Book: “The Space Between the Stars” by Anne Corlett
Publishing Info: Pan Macmillan , June 2017
Where Did I Get this Book: the library!
Book Description: All Jamie Allenby ever wanted was space. Even though she wasn’t forced to emigrate from Earth, she willingly left the overpopulated, claustrophobic planet. And when a long relationship devolved into silence and suffocating sadness, she found work on a frontier world on the edges of civilization. Then the virus hit…
Now Jamie finds herself dreadfully alone, with all that’s left of the dead. Until a garbled message from Earth gives her hope that someone from her past might still be alive.
Soon Jamie finds other survivors, and their ragtag group will travel through the vast reaches of space, drawn to the promise of a new beginning on Earth. But their dream will pit them against those desperately clinging to the old ways. And Jamie’s own journey home will help her close the distance between who she has become and who she is meant to be…
Review: It’s been a while since I’ve read and reviewed a sci-fi novel for the blog, so when I was looking for what to pick up next, I decided that now was a good time to fit this book into the reading list. Unfortunately, what I got was less sci-fi and more interpersonal drama, of the kind that I don’t particularly enjoy.
Looking at the book description, there were several things that intrigued me with this story. Not only is this set on another world in a time when space exploration and colonization is fairly common place, but the author throws in a nice humanity-ending virus to the works. I love survival stories, the more extreme the better. And how do you get more “out there” than strand your protagonist on a world light-years away, potentially the only one alive on this planet and with no way of contacting Earth? So, you see, the premise was awesome.
And the story starts out upholding this premise. We jump right into the action with Jamie waking up, alone, sick and confused. Even more creepy, the disease that she has survived kills its victims by essentially incinerating them. All around her is floating the dust of her peers, all that remains of them. Unfortunately, the story goes off the rails almost right away.
In only a matter of pages Jamie meets up with a few other survivors on her planet, something that seems statistically bizarre. There is a lot of detail about the rates of survival at the beginning to really show how deadly this disease was supposed to be, but then it’s immediately undercut by the fact that Jaime finds others quickly and easily. They all simply meet up in town. And, look at that, in a few days they also get a call from a passing ship and they meet up with a handful of other survivors and are off the planet in only a few chapters. So, nope on the “sole survivor” bit of this story!
Things like this always just frustrate the hell out of me. Part of it was a marketing failure for this book. My expectations weren’t properly managed so I went in expecting one thing and got another. But then the author also actively misleads readers in the first few pages with all the discussion about how deadly this virus is and the fear that Jamie lives with for the first few days (few pages) when she thinks she’s alone and the odds aren’t in her favor. But, of course, the odds mean nothing.
From here, the story shows its cards for what the author was really wanting to write: a character study for Jamie as she deals with the past trauma of her divorce and a miscarriage (all happening several years ago and which she was fleeing when she moved to a planet on the edge of the galaxy). And, while this isn’t the type of story that I typically enjoy, I might have been able to get on board if Jamie herself hadn’t been such an incredibly unlikable character.
She spends much of her time feelings sorry for herself, contradicting her own thought processes, and going off on the other survivors around her. The plot conveniences are sprinkled throughout to further fan the flames of her inner struggles. The other characters who surround her are perfectly primed to present Jamie with worldviews and opinions that challenge her own. But none of this leads to any deeper reflection on being the survivors in a depleted universe, but instead present opportunities for Jamie to come across as judgemental and hypocritical. And most of all, self-involved. She’s the main character, so yes the story is her story. But this is a main character who thinks she’s the main character or something. It’s all about her feelings, her pain, her loss, all the time.
Beyond this, her decisions and opinions were all over the place. In one chapter she’s condemning a character for not doing something, and in the next she’s getting in their face for doing that same thing and risking them all. These types of inconsistencies only made Jamie a harder character with whom to sympathize.
It became abundantly clear that the author was wanting to write a “women’s fiction” book and added space because…? I’m not sure? This book could have taken place on any location on Earth, separated by a continent or something, and Jaime could have gone through the same emotional path elsewhere. The fact that there were sci-fi moments sprinkled here and there only made it more challenging when the book again dove into Jamie’s inner arc.
There were a few interesting side characters who accompanied Jamie on this journey, but, again, all they did was make me wish to follow their stories instead of the one I had. So, in conclusion, this book mostly did a good job making me wish it was a completely different book. One that more closely followed the book description and marketing it was given (sci-fi, survival story) and that followed a more relatable and sympathetic main character. Perhaps for fans of more contemporary reads, women’s fiction in particular, this may be more of a hit. But for fans of sci-fi, beware. You’re mostly getting “whining in space” with this one.
Rating 5: Jamie may be one of the few survivors in this universe, but she wasn’t one I cared about.
Book: “Feral Youth” by Shaun David Hutchinson (Ed.)
Publishing Info: Simon Pulse, September 2017
Where Did I Get This Book: The library!
Book Description: At Zeppelin Bend, an outdoor education program designed to teach troubled youth the value of hard work, cooperation, and compassion, ten teens are left alone in the wild. The teens are a diverse group who come from all walks of life, and they were all sent to Zeppelin Bend as a last chance to get them to turn their lives around. They’ve just spent nearly two weeks learning to survive in the wilderness, and now their instructors have dropped them off eighteen miles from camp with no food, no water, and only their packs, and they’ll have to struggle to overcome their vast differences if they hope to survive.
Inspired by The Canterbury Tales, Feral Youth features characters, each complex and damaged in their own ways, who are enticed to tell a story (or two) with the promise of a cash prize. The stories range from noir-inspired revenge tales to mythological stories of fierce heroines and angry gods. And while few of the stories are claimed to be based in truth, they ultimately reveal more about the teller than the truth ever could.
Review: We have once again found a book that is inspired by “The Canterbury Tales”, the medieval tome that I have not read. Even though I was excited about “Feral Youth”, enough so to highlight in on this blog, I was a bit worried that I would miss key components because of my ignorance. But I still went ahead and picked it up, and I’m glad that my self doubt didn’t discourage me. “Feral Youth” is a strong collection of short stories from a number of talented YA Authors, some of whom I loved before, others of whom I am now interested in pursuing.
As the description says, the premise is that a number of teenagers at a program for troubled youth are on an eighteen mile team building exercise hike, and tell stories to each other to pass the time or provide distraction. Each author of the collection has written a story for each of the teenagers, and created some insight into their personalities through the stories. As a whole the collection was pretty strong, with a few excellent standouts and a couple of clunkers. I’m going to talk about my three favorites here.
“A Ruthless Dame” By Tim Floreen: Cody is a closeted teen in a religious family. He starts up a romance with Mike, the boy next door who is visiting from college, and has a passionate, yet brief, love affair. But after Mike goes radio silent, Cody feels like he’s been used. When Mike comes home the next break, Cody finds out that Mike not only has a girlfriend, but a number of photos of underage boys on his phone… Cody included. Cody decides to follow the footsteps of the femme fatales of his favorite noir movies to get his revenge. This story was a pure revenge fantasy piece, and I greatly enjoyed Cody and his manipulations. While in many ways he has been victimized by Mike, he doesn’t take things lying down, and is brilliant in his scheming. I was cackling as I read this story, but also always had a sense for the tragic existence that Cody is living and why he loses himself in noir films.
“A Cautionary Tale” by Stephanie Kuehn: C.J. Perez has found himself in the role of Student Safety Escort during a college’s Avalon Festival. He meets Hollis, a sophomore who pulls C.J. into an urban legend and conspiracy theory about a serial killer, or something worse, that kills students at the school in cycles. While C.J. is skeptical, he and Hollis find out that things may not always be what they seem. This story was the one that pulled the rug out from under me, plot wise, and I expected nothing less from Stephanie Kuehn. You all know how much I love her books, and this short story is just another triumph of hers. The suspense builds and the behavior of various characters simmers in unsettling ways, so this combined made for an intense and shocking read. Man, I would love it if Kuehn would do flat out horror in her future works, because this story shows that not only could she pull it off, she could create something fabulous.
“Self Portrait” by Brandy Colbert: When Sunday moves to a new town and new school, she befriends Michah and Eli, two brothers. Michah and Eli have a tumultuous relationship, and Sunday finds herself in the middle of their low simmering feud. But she never could have imagined that she would find herself betrayed so fiercely by one of them. Colbert was the other author that I was very excited for, and “Self Portrait” didn’t disappoint. I feel like Colbert knows how to build up the feel of YA melodrama without ever crossing into the ridiculous, and Sunday’s story continues that theme. It was one of the quieter stories in this book, but it still packed a real emotional punch at the end of it.
The stories are strung together through interactions between the characters on the camping trip, and it was interesting to try and parse out who were reliable narrators and unreliable ones based on those moments. But all in all, it ultimately doesn’t matter if these stories are ‘true’, at least within the context of the story. The point is that they shed insight into those telling it, and with all these different authors telling these different stories it does feel like a group of unique individuals. If I missed anything because of my lack of knowledge of “The Canterbury Tales”, I didn’t notice it. It stood on it’s own two feet well.
“Feral Youth” was an enjoyable collection of short stories that showcases some good writers. If you want a taste of some of these authors, this is the place to start!
Rating 8: A solid collection of stories with a few serious stand outs, “Feral Youth” is a must read for fans of short stories collections with a twist!
Publishing Info: Grand Central Publishing, June 1997
Where Did I Get this Book: audiobook from the library!
Book Description: A masked stranger offers to reveal an Egyptian queen’s last tomb… and Amelia Peabody Emerson and her irascible archaeologist husband are intrigued, to say the least. When the guide mysteriously disappears before he tells his secret, the Emersons sail to Thebes to follow his trail, helped – and hampered – by their teenaged son, Ramses, and beautiful ward, Nefret. Before the sands of time shift very far, all will be risking their lives foiling murderers, kidnappers, grave robbers, and ancient curses. And the Hippopotamus Pool? It’s a legend of war and wits that Amelia is translating, one that alerts her to a hippo of a different type – a nefarious, overweight art dealer who may become her next archenemy!
Review: This is the most privileged-person reading problem ever: how do I continue to find creative ways of praising these books and this author without just sinking into repetitive gushing?? It’s problem, people.
Let’s just say that the strengths of this series are just as present in this book as they have been in the many before it. Amelia is ever the entertaining heroine (I’ve been listening to the audiobook version for the past several books, and it’s almost impossible now to separate the Amelia of the page and the Amelia that is brought to life with Barbara Rosenblatt’s expert and canny reading of her). Emerson, an excellent romantic hero, foibles and all. A mystery, complicated and full of new suspects. Villains, some old and some new.
But I will focus on a few of the newer bits of this story. For one, while there is comfort in the stability of Amelia, Emerson, and their relationship, it’s a nice balance to have it contrasted with the ever-evolving lives of their children. Ramses and Nefret are now teenagers, Ramses on the young teen side and Nefret right smack in the middle, an especially complicated age for a young woman of fortune.
For his part, Ramses is beginning to evolve his relationship from child-with-adults to putting out feelers establishing himself as an independent entity. His changing relationship with his parents is perfectly illustrated in small changes (calling them “mother and father” rather than “mama and papa”). But also comes into play in larger ways as he pushes for independence and respect. However, Ramses’s relationship with them is firmly bound in familial love and respect. So these struggles often present themselves instead in strained interactions with his “sister” Nefret.
The two are at a perfect point for frustration. Sixteen and fourteen are around the exact ages when two years represents a world of difference and both the older and younger sibling struggle. In this case, it is all the more challenging in the fact that while Nefret has been adopted by the Emersons, she is not their natural born daughter.
Peters strikes the perfect balance in this sibling relationship. They bicker and argue like all the best siblings, but there is also a clear underlying tension in the knowledge of their non-typical family relationship. Further, Nefret is still adjusting to life in British Society, with all of the ridiculous rules and impositions that come with it. Yes, she’s growing up with a “mother” who shirks much of this (lucky for Nefret!), but society itself has a way of pushing back, this time in the form of “suitors.”
I particularly loved Amelia’s attempts to parent a young daughter. She went from having one child, a very non-typical boy, at that. To having a pre-teen daughter who came with the added complications of being smart, headstrong, beautiful, and an heiress. But like anything, Amelia is up to the task. Theirs is a very nice example of female relationships, both maternal and friendly.
As I said, most of these stories come with the addition of new characters and you never quite know which ones are “one offs” or which are there to stay. We had Nefret introduced recently, but Peters wasn’t done there! Here we have the addition of David, a young boy (around Ramses’s age) who is loosely related to Abdullah, but through various mishaps has lead a life estranged from his family and raised to a life of crime. This will not do, of course! Particularly since Ramses forms a close, brotherly bond with David throughout this book. I feel confident that David is a character that is here to stay, and I’m excited to see what role he falls into in this strange family.
Beyond characters, this story is one of the first in a while to truly delve into a major dig, this time with the discovery of a queen’s tomb. While Egyptology is always important to these stories, there are varying degrees in each. I very much enjoyed having another mystery focused so closely on a dig.
Lastly, this book tackles some difficult topics with the sudden death of Evelyn and Walter’s infant child. Through Amelia’s eyes we see Evelyn’s struggle with this loss, the strain that is put on her and Walter’s marriage, and the process of living through grief. This also leads to Evelyn and Walter playing a much larger role in this book than they have for quite a long time. While the reason was tragic, I loved having these two characters back in a book. Evelyn especially. Not only does Amelia’s relationship with her lead to a deeper exploration of loss and depression, but Evelyn also rises through it into a role that was surprising and fun to read. Walter, on the other hand, had moments where I wanted to slap him upside his head. I can’t quite remember whether he always had some of the tendencies he put on display in this book, or whether this is evidence of Peters evolving his character over time and through experience. Don’t get he wrong, however, I still finished the book enjoying his character.
Well, hopefully I managed to cover some new ground in my praise of this book! But really, I’ll take the challenge of tricky reviews for the assurance of enjoyable novels any day. For fans of the Amelia Peabody mysteries, this is yet another to check out!
Rating 8: Yet another excellent story. This one tackles some tough issues, but handles them well and introduces another (hopefully!) main character.
Book: “Double Date” (Fear Street #23) by R.L. Stine
Publishing Info: Simon Pulse, 1994
Where Did I Get This Book: Ebook from the library!
Book Description:No girl in her right mind would say no to a date with Bobby Newkirk. Not with those great looks, that easy charm, and the awesome way he plays the guitar. Of course, some people think he’s just a bit conceited. But when it comes to breaking hearts, that hasn’t slowed Bobby down one bit.
At least, not until the beautiful Wade twins move to Shadyside. And Bobby brags to his friends that they’ll both fall for him.
And they do. Too bad for Bobby the twins never learned to share. One of them is jealous, murderously jealous. Is it quiet, shy Bree? Or bold, sexy Samantha? Bobby had better figure it out…or his double fun will turn to double terror.
Had I Read It Before: No.
The Plot: BUCKLE UP FOLKS. THIS IS THE LONGEST ONE YET!! So for this book we meet Bobby Newkirk, a festering shithead of a protagonist. Bobby likes to date girls as long as they entertain him, then he will toss them aside like a wadded up tissue and never look back. When we meet him he’s pressing a skinny redhead named Ronnie up against her locker, kissing her and teasing her. She treats him like a rapscallion up for some fun, but I think he’s sketch as hell right out the gate. He muses in his head about how she’s not the prettiest girl he’s been with, but she’s the last cheerleader on the cheer squad that he has yet to hook up with. As the go their separate ways, her to cheer practice and him to his garage band practice, he says that maybe he’ll call her, but it’s pretty clear he probably won’t. He runs into his acquaintances Markie and Jerry, and confirms that he dumped Cari Taylor, and ribs Jerry for having to work at McDonalds. Bobby wouldn’t know about that, because he’s rich. Oh great, more North Hills jerks. Then, ANOTHER cheerleader Kimmy Bass turns the corner and yells at him for standing her up the night before. He tells her he only did it because he got a better offer. Piece of work, this Bobby. Kimmy rightfully storms away. We then meet Bobby’s bandmates as he saunters into practice, late. There’s Arnie, the drummer, Paul, the keyboardist, and Bobby, the lead guitar. Apparently their band is called Bad to the Bone. After some gross chit chat about the girls that Bobby uses and tosses aside, Paul (the only one who is actually committed to the band and the only one concerned about their gig that Friday) makes an off the cuff remark about how surprised he his that Bobby didn’t try to date them both at the same time.
AND THAT is where the Wade Twins enter, Bree and Samantha. They just moved to Shadyside the previous year, and they are the most beautiful girls in school. They are looking for a teacher, but the guys tell them that he’s not there, so they go on their way. Bobby and Arnie make some objectifying remarks, and then Bobby decides that he is going to ask both of them out! Paul thinks that it can’t be done, but Bobby is totally willing to try. After practice wraps up, Melanie comes looking for Arnie. Melanie is Arnie’s girlfriend, but she used to date Bobby, but Bobby dumped her, natch. And he thinks that if she lost some weight he’d probably ask her out again. THIS. FUCKING. GUY. They then hear the Wade Twins in the hallway, and Bobby heads off to chat them up. Melanie tells him not to do it (at some point Arnie told her and we didn’t notice), but he blows her warning off. He goes in the hall and meets with Bree, who is quiet and demure. After chatting a bit, he asks her to come to the band’s show at the Mill that Friday night. She accepts, and Bobby thinks that’s one down.
Arnie stops by Bobby’s place after dinner and congratulates him on his skeezery, calling him “The Man” at Bobby’s behest. Bobby decides to take that moment to call Samantha and ask her out for Saturday. Samantha answers, and Bobby starts chatting HER up. Samantha says that she and Bree were just talking about him, and is suspicious when he says he wants to talk to her. He asks her out for Saturday night, and she reminds him that he had just asked Bree out for Friday, and then asks if it’s a dare or something. He says no, he’s just been thinking about her a lot, and thought that she’d like to go out with him too. She asks why he thinks she’d do that to Bree, and he says it’s because she’s just dying to go out with him. She calls him conceited, but accepts the date. He says that it has to be their secret, and she agrees. They hang up, and Bobby whoops and hollers with Arnie about how scummy this all is. Bobby is sure Samantha won’t tell because she’s so outgoing and cool. Arnie wonders why Melanie was so against this that she warned him about the Wade Twins, but Bobby doesn’t care.
Bree goes to Bobby’s show at The Mill, and Bobby hot dogs on stage and struts like he’s Mick Fucking Jagger or something. After the set he meets up with Bree on the dance floor and they dance around, but then Bree says she would like to go somewhere quieter. As they’re leaving they run into Paul, who chastises Bobby for taking the attention away from the rest of the band, but Bobby don’t care. He looks back at the dance floor and thinks that Melanie sure looks fat as she dances with Arnie. Christ. He and Bree go driving around Shadyside, and he talks mostly about himself since Bree is so quiet. He even talks about a science experiment he’s doing with two honest to goodness monkeys that his uncle, who imports animals to zoos. Oh, okay. Because it’s totally ethical to give your dumbshit nephew two monkeys he can do a diet experiment on. Anyway, he drives her home and they kiss for awhile. Bree asks him if he wants to hang out again the next night, but NO CAN DO, as he has a hot date with Samantha. He makes an excuse and they say their goodbyes with more kissing.
The next day Bobby meets Samantha at the Mall. When they walk up to each other she pretends that she sees Bree, giving him a jolt, but HA, just kidding! Samantha flip flops between thinking it’s cool that they’re sneaking around, to feeling weird about it, but she also doesn’t beat around the bush and tells him she’s heard of his whorish ways. They go into the Gold Barn, and Samantha starts trying on earrings willy nilly. The clerk asks that she not do that anymore, and she politely agrees. She then asks Bobby if he likes excitement….. and bolts for the door with the earrings in her ears! Bobby is shocked that she’s shoplifting, and then before they know it they’re being chased through the mall by the clerk! They manage to lose their pursuers, and have a moment where a security guard approaches them, but only because they were running. So they get away with it, scott free. ‘Okay, kind of weird, but also sexy,’ were no doubt the thoughts going through Bobby’s mind. As they get to his car Samantha says that she wants to drive, and she drives his car like a speed demon up to River Ridge, Shadyside’s make out point. They start kissing, and Samantha asks if he likes her better than Bree. He says sure he does. She tells him that there’s a way to tell them apart, but she’ll show him later, but then goes on to say to be careful with Bree because she’s ‘fragile’.
Some time later Bobby is heading to band practice. But before that, he detours to harass Kimmy some more, pulling her hair and asking what she’s doing on Saturday, only to tell her to take a bath. He runs into Arnie and Melanie in the bandroom (Paul is there too but pissed, apparently is thinking of quitting the band because Bobby is such a fuck), and Melanie asks if he’s still trying to juggle the Wade Twins. He brags about how Samantha was over for a study date and Bree showed up, but Samantha snuck out back, and how he has them both crazy for him. Melanie asks him what if Bree finds out and it causes a rift between sisters, but Bobby says that that’s just how it is. That night in his room, he gets a strange phone call, someone saying that two’s company, three’s a crowd, and that he’ll pay. It freaks him out for a bit, because who could do this? Turns out, though, it is just Arnie messing with him and telling him that Melanie is mad. Bobby implies that she’s still hung up on him, but hangs up when the doorbell rings. It’s Bree! She walks into the house, and he thinks that maybe he’s busted. Bree says that Samantha is seeing someone, but she won’t tell her who and it’s upsetting her. Bobby assures her that he’ll ask around, and kisses her goodbye, then struts around the house totally pleased that he’s manipulating her so perfectly. Then SAMANTHA calls him and tells him Bree is on the way, and that she suspects something. He assures her that he pulled it off, and she says that he needs to dump her right away because she’s sick of sharing him, and because if Bree finds out there’s not telling what she’ll do. Bobby isn’t ready to break it off yet.
On their usual date to the mall, Samantha insists on driving Bobby’s car. She drives like a lunatic, swerving into traffic and out of it and Bobby is convinced that they are going to die a fiery death. They get to the mall though, and she confides she doesn’t even have her license.
Over a slice at Pete’s Pizza, she asks him if he broke up with Bree while at Suki Thomas’s party the night before (YEAH SUKI MY GIRL!!!). He doesn’t really answer the question, but she seems satisfied when he assures her that she’s more fun than Bree. Eventually they make their way to the jewelry store again, and this time she dares Bobby to steal a charm bracelet. When she calls him a wimp, he says that he absolutely is not a wimp and lifts the case…. only for ALL the alarms to go off. But they make a clean getaway again, and Samantha accepts the bracelet for herself. Their merriment is short lived, however, as they are soon face to face with Bree!!! And Samantha looks absolutely terrified of her. Bobby says that they were just talking about her, and Samantha makes up some excuse about shopping and running into Bobby. Bree seems mollified, and both girls run off together, leaving Bobby in the lurch. Which irks him. But he’s still intrigued by them, and is convinced that he deserves a trophy for having them ‘both at once’. When he gets to his car in the parking lot, he finds that someone slashed some of his tires. EAT IT, CREEP. By coincidence (but Bobby doesn’t think so!), Melanie drives by, and offers to give him a lift. He’s certain that she has to be the one who did this because she’s jealous.
On the way to band practice that week, Bobby has decided that there’s no way that Melanie did it. For one, she does seem happy with Arnie, but for more importantly, there’s no way that a girl could slash his tires! On the way to band practice, he tries to catch up with Bree, but lost her as she went to chorus practice. Instead he finds Samantha, who pulls him into the science room. They kiss a bit, and she shows him the way to tell her and Bree apart: a blue butterfly tattoo on her shoulder. She then demands that he drop Bree because he doesn’t know her like she does. And boy is she adamant. She then shows him her science project: cannibal ants from New Zealand!!!
Yes, because NEW ZEALAND, the country of kiwis and sheep, would TOTALLY have those. (source)
At their rock show some times later, Bobby is being his usual boorish self, hot dogging and blocking Paul as he performs. But then, when he strums his guitar, he is suddenly bowled over by and electric shock! When he comes to, he is told that his amp wire was cut. He sees both Melanie and Kimmy looking down at him, concerned. He starts to wonder if someone is trying to kill him. WHen he gets home he calls Samantha, asking her if Bree could have done this. Samantha says she doesn’t think so, but then, she could be capable of ANYTHING. Sadly for Bobby, he turns around and sees Bree in his doorway. He hangs up and she says that she was SO SCARED. He hugs her, but wonders if she’s being sincere…
Bobby meets Arnie for lunch at a diner, and tells him that he wants to quit the band. He’s convinced that someone is trying to kill him, but Arnie says there wasn’t enough power in the amp to do that. Soon Melanie meets them, and Arnie goes to check in with his parents. Melanie asks Bobby if he’s okay, and says that maybe this is a sign that he needs to stop dating the Wade Twins. He asks her what SHE knows about it, and accuses her of being jealous and wanting him back. He then nuzzles up against her because YUCK! She assures him that no, she’s quite happy with Arnie, and shoves him off. Bobby storms off. He eventually meets Samantha a few blocks from her house, and they go driving together. She tells him that Bree is out with their mother. He asks her if Bree has said anything to him about his guitar, and she gets defensive, saying no, and that they don’t talk much anymore. The arm of her shirt falls to the side, and Bobby notices that there isn’t a butterfly tattoo there… THIS ISN’T SAMANTHA!!! He asks where her tattoo is, but she doesn’t hear him over the music. He pulls over and he asks if she’s Bree. She gets defensive, and says that he KNOWS Bree doesn’t know so how could she be? He asks abotu the tattoo on her shoulder, and she says that she doesn’t HAVE a tattoo. She then demands that he take her home because she’s upset him. He complies.
The next day at school he approaches both twins, but they blow him off. He goes to his locker, but sees a note on it that says ‘THIS IS YOU INSIDE’. He opens his locker, and sees the severed head of one of this monkeys!! He pukes his guts out, and Arnie comes to see what’s going on. He looks in the locker, and shows Bobby the monkey head is fake. But someone is definitely messing with him. Bobby is getting really scared now.
Before his date with Bree that weekend, Samantha demanded that he take her out somewhere so they could talk. She says that she asked him to dump Bree weeks ago, and now it may be too late. She is tired of waiting, and demands that they kill Bree together. Bobby is shocked, but she insists that they do this because she wants him all to herself. He says he will to placate her… but then he notices that there is a butterfly tattoo on her shoulder!!!! He asks her where it went in the car, and she has no idea what he’s talking about. She then tells him she wants to take him to a ‘special place’. While she drives he starts to wonder if maybe SAMANTHA is behind all of this! She drives them to an isolated cabin, She says that they can do the deed here, it’s her family cabin, and no one will ever know. Bobby decides that he has to warn Bree.
He calls Bree when he gets home, and says they have to get together right away. She says he has to wait until their official date because she’s busy, and hangs up. He waits until their date, and drives her away from her house, intending to tell her what Samantha plans to do. When he does, Bree has her own confession: she and Samantha aren’t twins. There is a triplet named Jennilynn who was sent away because of her violent tendencies towards the other two. She was so jealous of Bree and Samantha that she locked them in their room and set the house on fire. Luckily their father got home in time to save them, and they got Jennilynn therapy and sent her to live with relatives. She thinks it must be Jennilynn who wanted her dead, because she’s jealous that Bree has a boyfriend. She tells him that the way to tell it’s Jennilynn is the BLUE BUTTERFLY TATTOO ON HER SHOULDER!!!!!
Well after Bobby drops her off, he goes to tell Arnie about this (even though he promised not to tell anyone). Melanie happens to be there too, and Bobby tells them both, and demands if Melanie knew since she’s known the Wade Twins so long. She says that she ‘can’t say’ because she promised, and she and Arnie got to the movies. Bobby decides to dump both twins because he never bargained for a crazy triplet. The next day he meets with Samantha, who asks him why her sister was so upset when he dropped her off. He says that she told him about Jennilynn… And then Samantha says that THERE IS NO JENNILYNN, this is a sign that Bree is REALLY OFF HER ROCKER. She says that she has to go home and tell her parents…. He soon asks where her tattoo is. She tells him that she has no tattoo, and he says that she showed it to him in the science lab. She says that never happened and he needs to get a grip.
That night Bobby is at home when his phone rings. The caller identifies herself as Jennilynn, and demands to know why he was meeting with Bree at the Mall! He says it was Samantha, not Bree, and she says that she knows her own sister, and when are they going to KILL HER?
SO THE NEXT DAY he still hasn’t called Samantha or Bree or WHOEVER to ask about this, and Samantha drives up to his house in her convertible. He knows it’s her because she’s dressed very boldly. He gets in the car with her, and says that Jennilynn called him. She says that it HAS to be Bree because Jennilynn isn’t real. She says they’ll talk more when they get to the cabin. He then realizes that her shoulder HAS A TATTOO. He points this out, she says duh, he says that she didn’t have it at the mall yesterday, and she says she wasn’t at the mall yesterday, what is his problem? He asks if she’s always had it, and she says she showed him in the science lab!
They get to the cabin and she says that she has Bree’s murder all planned out. They get out of the car, and she hits HIM over the head with a bottle.
When Bobby wakes up, he realizes he’s tied to a chair, stripped to his tee shirt and boxers. He sees Samantha by a roaring fire in the fireplace, and she says that she’s Jennilynn. He says there IS no Jennilyn, and she freaks. OF COURSE THEY SAID SHE WASN’T REAL!! But she’s the one with the tattoo, and she was the one in the science lab! He begs that she let him go, and she says that her sisters can’t be happy, so they both have to lose him. She then dumps a jar of honey on his head, and THAT is when he sees the New Zealand Cannibal Ants. I AM SCREAMING, this is amazing. She takes their container’s lid off, and the ants storm forth, crawling all over him and starting to bite. She tells him to scream, because no one will hear him. She leaves him behind to his apparent doom. He freaks and falls over as the ants crawl all over him, but the tie comes loose due to the honey, and he’s able to get free. He runs out of the house, only to see headlights. He thinks that it might be Jennilynn, but no… It’s Melanie! He tells her what happened and she tells him to get in, they’ll go get help. She says that she wasn’t looking for him, though, she was trying to help Samantha and Bree, as someone stole their convertible and they thought it was Jessilynn. She admits that she knew the whole time, and he says they have to warn them. So they drive to their house….
WELL, when they arrive, he bursts into the house to warn them…. And sees that Bree, Samantha, Kimmy, Ronnie, and a few other girls are there. Mr Wade asks who he is and what he’s doing there. Bobby says that Jennilynn kidnapped him…. To which Mr. Wade says ‘who?’ He then says that his triplet daughter kidnapped him. Mr. Wade says there is no third sister. BUT THE CANNIBAL ANTS. “There is no such thing as cannibal ants.” Also, they don’t own a cabin. Bobby turns to Melanie for confirmation, and she says she has no idea what he’s talking about. BUT THE ONE WITH THE TATTOO-, to which Mr. Wade says they BETTER NOT HAVE TATTOOS. And they don’t. Mr Wade tells Bobby to go home and leaves to get the phone. Bobby says that the Twins did this to him, and they both say they have NO IDEA what he’s talking about they’ve just been with their friends all night. And then Melanie says that they were all in on this together because he’s a misogynistic pig who thinks he can just treat girls like crap. Humiliated, Bobby runs out.
At school that week Bobby is alone, his band has broken up, and he’s confronted by Bree and Samantha who give him a note that says “Twin sisters don’t have secrets. We both knew everything from the very start.” They wave and leave, and inside the envelope Bobby finds a temporary tattoo of a blue butterfly. THE END.
Body Count: Zilch, and I’m not angry about it because this story was baller.
Romance Rating: 1, because Bobby is a serious douche canoe. But again, that’s just fine given how this all shook out. Maybe I’ll up the ante to a 2 because Melanie and Arnie are happy enough.
Bonkers Rating: 8. I say this because these girls went to crazy lengths to teach this misogynistic creep a lesson, like shop lifting, breaking and entering, and probably what one could call assault.
Fear Street Relevance: 4. The Wade Twins live on Fear Street, and there’s some action in the Fear Woods, but altogether it could have been anywhere. Not as bad as books that take place outside of Shadyside, though.
Silliest End of Chapter Cliffhanger:
“Cut off just below the chin, the monkey head rested in a dark puddle of blood. Its tiny black eyes stared up lifelessly at Bobby. Its mouth frozen open in a silent cry of terror and pain.”
… And it’s just a plastic monkey head meant to freak Bobby out. I’m relieved, but how stupid.
That’s So Dated! Moments: Bobby named his test monkeys Wayne and Garth a la “Wayne’s World”, which is the second “Wayne’s World” reference in these books, so maybe Stine really likes this movie? Also their cover band plays a lot of songs from the 1950s, and I can’t imagine teens of today reaching THAT far back for retro points in the 2010s….
Best Quote:
“‘I warned you,’ she said in a low voice. ‘This is what you get for the way you treated Bree and Samantha, and for the way you treated all of us. You’re not Bobby the Man. You’re Bobby the Total Pig!'”
Conclusion: It was unexpected and kind of refreshing in a lot of ways, so I really have to give “Double Date” the props that it deserves. It shows that Stine was a bit more willing to think outside the box when it came to these books and not necessarily stick to a formula, and I LOVED how it all shook out.
While we do love us some books, believe it not, we do have a life outside of reading. So to highlight our other pop culture interests, on the last Monday of each month, we each will highlight three other “happenings” from the last month. Big events on favorite TV shows, new movies we’ve watched, old movies we’ve “discovered,” etc. Pretty much whatever we found of particular interest outside of the book world during the last month. Share your own favorite things in the comments!
NOTE: Yes, we know that this isn’t the last Monday of the month and this isn’t a scheduling snafu. Instead, we’re working on a super special and exciting post for next Monday that also happens to be Christmas Day, so keep your eyes out for that!
Look, I’m not proud of it, but there’s a good reason for this pick, just hear me out. As Kate knows (as in, this is all she’s heard about for a year now), my husband and I have been finishing the basement of our house. It started as “partially finished” (read: moldy wreck), and over a year we did demo, leveled the floor, added in-floor heat, tiled the floor, re-structured and laid out rooms, built walls, added a reading nook under the stairs, added built-in book shelves, installed a gas fire place, etc etc. And we finally finished this month. And ever since, we’ve been enjoying the new TV room by doing absolutely nothing but veg out in front of it re-living our trauma through the various home makeover shows on HGTV. Seriously, I think we have PTSD, but we can’t stop watching and triggering ourselves. It’s a sick obsession at this point.
Netflix Show: “Glitch”
This seems to be one of those Netflix shows that is largely unknown by people. The first season came out two years ago, and yet somehow I never really looked at this one, and I’m not sure why. Set in Australia, the story rotates around 7 people who have mysteriously risen from the dead. No bells or whistles, they’re just back, and no one knows why. What’s even more strange is that they’re all back from different time periods, some as recently as a few years, some who have been dead for centuries. As the season progresses we learn more and more about each of these character’s lives and the suspense grows around the mystery of their return. I’ve really been enjoying binging this show and part of it is simply the fun of listening to their accents. “Come this way, mate. That’s right, now just take it easy” all in the classic Aussie drawl.
(I WILL RE-POST THIS ONE EVERY YEAR, I DON’T CARE!) Obviously this falls under the category of old movies we’ve “discovered,” but even that’s not true! Let’s be real, I watch this movie EVERY Christmas. It’s a classic for a reason and there is something to love for just about everyone. You have the romance, the friendship, the family, the humor, the villains, the court room action, and the feel goods. Not to mention, the adult in me loves this movie even more now than I did as a kid, with its main message being that even adults should believe in Santa Claus! And the larger message, that whether or not he was actually Santa Claus was beyond the point: Christmas is about loving and caring for everyone, and in that, Mr. Claus was the epitome of Christmas.
So the first season of the darkly hilarious “Search Party” involved a group of New York Hipsters trying to solve the mystery of a missing girl. Dory (Alia Shawkat) is sucked into the disappearance of a college acquaintance named Chantal, and is convinced she met foul play. The season ends with them finding Chantal alive and well and vapid as ever…. except Dory and her friends accidentally killed a man who had been helping them look for her. Season 2 is dealing with the fallout… And yes, it’s still hilarious. My favorite character remains Elliott, played by the snide and snarly John Early, whose mild sociopathy and need for self preservation send him on a disconcerting, but also pretty amusing in some ways, mental breakdown. For those who like their humor dark, give “Search Party” a try, and know that Season 2 is pretty amazing.
I have a fun little obsession with the supernatural and cryptozoology. My favorites include Mothman, El Chupacabra, and The Jersey Devil, and while I’m solidly a skeptic who wants to believe, it’s fun hearing stories about this stuff. Given this interest, I was pretty happy to discover the podcast “Bigfoot Collectors Club”. Hosted by Bryce Johnson and Michael McMillian (one of my faves), this fairly new podcast tackles strange and unnatural events, as well as tales of cryptids, aliens, ghosts, and personal experiences of the unexplained. While I may not be as true blue believing when it comes to Sasquatch, their enthusiasm and earnestness is contagious.
So last year I talked about the movie “Scrooged”, but that is just ONE of MANY Christmas movies that I like to watch this time of year. This year I’m going to talk about the SMASH HIT HOLIDAY CLASSIC “Jingle All The Way”. Is it a good movie? No, not really. But it’s one that my husband and I HAVE to watch every year because 1) We love Arnold Schwarzenegger, 2) it takes place in Minnesota and treats both Minneapolis and St. Paul as interchangeable cities, and 3) Phil Hartman is treasure, may he rest in peace. The plot is flimsy, it feels like one long toy commercial, and it’s super dated and actually pretty problematic in a number of ways, but hey, we can’t deny a cheesy and stupid movie such as this? Put the cookie DOWN!! NOW!!!
What non books have you been enjoying this month? Let us know in the comments!
Publishing Info: Scholastic Paperbacks, August 1998
Where Did I Get this Book: own it!
Book Description:“The Threat” is a new Animorph named David. At first he’s a valuable warrior. But as crucial battle plans unfold, the Animorphs realize they’ve made a terrible mistake.
Narrator: Jake
Plot: Part two of the David trilogy here I come! This is the one where shit gets real.
My feelings about this whole trilogy: It’s the worst! It’s the best! (source)
This books picks up immediately where the last one ends: with half the team falling through the air as cockroaches. The situation is quickly handled by Rachel and Tobias swooping in to grab them from the air. They all land and demorph. But David, notably, doesn’t have a morphing suit yet. Tobias goes to steal some clothes from a near by shop, but Jake warns that they will need to pay them back. David goes on for a bit about how cool their abilities are and how they could probably steal anything they wanted. Jake is unsettled by this, but has to keep moving. They decide to morph gull to continue scouting out the resort. David is all too eager (again unsettling Jake) to morph his eagle and take down a gull for him to morph, but Jake has Tobias to it (not killing it), and both Tobias and David acquire the gull.
In morph, they team begin circling nearer the resort, but all they can see is security, security, and more security. They can’t see a single way in to this place. All of sudden, Jake is hit by an incredible flash of pain. They realize that one of the guards below is using his sunglasses to shock animals flying nearby with low level Dracon beams to scare off any Andalite bandits. Jake tells the others to take the hit, and then fly away like a real gull would. David does, but is sarcastic about thanking Jake when Jake compliments him on doing a good job.
They all head home, with David crashing in Cassie’s barn. At home, Jake finds out that his cousin Saddler (a kid he never got along well with) has been hit by a bike, and they’re not sure he’s going to make it. Jake is appalled to realize that his first thought is how this will affect the mission. Short answer, it plays out well since his parents leave town for a few days, freeing up Jake to focus on the world summit problem. That is until Cassie calls, cryptically warning Jake that “Dave” from “Letterman” is suddenly off the air: David is missing. Jake heads to the barn and meets up with Cassie and Rachel (Marco can’t get away that night), and decides to morph Homer to track David. Rachel, in owl morph, goes to fetch Tobias, but can’t find Ax. Owl!Cassie follows along. Jake is enraged to discover that David used his lion morph briefly, but then morphed eagle. Looking around further, and after asking Cassie what David talked about that evening (whining about missing TV), they discover a Holiday Inn with a broken window. Jake demorphs and barges in. He confronts David and says they don’t break the law or use their morphs for selfish reasons. David is rebellious and tries to tell Jake that sure, he’s the leader on Animorphs missions, but he doesn’t get to tell David what to do in the mean time. Jake knows that there is a line that needs to be drawn.
“No, that’s not what it’s like, David. I don’t want to come down on you, but the way it is is like this: You want to go around using your powers in selfish ways, then we can’t have you around. You’re just a danger to us. And you’re against what we stand for.”
His eyes widened. He rolled off the bed and stood up. “Are you threatening me?”
“No. Just telling you the way it is. We’re the only family you have now, David. The only people you can trust. The only people who can help you. We’re all you have. Deal with it.”
David sullenly goes with him. The next day, Cassie comes up with a plan of attack for getting into the resort. Jake morphs a dragonfly (the one bug they can think of that has good eye sight) and the others morph flea and jump on his back, having to bite into him to hold on as he flies. Tobias carries them as close as he can to the resort and then sends them off. To get in, Jake flies under a bellman’s hat, and manages to sneak into some air vents inside. By this point, they are all running low on time in morph (it took quite a while for the fleas to get on his back as they couldn’t aim their jumps very well). Jake gets caught in a spiderweb at one point, and David begins panicking and demorphing, risky crushing and exposing them all. At the last minute, Jake is able to escape and make it to an empty room that seems strange. They all demorph, right up against the time limit. All but Marco, who only makes it part way. Cassie, the fastest morpher, grabs him and begins calmly talking him through his demorph. He manages to finish it, and cries and hugs Cassie. Everyone is awed by Cassie’s abilities, even Ax, who says he’s always known she has a rare morphing talent, but this is almost miraculous.
They look around and discover they are in a hologramed pillar that contains a mini Yeerk pool. Jake goes out to look around and has to hide under a table when some people enter the room, arguing about the change in plans for the banquet. Jake realizes that the man they saw Visser Three acquire in the book wasn’t the President, but this man, the social coordinator for the White House who is now directing that all world leaders will need to pass behind the column when they go up for their speeches. They all eventually leave, and Jake sneaks back to the column. The only way out seems to be up through the hologram that is being projected through a hole that the Yeerks must have made in the ceiling. But before they go, Ax asks about the Yeerks in the pool. Jake says to leave them.
David volunteers to pull a fire alarm to distract everyone from a bunch of gulls emerging from the roof all together. He manages it, but trips on his way back. The others escape, but Jake rushes out to help David. David hides under a table and begins morphing lion, ignoring Jake emphatically mouthing “no” at him repeatedly. Jake frantically crawls towards him and just manages to grab him before he attacks a Controller who comes in to check the room. The Controllers decide that since the Yeerks in the pool are alive, it couldn’t be Andalites. Jake and David escape as dragonfly and flea once again. As they escape, David wonders aloud which would win, a lion or a tiger?
Back in the barn, they discuss the Yeerks’ plans and Cassie hits the nail on the head, saying that the reason they didn’t simply infest the social planner guy all came down to character. Notably, Visser Three’s character and his need to be on the ground when his biggest success goes down. Jake thinks hard about what Cassie has said about character, evaluating how little he knows about David and going over in his mind some of David’s more questionable choices that hint to the fact that his moral compass isn’t quite pointed the same direction as the rest of theirs.
He mentions the situation with his cousin and is even more unnerved by the strange look of excitement in David’s eyes. Later, he talks to Cassie who also admits that she’s confused by David and that he doesn’t quite seem upset enough about losing his family and home (I mean the guy was whining about TV for Pete’s sake!!).
The group regather with plan in mind to disrupt the Yeerks’ plot to infest the world leaders. That night, they all fly back to the resort. On the way, Cassie, the only one in owl morph with good eyes, thinks she spots the President wandering around near the pool in his shorts. But they fly on. They manage to get into the hologram above the building. From there they can spot three Controllers below them in the hologram pillar. Carrying fishing weights, they dive, release the weights, and knock them out. Rachel, carrying cobra!Marco, swoops down to join them.
They all get in place, ready to nab the passing world leaders and hopefully frantically convince them that the world is being invaded. But as the banquet ends and the speeches start, something is wrong: the world leaders are all walking directly to the stage, not behind the pillar at all. Jake realizes that it’s a trap, a hologram within a hologram, and sure enough Visser Three steps out from the hologram, and drops the facade all together, revealing an army of Hork Bajir surrounding them. Then, of course, he begins to gloat and threaten to kill them, but it doesn’t seem that he’s spotted Marco, still a snake on the ground.
As he continues to threaten to shoot them, David begins to break, calling out that he doesn’t care about the rest of them, and yes, he’ll demoprh. Wolf!Cassie grabs lion!David’s leg to stop him and they begin to fight.
<Rachel! Explain to David that he needs to knock it off!> I snapped. Rachel was on all fours. She half rose up to a sort of bear crouch. She reached out with her left paw and swung hard. She connected with David’s snarling, snapping jaw. David staggered. Cassie released David and jumped back.
Throughout this all, Jake’s been thinking. How did these Hork Bajir get in here when they could barely get in as one little dragonfly? He has Marco slither out, knowing that if he’s wrong, Marco will die. David continues to panic, yelling to Visser Three that they (the Animorphs) are threatening him and running towards him saying he’ll demorph and he’s on his side. Just them, Marco bites a Hork Bajir and it is confirmed that they are all holograms and it’s only Visser Three and a few human Controllers in the room. A fight breaks out, David quickly saying he can get Visser Three since he’s closest. It ends at a standoff after Cassie’s been shot and Ax has his tailblade at Visser Three’s neck. They all retreat, and the Animorphs fly back up and out of the hologram.
On the way home, Jake privately thought speaks with the rest, telling them not to confront David about his cowardice. David is busy telling them how it was all a trick anyways, that he was just trying to get close to Visser Three. As the others agree and nod along with him, he goes even further and starts bragging about how he could have taken Visser Three on his own and how he saved Cassie. (It’s all very intolerable and you can almost feel Jake’s skin crawling as he listens to it). In the end, Jake doesn’t trust David at all, but still wants to give him the benefit of the doubt; after all, he really could have been playing a trick.
They all head home, but after rigging his bed to look like he’s sleeping, he heads back with Tobias and Ax to watch Cassie’s barn. If David stays there, maybe things will be ok. Of course, he doesn’t, leaving in the middle of the night in golden eagle morph. Jake has Tobias follow him while he and Ax morph bird to join. They lose track of them, and as they’re flying Jake becomes more and more worried, unable to contact Tobias. He tells Ax to keep an eye out, not in the sky, but on the ground.
They head to David’s house, thinking that must be where he is heading. Ax wonders what they will do if David is truly joining the other side, and Jake doesn’t know. Outside David’s home, they spot a truck and know that there are likely Hork Bajir stationed there in case David returned. Jake has Ax go to the back of the house and demoprh to provide back up. He heads to David’s room, still in falcon morph. Eagle!David is watching TV (what is with his obsession with TV, btw??), and beside him there is a bloody, brown mass of bird.
Jake is stunned, frantically calling to Tobias and trying to listen for a heart beat. David goes into a whole speech about his having no choice, that the Animorphs were just like cliques at school and would never accept him. He has no life, but now he has this power and he’s going to use it to create one for himself, morphing some other human and making his own way.
<You murdered Tobias because you think this is some stupid school thing?!> I yelled.
David says Tobias was just a bird. And so is Jake right now. He attacks. Jake, more familiar with his morph than David is with his own, manages to escape to under the bed, and then when David begins to demorph to try and grab him out, Jake flies at his face, scratching him up. The commotion draws the Hork Bajir and they both escape out the window. Ax scoops up Jake and runs away. Jake tells Ax to go get Rachel who lives the closest, and takes off after David.
David leads him to roof of the mall and Jake knows what he wants, a showdown between his lion and Jake’s tiger. The two morph and fight, with Jake struggling against the lion’s mane. They end up on the skylight and break through. As they fall, Jake feels the lion bite him on the neck. End scene!
Our Fearless Leader:
This is the perfect book to illustrate the many, many strengths that Jake brings to the team as the leader. He has to make tough calls, he’s the first to realize that they’re being tricked by Visser Three in the resort, and, most importantly, we see how crucial his understanding of his team is to their success.
I knew each of the others. Name any situation. I could tell you exactly how Cassie or Marco or Rachel or Tobias or even Ax would react. But David remained unknown. Unpredictable. He’d been brave, mostly. He’d done what he had to do, mostly. But there had been things . . . the way he’d been in eagle morph and attacked some passing bird for no reason. The way he’d gotten weird in the lion morph. And the thing with breaking into the hotel room. All totally understandable. Nothing really awful. Not given how his entire life had been ripped apart.
Throughout it all, he’s off balance with David, something that isn’t helped at all by David’s erratic behavior and his tendency to get on the wrong side of everyone else on the team (yes, the biggest one is Marco, but there is at least one example of him coming up against the wrong side of every single member of the group in this book).
There are probably two big moments for Jake in this book, leadership-wise. The first is how he handles David’s break-in to the hotel. He knows that coming down on him will change their relationship forever, but Jake knows his role and that protecting the group, and enforcing these rules, is crucial to their survival. He doesn’t really have an option to be soft on David. And, importantly, he walks a fine line with this confrontation. He’s not soft, but he also isn’t needlessly cruel. One can only imagine what Marco or Rachel’s responses would have been. Jake is firm, leaving no room for questions, but he also doesn’t shame David.
And second, after David turns coward, he knows that he must go into damage control mode. By silently contacting all the others, he lays out their game plan, making sure to leave room for the shrinking possibility that David really was trying to play a trick. It’s clear that Jake doesn’t really believe this, but his actions here prove why he’s the leader. He wants to be as optimistic as Cassie, and knows that he can’t be as harsh as Marco and Rachel. So instead, he lays the groundwork to test David’s character by letting him think they all believe him, then gathering a select group to spy on him, knowing that if he leaves the barn, they have real problems.
And then, once David “kills” Tobias, Jake doesn’t hesitate to call in the big guns, sending Ax to go get Rachel in case they need to do something drastic. But Jake doesn’t back away from fighting David himself, either.
Xena, Warrior Princess: Like Marco, Rachel has a hard time not blowing up at David. She immediately comes down on him when he tries to turn himself over to Visser Three, calling him a spineless coward. David later rants about this, trying to say that maybe Rachel is the real coward. As we’ll see in the next book, these two’s power struggle is being set up in this book for a big pay off later. When they’re flying back, Jake has to very firmly hold Rachel back from continuing to come down on David.
And, in one of the most important moments for Rachel in the entire series, likely, Jake tells Ax to get Rachel after he thinks David has killed Tobias. He notes that Rachel lives the closest, but that is clearly only an excuse.
<Yeah. Get Rachel. If David’s killed Tobias, we may have to do a terrible thing, too. Get Rachel.>
Jake knows his team well, and this is the right call. But we, as readers, know how much this decision, and the action of the next book, will ultimately mess up Rachel.
A Hawk’s Life: Tobias is along for most of the missions in this book, but doesn’t have a lot of stand out episodes of his own. At one point early in the book, Tobias makes a comment about gulls being like rats of the sky, and David says that Tobias must be really into this bird stuff and says he’s kind of a “bird racist.” Cassie is quick to jump on this and point out that birds are different species, unlike people. David just answers with a sulky “whatever.” (A good example of David casually saying stuff that gets him on the wrong side of members of the group, this time both Tobias and Cassie).
Later, when he’s raging at Jake in the hotel room about what the long term plan is for him (and how much he misses TV, I’m sure), he mentions that he’s not like Tobias who isn’t human. In some ways, yes, this is factually correct that in his current form, Tobias is better equipped to live out in the woods. But it is also another disturbing little reminder of David’s skewed way of looking at the world and serves as some pretty dark foreshadowing for David’s main justification for becoming a murdering psychopath. Tobias was a bird; it wasn’t “murder” to kill him.
Peace, Love, and Animals: Cassie has some big stuff in this one. Not only does Ax essentially admit that her being able to talk Marco through almost getting stuck in morph is a feat of talent virtually verging on the miraculous, but she comes up with the entire plan to get in to the resort in the first place. This has to be one of her biggest ongoing contributions to the group, her ability to think creatively about the animal kingdom and then neatly pair morphs with the unique challenges of any given mission. Usually, they’re super gross solutions, but hey, that’s out of her control.
“You’re a very disturbing person sometimes, Cassie,” Marco said [in response to her suggestion of the dragonfly-carrying-fleas idea.]
Jake also specifically seeks Cassie out to get her take on David, saying that he trusts her judgement of people more than anyone. This is a fine line between Cassie and Marco. Marco, too, is a good judge of character, but Jake knows that he falls on the suspicious side of things. But Cassie, as seen in a couple of scenes in this book and the first in the trilogy, can also fall on the optimistically naive side of things, too quick to believe David’s lies and wanting to think the best of him. A balance between the two points of view would probably give the clearest answer.
And then, when David tries to give them up to the Yeerks in the resort, Cassie is the quickest to act, biting lion!David’s leg and preventing him from running off. Jake notes this with surprise, but it’s a nice example of Cassie also understanding the stakes involved with this new member and quickly seeing and doing what needs to be done.
The Comic Relief: Early in the book, Jake worries about Marco and David’s interactions. At first he chalks it up to the fact that Marco often doesn’t mix well with new people and that it will probably blow over. But as things progress, he becomes more concerned that it is an issue that he is going to have to deal with. And then, as the book goes on even further, I think he begins to understand that Marco may have simply been on to something the rest of them were late to see (which we, having read Marco’s book, know to be true). Marco misses out on some of the action in this book due to his Dad’s dating life. But that’s mostly the mission to retrieve David from the hotel, and given that even level-headed Jake lost his temper on that one, it’s probably for the best that Marco wasn’t there.
Marco, along with Rachel, also has the hardest time biting his tongue in the end of the book when they’re flying away from the disaster at the resort where David tried to give them up.
E.T./Ax Phone Home: Like Tobias, Ax doesn’t have a lot action in this this book. He’s always there, but no really big moments. Most notably, probably, he’s the one to get up close to Visser Three during their mid-book battle and hold the Animorphs’ side of the stalemate. You have to wonder if Visser Three, somehow, subconsiously respects the threat of an Andalite tailblade more than he does the animal morphs he runs into. It seems that often it comes down to Ax and Visser Three in these moments.
He’s also the one to explain all the hologram technology that the Yeerks use at the resort.
Best (?) Body Horror Moment: When David and Jake are escaping from the resort during their first infiltration attempt, Jake has David bite him on the back and hold on while they both morph together, so that when David turns into a flea, he’ll already be on Jake. This is all to avoid the circus that was the fleas trying to aim their jumps the first time which took quite a bit of time. I mean, yes, this makes a lot of sense. But there’s no getting around the fact that it’s completely disgusting. Even more so because David is a disgusting individual on his own. I mean, if this had been Marco, it would have mostly been pretty funny. But knowing what we do about David…
Couples Watch!: Other than Jake relying on Cassie for insight into David’s character, there really isn’t much couple-wise in this book. I wonder if another reason that Jake calls specifically for Rachel is due to her burgeoning relationship with Tobias, and the fact that he was the one first attacked?
If Only Visser Three had Mustache to Twirl: Cassie is right on about Visser Three’s ego. And, per usual, whenever they’re in a standoff that involves his own life, he backs down. But for the purposes of this arc, David is the true villain and the one more worth discussing.
David is Applegate’s reminder that humanity itself can’t be trusted. We’ve seen it before even with Chapman in “The Andalite Chronicles.” With examples like these, we see why the group of kids that make up the Animorphs are so special. It’s not shocking, maybe, that David doesn’t handle it well; perhaps it’s more shocking that all of these teens have held it together as well as they have. That they all had similar ideas about responsibility, loyalty, and bravery. Sure, they all come down on different sides of some things, but in the end, through David, we see what could have been. He does pretty much everything wrong. He uses his powers for selfish and illegal reasons, breaking into the hotel. He’s needlessly violent, killing the crow earlier. He’s too eager for battle (unlike Rachel who trusts Jake’s judgement), morphing the lion in the resort. He’s a coward who gives up his friends in a moment and breaks under pressure. He’s a liar. He’s a murderer.
And yes, David’s situation is terrible. Jake thinks about it himself early in the book, knowing that they will need to come up with something long term for David. But not every kid would turn into a psychopath. Given his words and actions from the very beginning, David is not a healthy-minded kid even from the start. And once he’s given power, his descent into complete psychopathy is sure and steady. In many ways, David is the worst villain in the entire series. Visser Three can come across as campy and is a comfortable villain: he’s a bad guy doing bad things because that’s what he does. But David, David is a kid, a kid who had the chance to save the world but instead chose to murder the kids who saved him so that he can become powerful using the gifts they gave him. He’s utterly despicable.
Adult Ugly Crying at a Middle Grade Book: In this re-read, knowing how everything turns out, I wasn’t too upset by most of the action in this book. Not sad at least, still very enraged. But I do have clear memories of reading it the first time and being legitimately concerned about Tobias’s death. I never bought that Jake would actually die, as is implied in the last scene of the book. In many ways, he’s almost the main character and as the leader of the group, he’s irreplaceable. But Tobias….I had real fears there. As we’ve seen, Tobias, even with his morphing abilities, is often the first character to get shuffled off to the side. Thinking about it now, I realize that there’s no way Applegate would have killed off Elfangor’s son without resolving that story line somehow, but as a little girl who had a major crush on Tobias and was fully shipping him and Rachel, I was very, very upset by this last scene.
What a Terrible Plan, Guys!: These plans to “reveal” themselves to big heads of state are always just so stupid, and this one in particular is bad due to the extremely short window of time they have to work with. Not only do they need to convince each of these head’s of state within their brief hologram-recorded speech when the Yeerks would think they’re being infested, but they also need to count on these same people calming walking back out and taking their seat again, as if nothing had happened. It’s just ridiculous.
Favorite Quote:
This quote comes before the botched resort mission and the confrontation with Visser Three. It perfectly highlights how much of a creep David really is, and makes you wonder how Jake wasn’t put on high alert from things like this even before David tried to switch sides and save himself.
David’s gaze was somewhere else. He was looking at us, but from far off. Like we were each animals at the zoo. Like he was sizing us up.
Scorecard: Yeerks 6, Animorphs 9
I’m going to give the Yeerks another point for this one, simply for managing to so expertly trick the Animorphs into infiltrating the resort on the wrong day. Sure, it didn’t go completely to plan and they escaped, but it does show that Visser Three is trying to go on the offensive, rather than just waiting for the “Andalite bandits” to interrupt his own plans.
Rating: Excellent! The stakes are just shooting through the roof, and this book makes it clear why David is probably the most hated character in the entire series, even more so than Visser Three. Beyond that, the cliffhanger at the end of this book is much more crippling than the first. We all knew Tobias and Rachel would save them when they dropped out of the plane (plus, we’ve had about a million scenes of Animorphs seemingly tumbling to their deaths from high heights, so we’re pretty numbed to it). But here, it’s almost believable that Applegate may have killed off Tobias, and either way, the options for dealing with David are pretty limited, right from the beginning, so the tension is sky high when it ends.
Note: I’m not going to rate these books since I can’t be objective at all! But I’ll give a one sentence conclusion and you can take from that what you will!
Book: “Outcast (Vol.4): Under Devil’s Wing” by Robert Kirkman & Paul Azaceta (Ill.)
Publishing Info: Image Comics, Februaru 2017
Where Did I Get This Book: The library!
Book Description: Answers are given and secrets are revealed as Kyle Barnes and Sidney have a conversation that will change EVERYTHING. Kyle has never been in more danger. THE WALKING DEAD creator ROBERT KIRKMAN’S latest horror hit is now a Cinemax TV show. Collects OUTCAST BY KIRKMAN & AZACETA #19-24.
Review: It’s been awhile since I picked up the “Outcast” series. Almost exactly a year, as a matter of fact, and though it was awhile from the past volume I had high hopes that I would easily fall back into it. Especially since I had overall really quite enjoyed the previous collections, and like the variety and creativity that Kirkman has brought to what could have been a typical possession story. So after reminding myself where we left off in the last volume, I came back to Kyle, Anderson, and Sidney ready for more. But unfortunately, the bloom has kind of come off the rose for me when it comes to “Outcast”.
I am fully willing to admit that perhaps I let too much time pass between readings. A year is a very long time to leave a storyline hanging, especially one that moves at a slow and meticulous pace such as this one. But as I was reading through with the promise of ‘answers given’ and ‘secrets revealed’, I felt like I was once again just kind of waiting for an explanation that didn’t really come to fruition. One of the biggest complaints that people seem to have with this comic is the steadily parsed out pace that it takes, and up until now that hadn’t really bothered me. But I think that when it does move slow like this, you really do need to start giving people more to keep coming back for, be it answers, or explanations. We’re getting a lot more questions thrown at us instead. And implications of a conspiracy that seems to be far more in depth than we as readers could have ever imagined, but I was more frustrated by this revelation than compelled by it.
I will say that I did enjoy getting background on Sidney, our resident ‘demon’ and main antagonist. By getting this background, we did get a little insight into who these possessions can affect their hosts, sometimes in more positive ways than we may think. Sidney is by no means a good person, but we find out that before he started housing his ‘companion’ he was leading a very violent and destructive life. Once he was ‘possessed’ (if one can even call it that. We’re definitely moving away from Biblical thoughts of demonic possession), some of those more violent urges were, according to him, quelled. It definitely twists the thought that demonic possessions can only make a person worse; and it definitely makes the readers start to wonder just what is going on, and what kind of role ‘outcasts’ play in this world. There is a particular scene between him and Anderson that might be a hint as to what exactly Kyle is dealing with here, but it’s still wrapped in vagueness and secrecy.
The other significant storyline in this was that now Amber, Kyle’s daughter, may be in some sort of danger from the group that Sidney has formed. Now that we are past the ‘Kyle tried to kill her’ storyline, as Allison knows the truth of all that, I’m hoping that we’ll get a bit more from Kyle’s daughter, and that perhaps there are some shared abilities between him and her. I still contend that this series needs to give the women a bit more to do, so if we could give Amber and Allison more than just be held on a pedestal for Kyle to worry about, that would be great.
Also, not enough Megan and Mark. I wanted more than just a few pages of them, as I sitll find them to be some of the more compelling characters in this series.
My plan for “Outcast” going forward is to pick up the next volume ASAP and see if it can jumpstart my interest. As of now, I could see myself letting it fall to the wayside again because of how slow it continues to move, but my hope is that given where some things ended up in this volume, the next one will have some major moments in it.
Rating 5: I feel like my interest in this series is waning. We are still being tantalized with the promise of explanations, and yet have little to show for it. While it was cool seeing a Sidney centered arc, I’m losing patience in how slow this slow burn is.
Publishing Info: Katherine Tegen Books, September 2017
Where Did I Get this Book: the library!
Book Description: Before
Mira Minkoba is the Hopebearer. Since the day she was born, she’s been told she’s special. Important. Perfect. She’s known across the Fallen Isles not just for her beauty, but for the Mira Treaty named after her, a peace agreement which united the seven islands against their enemies on the mainland.
But Mira has never felt as perfect as everyone says. She counts compulsively. She struggles with crippling anxiety. And she’s far too interested in dragons for a girl of her station.
After
Then Mira discovers an explosive secret that challenges everything she and the Treaty stand for. Betrayed by the very people she spent her life serving, Mira is sentenced to the Pit–the deadliest prison in the Fallen Isles. There, a cruel guard would do anything to discover the secret she would die to protect.
No longer beholden to those who betrayed her, Mira must learn to survive on her own and unearth the dark truths about the Fallen Isles–and herself–before her very world begins to collapse.
Review: This book made its way on to my TBR pile for a few different reasons. First of all, I was intrigued by the inclusion of a fantasy heroine who struggles with her mental health. I’ve also read a few of Jodi Meadows’ books in the past and have mostly enjoyed them. And lastly, dragons. Enough said. For those three interest points, the book does deliver. However, the execution and pacing of the story was off and there simply weren’t enough dragons.
Mira’s life has been one lived upon a stage as the living representative of a treaty that brought several island nations together under a peace and trade agreement. But Mira herself has never felt like the fabled Hopebringer that she is meant to represent. For one, she suffers from anxiety and panic attacks and uses a counting system in her mind to keep her fears at bay. For two, she has an unseemly obsession with dragons, always running off to spend time on the reservation with her two friends and these fantastical beasts. But when she stumbles across a secret betrayal and reports it to her countrymen, she’s not rewarded, but thrown in prison.
I have complicated feelings and thoughts about this book. Many of the things I enjoyed were also parts that I later had criticisms of, which makes it hard to write this review. To start with some of the things I remained “all in” on throughout the book, I guess.
I very much enjoyed the world-building in this story. The islands that have joined together in the Mira Treaty all are based around one of the gods in a shared pantheon. These gods, and the religions practiced in their name, greatly shape the culture and priorities of each unique island nation. Mira is from a pair of twin islands that devote themselves to a pair of gods, a god and goddess of love. Through this lens, we get some insight not only into Mira herself and her struggles in her role as a public figure, but also into her reactions to the betrayal committed against her when she reports wrongdoing.
Part of Mira’s anxiety and insecurities are based on the fact that she sees herself as not perfectly matching the preferred and seemingly often inherent skill sets that make up her island’s culture. The people of her home are known for the social skills, to befriend others easily, to converse freely, and to generally thrive in social interactions. Thus, for Mira, a young woman whose role would require the most of these inherent skills, she sees her own struggles and inabilities in these roles as failures and a sign that there is something wrong with her. Further, her naivety when reporting on the betrayal she uncovers is explained through her perception of her homeland. For a country that’s focus is on love and care, it simply never occurs to her that power dynamics and political maneuvering could lead even her own country’s leaders down some treacherous paths.
As the story unrolls, we see various other island nation’s differing cultures and religions. There is an island nation devoted to Silence, and this is reflected in the power they associate with not speaking (a lesson Mira much needs), and an alternative language that they have developed to communicate without noise. There is also a nation focused on warfare and fighting prowess. A nation whose inhabitants are skillful healers and agriculturalists. A nation that worships shadows. All of these cultures are masterfully woven in throughout the story, and I very much appreciated the non-info-dumpy manner that Meadows worked them into Mira’s journey.
Mira herself was an interesting protagonist. I very much enjoyed the exploration of her anxiety, the strategies she has developed to deal with her panic attacks, her counting method (I don’t believe it is meant to represent an OCD habit, but it’s still incorporated well). Further, Mira is not demonized for missing the beautiful parts of her life when she finds herself in prison. She’s always been clean and been surrounded by lovely things. It’s believable and refreshing that she would miss these things and relish in them when she finds them again, even now knowing the underworkings behind her privileged life. I very much liked that she was written as a believable young woman in this way. And, again, while she sees things through new lens, her character isn’t punished for still loving these creature comforts or presented as superficial for caring that her hair is dry and broken from long days in a prison.
However, while I appreciated these aspects of her character, I never felt truly invested in Mira. I’m not quite sure what the problem was. Perhaps, while I liked the realism that was given to her character, that same realism read as…dull? The story has several action scenes and jumps from one location to another, but Mira was often a passive player in all of this. And that’s what the story requires, I understand that. But that still doesn’t make me enjoy it any more. So, yes, it’s complicated. I see what the author was trying to do, and I think she largely accomplished it, but the downside of that same success is that this goal makes Mira not the most engaging character to follow.
Further, the pacing of the story was strange. In the beginning, her time in prison was broken up with flashbacks to the events that lead up to her ending up where she does. There’s nothing wrong with this approach, but it was hard not to find myself skimming through the flashbacks, eager to get back to the prison plotline that I felt was much more compelling. Part of this is due to the fact that Mira’s fellow inmates were much stronger characters than her two friends back in the outside world. So with a fairly bland leading lady, these variations in strength of supporting characters really drove my appreciation of one plotline over the other.
Further, about halfway through the story, Mira’s experiences take a sudden shift and, again, due to the change of location and supporting characters, it was all just kind of “meh.” This whole section left something wanting in my opinion, and again, I was eager to get back to the prison action.
Lastly, the dragons serve an important role within the story, and yet, somehow, I still felt like there wasn’t enough of them in the story itself. At the point we were at in this book, I almost wish there had been even less? We were right at the teetering point with what was given here, and I feel like committing to one side of the other would have been an improvement. Either make the dragons a more active portion of the story, or keep them more fully on the peripheral as chess pieces in a larger game.
Ultimately, while there were things that I very much enjoyed about this story, I left it feel rather indifferent. I wasn’t “in love” with anything presented here, but I also didn’t actively dislike it. I give tons of credit to Meadows for giving us yet another example of a YA protagonist who isn’t a special snowflake. And the world-building is very interesting. As I recently discovered with “A Poison Dark and Drowning,” sometimes the second book in a trilogy is better having gotten all of the set up out of the way with the first book. That would be my hope with this trilogy.
Rating 6: Doing good work introducing a YA heroine who struggles with her mental health, but lacking in strong pacing.
Book: “The Disaster Artist: My Life Inside “The Room”, The Greatest Bad Movie Ever Made” by Greg Sestero, Tom Bissell
Publishing Info: Simon & Schuster, October 2013
Where Did I Get This Book: I own it on audiobook!
Book Description:From the actor who lived through the most improbable Hollywood success story, with an award-winning narrative nonfiction writer, comes the inspiring, fascinating and laugh-out-loud story of a mysteriously wealthy outsider who sundered every road block in the Hollywood system to achieve success on his own terms—the making of The Room, “the Citizen Kane of bad movies” (Entertainment Weekly).
In 2003, an independent film called The Room—written, produced, directed, and starring a very rich social misfit of indeterminate age and origin named Tommy Wiseau—made its disastrous debut in Los Angeles. Described by one reviewer as “like getting stabbed in the head,” the $6 million film earned a grand total of $1,800 at the box office and closed after two weeks. Now in its tenth anniversary year, The Room is an international phenomenon to rival The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Thousands of fans wait in line for hours to attend screenings complete with costumes, audience rituals, merchandising, and thousands of plastic spoons.
Readers need not have seen The Room to appreciate its costar Greg Sestero’s account of how Tommy Wiseau defied every law of artistry, business, and interpersonal relationships to achieve the dream only he could love. While it does unravel mysteries for fans, The Disaster Artist is more than just an hilarious story about cinematic hubris: It is ultimately a surprisingly inspiring tour de force that reads like a page-turning novel, an open-hearted portrait of a supremely enigmatic man who will capture your heart.
Review: As a bad movie connoisseur, it will probably come as a huge surprise to people that I have not actually seen “The Room” in it’s entirety. My first experience with “The Room” was while at a midnight showing of “The Rocky Horror Picture Show”, as they were advertising a special screening of this piece of cinematic napalm. I’ve seen plenty of clips online. I’ve seen lots of references to it, gifs, parodies. And I had heard of the book “The Disaster Artist”, written by Greg Sestero. Sestero was one of the stars in the movie, and decided to write a memoir about the making of it, as well of his friendship with Tommy Wiseau, the man behind the film. With the new movie out based on this book, I felt that before I saw it, I needed to read the original memoir to get the full effect. So I got my hands on the audiobook, read by Sestero himself.
And it was more surreal than I ever could have imagined in the history of surrealness.
Okay, for the super uninitiated, “The Room” is a nonsensical, poorly written, poorly directed, poorly acted vanity project written, directed by, and starring Tommy Wiseau. I would say go watch it, but… HERE, see some scenes for yourself. Greg Sestero, who plays Mark in the movie, had known Wiseau for some time before he was emotionally manipulated asked to appear in the film by him. The memoir he’s written takes two different timelines and juxtaposes them into the narrative: the actual making of “The Room”, and his strange friendship with Wiseau, from it’s inception in an acting class to the moment Wiseau decided he was going to make his own movie after success eluded him. I had heard plenty of stories about the bizarre antics of Tommy Wiseau on and off the set, but none of prepared me for the ‘what the FUCK’-ness that was this memoir. I walked away from it thinking that either Sestero has the patience of a saint, or has found himself totally within the clutches of an incredibly toxic friendship and doesn’t know up from down anymore. I really hope it’s the former.
So many of the stories in this book read like they should be fiction, and yet I have no doubt in my mind that they absolutely occurred the way that Sestero said they did. They are just too outlandish and random to have not. Be it a moment where Wiseau reads a key code to Sestero telling him it’s very complicated, only for it to be ‘1234’ (and written down because Wiseau ‘can never remember it’), to descriptions of Sestero coming home to find Wiseau hanging upside down from a pull up bar and just kind of lingering in stasis, to Wiseau telling Sestero to meet him in downtown San Francisco, only to surprise him by saying they are running The Bay to Breakers Race THAT VERY MOMENT (poor Sestero was only wearing sandals), the anecdotes are stranger than fiction. And laugh out loud funny. I had it on my phone as I was setting up for work one morning, and one of my coworkers needed to know why I was laughing so hard. And, of course, the descriptions of the antics on the set itself were mind boggling in their hilarity. Wiseau would take hours upon hours to get a seven second line correct; he would perform his suicide scene, and then writhe around and moan in spite of the fact his character had just eaten a gun; he would insist upon green screens for simple shots that end up looking out of place at best, ridiculous at worst. And he had a knack for getting the absolute worst performances from his players. In the moment it had to be absolutely maddening; but Sestero tells it in such a way that the humor is always there, and it is entertaining as hell.
But along with that, Sestero does a great job of capturing the darker and more poignant sides to Wiseau and their complicated friendship. Behind the oddities and eccentricities, there is definitely a dark side to Tommy, one that is hard to completely understand, if only because he is so private with his past and his personal life. He is desperate for friends, he is desperate to be loved and admired, and he latches onto Sestero out of what appears to be sheer loneliness. Unfortunately, like most of the time, this makes for a very tempestuous, and unhealthy, friendship. Wiseau could switch from being supportive and whimsical, to threatening and abusive should he think that Sestero, or anyone, was crossing him. Hell, “The Room” itself seems to be a reflection of how Wiseau sees himself in the world, as the one truly pure person who is taken advantage of by the people he loves. Wiseau insisted that Sestero play Mark, the best friend of Johnny (played by Wiseau), who betrays Johnny by having an affair with Lisa, Johnny’s fiancee. When you look at that in the context of a deep resentment that Wiseau potentially had for Sestero due to his perceived ‘success’ in Hollywood pre-“The Room” (booking a few roles here and there is success in this case), the casting makes perfect sense. There were moments where I felt deeply uncomfortable about the toxic nature of their friendship, as in some ways it hit a nerve. I’ve been in Sestero’s shoes before, as I’ve been in the position of having a friend who is so completely draining and yet you don’t know how to extricate yourself from them. One review I read thought that Sestero either had to be lying, or downplaying his own ‘leech’ status to Tommy (who provided him with an apartment at a reduced rate), because how could he continue to put up with the abusive nature of their friendship for so long if there wasn’t something in it for him? To that reviewer, I say that it is far more realistic than one would think. To Sestero’s credit, this could have been a complete hatchet job towards an unstable and narcissistic asshole. But instead, by giving some insight into what sort of (potential) experiences Wiseau went through in his early life, he writes of him in such a way that while you are repelled by some of his actions, you also understand why he acts in certain ways. I don’t feel that Sestero ever makes excuses for it, either, as he is VERY clear when Wiseau goes over the line against him and others. But he’s made peace with this relationship, and shows the good with the bad.
As mentioned previously, I listened to this book, and Sestero reads it himself. I HIGHLY recommend it. At first he sounded a little bit wooden and I wasn’t totally sure… but the moment that he started imitating Wiseau, well, that sold it for me. It’s pretty much the perfect imitation as only a friend can do.
“The Disaster Artist” was easily one of the most bizarre and entertaining books that I’ve read. It says a lot about the need for acceptance, the desperation for fame, and how sometimes being just off the wall wacko can pay off, even if it’s in ways you never intended.
Rating 10: A hilarious, outlandish, and at times incredibly pathos ridden and disturbing romp about dreaming of stardom, acceptance, and success… no matter how you define it or achieve it.
We are part of a group of librarian friends who have had an ongoing bookclub running for the last several years. Each “season” (we’re nerds) we pick a theme and each of us chooses a book within that theme for us all to read. Our current theme is a “Dewey Call Number” theme. This book comes from a Dewey Decimal Call Number range, and has to fit the theme of that range.
For this blog, we will post a joint review of each book we read for bookclub. We’ll also post the next book coming up in bookclub. So feel free to read along with us or use our book selections and questions in your own bookclub!
Book: “Word By Word: The Secret Life of Dictionaries” by Kory Stamper
Publishing Info: Pantheon Books, March 2017
Where Did We Get This Book: The library!
Dewey Decimal Call Number: 400s (Language)
Book Description:Do you have strong feelings about the word “irregardless”? Have you ever tried to define the word “is”? This account of how dictionaries are made is for you word mavens.
Many of us take dictionaries for granted, and few may realize that the process of writing dictionaries is, in fact, as lively and dynamic as language itself. With sharp wit and irreverence, Kory Stamper cracks open the complex, obsessive world of lexicography, from the agonizing decisions about what to define and how to do it, to the knotty questions of usage in an ever-changing language. She explains why small words are the most difficult to define, how it can take nine months to define a single word, and how our biases about language and pronunciation can have tremendous social influence. And along the way, she reveals little-known surprises–for example, the fact that “OMG” was first used in a letter to Winston Churchill in 1917.
Word by Word brings to life the hallowed halls (and highly idiosyncratic cubicles) of Merriam-Webster, a startlingly rich world inhabited by quirky and erudite individuals who quietly shape the way we communicate.
Kate’s Thoughts
So it will surprise no one here that I love to read. What may surprise people is that even though I love reading and the words that ultimately come with it, I don’t have much interest in the history or said words. When this was picked for book club, I will totally own up to the fact that I basically groaned internally. I have a hard enough time with non fiction as it is (unless it’s narrative, memoir, or true crime), so I worried that this would be a terribly boring slog to get through. The good news is that I wasn’t totally correct in this. The bad news is, like the scorpion in that old folktale, it’s in my nature to have a hard time with this kind of book no matter how engaging it is.
But I’m going to focus mostly on the good since the bad isn’t any fault of Stamper’s. “Word By Word” was a well done, and at times quite funny, overview of what it’s like to work at Merriam-Webster, and the intricacies that go into adding words to and defining words for a dictionary. I guess that until I read this book it never occurred to me that there would be questions and consistently changing definitions to words, or that sometimes it can take months to settle on a most representative definition. Stamper not only talks about what it’s like to work at Merriam-Webster in this capacity, she also talks about how people like her have to take so many different variables into account just to function in the best way possible. For some, some of the most interesting concepts were focused on how society perceives dictionaries, and how they actually are supposed to function. Within this was the authority myth, in that if a word is defined one way in the dictionary, this is the bottom line because the dictionary said so. Stamper points out that this just isn’t the case; dictionaries are not supposed to be authorities on definitions, they are merely there to record and relay these definitions. Language is always changing, and therefore the meanings of words are changing too.
My reservations and hesitations about this book (aka why it was a slog) was going back to my nature: I am very picky about my non fiction. I merely want to reiterate that for my ultimate rating, because it was based on form, not substance. This book also gave our book club a LOT to talk about, which was really, really excellent. So while “Word By Word” wasn’t really my cup of tea, I can see it being very appealing to a lot of people who aren’t me.
Serena’s Thoughts
As evidenced by the content of this blog, neither Kate or I are big nonfiction readers. If anything, Kate is more of a nonfiction reader than I am, and as seen in her thoughts above, she’s still not that into it. At least she has true crime to back her up as not completely stuck in the “fiction only” section that I am. I don’t think I’ve reviewed a single nonficton book on this blog. I don’t say this out of pride or anything. I really wish I liked nonfiction more than I do. There are a few exceptions to this, but usually it’s when books are thrust upon me my trusted friends and family. So, while I would never have picked up this book on my own, I’m so glad that our fellow bookclub librarian, Katie, recommended it! I found myself very much enjoying it, and while it isn’t changing my mind on nonfiction as a whole, that’s too big of an ask for any book.
I’ll also confess that I didn’t read this book in the traditional front-to-back method, and I really think this is one of the reasons I enjoyed it more than I would have otherwise. Instead, I picked a chapter here and a chapter there, skipping forward and backward through the book based on my interests. For example, I started with the “irregardless” chapter, because, yes, that word and all the controversy around it does intrigue me! From there, I found myself in a chapter document acronyms and how rarely the much bandied explanations for words’ origins having to do with acronyms is true. We’ve all probably heard of some acronym for the “f” word, for example. The author does an excellent job exploring why acronyms are so rarely involved with a word’s definition.
As I read, I mostly found myself gather ammo for word-related conversations. As a librarian and book lover, these are the exact sorts of disagreements and discussions that I regularly find myself in, and I loved getting some more detailed background knowledge on my side going forward. As Kate said, for this reason, I’m sure, our bookclub probably had more to say with regards to this book than we’ve had for many other books recently. In this way, this book is an excellent choice for other bookclubs out there. Especially for those that have members who may not be totally bought into nonfiction. I recommend my reading strategy, specifically, for those folks. I think I had an easier time than Kate just because of this. By hopping around, picking it up to read a chapter here and a chapter there, I never had to confront the general dismay about the long slog ahead that results from starting in the beginning, especially starting with a non-enthralled position.
I also really think that had I not found my calling as a librarian that working on a dictionary like this like may have been another dream job. I had an assignment in a publishing class back in undergrad to create an index for a book, and similar to that, dictionary work seems appealing nit-picky and focused on organization. I also would have had a lot of fun writing snarky answers to the people who wrote in with complaints about the inclusion of the word “irregardless” in the dictionary. Really, could I just have that job? Answering dictionary-related complaint mail?
Kate’s Rating 6: An enlightening examination of how dictionaries are compiled and the role they play, as well as fascinating questions raised about language in modern society. It was a bit of a dry read for me at times, but overall a worthwhile one.
Serena’s Rating 8: I was shocked by how much I enjoyed this! There was a lot of history of words and details of dictionary work that I didn’t know, and by reading it one chapter at a time I was able to hold off my own non-fiction antipathy.
Book Club Questions
Were you surprised about anything about this job? Would you want it?
Grammar snobs: heroes or obnoxious?
What do you think about the social justice implications of language/dialects?
Does the history of words, or etymology, interest you? Why or why not?
What words do you hope get added to future dictionaries?
Book: “The Space Between the Stars” by Anne Corlett
Book: “Feral Youth” by Shaun David Hutchinson (Ed.)
Book: “The Hippopotamus Pool” by Elizabeth Peters
Book: “Double Date” (Fear Street #23) by R.L. Stine
Netflix Show: “Glitch”
Movie: “Miracle on 34th Street”
Animorphs #21: “The Threat” by K.A. Applegate
Book: “Outcast (Vol.4): Under Devil’s Wing” by Robert Kirkman & Paul Azaceta (Ill.)
Book: “Before She Ignites” by Jodi Meadows
Book: “The Disaster Artist: My Life Inside “The Room”, The Greatest Bad Movie Ever Made” by Greg Sestero, Tom Bissell
We are part of a group of librarian friends who have had an ongoing bookclub running for the last several years. Each “season” (we’re nerds) we pick a theme and each of us chooses a book within that theme for us all to read. Our current theme is a “Dewey Call Number” theme. This book comes from a Dewey Decimal Call Number range, and has to fit the theme of that range.
The Library Ladies 