‘Little Girl Lost’ is book one in the DI Robyn Carter series. Frankly, I will not be continuing with it.
The plot is a boilerplate one about a vengefu‘Little Girl Lost’ is book one in the DI Robyn Carter series. Frankly, I will not be continuing with it.
The plot is a boilerplate one about a vengeful psycho serial killer who was damaged from a bad childhood and rotten parenting - hooray, right? We love dark validating mysteries! This is not the issue for me. (I did not spoil, gentle reader, no worries.)
The writing is flat. There is too much expository dialogue and it is void of life even when everyone isn’t explaining about everything. All of the characters talk the same. The writing technique dulled any excitement of the upcoming victim attack and the manhunt. The cruel killer’s self-talk in every other chapter was also written in a flattened voice. This book needed more tension. This is why I am disappointed.
For those who need to know about DI Carter: as the story begins, she is returning to work as a UK police officer after taking time off to recover from grief after a traumatic vacation. Her beautiful fiancé Davies was a black-ops guy who was on an assignment tracking down Islamic terrorist cells in Morocco. Robyn joined him as she planned to combine his assignment with a impromptu celebration of her unexpected pregnancy. Unfortunately, Davies was killed and the shock caused Robyn to miscarry. Although she was given a leave of absence, she decided to work with her cousin Ross in his private investigation agency for a short while. This busy work is almost at an end as she shortly will report to work and take charge of her team again. She is an orphan as well. Her parents were killed in a car accident.
First books in a series are often flattened by inexperienced writing or because the author is still honing their character, but this was really dulled-down boilerplate, too. The series isn’t for me.
Merged review:
‘Little Girl Lost’ is book one in the DI Robyn Carter series. Frankly, I will not be continuing with it.
The plot is a boilerplate one about a vengeful psycho serial killer who was damaged from a bad childhood and rotten parenting - hooray, right? We love dark validating mysteries! This is not the issue for me. (I did not spoil, gentle reader, no worries.)
The writing is flat. There is too much expository dialogue and it is void of life even when everyone isn’t explaining about everything. All of the characters talk the same. The writing technique dulled any excitement of the upcoming victim attack and the manhunt. The cruel killer’s self-talk in every other chapter was also written in a flattened voice. This book needed more tension. This is why I am disappointed.
For those who need to know about DI Carter: as the story begins, she is returning to work as a UK police officer after taking time off to recover from grief after a traumatic vacation. Her beautiful fiancé Davies was a black-ops guy who was on an assignment tracking down Islamic terrorist cells in Morocco. Robyn joined him as she planned to combine his assignment with a impromptu celebration of her unexpected pregnancy. Unfortunately, Davies was killed and the shock caused Robyn to miscarry. Although she was given a leave of absence, she decided to work with her cousin Ross in his private investigation agency for a short while. This busy work is almost at an end as she shortly will report to work and take charge of her team again. She is an orphan as well. Her parents were killed in a car accident.
First books in a series are often flattened by inexperienced writing or because the author is still honing their character, but this was really dulled-down boilerplate, too. The series isn’t for me....more
I wish I'd known this was a Book one of a trilogy. Sigh. I have a HUGE stack of books already, and now I have to put on top TWO more books.
This is a I wish I'd known this was a Book one of a trilogy. Sigh. I have a HUGE stack of books already, and now I have to put on top TWO more books.
This is a fun read. It really is a three star book, but the characters have enough charm and the plot has left SO many cliffhangers dangling, I MUST find out what happens next!
I could not put ‘The Last Murder at the End of the World’ by Stuart Turton down! I only stopped to sleep, shower and eat. It is a terrific mystery! ‘TI could not put ‘The Last Murder at the End of the World’ by Stuart Turton down! I only stopped to sleep, shower and eat. It is a terrific mystery! ‘The Last Murder at the End of the World’ is a story that in describing too much of it will cause prospective readers to have a less than exciting experience in reading the book. I had no clue myself when I started the novel what it was about since I didn’t read any reviews. It was a book club selection, and I had only read the title and author in the email I received so that I could put a hold on it at my local library. I had a very happy time being totally amazed at every twisty and turny reveal! There were, I think, some dangling threads, and I felt the book could have used more explanatory filler here and there, but I didn’t really stop to examine the plot intellectually until writing this review. The pounding of my heart because of thrills and chills drove me on!
And, here you are, gentler reader, into a book review. Ok, then. I highly recommend ‘The Last Murder at the End of the World’! It is more murder mystery and thriller than science fiction imho, but all of the genre elements are necessary to make it work. I suggest reading a hard/digital copy rather than only an audiobook. There is a list of characters which explain the relationships between them, which are important insofar as how they emotionally interact. Which is odd, actually, because of one of the reveals left me with a lot of questions about this. Emotions are thicker than blood in this case?
I have copied the book blurb:
”From the bestselling author of The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle and The Devil and the Dark Water comes an inventive, high-concept murder mystery: an ingenious puzzle, an extraordinary backdrop, and an audacious solution.
Solve the murder to save what's left of the world.
Outside the island there is nothing: the world was destroyed by a fog that swept the planet, killing anyone it touched.
On the island: it is idyllic. One hundred and twenty-two villagers and three scientists, living in peaceful harmony. The villagers are content to fish, farm and feast, to obey their nightly curfew, to do what they're told by the scientists.
Until, to the horror of the islanders, one of their beloved scientists is found brutally stabbed to death. And then they learn that the murder has triggered a lowering of the security system around the island, the only thing that was keeping the fog at bay. If the murder isn't solved within 107 hours, the fog will smother the island—and everyone on it.
But the security system has also wiped everyone's memories of exactly what happened the night before, which means that someone on the island is a murderer—and they don't even know it.
And the clock is ticking.”
There are some red herrings which I think were unnecessary or simply nonsensical, logically speaking, but it was Abi who was throwing fog mist at everyone’s eyes, so to speak. Perhaps she had absorbed the plots of a lot of mystery novels and she had become a fan. Who is Abi? Not telling. Is she good or bad, wise or philosophically corrupted? I’m still mulling that one over…
The book is a fun and exciting thrill ride!...more
‘Chills’ is incredibly leaden for a tale of horror. It is more like a clumsily-written technical manual in describing a town’s descent into terror. No‘Chills’ is incredibly leaden for a tale of horror. It is more like a clumsily-written technical manual in describing a town’s descent into terror. Not a lot of style or innovation in this mundane gorefest.
A strange cult, the Hand of the Black Stars, unleashes a monster which begins to murder many people living in a New England town called Colby. Jack Glazier, homicide detective, calls in Kathy Ryan, an expert consultant on the occult. The murders apparently are necessary to create a key to open a door into a place beyond this universe. There be more monsters, or something, behind the locked door. I only got to chapter seven, so, whatever.
Merged review:
‘Chills’ is incredibly leaden for a tale of horror. It is more like a clumsily-written technical manual in describing a town’s descent into terror. Not a lot of style or innovation in this mundane gorefest.
A strange cult, the Hand of the Black Stars, unleashes a monster which begins to murder many people living in a New England town called Colby. Jack Glazier, homicide detective, calls in Kathy Ryan, an expert consultant on the occult. The murders apparently are necessary to create a key to open a door into a place beyond this universe. There be more monsters, or something, behind the locked door. I only got to chapter seven, so, whatever....more
‘How High We Go in the Dark’ by Sequoia Nagamatsu is a beautifully written elegy about life and civilization on Earth when a pandemic strikes. There a‘How High We Go in the Dark’ by Sequoia Nagamatsu is a beautifully written elegy about life and civilization on Earth when a pandemic strikes. There are several linked short stories which, altogether, show the changes on society caused by the mutating virus, and the various responses by individuals who lose loved ones to it. The book is not a dystopic look at a self-destructing Humanity which falls into depravity as everything falls apart. Instead, it is more of eulogy about the resilience of most people who use their grief to continue to walk forward, even if only one step forward at a time if that is what they are able to manage.
I have copied the book blurb:
”Goodreads Choice AwardNominee for Best Science Fiction (2022), Nominee for Best Debut Novel (2022)
Dr. Cliff Miyashiro arrives in the Arctic Circle to continue his recently deceased daughter's research, only to discover a virus, newly unearthed from melting permafrost. The plague unleashed reshapes life on earth for generations. Yet even while struggling to counter this destructive force, humanity stubbornly persists in myriad moving and ever inventive ways.
Among those adjusting to this new normal are an aspiring comedian, employed by a theme park designed for terminally ill children, who falls in love with a mother trying desperately to keep her son alive; a scientist who, having failed to save his own son from the plague, gets a second chance at fatherhood when one of his test subjects-a pig-develops human speech; a man who, after recovering from his own coma, plans a block party for his neighbours who have also woken up to find that they alone have survived their families; and a widowed painter and her teenaged granddaughter who must set off on cosmic quest to locate a new home planet.
From funerary skyscrapers to hotels for the dead, How High We Go in the Dark follows a cast of intricately linked characters spanning hundreds of years as humanity endeavours to restore the delicate balance of the world. This is a story of unshakable hope that crosses literary lines to give us a world rebuilding itself through an endless capacity for love, resilience and reinvention. Wonderful and disquieting, dreamlike and all too possible.”
I was moved to tears by several of these stories. The titles are:
-30,000 Years Beneath a Eulogy -City of Laughter* -Through the Garden of Memory -Pig Son* -Elegy Hotel -Speak, Fetch, Say I Love You* -Songs of Your Decay -Life Around the Event Horizon -A Gallery A Century, a Cry a Millennium -The Used-To-Be Party -Melancholy Nights in a Tokyo Virtual Cafe -Before You Melt into the Sea -The Scope of Possibility
*imho, the best ones.
However, ‘The Scope of Possibility’ made me guffaw out loud. What the actual fukc? I still find myself chuckling at odd moments today as I eat my breakfast, knit a few rows, playing with my cat. (I am happy my current cat is not yet two years old, though, this book did remind me of previous losses of beloved pets.) I suppose the author meant ‘The Scope of Possibility’ not as a joke, but a science fiction speculation. However, that is not how it hit me.
This is a serious book, one that focuses on the positive aspects of people, and on the middle-class, who live in today’s Western World. There are a lot of speculative explorations about the responses of individuals and society using current science techniques and social trends. It does this while using personal narratives of individual characters, highlighting their personal feelings about what is happening, not the science. It assumes governments and people keep themselves or are led to keep themselves under self-control despite the scary deaths caused by the virus. Ultimately, it is not about the terrifying horrors of a pandemic, it is about the resilience and positive emotional creativity of the survivors.
But damn! That last story is an outlier, imho! Really? Really? It is simply wrong, an off-key final note to what was otherwise a really fine song about Humanity....more
‘AntiMatter Blues’ by Edward Ashton is the second book in the Mickey7 series. Readers should read Mickey7 before this one since the books are not stan‘AntiMatter Blues’ by Edward Ashton is the second book in the Mickey7 series. Readers should read Mickey7 before this one since the books are not standalone. Mickey7 is the narrator, and he’s been killed six times. Well, it was thought to be seven times, and Mickey8 was created before it was known Mickey7 hadn’t actually died yet. The rule was if two expendables were unintentionally alive, both copies had to go down the recycle hole. It didn’t go down like that as it should have by the rulebook. A lot of mistakes were made! But Mickey7 is the expendable who knows where he hid the bomb, so he is still alive. It’s a convoluted story, which is why it is best if the reader start with book one before this one.
It is always interesting times for an expendable!
I have copied the book blurb:
”Edward Ashton's Antimatter Blues is the thrilling follow up to Mickey7 in which an expendable heads out to explore new terrain for human habitation.
Summer has come to Niflheim. The lichens are growing, the six-winged bat-things are chirping, and much to his own surprise, Mickey Barnes is still alive—that last part thanks almost entirely to the fact that Commander Marshall believes that the colony’s creeper neighbors are holding an antimatter bomb, and that Mickey is the only one who’s keeping them from using it. Mickey’s just another colonist now. Instead of cleaning out the reactor core, he spends his time these days cleaning out the rabbit hutches. It’s not a bad life.
It’s not going to last.
It may be sunny now, but winter is coming. The antimatter that fuels the colony is running low, and Marshall wants his bomb back. If Mickey agrees to retrieve it, he’ll be giving up the only thing that’s kept his head off of the chopping block. If he refuses, he might doom the entire colony. Meanwhile, the creepers have their own worries, and they’re not going to surrender the bomb without getting something in return. Once again, Mickey finds the fate of two species resting in his hands. If something goes wrong this time, though, he won’t be coming back.”
In the previous novel, it was discovered the Creepers are sentient. They don’t have a culture like people, so it took awhile for the colonists to realize the Creepers can talk. The Creepers, in turn, did not understand how humans work. It caused a misunderstanding, with deaths. After all, it IS the Creepers’ planet. But Mickey7 is the only human who can talk to them (read the first book). Things are very tense between Creeper and human. It gets worse, because in this book, the colony makes the sad discovery the Creepers are not the only bug colony as they had thought! Well. Maybe the enemy of my enemies is my enemy?
This is an excellent science fiction series! It is a fun entertainment written with light-hearted humor despite the seriousness of the troubles the little colony faces. I highly recommend it....more
Voices’ by Ursula K. Le Guin is book two in the Western Shores trilogy, but I think it can be read as a standalone despite a couple of the characters Voices’ by Ursula K. Le Guin is book two in the Western Shores trilogy, but I think it can be read as a standalone despite a couple of the characters having been in the previous novel in the series. For those interested, start here with book one in the series: Gifts.
I have copied the book blurb:
”Ansul was once a peaceful town filled with libraries, schools, and temples. But that was long ago, and the conquerors of this coastal city consider reading and writing to be acts punishable by death. And they believe the Oracle House, where the last few undestroyed books are hidden, is seething with demons. But to seventeen-year-old Memer, the house is a refuge, a place of family and learning, ritual and memory--the only place where she feels truly safe. Then an Uplands poet named Orrec and his wife, Gry, arrive, and everything in Memer's life begins to change. Will she and the people of Ansul at last be brave enough to rebel against their oppressors?
A haunting and gripping coming-of-age story set against a backdrop of violence, intolerance, and magic, Voices is a novel that readers will not soon forget.”
Orrec and Gry were children in ‘Gifts’. The book described their coming of age just as in this book Memer Galva’s coming of age is described. All of these characters are part of the same world, although in different geographic areas. Orrec and Gry were raised in the hills in the North, in small villages. Memer is raised in the port city Ansul south of the hills where Orrec and Gry were raised. However, Orrec and Gry’s childhood had a lot of violence and horrendously patriarchical rules built into their culture. Memer’s childhood, which occurs years after Orrec and Gry’s, was affected by the destructive annexation of the defenseless city Ansul by the Alds, an overly-religious warrior culture of the desert, seventeen years previously.
The Alds are determined to find the Night Mouth which they believe is situated somewhere in Ansul. The Alds believe books and writing are infested with demon magic, and the Night Mouth is where the demons live. They think Ansul is swarming with demons and witches and wizards because Ansul has libraries. In Ald culture, women are all slaves, but in Ansul women are free to be anything they want to be. At least, they were until the Alds invaded. Especially offensive to the Alds is everyone in Ansul knows how to read and write. When the Alds are finished killing half of Ansul’s population, raping, burning buildings, and destroying all of their gods’ shrines, art, and statues, the next thing they do is ban the teaching of reading and writing, as well as all dancing, and the worshiping of the hundreds of Ansel’s gods. The Ald believe in a single god, Atth, the burning god. They do not permit the people of Ansul near where they are bivouacked nor do they enter many of Ansul’s buildings to do their work because they consider non-believers “unclean.” The whole point of their invasion of Ansul is to kill everyone who they believe is evil. But the elites order their soldiers to keep many of the surviving unbelievers alive to enslave, rape and rob, which of course, is done often to the utter bafflement and dismay of the true-believer rank-and-file soldiers and priests. The rank-and-file are free to abuse the surviving population as they will, though, which they do.
Memer is a “siege child”, the result of rape. (Apparently, raping unclean women is ok, gentler reader, as it is in many real-life religious theological governments.) Her appearance is that of being an Ald, although she has been raised culturally as someone from Ansul. Her grandfather, the Waylord (seems like the Waylord’s duties were that of being a mayor) is tortured by Alds for many months because they are certain he knows where the Night Mouth is. Of course, gentle reader, there is no such place. His body is broken and crippled. He is stripped of all of his duties as Waylord. But he never tells them of the library which is hidden in a secret cave linked to his house.
The Waylord teaches Memer to read and write, which she hides from everyone else. She also disguises herself as a boy, which enables her to travel everywhere in the city. She meets Ald boys, whom she discovers are lonely, longing for friends, or for sex with the nasty prostitutes they have heard exist in Ansul. She tries to stay clear of the priests, who are cruel and vicious.
Is it better to compromise, to convince the Alds trade and tolerance would be a better strategy in handling a conquered race without any armies, or should all of the Ald be killed in revenge, if the people of Ansul, who far outnumber the Ald soldiers, ever gain the upper hand? What do you think, gentler reader?
I think the novel has a lot of layers and nuances. I loved it, if not the Alds. Although in theory I should be an adult having grown-up intelligence and experience since I am old, an amateur watcher of the wisdom of democratic governments in the ways of statecraft after decades of living through the politics of the USA and reading about theocracies, I honestly don’t know if I’d opt for working with/for the invading theocratic enemy or not to stay alive? To hopefully moderate their views? To secretly work against them when I could? I love reading, gentler reader. I am also a woman, gentler reader, who lived through the eras of American suppression of all female rights until around 2000. I could not suppress my rage about not having the same rights as American men at all. A culture that burns books to enforce not just censorship but because of a theological point of view that reading is evil, idk. I own hundreds of book I love…....more
‘The Time Machine’ by H. G. Wells is absolutely fun and exciting to read! It was originally published in 1895, but it hasn’t aged at all. It is such a‘The Time Machine’ by H. G. Wells is absolutely fun and exciting to read! It was originally published in 1895, but it hasn’t aged at all. It is such a marvelous tale that I think the people who made the movie in 1960 that was based on it, which I have seen many times, did not want to change the bones of Wells story very much at all in bringing the book to the screen. The book is naturally cinematic (as are most of Wells’ novels). I noticed, however, that the Time Traveler who narrates his adventure in Wells’ story makes more deadly mistakes than his movie counterpart. There are also added scenes in the movie of additional stops in Time as the Time Traveler moves forward until he meets Weena, an Eloi, in 802,701 AD. In the movie, these stops in Time show an accurately depicted future that Wells could not predict since he wrote the book in 1895, not 1960. Being a man of science, though, Wells does include what the Time Traveler sees when he moves forward 30 million years. This was not in the movie!
I have copied the book blurb:
”A scientist and gentleman inventor in industrialized Victorian England claims to have irrefutable proof that time is not simply a concept - it's a whole other dimension. When he reveals the prototype of a time-traveling machine to his peers, he's met with skepticism at first ... until he returns one week later, disheveled, bloody, and with a fantastic story to tell.
A cornerstone of speculative science fiction, The Time Machine launched the time-traveling genre, influenced generations of writers, and is recognized as a prescient vision of twenty-first-century fears - those of an impending environmental nightmare and the irreversible fate of a dying planet.”
Gentler reader, if the terms Eloi and Morlock sound familiar, this is the novel those words are from.
Eloi are childlike humans, beautiful and ignorant and almost completely without empathy. They spend the days eating fruit and playing gentle games and having sex without guilt (implied). They barely have a spoken language, and do not know how to read or write. Yet they have clothes and other manufactured items which they need! These are the people the Time Traveler first meets in the far future, the year 802,701. The weather is mostly warm and sunny, and when it rains it is brief. Whatever few buildings the Time Traveler sees are falling apart, but they were obviously beautiful and built for communal use. The park-like land where they live is full of flowers, streams, and trees.
Morlocks, whom the Traveler meets next in 802,701, are bestial, living underground in darkness. They apparently are creating and maintaining machines which sustain the Eloi in their Eden. Why do they nurture the Eloi? Hmmmm.
At night, the Traveler learns some of the Eloi often disappear, never to be seen again. The defenseless Eloi are terrified of the dark and of the Morlocks.
Could it be Humanity has split into two new species? Are the Eloi the result from the 1%-ers lifestyle? Are the Morlocks the result of what happened to the oppressed classes that were spit on, abused and ignored by the 1%-ers? The Time Traveler thinks so.
I think Wells was a writing genius! Almost every book he wrote has been made into a movie. Every novel, each a story of science speculation never before written of with such imaginative flair and verve when it was published, has birthed millions of science fiction plots in following centuries which either directly copy or reboot Well’s original stories, or have extrapolated new stories from what was an original Wells’ plot. Even more incredibly, they have held up generally despite the centuries that have passed since he wrote them. Also, given that most of the books Wells wrote were also moralistic with some satire, being sometimes a sermon on environmental destruction or about unethical scientists or about societal problems caused by the psychological rottenness of people (selfishness, those quick to do violence, lack of moral backbone, the indolent 1%ers living their lives of extremely soft landings which is often supported by the backbreaking and unacknowledged labor of the much more impoverished 99%), it is amazing these books have survived current censorship and banning. Oh, there are some things in his stories which show Wells did not escape the cultural misperceptions of his era, but they are few. Wells is truly the Father of all current science fiction novels!...more
‘Binti: The Night Masquerade’, book three in the Binti series by Nnedi Okorafor, left a lot of loose threads dangling after I turned the last page. (R‘Binti: The Night Masquerade’, book three in the Binti series by Nnedi Okorafor, left a lot of loose threads dangling after I turned the last page. (Readers should start with book one, Binti)
It is difficult to write a review of a book three in a continuing series without spoilers, and I don’t think I did a good job of not doing so. If you haven’t read book one or two in the Binti series, I would stop reading this review NOW.
(view spoiler)[There is a violent war which has begun near the end of this book between two groups, the Khoush and the Meduse. Binti appears to be on the cusp of being part of a ménage à trois. She decided to go back to university and her studies, despite leaving several serious messes on Earth behind, and despite that she feels guilty she is the catalyst that started the messes. There still are a lot of unanswered questions about the edan device as well as about an alien race which has not yet made an appearance although they are responsible for performing sort of a nanobot ‘uplift’ to Binti and one of her related tribes. (hide spoiler)]
Strange changes have been made to Binti’s body but so far we readers don’t know what powers the changes will give Binti. She hasn’t had any reason to use most of them. She really has only used some of her new abilities to communicate with different friends and family, but she is extremely reluctant to do even that. Why did the author introduce these elements without having them be much of a part of the story, other than to amaze and frighten Binti into mostly avoiding using her powers?
At this point, I can’t understand why Binti is feeling naked without her otjize clay. She has had changes to her physical body, and her mind has been opened from seeing the many different social customs of hundreds of aliens. She has learned every tribe and alien race, especially her own Himba people, has archaic customs that are not the holy rituals she used to feel they were. She has caught her village elders in lies, and has discovered the elders, all male, have been tricking the women into being compliant and obedient through creating fear of powerful witchlike demons. Yet, she has seemingly decided to hang on to many of her tribe’s beliefs and definitions of what is a woman’s place in her tribe and what her proper duties are to be considered a proper Himba woman as much as she can. However, circumstances are forcing her to be all that she truly is, going beyond what she is supposed to limit herself to, but she is reluctantly defying those limitations her tribe wants to place on her. She still feels like shit about not staying in her place. With all of the shocking things she has learned about herself and her tribe, this would have had me moving on with more confidence about my choices in breaking away from those gender-limiting rules, and not at all hanging on to her tribe’s world view of staying isolated, with their strict conservative rules. I would feel much rage, in fact, at the lies and tricks and hypocrisy. When Binti does get mad about the lies, though, she feels bad about getting mad because it makes her feel she is not being a proper Himba female. Wow. Stupid, right?
However, despite what I feel is a chaotic last (apparently) chapter in the series which doesn’t finish the story at all, the world-building is awesome.
I have copied the book blurb:
”Goodreads Choice AwardNominee for Best Science Fiction (2018)
The concluding part of the highly-acclaimed science fiction trilogy that began with Nnedi Okorafor's Hugo- and Nebula Award-winning Binti.
Binti has returned to her home planet, believing that the violence of the Meduse has been left behind. Unfortunately, although her people are peaceful on the whole, the same cannot be said for the Khoush, who fan the flames of their ancient rivalry with the Meduse.
Far from her village when the conflicts start, Binti hurries home, but anger and resentment has already claimed the lives of many close to her.
Once again it is up to Binti, and her intriguing new friend Mwinyi, to intervene—though the elders of her people do not entirely trust her motives—and try to prevent a war that could wipe out her people, once and for all.
Don't miss this essential concluding volume in the Binti trilogy.”
While I am disappointed by the lack of closure to this story, the world-building is very unique and interesting. Okorafor’s writing style is different from many other authors, seemingly being occasionally done in what rhythms an African storyteller would use in speaking. I have heard tapes of African story tellers telling stories about African myths. The series is a curious mix of the expected urban science-fiction thrills this American is accustomed to while at the same time often voiced in a perspective that seems to be very African. In any case, I liked the series....more
‘The Devoted Friend’ by Oscar Wilde is both hilarious and ridiculous. I had not realized before beginning to read Wilde’s short stories how he uses hy‘The Devoted Friend’ by Oscar Wilde is both hilarious and ridiculous. I had not realized before beginning to read Wilde’s short stories how he uses hyperbole to disguise the double and sometimes triple meanings in his tales.
I have copied the book blurb:
”The two main characters in "The Devoted Friend" are a poor man known as little Hans and a rich Miller. The Miller claims to be a devoted friend of little Hans. In truth, he selfishly takes advantage of little Hans at every opportunity. Little Hans' desire to remain the Miller's friend ultimately proves fatal for him.”
For thirty pages, the Miller proclaims and expounds on what being a good friend is, in homilies and in examples given at great length, to teach (and threaten) little Hans. All the while, he takes everything he can get out of Hans. In return for taking all of Hans’ flowers almost every day without paying (Hans is a flower salesman, selling his gardening goods at a local market), and for Hans’ unpaid backbreaking labor, he bestows his friendship on Hans. Full stop. For some examples on the one-sided ‘transactional’ relationship, the Miller puts him to work fixing his roof one day, and on the next to delivering the Miller’s flour to a market six miles away carrying the flour on his back, which Hans successfully bargains to be sold for at a good price, on a journey that takes him most of the day to walk there to the market and home. The Miller comes again to Hans’ hut the next day, after months of convincing Hans again and again day after day that Hans’ unpaid labor for the Miller and the gardening products he is forced to give to the Miller for free, is normal for the Miller’s priceless friendship. When the Miller finds poor wornout Hans still in bed sleeping off exhaustion, he precedes to lecture Hans on the evils of laziness. Hans is very grateful to the Miller, and takes notes on the Miller’s lectures on friendship.
The satire is incredibly thick in this particular short story by Wilde. But I am learning after having read a number of Wilde’s stories that figuring out whether the apparent bad guy is really a bad guy is difficult to parse out. Wilde writes mostly tales seemingly with a commonly known moral to process by readers on the surface, a moral which is frequently understood by society that if adhered to it is a Good. These morals are taught to children by parents everywhere, and lectured on by ministers from pulpits in every church.
But every time when I think about what Wilde’s fiction is showing about that moral for the second and third times, I’m more and more certain that Wilde is also tweaking the reader’s sense of morality sideways and upside down. On one hand, readers will think the Miller is despicable in his treatment of Hans. On the other hand, Hans is incredibly socially needy, someone who is happy to help the Miller destroy him without complaint because he is willing to buy the Miller’s goodwill and so-called social support through the acceptance of being socially blackmailed into poverty and personal devastation. I find myself as disgusted with Hans as I am with the Miller. Other readers, maybe most readers, will sympathize with Hans, praising his kind giving nature and condemning the Miller. But I believe it is the second suggestion I have made about people selling their souls willingly, allowing themselves to be socially blackmailed to gain social capital is really the moral of almost 100% of Wilde’s stories....more
‘The Selfish Giant’ by Oscar Wilde did not seem like something written by him at all. I thought it very much a mundane children’s tale that is of the ‘The Selfish Giant’ by Oscar Wilde did not seem like something written by him at all. I thought it very much a mundane children’s tale that is of the sort actually designed to impress the parents who are reading the story to their kids more than the kids. On top of that, the ending seemed to me shocking since most of the story before the ending was pure pablum.
This is the plot: Kids sit in the giant’s trees in his garden, which for some reason makes the seasons of Spring and Summer come to visit and the trees flower. Giant tells the kids to get off his lawn. The kids get off of his lawn. Spring and Summer leave and this makes the trees stop flowering, so the birds leave too. This causes Winter and Frost to visit and stay and stay. Suddenly one day the kids sneak back in to sit in the giant’s trees when they discover a hole in the wall the giant built to keep them out. Spring and Summer return again and stay. Giant repents and knocks down the wall.
One kid who comes once to climb a tree touches the giant’s heart, and the giant likes him a lot because he is shorter than the other kids. The kid doesn’t show up again for a long time, until one day the giant sees him alone in the garden in a tree. The giant runs over to the kid to say hi. (view spoiler)[Surprise! The kid has bloody wounds in his hands and feet caused by nails and he says he is there to grab the giant’s soul and take it to Paradise. The tiny kid apparently murders the huge tall giant right then and there, because the giant’s dead body is discovered later.
I actually had a recurring nightmare when I was a little kid that was very similar to this ending. Only, the boy was there to kill me, not a giant. This kid had very large all-blue eyes and a very green beanie on his head and a very dead white face. He told me he was going to kill me like the kid in ‘The Selfish Giant’ told the giant, and he chased me down the street in front of my parent’s house. This story’s ending reminded me of that nightmare. I had forgotten it. My childhood was very bad, gentler reader. (hide spoiler)]
I am aware many GR reviewers enjoyed this story. I thought it asinine. Until the ending, it was simply hokey. But the ending changed everything. If I was a little kid, I’d be terrified, shocked. Of course, Christian adults would be oblivious to the horror aspects, thinking how sweet. (view spoiler)[The first time I saw inside of a church a big cross on the wall with a bleeding and obviously suffering man nailed to it, the man’s mouth open in a soundless scream, with the man’s hands and feet all torn and bleeding, and a huge cut in his side also bleeding buckets down the man’s side, I almost fainted. People were supposed to love a god who did this to people? (hide spoiler)]
I’m afraid I made a little screaming noise that made my cat jump when I got to the ending. ...more
The short story ‘The Nightingale and the Rose’ by Oscar Wilde is absolutely bursting with meanings - about love, about greed, about sacrifice, about bThe short story ‘The Nightingale and the Rose’ by Oscar Wilde is absolutely bursting with meanings - about love, about greed, about sacrifice, about beauty, about the power of emotional imagination vs. hard-eyed dispassionate materialism - but it will tear your heart to pieces in reading it. Omg. I have been pierced to my soul.
Oscar Wilde’s story illustrates simply and succinctly the glory and dangers of love. But the architecture and writing in these 9 pages also puts the reader right there, into the nightingale’s world view, seeing her sweet nature, feeling her sweet nature, deeply arousing the reader’s sympathy and immediate love for the brave little bird. As I read, I petted my own dear little kitty, asleep in my lap. She burst into purring, much like the nightingale did, trilling out her love song. My heart was full.
Quote:
”She sang first of the birth of love in the heart of a boy and a girl. And on the top-most spray of the Rose-tree there blossomed a marvelous rose, petal following petal, as song followed song. Pale was it, at first, as the mist that hangs over the river-pale as the feet of the morning, and silvere as the wings of the dawn. As the shadow of a rose in a mirror of silver, as the shadow of a rose in a water-pool, so was the rose that blossomed on the topmost spray of the Tree”
“And a delicate flush of pink came into the leaves of the rose, like the flush in the face of the bridegroom when he kisses the lips of the bride. But the thorn had not yet reached her heart, so the rose’s heart remained white, for only a Nightingale’s heart’s blood can crimson the heart of a rose.”
That is where the grief begins, gentler reader. Omg, omg.
I also saw that Oscar put in his little joke. Metaphysics, indeed. Shutup. ...more
‘The Happy Prince’ by Oscar Wilde is a sad and heartbreaking short story about social class, a loving supportive partnership and the sacrificing of ev‘The Happy Prince’ by Oscar Wilde is a sad and heartbreaking short story about social class, a loving supportive partnership and the sacrificing of everything one has, including one’s own life, to help very poor people.
I know many readers love this little fable, taking it at face value. Idk. I’m thinking Wilde was being facetious, telling a story that seemed to me condemning of the irrationality of some who feel guilty they were given more happiness, luck and means to enjoy life. I mean, Wilde obviously recognized how poverty leads to starvation and sickness, but it seems to me he was actually being hyperbolic in this little tale of morality. Gentler reader, I think he was intentionally exaggerating. Like saying, “go knock yourself out.” Sounds better than “humbug”....more
‘Binti: Home’ by Nnedi Okorafor is book two in the Binti series. It is a middle book of a trilogy, and it has all of the pluses and minuses of being a‘Binti: Home’ by Nnedi Okorafor is book two in the Binti series. It is a middle book of a trilogy, and it has all of the pluses and minuses of being a middle novel in a continuing series! For instance, some mysteries that the first novel in the series, Binti, left readers with, are resolved, but more mysteries arise, to be resolved in the next book.
Binti is more fully experiencing the relentless erosion of the beliefs taught her in her conservative upbringing in this book. Not only is Binti trying to decide whether to move forward into a new paradigm of understanding the universe that is different from her isolated tribe, or of making the decision instead to not go forward at all and stick to her tribe’s rituals and beliefs, but she is still trying to come to terms in the first place with the new ideas.
The confusions of new ideas and of acquiring new skills necessary to handle the actual complexity of her expanding horizons, such as learning she is racially mixed, has her desperately wanting to “go home.” I think the desperation she is feeling is of wanting to be as simple as a child again, a time of blind acceptance of her parents and in her tribe’s teachings, and in her previous locked-in world of unquestioned rituals and rules.
Every book so far brings new challenges to Binti’s former mindset, forcing her to see how wrong her beliefs were in the now clearly erroneous foundational teachings of her parents and of her tribe. One parent in particular has been bending her natural abilities into a shape that suits his desires of belonging to the ‘right’ family.
Binti has been offplanet, and she has gone to college with many different species with different beliefs than those with which she was raised. Her new teachers have been leading her to explore those parts of her that her family had been suppressing. Like it or not, she has become an outsider. In this novel, she is struggling with that realization.
I will be continuing on to the next, and final novel in the series....more
I have read quite a few of Riley Sager’s novels and I loved them all. But I did not love ‘The House Across the Lake’. Well, I was enjoying it as long I have read quite a few of Riley Sager’s novels and I loved them all. But I did not love ‘The House Across the Lake’. Well, I was enjoying it as long as I thought it was a thriller. Then I read the chapter that begins on page 268. First, shock at the twist! Then the next astonishing reveal….. I hoped it was a some sort of con game being played out. Then, I felt growing dismay. Oh well. I know lots of people enjoyed the book, and I did too. Until I didn’t.
I have copied the book blurb:
”It looks like a familiar story: A woman reeling from a great loss with too much time on her hands and too much booze in her glass watches her neighbors, sees things she shouldn't see, and starts to suspect the worst. But looks can be deceiving...
Casey Fletcher, a recently widowed actress trying to escape a streak of bad press, has retreated to her family's lake house in Vermont. Armed with a pair of binoculars and several bottles of liquor, she passes the time watching Tom and Katherine Royce, the glamorous couple living in the house across the lake.
Everything about the Royces seems perfect. Their marriage. Their house. The bucolic lake it sits beside. But when Katherine suddenly vanishes, Casey becomes obsessed with finding out what happened to her. In the process, she discovers the darker truths lurking just beneath the surface of the Royces' picture-perfect marriage. Truths no suspicious voyeur could begin to imagine--even with a few drinks under her belt.
Like Casey, you'll think you know where this story is headed.
Think again.
Because once you open the door to obsession, you never know what you might find on the other side.”
I did enjoy the mystery, finding the book hard to put down until the ending.
(view spoiler)[I couldn’t believe so many characters could so quickly accept what they learned about Len, Casey Fletcher’s husband. I mean, all of Casey’s neighbors in a few seconds, basically, were like, “Oh, ok then. I believe in the paranormal story, no problem.”
Len is a serial killer, and Casey intentionally drowns him instead of calling the police - twist one gentler reader. The second twist which takes everyone by surprise is that the lake is a magic one which releases drowned victims’ souls back into the world, who thereafter can pass into someone else through a kiss.
Oh, and incidently, Tom Royce believes instantly that Len possessed his wife Katherine Royce. Tom was trying to kill his wife for her money by poison before Len possessed her. But after Len possesses Katherine, which Tom figures out and believes happened, instead of going ahead with his plan to kill Katherine/Len as he planned before he discovered she was possessed, he ties her up for several days instead. Wtf. Why didn’t Tom simply poison her/Len and be done with it? His plan to disappear Katherine would work whether Katherine was possessed or not. (hide spoiler)]
The book is very well written until the last third of the book. The ending is too hurried, it lacked the character development which imho would have helped, and it had what was to me a big plot hole....more
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