I am in trouble here. This woman is not right

Continuing my current trend of reviewing horror stories in December/January because I am unable to review things in a reasonable amount of time, I now come to Stephen King's Misery.

This is at least the third time I've read this book. I was introduced to it in a college class, The Modern Bestseller, and I've loved it since then. Which was good cos it was one of the few books I did enjoy from that class (Lovely Bones, shut up, you're terrible). This won't be a gushing review, but I've read it multiple times so it's certainly not going to be a negative review.

For those of you unfamiliar with the story, Paul Sheldon is a writer who has just finished what he believes to be his best book, a long cry from his romantic Misery series he can't wait to get away from. He celebrates finishing his book with a couple bottles of champagne and then decides to drive to L.A. because drunk people make GREAT decisions. He gets caught in a snowstorm and predictably crashes his car. Unpredictably, he's found by a "good samaritan" who just happens to be his Number One Fan. Lucky Paul. 

Annie Wilkes is also a former nurse so she brings Paul back to her home to take care of his badly broken legs. Good thing Annie has a stockpile of medication, including novril, an addictive pain killer. And of course, Annie loooooves Paul's Misery Chastain series. It's too bad Paul killed off Misery in his last book. But Annie now has her own pet writer to right the wrongs Paul created.

This book is seriously scary. Annie Wilkes is among the best villains I have encountered. She's delusional and unpredictable, she's not clever, but she's also not stupid and it's dangerous to underestimate her. Paul is dependent on Annie, particularly Annie's stash of novril. And a little bit to the writing. Paul plays Scheherazade to both Annie and himself. He needs something to keep him going because things aren't looking great for him. 

I like the fact that there's nothing supernatural happening here. It makes things that much scarier. It's a slim story. There are really only two characters the whole time: Paul and Annie. Almost all of the action takes place at Annie's secluded home. Even there, most of the action takes place in a single guest bedroom. You start to feel the isolation and claustrophobia Paul is going through. There's also the suspense. Paul is playing a game of "Can You?", not only to see if he can write the story Annie wants without cheating, but he's also playing for his life. Can he get away?

GIF rating:

King, Stephen. Misery. Signet, 1988.

Best books of 2014

That is, the best books I read in 2014. Not necessarily ones that came out in 2014. ANYWAY.

I see a lot of people putting together their lists of the best things they read this past year and yes, I would like to jump on this bandwagon. These are the books that I have been trying to shove into people's hands all year. In some cases I have even been successful. People should always listen to me.

The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion
Romantic comedies usually aren't my thing, just, in general. But this one? This one is EXCELLENT. It's funny and the characters don't do things that make me cringe and wonder how they can possibly function.

The Serpent of Venice by Christopher Moore
It's Christopher Moore. It's Shakespeare. It's hilarious. LOVE IT.

NOS4A2 by Joe Hill
This one caught me off guard. I expected to like it and thought sure, this is probably going to be a good scary story. I didn't expect it to be SO good, not just for a scary story but for just a story, in general.

The Martian by Andy Weir
This was another book I didn't expect to looooooove so much. I'm sure Tom didn't expect me to spend so much of our transcontinental flight smacking him on the arm and making him read bits. I'm currently making him read the whole book, BECAUSE I CARE.

Maus I&II by Art Spiegelman
This is a hard book to shove into people's hands because 1) it's a graphic novel, so it can be difficult to get people to give it a try and 2) it's about the holocaust so it's hard to be too effusive about it. It's a seriously depressing, beautiful, very good graphic novel.

Here's to 2015 reading

Year End Reading Wrap-Up

You may have noticed I am skipping a December reading wrap-up post. That is because at the beginning of December I began reading the third GoT/ASoIaF book, A Storm of Swords, which is 80,000,000 pages long (roughly) and December has been a bit hectic and thus, I have not actually finished ANY books this month. Which is the first time that has happened in I don't know how long. But this seems like the perfect opportunity to look at how many reading has fared over the year, doesn't it? And I'll put in a bunch of graphs because, come on, who doesn't LOVE spreadsheets as part of their end of year wrap up?

Books read
50. Allllllmost a book a week. I blame George R.R. for screwing that up.

Pages read
17,232

Percentage of fiction read
72%

Percentage of female authors
45%

Percentage of white authors
86% - I did split out India from the rest of Asia when figuring race,, although I guess that's not actually what the US census bureau does. Maybe that would be the best designation to use.

Percentage of US authors
74%

Percentage of eBooks
38% I'm surprised this isn't higher. I wonder what that says about my perceived reading, that I think I'm reading ebooks more often. Of course I have been plowing through A Storm of Swords on my Kindle forever, so that's probably tainting my current view.

Percentage of rereads
10% so many new books to check out

Percentage of review books
4% - I knew it wasn't a lot but I didn't think it was THAT low. That said, I'm not super upset about this.

Books written by decade
1850s - 2%
1860s - 2%
1950s - 2%
1960s - 4%
1970s - 2%
1980s - 10%
1990s - 6%
2000s - 18%
2010s - 54%
I'm always surprised how much of my reading is made up of books that only came out in the last couple years.

Books by genre
Children's - 2%
Classic - 2%
Coming of age - 2%
Crime - 4%
Economics - 2%
Essays - 6%
Fantasy - 4%
Graphic Novel - 10%
Health - 4%
History - 2%
Horror - 20%
Humor - 8%
Lit Fic - 2%
Memoir - 2%
Mystery - 2%
Rom Com - 2%
Romance/Love Story - 4%
Sci Fi - 8%
Science - 2%
Thrille - 6%
Travel memoir - 2%
I still have no idea what to consider this - 2%
My reading is all over the place. Except when it comes to horror. That may also be because horror is easier to put in a genre than some of the others. Genres are haaaaaard to figure out and what about ones that fall into multiple genres? It's an imperfect system but I'll probably keep doing it next year.

So there we go. Overall I can't say there are any surprises here. Which is a bit sad.

Bookish Resolutions
Read more non-white people
Read more non-US people
Read more books that are older than the 2000s

Let's see if I can hit at least 1 of those 3 resolutions above each month.

How'd you do with your reading this year? Do you have any bookish resolutions?

It's not just a job. It's the rest of your life

My last post was about Christmas, so naturally I'm going to review a horror book I read back in October. Perhaps a resolution for next year should be "speed it up with the reviews".*

I finished Horrorstor by Grady Hendrix in early October. It made an excellent Halloween read. Excellent for me as it's got a bit of satire in it and a LOT of horror.

At an Ikea knock-off store called Orsk, strange things seem to be happening at night. Employees arrive in the morning to see the faux-Swedish furniture smashed and foul smelling substances smeared on the sofas. But the security cameras haven't caught anything. Corporate is getting concerned. The manager, Basil, recruits two associates, Amy and Ruth Anne, to stay up and see if they can catch who is damaging the store before corporate's consultants show up the next morning.

Amy is having money trouble. She agrees to stay no only because it means double time, but Basil has promised to help push her transfer request through. Ruth Anne is loyal to the company she she agrees to stay. Trinity believes ghosts are behind the whole thing and wants to perform a seance and capture the whole thing on tap so she can be the next "real-ghost busters" and get a reality TV show. Matt goes along with Trinity cos he's sleeping with her and also has the camera equipment.

And thus we have the set up for a seriously creepy haunted house/furniture superstore tale. There are these strange texts coming from unknown numbers that just say "help". There's a figure that seems to be darting in and out of the maze of fake home scenes. And some of those furniture pieces really do look like torture devices.

I won't go anymore into the plot, lest I spoil anything. I have to say this was a lot scarier than I assumed it would be. It has it's funny parts, with the whole fake Ikea, but that almost works to let your defenses down so when things start going wrong, you don't expect them to go quite SO wrong. As soon as I finished with this book, I simultaneously wanted to run to an Ikea and alternatively never step food in an Ikea again. The thought of those "false" closet doors creeps me out now.

I wanted to pick up a physical copy of this book, since it does have some things like a map of the store and descriptions of some of the Orsk furniture. Overall though, I don't know that it makes a difference whether you get a physical or ecopy of the book. Especially where the physical copy is larger than a trade paperback, and thus is a little more awkward to hold on the subway. However, I did finish the book in about a day, so at least you're not dealing with it's larger size for very long.

GIF rating

*Not only would this be good cos then my reviews could somewhat fit the season, and I'd actually be talking about a book when it's still fresh in my mind, BUT I wouldn't have to dig through my book suitcase.

As I recently mentioned, we're going to be moving. Which means we need to sell our place. Which means we need it to look neat and not cluttered. And APPARENTLY bookshelves that are double and triple stacked don't look neat. I am also aware that keep books in a suitcase like this is bad for the books. Which is why unless the house is being shown, the suitcase remains out like this. And hopefully we'll be able to store some of this stuff at my mom's while we try to sell this place/buy a new one and they won't have to be in here at all.

Title quote form page 35

Hendrix, Grady. Horrorstor. Quirk Books, 2014.

BOOKISH CHRISTMAS

Merry day-after-Christmas, for those of you that celebrate. For those that don't Happy Friday and I hope you get to take some extra time off without any of the Christmas obligations.

Tom and I spend the last couple days running around. Christmas Eve was spent at my mom's, hanging out with her and my brother. Well, also cooking. We stopped in the city to pick up lots of fresh seafood for paella that night. But other than that, mostly hanging out with the family, watching things like A Muppet Christmas Carol (aka the best Christmas movie EVER, don't even bother trying to tell me A Christmas Story is the best one because you've all been brainwashed by the fact that's literally on for 24 hours. That movie is terrible.) and having make drinks. We opened gifts and had tiramisu and good times.

The next morning was French toast before heading into the city to spend Christmas day with Tom's family. Lots of people hanging out, bad movies watched (I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry is actually worse than I assumed, which I suppose is an impressive feat and WTF, why aren't you playing Christmas movies on Christmas day?) and food eaten. Tom and I didn't have a huge amount since it was essentially Christmas lunch and we had just had all that French toast. But don't worry, I have lots of pernil leftovers for today. On our way back home we realized that we would probably be hungry later and there wasn't much food at home so naturally we stopped for Chinese takeout.

I realize I just talked about the food we had because, you know, priorities.

But there were also some bookish gifts, and why not point those out?

Julie is an excellent Secret Santa and she sent over hazelnut & coffee chocolate, these caramel wafers that are THE BEST, an adorable dino ornament, wine stoppers (important bookish accouterment), and 2 books (Coronado by Dennis Lehane and Beirut Blues by Hanan al-Shaykh).

Mom got me a Barnes & Nobel gift card so additional new books will be forthcoming! I haven't decided which ones yet. But picking up out is half the fun. And, while not actually a book, Tom got me the entire collection of Harry Potter movies.

A million years ago (or 2007), after the 5th movie came out, Tom was going to get me the set of HP movies for Christmas but decided against it, since not all of the movies were out yet. I commended him on this choice, as having a 1/2 complete set would drive me nuts when the other movies came out and nothing matched up. At that point he promised he would get me the set of movies once they were all out. When I told him how long that would be (and I didn't even know they'd be splitting the last book into 2 movies) he made a comment about how we'd better be married by THAT point. The fact that we got married this summer and he got me the movies this Christmas is somewhat coincidental, as he had been waiting for a movie set that had all of the bonus stuff and not JUST the movies. But it worked out nicely that all promises were kept. And now I can say I married him to get the full set of Harry Potter movies.

I have a couple days off so I plan on spending them watching ALL the movies, catching up on blogging, maybe getting some reading done. And of course eating.

Armageddon is kind of a lot to lay on a six-year-old

Last year Alice introduced me to Sarah Vowell's stuff by sending me a copy of The Wordy Shipmates. That was nice of her. Later that year I saw a copy of Assassination Vacation on sale so I picked that up. Then earlier this year I was looking for some other book. I don't remember this one because I am WAY behind on reviews. But I know I was looking in the humor section and the book I wanted wasn't there. But another discounted Sarah Vowell book was! This time I read Take The Cannoli: Stories from the New World. 

Unlike the other 2 books, the focus of Take The Cannoli isn't historical. At least, not entirely, though of course there is a little of that. This is a collection of autobiographical essays where she covers things like her obsession with The Godfather when she was in college, or when she tried to look more intimidating and decided to get a goth makeover, or when she talks about her vacation following the trail of tears (because there's gotta be some history).

There isn't really a unifying theme to the essays. Other than they are about her in one way or another. Which doesn't bother me because I have a short attention span and that little bit of unification is all I need. And besides that, the essays are funny. Vowell is funny and while I can't say I learned anything, like I did with her other two books, I can say I enjoyed this one a lot. What can I say, I like self-deprecation, like when she talks about she and classmate used to each write music, though of very different styles. And qualities. Her philosophy behind her pieces was "Why not just have every instrument in an ensemble play every kind of note grouping simultaneously? That way, you could make even the sappiest string section sound almost as good as a hair dryer." Meanwhile, her musical nemesis used to write pop-friendly tunes to the delight of the female students. Except for Sarah, of course.

Pishposh, I thought, alone in my two-by-three soundproof practice module that was more than roomy enough to accommodate my admirers. I was convinced that real artists were the kind that nobody understood, much less liked, which was pretty reassuring since nobody liked me. Or my music.

See, teenage pain is hilarious.

She talks, in bits and pieces, about her love of America, while still being upset with it. She talks about hearing the Rodney King verdict while studying abroad in Holland and trying to defend herself and the US to her friend (a local) who said to her "Of course you're not going back there." As I mentioned above, she talks about traveling the trail of tears with her sister, which is not exactly a barrel of laughs (A historical tragedy and five fourteen-hour days behind the wheel? Who could pass that up?)

If you like Vowell, you should read this one. If you haven't tried Vowell, this isn't a bad place to start. It's easier to get into than, say Wordy Shipmates (WHICH IS STILL VERY GOOD, ALICE, but let's face it, if the puritans aren't your jam, might be a bit slow at times) and gives you a good sense of her style, while being entertaining, if a bit light. I can't say a lot of these essays stuck with me. Except maybe the goth one, where I have actually quoted that the rule that you have to stay out at the club at least as long as it took you to get ready. IMPORTANT LESSONS.

Gif rating:

Title quote from page 37

Vowell, Sarah. Take The Cannoli: Stories from the New World. Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, 2000.