disbelief and get swept away in the author’s (or, here—authors’) imagination; their ability to conceive a plot that deceives the reader with interlocking clues and red herrings jenga’d up into a pleasing puzzle that logic would only dismantle.
and if a book is twisty enough, it’s okay if you predict some of its surprises. and if some of the steps in the extended cat-and-mouse scheme rely too heavily upon coincidence or a character’s preternatural ability to anticipate every variable or accurately predict the actions/reactions of multiple individuals despite having only just met them, well—stop poking the jenga!
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i read The Wife Between Us and i was pleasantly surprised. i bought-in-hardcover-but-haven’t-yet-read An Anonymous Girl, so i’m only able to compare this one to their debut, and while it wasn't as sparky, i was never bored. if the breed standards are that it entertain, then ✓. keep the reader guessing, ✓. deliver reasonable explanations, ✓-ish. resolve itself adroitly? no. nuh-uh. chapter sixty-eight would never ever happen. ladies, please. there are two of you. that’s TWO chances to say “let’s get some more paper and try again.”
overall, it was enjoyable without being groundbreaking or memorable. sometimes you'll get to the end of one of these and be so mind=blown that you immediately go back through to marvel at all the clues ya missed and the cheeky misdirections, and YOUR LIFE IS CHANGED FOREVER.
this is not one of those books.
but it’s a fun temporary escape and if you are quarantined—grab a stack of books like these and several bowls of candy and hunker down for as long as this takes.
oooh, goodreads choice awards finalist for best science fiction 2020! what will happen?
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fulfilling my 2020 goal to read (oooh, goodreads choice awards finalist for best science fiction 2020! what will happen?
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fulfilling my 2020 goal to read (at least) one book each month that was given to me as a present that i haven't yet gotten around to reading because i am an ungrateful dick.
nothing i can say about this book is going to resonate as much as the author's own words, so:
This book, like its title character, saw a fiery birth. Formerly a swirl of disembodied phrases and feelings and half-characters, the story of Ella and Kev began to coalesce while, in Paris, I learned of the non-indictments of the police officers responsible for the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner. After the revelation of the circumstances surrounding the shooting death of Laquan McDonald, I began to hear, with greater force, the stirrings of Ella's voice and Kev's. Each new horrifically regular death, whether upon initial police contact or later during police or carceral custody, made clearer what I wanted to say. Because while I mourned, I thought of the families left behind and how the orbit of hurt at the center of which sits each of these tragedies is spread almost beyond imagining. In a fiction genre that traffics in the impossible, I wondered how such people, such families, might find themselves situated.
What might the opposite of injustice look like?
too many orbits, too many obits
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to anyone who needs to hear this: please stop making the world terrible.