March reads

I have inadvertantly stumbled into reading a bunch of Middle Eastern-ish fantasy books.  No idea why, but it happened.  Not mad about it.

• A Master of Djinn by P. Djeli Clark.  A fantasy murder mystery set in steampunk 1912 Cairo, with a lesbian detective protagonist.  What's not to like?
• The City of Brass by S.A. Chakraborty.  More djinn, plus ifrits, magic and, yes, Cairo again.  This one is a little more dense but the heroine is flawed and feisty and I liked it enough to read the second one in the series too.
• Duma Key by Stephen King.  Ah, yes, a re-read.  I knew I'd read this one already tho - just wanted to read it again.
• The Queen by Nick Cutter.  Teenaged girl insect horror.  Pretty gross, kinda meh.
• I'll Be Waiting by Kelley Armstrong.  Supernatural horror with haunted houses and lingering spirits.  This one I liked quite well.
• What-the-Dickens by Gregory Maguire.  A fairy tale - tooth fairy, to be precise - for the younger set by the author of Wicked etc.  Didn't love it.  Didn't really see the point of the framework story.
• A World of Curiosities by Louise Penny.  I am now caught up on all the Inspector Gamache novels and have to wait for her to write the next one.  Great cop/murder mystery series set in a remote Quebec village.
• Olive Again by Elizabeth Strout.  I don't really remember the first, Pulitizer Prize-winning Olive Kitteridge but this one rejoins Olive as an elderly woman.  It doesn't really have plot per se, just different vignettes in each chapter (which is not my preferred style - I like lots and lots of plot).  But it draws you in.
• The Mothers by Brit Bennett.  Contemporary novel set in a black community in southern California following three young people as they navigate family, high school, church and young adulthood.
• The Women by Kristin Hannah.  Set during the Vietnam War, this one follows Frances, a young nurse who volunteers to serve in country in the U.S. Army.  Initially way, way over her head, she finds loyal friends throughout the war and back home, dealing with the aftermath.  I liked this one and found it poignant, especially when the returned veteran nurses tried to get help only to be told time and time again, "there were no women in Vietnam."
• Good Night, Irene by Luis Alberto Urrea.  Inspired by the author's mother's own experience, this novel follows posh Irene who, escaping an abusive fiance, volunteers with the Red Cross as a "donut dolly" in the European theater of WWII.  Irene and her BFF Dorothy are hot tickets and I realy liked this one too.
• The Kingdom of Copper by S.A. Chakraborty.  Second volume in the Daevabad trilogy.

February reads

 Hahahaha best intentions and all that: the second book I read in February was an accidental re-read but all the rest of them were new-to-me:

• Normal Women by Ainslie Hogarth - I don't remember much about this one now but I liked it well-enough.
• The Hollow Places by T. Kingfisher - I liked it the first time I read it (whenever that was) and I liked it this time too.  Scary portals to other worlds and rampaging taxidermy.
• The Princess Bride by William Goldman - You know how if there's a book and a movie, it's usually the book that is better?  The movie is better, for me anyway.  It may have been the edition I read.  And the movie is so well-cast, so iconic, that it kept getting in the way of what I was reading.
• Loot by Tania James - Historical fiction set in India and England.  Didn't love it, found it a little tedious.
• Emily Wilde's Encyclopedia of Faeries by Heather Fawcett.  Pretty good, seemed a little lightweight.
• How to Be Eaten by Maria Adelman.  Really liked this one: a retelling of classic fairytales via a support group for traumatized women.
• Into the Mist by PC Cast.  Post-apocalyptic, women-focused, mystical.  Characters seemed a little thinly drawn.
• Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo.  Power, privilege and dark magics on the Yale University campus.  Really liked this one, as well as the second one in the not-yet-complete trilogy.
• Hellbent by Leigh Bardugo.  Continuing the story from Ninth House.
• The Dead Cat Tail Assassins by P. Djeli Clark.  This one is a novella and seemed lighweight.  Didn't love it but it was okay.

Hooray for libraries!

January reads

 It's 2025 and the country is on fire, literally and figuratively; my dog has now decided to be afraid of the fridge; and it has been cold and dark but without the snow our mountains desperately need.  So what's to do?  Slightly resurrect this little blog to report on the books I've read each month.  I just got a new library card - my second: one for the SLC library system I've had for years and the new one for the county system - in an attempt to support local.  I've always liked libraries as I read so quickly as to bankrupt myself were I to purchase all the books I read.  And I've always got at least one book going at any given time, re-reading old favorites if I'm in between library visits. 

That's what prompted this second library card, when I realized I'd re-read three books in one month (as outlined below), despite the lengthy to-be-read list I have.  So here's January's list and I'm planning for February's to have no re-reads:

• Last Argument of Kings by Joe Abercrombie - the final volume in the First Law trilogy.  I love Joe Abercrombie's stuff (re-read)
• Off Course by Erin Beresini - I stole this one from Mr. Mouse's library haul.  It's about obstacle course racing (non-fiction omg)
• Ghost Eaters by Clay McLeod Chapman - Horror fiction looking closely at hauntings and addiction
• The Bone Orchard by Sara A. Mueller - Gothic resurrection horror and ooh I liked this one a lot
• The Book Eaters by Sunyi Dean - Kind of weird, literally about people who eat books, like vampires but words and paper instead of blood
• Mary: An Awakening of Terror by Nat Cassidy - menopause horror!  I liked this one a lot too
• Best Served Cold by Joe Abercrombie - The first of three standalone books in between his two trilogies, set in the same universe, using some of the same characters.  Swords and sandals and bloody, bloody treachery (re-read)
• The Heroes by Joe Abercrombie - The second of three standalone books in between his two trilogies, set in the same universe, using some of the same characters.  Swords and sandals battle fantasy, frigging amazing (re-read)

What are you reading?  What's on your to-be-read list?

Fifteenth Annual FMS Scarelicious October Movie Series: #17 Mandy

Editorial note: I watched this one because my name is Amanda, although I do not like the nickname "Mandy" for myself.  But I felt I was honor-bound to check this one out.

Red (Nicolas Cage) and Mandy (Andrea Riseborough) live a peaceful life in a cabin in the woods.  She is an artist and he is a lumberjack, proficient with a chainsaw.  This will be important later.  They have a close relationship, they talk to each other.  Their cabin is awesome.  It all comes apart when Jeremiah, the leader of a hippy-ish religious cult, takes a shine to Mandy and decides to add her to his harem.  The cult invades the cabin, drugging her and beating the snot out of him.  When the out-of-it Mandy laughs at Jeremiah, however, they kill her - horribly - right in front of Red.

And now comes the unhinged Cage everyone was waiting for.  He frees himself, sources a crossbow and forges his own axe (which, to be honest, looks like the one from BtVS S7).  First he takes out the demon (?) biker gang that helped Jeremiah, then he does some coke and LSD.  And then he goes after Jeremiah's little cult.

This too-long, weird fuckin' movie is unlike anything I think I've ever seen.  Described as an "action-horror-dark fantasy," it is very darkly lit and difficult to see at times.  The first half, even when Red and Mandy are happy, seems ominous.  It's been compared to the visualization of a heavy metal album, where the dark and foreboding first half is Red and Mandy's descent into hell, and the second half is Red's blood-soaked journey back.  It is very, very violent and bloody, but almost cartoonishly at times: there is a chainsaw fight.  The musical score is fantastic and adds a lot to the movie.  And there's one scene with Cage alone in his bathroom that, while seemingly over the top, is actually really well acted.  He is a man destroyed.

Fifteenth Annual FMS Scarelicious October Movie Series: #16 Smile

Another newish horror movie!  These just aren't my usual jam but I read that the brand new Smile 2 is even better, so I thought I should watch the OG first.

Dr. Rose Cotter, a psychiatrist at an emergency psych clinic, gets a new, quite disturbed patient. Laura is seeing things - a being that speaks to her whilst wearing other people's forms and smiling terribly.  Laura has a psychotic break and kills herself horribly, right in front of Rose, dying with a rictus smile on her face.  Rose is understandably freaked and her boss (played by Kal Penn) tells her to take a week to rest and recover. She does, but then she starts seeing things: people smiling terribly at her, telling her terrible things.  She doesn't know if it's family history of mental illness coming through or something else even worse.  SPOILER ALERT: it's worse.

Rose starts seeing smilers everywhere.  She can't trust herself or other people and all her relationships - fiance, family, work, her own therapist - start to suffer.  The only person who halfway believes her is ex-BF Joel (played by Kyle Gallner) who is a cop.  Rose convinces Joel to do some research and they find that this whatever it is seems to be spread by trauma: an "infected" person kills themselves in front of a witness, and the infection spreads to that witness.  And repeat.  Kind of like It Follows without the s3x.

Smile was pretty good and plenty scary; for me, I ended up not watching a bunch of it, either taking my glasses off or peeking out from behind my fingers, especially when Rose was alone in her house at night.  After The Empty Man, I need to take a break from movies where scary things rush out at people from the dark.  Give me monsters!  That said, I will definitely be watching the sequel when I can get it.

Fifteenth Annual FMS Scarelicious October Movie Series: #15 The Empty Man

 Well, that was weird.  

The Hulu thumbnail said TEM was about a midwestern ex-cop who realizes that people's disappearances may have a supernatural bent to them.  So right away I was confused when for the first twenty or so minutes we were with underprepared Americans trekking in Bhutan in 1995.  One of them falls into a cave and when they find him, he is dazed, staring at a decidedly inhuman skeleton.  They drag him out, nearly comatose, and hole up in a nearby house while a storm rages.  His girlfriend finds a bone whistle clutched in his hand and, in the ways of stupid horror movie people, gives it a blow (not a euphemism).  Things go from bad to worse and let me just refrain from too specific spoilers by saying not everyone makes off that mountain alive.

And then we're in 2018 Missouri where nice and helpful ex-cop James Iforgethislastname (played by James Badge Dale, so we'll just go with "James") starts investigating some unusal events.  A group of teenagers play the "Empty Man game" - which is kind of like the Bloody Mary game only involves blowing across an empty bottle (KIND OF LIKE BLOWING ON A CREEPY BONE WHISTLE, EH?).  One girl disappears entirely; five kids more hang themselves under a bridge; and the last one has the world's most unrelaxing spa day.

There's also a doomsday cult and the front man is played by Stephen Root.

The Empty Man was recommended to me by my work friend Spencer: he and I have very similar pop culture tastes (he actually became my library when the public libraries were shut down in 2020, loaning me whole bags of books that I absolutely devoured), including loving horror films.  We do differ a bit: he doesn't love zombies the way I do; and he has a much higher tolerance for jump scares than I do.  He recommended TEM to me and I had to wait for a weekend viewing as, at 2+ hours, it's too long for midweek.

Spencer did mention that he felt this movie "had a lot going on towards the end" and boy oh boy.  Yes.  A very lot.  And it did seem to shift tonally throughout, and tried to be a more cerebral horror film than it really is.  There was a funny moment, when James was spying on the cultists who had just finished dancing around a bonfire, but otherwise it was rather self-serious.  Still, it's good for me to branch out, try something other than my beloved 1980s slashers.  Plus this movie came out in 2020 and didn't get much love then.  Let's give it what we can now.

Fifteenth Annual FMS Scarelicious October Movie Series: #14 Lisa Frankenstein

Set in the late 1980s, written by Diablo Cody, directed by Robin Williams's daughter, Zelda Williams, and starring Kathryn Newton, Cole Sprouse and a wicked Carla Gugino, Lisa Frankenstein is a delightful, frothy confection with a dark heart.  

After the wonderful animated opening credits fill you in on some backstory, we are introduced to Lisa (Newton).  She's a new student, in a new school, with a new evil stepmother (Gugino) and supportive stepsister, after her mother was brutally axe-murdered.  She's withdrawn (despite the cheerful and earnest attempts of stepsister Taffy to include Lisa in her social circle), preferring to spend her days in an abandoned Victorian era graveyard.  Lisa especially likes the stone bust of a young man's monument, wishing she could join him.  

She means in death - but when a freak electrical storm strikes the gravestone, the young man (Sprouse) arises from his grave and goes to find Lisa.  After her initial shock wears off, she cleans him up; later, he returns the favor, revamping her wardrobe towards a more goth vibe.  A likely friendship arises, as Lisa realizes she needs someone to talk to about her mother.  And then they go on a bit of a murder spree, to replace the monster's missing ear, hand ... and other body parts.

There's shades of/homages to She's All That and Edward Scissorhands and even Heathers here, with the quips and the makeovers and the awkwardness and the murders.  It's quite cute and funny - Cole Sprouse is very funny as the monster - with occasional bloody bits (PG-13 rating).  I enjoyed it quite a lot as a solid return to pro-girl horror-comedy for Diablo Cody (long live Jennifer's Body!)

 

Fifteenth Annual FMS Scarelicious October Movie Series: #12 The Vampire Lovers and #13 Vampire Circus

 It's Hammer [Films] time!  I'm combining both Hammer films into one post because.  Well, because I want to.  It's certainly not because I watched Vampire Circus weeks ago, wrote notes for a review and then lost the notes and forgot to post the review.  Certainly not that.

1970's The Vampire Lovers has Hammer Films' beloved, Peter Cushing, in it.  He gets top billing but he's not on screen all that often.  In any event, in the late 1700s, somewhere in Europe (Bavaria, maybe?), there are vampires in the village.  They've got a neat set-up, orchestrated by the main vamp, a tall, pale dude in a top hat, who lurks around and laughs, but not much else: a familiar, "the Countess," installs her vampire "daughter," who goes by Carmilla, Marcela, and other names, into local gentry's homes.  Carmilla seduces and drains any nubile daughter, killing or turning them, and then flounces on to the next home.  There's quite a lot of screaming and nekkid 70s breasts, but it's pretty slow.  Cushing and a small gang of townsmen end up staking Carmilla to end the vampiric menace.

1972's Vampire Circus uses the same castle backdrop as TVL does, which is funny.  In this one, set earlier than TVL, a village is isolated from its surroundings since there's a bit of plague floating around and none of then neighboring towns wants their germs.  A roving circus arrives, giving the village some entertainment.  But the circus folk are vampires and their familiars, in town to attempt to resurrect the main vamp who was defeated by the villagers years and years ago.  These vampires have HUGE fangs (no a euphemism).  This flick is terrifically campy (the attack by the black panther is obviously crew members tossing a big stuffed animal at the actors) but with some decent special effects.  It's also kind of lowkey 70s sexy, which is, I guess, a Hammer hallmark.

Fifteenth Annual FMS Scarelicious October Movie Series: #11 George Romero Presents: Deadtime Stories Vol. 2

 WHY DO I INSIST ON DOING THIS TO MYSELF?  Because I am a sucker for anthologies.  I was looking for The ABCs of Death but that was too long for a weeknight, so I ended up with this.  Aside from the charming little George Romero snippets before and after each story, this flick should be a hard pass.  I watched it for you because apparently I like to suffer.

First story: "The Gorge" - Three friends go caving in the wintertime.  There's a cave in and one of them gets badly injured, although none are unscathed.  No one knows where they are but a rescue finally shows up after about a month, when someone finally noticed their car parked at the trail head.  By then, the two survivors had eaten the third guy.  And things don't actually look up after the rescue.  The sound levels are bad [throughout all three stories, actually] and the music is jarring.  The acting is bad.  The chick's hair looks awfully clean after being trapped in a cave for a month.  This is slow and dumb but at least it's really GROSS.

Second story: "On Sabbath Hill" - A married college professor is having an affair with one of his students.  He gets her pregnant and is a dick about it, so she offs herself in his classroom in front of everybody.  Then she haunts him.  The acting is bad, the whole thing seems very amateurish.  This is slow until the "birth" scene, which is gross (but not as gross as story #1).

Third story: "Dust" - A security guard at a high security research lab has a wife dying from cancer.  The lab is testing "Mars dust" and is finding that it may have curative properties.  The guard steals some and doses his wife; for about twelve hours she is 100% cured and also a bit of a s3x maniac.  So he steals the rest of it, killing the research scientist in the process - and lol knocking his eyeball out in the process.  Of course, no one knows, or could even guess, about the side effects of consuming "Mars dust."  The high security lab is TOTALLY filmed in a high school chemistry lab.  And this is the best story of the three, which really isn't saying much.

Fifteenth Annual FMS Scarelicious October Movie Series #10: Pearl

 There's a bit of a disclaimer here, as I haven't seen the first film, X, in this Ti West series.  While I know the connection between the films, I don't think that X is a prerequisite for Pearl, and I was in the mood to watch something good.  I like the two Ti West movies I've seen - House of the Devil and The Innkeepers - so I figured Pearl was a safe bet.

Set in 1918, Pearl (the fantastic Mia Goth) is stuck on the family farm after her husband goes off to war.  She is lonely and isolated, with the country in the grip of the Spanish flu pandemic, with her father stricken and combined to a wheelchair and her mother bitter, cold and cruel in the face of what her life has become.  Pearl dreams of being a star, a dancer for the Follies, and goes to the movies as often as she can to distract herself from her own disturbing thoughts.  And actions, if her mother is to be believed - which she can, as early on, Pearl kills an innocent goose and feeds its carcass to the neighborhood alligator.

Note: I was very distracted by the alligator.  I couldn't place Pearl's accent, and with the corn fields I assumed the movie was set somewhere in the midwest.  Where there are no wild alligators.  But online research sets the movie in Texas and, yes, Virginia, there are wild alligators in that state.

Pearl strikes up a relationship with the movie projectionist in town.  I thought he was sleazy; he called himself "bohemian."  Between him and a dance troupe audition, Pearl has high hopes for fleeing her depressing, limiting life.  But after a fight with her mother, things unravel fast. 

Ti West is so good at atmosphere and mood, building suspense despite the cheerful music and absolutely no reason to expect tension.  And Mia Goth is amazing: expressive and emotionally turning on a dime.  Her lengthy monologue to her sister-in-law is incredible  And watching her hold that final rictus grin over the closing credits was truly awesome - creepy, heartbreaking and terrifying in turn.