“I’m going to write a book about EVERYTHING. Everything.
“I don’t know anything about human nature, but that’s not going to stop me as I have a lot of time on my hands.”
This has been a review of Leviathan.
Paintings of the Drive Home
I’m continuing with the “quantity over quality” approach. This is partly inspired by an artist whose work I found on Pinterest, often with the tag “a sunset a day.” He does lovely impressionistic cloud paintings. However, I think he may be putting more time into them than I am.
What I do is, notice the sky around 3 or 4 p.m. when I’m driving myself and my offspring home from school across the windswept Idaho plains, take a mental picture, and do my best to reproduce that mental picture over the next few days.
Both of these are 8×10.
The one on the top is cornfields; the one on the bottom features fields that have been harvested, then harrowed, then planted with something green again before the winter.
Another 8×10: Big Southern Butte in a dirty sky.
Reminder: Purchase The Scattering Trilogy for your Bookworm Loved Ones for Christmas
But don’t take my word for it!
Reviews of The Long Guest
Reviews of The Strange Land
Didn’t like the abuse scenes: https://forums.onlinebookclub.org/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=535834 ,
Didn’t like the tribal rituals scenes: https://forums.onlinebookclub.org/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=552727
Liked the bear scene: https://forums.onlinebookclub.org/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=519407
Liked the whole thing: https://forums.onlinebookclub.org/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=563318 , https://forums.onlinebookclub.org/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=523075
Reviews of The Great Snake
Wanted more relationship development: https://forums.onlinebookclub.org/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=521141
Wanted more cowbell snake: https://forums.onlinebookclub.org/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=533607
“I felt her pain, her joy, and everything in between”: https://forums.onlinebookclub.org/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=545809
William Bradford Be Like
“Here’s a long letter from our pastor in Holland.
“Here are five pages about the financial trouble our supplies broker got us into. This is greatly abridged.
“Here are a few paragraphs about the time we had to break up a commune, but they were so drunk that we were able to just walk up to them and physically take their rifles.”
This has been a review of Of Plymouth Plantation.
Our Week in Pictures II
The arm on the left is my offspring’s elbow as it is supposed to look. The one on the right, as one elbow actually looks.
The Belated Hallowe’en / Horror Tropes Tag
I got this tag from Snapdragon Alcove. I hope it’s OK that I’m posting it after Halloween (life is busy!). Because of the relatively narrow range of my horror consumption, I’m freely mixing movies and books.
Pick your favorite example of a …
Zombie apocalypse
The Book of Eli (a movie)
Not exactly zombies, but as I recall, there is an older couple that seems normal, but then you find out they have some sort of neurological disease from having eaten human flesh to survive. Creepy.
Also, I love the characters Denzel Washington usually plays, and this is no exception. I like my apocalyptic movies to be somewhat uplifting, and this fits the bill.
Vampire
The Unwilling, by C. David Belt (a book). Cheating a little, ‘cause I recently reviewed it here. This one made me cry, because there is a child vampire who wants to be “a real boy.”
Haunted house
I guess I don’t read many haunted house books, because Monster House is the only one I can think of. It is just as sad as ghost stories usually are.
Psychological thriller
Fractured and Shutter Island (both movies). I was very angry with both of these movies, but Fractured probably made me angrier.
Creepy doll
The Collision series, by Rich Colburn. So far, it has only two volumes: The Resolve of Immortal Flesh and The Formulacrum. But The Formulacrum ended on a literal cliffhanger, so that means Colburn owes us another one.
Neither of these books is exclusively about creepy dolls, but one very memorable creepy doll is featured … and that’s just about the only book I have ever read with a creepy doll.
Monster
Beowulf, duh.
And, in case you are not up to speed on this, Grendel is a t-rex. But there are plenty of other monsters in this how-to-defeat-monsters book, including the sea monsters Beowulf encounters while swimming in the North Sea, and Grendel’s mother, who appears to be some sort of octopus.
Comedy-horror
The Tremors franchise. It is the best. Extreme gross-outs, but also extreme humor. Survivalist Ed really steals the show.
Teen Horror
Stranger Things. I will die on this hill.
The series starts out where the kids are about twelve and it more resembles E.T. or The Goonies, but the events cover several years and we see the kids discovering the opposite sex, feeling left out as they grow up at different rates, dealing with problems with their parents and problems involving finding a career and their place in the world. Their lives have all the teen challenges, plus the ghosts and demonic creatures and stuff to deal with. And yes, there are a few make-out scenes that it would be nice if we could skip. I will also say that the series seems to be equally sensitive to the experiences of teen boys and girls.
Some people think the episodes are too long and detailed, but that’s the point. They work in a lot of human drama in addition to the scary stuff, and I am here for it.
Demonic possession
Perelandra and That Hideous Strength by C.S. Lewis both feature possession that gets more terrifying the longer you think about it.
In Perelandra, the possessed man gets to come out and speak instead of the demon once in a while, and this gives a more evocative glimpse into his mind than we might prefer.
In That Hideous Strength, the people that are serving the demons get dehumanized to an even greater extent, and we see the beginning of this dehumanization process happen to one of the main characters. There is also a memorable scene where one of the villains, who up until now has been the most formidable because of his intelligence, wants to put a stop to something, but “he could not think of any words.” This moment of aphasia shows us how close his mind is to total disintegration.
Science fiction
Science fiction reliably pulls towards horror, for obvious reasons. Human nature doesn’t mix well with dimensional portals … or genetic engineering … or time travel.
That second image is from a movie called Paradox. It turns out there are quite a few of those, but this one involves time travel being exploited by a bitter coworker to go postal, and even though the team has an awful lot of information, they can’t figure out what is happening quickly enough.
Life in America: Unrhymed Sketches
I love the little houses:
trailer,
double-wide,
double-long,
saltbox,
shotgun shack,
ranch,
unconverted farmhouse.
Dogs that come out and terrify you
from behind a far too flimsy fence.
***
Castor oil, ginger,
apple cider vinegar,
put half an onion on a sill and see how it behaves.
Honey’s good for cough and cold,
pine-needle for the hard-core.
Lots of garlic helps to chase the stomach bugs away.
Epsom salts and menthol rub,
basil, thyme, and black cohosh.
Herbs that our great-grandmothers
used to keep in stash.
Tinctures, teas, and poultices,
but we don’t say Hail Marys ’cause
we’re Protestants.
***
At first, it will seem intrusive.
If outdoors, you’ll want to stop what you are doing and watch it glide by,
noting its three or four engines,
its well-executed graffiti,
its rhythmic clicks.
If indoors, you’ll want to stop speaking
when you feel its rumble.
But after a while, it will become part of the necessary sounds of life:
water running, the heat kicking on, children singing, your own breathing,
and the train.
This process will take less time than you expect.
In weeks, not months,
you will feel uneasy if it does not come on time:
your motherland’s lullabye
rocking you through your days.
Feeling Comely
Might go to the Meeting House and sit in silence on the women’s side after a time.
Bears! The Blondes Have More Fun Edition
The following article appeared in my local hometown newspaper a few weeks ago. It has everything you could possibly want in a bear story:
Recently a local family had the experience of finding a bear in the woods. Those woods happened to be on the [redacted] property four miles north of [town name]. Apparently she sniffed out the bee hives near the [family name] place and found herself in the trees.
After observing the trails cams, [the family] found her among the trees sitting on the ground and called Fish and Game to come take her to a safe place so she would not be killed. The Fish and Game were able to dart her as she was sitting on the ground. She apparently was not aggressive and seemed content where she was.
They said according to the biologist she was an older black bear by the wear on her teeth. They thought at first she may have been a grizzly cub because of her unusual blond coloring … The biologist was also excited about the coloring of her fur because it was so blonde, being a black bear.
The Fish and Game have no idea where she may have come from, but speculated over by Sun Valley, and it is not uncommon to have bears on the desert when the water becomes scarce in the mountains.
The bear was tranquilized and put in a transport cage and taken away, but not before everyone involved had a photo-op with the “sleeping bear.” The bear was transported to the Bear Lake area.
Our hometown paper, vol. 27
Really, I can’t add anything to this. The last line says it all.
Just Some Amazing Writing
Being nineteen didn’t sit right with Cal. He thought it did at the time, when he was running wild in Chicago, giddy on freedom, working as a bouncer at skeevy clubs and playing house with Donna in a fourth-floor walkup with no air-conditioning. It was only a few years later, when they found out Alyssa was on the way, that he realized running wild never had suited him. It had been a lot of fun, but deep down, so deep that he’d never spotted it there, Cal yearned after getting his feet on the ground and doing right by someone.
The Searcher, by Tana French, pp. 163 – 164
Out of Babel Books 