No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality

I was looking for Halloween reads last October and Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House came up again and again. I've read her short story "The Lottery" (and loved it) and figured I need to try one of her full length novels. I've heard only good things about Hill House while We Have Always Lived in the Castle has gotten some mixed reviews, so I decided Hill House is where I should start.

My copy, part of the Penguin Horror Series, included a decently long intro on horror overall by Guillermo Del Toro and now, I sort of want to read an entire book about the history of horror fiction by him. Maybe he could take some time off from directing to expand this entry out into a full book, pleaseandthankyou. I don't think it's true to say that the intro was better than Jackson's story, but the intro has stuck with me in a way that the story hasn't. Before I get into it, a quick summary.

Hill House is a supposedly haunted mansion. Dr. Montague is a professor investigating paranormal activities and he rents the house for the summer in the hopes of finding something. He invites a number of people who have experienced paranormal events to come and stay with him. Naturally, most people ignore his letters, with the exception of two women: Eleanor, a quiet woman who has spend the last several years taking care of her invalid mother and more recently dominated by her sister and her sister's family, and Theo, an artiste. Luke, heir to the mansion, is also going to hang out with them. And then there are the super creepy caretakers Mr. and Mrs. Dudley who refuse to stay in the house at night and discourage the people from coming in and also might be robots.

There are creepy moments in the book. Doors won't stay open, regardless of it they're propped open or not. There's a strange voice and knocking noises and seems to be SOMETHING trying to get into the guests' rooms. It's never explicit what's actually happening. Is there something out there? Is this all in the characters' heads? Maybe just Eleanor's?

The haunting moments were scary. The fact that you're never really sure what's happening amps up the fear. But I had trouble with the characters. Mostly because I never fully believed them. We got some good background on Eleanor in the beginning and I thought maybe we'd spend more time fleshing the characters out. Or maybe not even fleshed out. I would have been fine if maybe we just stick with Eleanor and never really learn more about the other characters because we're dealing with Eleanor and how she perceives them. But the interactions between the characters never read as true. Mrs. Dudley can be stilted and sound like she's just reciting from a script. That's her thing. But the interactions between Dr. Montague, Luke, Theo, and even Eleanor should have seemed more natural.

Ultimately, the story was a bust for me. There were some good moments and it's cited so often as an ultimate haunted house story, so there's something there. But in the end, I preferred the intro (and highlighted more lines there) than the story itself.

But hey, check out these quotes from that intro!

To learn what we fear is to learn who we are. 

The tragedy in Poe's world is not the darkness in which we wallow but the fact that we once contemplated heaven. 

This is perhaps one of the most veiled and pervasive horrors in Jackson's fiction: We are always alone.

GIF rating:

Title quote from page 3.

Jackson, Shirley. The Haunting of Hill House. Penguin Classic, 2006. Originally published 1959. Kindle.

I'm tired from talking...and it's enough stories for now

We're having an open house right now, and since I don't have a car in order to get anywhere not the house (and it's cold and there's snow everywhere so walking 2+ miles doesn't sound like super fun) I figured I'll hide upstairs and work on a review! Now let's see, next up to review is...Maus II. Great. Something light-hearted.

I'm having, if possible, even more trouble coming up with what to say about Maus II: And Here My Troubles Began than I had with Maus I, and not only because it's been a few months since I read it.

Maus I takes place in occupied Poland, with Vladek and his family having to deal with all of the pain and terror that comes with being Jewish in a place that really does not like Jews.  Maus II takes place after Vladek and his wife Anja have been taken Auschwitz. So things go from bad to oh-my-god-this-is-the-worst-please-let-me-go-back-to-how-it-was-before. The story is depressing, which you should expect because Holocaust. You know things are going to be OK for Vladek and Anja (for awhile) because the story is Vladek telling his son Art about his time at the camp, so obviously he makes it out. Just because there's a silver lining, doesn't make things any less heartbreaking. Just because Vladek and Anja make it out of the camp, doesn't mean lots of other mice do.

Vladek's telling is matter of fact, which in a way serves the story well because you don't get quite so fatigued reading about the terrible things that happen. Vladek talks about receiving a beating from a guard after he spoke a couple words to Anja. When telling his son all he says is "So he beat me, what can I tell you? Only, thank God, Anja didn't get also such a beating. She wouldn't live." If this wasn't a true story I could see such a telling as coming off as cold and distant. Coming from someone relieving the event, the coping mechanism is more than understandable.

Vladek displays a lot of strength and ingenuity during these dire times. He's very ill for awhile (cos you know, death camps aren't great for your health) and of course he's seeing terrible things happen constantly, but still he manages to stay relatively safe and of course he makes it out.

There's another thing that makes the story more complex, more interesting: Vladek isn't some saint. Most of the story takes place during his time at the camp or his time marching, but a good chunk of the story is Art's interviews with his father in the present day and his farther seems like a lot to deal with. He's not bad, he's not evil. He's an old man who was constantly insulting Art's step-mother until she gave up and left him and now he's alone and guilts Art and Art's wife into spending time with him. You feel for Vladek while at the same time you can feel Art's frustration. He loves his father, that isn't in doubt, but family is never that simple.

You should read this. It's hard to really give reasons here. I want to say the typical things like "It's amazing and beautiful" but then a lot of caveats come in. Like "well I mean, it's amazing but also about the Holocaust and I mean, that's not amazing. Also it's beautiful but not like, piles of dead mice/people beautiful and oh no, I think I've sort of committed a hate crime. I'm sorry." So I'll just repeat, you should read this.

Gif rating:

Title quote from page 136

Spiegelman, Art. Maus II: And Here My Troubles Began. Pantheon Books, 1986.

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.