The Lost World / Michael Crichton

First things first: I don't think I will ever be able to spell "Crichton" without help, as it is a nonsense spelling and pronunciation that completely evades my memory.

I somehow missed out on Jurassic Park when I was young, and when I say "somehow" I mean "I'm very easily spooked and Jurassic Park (in book and movie form) was way too scary for me, and then I just kinda forgot about it". I didn't pay it any attention until a couple of years ago at grad school, when, while settling on a group project idea for Multimedia Literacy, a pal of mine said, "let's focus on Jurassic Park" and my fate was sealed. Cue the Year(s) of the Dino, where I devoured the movies and the book and a Rollercoaster-Tycoon-esque game called Jurassic World Evolution which is as great as it sounds, but then stalled out on The Lost World and didn't pick it up again until my nieces challenged me to a summer reading contest this year (a contest I intend to WIN).

So I finally read The Lost World and yes, it's bananas, and yes, I loved it. There are characters who are evil for no reason and meet a suitably grisly end! There's a douche who no one likes but who they work with who does very typical white rich guy stuff who gets shown up by other people! There are children who are, for some reason, geniuses! And most of all, best of all, there is Dinosaur Drama APLENTY. When I watched Jurassic World my main takeaways were that a) it's not good!, and b) the main reasons it's not good are joylessness and a lack of wonder for the natural world! The Lost World (both book AND film even though they are very different from one another) retains the fun and joy and wonder (and genuine scares!) that make Jurassic Park so damn good.

One thing Crichton seems to love doing is carrying a story smoothly along and then taking BREAKS FOR SCIENCE!!!!!!!! We open on our main characters, squirreled safely (?) away in the high hide, observing the Noble Apatosaurus turn on a Vicious Velociraptor in order to defend the herd with its mighty tail!! Now is a good time to discuss the complexities of the idea of natural selection AT LENGTH! It's ridiculous and I love it. Every other scene has Ian Malcolm declaring that "complexity/chaos theory can perfectly explain this!" and/or having a character put forth inexplicable knowledge on a subject FAR away from their field (slight spoiler but WHY would a mathematician know about prion risk in sheep???).

Will reading The Lost World change your life? Probably not! Does that take away from its fun in any way? It doesn't!

The Witch Elm / Tana French

There were a couple things in this book that really irked me:
a) how Toby kept talking about how hot his cousin Susanna was;
b) the oft repeated use of the description of anger as “taking my breath away”, and;
b) a final act completely out of left field and narratively dissonant with the rest of the book.

Other than that, I think what stands out to me most about this story is that it’s not so much about the mystery or who did what or what their motivations were as it is about how consequences for the same action are different for different people. In that sense, I guess the final act wasn’t so dissonant, but it was a very jarring turn nonetheless. I think I liked this book, and I know I disliked Toby and all he represents (blasé, blithe “I’m a nice guy” toxic masculinity here we come). I don’t think anyone is actually meant to like Toby. A lot of the reviews for this say “the main character was so unlikable” and yeah, he was, but he wasn’t MEANT to be someone the reader wants to be friends with. I mean, I would avoid this entire extended family and (spoilers) Melissa made extremely the right choice when she broke up with Toby (/spoilers) but having an unlikable narrator isn’t exactly a bad thing. Why should we like Toby? Why is likability something readers find so important? Am I thinking about this too much?

Toby is the kind of person who thinks we should all be civil and get along, who’s severe lack of introspection or empathy leads him to disregard those around them (thereby putting them in danger), who refuses to acknowledge his privilege in any except one very small way near the end of the book, who puts others at risk for a laugh, and who’s convinced that he’s just a "lucky" person and that's why things go his way. He’s a White Dude in the one of the worst ways, so of course he’s unlikable. He becomes more and more revolting as the book goes on, and that feels like the point. 

I feel like I could try another Tana French book at some point, because this was a good book and her examination of Toby was spot on, I just think I need to take a wee break.

Content warnings for this book: sexual violence (past events described by a character), suicide, violence.

Justice for Rafferty.

The Invington Diaries / Monty Don

It's no secret that I love plants and gardening, and it is probably also no secret that I also love pretty much everything Monty Don has written or filmed, and this book is no exception. This was my second time reading it, and I don't doubt there will be a third time. It goes through a year in his garden (although the entries are taken from about a ten year span), reflecting on the hows and whys and whens of everything, all while being thoughtful, gentle, and informative. I'm very aware that gardening books aren't for everyone, but if you watched some Big Dreams, Small Spaces or Monty Don's French Gardens on the netflix and enjoyed it or felt buoyed up in the bleak midwinter, then I highly encourage you to see if your local library has this book on its shelves.

There are bits about children and family, and bits about plants, and bits about dogs, and bits that I read out loud to Josh, and bits that made me laugh, and all in all it's a really good example of how well a journal can work as not just a record, but a way to tell the story of a place and a way to see patterns emerge. While I was reading this I got an idea for a haskap berry hedge mulched with woodchips and underplanted with crocuses.

The only glaring fault in this book is the weird design choice on the front cover to put the dot of the "i" into the loop of the "g". Once I noticed it I couldn't stop staring.

The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina / Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, Robert Hack

   Do you ever read something and say to yourself, "oh, this was extremely written and drawn by  men." This book has it all, including a sequence of pages focused on the all important question: should a 13 year old girl completely change her appearance in order to be more sexy? Remember, it's best if this sexiness is imposed on her by a male relative without her consent. There's also a panel where the foreground is completely taken up by one characters breasts and the mid-ground is focused on a teenage girl in a bikini.

   LISTEN, I really wanted to like this book, and I did like parts of it! But there was so much in here that was just so off-putting that I finished the book feeling frustrated and upset. And I realize that this blog has kinda become a (very sporadic) negative review blog in that last while and that's not my intention for it! I want to like the things I read! Anyways there's a LOT of spoilers ahead.

   So, this book, ostensibly about Sabrina, opens with a prologue focused on her father in which he betrays and then attacks her mother, while taking Sabrina as his possession. Sabrina's whole family and community knows that her mother is a) alive, and b) incapacitated and institutionalized by her father, but they all tell her that her mother is dead. So we begin Sabrina's life with control being exerted over her and those around her by her father. Skipping forward, Sabrina's father has been somehow encased in a tree, and Sabrina is a 13 year old going to public school for the first time. She's getting ready for school when her cousin comes in and says she needs to be more sexy, and casts a couple of glamours on her while she says "don't cast a glamour on me". While at school she sees a football player and is like "wow, I love him, and I hate the girl who also likes him and said 'he's mine', also both of us are fully developed even though we are, again, 13" Upon returning home from school Sabrina displays one of her few moments of agency-exercising by, you guessed it, taking agency away from someone else by casting a spell on Harvey to make him like her!

   I realize I'm just typing out a cynical synopsis but I'm so annoyed with this book! It could have been so good!

   Once again, I'd like to remind everyone that this book is ostensibly About Sabrina. So Betty and Veronica are witches now and they raise Madam Satan from the dead (she killed herself so OF COURSE she was sent to, and this is a direct quote, "that particular circle of hell reserved for suicides" WOW! I HATE IT!). Madam Satan threw herself to hungry lions, literally, because Edward Spellman aka Sabrina's father said he wanted to marry a mortal woman instead of her. This is the same mortal woman, remember, who was violently and brutally attacked by Edward earlier in the book. Madam Satan goes to the place where Diana (Sabrina's mother) is institutionalized, tells her her story, and then decides to - instead of helping her - give her "clarity" and thereby subject her to further pain and torture at the hands of doctors and nurses!

   Here's something I really hate: when books pit all of their female characters against each other, especially women hating each other because a man chose one of them over the other one. The man caused this problem! Not the woman! Rosalind and Sabrina hate each other because hey both liked Harvey. Madam Satan curses Diana because they both liked Edward.

   Meanwhile, Sabrina is now dating Harvey and he is pressuring her for sex. She asks her aunts if she can have sex and they say "no, you have to be pure for satan", and she doesn't question that at all. Madam Satan, by now disguised as a teacher, uses her breasts (I am not kidding) to distract Harvey (the 16 year old boy) from his football game and then says "oops, sorry for distracting you, by the way isn't it just too bad that Sabrina runs off into the woods at night, probably for sex with randos?" Which of course makes Harvey angry so he runs into the woods to find and rebuke Sabrina. Sabrina is, of course, going to her "dark baptism" in the woods which is a big ceremony where it's implied she is going to have sex with satan?

   In The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina the netflix tv show, Sabrina decides, of her of volition, to not go through with her dark baptism and accepts the consequences. It's a good moment! In The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina the comic book I'm currently writing about, Sabrina's dark baptism is interrupted by Harvey and he stops it, and then is killed and eaten by the witches who were there while some other witches scream at Sabrina that she is so horrible for ruining the dark baptism (because of someone else's actions that she has no control over?). Now Madam Satan, who manipulated Harvey into trying to find Sabrina, goes to manipulate Sabrina into raising Harvey from the dead.

   The two times in this book that Sabrina shows an interest in furthering her skills in spell crafting and casting are both times when she wants to make Harvey do something. Oh yeah and after Harvey died his mom gives a ring to Sabrina and was like "he was going to propose, isn't that beautiful" and I was like "they're??? 16????? He only liked her??? because of a spell???"

   So Madam Satan gets Betty and Veronica to come and help Sabrina get through a trial and then the four of them reconvene to raise Harvey from the dead but SURPRISE Madam Satan ACTUALLY released Edward's spirit from the tree it was encased in and put it into Harvey's body. So! Harvey/Edward goes back to Harvey's parent's house where Harvey's mother murders his father because he's like "Harvey is dead and I have a bad feeling about whoever is knocking on the door" and then Harvey/Edward is like "Harvey isn't here anymore" and then ties her up and phones Sabrina (HIS DAUGHTER) and says "I'm back". End book!

   So! We begin with Edward controlling, attacking, and lying to women and we end with Edward controlling, attacking, and lying to women! This book, once again, ostensibly about Sabrina, focuses way way more on Harvey and Edward, with the women in their lives acting as a backdrop. Once again, there is SO MUCH this book could've done and/or talked about, and it just, didn't.

   I also know that other people really liked this book and I am so curious about your opinions!! Did I read this book entirely wrong????? Did I miss something??? Honestly I would like to have missed something!!

River of Teeth / Sarah Gailey

River of Teeth is a hundred pages and change, which results in a four hour-ish audiobook, and my biggest takeaway from it is that I wish it was longer. Here again we have a great concept well-executed, but it is Very Rushed, and listen: I like a good twist and/or turn, but if a novella has a "but theEeEeEeEennn" moment every single scene it gets to be a BIT MUCH. And the action moved so quickly and I couldn't get a grasp on how much time was meant to be passing and I was like "I know I'm SUPPOSED to feel betrayed/shocked/happy about what these characters are doing, but I haven't had time to get attached!!!!!!!" 

A definite strength of this book is the very varied cast of characters. There's a non-binary character who is always referred to as they/them, even by people who don't like them or want them gone. No one uses gendered language as a weapon against them, and there aren't scenes where they have to explain what their pronouns are, or explain what being non-binary is, they just ARE, and it's refreshing. There's a scene in the book (mild spoiler ahead) where the crew has to decide what to do after losing the only white man on the team when there's someone expecting a white man to come and get something, and it was nice to read about a book where the world looks like the world actually looks. 

I WANTED TO LIKE THIS MORE, is what I'm saying. I'm hoping the second book is a little less break-neck and a little less "but it turns out"-y with one or two fewer Shocking Reveals. You know? Gimme them good hippos. 

Bird Box / Josh Malerman

Yesterday I saw the trailer for netflix's adaptation of Bird Box, and my reaction was to immediately (after watching Jeopardy, of course) go get my copy of the book and start reading it because IT WAS FINALLY TIME. I've owned Bird Box for several years, and just never brought myself to actually read it, until now. I started and finished it last night and now here we are.

Usually when I read a spooky and/or scary book, I have to either not read it at night or read a VERY GENTLE palate cleanser before falling asleep. So when it was time to go to bed but I wanted to keep reading, I bundled into bed with Bird Box almost finished and with Age of License / Lucy Knisley to get me to sleep sans nightmares. Now don't get me wrong, Bird Box has some good, evocative scenes, and pages that I read very quickly because the action and the tension were moving so quickly. But when I read the last page and closed the book, I didn't feel like I needed to read something non-scary. I still did, because I luv 2 read, but I didn't neeeeeed it. The ending of Bird Box is fine, it's just a little lackluster. It's a fine book! It feels like it could have maybe taken another round of editing? The way I feel about Bird Box is about the same way I feel about Horrorstor: it's a great concept executed well, it's just not a Triumph of Literary Genius, and that's fine!!! I think what may have happened here is that my expectations for Bird Box were off from what Bird Box actually is and that's why I'm feeling a bit weird about my reaction to it!!!

Bird Box was fine! It wasn't bad, and it wasn't amazing. It was nice. I've lifted a gif rating from Alley to explain how I felt about this book:

Minithon 2018

It is back and it is smaller than ever. The Minithon! Alice is our brave leader and I am so excited to minithon. A time to read mini books and eat mini snacks for a mini amount of time. What counts as mini? Anything can be mini if you say it is. Will I say "mini" until it reaches semantic satiation and no longer holds any meaning? POSSIBLY.

Minithon means we read and snack for eight hours (from 9 am til 6 pm here in mountain time) and we talk about it. It is a joyous occasion and I love it. I won't be joining right at nine because I have a garden plant swap to attend but you can be sure I will be reading and snacking as the day goes on.

Here's what I'm reading today:

• The Little Sister / Raymond Chandler - "little" sister? More like MINI sister. 
• The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet / Becky Chambers - "small" angry planet? More like MINI angry planet, AM I RIGHT
• The Martian / Andy Weir - uhhh, he had to eat only a mini amount of food every day? 
• Get Well Soon / Jennifer Wright - what makes it mini? It's about plagues and epidemics, and viruses and bacteria are VERY SMALL. 

The first order of the day will be to purchase mini snacks for me to consume. Want miniature updates?? WATCH THIS SPACE and also watch my twitter: @olyvianne

***

Here is an update, which in the true spirit of the Minithon, is a couple days post-thon. It was a good day! Did a lot of snacking and tweeting, and a fair amount of reading. Here's what I read!

• Two chapters of Get Well Soon, the chapter on the black plague was particularly good.
• Thirteen chapters of The Martian, which is fun and goes by quickly. 

Josh joined in on the reading and got about halfway through Ninefox Gambit, and finished it yesterday. We ate mini croissants, hashbrowns, chips and salsa, and had some nice hot beverages. It was a good, quiet day. 

Gardeny Things

I love my garden. I love working in it, I love learning more about plants and soil, I love eating things that I grew, I love bring a plant from seed to maturity, I love seeing the bees at work on the flowers while the birds peck at the ants. It's a good garden now, and will be even better next year.

On our way back from Fernie (via Saskatchewan, where I was given a parsley plant) today we stopped at Josh's parents to pick up even more plants. It's a joy to have someone so willing and happy to share plants with me, and I've now been gifted hollyhocks along with many more bedding plants to fill out the gaps in the garden. The hollyhocks will have pink flowers, and I have seeds for hollyhocks with flowers that are almost black, and I'm hoping they will mix and seed around and I'll have blackish-purpleish-pinkish flowers towering above the other plants in a couple of years. It's a long game with hollyhocks; they're biennial - the first year they grow enough of a plant to survive dormancy in the winter, and the second year they flower and set seed - so I won't see the black flowers until 2020, unless I buy an already-flowering plant. Which honestly, I might do.

The bedding plants mostly went to the front, and the hollyhocks are going to join the delphinium, day lilies, and irises in the side bed. Before I can plant them out, however, I have to carry out Operation Extreme Makeover: Garden Edition, which involves digging out nearly all of the plants in the side bed, doing some major weeding, and replanting things in a way that makes sense. I arrived home to discover that the flowers are done on both the day lilies and the delphinium, so the timing is perfect. I need to get the hollyhocks in the ground within a couple of days, so Operation EM:GE is going to be carried out this week.

I've got other garden tasks to complete this week, including trimming and supporting the tomatoes, doing a huge amount of weeding in the veg bed (there was a heat wave the week we were gone and things have gone wild and are starting to set seed), pulling all the radishes, and eating some of the chard. We've moved from weather hovering in the high 30s to a much more friendly mid-20s, so it's a good time to get out there. We were gone for a bit over a week and I've been missing my plants.

6-10, 2018

I mean, you know the drill by now, right? Guess the movies, etc, etc, etc

oh fyi

I wrote about what I read in February on my other blog in a post HERE, and if you think I'm gonna write the same thing twice you're DREAMING.

Also I'm almost done school! I have like a month left!

Also my other blog is written by me and my best friend Raiah and honestly I think it's very good, go ahead and peruse.

"You're more like Sarah Conner, and in the first movie too, before she could do chin-ups"

The movies in order of the screenshots from my last post ARE:

• Hunt for the Wilderpeople
• Kedi
• The Man from UNCLE
• Ocean's 11
• Terminator

After seeing Thor: Ragnarok and being so extremely delighted by it, I resolved to make a point of watching more of Taika Waititi's movies. Hunt For the Wilderpeople was first on the docket and came highly recommended by some pals, and I am not exaggerating in the least when I say that it has quickly taken its rightful place as one of my favourite movies. It's about grief and family and it is hilarious and poignant, I cannot urge you strongly enough to see it at your soonest opportunity, and then to watch it again soon after that. It's joyful and sad and funny and I love it. I also love New Zealand, and want to go back.

PICTURE THIS: your husband announces that he's downloaded a documentary about cats in Istanbul and shows you the trailer, asking if you'd like to watch it. Of course you would, you love cats, and turns out it is a delightful and heartfelt look at cats and the ways cities change over time. It's called Kedi and you're so glad you're married to such a lovely man.

LISTEN, The Man from UNCLE is a cinematic masterpiece, here I stand I can do no other. I could argue the merits of this movie all day (along with another perennial fave, Sahara, of COURSE), but I don't need to, since you need only to watch it to be UTTERLY CHARMED.

I watched Ocean's 11 and it made me even more excited to see Ocean's 8.

My phone's lockscreen is a picture of Arnold sitting on a rock, surrounded by (taxidermied) woodland creatures. I've been asked MULTIPLE TIMES "Oh, is that Josh?" only to have to reply "no....it's Arnold Schwarzenegger" so imagine my embarrassment when I ALSO had to admit to never having seen any of the Terminator movies except for portions of (maybe?) Terminator 3 which I saw in a hotel in Las Vegas after my pals and I realized we hated Las Vegas and before we went to see Ka which is a Cirque du Soliel show which still, years later, haunts me in a good way. ANYWAYS cut to Movie Cocktail Club and a double feature of Terminator and Terminator 2 (the 6th movie I watched this year, you get a fun bonus for the next guessing post) and I am very glad to have filled a severe gap in my Arnold watching history. Terminator was fun and good, featured some special effects that we laughed at now but I'm sure were amazing then, and a story line which maybe wasn't the sleekest but which I enjoyed.

If you only see one of these movies I have to strongly encourage you to make it Hunt for the Wilderpeople, you will not regret it, I promise.

1-5, 2018

New year new movie count!!! You know the drill: I watch the movies, I post the screenshots, you guess what they are. I believe in you.

read in January

When Josh and I got home from Christmas traveling we both fell victim to the Christmas Sickness, and I nursed an intense head cold basically until a day or two before going back to school on the 8th. I feel like my body was like "I have been holding this off for so long, and now that you've got a break from school and you don't have holiday responsibilities, we're going to suffer." I slept a lot! I extremely lost my voice! I had a very bad headache! I was inhaling day- and nyquil! You know how it goes.

This sickness, besides being a bodily-enforced time of rest, was also a HUGE boost to my 2018 reading stats in that, after I became bored with playing the Sims on Dec 30 and 31, I read a book every day until the 7th. Some of them were comic collections, but I'm still counting them! I also actually used my ereader, please give me accolades. I rode the reading wave until the end of January and ended up reading 14 books. It's really nice to look at my reading challenge on Goodreads and see quite a few books there already. What an absolute boon.

So: what I read. I'll lump the comic volumes together, but other than that this'll be chronological.

• The Coldest City / Antony Johnson - I read this because it's the source material for Atomic Blonde, and guess what: the movie is better. This is a fairly sparse comic, and the movie has more depth and character development. Plus, one of the best things about the movie was how music and sound were constructed around the story, and obviously that's not part of the experience of reading a book. 
• From Here to Eternity / Caitlin Doughty - I've been a fan of Caitlin Doughty for awhile, and so when I learned that she had another book coming out I knew I had to read it. This book is thoughtful, funny, and will make you want to write an advance directive. For starters, if I get embalmed when I die, I will come back and haunt whoever is responsible to the seventh generation. 
• Rosemary's Baby / Ira Levin - Speaking of hauntings, sort of! This book has an increasingly tense and creepy tone, and even if you know what happens and what the situation is, it is still an extremely good read. I haven't seen the movie for various reasons, but I think pretty much everyone knows the jist of the story. Trust me when I say that this book is better than you think it will be. Also, you will hate her husband, TW for sexual violence. 
• Akata Witch / Nnedi Okorafor - Magic school story set in Nigeria! It's very good! There are heaps of adventures and a different concept of magic than I am used to. I have the second book on hold, but realistically probably won't read it until school is done. 
• Monstress, v. 1-2 / Marjorie M. Liu, Sana Takeda - I read this because it was on Jenny's 2017 reading wrap-up, and she made it sound extremely excellent. She was right! The art in this series is absolutely stunning, the mythology is fascinating, and it is so refreshing to see so many women on the page. 
• Hostage / Guy Delisle - This book is monotonous an that is a compliment! It's about a Doctors Without Borders administrator who is kidnapped and held for an extended period of time. It does an excellent job of illustrating how entirely boring it was to be held captive. Guy Delisle is a recurring fave of mine, and while this was a departure from his usual travelogues, both his storytelling and drawing style suit the story extremely well. 
• M / Jon J. Muth - This was only fine. M is arguably the precursor to film noir, so it's an important movie. This book is a comic-ization of the movie, with paintings of various frames. It feels a little bit unnecessary? Like the art is good but what does the book itself contribute to the story of the movie? I don't know. 
• Mr. Higgins Comes Home / Mike Mignola, Warwick Johnson Cadwell - A v short, v fun little send-up of vampire stories. 
• Silk, v. 0-2 / Robbie Thompson, et al - As you may have heard, and which I heard from Alice's 2017 wrap-up, Silk is truly excellent and so well done. I was sometimes a little thrown off when the artist changed issue to issue. It has also been cancelled, apparently, so eff you Marvel. 
• Iron Cast / Destiny Soria - Another book I learned about via Jenny's 2017 wrap-up. It's an alternate history story set just before prohibition, where there are people with special abilities like constructing an illusion by reciting poetry or making people feel an emotion by playing the violin. The friendship between the two main characters is central to the story, and their respective romances are secondary, which is refreshing. It's a good book, and damn I love friendship. 
• Horrorstor / Grady Hendrix - I wrote about this one previously. 

And that's it! I'm fairly certain that February's reading tallies will be much, much smaller than January. When I graduate I'm going to dedicate some serious time to fun reading. 

something on Sunday, 02/04

I'm taking part in Jenny's something on Sunday, and there are two things that are bringing me joy this week, and here they are: 

1. I presented a research poster at a small conference this week, and my favourite professor who is a) an absolute gem and an inspiration, and b) person whose approval I crave, looked at it, asked thoughtful questions, talked with me about potential future research, congratulated me on my marriage, and said "well done." IT WAS A BIG DEAL, OKAY. ilu, Dr Mackey.

2. Upon being reminded of Sister Wendy Beckett's existence I googled with hope and discovered that not only is she still alive, but also that the entirety of Sister Wendy Beckett's Story of Painting is on youtube, that's right, all ten episodes, you can watch them all right the hell now. Her art criticism is compassionate, smart, insightful, and passionate, and I learned a lot from her as a child. That's one fo her videos at the top of this post, I cannot encourage you strongly enough to watch it. Also, she has an extremely good first sentence on her wikipedia page which lists her as a "nun, hermit, consecrated virgin, and art historian". I love her. 

Horrorstor / Grady Hendrix

IMAGINE THIS: you're in an Ikea at night when it's deserted and suddenly there are GHOSTS and HAUNTINGS, that's right, get ready for both Thrills, and Chills!

Here's what many before me have said about Horrorstor: it has concept in spades and the exact right amount of execution to make it a fun and quick read. The ending is only okay and some of the story beats seem unnecessary BUT, overall it's good and spooky! And isn't that all we can ask or expect from a book like this? A slasher-esque movie turned concept book? BUT WAIT, I hear you say, THERE MUST BE MORE TO LIFE. Good point, and there is, and it comes in the form of Joey Comeau's slasher thriller The Summer is Ended and We Are Not Yet Saved.

This book not only gave me the satisfying type of fear that comes from a book that is not only extremely over the top but is also very well written, and left me feeling Real Human Emotions to such a degree that although I read this book several years ago, I still think of it often and recommend it to people on the reg. For instance! A couple weeks ago I was getting my nails done and the esthetician and I somehow realized we had a mutual appreciation for true crime podcasts, which led to a discussion of reading, which led to my admitting that I get scared VERY easily and so I can't watch horror movies or listen to horror audiobooks BUT since she loves horror she should DEFINITELY find and read a copy of The Summer is Ended and We Are Not Yet Saved by Canada's own Joey Comeau (If you recognize his name it's probably because of the late great A Softer World).

LISTEN, I do not claim to understand Mr Comeau's mind, but imagine the ramblings of that weird and sad comic translated into a really good and affecting horror novel and out comes a book that is NOT ONLY a really scary bloodbath but ALSO a really touching story about a single mother and her son. I can't explain it!

I normally don't like/can't read horror, despite my yearly quest for spooky scary reads in the Fall, but I can honestly recommend both of these books, although for entirely different reasons. If you are trying your BEST to play Civilization 5 but it Will Not Stop Crashing then I recommend you log on to your nearest library website and get yourself an ebook copy of Horrorstor to read whilst enjoying a quiet evening at home. If you want a book that will spook you til your eyes are wide BUT ALSO will spring into your mind with tenderness years later, read The Summer is Ended and We Are Not Yet Saved.

And really, who among us hasn't shut all the lights off in a normally busy and bright space and felt just a lil bit of the creepy crawlies.

watched in 2017

I stopped recording what movies I watched this year when I got to 13, and let me assure you: I watched way more than 13 movies. And so I cannot tell you everything I watched, because I don't remember. BUT I can talk about a few that were notable enough for me to remember when I watched them. Sometimes I'm good at remembering plots and storylines, but not when I watched something, or with whom, etc. Like, my list says I watched 2001: Space Odyssey this year but I feel like I watched it absolute eons ago. Perhaps because this year was extremely long, and very full, and at parts surreal. A lot happened this past year, both to me personally and on the international stage. I also watched District 9, and let me tell you: it is very weird to watch a movie like District 9 amid calls for building a racist wall and deporting refugees. It hits close to home, is what I mean.

Here's a short list of some of the other movies and shows I remember watching:

• Thor: Ragnarok (17) delightful and genuinely funny, highly recommend. Gonna watch through Taiki Waititi's filmography, I think. 
• The Monster (25) give me a silent movie and live organ music on Halloween or give me death. 
• Hidden Figures (16) I've said it before and I'll say it again: this movie is required viewing. 
• Contact (97) I loved this. I think it will become a movie I watch again and again. I love Space! I need a big sunhat! I want to read the book! Alright alright alright!
• Sunshine (07) this was the year of Space Movies, apparently. 
• Hot Fuzz (07) turns out this movie is a) as delightful and funny as everyone has been saying for ten years, and b) chock a block with really good and inventive storytelling and jokes.
• Logan (17) the more I think about it the more I appreciate it. It's a logical progression from the previous X-Men movies, and a reflection of the current climate. 
• Lion (16) I don't know what to say about this movie! It was very good, but everything I say feels irreverent somehow! 
• Atomic Blonde (17) I will watch any movie that prominently features Charlize Theron kicking everyone's ass.  
• The Fugitive (93) this one is in the canon for a reason, folks. I didn't kill my wife. 
• The Castle (97) there's a joke from this movie in Thor: Ragnarok, that's how iconic it is. 
• Star Wars: The Last Jedi (17) everyone who didn't like this movie can get stuffed. The last couple Star Wars movies have had the thesis "actually, war is bad" and I'm a fan. 
• Stranger Things 2 (17) Joyce and Steve are the Moms of the Year 1984. 
• The Good Place (S1) I have only seen season one so if someone spoils this show for me, just remember, I have a very special set of skills. 
• Brooklyn-99 - this was often our mealtime-tv, and I think we've watched it through like three times now. I love B99. 
• Parks and Recreation - the other day I saw someone on twitter say that they didn't like Parks and Rec and EXCUSE ME, how? 

I probably also watched Mad Max: Fury Road, because how is it possible for anyone to go an entire year without viewing that absolute legend. I live, I die, I live again. We are not things. 

As a final note: I CANNOT be the only person who sees this and thinks it was done on purpose: 

books read in 2017

Listen, I write a lot for school and for my other blog (which my best friend and I write together and which is, imo, a v good blog. I'm proud of it.) so writing here has taken a serious backseat to the rest of my writing life. BUT new year new blogging goals, and I want to write a little bit about the books I'm reading, since it helps me remember them better. And so, in chronological order (I think), the books I read in 2017 (not including a few short picture books):

• The Happiness Project / Gretchen Rubin - this book is nice and I liked it. I feel like I was pretty late to the Gretchen Rubin train, but it's a nice train to be on. 
• What We See When We Read / Peter Mendelsund - I read this for a class in my second semester, and it's quite good. When I first read it I made a note that it was "a little monolithic", which probably gives you some insight into how much academia is seeping into my brain. What can I say, I like to read about reading. 
• Partners in Crime / Agatha Christie - whenever I'm in a reading rut Tommy and Tuppence are there to bolster me up. 
• The Life-Changing Magic of not Giving a F*ck / Sarah Knight - this was a good, quick lil book and I recommend it! I listened to the audiobook version and I feel like I could be pals with Sarah Knight. There's a new book out with a similar title which I feel a strange antipathy towards. 
• Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone / JK Rowling - do I need to explain Harry Potter to anyone?
• I'm Judging You / Luvvie Ajayi - HELLO EVERYONE I recommend you read this book ASAP, also the audiobook version is a PURE DELIGHT. 
• White Rapids / Pascal Blanchet - this is a great little piece of Canadiana! And it's about a bit of Quebec history that I didn't know anything about. 
• Bitch Planet, vol. 1 / Kelly Sue DeConnick, Valentine De Landro - not for everyone but I enjoyed it. 
• The Rosie Project / Greame Simsion - another book I read way after everyone else! A good pal gave me her copy and I stayed up til 4:00 am to finish it. 
• Wishful Drinking / Carrie Fisher - the audiobook is absolutely PERFECT for a three hour car ride. 
• Sunshine / Robin McKinley - I've been a Robin McKinley fan for a long time so why I didn't pick this one up is a mystery to me. Actually tbh it's probably because of a misplaced prejudice against vampires and a weird self-congratulatory attitude about having only read Dracula and no other vampire stories. Get over yourself, past Glynis. Literally no one cares about your opinions on Twilight, just let people enjoy things. 
• The Miniaturist / Jessie Burton - this was...fine. I feel like there was a lot of wasted potential in the ideas and storytelling. 
• There is no Right Way to Meditate / Yumi Sakugawa - very short, very cute. 
• Witches of East End / Melissa de la Cruz - this book was really dumb but I liked reading it. 
• My Friend Dahmer / Derf Backderf - do not, I repeat, DO NOT delve into Jeffrey Dahmer's wikipedia page directly before bed after finishing this book! It is a bad idea! The book is good though!
• The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane / Katherine Howe - more witches! Plus now I like the name Deliverance?
• Every Heart a Doorway / Seanan McGuire - a book about children who go through a door into another world and then end up back on earth and now they're dealing with it. It's good! 
• Vengeance Road / Erin Bowman - if you liked True Grit (and let's be honest, who didn't), you'll like Vengeance Road. There's revenge. There's riding horses through the desert. There's good representation of indigenous peoples (as far as I can tell! I'm white! Feel free to correct me on this one!). 
• Giant Days, vol. 4 / John Allison, Max Serin - I've said it before and I'll say it again: I will read anything John Allison writes. 
• Go Ask Alice / "Anonymous" - here's the two-sentence review I wrote on this book when I finished it, because I will not spend one more iota of mental effort on thinking about it: "Greetings friends! Not only is this book 100% fake it is also: complete shite!" 
• The Outside Circle / Patti Laboucane-Benson, Kelly Mellings - this should be required reading for all Canadians. It lays out inter-generational trauma in an understandable and immediate way. PLEASE READ IT AS SOON AS YOU CAN. 
• Queer: A Graphic History / Meg-John Barker, Julia Scheele - chock full of good, rigorous, academic work. If you find yourself saying "what the hell is queer theory" then I recommend this book! 
• Jane, the Fox & Me / Fanny Britt - delightful! lovely! poignant!
• Unquiet Past / Kelley Armstrong - oh hello, did you order one deus ex machina? 
• The Winter People / Jennifer McMahon - spooky scary! A fun read with some solid creepiness that I quite enjoyed. 
• Uprooted / Naomi Novik - another audiobook which is definitely worth the many, many hours it takes to get through it. A sort-of retelling of Beauty and the Beast. 
• How to Be a Woman / Caitlin Moran - listen, Caitlin Moran's feminism is not perfect, but then, neither is mine. I really like this book regardless. 
• Fatty Legs / Christy Jordan-Fenton, Margaret (Olemaun) Pokiak-Fenton - a true story of one girl's experience in a residential school in the north. Very short, lots of illustrations, highly recommend. 
• Lily Renee, Escape Artist / Trina Robbins - not quite what I was expecting but still good. 
• Whose Body? / Dorothy L. Sayers - I don't think I'll ever get tired of British crime writers. 
• Spill Zone, vol. 1 / Scott Westerfeld, Alex Puvilland - VERY GOOD, MUCH RECOMMEND
• Magpie Murders / Anthony Horowitz - I know this is getting rave reviews but honestly the more I think about it the more it bugs me. Motives in the story seem very........unmotivating. It's not BAD, it's just not my favorite. 
• Austenland / Shannon Hale - Shannon Hale, like Robin McKinley, has been a longtime fave and this book was just as fun and silly as I wanted it to be. 
• A Murder for Her Majesty / Beth Hilgartner - Christmas is a good time to reread faves from your youth. Shout out to this book for making young Glynis want to be in a choir. 

Aurora Leigh Part Three Which I Didn't Read, Oops

   My body has been attacking me and term papers etc are heaping up and so I have to admit that I did not read this weeks section of Aurora Leigh, and I am sorry.

   What I DID read was Alice's and Jenny's posts about the last part and here are my impressions:

• Once again EBB goes off on how good, pure, noble, etc poetry is, and how it transcends everything else. At some point I feel like we'll be like "we get it, Elizabeth, poetry is good." 
• GAL PALS, WINK
• Romney is a fake-woke bro and is also: the worst. Also he gets married too much. 
• England has always hated France and probably always will? Remember reading Villette and Lucy Snow is like "I hate three things: France, Catholics, and everything else"
• Victorians were the worst AND I always get mad when people are like "I was born in the wrong generation!!!!!!!111!" because really? You think so? 

   I'm going to do my best to read this difficult book in time for the last post. Who can say if I will be successful? Only time. 

Aurora Leighdalong, Books 1 & 2

   And so begins our foray into a novel-in-verse about a woman who becomes a poet, and so far, it is equal parts delightful and impenetrable. So many thanks to Alice and Jenny for organizing.

    A RECAP: Aurora Leigh is born in Italy, and is an orphan by the time she's 13, at which point she's shipped off to England and to grow up in her aunt's care but DON'T WORRY, this aunt isn't as bad as Jane Eyre's aunt. She grows up rather under the aunt's thumb and her cousin visits sometimes, then she talks a lot about how much she loves nature and then she finds her father's book collection in her aunt's attic and spends the next ~fifty thousand pages talking about how amazing poets are and how they are closer to God than the rest of us.

Aurora and Chuck would get along, I think

   She starts writing poetry, but then on her twentieth birthday her cousin Romney finds her book of poems (which she hid in a tree near a stream, of course) and first tells her that women can't be poets (even though he didn't read anything she wrote so like...get stuffed, Romney. Although I am glad you did a small amount of privacy-respecting), does some general insulting, and then proposes to her. Aurora is like "hell no," and I applaud her.

Aurora reacting to Romney's proposal

   Her aunt is like "gurl you're going to be poor when I die, marry your cousin to secure your future," and Aurora is still like "hell no," and honestly I respect her resolve, also cousin Romney is v rude. Six weeks later the aunt dies from...sitting? and Romney tries to give Aurora a bunch of money and she's like "keep it, I'm outta here" and goes to London to be a poet.

   At one point Romney says, "When Egypt's slain, I say, let Miriam sing! / Before...where's Moses?" and honestly Romney, you need to read the Bible again and then you need to start getting better opinions. I feel like he's going to come back as a romantic interest for Aurora, and I'm mad about it. He's rude and mean, and I don't like him. I do like Aurora, and how she's very principled and does things like preserve ivy crowns in a drawer because PERSONAL SYMBOLISM.

   A lot happens, and a lot doesn't happen. During the nature and poet parts I was like "please, EBB, spare me" but there are so many good lines in this book that I can't complain. If reading this first portion didn't remind you of Bright Star then I have to assume you haven't seen Bright Star, and I feel like you should because it's a good movie, and very pretty. Look at these gifs and tell me that's not Aurora, I dare you.

Sometimes all you can do to make yourself read again is find one subject that holds your attention and lean into it with all your strength. My reading resolution of 52 books a year has been a true challenge in both 2016 and 2017, and so far this year I've only managed to squeak through 14. But, a few of those books lately have gone more smoothly, have held my attention more firmly, have kept me coming back to them and working through them. What an enormous relief. They've all been books about magic and witches, magic and witches. If there's a woman in them learning her own power through magic I'm there.

16 hour long audiobooks? Put them in my ears, as long as there's stories about Baba Yaga and spell-casting. Ebooks when I don't usually make good use of my Kobo? I'll pay attention as long as someone is researching the Salem Witch Trails while simultaneously discovering her own magic. Heck, I'll even read Witches of East End EVEN THOUGH it's dumb.

Please, for the love of my reading-hungry brain, suggest witch books to me.