The Birds and The Bees Float Down Here, Too.

For once, I was not perusing the community library, scanning for something interesting, something that would pop out and scream at me. This time, I had subscribed to a service: Audible (This is not a paid advertisement by Audible and I was not compensated in anyway.) Audible is a monthly subscription service that, for the price of like 15$ a month, allows you to buy 1 free audiobook and unlimited reduced-price audiobooks per month. My first audiobook was free, but I decided that I really wanted to get my money's worth, so I looked for the longest book I could find. Stephen King's novel, IT clocked in at just under 45 hours, so I figured it would be PERFECT! Little did I know, this would be one of the craziest rides ever.

Let me start by saying that this book can be fairly hard to follow. It's long, some of it is fairly useless, but it is all thrilling, exciting, and incredibly well-written. This story follows the life of six kids that attempt to defeat the very embodiment of fear itself.

Honestly, I'm not going to try to explain this book to y'all. It's so long and involved that I'd have to take about 45 hours to explain it, and in the end I'd just play the damn audiobook for you. In short, this story is about six kids who fight the embodiment of fear when they were young, forget about it, return to their hometown as adults, and then fight (and ultimately destroy) the same embodiment of fear. It's a horror book, but in so many ways it wasn't about terror, it was about courage and human resilience. It was about eternal love and hope and fear. Most of all, it was about faith. Seriously, this is a damn fine book.

This will be a shorter post because there is just SO MUCH to focus on, and I have SO LITTLE time, so I'm only really going to focus on one big aspect of the book: sex. Through the novel, each character struggles with sexual desire. The schoolyard bullies would regularly strip down with each other and play, childhood crushes developed, and (most interesting of all,) Beverly's father was terrified of the idea of Beverly losing her virginity and becoming "impure". However, when Beverly does have sex, King portrays it in a very interesting light. It is not the same kind of fling that is found in modern society, it is an everlasting and eternal love. It is used to bind the six kids together for all eternity, making Beverly's father's fear so strange.

In many ways, Beverly's father was not afraid of Beverly having sex, so much as he was terrified of losing Beverly to someone else. He had this unrealistic attachment, he viewed her as his object, not his child, so he abused her and lived in fear that someday, Beverly would fall in love and leave him. He was afraid that Beverly would engage in sex because sex is not just a quick fling, it is not just a short little blip in someone's life, it is an act that binds people together for eternity.

This act also casts the bullies' actions in a strange light. While they never actually had sex, they had a strange phallic obsession while hanging around each other, leading the reader to believe (much like Freud would argue) that these boys had very difficult home lives. These kids were tormented in a way they should not have been, and this is later revealed to the reader as King begins to describe the home life of Henry Bowers. It also resembles their own strange way of bonding. These boys engage in sexual play (reminiscent of that found in Brave New World) and it is through this that they being to bond, not in the usual way children bond through imaginary play. By placing this in his novel, King effectively created a Twilight Zone-esque aura to the friendship of these boys. Something felt amiss, something felt odd, but you couldn't quite place your finger on what exactly was so off about this relationship (besides the fact that these boys were horrible people).

Okay, that's my sermon for today. I think I ought to list off pros and cons now, before I begin to launch into a whole other ordeal.

Pros:
Jeezum Crow this book was good. The characters were amazing, the plot was enthralling, and it had its literary side without sacrificing for entertainment (though I wouldn't mind to see King use a touch more literary influence. I know that he is capable of it!).

Cons:
My real issues with this book are highly technically. I loved his writing style and everything about it, I just had a difficult time managing all these different characters, their backgrounds, their futures, distinguishing between past and present, AND reading all 20 billion pages of this book without forgetting a single detail. If you were to ask me what happened in the first chapter, I would honestly not be able to tell you because there was just so much information crammed into such a little book. Also, at one point, Beverly's husband is supposed to come down to Derry to get her and beat her up, but he never really shows. Maybe I missed something, but that felt like a HUGE plot hole to me.

My Rating:



3 Delicious slices of pizza! It almost got four, but I just couldn't get past the length and confusion! Alright, I'll see y'all next Wednesday at Noon! Be sure to follow me on Twitter, subscribe, and comment below!

Your House is on Fire, Your Children are Gone, and This Title is Long.

Ever since I was a little kid, I have always associated Penguin Books with classic literature. I have no idea why, especially since they are one of the biggest publishing houses in America and publish ridiculous amounts of books every year, but I have. So, naturally, when I saw Your House is on Fire, Your Children are Gone  by Stefan Kiesbye, I was intrigued. "A classic horror novel?" I though to myself, "This has GOTTA be good!"

To my dismay, this book is neither a classic, nor is it really a novel. At most, it is a collection of short stories that are linked to each other. Each chapter is narrated either by Christian, Anke, Linde, or Martin, and each chapter tells another moment in their lives. The moments often coincide, but they do not tell a singular plot that could be traced from beginning to end. To be honest, this was a disappointment for me. I personally am not a huge fan of short stories because I want to have time to sit down and read each individual one, not sit down and read five or six at a time. I feel like, when I rocket through many stories, I begin to become desensitized to the plot because I'm watching a thousand mini-plots zoom by at lightning speeds! It's just too much for me!

On top of that, this book is not advertised as a short story, or a collection of related narratives that don't tell one singular story. This led to some SERIOUS confusion on my part. For the first 50 pages, I was trying to figure out what the hell was going on. I expected a single story, not a thousand little ones, so I read it believing that I would find a single plot line. I didn't even expect the characters to change each chapter, so I couldn't really tell what was going on for a REALLY long time. By the time I did figure it out, I was already frustrated with the book. This is a really frustrating problem for me, because it has nothing to do with the author or his writing style, it has to do with the way the book was marketed. If Penguin Books had described this as an anthology or a collection of related stories or memories, I would've enjoyed the book more (but maybe not much more).

Other than some serious marketing issues, this book was fairly confusing. I can't really give you a summary because it's a bunch of stories and I'm way to lazy to tell you about every individual chapter, but I will talk about more technical issues than issues of plot for your convenience.  Let's start with the narrators.

I hated all the narrators. All. Of. Them. Don't get me wrong, as characters in a horror collection they were fantastic! They were creepy as hell, murderous, and totally okay with doing some really fucked up stuff. My real issue is the fact that EVERY CHARACTER SOUNDS THE SAME! The only way to know who the narrator was for each chapter was to go to the first page of the chapter and find their name as the title of the chapter. This lack of voice caused me to be really confused and to read the book assuming that there was only one narrator because there was nothing telling me the narrators were different (except, of course, the name that was used for a chapter title. Guess I'm not super observant). When I did realize my mistake, I found myself having to flip back to the chapter title to see who was narrating because, otherwise, I could not figure out who it was.

Each narrator had a family and a background (which is good) but I honestly am not clear on any of their backgrounds (which is bad). This is due, in part, to the number of narrators. I can't remember how many siblings (if any) Linde has because I'm too busy trying to remember what all these narrators are doing. Kiesbye's writing style also made it difficult because he is not a fan of blatantly stating anything about his narrators. While normally this is juvenile (unless done well), it is very hard to have a story about many narrators and still not say something like "I have five sisters" and then name them all so I can figure out what the hell is going on.

Not all of my feedback is negative though! I did like the stories a lot, and I love how ambiguous the time period was. I know that the town, called Devil's Moor in German, is in Germany, but I couldn't figure out what time period it took place in. There were cars, but you travelled everywhere by boat. There was limos, but no electricity or phones. It seemed as if the town existed outside of time, completely isolated from the rest of the world, giving it an impossible-to-escape vibe. I loved it. It made each story way creepier and the reader was more disoriented. Honestly, I think the time ambiguity really saved the book.

Alright, let's break it down:

The Good:

• Time Ambiguity
• Creepy AF
• Characters have no morals
• Town is hella creepy
• Short

The Bad:

• Marketing insinuated this was a novel, not a collection of short stories
• Stories not connected enough
• Characters have vague backgrounds
• Hard to keep track of all the characters
• Confusing at times
• Narrators have no voices
• At times, the book is boring

Now, let's see the review! Drumroll please!

I give this book,

1.5 Pizza slices! I couldn't decide between 1 and 2, so I split the difference. In the end, the book was too confusing, too boring, and the narrators just weren't written well enough. If Penguin Books ever changes how they market this book, I'll bump it up a full slice. (Yes, I did edit this photo of two pizza slices. No, I don't have photoshop. It turned out super realistic XD).

How to Set a Fire Because of This Book

Last week, at the same time that I picked out the book The Long Walk, I wandered past a book called How to Set a Fire and Why. It caught my eye because, on the spine of the book, there is a classic matchbook strike plate. When I was younger, I used to visit my grandfather’s house every day after Kindergarten and, being an avid smoker, he had thousands of matchboxes lying around. I always wanted to light a match, but I never did. Instead, I would run my fingernails over the strike plate as if it were a nail file. I remember pretending that my fingers were matches and that I was setting the house on fire, not just shaving down my nail. The spine of this book reminded me of my childhood, so I decided to check it out. 

The book, written by Jesse Ball is about Lucia, a young teenage girl who’s mother is in an insane asylum and who’s father was murdered (presumably by her mother). Lucia lives with her aunt in a garage that has been converted to a small house. Her aunt is very old and does not have a job, so they both live very meagerly. 

Okay, this is the part where spoilers come into play, so get ready!

**********SPOILERS AHEAD!**********

The book begins with Lucia having stabbed a boy in the neck with a pencil. He touched her father’s lighter, which she always keeps in her pocket and tells no one to ever touch, and she instantly wishes that she had stabbed him deeper. For very obvious reasons, she is kicked out of school and forced to move to a new school. It is not the first time she’s been expelled, so she’s fairly used to the drill. This is where my first grievance comes in: Lucia’s aunt is not angry with her niece. She does not chastise Lucia for stabbing someone IN THE THROAT! Hell, she even seems to be proud of her niece. I get that both Lucia’s father and aunt were supposed to be somewhat anarchist, but even an anarchist would not condone a throat-stabbing! Especially not from their own kid (or niece)! The part that really gets me is that Lucia claims that she understands what rules are and that she is mindful of them, but I can’t think of a single time she was actually a rule-abiding person. She mostly just steals, burns shit, gets high, gets drunk, or stabs people in the throat. 

Anyway, in her new school, she turns in a really great paper, blah blah blah, and she hears about a club called the Sonar Club. Sonar, fun fact, is an anagram for Arson. She hears this from a guy who obviously has a crush on her, seems like an important character, and then really doesn’t impact the plot at all. This boy, however, introduces Lucia to the actual leader of the real Arson club (which isn’t at the high school? And there are meetings maybe? I don’t really understand how this club works tbh). The leader is a boy named Jan (I had Office flashbacks too). It seemed like there was going to be a thing with Lucia and Jan, but there wasn’t. Personally, I’m glad that there wasn’t because holy shit this book was hella angsty to begin with, and it DID NOT need a romance subplot, so props to Jesse Ball! 

Jan invites Lucia to be the lookout while he lights a building on fire. She loves it, and she is immediately entered into the Arson club (even though it’s maybe not even really a club?). By now, Lucia has met Lana. Lana is her best friend, and she is just as dysfunctional as Lucia. Not much more to say about that because the two characters are basically copies and Lana’s character is really forgettable. 

Lucia’s aunt has a stroke and goes to the hospital. She comes home, but dies shortly after. In between the hospital visit and coming home, Lucia is invited by her amazing teacher to test for a totally free boarding school. The test questions are HELLA vague (like “why Hitler?” ) and one isn’t even a question (“Tell me a joke.”), but Lucia passes and is accepted. Her aunt is glad because she wasn’t really sure what was going to happen to Lucia after her death. What does happen is not AT ALL what her aunt had in mind. Lucia sees that her aunt’s most prized possession, her wedding dress and her husband’s tux (which were never mentioned up until this point) were missing. She suspects the landlord because the landlord hates her. She goes to see the landlord and, lo and behold, the landlord has the dress and the tux. He then calls the cops, and it turns out that he had already called in a warning for Lucia and her aunt in case the aunt died, so Lucia is now homeless. She goes to school the next day, and the principal says that he knows about the crime committed and will make Lucia’s life Hell if she doesn’t drop out of school, so she drops out (which I think is fair. She never really liked school, and she really went for her aunt’s sake.) The principal had called the boarding school that accepted her, and they rebuked their acceptance. Lucia has nothing left, so she, Jan, and Lana decide to burn the landlord’s house down. 

Lucia’s final chapter is just a prediction of what will happen. She wants to burn down the house, and then she wants to leave town and never return. Her biggest fear is not about getting caught, but that (in her absence) her mother will suddenly become lucid and will cry out for her daughter, but Lucia will never return to see her mother again. And that’s the end. 

**********SPOILERS OVER**********

Alright, list time:

The good:

The plot is mildly interesting. While the tone can be very depressing, it is interesting to watch Lucia ruin her life further, but it is only interesting in the same way watching a car crash is interesting. 

Lucia’s aunt, despite being a terrible guardian (by literally letting Lucia get away with whatever the fuck she wants) is actually a really sweet character, and I really enjoyed her. 

It is alluded that Lucia has a blacklist of people that she wants to kill. Weirdly enough, this was a plus. She, for only a moment, because a character that wasn’t just super crazy angsty, but that had some actual bite behind her bark. The fire she sets at the end provided this as well. Lucia is also an unwilling narrator, which is not often seen in novels. I personally enjoyed that, because it helped characterize Lucia more. 

Finally, an orthodox church is mentioned! As an Eastern Orthodox Christian myself, that was very exiting. You don’t see many of those in the literary world (unless if you live in Russia or and Eastern European country, in which you see it all the time). 

Now for the part I love (The Bad):

At first, I thought Lucia was mentally challenged like the boy in The Case of the Dog in the Nighttime (Amazon link), but over time I began to realize that she isn’t actually mentally challenged, but that the author wrote her in a way that seemed awkward. Take this quote for example:

“Drunk means: you can understand what they are doing and why and you don’t have to fear them as much as when you wonder what they want,” (Ball 138).

Throughout the whole novel, Lucia speaks in a very choppy and matter-of-fact way that is highly reminiscent of The Case of the Do gin the Nighttime, but I began to realize that this is not actually intentional, and that it was almost a mistake as it was highly distracting and impeded on my ability to pay attention on the plot. I was so busy trying to diagnose Lucia that I couldn’t pay attention to what she was actually talking about! Lucia is also S U P E R angsty. I get that having your mother locked up in a mental hospital and your father die is very traumatic, but wow Lucia was your typical YA novel teen (especially with that SUPER tragic backstory and not a single good thing ever happening to her). Seriously, there was so little development with her that I almost thought this was a poorly written YA novel (I ended up googling it and it isn’t actually a YA novel). Lucia’s voice was so dry, detached, and angsty that the plot seemed boring. if you were to write down just the plot, it would seem incredibly interesting and full of deep emotions, but Lucia’s character actually prevented this, which is never a good thing. 

Finally, the ending was just awful. It was so dull, and it didn’t actually say what happened. It gave Lucia’s prediction and then left it at that, and not in a cliffhanger-y sort of way, but more of a wow-I-wasted-all-this-time-for-nothing sort of way. That isn’t to say that I hated the book itself, just the ending. 

Now, of the moment you’ve all been waiting for…

MY RATING! 

I give this book: 

Two Pizza Slices!

The book was fairly average. I finished it, but I don’t think that I will remember any of it in a week or so. It was just another book in a long line of books, and that is mostly because Lucia was a terrible character and prevented the book from being awesome. So, read this book if you’ve got time to kill, but it isn’t going to be groundbreaking. 

Join us next Wednesday at Noon for my next book, and be sure to comment any book recommendations you have!

The Long (But Incredible) Walk

Once again, I found myself at the Community library (quite disappointed with my last choice, $10,000,000 Marriage Proposal) when I happened past the Stephen King section, seeing a book mis-shelved. A book by Richard Bachman had been shelved in King's section. Confused, I picked up the book, only to find that Stephen King had a secret alias that I had never heard of! You could not believe my elation! It was as if I had uncovered a secret gem, despite the fact that this alias was actually a well known fact. Then I noticed something else. The title of this book was called The Long Walk. I picked it up, mostly because I have a habit of reading while taking long walks, or pacing around my house. Ever since I bought a Fitbit (or rather, ever since I allowed my Fitbit to take over my life) I have become a slave to getting more steps, so I began walking while reading to increase my step count (I know, I know, it's super weird). For these highly superficial reasons, I decided to check out this book.

Let me say, I never once regretted it.

Before I begin, I want to tell you something. One of my favorite parts of this book did not actually take place in the real book. You see, Stephen King wrote an introduction to this book and, while I rarely actually read introductions, it was eye-opening. He spoke about how much he loved having his alias. He imagined a whole life for Richard Bachman, living on a farm with a loving wife. But then, when the media revealed that Bachman was King, he died.  King wrote of a longing for his old alias, just as one would mourn a lost friend. It was a heartbreaking introduction that was also incredibly sweet, but it also got me thinking about the differences between King's writing and Bachman's writing. The truth is, their styles aren't very different, but King is more restrained by his fame, and Bachman has the freedom that comes with a smaller audience and fewer critiques. I love King, but his books are more mainstream horror, and Bachman is more literary. His plots may not be as flashy and quick as It, Carrie, or The Shining, but he makes up for this immensely by writing something that will certainly be hailed as literature, something that will withstand the ages because it is so incredibly deep and fulfilling. God dammit, this book will change the way you see the world! It's AMAZING!

Unlike last time, I'm going to do my best here to prevent spoilers because, DAMN THIS BOOK IS GOOD! It would be immoral of me to spoil any word written. So, let me give you a skeleton of the plot:

Every year, 100 boys apply to be in a walking competition. The premise of this competition is simply: walk for as long as you can, and try to out walk the other 99 boys. Each boy gets 3 warnings, and warnings can be given for stopping or walking slower than 4 miles per hour. After a boy is given his third warning, he is shot and killed. The only way to win is to survive the longest.

This book takes place in a dystopian society, but King (Or rather, Bachman) doesn't outright tell the reader any real facts. Slowly, and mostly by reading in between the lines, the reader comes to understand that the US government (which now has 51 states) is ruled by a man named Major. The military seems to be controlled and any attempt to say anything bad about the Long Walk or the government in general leads to you getting "squadded," which is basically taken hostage by the government and (presumably) killed.  I actually really love the way King/Bachman builds this world in such a subtle way, because it reads less like the Hunger Games (don't get me wrong, I love dystopian fiction) and more like actual literature.

The main character in this book is a boy named Ray Garraty.  Garraty is 16 years old, and his father was squadded. His mom is old and seems feeble, but is only really mentioned twice. Garraty has a girlfriend, Jen. Garraty has no real stated motivation to be on this walk, but somehow this doesn't detract from the novel. On the other hand, it adds so much more to the story. By withholding (or just straight up not having) his motivation for undertaking such a serious and deadly, the real reason for the walk is revealed. This book is highly existential, and Garraty begins to realize that he is not in this walk for any reason at all. He has no reason to continue, except to escape death, which creates an existentialist outlook that is highly reminiscent of Albert Camus' The Stranger. It has the same strange detached horror that follows death, the same oddly disconnected character who is surrounded by death, and the same lack of ambition or drive characteristic of existentialism. This work is truly masterful because, unlike Camus' The Stranger, it is a more more interesting read. Garraty begins as a somewhat normal person, someone who is afraid of death and who is horrified by death, but this walk morphs him into an aimless person who is merely escaping death and walking only because there are no other options. Walking despite the prize of the fulfillment of any wish, as opposed to walking towards it.

I also love how Bachman (and also King) have characters that, at times, almost seem very mature, as if they were adults, but then they use phrases like "low-key" (yeah, I think King invented the phrase Low-key, so that's pretty lit) or "whore," and suddenly you realize (with horror) that these are just KIDS! Ugh, it's so well done! And don't even get me started on Stebbins! He is this enigma of a character, highly reminiscent of Tiresias in Oedipus Rex. He seems to know exactly what is happening and why. He knows the truth, he IS the truth, but slowly even this was worn away. By the end of the walk, he is just another pathetic, meaningless kid. It's heartbreaking, but it couldn't have happened any other way.

Finally, the conclusion. Now, I won't spoil what actually happens (oh, boo-hoo. Quit crying and read the book XD), but I will tell you that, at first, I was not satisfied. It bothered me. It felt... undone, like a rope that is well-made, but frayed at the edges. But then, over time, I began to realize that there is no other way this book could've ended, even if Bachman had wanted it to change or be brighter. No, the ending had to be like this. It was perfect. Existentialistic, but perfect.

Okay, okay, I've talked long enough! Why don't I tell you the rating?

I rated this book:



One delicious, whole, fresh-out-of-the-oven, fire-roasted personal pizza. Yup, that's right, that whole damn pizza is just for you. This book is as good as this super delicious pizza probably was. That's how you know it's super good. Seriously, this is a MUST READ! If you love books, you oughta read this one because, holy cow! it's amazing!!!!!

Alright, that's all for this week. I'll see you next Wednesday when I review some TBD book!