The Night Country by Stewart O'Nan

Stewart O'Nan is one of those authors that captures a moment in time so well and creates such a feeling of place and character. I read The Speed Queen first, because my other half bought it way back when we were in college and he said I really needed to read it. I read Last Night at the Lobster, and it too was perfection. The Night Country wasn't a disappointment at all, although I am not really sure why people classify it as horror.

A year ago, a group of teenagers died in a car wreck on Halloween. Their spirits live on, haunting those they left behind: the cop who has a secret, the survivor, the mother of the survivor marred forever by the wreck. As the anniversary of the wreck draws near, you learn how their lives have changed and know that each is trying to commemorate it in his or her own way. In some ways, they are trying to move on, in others, they can't.

O'Nan creates this world where it makes sense that ghosts are along side us, whispering in our ears. He's able to include those voices without seeming silly or hammy. His characters are sympathetic, and all of the story leads to this reveal at the end that I literally couldn't stop reading. It's touching, life-affirming, and terribly tragic all at once, all without ever being cheesy or resorting to the stereotypical. It's lovely.

Rating: 5 Purrs

Factotum by Charles Bukowski

Ah Bukowski, how I love thee. I once told a friend the reason I like Bukowski so much is that he’s an asshole and makes no apology for it. I was comparing him to Jack Kerouac, who I like as well, but not as much as I like Bukowski. Somehow he ends up being a sympathetic character (well Henry Chinaski does) despite the fact that he drinks too much, is lazy, a jerk to everyone, and a real asshole to the ladies who hook up with him. I can’t help but admire someone who will throw all of those warts out there, perhaps even make them worse, and yet still make me actually like the character.

Factotum follows Henry Chinaski again, this time as he drifts from job to job in WWII America trying to make enough money to live on and pretty much making just enough to buy booze and play the horses. The whole novel pretty much consists of his applying for, getting, and losing various jobs interspersed with scenes of drunken stupors, drunken hook ups, and drunken trips to the racetrack.

I don’t know why I find it so appealing, but I do. I mean, when I describe it, it doesn’t sound all of that interesting, but it is. The language, the characters and so gritty, so urban, so dark, and so poetic and somehow Bukowski takes those dark, lost, ugly people and helps you identify with them, in his ability to not care one way or the other, makes you sympathize with them. I really can’t put my finger on just what it is, but he had it. I just wish there were more Bukowski books to read. As it is I have to parse them out here and there to make sure I don’t run out any time soon. Otherwise I would just read them back to back and forgo any other book. I can’t help it. I rarely gush over an author, but this one I totally fan girl over. Bukowski is my genius. I don’t want to be him, but I sure love to read him.

Rating: 4 ½ Purrs for pure, classic Bukowski – ugly warts and all

Ham on Rye by Charles Bukowski

I never would have picked up Charles Bukowski on my own if it weren't for 3 different people waxing poetic about him, so I threw in the towel and tried him out. Wow. I wasn't sure about him because although I understood the significance of On the Road, I just didn't fall in love with it, so more Beats, well, I wasn't interested. But damn if Mr. Bukowski didn't blow me away. Technically, he's not a Beat, but he has a similar style. So far I have read Post Office and Ham on Rye this year, and I have several more queued up in the library to read. I am parsing them out so I don't run through everything too quickly; that's how much I like Bukowski. He is reaching Vonnegut proportions for me.

Ham on Rye is set in Bukowski's younger years and man if the guy can't create a vibrant visual image using like, 3 words. 

If you are interested in an author who can write using concise, simple language to create images that stick with you, beauty out of the ugly. gilding out of the sow's ear so to speak, then check him out. He runs up there with my e.e. cummings, Kurt Vonnegut, and (new) Philip K. Dick obsession. 

Rating: 5 Purrs so far...there's still so much to read!

Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte

Wuthering Heights is one of those books that has sat on my shelf for years. It's not that didn't want to read it; I always wanted to but just never seemed to get around to it. After reading it, I'm not sure what all of the fuss is about. Maybe I do, but overall, the book just left me kind of angry.

Cathy and Heathcliff grow up together and of course fall in love. But since Cathy has no redeemable qualities whatsoever, and neither does Heathcliff really, of course they don't end up happily ever after. Cathy marries rich, and since Heathcliff overhears her say it's because she can't marry him because it would be beneath her, he decides to seek revenge on Cathy and those who have slighted him. This revenge drive the rest of the book, and he seeks it even unto his and Cathy's own children.

I don't know why anyone would ever read about Cathy And Heathcliff and think man, those two are some of the most romantic characters in literature. Frankly, they are nightmares and deserve each other, if only they could not destroy everyone else in their path. They may talk how one completes the other, that Cathy *is* Heathcliff or whatever, but really, neither character understands one little whit about love. I can kind of see why Stephenie Meyer says Wuthering Heights influenced the Twilight series, because I see a whole lot of Heathcliff and Cathy in Edward and Bella. That's not really a good thing.

I do, however, find it very interesting that Emily Bronte would put two unlikable characters as main characters in her story, considering Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre has such an agreeable main character in Jane. It sort of makes Emily a bit balls-y in my thoughts. You know, like I *dare* you to like my story.

Rating: 3 1/2 Purrs for a couple of characters that pissed me the hell off, but yet also Go Emily!

Even more acquisitions to the library

My nephew challenged me this weekend. He said that he had more Hot Wheels than I had books. I hated to contradict him, so instead I took advantage of Half-Price Books 20% off sale and added a few more to the shelves. 

• A Wizard of Earthsea and The Farthest Shore by Ursula K. Le Guin - The final books in one of my favorite series when I was a kid. I had the second, but not the first or the third. 
• The Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe 
• Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry - Not the type of book I would normally read but it comes highly recommended by a friend. We'll see if I agree with him. 
• Babylon Revisited and Other Stories by F. Scott Fitzgerald - I pretty much adore Mr. Fitzgerald
• In the Lake of the Woods by Tim O'Brien - Given to me to read by a friend years ago. (Not a friend anymore but at least she introduced me to this book.)  I finally got my own copy.
• Coyote Blue: A Novel by Christopher Moore - I'll read anything he writes. 
• Spaceman Blues: A Love Song by Brian Francis Slattery - This has been on my wishlist so long I don't really remember why - I think I read about ti in Entertainment Weekly. 
• All the Pretty Horses by Cormac Mccarthy - I'll also read anything he writes, or at least, I am working on it. 
• Look Homeward, Angel by Thomas Wolfe - One of those that I should have read a long time ago. 
• The Daughters of Juarez: A True Story of Serial Murder South of the Border by Teresa Rodriguez - The murders happening down there are so scary.
• Practical Magic by Alice Hoffman
• Black Water by Joyce Carol Oates
• City of Glass, Ghosts, The Locked Room (New York Trilogy) by Paul Auster
• Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
• The Good Guy by Dean Koontz - I don't read a lot of Koontz but I saw this on Stephen King's best of list so I thought I'd check it out. 
• Knots and Crosses by Ian Rankin
• Presumed Innocent: A Novel by Scott Turow
• The Fall of Hyperion, Endymion, The Rise of Endymion by Dan Simmons - The first science fiction/fantasy book I ever read was Hyperion. Many, many years later I discovered there were sequels. I will say that these are some of the very few science fiction/fantasy books I really, really enjoyed, so I picked them up fro Steve to read. He owes me big time for the Dragonlance books. 
  

Ghostwalk by Rebecca Stott

I picked up Ghostwalk by Rebecca Stott expecting one type of book and finding, on the whole, another. I thought I would be reading a mystery, but instead I found a complex weaving of mystery, history, romance, and thriller all in one package. Ghostwalk was excellent.

Ghostwalk starts off with the death of Elizabeth Vogelsang. Elizabeth died under slightly mysterious circumstances while writing a biography of Isaac Newton. Enter Lydia Brooke, hired by Elizabeth's son Cameron to come in and finish the biography. Lydia and Cameron have a history together, and when Lydia returns to Cambridge, their romance is rekindled, despite the fact that Cameron is married with children. Lydia begins picking through the mostly written biography and in turn ends up getting drawn in to the mystery surrounding two separate series of murders - a group of Cambridge scholars that Elizabeth discovered when researching Isaac Newton's biography and a group of Cambridge-affiliated researchers that have drawn the wrath of a radical animal rights group. Are these two groups of murders actually connected in some way? Lydia begins to think so, and begins to feel haunted by the ghost of (possibly) Newton. While she follows Elizabeth's research, Lydia realizes that Elizabeth might have uncovered a conspiracy that someone might be willing to kill for. Will Lydia be able to finish the book? Who is the ghostly figure that haunts her? How are the two sets of murders tied to Newton, if they are at all, and will Lydia be next?

This book is a great mystery; it successfully intertwines the current and historical time lines so that you feel much like Lydia does. On one side, you have this wandering, flowing narrative, and on the other, you are inundated with historical facts about Newton, Cambridge, alchemy, glass making, and more. It’s difficult to do, and I never felt overwhelmed with either side. You are captured in a dreamlike state, so much so that I longed to travel and walk where she walked, to see what Elizabeth saw, and know Newton to the extent that these main characters did. It literally felt like I was reading a walking dream and those types of books end up way high on my list of best. Mostly because I think reading should take you away, bring you into a place where your imagination can fly, and help you discover new things about the world and yourself, leaving you in a better place than when you started (even if that place is a sad one). Ghostwalk is one of those. I’m sure some will find things that could be improved, but really, it was perfect to me.

Rating: 5 Purrs. I’ll put this one up there with The Virgin Suicides and The Lovely Bones for the way the words worked in my head.

Terry Gilliam! Windmills! Don Quixote!

I just read that Terry Gilliam is going to restart his production of The Man Who Killed Don Quixote. Whee!

I watched the documentary Lost in La Mancha a few years ago and was so overwhelmed with Gilliam's vision and so sad to see the just *awful* luck involved with the film. Flash floods, back problems, destroyed sets. Just like someone broke 100 mirrors and channeled all of that bad luck into one film. But the pieces of the film that you did get to see, the storyboards and costumes and drawings, gave me just enough of a taste to really wish he would have been able to push on. Wow. I just love his movies, mostly because I have always felt that Gilliam has such vision, such a signature style that creates a fairytale on screen. Sometimes it's dark , like 12 Monkeys, sometimes it's an adventure full of life and bittersweet relationships, like The Adventures of Baron von Munchausen. But what you always get is a dream. A beautiful, eerie, haunting dream.

X-Files Redux

Yesterday I caught up on this new show everyone has been telling me about. Fringe. It looked intriguing in the previews, but part of me said, enh. Looks like Alias (which I never really got into no matter how hard I tried) married The Eleventh Hour (which I did get into, the British version of course, and dang it I forgot to DVR the premiere of the US version last night), had a side affair with Lost and birthed the The X-Files all over again. Which yeah, I was pretty much right.

Which doesn't mean I am not totally, so much, OMG, Srsly in love with it. Cause I am.

I am so ashamed of myself. Where's my loyalty? I loved the X-Files. I even watched the horrid last two seasons. I've watched every single episode at least twice. I own them all on DVD. (The original DVD printings I might add, before they got so damn cheap.)

I'm sorry, Mulder & Scully. Really, I love Fringe and its adorable wide-eyed, expressionless Agent Olivia (I even love her name!) and baby-sitting Pacey in a completely different way than I love you.

Promise.

Pinky Swear.

Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marissa Pessl

I heard so much about Special Topics in Calamity Physics before I bought it that I had very high expectations. There was so much buzz about this book that it could have been disastrous, but really it was a pretty good book. It had its moments of feeling a little too gimmicky, but overall it was a good story with entertaining characters and a nice mystery to boot.

In Special Topics in Calamity Physics, you meet Blue Van Meer, very studious and very smart daughter of a self-absorbed scholar. Blue and her dad travel from college town to college town, her father working his way through girlfriends and Blue working her way through schools. Eventually they end up in Stockton, North Carolina at the very preppy St. Gallway school where Blue becomes entangled in a mystery, in a small group of the “elite” students, and in her first true romance. Blue’s experiences with this group of kids, the “Blue Bloods,” and their mentor, Hannah Schneider, the electric and odd film teacher, change her forever. Blue’s relationships with these new people divert her from fawning over her father, but also bring her deep into a mystery – why do they even involve her at all, why is Hannah so interested in her, and who is the man who drowns in Hannah’s pool? Blue and to some degree, the BlueBloods, try to decipher the truth behind Hannah, and eventually behind Hannah’s death.

The shtick here is that Blue Van Meer is writing this story as a report in one of her college classes, and thus annotates it madly with references to books real and imagined, includes drawings, and even has a final exam at the end. Blue writes this way, mostly due to her father telling her once to “exquisitely” annotate her works. It can be fun to follow along with the literary and pop culture references she includes, but if you don’t like footnotes and that sort of thing, just stay away.  Occasionally, Pessl uses these affectations to hide the fact that some of her secondary characters are thinly written as well. It occasionally leaves you wanting more meat and less fluff.

Overall, I can see why the book got such good reviews – the idea, the gimmick are fresh and those literary types love to be able to laugh and think – ha I got that lit geek reference (I’ll admit it, I did it once or twice myself. ) It’s a fun read, and Blue Van Meer is a character that sticks with you for a while.  It’s a very good first novel, and I hope Pessl continues to grow and write even more.

Rating: 4 Purrs for some truly creative and bittersweet moments and some fairly memorable train wrecks as the Blue Bloods.  

Recent Acquisitions to the Library

Here's the latest haul from Half Price Books:

• The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger
• A Spot of Bother by Mark Haddon
• The Exorcist by William Peter Blatty
• The Night Country by Stewart O'Nan
• The Ring art by Misao Inagaki, original novel by Koji Suzuki
• Last Night at the Lobster by Stewart O'Nan
• Light on Snow by Anita Shreve
• Skylight Confessions by Alice Hoffman
• Origin by Diana Abu-Jaber
• Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal by Christopher Moore
• Ten Days in the Hills by Jane Smiley
• The Concrete Blonde by Michael Connelly
• The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
• The Member of the Wedding by Carson McCullers
• A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley

Scotland, PA

“We're not bad people, Mac... just underachievers who have to make up for lost time.”

I heard about this movie a long time ago and it had been sitting in my NetFlix queue for a long time. I thought oooh, a MacBeth movie. Sounds interesting. And it was.
This retelling of MacBeth takes place in 1970’s Scotland, Pennsylvania, hence the name Scotland, PA. Joe McBeth and his wife Pat work in the local fast food joint. Pat’s convinced that Joe should be running the shop rather than bowing and scraping to the owner Duncan. She's sure that she could be doing a much better job of running the place. The oh so simple plan turns out to be a disaster, as you might expect from a Shakespearean tragedy. Things look bright for awhile, but you know how it goes – no water, no perfumes of Arabia can wash those hands clean, and boy do they know it.
The cast in this movie was amazing – James LeGros, Maura Tierney, Christopher Walken, and Amy Smart.  All sorts of indy verterans were in this one. The atmosphere was great and the 1970’s fast food resturant location was inspired. I mean, it it also a bit campy, but I think that was the point. I love Shakespeare, so I’m fine with extremely accurate, line by line interpretations, but this whole retelling has the comedy and tragedy all at the same time. I wouldn't consider it to be Oscar winning or anything like that, but it was a great rental. I’m ashamed that it sat so far down in my queue for so long.

Rating: 4 Purrs for campy, bell-bottomed French fried fun with tragedy and Christopher Walken to boot.

Death Sentence

"You go near my family, and I will cut out your goddamn guts like I did your fucking friend. Do you hear me?”

I was really surprised at how much I liked this movie. I had pretty low expectations going in – it’s a revenge flick so I didn’t expect much depth or much besides some gore and some angry scowls.  You know, some Charles Bronson blowing some guys away and maybe some Chuck Norris action here and there.  I was really surprised at how unexpected things were in this movie.

In Death Sentence, Nick Hume (Kevin Bacon) is a family man. Everything seems swell. He’s got a great wife, two great sons, a high paying job and a beautiful house. There’s some tension underneath the surface there though,…and after Nick Hume brush with the dark side of the city, all the underlying ugly comes out.  Nick and his star hockey player son are driving home after the game and have to stop for gas in a not so great part of town. You know, THAT part of town. The one that always shows up in these movies, the dark and not so safe looking one that you of course have to stop at because your car just happens to be out of gas right at that moment. Well, the bad guys come and kill the all-star favorite son, and when Nick hears that even though he can identify one of the doers, the guy won’t do much time.  Nick wants revenge, so a hunting he will go. The problem is, the gang doesn’t just sit back and take it, and that’s really when all hell breaks loose and things veer from what I think is the standard formula.

What did I like most about Death Sentence? Well, it was raw.  Nick Hume isn’t one of those Commando types that underneath his clean-cut exterior lies a ninja or a Army Ranger. No. Nick Hume is a normal family man. He may want revenge and he goes after it full force but he's not too slick about it.  His revenge is half dumb luck as it is  skill, in fact more dumb luck than anything.  The acting was spot on, with maybe the bad guys being a bit over the top, but that’s pretty normal. John Goodman's character was so evil – but went a long way to almost make you sympathetic towards the gang guy and his cohorts. There’s always a bigger fish in the pond.

I can’t really think of anything I disliked about Death Sentence. I was way better than I expected. It felt pretty tightly edited. Backstory was concise. The story was compelling and there was plenty of action and rough stuff.  I’m not sure I’ll buy this one cause I’m kind of  sad about the whole thing but I wish I had seen it in the theater. It would have been worth the full-on evening ticket price.

Rating: 4 ½ Purrs for a near perfect revenge flick that doesn’t make you feel dirty like  some of those more grindhouse flicks can. I did think of something a little off – that guy's aim was pretty darn good for someone who had never shot a gun before. But hey – it’s Hollywood. Everyone hits targets right on in Hollywood.

World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War by Max Brooks

I waited anxiously for World War Z to be released in paperback for ages (I rarely buy hardback books, just too heavy to carry around with me), and when it finally was released I snatched it up so fast I might have knocked over some nuns on my way to the counter. After reading it, I would have bought it in hardback it was so good.

In World War Z, Max Brooks creates much more than just a zombie story. He takes that step that most zombie films have tried to do since Night of the Living Dead. He uses zombies to address the real possibilities of a global epidemic and how the world might be after the war is finished and peace is reached. It’s amazing. Brooks tells the story of the Zombie War, a true World War that affects every corner of the earth, from small province to large city using a series of first-person accounts and interviews. It creates such a feeling of history and truth that it’s almost spine chilling. The story covers tales from military folks, smugglers, doctors, teenagers and children, political officials, and regular Joes, all who in their own way dealt with the 200 million plus zombie horde. The ones that stick out to me, even now after weeks of reading it, are the stories from the young woman whose family fled to Canada to ride out the zombie horde, the military team with the trained dogs, and the military personnel who recount the stories of PTSD and the Battle of Yonkers.

I’m definitely going to pick up Max Brooks’ other book, The Zombie Survival Guide, just to see if it is just as good. I really can’t recommend this book enough. It’s scary as a horror novel, but it’s even scarier as a contemporary history or story of one of our possible futures. It feels impossibly real but never loses its entertainment value.

Rating: 5 Purrs for zombies with a purpose. Buy this now.

The Terror by Dan Simmons

I read several of The Hyperion series by Dan Simmons starting way back in high school. He is still one of the few sci-fi writers I can truly enjoy, so when I saw he wrote a horror novel I was really surprised. In fact, I went back and made sure it was the same Dan Simmons. I was even more surprised to see it on several top 10 lists, including Stephen King’s list in Entertainment Weekly. I had let this book sit on my bookshelf for a while, intimidated by its size and subject matter. I am very glad I finally picked it up and listened to the folks who thought so highly of it.

In The Terror, Dan Simmons creates a fictionalized story of the doomed Franklin Expedition. In 1845, two ships, the Erebus and the Terror, left England on a quest to find the Northwest Passage to the Pacific. They never returned. Rescue missions were sent, and few answers or traces were ever found. Dan Simmons takes what history knows and builds a deeply engrossing adventure, horror, and fantasy novel. In Dan Simmons version, the men of the Erebus and the Terror are frozen in the Arctic for the third (or second, I can’t remember to be honest) winter. Franklin is dead, and the two ships are dealing with not just frozen temperatures, rancid food, low rations of rum, and the general crew issues that come up in those kind of conditions, but also a weird tongue-less Eskimo woman and a strange beast that may be a polar bear or it may be something else. The “thing on the ice” is stalking the crew, and for the longest time I didn’t know if it was a polar bear, a figment of their imagination, or something like my old friend The Shrike from the Hyperion novels. It’s a definite pull into the narrative – is it real or is it symbolic for the evil within? (well, yes, but it’s also a rip-tastic slashie beastie.)

What stands out most to me about this book was the attention to detail. After reading it, I went to Wikipedia to find out more about the Franklin Expedition and I was surprised at how much truth there was in this fiction. Franklin of The Terror and Franklin of the real world were the epitome of that “British spirit of exploration,” a man who brings along fine china to the Arctic and yet refuses to adopt native customs that might help his crew live.

I really don’t know what compelled me more, the true story of the Franklin Expedition or the story that Dan Simmons tells and the idea that some of it might be true. The “thing on the ice” became secondary to me when faced with the bare facts of a crew of men faces the odds this crew faced: starvation, freezing temperatures, cannibalism, murder, psychosis, scurvy, the list goes on. Wow. This is one of those rare books that is more than just a horror story. Strip out the gore & beastie and you still have a novel fraught with horror .  Don’t let the thickness of the book scare you away. It’s an excellent read, just make sure you are ready to stomach some big icky areas.

Rating: 5 Purrs for a book well-worth the time and effort it took to read it. I love to find a book that scared me, disturbed me, and taught me something all in one story.

 

The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger

The Time Traveler’s Wife was talked and talked about as an excellent read, so I had to pick it up and see what all the fuss was about. What a surprise – it was a good as the critics said it was.

In The Time Traveler’s Wife, Audrey Niffenegger tells the story of Henry and Clare. Henry is a librarian (yeah for librarians!) who has an unfortunate affliction – he time travels, spontaneously and without any real control over where he ends up.  The only real guarantee is that it ends up being sometime and somewhere in his lifeline. One of these leaps in time brings him to Clare’s field outside of her family’s large house in the country. She is pretty young at the time, and from there begins a life-long friendship and eventually romance. Time travel can be a problem for a relationship, though, as Henry’s age and his meetings with Clare end up varying from middle-aged Henry to young man Henry while she continues in a normal lifeline and ages normally. 

It sounds like it could be silly, a gimmicky, sappy love story, but Niffenegger never lets the story reduce itself to that. Henry and Clare build a life together as they can, and along that love and relationship all the struggles of a normal relationship are aired. It’s a beautifully detailed story, further enhanced by all of the secondary characters and plots. There is Henry’s musician father, their eccentric best friends, Henry’s other girlfriends, Clare’s family, the doctor brought in to study Henry’s genetic abnormality that allows him to travel in time, and Clare and Henry’s child. It’s a very rich and engrossing fabric that enhances rather than takes away from the story. 

Part fantasy, part romance, part bittersweet story of life lived; The Time Traveler’s Wife was one of the best books I have read last year. It was engrossing, thought provoking, and beautiful. You end up with a picture of life lived is worth the weirdness and struggles.  Instead of focusing on the eccentricity time travel brings into their lives, you really are left with one thing: Henry is Clare’s savior and she, his.

Rating: 5 Purrs for a story that sticks in your head for a long, long time

The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold

The Lovely Bones is one of those books I put off reading because I knew the story would probably be tough to read. I finally pulled it off my bookshelf recently, and wow, what a book. I love to read, and I read a lot, but it’s not often I get a book in my hands that rips me up and stays with me even now, weeks later. I was sucked into this book, and it ripped me up emotionally, but it was such a beautiful story I just can’t say I regret the experience. As I remember the story and how it was told, I can feel that sorrow work its way back into my heart, but it is bittersweet.

 Susie Salmon, a 14 year old girl, is the narrator of The Lovely Bones. When we first meet her, Susie is in heaven watching over her family. She tells us how she died, and she watches her family deal with that loss. Her parents struggle to keep their marriage together, her sister refuses to feel anything so avoid the sorrow of losing her sister, and her baby brother struggles to understand where Susie went and why she is never coming back. For years, Susie watches the world and struggles with letting it all go. While she works through the grief of losing her life, Susie sees her family grow, mend, and eventually move on.

 I really don’t want to say too much, because I truly believe this is one of those novels that you simply must just discover on your own. I couldn’t do Alice Sebold’s prose justice. Her words are too lyrical and haunting to condense, and I hate to take that experience away from anyone. The Lovely Bones is a memorable and stunning story about love, loss, grief, marriage, memory, heaven, and moving on. I can’t recommend it enough.

Rating: 5 Purrs for one of the best books I have ever read, hands down.

 

The Living and the Dead by Todd Livingston and Robert Tinnell

I picked up The Living and The Dead in the bargain bin at my favorite comic shop, Titan Comics.  The cover looked interesting, and you know, it sounded like it was about zombies.  It wasn’t about zombies after all, but it was still a pretty good read. Technically the undead were involved, so it worked out.

In this graphic novel, Livingston and Tinnell revisit the Frankenstein story and see where it could lead if the Baron lived on.  They throw in to the mix all sorts of nasty sins: torture, incest, necrophilia, murder, and resurrection.  This is not a kid’s comic book. Here, the Baron is trying to live a good life with his wife and children and make up for his indiscretions by working as a country doctor and hiding his infamous past history. Unfortunately for him, his relatives won’t let him live free and be the good guy. Instead, they want him to resume working on his evil experiments raising the dead. This naturally leads to all sorts of trouble and the multitude of sins listed previously.

I like the Frankenstein mythos, I always have, and this was a very pleasant surprise. The plot was good, the art was decent, and I got it for a steal. What’s not to like?

Rating: 4 Purrs for a great horror story. I’d rate it higher if I liked the art better.

 

The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold

The Lovely Bones is one of those books I put off reading because I knew the story would probably be a tough read. I finally pulled it off my bookshelf recently, and wow, what a book. I love to read, and I read a lot, but it’s not often I get a book in my hands that rips me up and stays with me even now, weeks later. I was sucked into this book, and it ripped me up emotionally, but it was such a beautiful story I just can’t say I regret the experience. As I remember the story and how it was told, I can feel that sorrow work its way back into my heart, but it is bittersweet.

Susie Salmon, a 14 year old girl, is the narrator of The Lovely Bones. When we first meet her, Susie is in heaven watching over her family. She tells us how she died, and she watches her family deal with that loss. He parents struggle to keep their marriage together, her sister refuses to feel anything so avoid the sorrow of losing her sister, and her baby brother struggles to understand where Susie went and why she is never coming back. Susie watches the world and struggles with letting it all go. While she works through the grief of losing her life, Susie sees her family grow, mend, and eventually move on.

I really don’t want to say too much because I truly believe this is one of those novels that you simply must just discover on your own. I couldn’t do Alice Sebold’s prose justice. Her words are too lyrical and haunting to condense, and I hate to take that experience away from anyone. The Lovely Bones is a memorable and stunning story about love, loss, grief, marriage, memory, heaven, and moving on. I can’t recommend it enough.

Rating: 5 Purrs for one of the best books I have ever read, hands down.

Marie Antoinette

I love Sophia Coppola's previous work. The Virgin Suicides was just beautiful and a near perfect interpretation of the lyrical novel. Lost in Translation was a vision of a story , making the viewer a part of a newly formed friendship in a strange place. Her visuals made Japan a postcard that I wanted to visit, even though I felt the alienation of the main characters. Marie Antoinette was a visual feast much like Sophia Coppola's other movies, but while I loved the movie, I didn’t get the charm and the haunting, staying power of her other films.

Coppola used Antonia Fraser’s biography of the fated queen, which I hread after seeing the film, but from what I understand it is a much more generous interpretation of Marie’s life than some might give. The story is well told, but focuses mostly on the young queen’s life and her early years at court before her first children were born. You feel the alienation and the confusion the young Dauphine feels when she first enters Versailles, and you fear the intricate court politics that she must maneuver to survive. You feel sorry for this girl who is married off for the good of her people and is under pressure from all around her to fulfill her conjugal duties when the Dauphin is indifferent and every move she makes is gossiped about and scrutinized. When you get to the later years of her life, Coppola moves quickly to the end, but you also see the point Fraser and in turn, Coppola is trying to make: Marie Antoinette was maligned by the public at large, and while her excesses were problematic, she also was only a small piece of the puzzle. While most would lay the blame for the revolution at her feet, you see here the more human side of the woman with ships in her hair.

The movie is a like a big piece of intricately frosted cake, and of course you get the heavy 80’s influence you tasted in the trailer. The costuming is beautiful, with no detail left undone. The colors of the costumes are bright pinks, blues, greens, and yellows that could be more frou-frou versions of the neon teens would wear in the height of the big hair era. Even the food follows this color scheme. I thought this fit rather well with Coppola's comparison of the court at Versailles and the opulence that was the Reagan years. The only thing that didn’t fit was some of the music. Coppalla used a mix of traditional and retro tunes that sometimes worked and sometimes didn’t. The music fit really well during some of the shopping and ball scenes but the one point I really felt didn’t work was the song used when Marie and her entourage return from a masked ball in Paris. It kicked you right out of the moment. Not only was the song jarring, but it was a bad song.

There are many reasons you should see this film, but I can’t recommend it to everyone. Sophia Coppola has so much talent you can’t help but feel she is genetically encoded with good film-making genes. This would be a near perfect movie if it weren’t for the poor use of music in some places. It was beautiful, the actors were good in their roles, and the supporting cast was outstanding. However, if you are looking for a perfect interpretation of history with the soundtrack to match, you won’t find it here. Instead you will find a bright, independent, and inventive telling of a widely misunderstood person in history. This version of Marie Antoinette has guts and feelings, she’s no cardboard cutout or dry, unidentifiable woman who recklessly and uncaringly sends her country into revolution. I don’t know if it’s true, but I like it.

Rating: 4 ½ stars for such a beautiful feast for the eyes

300 by Frank Miller & 300: The Movie

Two great tastes that taste great together.

I adore Frank Miller. I adore Lena Headly and Gerard Butler. So naturally, I loved both 300 the book and the movie. To be honest, I had a hard time not cheering throughout the entire movie.

Frank Miller’s 300 is a pleasure to look at with the sepia tones and the splashes of red for emphasis. The characters are not well developed, but the story is a short one, so that didn’t disappoint me. It is a rousing story, one that makes you shout “Huzzah!” or “St. Crispin’s Day!”, whichever you prefer.

300: The Movie brings all that testosterone and vibrancy to the screen. What I liked about 300: just about everything. The actors were great; all good actors without huge names so you could really like them just as they are. Gerard Butler plays King Leonidas, and while he looks a bit young, he is still terribly yummy in the role. You just can’t help but want to follow a guy like that into battle. Lena Headly is a wonderful Queen Gorgo, whose part is greatly enhanced from the graphic novel (Thank God!) She is beautiful and fierce, and terribly devoted to Sparta and her family. (I’ll admit to having a bit of a crush on her for a while, and I can’t wait to see her in The Sarah Connor Chronicles.) The other soldiers were good background, with some of them providing some nice side stories. There were plenty of rousing speeches, but the best parts of the movie were the battle scenes. While I know the slow-motion camera action can get a bit overdone, I can’t help but love every little bit of it in 300.

There wasn’t much I didn’t like in 300. Xerxes and the baddie in Sparta were somewhat caricatures to the point where I almost expected the Sparta baddie to pull up his cape Dudley Do-right/Dastardly style, but the overwhelming spectacle of the movie made me forgive that. Plus, there was no NIN song in the movie, and I just loved it in the trailer.

I really felt the movie translated the graphic novel well, keeping the color palette, the feel, and even pulling exact panels for some shots. And that’s all I really expected out of it. It’s not quite as page to screen as Sin City, but it is pretty close in spots. Some might be turned off of it because of all of the testosterone and the battle rousing, but to me it was just what the graphic novel presented.

Rating: 5 Purrs for sheer Spartan perfection!