MEEERRRRRY CHRISTMAS

I've been falling behind on posting reviews. I'm going to blame the holiday season and all that entails, despite the fact that my entire year can be described as "falling behind on posting reviews".

BUT WHATEVER IT'S CHRISTMAS!

I'm going to spend the day...well I want to say watching A Muppet Christmas Carol on repeat, but that will probably be in the background while I spend the day cooking.

For those that celebrate, hope you're enjoying the day! For those that don't, well, I hope you're enjoying the day as well. GOOD DAYS FOR EVERYONE!

Keys turn both ways

I'm still having trouble getting into graphic novels, so it's sort of funny that I love love loooooved the audiobook version of Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodriguez's Locke & Key. It's also something that got me into listening to more podcasts, which I realize is odd since it is not actually a podcast and if anything it should get me into listening to more audiobooks. But I got used to listening to L&K while I was cooking so when I finished it and needed something else, I turned to podcasts and have been all over Serial and Stuff You Missed in History, (as well as Freakonomics, but I've listened to that on-and-off for awhile).

So I'll focus Locke & Key on the story, since I can't really speak to the art, which I realize is typically a BIG part of graphic novels. Except, of course, I don't want to throw out too many spoilers so let's see what I can manage.

Locke & Key starts with the murder of Rendell, patriarch of the Locke family. Nina and her three kids, Tyler, Kinsey, and Bode move to Lovecraft, MA to Keyhouse, a home that's been in the Locke family for years, in an attempt to put these terrible things behind them. Tyler's depressed, Kinsey doesn't fit in, Nina's started drinking and Bode finds a strange key that seems to let him leave his body.

The kids slowly unlock (ha) the mysteries of Keyhouse and continue to find keys that allow them to do any number of crazy, magical things. The Ghost Key lets you leave your body and float around like a ghost. The Head Key lets you open up your or someone else's head and either put information in or take memories out. There are a ton of keys and it's fun to learn what each one does.

But of course, it's not just kids finding weird keys that none of the adults seem to notice. Someone/something is stalking the Locke family to get the Omega key. It's what Rendell was killed for back in California.

Joe Hill is a horror writer and this falls into that genre, though with a lot of fantasy elements. But the story can and does get pretty violent. It also gets sad at times. I finished up the book while riding on an exercise bike and I think I went the fastest I've even done trying to outrun the feels.

I highly recommend listening to this as an audiobook. Like I said in an earlier post, it's like a radio play with a number of different actors portraying all of the characters and various sound effects used to keep you in the story. Everyone was distinct enough that I never missed speaker tags that are part of a more traditional audiobook. And I liked the story enough I'm thinking of picking up the actual graphic novel, though as a set, if that's an option, please & thank you.

(P.S., don't you love my seasonally appropriate reviews. I'm so good at this...)

Gif rating:

Title quote from somewhere near the end of the series, but since I listened to it I don't really know WHERE it's from.

Hill, Joe. Locke & Key. Audible recording

Staying alive, as it turns out, is mostly common sense

It's the Christmas season, so let's talk about dead bodies via a forensic pathologist, shall we?

Of course there's a gif that combines these things

Working Stiff: Two Years, 262 Bodies, and the Making of a Medical Examiner had been on my radar ever since Nahree's post about it. So I picked it up when it and a bunch of other books when in sale.

Overall, I enjoyed this book. It's interesting if you're into reading about dead bodiesand the things that happen after you die if you end up on the forensic pathologist's slab. And given I very much enjoyed Stiff yes, this is a book that is up my alley.

It's somewhat of a memoir, with Dr. Judy Melinek discussing how she ended up working as a pathologist in NYC in the early 2000s. She originally wanted to be a surgeon but being made to work insane hours and while sick (cos you know, you want your surgeon to have a crazy-high fever and be sleep deprived when slicing you up!) but a pathologist is more of a nine-to-five job.

The book is graphic at times, but not overly so. It doesn't feel like she's describing things with the sole purpose of being shocking. But that doesn't mean she shies away from explaining exactly how she has to split apart the rib cage to get to the organs within or any other medical details.

Learning to handle human beings who have begun to return to the soil cycle has, more than any other aspect of the job, made me more comfortable with death - though it's also made me much, much less comfortable with houseflies, and leery of cats.

While it is like a memoir, the structure threw me at times. The book is split into different sections, themes based on how the people died. Which meant that things weren't chronological, though at times it felt like it should be or that she was hinting at something big she learned from a later case that would apply to her current one, only for that to never once happen. It almost felt like it should have been more clear, with each case being its own stand alone chapter. But a minor complaint.

She was a pathologist in NYC during 9/11 and her chapter on September 11th was a lot harder to read than I anticipated. She talks about the trucks bringing bodies to the pathologist's site. Well, "bodies" isn't really accurate because, as she makes clear, they were very rarely dealing with whole bodies. More often it was pieces about the size of your thumb.

The book can be funny, can be sad, can be horrifying, can be gross, but it's also entertaining.

Gif rating:

Title quote from page 5, location 67

Melinek, Dr Judy. Working Stiff: Two Years, 262 Bodies, and the Making of a Medical Examiner. Scribner, 2014. Kindle edition

Book as gifts, good idea?

Or GREAT idea?

For people who love books, sure, no brainer. But what about other people? What are your thoughts about giving books as gifts to people who aren't avid readers?

On the one hand, they seem like a safe bet. You don't have to worry about figuring out sizes or colors. No allergies to contend with. There are a billion types of books, so there's going to be something out there they'll likely enjoy. And books are great, so what's the problem?

Then again, I like books, so I think getting books is great. I like having books and I like reading books. But it seems a bit selfish for me to give someone a gift because I like it. Even if I mean well and I think they'll really enjoy it. It can still be a bit like I gave them a bowling ball with my name engraved on it.*

What if the person sees getting a book like getting homework? Or they have a super minimalistic home and having books laying around would ruin the aesthetic? Or if they just don't like reading? Because everyone is super busy and I want to spend downtime reading, but maybe you want to play video games or knit or watch TV or play piano or train for a marathon or any other million things people do with their downtime.

I've been going back and forth on this the holiday season (also, I'm clearly terrible and planning gift giving and just getting to this now) on books as gifts and I think I've landed that, unless the person is a big reader, maybe books aren't the right way to go. But what do you think?

In other news, I finally started listening to Hamilton and shit. You're all right. It's amazing. But why must tickets be so expensive (last time I looked, $800 for the crappy seats, $1600 for nice seats and it's sold out till the summer anyway. You know, in case I win the lotto or something.)

*Can we make the term "Homer ball" mean a gift you give to someone else, but you really mean it for yourself? Yes, we're all agreed on that? Excellent.

Welcome to Kazam...where unimaginable horrors share the day with moments of confusing perplexity and utter randomness

You'd think Jasper Fforde and dragons would have been a no brainer for me, but I had stayed away from this series, despite the fact that this is a Fforde series and I luuuuuuuuurve him, because it's a kids series. It says for grades 5-7. So while I KNOOOW children's lit can be amazing, it's not something that I was thinking would be my thing and thus I ignored it. Then more and more people starting talking about how great it is and it was on sale and hey, I do love Fforde so I decided to give it a try.

5-7 graders are more advanced than I had assumed. Or actually, I think what's more likely true is that a lot of the other books I read would also probably be fine for 5-7 graders. Because if you hadn't told me this was a kids book then other than the fact that the protagonist is a teenager I don't think I would have noticed. And I guess I still can't really tell what makes this a kids book vs. not.

As with all Fforde books, the plot is sort of hard to explain. The main character is Jennifer Strange, who works at an employment agency for magical people, and lives in the nation of Kazam. They seem to mostly do house renovations, fixing the plumbing and whatnot, but since they can do it with magic no need to tear through walls. She's sort of an indentured servant to the place, which is the normal situation for orphans and, at least for Strange, doesn't appear to be all that unpleasant. She it's pretty much running the place, especially since the manager Mr. Zambini has gone missing. And there's a prophecy the last dragonslayer will kill the last dragon, which will lead to a massive war as opposing armies vie for control of the dragon land. The usual imminent peril that plagues Fforde protagonists.

Two people tried to kill me, I was threatened with jail, had fifty-eight offers of marriage, and was outlawed by King Snodd IV. All that and more besides, and in less than a week.

All of Fforde's books feel the same. I mean, they all have the same style, and all deal with plots that are nigh impossible to describe, with morally upstanding and intelligent leads, evil corporations/governments with seemingly unlimited resources to use against our plucky and intelligent hero. While I guess this could get repetitive, it doesn't. Thursday Next, Nursery Crimes, even Shades of Grey and now this are all sort of the same but in such entertainingly different ways that I love it every time. Now I can add The Last Dragonslayer to the list.

Gif rating:

Title quote from page 16, location 182

Fforde, Jasper. The Last Dragonslayer. HMH Books, 2012. Kindle

November Reading Wrap-Up

The year is almost done. How scary is that? And of course December flies by because of the holidays, so it will be a new year before we can blink. I had a pretty good November. All good on the home front and a successful Thanksgiving with much to be thankful for. Actually, let's look at a couple puppy photos, shall we?

They are the cutest, even the old man down at the bottom.

Let's look at those stats, shall we?

Total books read
5
Furiously Happy by Jenny Lawson
Black Chalk by Christopher J. Yates
The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo
I Don't Care About Your Band by Julie Klausner
Revenge by Yoko Ogawa

Less than the last few months, but I was also fairly far through Honeydew before my trip and decided I'd rather only bring my Kindle than bring it PLUS a book, so it didn't get finished this month.

Total pages read
1,326

Percentage of fiction read
40%

Percentage of female authors
80%

Percentage of white authors
60%

Percentage of US authors
40%

Book formats
ebook - 40%
paperback - 20%
hardback - 40%

Rereads
0%

Review books
0%

Books by decade
1990s - 20%
2010s - 80%

Books by genre
Memoir - 40%
Self-Help - 20%
Short Stories - 20%
Thriller - 20%

Resolution books
60%

Black Chalk - author from the UK
The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up - author from Japan and a translation
Revenge author ALSO from Japan and also a translation