this explanation/intro will be posted before each day’s short story. scroll down to get to the story-review.
this is the SIWELCOME TO DECEMBER PROJECT!
this explanation/intro will be posted before each day’s short story. scroll down to get to the story-review.
this is the SIXTH year of me doing a short story advent calendar as my december project. for those of you new to me or this endeavor, here’s the skinny: every day in december, i will be reading a short story that is 1) available free somewhere on internet, and 2) listed on goodreads as its own discrete entity. there will be links provided for those of you who like to read (or listen to) short stories for free, and also for those of you who have wildly overestimated how many books you can read in a year and are freaking out about not meeting your 2020 reading-challenge goals. i have been gathering links all year when tasty little tales have popped into my feed, but i will also accept additional suggestions, as long as they meet my aforementioned 1), 2) standards.
GR has deleted the pages for several of the stories i've read in previous years without warning, leaving me with a bunch of missing reviews and broken links, which makes me feel shitty. i have tried to restore the ones i could, but my to-do list is already a ball of nightmares, so that's still a work-in-progress. however, because i don't have a lot of time to waste, i'm not going to bother writing much in the way of reviews for these, in case GR decides to scrap 'em again.
i am doing my best. merry merry.
DECEMBER 7: SING A SONG OF SIXPENCE - LILLI CARRÉ
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two days ago, i read Babycakes for this project, and entreated y'all thusly:
five pages of sequential art n' narrative. you have time for this.
and so but maybe some of you STILL felt you had far too much to do to because HOLIDAYS, so here i am again, saying WHAT ABOUT THIS, THOUGH?
this one is THREE PANELS OF ART and the only words are a nursery rhyme YOU ALREADY KNOW and the whole thing is BRIGHT YELLOW.
YOU HAVE TIME FOR THIS!
i didn't mean to choose a story that feels like a cheat, but goodreads was down for most of the day (LGM) and i had to get a quickie posted (LGM) and i promise to do a long 'un tomorrow to make up for it (LGM).
fulfilling my 2021 goal to read one book each month by an author i love that i haven’t gotten around to reading yet
this whole monthly goal to 'read a fulfilling my 2021 goal to read one book each month by an author i love that i haven’t gotten around to reading yet
this whole monthly goal to 'read a book i've never read by an author i love' endeavor has been interesting, especially in those months where the book i hadn't read was the beloved author's debut, which was the case with this one, John Crow's Devil, and Under the Bright Lights.
for some reason, i was convinced that The End of Everything was her debut, and the handful of girlnoir books she wrote were a brief experiment with historical/genre-writing before returning to the realm over which she reigns supreme: contemporary psychological explorations of the dark underbelly of adolescent girlhood.
but no, these four books (Die a Little, Queenpin, The Song Is You, and Bury Me Deep) were how she announced her arrival on the literary scene, and although, of the four, i've only read this one and Queenpin, it's enough to know that she's stunningly good at this style, and now i wonder why she ever stopped writing these literary pulp novels. i mean, the six books she wrote after these are amazing, and she's one of my all-time favorite writers, but the fact that this book was her veryfirst is making me fall even more in love with her than i already was.
because this was outstanding. everything she is—all of her strengths and themes and fixations—all the seeds for what characterizes her later work are here, just in period costumes. in fact, there's a line in this one that pops up, in a slightly different context, in her most recent, The Turnout.
how did she manage to bang this one out of the park her first time at bat? the observations, the turns of phrase, the details, the subtext—she came into this world fully-formed, poised and collected, and unleashed this twisted web of secrets and concealment and guise that reads like the work of a much more seasoned author. it's tight and complex, and there are just layers of dark, dirty things squirming beneath this stylized, economical prose, and it's so damn precise and compact and pure.
as always, her focus is female, and it's centered around the not-so-sugar-and-spice aspects of ladyhood. in her contemporary novels, where her characters tend to be younger, it's effective because
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here, set in 1950's LA, you have the juxtaposition of the blowsy, wanna-be-starlet floozy types, living fast lives at odds with the prim-and-proper housewife ideal, but those trim, coiffed, pencil-skirted ladies have secrets of their own, secrets that are just as seedy despite being so well-concealed.
sex and drugs and murder and the scrabble-and-hustle of trying to make it in a world that pigeonholes its ladies into the boring binary of naughty and nice. and then megan abbott comes 'round, sticks a knife into that seam and lets it all bleed out.
“I surprised her, you see,” he said, grinning, “as you would be surprised if this insect suddenly spoke to you. Hri and her sisters have been aware of
“I surprised her, you see,” he said, grinning, “as you would be surprised if this insect suddenly spoke to you. Hri and her sisters have been aware of Origin Earth since the first multicellular creatures swam in its oceans. And they did not pay us much heed, even as we spread across the stars, because our works were so small and transient compared to (missing word [sic]). They did not think it was possible for us to develop the states of consciousness necessary to commune with them.
“Yet my mind, out here at the galaxy’s edge, unpolluted by the noise of humanity, refined by meditation, sharpened by fasting, touched their realm. I swam in cosmic seas you could not comprehend. I saw all time and space spread before me like an ocean, past and future intermingling in universe-sized waves. “This”—he waved at the meadow—“is nothing compared to that.”
over the past few years, i've experienced a particular kind of embarrassment; a sort of helpless secondhand shame as someone supposedly representing 'me' and 'my' values became the public face of the place where i live, and struggling to parse their through-the-looking-glass perceptions of how anything worked; individuals, society, science—my typical #mood became "aghast," every day i wanted to apologize to the rest of the planet for shit that wasn't my fault, and it was hard to know whether to gallows-laugh or be fucking terrified.
this story captures that feeling and amplifies it. 'cuz if there are powerful higher powers to whom humanity is no more significant than an anthill or a beehive is to us, the consequences would be catastrophic if the first person they met was some self-aggrandizing misanthropic douchebag.
let's be on our best behavior when the planet-crushing entities come over, mmkay?
WELCOME TO JUNE PROJECT! this book is meant to encourage folks "to be brave enough to draw whatever you want and innocent enough to make mistakes. IgnWELCOME TO JUNE PROJECT! this book is meant to encourage folks "to be brave enough to draw whatever you want and innocent enough to make mistakes. Ignore the rules of what makes art “Art” and toss aside any inhibitions you have in order to draw as freely as possible."
i harbor no illusions about my own artistic skills, which are at least 40% mistakes, and i have no inhibitions about showing off my mediocrity, but i'm still gonna have fun with this book's series of exercises and prompts and continue to draw like the overgrown child i am! WHAT WILL HAPPEN? LET'S FIND OUT!
JUNE 1: draw anything that comes to mind on this pink background. think of something that isn't pink in real life
so, my real problem when it comes to drawing is that i'm not particularly creative and can never think of *what* to draw. i am someone who requires direction. so i decided to use wikipedia's "random article" feature to "tell" me what to draw on this here pink background. wikipedia told me to draw MOOSE MOUNTAIN. and so i did. [image] WELCOME TO MOOSE MOUNTAIN! IT IS A MOUNTAIN FOR MOOSE!
JUNE 2: close your eyes and reach into your pencil collection. pull out a random selection of five colors and use only this limited palette to create your piece.
this is great because it leaves EVERYTHING up to fate—the colors AND the content!
here is fate's rainbow: [image] olive green, lilac, tuscan red, crimson red and one without a name that i shall prosaically call "gray."
wikipedia challenged me to draw "Macrobathra porphyrea," but refused to provide a picture of whateverthehell that is. i asked google to intervene, and was rewarded with this: [image] so i drawed this: [image] a fuzzy slenderman-alien with a case of the wing-pox!
JUNE 3: draw a person riding a bike, using your left hand if you are a righty, or your right hand if you're a lefty. [image] honestly, this came out better than i thought it would, and it's probably pretty close to how i would draw a bike using my awesome left hand. i realized, while drawing this, that i have no idea what a bicycle looks like.
JUNE 4: draw one big dog and four small cats [image] don't mind if i do! this is a bad photo but it's the best i can do right now. long wearying day and it's a miracle i was able to even get the drawing thing done. sorry sorry meow
JUNE 5: draw an underwater animal tea party [image] don't ask me how this works w/r/t gravity/buoyancy and soggy sandwiches. i'm a CHILD, remember? goo goo gah gah&etc.
JUNE 6: fill in six squares depicting your day [image] THIS IS WHAT I DID! (and what i am going to do; i cheated a little)
JUNE 7: draw a big flower + a small bear [image] if i were a cleverer person, i would have drawn a big sack of flour and a tiny glass of beer. as it is, i am just a directions-following sheep. this is not fridge-worthy.
JUNE 8: make an illustration while holding your tool using your whole fist
first of all, a note to Haleigh Mun: [image] second of all, i once again turned to wikirandom for inspiration, and that bastard told me to draw a play!!!
Wall is a 2009 play by David Hare, in the form of a monologue. It was first performed in March 2009 at the Jerwood Theatre Downstairs at the Royal Court Theatre by the author himself, directed by Stephen Daldry. Its topic is the Israeli Security Barriers in the West Bank and Gaza and it is intended by Hare as a companion piece to his monologue Berlin and its passages on the Berlin Wall. Both monologues were later performed together as Berlin/Wall at The Public Theater, Broadway in May 2009.
challenge accepted! from my fisted tool to your eyes, here is the fruit of mine and wikipedia's loins: [image] i didn't color this one in because it would have turned into even more of a mess than it is in plain old pencil.
JUNE 9: draw the covers of books you have recently read.
JUNE 10: if you could spend a day with your childhood pet, draw what you would do [image] this is strider. he was a Very Good Boy.
JUNE 11: if you were an animal, what animal would you be? [image] pretty easy question for me. someone come splice my genes already.
JUNE 12: draw a planet surrounded by creatures [image] dear bezos-in-space: if you are planning a trip to donut planet, make haste. it will not be around for much longer...
JUNE 13: draw at a park [image] i drew many things, with no regard for perspective or scale or how humans—even humans playing soccer—are supposed to have arms. anyway, this is what it looked like at 7 am at the park across the street from me: there was soccer and a woman practicing a dance routine while another woman watched her from the swings, there was a man helping another man exercise (that is neither an electric chair nor a wheelchair; it's one of those 'put your arms on the long padded things and bring them close to your body' things that's for the arms? or pecs? i dunno, i don't exercise), and a lone man exercising his muscles (bumps = muscles in my drawing—i excel at anatomy), and what else? some birds, some water fountains shooting out of the ground, and me! in case you want to see MY SOURCE MATERIAL, it is here: [image] [image] [image] [image] [image] [image] and it's PERFECT!
JUNE 14: draw your childhood pets [image] here are some of the sad soft parts in my heart.
JUNE 15: draw your last weekend [image] i went to A RESTAURANT for the first time in over a year (and saw DANA for the first time in...many years), i caught-and-released the first firefly of the season, i hand-fed some squirrels, i was slobber-attacked by hudson at work, and i ate too much chicken and cheese and fruits with connor AND THAT WAS LAST WEEKEND!
btw, this is hudson: [image] he is my favorite customer and the best part of my workingday, but also a very naughty boy. he jumped into the hudson river (no relation) the other day, chasing a GOOSE!
JUNE 16: draw a dinner table. place your favorite food in the middle and other delicious things around it. try drawing as if you are above the table looking down on the scene [image] another badly-lit photo i will fix when i'm not half-asleep, whenever that is. i deviated slightly from the prompt—my favorite food is not "a seam of cured meat," but this is absolutely my favorite mealshape: grazing on little bites of fruit and meat and cheese and nuts and etc. gout = #lifegoals.
JUNE 17: draw the place where you are watching the show. be sure to include the screen of your TV or tablet in your drawing [image] this is the third of the "netflix and sketch" prompts, in case that wording made you feel like you were entering into a conversation already in progress. the book encourages skipping around, so i haven't yet done the other teevee challenges, but this is me watching top chef from my cozy bed.
JUNE 18: draw a bird dance party. this could be birds dancing in the sky, birds with two legs dancing on the ground just like humans, or something else entirely [image] welcome to my future, where the birds dance merrily on my grave. quick question about that prompt, though—are there birds with more than two legs? [image] OH NOOOO!
JUNE 19: draw a big person + a small house [image] i thought that house was yellow when i was coloring it. what a fun, unpredictable time can be had by drawing in the dark!
JUNE 20: draw the place you most recently visited [image] weee don't travel during pandemics, so here's a picture of Where I Went Today: the frozen treat aisle of the grocery store, where i bought several varieties of outshine bars and ate them at connor's. we can pretend they were exotic foods from distant lands, because that tangerine bar? was out of this world. A DAD JOKE FOR FATHER'S DAY!
JUNE 21: play with these shapes. draw around them, in them, or over them to make your own picture!
what shapes, you ask? [image] these shapes!
and my too-hot-and-tired-to-be-creative ass drew this and then flopped over until winter [image] welcome to ROCK, PAPER, SCISSORS, BLOOD! it is a terrible idea for a theme park. on a related note, i may have just failed a rorschach test.
JUNE 22: draw a dog wedding [image] okay, book! here you go!
JUNE 23: walk and draw. take this book for a little walk around your house or to a park, somewhere you can wander without fear of running into things. draw while you are walking. you may stop and draw when you find something you want to focus on. draw for the entire length of your walk. [image] this is a true story about financial success via divine intervention, or How I Found Ten Cents Today on my way to market, whilst being observed by an audience of woodside's wildlife like a queens—based cinderella remake. take that, In the Heights.
i outlined it at home for better photographing, but i didn't tidy it up—it's all still nice and janky from walk-drawing.
JUNE 25: sit by a window—it could be at home or in a car, anywhere really—and draw that window [image] for reference: [image] if you're wondering why i stopped updating this review, you're looking at it. this one turned out so bad that i was going to pretend it never happened and do a different page but it was too hot and i was too tired so i dropped the ball and 'tho i kept drawing, i couldn't get over the hump of my own failure enough to post them, so i'm doing it now and PLEASE LOOK AWAY FROM MY SHAME!
JUNE 26: draw a big mouse + a small lion [image] ...more
i had a VERY EXCITING PLAN for april's review project, but it's been delayed, so now i gotta scramble to produce a week's worth of posts in a day. i fi had a VERY EXCITING PLAN for april's review project, but it's been delayed, so now i gotta scramble to produce a week's worth of posts in a day. i found this naughty little book in my potential project-stack, and what better way to reflect the nowtimes than with a whole bunch of colorful cussin'? true, i've already completed Cocktastic!, The Swear Word Coloring Book, and Another F*cking Coloring Book, but there's always room for more off-color coloring, right? i'll be back here as soon as i can with some PG-13 content!
APRIL 1
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starting out mild as milk with a g-rated snake saying what we're all thinking.
APRIL 2
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cry, mean ocean, CRY!
this has got to be the worst supermarket ever. first of all, those poisonous olives front and center, but what's with the tentacles hanging out in the produce section? room-temperature octopus-limbs? no sale.
APRIL 3
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covid-era diet, a still life (2020-2021, artist unknown)
APRIL 4
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whoop dee fucking donut, amiright?
APRIL 5
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cupcake vertigo: the compulsion to face-plant into a valley of frosting.
APRIL 6
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the brunch party soured when the hostess ran out of fucks.
APRIL 7
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is it just me, or is this coloring book awfully fixated on confectionaries?
APRIL 8
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hahaahah this is my favorite art. ever. BUILD ME A MUSEUM WHERE EVERY PIECE IS OF A CRAB YELLING AT A FISH OR A REASONABLE EQUIVALENT.
APRIL 9
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oof, sorry for such a messy bessy post tonight. but at least we're back on the sweet treats! i will make a better coloring post tomorrow, i promise!
APRIL 10
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fuck, NO! NO MORE BIRDS PLEASE! WE HAVE ENOUGH!
APRIL 11
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everything was FINE until the olives got involved. then it became a real trainwreck. NO ONE INVITED YOU, OLIVES!
APRIL 12
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sometimes i find myself struggling to make a connection between the words and the pictures. this is one of those times.
APRIL 13
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"don't mind if i do," said the adult woman who received three different candy-forward easter baskets this year. #neverhadacavity
APRIL 14
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guess who's halfway vaccinated? this girl here, who knows EXACTLY how the words and the images match up in this one!
APRIL 15
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i respectfully disagree with this caption. this is not an epic fail at all. an epic fail would be trying to bite off more than you, a pelican, can chew. case(s) in point:
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and, take two:
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APRIL 16
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invited to a vegetable party and nothing to wear? NO PROB!
APRIL 17
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says the person who put OLIVES in my SALAD, so NO i will not calm down.
APRIL 18
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this must be a typo. they mean 'terrifying as fuck," right?
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who could be bored surrounded by so much creepiness? creeps, i guess.
APRIL 19
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welcome to my breakfast for dinner party: come harden yer arteries with me.
APRIL 20
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if ever there were a missed opportunity to caption an image "deez nuts," this is it.
APRIL 21
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feel free to take a moment to tell me how impressed you are that i managed to color around all those maddening grains of rice.
APRIL 22
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i like to think of this as being an illustration from a lost chapter of Charlotte's Web. happy earth day, hippies!
APRIL 23
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dinner at the home of a juggler can be challenging
APRIL 24
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this summarizes...everything.
APRIL 25
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glad to see a return to the pastry motif -bring on the carbs!
APRIL 26
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piñata at my house, bitches!
APRIL 27
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this is me entering my blue period
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although a lot of this book has been working blue, as they say...
APRIL 28
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that little fish is all of us
APRIL 29
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for some of these, i've had to make educated guesses about what some of the shapes are meant to represent, and i fear that my assumptions have made for some bizarre food-groupings. that nubbly rod? corn or grapes? i went with grapes, but what a weird meal! the things that look like fly girl earrings? is it calamari? were they fried eggs? i decided they were pineapple rings. i also opted for steak and bacon, but it all coulda been anything. this might be a depiction of a compost heap or the inside of a garbage disposal or the tummy of a raccoon or the sidewalk outside the local irish pub on a friday night.
APRIL 30
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i don't know what's going on here—what is bone, what is negative space? i don't have any answers for you, but this is a good place to tie this review project off. i give up on april.
i was not expecting this ARC, it just showed up at my place decked out in that delicious cover, and i was intrigued enough to read theNOW AVAILABLE!!!
i was not expecting this ARC, it just showed up at my place decked out in that delicious cover, and i was intrigued enough to read the author's letter accompanying the book, which begins:
As always, it's tremendously difficult to talk about Comfort Me With Apples without giving away the whole game. From the jump, we ruefully laughed about how hard it would be to market a book with such a massive twist that we can only vaguely tell anyone what it's about beyond: You just have to read it. Trust us.
well, consider that effective marketing, because that paragraph alone was enough to make me put Matrix on hold for a day in order to see what this massive twist was all about.
rereading the letter after reading the book made me laugh out loud (man, if only there were a shorter way to type out that phrase), because something she wrote after this paragraph is such a marvelously sly instance of I SEE WHAT YOU DID THERE!
and, no, i won't type that part out.
it's a little Bluebeard, a little The Stepford Wives, and a lot ████████, and while i didn't find it "terrifying," it was delicately unsettling and a finely wrought little splinter of a novella.
"I am happy, ████████*. How could I be otherwise? I am fed, I am housed, I am busy, I am loved."
Her voice catches on the last word.
sincere apologies to Lauren Groff for temporarily putting you in the corner, but i don't regret being part of a small handful of readers who know ALL THE SEEKRITS!
* name redacted to avoid potential spoilers for those of you with specific BACKGROUNDS.
fulfilling my 2021 goal to read one book each month by an author i have never read despite owning more than one of their books.
dammit.NOW AVAILABLE!!!
fulfilling my 2021 goal to read one book each month by an author i have never read despite owning more than one of their books.
dammit.
i was SO excited to get an ARC of this, and i really wanted to love it, but although it opens with a fantastic gotcha-pop of misdirection, the rest was kind of a slow fizzle for me.
it's about the satanic panic that swept thru 1980's america, and is based on the mcmartin preschool trials, where a bunch of little kids were coaxed/coerced into a salem witch trial-y situation, accusing their teachers of various crimes; everything from sexual abuse to flushing kids down the toilet. if you're not familiar with the details, you should click on that link up there because it's bonkers.
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Whisper Down the Lane approaches its parallel scenario from two different timelines—the accusations and their repercussions—in alternating chapters intriguingly named:
damned if you do/sean: 1983
and
damned if you don't/richard: 2013
although i came up in the 80s, i was too little and my parents too sensible for that whole satanic panic phenomenon to have had any impact on my life, and reading this book was the first time i realized how broad satan's net had been cast back then. obviously, ozzy osbourne and dungeons and dragons were team devil, but lucky charms? the smurfs? i had no idea that so many things i enjoyed as a kid were after my soul, and i honestly would have thought the satanic alliances attributed to cabbage patch kids and ronald mcdonald were invented for this book if i hadn't stumbled upon these two gems in my post-reading research:
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which i now NEED to own, along with their author's other title:
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i can't find any information about what that one is about, but i want to know very badly, so if anyone can hook me up with info, please you MUST.
back to the book i am meant to be reviewing.
i enjoy horror in any medium, even though the part of me that is responsible for activating my jumpy-goosebumpy fear response is busted*. still, i keep trying, and i can recognize effective horror even when, even though it doesn't give me the juicy shivers i want so bad. i didn't find this one scary at all, but it builds tension well, there are some strong disturbing descriptive scenes, and it hovers in that satisfying 'is this real or is this madness?' limbo just long enough before committing to a side. it's not a bad story, there's just nothing particularly surprising here if you've been around the horror block a time or two.
the best parts are the 80s-era interactions between five-year-old sean and the child psychologist with her creepy therapy puppet and her way of manipulating a desired response with leading questions and straight-up bullying.
i will say, though, that there is some distractingly clunky prose here; unnecessarily repetitive and awkward, which kept taking me out of the story to wince. i read the arc, so maybe it'll be fixed by then, but just to give a couple of examples:
There was power in unifying their voices, these mothers learned. A combined strength.
Unity.
They could harness their concerns and make it one voice. One loud, determined voice.
and
...Condrey considers us all to be one big, happy academic family. As in, "arguing-with-your-right-wing-uncle-about-whether-or-not-Obama-was-born-in-the-USA-during-Thanksgiving-dinner" type of family. That's what kind of family our faculty is.
overall it's...just okay. it was neither scary enough nor satirical-funny enough for my personal tastes, but remember i'm just one human whose tastes and opinions are different from every other human's tastes, and so are you!
coincidentally, this story ran in the ny times the day i wrote this review, and may be of interest:
But I was done letting wishing I was better stop me from being what I was.
i love sam J. miller and i love a story full of bowie and iggy pop (hahah i But I was done letting wishing I was better stop me from being what I was.
i love sam J. miller and i love a story full of bowie and iggy pop (hahah i typed iggy poo) and the pixies, but instalove is always boring, lauren doesn't really have any depth-of-character, and woke gender politics aside, as much as it may be theoretically true that gender was just a set of clothes we put on when we went out into the world, biological genitals and teen pregnancy are still real and i don't think it's unevolved for the mother of a teenage girl to exert a little parental responsibility when it comes to the specifics of a slumber party occurring under their own roof with some stranger their daughter just picked up at a thrift store.
additionally, gender aside, we are all incredibly vulnerable when we're asleep, so letting some stranger danger into your home is risky, no matter how insta- is your child's love.
while i didn't love the story, or feel it ultimately delivered on its premise, it reads like a good pitch for a YA novel and would probably work better if it were tweaked into a longer and more satisfying piece; some sort of contemporary spin on Pump Up the Volume with SF elements.
this explanation/intro will be posted before each day’s short story. scroll down to get to the story-review.
this is the FIWELCOME TO DECEMBER PROJECT!
this explanation/intro will be posted before each day’s short story. scroll down to get to the story-review.
this is the FIFTH year of me doing a short story advent calendar as my december project. for those of you new to me or this endeavor, here’s the skinny: every day in december, i will be reading a short story that is 1) available free somewhere on internet, and 2) listed on goodreads as its own discrete entity. there will be links provided for those of you who like to read (or listen to) short stories for free, and also for those of you who have wildly overestimated how many books you can read in a year and are freaking out about not meeting your 2020 reading-challenge goals. i have been gathering links all year when tasty little tales have popped into my feed, but i will also accept additional suggestions, as long as they meet my aforementioned 1), 2) standards, because i have not compiled as many as usual this year.
IN ADDITION, this may be the last year i do this project since GR has already deleted the pages for several of the stories i've read in previous years without warning, leaving me with a bunch of missing reviews and broken links, which makes me feel shitty. because i don't have a lot of time to waste, i'm not going to bother writing much in the way of reviews for these, in case gr decides to scrap 'em again. 2020 has left me utterly wrung out and i apologize for what's left of me. i am doing my best.
DECEMBER 20: DON'T LEAVE ME ALONE - GG
i read this story early in the morning prior to trying to squeeze in some xmas shopping before my 10:00 am shift, and it put me in the LEAST FESTIVE MOOD EVER. this is a graphic short, and i love the artwork and the story both, but the message is a downer: bullying only gets worse as you get older, and even if you have love and family and you're doing everything right, if you're working poor and 'other,' nothing really changes because assholes get older, too, and they just get more powerful. whee.
early morning heartbreak for me. guess i was naughty this year.
four riley sager books under my belt and i'm still not sure how i feel about him. i liked Final Girls and liked-liked Home BSPOOKTOBER FOREVER!
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four riley sager books under my belt and i'm still not sure how i feel about him. i liked Final Girls and liked-liked Home Before Dark, but Lock Every Door was pretty dumb, and this one might be even dumber.
FUN FACT: this is the SECOND book i have read with this title, (see also Survive the Night by danielle vega), and that one was also terrible.
scratch that—this one isn't terrible—he gets points for writing a propulsive page-turner that sucks you in and keeps you invested in barreling towards the conclusion, it's just—once you get to the conclusion, there are a lot of lingering brain-splinters from things that just don't add up, and it left me feeling the same simmering-resentment i had after both of iain reid's novels; I'm Thinking of Ending Things and Foe.
in its favor, this was a one-day read, which—considering my attention span and workload these days—was a rare treat.
but there's so much about that's just...dumb.
our dum-dum heroine is named charlie, after a character in hitchcock's Shadow of a Doubt. perhaps because of this cinematic birthright, she's a bit film-obsessed; a film theory major in her third year of college, she's an ambulatory IMDB whose social game is largely comprised of dropping cast lists and release dates.
She could be mute for hours, but if someone mentions a film title, the words pour out. Maddy had once told her that movies were her version of wine coolers. They really loosen you up.
Charlie knows it's true, which is why asking people about their favorite movies is the only icebreaker she has. It instantly tells her how much time and energy she should spend on a person. If someone mentions Hitchcock or Ford or Altman or even Argento, they're probably worth talking to. On the flip side, if someone brings up The Sound of Music, Charlie knows it's best to just walk away.
maddy was charlie's best friend and roommate, and her death two months ago has left charlie so grief-stricken that she's decided to go stay with her grandmother in ohio for a while.
and she's not sure if she's ever going to return, or see her boyfriend robbie, again.
there are two layers to that statement:
1) the campus, the room they shared, the clubs they went to—every inch of the school sparks a memory of maddy and now everything is a painful reminder of an absence charlie's not sure she can overcome.
2) maddy didn't just die, she was murdered, becoming the third victim of the campus killer, and now charlie's about to get in a car with some guy named josh she met briefly at the campus ride-share board, and she's standing around alone at 9:00 pm in the winterdark, having sent her boo back to his apartment because he had an early class. these are not the actions of a person who's long for this world.
as though emphasizing her foolishness, charlie's standing right next to a streetlamp with a Take Back the Night flyer on it, ignoring three of the four safety tips:
Never go out alone at night. Always walk in pairs. Always tell someone where you're going. Never trust a stranger.
to her credit, she knows she's being a dum dum:
...according to the Take Back the Night flyer, she shouldn't even be here at all, alone at the curb with suitcases and a box, clearly looking like someone about to leave and who no one would miss for a few days.
but, dummies gonna dum.
charlie hasn't been behind the wheel since her parents were killed in a car accident, so the coincidence of finding someone—even a stranger—who conveniently happens to be driving from new jersey to ohio seems more like a golden opportunity than a risk, when all she cares about is getting away to mourn the loss of her friend in the comforting presence of the only family she has left.
even if there's a killer on the loose.
increasing her vulnerability is charlie's tendency to retreat into a movie in her mind, a little neural glitch she's got where she zones out into uncontrollable fugue states without warning, which episodes frequently leave her unable to differentiate between reality and reverie.
explaining her condition to josh:
"Instead of what's really happening, I see a heightened version of the scene. Like my brain is playing tricks on me. I hear conversations that aren't happening and see things that aren't really there. It feels like life..."
"Only better?"
Charlie shakes her head. "More manageable."
She had always thought of it as seeing things in wide-screen. Not everything. Just certain moments. Difficult ones. A Steadicam operator gliding through the rough patches of her life. It wasn't until she was forced to see the psychiatrists who prescribed the little orange pills that Charlie realized what the movies in her mind really were.
Hallucinations.
That was what the psychiatrist called them.
She said it was like having a mental circuit breaker, triggered when Charlie's emotions threaten to overwhelm her. In times of grief or stress or fear, a switch flips in Charlie's brain, replacing reality with something more cinematic and easier to handle.
charlie feels responsible for maddy's death because she slipped into one of these mind-movies the night maddy died, and may have seen her talking to the man who killed her. no matter how many times she returns to the memory, she can't identify the man or sort out fact from fiction, infusing her grief with all sorts of guilt.
this condition conveniently makes her an easy target for gaslighting ne'er-do-wells, and sager takes advantage of this as charlie's trip to grandmother's house (in a bright red coat, naturally) becomes increasingly sinister and dreamlike and MY WHAT BIG TEETH YOU HAVE when, despite her hazy perception, charlie starts noticing some conflicting details in josh's story and suspects she may have accepted a ride with the wrong stranger.
it's a neat twist on an urban legend hitchhiking tale, but there's a lot that, ultimately, doesn't wash, although it is absolutely a very fun ride. for the reader, not so much for charlie.
one more gripe for the road: it's set in the 1991, not for any particular love of the time period, but because one cellphone and this story is over. however, it doesn't feel like immersive retro fun; he doesn't grady hendrix it—gleefully peppering the book with temporal references and nods and winks to get the reader in the 90's mood. using a nirvana song as a plot point is not the same as evoking an era.
perhaps i read this one too close to My Heart Is a Chainsaw, which features another unreliable female narrator obsessed with movies to the extent that the boundaries between life and film get a little blurry. that book is a slow-burning heartblam, this one is a kiddie-sparkler on the fourth of july—fun while it's fizzling, but...then what?
i'm all a-flicker about how to rate this fun but flawed thriller.
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and then i remember that none of this matters and no one cares what i think and the world is a mess, so why not be a person who rounds up??
“What are you?” I said with a really distinct, spattery lisp.
“Pissed,” he said.
love, love, a thousand times love. someday i will actually read all th“What are you?” I said with a really distinct, spattery lisp.
“Pissed,” he said.
love, love, a thousand times love. someday i will actually read all the stephen graham jones books i've been stockpiling over the years because i know our reader/writer true love is meant to be, even though circumstances seem to always be keeping us apart.
but i read this one, and it was a complete joy; funny and creepy and unexpected and everything one could want out of a free tor short.
someday i will be better about reading the books i want to read, someday i will get back into the habit of writing reviews again, someday i will grow wings and fly to the mooooooon!!
until then, i'll mask up, go to work, and try to make it through the day without toppling into the abyss while y'all stay safe and check this story out!!
this explanation/intro will be posted before each day’s short story. scroll down to get to the story-review.
this is the FIWELCOME TO DECEMBER PROJECT!
this explanation/intro will be posted before each day’s short story. scroll down to get to the story-review.
this is the FIFTH year of me doing a short story advent calendar as my december project. for those of you new to me or this endeavor, here’s the skinny: every day in december, i will be reading a short story that is 1) available free somewhere on internet, and 2) listed on goodreads as its own discrete entity. there will be links provided for those of you who like to read (or listen to) short stories for free, and also for those of you who have wildly overestimated how many books you can read in a year and are freaking out about not meeting your 2020 reading-challenge goals. i have been gathering links all year when tasty little tales have popped into my feed, but i will also accept additional suggestions, as long as they meet my aforementioned 1), 2) standards, because i have not compiled as many as usual this year.
IN ADDITION, this may be the last year i do this project since GR has already deleted the pages for several of the stories i've read in previous years without warning, leaving me with a bunch of missing reviews and broken links, which makes me feel shitty. because i don't have a lot of time to waste, i'm not going to bother writing much in the way of reviews for these, in case gr decides to scrap 'em again. 2020 has left me utterly wrung out and i apologize for what's left of me. i am doing my best.
DECEMBER 13: IF AT FIRST YOU DON'T SUCCEED, TRY, TRY AGAIN - ZEN CHO
this one grew into five stars for me. it didn't start out that way—in the beginning, i was getting kinda bored and bogged down in the folktaliness of it; the story of an imugi studying the Way in order to ascend and become a dragon &yadda. but that all changed when i got to this part here:
Byam turned for its last look at the earth as an imugi. The lake shone in the sun. It had been cold, and miserable, and lonely, full of venomous water snakes that bit Byam’s tail. Byam had been dying to get away from it.
But now, it felt a swell of affection. When it returned as a dragon, it would bless the lake. Fish would overflow its banks. The cows and pigs and goats would multiply beyond counting. The crops would spring out of the earth in their multitudes…
A thin screechy noise was coming from the lake. When Byam squinted, it saw a group of little creatures on the western bank. Humans.
One of them was shaking a fist at the sky. “Fuck you, imugi!”
“Oh shit,” said Byam.
once the story took on a more...contemporary tone, i absolutely loved it. to this imugi, i say: SAME—getting mired in frustration over not achieving one's goals, being thwarted by fate and happenstance despite prolonged efforts, hard work, ingenuity of approach, feeling foolish for having dreams, for wanting more, becoming accustomed to failure, accepting one's lot, resigned to making a life smaller than you'd hoped and finding happiness in this smaller life while still experiencing twinges of thwarted ambition—it is all very relatable.
“Sometimes,” it said, “you try really hard and it’s not enough. You put in all you’ve got and you still never get where you thought you were meant to be...It hurts. Knowing it wasn’t enough, even when you gave it the best of yourself. But you get over it.”
it's a crappy hand, knowing you have the potential to be a dragon but no matter how hard you try to punch through, people don't see you for what you are—or what you're trying so hard to become—and you end up stuck in the life of a goddamn worm.
apparently there was a sequel to this story: Head of a Snake, Tail of a Dragon, which was available to read on the author's site until last may, and yet SOMEHOW the gr scrubbers haven't deleted its page even though they have deleted NINE of my advent-stories, but that's just FINE. i missed it by months, but considering it was available for two years, i only have myself to blame for not getting to it sooner. the story will become available once more, in a collection the author will be self-publishing, and as someone who does a lot of work for free—a situation which gives me a lot of the same feelings as byam the imugi—trying and trying and getting nowhere, and feeling like a failure—i get her decision because not getting paid for work, especially creative work, really sucks.
catching up on reviewing last year's sharkweek reads!!
i read this to celebrate shark week 2020, but sharkfans NB: while the title promises sharks, thecatching up on reviewing last year's sharkweek reads!!
i read this to celebrate shark week 2020, but sharkfans NB: while the title promises sharks, there is only ONE page of shark content:
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and i'm a bit apprehensive about this message—seems to me a shark clever enough to bake would also be clever enough to bait, and this singsongy jingle might be masking a very clever trap.
this is a overall pretty mixed-messagey sort of book—cautioning readers against touching a variety of sea beasties while inviting tactile engagement with the rubbery inserts planted right on the tummies of the creature in question. are people reading this book to toddlers meant to slap away the tiny hands of toddlers from exploring the ridges and nubbles on each page, saying "NOOOOOOOO, you must NEVER touch a shark," or whatever? is this just teaching kids to question authority? to disobey? that 'no' means 'go ahead?'
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the material is the same on every page, but its color and composition is different on every creature. can you identify the aquatic pal based on this rubbery cereal/skin disease?
RUIN your DAY? harsh. this guy's day doesn't look one bit ruined:
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also, a missed opportunity to use a card shark pun, but i guess they're better known for their baking. (hide spoiler)]
in any case, apart from the giant shark, most of these animals are perfectly harmless to touch.
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although maybe stay away from this hangry turt:
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and this amorous hugger:
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but a pufferfish?
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go right ahead, whether it's in smooth mode, wagging its tail like a pupperfish:
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or all oi punk rock:
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however, this advice is sound:
you must never touch a seahorse/it's not a good idea/but if she's in a swimming race/then you can wave and cheer
because human-touches are not safe for the delicate seahorse.
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in conclusion, i am confused about the conclusion:
So, never touch a sea creature who isn't in this rhyme. But if it's in a buoy band, you can join in every time!
who ISN'T in this rhyme? because we just went through pages of book-bossery about how we're not supposed to touch the featured-creatures, but following this logic, excising the negative word/negative verb:
So, never touch a sea creature who isn't in this rhyme.
undermines the entire premise of the book, non? or can we not touch ANY undersea creature? what kind of life is that, i ask you?
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although, i read this in the middle of a pandemic, where encouraging those sticky little superspreaders to touch anything was wildly irresponsible, but it's all over now, right? we're totally safe from—
She wasn’t exactly the Neil Armstrong of astral projection, but so what? Practice made perfect, right? And she didn’t need to be perfect today. She onShe wasn’t exactly the Neil Armstrong of astral projection, but so what? Practice made perfect, right? And she didn’t need to be perfect today. She only needed to be bait.
if you have already read rogers' short story collection Every House is Haunted, congratulations! 1) you have good taste in horror/dark fantasy! but also 2) you have already met the canadian team of paranormal investigators in THIS story from having read The House on Ashley Avenue: Short Story, which according to my review and NOT my spotty recollections of anything that happened six years ago, was one of my favorites in the collection.
you don't need to have read The House on Ashley Avenue: Short Story in order to "get" this one (again—everything that happened to me before, say, an hour ago is all pretty hazy in my mind), but it was nice to have that faint bell rung thru the cobwebs when ashley avenue was name-dropped TWO TIMES in the middle of this.
this story* is on the longer side of the free tor shorts, but if you wanna hunker down and spend some time in a "paranormally polluted" place that's kind of like where the x-files, syfy original cryptid movies, and lovecraft rub elbows**; a place that is also CANADA, then here's a freebie for you!
i liked it just fine, although its unexpected length strained my pitiful attention span and it took me a couple of days to focus long enough to make it through. but i have officially stopped watching the news (that show lost me at "inject yourself with disinfectant and pour clorox into your lungs!" total shark-jump, that) so it's gonna be nothing but me and my carefree blissful ignorance from here on out and i will be fine to do all the things. cool.
* or novelette? i'm still unclear on what a novelette is. wordcounttools.com says this is 24,309 words, so whatever that means oh wait, i don't have to go to work anymore because pandemic so let's learn something. a novelette is 7,500—17,000 words, so this is a novella. there. a good use of quarantine time.
** my goodness, how the phrase "rubbing elbows" reads like the most salacious erotica to me here in my socially distant tower.
although it may be irresponsible in our current, corona-saturated climate to be recommending a book that's all about touching, it resonates so damn mualthough it may be irresponsible in our current, corona-saturated climate to be recommending a book that's all about touching, it resonates so damn much with l'esprit du temps
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and this
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is a pretty accurate representation of the corona-quarantine lifestyle.
People forget that. The glossy brochures for state parks show nature at its most photogenic, like a senior picture with all the
The world is not tame.
People forget that. The glossy brochures for state parks show nature at its most photogenic, like a senior picture with all the pores airbrushed away. They never feature a coyote muzzle-deep in the belly of a still-living deer, or a chipmunk punctured by an eagle's talons, squirming as it perishes in midair.
If you're quiet in the woods long enough, you'll hear something die. Then it's quiet again. There's no outrage about injustice, or even mourning. One animal's death is another's dinner; that's just the way it is. What remains will go to the earth, yesterday's bones sinking into today's dirt..
and that's how you open a book.
i expected to like this book because mindy mcginnis and survival stories are chocolate and peanut butter, but it turned out to be even more aligned with my personal tastes than i’d realized. not only is it a survival story, but it’s a grit lit survival story, set deep in the tennessee part of appalachia's woods-and-mountain isolation, trailers and factories and working poor resourcefulness, with some unexpected meth. at the center of it all is wilderness queen ashley—independent and impulsive, reluctant to ask for help, not reluctant to get her hands (or fists) dirty (bloody), stubborn as balls, and entirely capable of being on her own in the un-airbrushed part of the woods.
usually.
on this occasion, she gets in a little over her head during a boozy camping trip with her friends, after catching her boyfriend reacquainting himself with his ex, and i admit—at first i was unconvinced that a girl so familiar with the do’s and don’ts of wilderness safety would find herself in this situation—getting herself lost after stomping off into the woods, barefoot and enraged, and—worth repeating—BAREFOOT, but then i remembered that inebriated teens lack judgment and i just rolled with it.
and soon, ashley herself will roll with it, allaway down a hill, becoming seriously wounded on one of those bare, bare feet and separated from her friends with no supplies—no food, no water, no tampons. because—yes—mindy mcginnis has finally written the story i have always wanted to read—a survival story that directly addresses menstruation.
mcginnis does so many things well here—there’s great character work and strong descriptions of nature, which is just bare minimum your job as an author, but she goes on to perform the more subtle operation of gradually fusing the two. ashley is a little messy, in the way of teenage girls—reactive and hotheaded (one of the first things she does when she finds herself in her predicament is to get pissed off at a squirrel; throwing leaves at him and calling him a dick), while nature is its own kind of messiness, uncultivated, amoral, ungovernable and not even a little bit impressed by temper tantrums. ashley is introduced into this environment as other, but as the days pass and she travels deeper into the woods, further away from civilization, she becomes absorbed into the wildness—just another creature struggling to survive (or not), feeding and being fed upon in nature's relentless cycle.
eating a tick engorged with your own blood is some serious circle of life umami.
ashley is knowledgeable without being infallible, and her abilities are realistic and commensurate with her background and experience, details of which surface throughout the book. every part of her past has something to contribute to her fight for survival—her poverty taught her to ignore hunger, her cross-country training taught her to push her body past the pain, her father and her wilderness mentor taught her...all of the outdoorsy things—and she draws upon all of it, stacking up skills like building blocks in a—let's call it capability stratum—of brain, body, and spirit that give her a much better chance than i'd ever have of making it through. did i mention she's barefoot?
this pretty much sums up our ashley:
…the scar on my calf, the remnant of a deep cut from the steel siding of a neighbor’s trailer that opened me down to the muscle when I was trick-or-treating, my Wonder Woman cape getting stuck in between the stacked cinder blocks they used for steps.
I pulled my sock up and told them I was fine, because they were a nice old couple that gave out whole candy bars instead of bite-size, and I’d never had a whole candy bar to myself in my life. I limped home, shoe full of blood, and ate the candy bar in the back of the truck while Dad took me to the urgent care where they charge only half what the ER does and do stitches as good as anybody else.
she's badass, and it's not as though she doesn't struggle, because she certainly does, but she's grown up with the woods as a playground (Our games were made of mud and sticks, rocks and dirt.) and as a school—learning how nature is through years of observation, then learning how to be a part of it: how to make fire, build shelter, forage, hunt, fish, track, etc. along with the skills that can be taught, she has the innate deepgut character traits of pride and stubbornness that make a person endure, against reason, fighting 'til the end. this character in this situation is so much more plausible than some other YA survival books i could name, like ohhhhhidunno (cue anger-slitted eyes) The Raft? that book features a scene VERY similar to one here, which only one of the books does right. (view spoiler)[ohhhh mama possum!!! unlike The Raft, in which the stupidest character of all time manages to kill a mama AND a baby seal but can't bring herself to eat either of 'em, your sacrifice was not for nothing. (hide spoiler)] man, that scene was so goddamn sad. but not sad AND wasteful, which is something.
the only thing i wasn't crazy about was the coincidence-trail, wherein credulity was sacrificed for narrative appeal, and that's fine, but i didn't need it. what i DID need was that raccoon/buzzard story. it's only a couple of paragraphs long, but it says everything and it's a scene that's going to stay in my mind for a long time, reminding me to read anything she ever writes. ooh, especially if it is a reverse-jonah story written from the POV of that fish that ashley swallowed and then immediately vomited back up—still alive—into the water. what did he take away from the experience as he swam away? what did he do with his second chance at life? did he immediately forget being in ashley's tummy? these questions are more pressing to me than anything davey-related.
it was the perfect book to usher me in to my new way of life—my world comprised of just these walls and what even is this "outside?" oh, it’s full of hunger and wounds and possums who try to eat your bare feet? thanks for saving me from that, cuomo! it is not for me.
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EXPECTATIONS: MET
review to come!
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From the best-selling author of "Not a drop to drink" Mindy McGinnis comes a new contemporary book about a girl who gets lost in the woods.
mcginnis having brought The Female of the Species into the world means this tiny synopsis is all i need to know i need this.
this explanation/intro will be posted before each day’s short story. scroll down to get to the story-review.
this is the FOWELCOME TO DECEMBER PROJECT!
this explanation/intro will be posted before each day’s short story. scroll down to get to the story-review.
this is the FOURTH year of me doing a short story advent calendar as my december project. for those of you new to me or this endeavor, here’s the skinny: every day in december, i will be reading a short story that is 1) available free somewhere on internet, and 2) listed on goodreads as its own discrete entity. there will be links provided for those of you who like to read (or listen to) short stories for free, and also for those of you who have wildly overestimated how many books you can read in a year and are freaking out about not meeting your 2019 reading-challenge goals. i have been gathering links all year when tasty little tales have popped into my feed, but i will also accept additional suggestions, as long as they meet my aforementioned 1), 2) standards.
if you scroll to the end of the reviews linked here, you will find links to all the previous years’ stories, which means NINETY-THREE FREEBIES FOR YOU!
reviews of these will vary in length/quality depending on my available time/brain power.
so, let’s begin
DECEMBER 18
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Quickly as it had risen, the wind did not fall at once. On it went, moaning and rushing past the house, at times rising to a cry so desolate that, as Parkins disinterestedly said, it might have made fanciful people feel quite uncomfortable; even the unimaginative, he thought after a quarter of an hour, might be happier without it.
this was a pleasant surprise! even though this author wrote The Diary of Mr Poynter; the 'haunted curtains*' story that i read and enjoyed last year whilst making my way through seth's excellent "ghost stories for christmas" series (of which three more were published this year and will be reviewed here anon), i didn't have the highest hopes going into this one.
here's the funny thing—i just reread my review for the haunted curtains** story, and this is one of the things i said:
...it is a whole lot better than i thought it was going to be. i’d always kind of lumped m.r. james in with algernon blackwood in my mind as “contemporaneous english writers of dry and boring ghost stories that do not scare me one bit.”
and all of that holds up except for the “boring” part. this story was funny and pretty modern, not at all the stuffy atmospheric "mayyyyyybe it’s a ghost but maybe it’s maaaaadnessss” kind of thing i was expecting.
that is what i thought A YEAR AGO, and apparently i forgot all about what i learned from reading that story, because that is what i felt THIS MORNING, as i sat down to read this story, and was AGAIN struck by the modernity of the tone and the humor and the playfulness. not scary, because i am as brave as i am forgetful, but a great story, and if seth ever starts repeating authors in that series, i hope he chooses this one.
just in time for valentine's day, patricia marx and roz chast team up again, after their earlier collaboration—Why Don't You Write My Eulogy No[image]
just in time for valentine's day, patricia marx and roz chast team up again, after their earlier collaboration—Why Don't You Write My Eulogy Now So I Can Correct It?: A Mother's Suggestions—this time focusing on the perils of relationships, marriage, and co-habitation with humor and frazzled-line drawings. there is much wisdom within these covers, from a most succinct and accurate definition of marriage:
Marriage is one of you secretly turning the thermostat up and the other secretly turning it down and so on and so on until one of you dies.
to a mantra-worthy piece of advice:
Think "What would Romeo and Juliet do?" Then do the opposite.
to a rule i've lived by for many years now:
If someone is very picky about how the laundry should be done, as opposed to shoving it all in the washing machine and then shoving it all in the dryer, that someone should do the laundry.
the secrets of their own respective romantic longevities will be unveiled, with tips on how to keep love alive, or to at least prevent a crime of passion from occurring.
some of the tips are eminently practical:
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some are tough but fair:
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and some are SUPER-HEALTHY AND NOT AT ALL DYSFUNCTIONAL:
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for me, this was slightly less charming/LOL-worthy than their first collab, but it's a fine gift to present to your romantic partner, even if they interpret the gesture as passive aggressive. after all—