Genre Character of the Week: Bode Locke

A few months ago while listening to the Scotch & Comics podcast, I was introduced to Joe Hill’s Locke & Key. The story, following the Locke family after a terrible incident involving the murder of the husband/father, involved the family relocating to the family home in Lovecraft, MA, and the mystery they discover there. Although all the characters are incredibly well conceived and fleshed out, my personal favourite is the youngest of the three children, Bode Locke.

Bode is the archetypal little-kid character often found throughout horror and dark fantasy stories, and although there is a lot going on with his older two siblings as they explore their new home, Locke House, it is Bode who begins to find the secrets of the home, including the thing in the Well house and a strange key which opens a door that sends the keyholder on quite a journey.

What I like best about Bode is that for all the horror that has gone on in his life (the death of his father was extremely traumatic, read the series to find out more), he sees the house, the key and his new life exciting. Things that would terrify the normal person (me included) are simply considered “COOL!” by Bode. Let me tell you, that little kid is pretty amazing.

If you haven’t checked out this series yet and are in any way a fan of dark fantasy and horror, you are really missing out.

Things I've Noticed: My library keeps sending me batches

It’s not really a complaint, per se. I mean, I enjoy getting new movies from my local library like everyone else, the problem is, I’ll put a who bunch of holds on items listed as “On Order” and although my position in the hold queue varies from #1 of 15 copies to #284 of 29 copies, everything seems to show up on the same weekend.

Last weekend I got the following films: Pom Wonderful Presents The Greatest Movie Ever Sold, Rio, Unknown, Tabloid, and Source Code (which will get its own post soon).

This week I’ve got the following films: Dracula: Pages from a Virgin’s Diary, The Conspirator, Limitless, and The Lincoln Lawyer.The problem is that as all of these films (excluding Dracula – a title I got recommended to me from the very enjoyable Scotch & Comics podcast) have a very small window in which I can watch them and they keep showing up in these big batches. At my local library you can only keep DVDs for a week (which is pretty standard) and you can’t renew the DVDs you have out if someone else has a hold on the title (which is also pretty standard). This tends to leave me with about a week to fit in a half dozen new release films (90 minutes to 2 hours in length) with my own television watching, family time and schoolwork.

So I guess my problem with my local library comes down to the fact that they are too efficient and have many films I am quite interested in sitting in their current collection.

Ummmm…. I guess that isn’t really a problem so much as yet another reason I like my library a lot.

Never mind.