TWIR: Small bites

A few articles I have enjoyed this week, as I try to make my Instapaper backlog less atrocious (it’s still atrocious):

Black Girls Hunger for Heroes, Too: A Black Feminist Conversation on Fantasy Fiction for Teens: This interview is short and great. There were moments that were a bit of a wake-up call for me, in that these two ladies noticed issues in The Hunger Games that completely passed me by. I suppose I was caught up in the thrill of it, and the thrill of seeing explicit class issues in a YA book.

IBI: Reading [The Hunger Games], I had to wonder why the hero didn’t come from District 11 if they’re the most oppressed. I remember thinking Rue’s role in the whole novel is what this comic book writer calls “fridging.” Women in comic books serve to bring out the male hero’s deep humanity. The woman dies and then the hero taps into—

ZETTA: His sense of justice.

A Tentacled, Flexible Breakthrough: Robot octopi! Tell me so much more. Can I have one as a pet?

They aim to replicate the key features of an octopus: eight arms to provide an almost infinite range of motion; the ability to squeeze through any opening larger than its chitinous beak; and an unusual nervous system in which the arms are semiautonomous and the central brain is thought to do little more than issue general commands (“Arms, let’s go catch that crab!”).

Monsters at the Door: Yes, I’m still reading about Emily Carroll. I love her. In a completely appropriate way.

My day with Emily Carroll passes in the presence of the moth; I’ve never seen a bigger one. “It’s so meaty,” she says, sounding gleefully disgusted.

TWIR: Margaret Atwood and mermaids

Cover of Stone Mattress by Margaret Atwood
Lucky me.

A few weeks ago I received a package in the mail, and made an ungraceful sound when I realized that inside was an advance copy of Stone Mattress by Margaret Atwood. It doesn’t come out in the U.S. until next month, and I got a copy in my grubby little hands early. The problem is that I don’t have much to say about it! I liked it. I liked every story in it. Through it all runs a thread about aging, with grace or without, with humor or without. There are characters I liked, and characters I didn’t, but most of all I simply enjoyed it.

I always like when Atwood embraces an element of the speculative in her stories, even if it might only be figurative. But mostly she draws people so well that it doesn’t matter if she’s taking you to a place where friends reincarnate themselves to protect you from yourself, or only to a place where plain, dirty vengeance is enacted with a stone.

Atwood shapes a short story very well, packing a lot into a few dozen pages, so I guess what I’m trying to say is this is good.

Cover of Mermaid in Chelsea Creek by Michelle Tea
All of the type and illustration is stamped into cloth!

The other book I finished is a YA novel by Michelle Tea, called Mermaid in Chelsea Creek. It’s entirely possible my expectations were too high for this book, based on the cover and title. I had dreamed it into being something that it didn’t end up being. It was fine. The characters were good, especially the way the friendship between Ella and Sophie was drawn. Some beautiful imagery, and I like that so far, there’s no hint of “she thinks she’s plain but she’s really beautiful” that you get a lot in YA books. Sophie has ratty hair and a long face, and no one pretends that she’s the one the boys look at (that’s Ella).

And there’s a seed of something interesting, these fairy tale elements that could build into a great world, but… This book was all background to the story I wanted. It was a third of the book it should have been, spread out into its own book. All of the “This is why you are the chosen one,” but never moving past that.

I’ve since learned that it’s supposed to be the first of multiple books, which, of course it is. The second book was supposed to come out in June of 2013. No, July of 2014. No, some future unknown date. It’s not out now, at least.

I’d probably pick up the next book, to be honest. The lack of plot/action isn’t enough to put me off of the rest of it.

Other reading

A Rational Conversation: Will Bikini Kill Ever Make The Rock Hall Of Fame? YES let’s all talk more about riot grrl and lady-fronted bands. Constantly!

I was drawn to those bands because they were the girls I wanted to be; or they were the girls that looked like and sang about stuff I was interested in and wanted to be a part of, but wasn’t sure how to find it. (Elizabeth Spiridakis Olson)

The Last Halloween by Abby Howard. I hadn’t been reading this, and then I caught up all at once this morning, whoops! It’s really great, and creepy, and funny, and gross.

The Last Halloween title card
Creepy crawlies, sass, and darkness.

TWIR: Judging books by their covers

Some weeks I get to Friday and realize I’ve not actually read that much. I’ve done a good amount of cooking, gone to the gym, edited a satisfying amount, and, of course, watched a few episodes of Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries, but not so much with the curling up with a good book. The sensible thing to do would be to read the Kerry Greenwood books that the series is based on, but I haven’t gotten my hands on those yet.

There are a bunch of things that I’m in the middle of, but as a small follow-up to this post I’ll mention that I finished Ombria in Shadow and put a review up on Goodreads. While there were great aspects to it, the cover was in fact a good indication that it wouldn’t be quite my thing. Still good! Not my bag.

Judging books by covers: Completely valid.

Cover of Civilwarland in Bad Decline by George Saunders

To judge Civilwarland in Bad Decline by its cover, it seems a lot more sedate and serious than the contents of the book are turning out to be. I’m only a few stories in. I was going to work my way up to Tenth of December (also a sedate cover!), but I might have to skip to that next. It received such praise on release that I wonder if it’s much different from what I’ve read so far. I’ve read a few other things by Saunders, the odd short story in an anthology. I thought The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil was awful, too much a product of a brief period in time, and trying so hard to be satirical that it lost sight of anything else. These short stories aren’t like that, but… I still don’t quite know what I think of Saunders yet.

TWIR: It came from the woods (most strange things do)

I have trouble finding things that scare me. In stories, I mean. When a movie is supposed to be terrifying, it often turns out “terrifying” means “jump cuts and gore,” which is not what I consider scary. It’s a trick! It’s a trigger for my autonomic responses! Surprise and disgust are not the same things as fear. On the other hand, if it’s trying for a more subtle terror, I don’t even notice. Which is also what happens with books.

But I think I’m figuring it out. (You’re also free to argue that I need to watch more movies, which is valid.)

Movies have too much going on. The backgrounds, the actors, the music, the framing. It distracts from the creeping terror of a black night and an unknown sound.

Novels and short stories are too distanced. When it’s words on the page, I get engaged, but I’m not involved. I read The Haunting of Hill House and had no idea it was supposed to be scary. Atmospheric, internal, psychological. But scary?

Maybe I expect too much. Maybe I define scary too narrowly.

Then I come to my current read: On Sunday I picked up Through the Woods by Emily Carroll. I’ve been reading no more than one story per night, and should finish up tonight, only to re-read it all, I’m sure. Only one of the stories is already online: His Face All Red.

Cover of
Beautiful and spooky

I love Emily Carroll’s work. It’s beautiful, and her horror comics are slow-burn terrifying, the unexplained creeping up through the blackness of each page (or the stark whiteness of snow). The new stories in this book are just as good as I’d hoped, if not better (because my imagination is not Emily’s).

This is my theory: Comics are better at terror for me. In the hands of the right artist and writer, I have the visuals to connect me with the story, but not so many distracting elements to distance me again. The pacing is deliciously excruciating, so long as I can keep myself from peeking ahead. The restraint in the art, the cadence of the words, even the choice of when to turn the page…

This merits further research. Is it the medium of comics, or is it Emily Carroll and the style she uses? Are there movies that are Carroll-esque?

As a side note, I was concerned about this being in paperback but there was clearly a lot of care taken creating this book as an object. The cover has tantalizing textures, and the entire thing is printed well on high quality paper so the illustrations are vivid and the colors pop. It really is worth having on your shelf.

TWIR: Genre-bending, fantasy, and capitalism at the movies

I love #fridayreads and want more excuses to talk about reading (even though it’s Saturday), so I’m going to attempt to do that regularly with This Week In Reading.

Last weekend I went to Readercon, as mentioned, and picked up a bunch of books, but have barely touched them because I was already in the middle of several things. I have limits, you know. I can’t read ten books at once.

Five? Sure.

The Shining Girls by Lauren Beukes

I sped through The Shining Girls by Lauren Beukes before Readercon. It worked as a book to clear out my head after weeks traipsing through the autobiography of a labor activist (Elizabeth Gurley Flynn — the bio was great! But heavy, with a million little stories of wins and losses for the movement.) The Shining Girls was one of those cases of a book straddling the border between litfic and genre. Beukes made a valiant effort to write something that embraced litfic + time travel + mystery/thriller, but because she was balancing so many things, they all came off a little less rich than they could have been if focused on one. That may sound like a criticism of the book, but it’s not meant to be. I like the effort, and what combining genres did for the story. No aspect of it collapsed when poked, which is a huge accomplishment.

Ombria in Shadow by Patricia A. McKillip

I also started Ombria in Shadow by Patricia McKillip. I wouldn’t normally pick up something that has a cover like this, with the flowing locks of hair and the pensive look and the Renaissance-y stylings. This is not to say that I automatically dislike this sort of thing. It’s that I am not actively drawn to it, but the author was specifically recommended to me. So far it has magic, and ancient ageless evil, a girl made of wax, and a shadow underworld, so… I’m on board.

Short things I’ve read recently:

Smash the Engine at Jacobin Magazine:

“As it is, Snowpiercer is an enjoyable spectacle whether you care about its political message or not. But this is also a story with genuinely subversive and radical themes….It’s about the limitations of a revolution which merely takes over the existing social machinery rather than attempting to transcend it.”

That was a good movie, everyone.

Playing Nice with God’s Bowling Ball by N.K. Jemison:

“Then, apparently oblivious to Grace’s stare, the boy burst into tears. ‘I told him to be careful.'”

Please go read this story like I did: knowing nothing about it.