Megan

Salacious and also deeply human

Revisado: 04-18-25

I don't know how everyone I admire was once a sex worker, but here we are. There seems to be a subset of creative, interesting, smart Gen X women (Courtney Love, Diablo Cody, Kathleen Hanna) who owned lucite shoes during their salad days, and can spin an incredible yarn. Some Girls is absolutely about being in a harem, but that's also a reductive description. It's about how one finds oneself there, about how ones circumstances lead you to make choices. Some Girls follows Lauren's redemptive journey navigating the literal world as a teenager (!) after every single person who supposedly loved her failed her in some fundamental way. It's Crazy Rich Asians meets Candy Girl meets Catcher in the Rye. 5 stars, no notes.

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It's complicated

Revisado: 11-22-24

Seriously, it's complicated. I picked up this listen because I like horror, espeically social horror, and a horror story involving the horrors of menopause and misogyny seemed right up my alley. But wait! There's so much more! It's body horror! It's also a Gothic horror! A Metaphysical horror! There's a serial killer! A cult! Ghosts! Bugs! Aliens! (The terrestrial kind.) The shorter list would be things that the author DOESN't include, so zombies, cannibals. Vampires, though a case can be made.

The author himself bookends the story with a note, first about how the story came to be, and the second a meditation on whether dudes should be telling stories about menopause. These notes are also complicated! They are at once charming and...kind of annoying in that a dude decides he CAN tell stories about menopause. And maybe a man can do that! But the sheer lack of any subtlety in this book is enough to make me think that the author didn't think that misogyny was enough of a horror all by itself (it is).

The book is cartoonishly over the top. The horror of being a woman in this world doesn't really need that many bells and whistles.

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Unflinching

Revisado: 11-03-24

I hope that Kathleen Hanna is safe and comfortable. In a home with a security system and a gate. I hope she can buy any food she wants. I hope that this home is clean and dry and warm. I hope this because this was the OPPOSITE of the life she was living for most of this book. She's only a couple of years older than I am, and I remember being likewise in some pretty shitty places in the early nineties, when we didn't have a word for the way men treated us. We were in so much damn danger, and we weren't even touring in a barely functioning van.

This book is thought provoking, Hanna somehow comes off a vulnerable, badass and complicated. This is, of course, very, very punk. Hanna was truly dedicated to art, to living in terrible circumstances, to hoping that terrible men would stop failing her, to being authentic, to helping other women with their sexual trauma.

I was sadly struck by the way writes off her sister, whom she only refers to as the misogynist nickname she got as a teen, "Good Times." Hanna seems to have zero compassion for her, through the sister is clearly struggling with trauma--the same kinds of trauma that Hanna and all of us suffered growing up in that era. Like I said. She's unflinching. And complicated.

But your heroes all show up in this book. Kurt is exactly who you have been told he was. So is Courtney (who I love). Kurt asked Bikini Kill's drummer to be in Nirvana. She turned him down and so they went with Dave Grohl. As you do. (Lord if my second choice for a drummer was Dave Grohl.)

I was at that Riot Fest Bikini Kill headlined. They absolutely slayed. But they had already slayed for so long, all they really had to do was show up.

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Lord, let's survive the apocalypse as a horny teen

Revisado: 11-02-24

Look. Being 17 is hard, being raised in a cult is hard, a zombie apocalypse is hard. Everyone is hard in this book. (Read it and see what I did there.) Sophie is a teen being raised in a strictly biblical home when the zombie flu hits. Added spice to this is that the zombies are rape zombies! Sophie is having sexy thoughts as this is happening.

The thing about this book that I really didn't love was that we were stuck inside of Sophie's brain for hours that were really minutes. Hours. And hours. And hours. During action scenes that took minutes we were listening to Sophie's every brain synapse until whatever was going to happen happened three days ago in listening time. At the end of the book, we had 18 minutes left and it was 18 minutes of Sophie waxing on about... whatever she'd been circularly waxing on about the whole time.

And TROPE ALERT Loved by all, even the girls want her, doesn't know she's pretty.

All of that said, I finished it and the last sentence was devastating.

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So incredible but NOT for the faint of heart

Revisado: 09-25-24

Wow. This has been my summer of horror and this is probably the most horrific of all. If you like a sci-fi driven thriller, or even if it's not really your jam, this book was so good. The book centers on a company called Edited Pets that...edits pets to be more...interesting. Uplifted, one of the characters suggests. Owned by a guy who overcame poverty and bullying only to become a true capitalist alpha a$$hole, Edited Pets needs a win. Its principal scientist, Sienna, injects human DNA into rat zygotes, and, if you have seen a single Jurassic Park movie, you know what happens next.

The story is character driven and moves on quickly from there, with security guard and pest control specialist Prez and his dog, and hearing challenged child Dallas, who lives with his train-conductor mother in a down-market complex in Harlem providing the deep humanity that contrasts with Edited Pets' vile capitalism.

This is a true horror novel, and I say this because it is not for the faint of heart. The hardest scenes are of animal cruelty in the lab, but also body horror when the time comes. It is visceral and haunting and it pulls exactly zero punches. Imagine the worst death by rats, with their teeth and their sewage smell and you maybe get the idea.

All of that having been said, this was a fantastic horror read. Modern horror at its best is a commentary on contemporary society and oh, man. We could write a book about this book. A rat learns about humanity through the worst of humanity. I won't give the rest away. This novel is touching and sweet and hard and gross and incredibly human.

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Quaffable, but the hype made me expect more

Revisado: 08-28-24

I resisted this title for a long time because I couldn't get into The Nightingale. However, I found myself needing a novel and had a credit to burn and here we are. The story does move forward and the narrator does a great job. There is quite a bit of body horror and graphic descriptions of smells. You can believe that a naive young woman is quite the fish out of water in Vietnam.

My problems with the book...

Lazy history, minor but noticeable
A lot of details would just take you right out of the story. For example, the doctor that befriends her has a niece named Kayley and a nephew named Braden. In 1965. Why weren't they Susan and Robert?!? I couldn't stop thinking about that. Even some of the language was too modern, think "kickass nurse."

Derivative
If you've ever seen MASH, a lot of scenes will be familiar to you, such as the way the crispy head nurse can hear the choppers before anyone else, for example. Or that the thoracic surgeon is a "chest cutter."

A little racist
Then there is the white savior aspect when Frankie visits an orphanage and is told that a little burned orphan girl would remember her forever for giving her a sucker.

A little tropey
What is it that everyone sees in Frankie that they encourage her so much? Or drop literally everything for her? Or move with her to a Virginia horse farm for her? This is the "Loved by all" trope. I find it hard to believe that a debutante from California would so easily win the hearts and minds of everyone in her midst. Also: A debutante from California.

I'll stop now. All of that said, I did enjoy the book. It's a page-turner, and the larger point celebrating Vietnam vets in general and women vets in particular was well taken if a little heavy handed. I probably wouldn't have been so critical if it wasn't for all the hype around it. I'm going to pick up Dust Child next, for a different perspective on the same war.

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Prepare to miss everyone when you're done

Revisado: 08-04-24

I feel like I use the word "haunt" in my reviews a lot, but this book will absolutely haunt you. Starting out as a charming story of friendship between two outsiders in a small town, it quickly becomes the story of a crime, the consequences of which last for decades for everyone touched by it. 13-year-old Patch is missing after interrupting an attempted abduction and held prisoner for 10 months. His only companion in the total darkness is Grace, a girl of the same age. Patch's friend, Saint, herself 13, is the one to break the case and find Patch. Patch is wrecked when no trace of Grace is found, beyond what he recalls of her. Was she even real?

There was a small amount of time, when I had 10 hours to go in the book, when I was like, well, this is too freaking sad for words and what am I doing. The crime has happened, is this just a 10 hour meditation on trauma? But things begin to escalate not long after that and the rest of the book was absolutely stunning, and every character utterly unforgettable. This is a love story, a story of friendship and a crime thriller that unfolds over 25 years. I'll be missing Patch and Saint for a long time.

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Is it a metaphor?

Revisado: 07-07-24

About halfway through this book, I wondered if this was all just a metaphor for our times. I mean, it's got all the markers! One group dehumanizing and subjugating another group (what were the criteria to be eaten? the book didn't really get into it other than if you misused your "head"). Conspiracy theories. Phone-addicted teens. Government-sanctioned atrocities. The ultimate supremacy of haves over the have nots. The book was written in 2017, so that all tracks! It was written in Argentina, however, so maybe it's not always about me, lol. It's hard, though, not to follow the thread of our current situation to a conclusion like this in which very slowly and with great forethought and planning, begin to normalize eating people. What can I say--the news is depressing.

This is a horror novel, and it is truly horrific. It is a very slow burn, during which we are fed details that get more and more graphic, scary and disturbing. It is also a meditation on grief and loss. Pay particular attention to the female characters: the secretary, the sister, the doctor, the butcher, the wife, the poor gal in the barn. Though the protagonist is male, and male characters to most of the work in the "processing plant," it's the women going about the business of living that can be the hardest to swallow. Sorry.

Don't go to the butcher for a while, and maybe think about how capitalism and cannibalism aren't that divorced from one another.

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What makes us human?

Revisado: 06-19-24

This book is deeply disturbing. It is a also beautiful, meditative, queer friendly, multi-cultural gothic novel that will haunt you just a little bit.

Don't let the death of Santiago keep you from picking this up. (Not a spoiler, it's on the book jacket.) We don't linger too long over that loss before we are transported to Mexico City and beyond, and the events that lead to Monstrilio's animation.

If you have a chance google some of author Gerardo Cordova's interviews about the book.

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A warm(?) meditation on childhood trauma

Revisado: 06-19-24

Why are you the way you are as an adult? And what core memories do you have about how you became that person? Mister Magic is about the Circle of Friends, child TV stars in a show called Mr. Magic. Everyone had a role to play in teaching lessons to the children watching. Weirdly, though, there is no record, no recordings, no scripts, no evidence at all of this show ever having existed.

The mystery unfolds as one of the Friends, who has no memory of the show whatsoever, is found by three of the others and brought to the filming site for a reunion podcast.

Strange, confusing, confounding, deeply weird and also somehow incredibly warm, Mister Magic had me hooked at the beginning and never let up. It had me examining my own adult traits and where I learned them, and thinkng about that ending for a long time.

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