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juushikaTitle: Unmask Alice: LSD, Satanic Panic, and the Imposter Behind the World's Most Notorious Diaries
Author: Rick Emerson
Narrator: Gabra Zackman
Published: BenBella Books, 2022
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 385
Total Page Count: 516,190
Text Number: 1875
Read Because: this review, audiobook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: The extensive character assassination based on what feels like embarrassing but petty flaws like self-aggrandizement becomes increasingly justified as those flaws are revealed to be the definitive elements of some infamously falsified, culturally significant books. This is thorough, which sometimes means belabored, and Emerson's approach to citing sources sucks; the historical context and room for the redeeming qualities is thoughtful; Emerson's voice is conversational to the point of obnoxious and muckrakey. Fascinating but infuriating, and not always on account of the offenses of Beatrice Sparks.
(Go Ask Alice felt ubiquitous in my tween-to-teen years; I think I read it in middle school, late 90s. It went on a mental shelf alongside the D.A.R.E. program: transparent, manufactured fearmongering which felt illicit and exciting. Social problem novels had the same vibe, sentimental and didactic and yet deliciously taboo, a hilarious and not accidental combination. But Go Ask Alice was confessional: ridiculous but somehow real. Unmask Alice does a good job explaining how it ends up with all those qualities, and I feel like it solved a mystery I didn't know needed solving and yet here we are.
And then gave me a new one, because I had never heard of Jay's Journal. Ever! The explanations I feel like are pretty straightforward: the Satanic Panic left a cultural stain, but it passed/moved on in a rather more definitive way than the war on drugs haha sob; I was around ten when it died down and Jay's Journal's power would have died with it. [That said, I feel like some comments my parents made when I started to show signs of mental illness at that age now make a lot more sense! They were making the mental illness = repressed memory connection, which a hilarious deflection in hindsight.] But it's weird to see it as such an instrumental part of a narrative that overlapped with my own adolescence, and yet be so disconnected from it. ...And now I want to read it.)
Title: The Day of the Triffids (Triffids Book 1)
Author: John Wyndham
Published: RosettaBooks, 2010 (1951)
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 245
Total Page Count: 516,435
Text Number: 1876
Read Because: reading more of the author after enjoying Chocky, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: Stories about how the world falls apart are rarely "enjoyable," and appropriately I didn't enjoy this. Wyndham's read on the apocalypse runs into predictable pitfalls, namely ableism and sexism; Golden Age SF often manages to be forward thinking for its time and profoundly trapped in that time, and rejecting vs. preserving marriage is the locus of that conflict here.
But this is almost cozy in its apocalypse. Like War of the Worlds, it's a devastatingly large event explored on a personal level (a necessary focus, as the triffids are pretty boring baddies); unlike almost any apocalypse narrative I can think of, it's about agriculture, about life after the grocery stores are looted, about the labor of rebuilding society. When I read this, it was an interesting touchstone in the genre but not my thing; but, in the months since then, I've thought about it with surprisingly regularity, every time I've encountered another apocalypse story utterly unconcerned with farming.
Title: A Little Princess
Author: Frances Hodgson Burnett
Narrator: Johanna Ward
Published: Blackstone Publishing, 2012 (1905)
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 240
Total Page Count: 516,675
Text Number: 1877
Read Because: childhood reread, audiobook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: This is no The Secret Garden, but of course the comparison is unfair, especially since I have nostalgia for one but not the other. This is bigger, with an almost campy contrivance and predictability, as the reader is let in on secrets far ahead of the protagonist. But that's just what grew on me: Burnett's willingness to intrude on the narrative, to explicate and to remove the veil of suspense just when it grows too thin, is great fun, the narrator almost a character itself, tamping down the sentimentality. I love a story of isolated-but-romanticized suffering, and self-romanticization certainly fulfills that niche; I probably would have liked this better as a young reader but, hey, better late than never.
(I have a trope tag for desert island paradises which is small but one hell of a vibe, and this is the first addition in a while.)
Author: Rick Emerson
Narrator: Gabra Zackman
Published: BenBella Books, 2022
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 385
Total Page Count: 516,190
Text Number: 1875
Read Because: this review, audiobook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: The extensive character assassination based on what feels like embarrassing but petty flaws like self-aggrandizement becomes increasingly justified as those flaws are revealed to be the definitive elements of some infamously falsified, culturally significant books. This is thorough, which sometimes means belabored, and Emerson's approach to citing sources sucks; the historical context and room for the redeeming qualities is thoughtful; Emerson's voice is conversational to the point of obnoxious and muckrakey. Fascinating but infuriating, and not always on account of the offenses of Beatrice Sparks.
(Go Ask Alice felt ubiquitous in my tween-to-teen years; I think I read it in middle school, late 90s. It went on a mental shelf alongside the D.A.R.E. program: transparent, manufactured fearmongering which felt illicit and exciting. Social problem novels had the same vibe, sentimental and didactic and yet deliciously taboo, a hilarious and not accidental combination. But Go Ask Alice was confessional: ridiculous but somehow real. Unmask Alice does a good job explaining how it ends up with all those qualities, and I feel like it solved a mystery I didn't know needed solving and yet here we are.
And then gave me a new one, because I had never heard of Jay's Journal. Ever! The explanations I feel like are pretty straightforward: the Satanic Panic left a cultural stain, but it passed/moved on in a rather more definitive way than the war on drugs haha sob; I was around ten when it died down and Jay's Journal's power would have died with it. [That said, I feel like some comments my parents made when I started to show signs of mental illness at that age now make a lot more sense! They were making the mental illness = repressed memory connection, which a hilarious deflection in hindsight.] But it's weird to see it as such an instrumental part of a narrative that overlapped with my own adolescence, and yet be so disconnected from it. ...And now I want to read it.)
Title: The Day of the Triffids (Triffids Book 1)
Author: John Wyndham
Published: RosettaBooks, 2010 (1951)
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 245
Total Page Count: 516,435
Text Number: 1876
Read Because: reading more of the author after enjoying Chocky, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: Stories about how the world falls apart are rarely "enjoyable," and appropriately I didn't enjoy this. Wyndham's read on the apocalypse runs into predictable pitfalls, namely ableism and sexism; Golden Age SF often manages to be forward thinking for its time and profoundly trapped in that time, and rejecting vs. preserving marriage is the locus of that conflict here.
But this is almost cozy in its apocalypse. Like War of the Worlds, it's a devastatingly large event explored on a personal level (a necessary focus, as the triffids are pretty boring baddies); unlike almost any apocalypse narrative I can think of, it's about agriculture, about life after the grocery stores are looted, about the labor of rebuilding society. When I read this, it was an interesting touchstone in the genre but not my thing; but, in the months since then, I've thought about it with surprisingly regularity, every time I've encountered another apocalypse story utterly unconcerned with farming.
Title: A Little Princess
Author: Frances Hodgson Burnett
Narrator: Johanna Ward
Published: Blackstone Publishing, 2012 (1905)
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 240
Total Page Count: 516,675
Text Number: 1877
Read Because: childhood reread, audiobook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: This is no The Secret Garden, but of course the comparison is unfair, especially since I have nostalgia for one but not the other. This is bigger, with an almost campy contrivance and predictability, as the reader is let in on secrets far ahead of the protagonist. But that's just what grew on me: Burnett's willingness to intrude on the narrative, to explicate and to remove the veil of suspense just when it grows too thin, is great fun, the narrator almost a character itself, tamping down the sentimentality. I love a story of isolated-but-romanticized suffering, and self-romanticization certainly fulfills that niche; I probably would have liked this better as a young reader but, hey, better late than never.
(I have a trope tag for desert island paradises which is small but one hell of a vibe, and this is the first addition in a while.)
no subject
Date: 2024-11-27 04:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-11-28 09:02 am (UTC)Also hi, welcome, etc.! I don't normally post dozens of book reviews a week; I'm trying to catch up on my backlog before the end of the calendar year catches up to me.
no subject
Date: 2024-11-28 11:40 am (UTC)The Lost Prince is a lot of fun imo, but then I'm a sucker for a grumpy disabled street rat and a Ruritanian romance.