Slow Reads

So although I have a specific reading pattern I tend to follow each month (LINK), there are a number of things I read that fall through the cracks.

1) Month-long Reads: During any given month I'll supplement my seven regular books with a book of non-fiction, usually essays, to read each night. As these books can take a month or longer to read, I don't often update them on my Goodreads list or even mention them on my blog. Current I'm reading Chuck Klosterman's Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs: A Low Culture Manifesto, and enjoying every bit of it.

2) Year-long Reads: A few years ago I received a horror anthology from one of my younger brothers that had a horror story a day for a year - usually these stories were less than a page long, but they were all a lot of fun. So, when I heard about Ryan Holiday and Stephan Hanselman's The Daily Stoic: 366 Meditations of Wisdom, Perseverance and The Art of Living I had to give it a shot, and you know what - it's a pretty great read read! I'm about a third of the way through and find this book, read first thing in the morning gives me some pretty interesting stuff to think about all day.

3) Books my wife suggests: As my lovely wife is just as voracious a reader as I am, she'll often read a book that she know would be exactly my thing (for instance, she was the one who introduced me to the world of Charles de Lint), so every couple months she'll suggest something I have to squeeze in between my other books. Although she does suggest far more titles than I can immediately get to, I do keep a list and get to it when I've got time.

4) Other: And here we fit all the trade collection of comic books I read, as well as magazines, social media, and pamphlets, as well as all sorts of online content ranging from LinkedIn and Facebook posts to Doctoral Theses on Economics.

What can I say? Even for a guy who spends all his time reading it's often tricky to keep track of it all!

Book Review: Promises to Keep

So after finished Widdershins, wherein de Lint has written a very nice finale for two of his favourite characters, what is the appeal of a prequel novel looking at one of them during her college years? Actually quite a lot.

Promises to Keep follows perennial favourite Jilly Coppercorn in an earlier time in her life, shortly after she came to Newford in the first place, and works as both a great little story in its own right, and also a pretty great jumping-on point for new readers who may not want to go all the way back to The Dreaming Place, written nearly two decades earlier, as well as a story that acknowledges that although very interested in the magical aspects of the world, Jilly spends the first part of the series of books with no direct contact, only hearing about this world through the stories of her friends.

The story is short and sweet, focusing on issues of lost friends and things that may have been and left me feeling quite satisfied and looking forward to reading more.

Movie Review: Colossal

Throughout our lives every action we take (or don't take) effects people around us in ways we can't often see until well after the fact. Nacho Vigalondo's 2016 film Colossal takes this concept into the fantasy genre when Gloria, a young woman in crisis finds that for a few minutes each morning her actions directly affect the people of Seoul South Korea when a giant Monster exactly mimics her actions, causing destruction and mayhem wherever it goes.

The film alternates quite nicely between small-town drama and the heightened reality of a monster attack on the other side of the world. Recently dumped by her long time boyfriend, Gloria (Anne Hathaway), has returned to her small hometown and is living in her childhood home while attempting to find something to do with her life. She reconnects with a friend from elementary school and gets a job in a local bar, she begins to put her living space and life together, and then she gets swept up in the news stories surrounding a monster attacking Seoul. Things take a strange turn however when she starts to realize the creature is mimicking her movements each morning when she crosses the same playground on her way home from work.

The story depends strongly on the relationship between Gloria and Oscar (Jason Sudeikis) and how their friendship begins to move in a direction Gloria isn't interested in.

Although darker in tone than I was expecting based on the trailers, Colossal was well worth the watch and a nice change from the comic-book adaptations that tend to fill my spring and summer theatre viewing.

Book Review: Guillermo Del Toro: At Home with Monsters

A companion book to the museum exhibition of the same name Guillermo Del Toro: At Home with Monsters is a fascinating read looking at the collection of horror, science fiction, fantasy and other genres kept by the writer/director in his home.

The book focuses on many of the pieces of artwork (in many mediums) in Del Toro's collection, as well as an essay by the author himself, and three different lists of films, artwork and fiction the author has been influenced by - all of which are robust enough to keep even a massive reader like me enthralled for some time. An excellent addition to his 2013 book Cabinet of Curiosities, which went film by film through his works and related parts of his collection.

A wonderful Christmas present from my friend Ron - this book was quickly scooped up by one of my children for her own reading pleasure, so double bonus!

Book Review: American Elsewhere

Robert Jackson Bennett's American Elsewhere (2013), sits nicely in the same Horror/Science Fiction cross genre as the television series Rick & Morty - a place I (and any number of literature critics) like to call cosmic horror.

Cosmic Horror, largely influenced by the weird fiction (actually a genre classification, not a judgement - mostly) of Howard Phillip Lovecraft, focuses less on gore and terror and more on the fact that our world is merely the plaything of ancient gods and monsters who can not only destroy us with little effort, but probably wouldn't care if they did. Generally when characters in a Cosmic Horror story figure this out, they go incurably insane.

American Elsewhere follows an ex cop named Mona Bright, who discovers at the reading of her stepfather's will that part of his estate includes a house previously owned by Mona's mother, and it exists in a small town called Wink, New Mexico.

Unfortunately for Mona, Wink does not appear on any map, and she has a week to claim the home before it reverts to municipal ownership. Finding her way into the town, Mona finds a curiously perfect city, with any number of strange rules (actually, this is not dissimilar to Welcome to Night Vale - only really not played for laughs) such as no one can go out after dark, certain questions cannot be asked and certain buildings cannot be entered.

Also there some sort of demon in a rabbit mask no one is supposed to talk about.

Although topping six-hundred pages, the novel moves along a quite a nice clip and definitely kept me interested. Definitely worth a look!

Book Review: Tides of War

My third novel by Steven Pressfield on this tour of Ancient Greece through Historical Fiction, Tides of War takes place well after the events of The Last Amazon and Gates of Fire, but as with those previous novels, gets deep into the world of Ancient Greece and gives the reader a rare taste of the values and thoughts in world.

Taking place during the Peloponnesian War, Tides of War follows Alcibiades, the nephew of Pericles and one of the greatest generals of the Ancient World. The story is told through two layers; our narrator is interviewing the man responsible for Alcibiades death, who in turn is narrating his life alongside the general over this many campaigns.

What I found most interesting about the story was how little I knew about the general going in; when I've read previous works about Theseus or Sappho or Leonidas, I was at least a little familiar with their lives (Minotaur, Poetress, Spartan King), so when I started reading about a general who switched sides from Athenian to Spartan and even to Persian, I was quite surprised by just how unfamiliar I was with the historical figure. It did lead me to more than a couple quick stops at wikipedia to get a better grasp on the character, but as these books often do, I found it was well worth the distraction.

An intriguing introduction to the Peloponnesian War, and one that leaves me looking forward to the next book off of the list, Isle of Stone by Nicholas Nicastro, with more than a little excitement.

Movie Review: Their Finest

Lone Scherfig's Their Finest, based on the 2009 novel Their Finest Hour and a Half by Lissa Evans, focuses on a film production by the British Ministry of Propaganda during the Second World War about the evacuation of Dunkirk. In many ways however, the film is about stories; why we like them, how we use them, and what goes into them.

The film takes place in 1940 and follows Catrin Cole (played by Gemma Arterton), a young writer hired to work for the Ministry and her growth as a writer and teller of stories. The film looks at film production from the point of view of writers, editors, producers, actors and executives, and works as both a great war story, and a story about how to tell great war stories.

The concept for the film within a film, two sisters piloting a stolen boat to aid in the Dunkirk evacuation, shifts from the actual event to the varied ways in which the story must or might be modified to better work as a film to inspire Britain, and perhaps even America into joining the war effort.

A really great picture, filled with heart, hope, and a love of the medium of film.