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juushikaOops, I forgot one (1) spoopy picture book, which I'll now gently slide between two very adult, very id books. I've been reading a lot of mixed-success books, which is probably one part "not a reading slump really but just like ... a bad attitude/generally being tired a lot" and one part "reading weird books"—stylized and/or experimental and/or strange content. Books like that tend to not quite succeed on account of their strangeness but are more interesting for having tried something strange, so it's not a run of mixed success that I regret, despite that everything is averaging to three stars (whatever that means, ratings are a fiction anyway). The Monster of Elendhaven in particular reminded me of The Wicker King: thank you for this trash, my trash, made just for me!
Title: The Monster of Elendhaven
Author: Jennifer Giesbrecht
Published: Tor, 2019
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 160
Total Page Count: 308,160
Text Number: 1047
Read Because: personal enjoyment, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: In the tainted city of Elendhaven, a self-proclaimed monster encounters a morally compromised gentleman. I could read entire novels with this setting and tone. Akin to a wintery Dunwall in its destructive magics, lost gods, dirty steampunk technology, and economic anxiety, it's a fantastic playground for unusual intimacies and very much my style. The specifics of this particular narrative within that playground are less memorable. I like them, despite but also for their tropey stylization and the sense of inevitability in the plot which also reads as predictability; it's competent, particularly as a debut. But it has the indulgent tone of fanfic (not a complaint, really) and the aesthetic overwhelms everything else.
Title: Mouse, Look Out!
Author: Judy Waite
Illustrator: Norma Burgin
Published: Dutton Children's Books, 1998
Rating: 2 of 5
Page Count: 30
Total Page Count: 308,190
Text Number: 1048
Read Because: this list of spooky picture books, hardback borrowed from the Wilsonville Public Library
Review: Beautiful art: a detailed, decaying home, melancholy and cozy. The "haunting" in this haunted house comes largely from external factors, which is an interesting take on the trope. But while the atmosphere is good, the writing is bad. It's written in rhyme with an unbalanced rhythm, repeated phrases, rhyming gerunds—bad poetry and too childish even for a picture book. The twist ending intentionally defies hidden details in the art, effectively twisting the predicted twist, but it rebuffs reader engagement and feels unsatisfying.
Title: Twins
Author: Bari Wood, Jack Geasland
Published: Signet, 1985 (1977)
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 345
Total Page Count: 308,535
Text Number: 1049
Read Because: interest after watching the film, used paperback purchased from Powell's
Review: Identical twin brothers are found after their murder-suicide. On the gamut of fiction books about sibling incest, this sits somewhere between a trashy guilty pleasure and gritty and/or profound. It's significantly different from Dead Ringers, the film adaptation: Cronenberg's weird styling, the gynecology fetishism and 80s social critique, compliments the premise and creates a surreal, satirical atmosphere. The book has less absurdity and more cancer—it's less fun, less exaggerated; more unsettling, more nuanced, broader in its anxieties, with a greater contrast between the semi-realist tone and the strangeness of the content; the characters are developed in greater detail, and their relationship is explicitly sexual (which, to be fair, is harder to include in a mainstream film). Both versions are narrative are about taboo, but the book rides a specific tension between an insular, toxic codependency and the inevitable, destructive intrusion of the outside world—and the reader inhabits both parts, glimpsing an interior view from a voyeuristic position.
Title: The Monster of Elendhaven
Author: Jennifer Giesbrecht
Published: Tor, 2019
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 160
Total Page Count: 308,160
Text Number: 1047
Read Because: personal enjoyment, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: In the tainted city of Elendhaven, a self-proclaimed monster encounters a morally compromised gentleman. I could read entire novels with this setting and tone. Akin to a wintery Dunwall in its destructive magics, lost gods, dirty steampunk technology, and economic anxiety, it's a fantastic playground for unusual intimacies and very much my style. The specifics of this particular narrative within that playground are less memorable. I like them, despite but also for their tropey stylization and the sense of inevitability in the plot which also reads as predictability; it's competent, particularly as a debut. But it has the indulgent tone of fanfic (not a complaint, really) and the aesthetic overwhelms everything else.
Title: Mouse, Look Out!
Author: Judy Waite
Illustrator: Norma Burgin
Published: Dutton Children's Books, 1998
Rating: 2 of 5
Page Count: 30
Total Page Count: 308,190
Text Number: 1048
Read Because: this list of spooky picture books, hardback borrowed from the Wilsonville Public Library
Review: Beautiful art: a detailed, decaying home, melancholy and cozy. The "haunting" in this haunted house comes largely from external factors, which is an interesting take on the trope. But while the atmosphere is good, the writing is bad. It's written in rhyme with an unbalanced rhythm, repeated phrases, rhyming gerunds—bad poetry and too childish even for a picture book. The twist ending intentionally defies hidden details in the art, effectively twisting the predicted twist, but it rebuffs reader engagement and feels unsatisfying.
Title: Twins
Author: Bari Wood, Jack Geasland
Published: Signet, 1985 (1977)
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 345
Total Page Count: 308,535
Text Number: 1049
Read Because: interest after watching the film, used paperback purchased from Powell's
Review: Identical twin brothers are found after their murder-suicide. On the gamut of fiction books about sibling incest, this sits somewhere between a trashy guilty pleasure and gritty and/or profound. It's significantly different from Dead Ringers, the film adaptation: Cronenberg's weird styling, the gynecology fetishism and 80s social critique, compliments the premise and creates a surreal, satirical atmosphere. The book has less absurdity and more cancer—it's less fun, less exaggerated; more unsettling, more nuanced, broader in its anxieties, with a greater contrast between the semi-realist tone and the strangeness of the content; the characters are developed in greater detail, and their relationship is explicitly sexual (which, to be fair, is harder to include in a mainstream film). Both versions are narrative are about taboo, but the book rides a specific tension between an insular, toxic codependency and the inevitable, destructive intrusion of the outside world—and the reader inhabits both parts, glimpsing an interior view from a voyeuristic position.
