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brian-in-finance · 2 years ago

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Diana Gabaldon spoke at the University of Glasgow's Outlander conference. Photo: Martin Shields

Diana Gabaldon recalls how first Outlander book ‘almost cancelled’

Best-selling Outlander author Diana Gabaldon has created nine beloved books and a seven-season TV series - but the franchise almost didn't happen.

The American writer told fans in Glasgow her first novel was almost cancelled because publishers could not decide what to do with it.

It took more than a year to go on sale as a debate raged about where it would sit on bookshop shelves.

The series has boosted Scottish tourism with fans flocking to Scotland to visit the book and TV programme's locations.

The author spoke at the word's first international academic Outlander conference at the University of Glasgow, which has been the backdrop for several scenes in the Starz TV series.

Expert scholars and Outlander fans have come together for events in the city, exploring themes such as Jacobite history, screen production, Scottish tourism, Gaelic and Scots, costume design, fandom, main character Claire Fraser's medicine, and witchcraft.

Ms Gabaldon - originally an academic herself - was awarded an honorary doctorate by the university in June last year.

The drama series stars Catriona Balfe and Sam Heughan as Claire and Jamie Fraser. Photo: Starz

Speaking about her first book, she said: "It took the publishers 18 months to figure out what to do with it. I learned later that they came very close to cancelling the contract and giving me back the book because they couldn't decide how to sell it.

"This was before Amazon where a book can be classified as several things at once and people can pick off the web what they want, and they still get the same book.

"Back in the day it was only bookstores, you had to put a book on a certain shelf, the shelf had to have a label and the book also had to have that label."

She said the decision to sell it as a romance came as a shock.

"My agent finally called me up and said they had decided to publish it but sell it as a romance. I said, 'What?' that isn't what I wrote.

"He pointed out that a best seller in fantasy fiction was 50,000 copies in paperback while in romance it is 500,000 copies. So we sold it as romance."

'Too weird'

She said that the success of the books was down to readers' recommendations.

"My first editor said to me early on these have to be word of mouths books because they are too weird to describe, which is totally true and that is also true about the word of mouth.

"So that being the case it made total sense to expose the book to 500,000 people in the romance category who will go out and tell their friends and the word will spread.

"So we did that and that is exactly what happened."

The Outlander series is currently nine books, with the author working on the tenth - and believed to be the final - book.

It follows the story of a post-World War Two nurse visiting Scotland who accidentally time travels to the Jacobite era.

Roger (Richard Rankin) and Brianna (Sophie Skelton) are main characters in the show. Photo: Aimee Spinks

It has now become one of the bestselling book series of all time and spawned the popular TV series, currently in its seventh season.

Ms Gabaldon's talk was entitled, '"Why Scotland? Why Not Mexico?" Genes, Borders, Culture and Fiction: Why They Matter and When They Don't'.

In it, she explained why she picked Scotland as the location of Outlander.

She said: "What I learned from my research and contact with Scots is that Scots are, and historically were, very literate. They wrote down things. They also have a very strong oral culture, they told their stories.

"They also have a lot of history available. Then there is the nature of Scottish history, it has a lot of heroes and heroines as well as conflict which is what you need for a good story."

The conference runs until Saturday and has seen fringe events including music concerts and battle re-enactments in the university's famous cloisters.

Transformative impact

Senior Lecturer in Gaelic at the University, Gillebride Macmillan, who has appeared in the programme, said it had been really important for the Gaelic language.

"It's so important for a minoritized language, such as Gaelic, to be seen on a world level, on a world stage, and Outlander gives Gaelic that opportunity.

"And I think it's been fantastic to hear Gaelic spoken by the actors and in the books, and also the use of Gaelic music, Gaelic song. I've been very lucky myself to be a part of that and I think it's been an incredibly positive thing for the language.

"Which I think has been born out by things such as, one and a half million people learning Gaelic in Duolingo. Obviously, many people are learning Gaelic for many different reasons, but Outlander has been one of the major factors for that."

Prof Willy Maley, professor of Renaissance studies (English Literature), at the university, said: "Diana Gabaldon's Outlander series has had a transformative impact on Scottish culture, generating global interest in the history, languages and landscapes of Scotland.

"Vivid and visceral, Outlander is an otherworldly but never unworldly phenomenon that takes a time-travelling nurse-turned-doctor and propels her from 1946 to 1743, two worlds of war that collide in an elaborate and painstaking reconstruction that make the series much more than historical fiction and more an innovative and pioneering rethinking of how we excavate and examine the narratives of the past.

"Outlander has also been a brilliant boost for the Scottish film industry."

BBC News

Gifs: @scotsmanandsassenach S01E03 The Way Out, Gillebride Macmillan as Gwyllyn the bard

Remember… I think it's been fantastic to hear Gaelic spoken by the actors and in the books, and also the use of Gaelic music, Gaelic song. I've been very lucky myself to be a part of that and I think it's been an incredibly positive thing for the language. — Gillebride Macmillan

#Tait rhymes with hat #Good times #Outlander #Diana Gabaldon #BBC News #22 July 2023 #Outlander Conference #University of Glasgow #18-23 July 2023

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him-e · 3 years ago

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I’m so glad to see you posting 001 x Eleven stuff because there are some serious vibes there (and I guess to a lesser extent with some of his interactions with Max, but that’s on a whole different level).

I can’t get out of my head that he literally hates all of humanity but actually genuinely saw himself as saving and repaying her with the massacre. And even after trapping her, he still stops to hear her appeal to him and expressly says that Brenner wasn’t on their (shared!) level.

KING OF "WE'RE EQUALS YOU AND I"

The Duffer bros are way too trope savvy to make certain visual and narrative choices casually. For example, the fact that most of Eleven's flashbacks actually featured grown up Eleven (yeah, of course it was done for budget reasons, as the cgi for child!Eleven must have been expensive. But there were other ways to do it, and yet they chose the solution in which older Eleven and 001 visually interact).

If he hadn’t been made so physically repulsive, the chemistry in those intimate shots would be off the rails. There’s so much going on here, and as a Reylo fan I can’t help but scream at the whole *using the Force to freeze the other in place* thing, lol. And Jamie Campbell Bower looks like the perfect pre-fall Lucifer, beautiful and deadly, sinister like only a natural born predator can be.

One and El’s shared experience as Brenner's "favourite children", their both having enormous powers that they use in different ways and for different reasons (though we know there's a part of Eleven that leans into anger and resorts instinctively to violence, and we don't know how much of that was the result of her trauma in the lab, and how much is actually 100% herself), the way he sees himself in her and recognizes her power when nobody else did... the layers of manipulation vs genuine sympathy...

(2016 reylo discourse ptsd intensifies)

he literally hates all of humanity but actually genuinely saw himself as saving and repaying her with the massacre. And even after trapping her, he still stops to hear her appeal to him and expressly says that Brenner wasn’t on their (shared!) level

YES! I think Eleven is at her happiest with "normal" people like Mike because they’re everything that lacked in her life, but while they love her shadow, they don’t really understand it. So she's also naturally attracted to those who know and understand the darkness. See: Will, Billy, Max (to different extents). Henry is on another level though. Henry is really on her level.

I think whether you ship it or not it’s just SO much better from a narrative standpoint if the big bad and the heroine are foils and have a personal, complex relationship. Sure, it was okay when the Mind Flayer was just this eldritch horror thing and the human evil was Brenner/the lab, but to really get the stakes higher and higher up to the final battle, to give depth and drama to the hero’s struggle, you need to make the conflict personal. In this sense, things are shaping up nicely for season 5. Since Will is probably Vecna’s horcrux, the personal conflict will be twofold, as El has a relationship with both the horcrux boy AND the big bad pulling his strings...

#asks #Anonymous #st spoilers #st for ts #//#///#vecna #eleven x one

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path-of-my-childhood · 5 years ago

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USA Today: What Is Taylor Listening To?

Below is the list of all the songs that originally appeared on Brian Mansfield’s USA Today article “Taylor Swift is listening to...” (from November 12th 2008). Article and list of songs can still be accessed with the help of Wayback Machine, if the Flash is enabled in your browser. Enjoy!

A Fine Frenzy - Almost Lover

Acceptance - Different

Aerosmith - Dream On

Alana Grace - Black Roses Red

Alana Grace - Paranoid

Alanis Morissette - Hands Clean

Alison Krauss & Union Station - If I Didn't Know Any Better

Alison Krauss & Union Station - New Favorite

Amos Lee - Colors

Anna Nalick - Breathe (2 AM)

Anna Nalick - Catalyst

Anna Nalick - Forever Love

Anna Nalick - In The Rough

Anna Nalick - Paper Bag

Anna Nalick - Wreck Of The Day (Live)

Aslyn - Be The Girl

Augustana - Sweet and Low

Avril Lavigne - Fall To Pieces

Avril Lavigne - Why

Backstreet Boys - All I Have To Give

Backstreet Boys - Climbing The Walls

Backstreet Boys - Crawling Back To You

Backstreet Boys - Incomplete

BarlowGirl - Never Alone

Ben Folds - Landed

Ben Folds - The Luckiest

Ben Folds Five - Brick

Ben Jelen - Come On

Ben Lee - Catch My Disease

Better Than Ezra - Breathless

Better Than Ezra - Our Last Night

Beyoncé - If I Were A Boy

Beyoncé - Irreplaceable

Beyoncé - Me Myself And I

Beyoncé ft. Bun B, Slim Thug - Check On It

Big & Rich - Holy Water

Big & Rich - Save A Horse [Ride A Cowboy]

Billy Currington - Why, Why, Why

Billy Gilman - Clueless

Billy Joel - Uptown Girl

Billy Mack - Christmas Is All Around

Blake Shelton - Austin

Blake Shelton - Don’t Make Me

Blake Shelton - It Ain't Easy Bein' Me

Blake Shelton - Nobody But Me

Blink-182 - Feeling This

Blink-182 - What's My Age Again?

Blu Sanders - Like the Movies

Blu Sanders - We All Lose It

Blu Sanders - You By Her Side

Bone Crusher ft. Killer Mike, T.I. - Never Scared

Bonnie Somerville - Winding Road

Boys Like Girls - Hero/Heroine (Acoustic)

Boys Like Girls - Thunder

Brad Paisley - It Did

Brad Paisley - Whiskey Lullaby

Brandi Carlile - Fall Apart Again

Brandi Carlile - The Story

Brandi Carlile - Throw It All Away

Brandi Carlile - Turpentine

Brandi Carlile - What Can I Say

Brett Dennen - She's Mine

Britney Spears - (You Drive Me) Crazy (The Stop Remix!)

Britney Spears - Do Somethin’

Britney Spears - Everytime

Britney Spears - I Love Rock 'N' Roll

Britney Spears - I'm A Slave 4 U

Britney Spears - Lucky

Britney Spears - My Prerogative

Britney Spears - Outrageous

Britney Spears - Sometimes

Britney Spears - Toxic

Britney Spears ft. Pharrell Williams - Boys (Co-ed Remix)

Britney Spears ft. Ying Yang Twins - (I Got That) Boom Boom

Brooke Fraser - Deciphering Me

Bruce Robinson - All Over But The Cryin'

Bruce Robinson - Virginia

Cartel - Honestly

Chamillionaire ft. Krayzie Bone - Ridin'

Chantal Kreviazuk - In This Life

Chingy - Holidae In

Chris Brown - Gimme That

Chris Brown ft. Juelz Santana - Run It!

Christina Aguilera - Beautiful

Christina Aguilera, Lil' Kim, Mya, Pink - Lady Marmalade

Ciara - Get Up

Coheed and Cambria - The Suffering

Colbie Caillat - Battle

Colbie Caillat - Feelings Show

Colbie Caillat - Magic

Colbie Caillat - One Fine Wire

Colbie Caillat - Oxygen

Colbie Caillat - The Little Things

Coldplay - Sparks

Coldplay - The Scientist

Coldplay - Trouble

Coldplay - Yellow

Concrete Blonde - Joey

Corinne Bailey Rae - Put Your Records On

Courtney Jaye - Can You Sleep

Cyndi Thomson - I Always Liked That Best

Damien Rice - 9 Crimes

Damien Rice - Delicate (Live)

Damien Rice - The Blower's Daughter

Daniel Cage - Catch Me When I Fall

Daniel Powter - Bad Day

Daniel Powter - Jimmy Gets High

Dashboard Confessional - As Lovers Go

Dashboard Confessional - Ghost Of A Good Thing

Dashboard Confessional - Hands Down

Dashboard Confessional - Rapid Hope Loss

Dashboard Confessional - Secret

Dashboard Confessional - Stolen

Dashboard Confessional - Vindicated

Dave Barnes - Until You

David Banner ft. Magic, Lil Boosie - Ain't Got Nothing

David Gray - This Year's Love

David Mead - Nashville

Deana Carter - We Danced Anyway

Def Leppard - Armageddon It

Def Leppard - Bringin' On The Heartbreak

Def Leppard - Foolin'

Def Leppard - Hysteria

Def Leppard - Let's Get Rocked

Def Leppard - Love Bites

Def Leppard - Miss You In A Heartbeat

Def Leppard - Photograph

Def Leppard - Pour Some Sugar On Me

Def Leppard - Rocket

Del Amitri - Roll To Me

Dem Franchize Boyz - Ridin' Rims

Dem Franchize Boyz ft. Peanut & Charlay - Lean Wit It, Rock Wit It

Diana Anaid - Last Thing

Dido - Here With Me

Divinyls - I Touch Myself

Dixie Chicks - Cold Day in July

Dixie Chicks - Cowboy Take Me Away

Dixie Chicks - Easy Silence

Dixie Chicks - Godspeed (Sweet Dreams)

Dixie Chicks - Goodbye Earl

Dixie Chicks - Long Time Gone

Dixie Chicks - Lullaby

Dixie Chicks - Not Ready To Make Nice

Dixie Chicks - Top of the World

Dwight Yoakam - The Back Of Your Hand

Eagle-Eye Cherry - Save Tonight

Eamon - I Don't Want You Back

Emerson Drive - Fall Into Me

Eminem - Lose Yourself

En Vogue - Don't Let Go

Enrique Iglesias - Bailamos

Eva Cassidy - Songbird

Faith Hill - The Lucky One

Faith Hill - This Kiss

Fall Out Boy - Grand Theft Autumn

Fall Out Boy - Sugar, We're Goin Down

Family Force 5 - Love Addict

Fastball - Out Of My Head

Fefe Dobson - 8x10

Fefe Dobson - Bye Bye Boyfriend

Fefe Dobson - Don't Let It Go to Your Head

Fefe Dobson - Everything

Fefe Dobson - Revolution Song

Fefe Dobson - Rock It 'Til You Drop It

Fefe Dobson - Stupid Little Love Song

Fefe Dobson - Take Me Away

Foo Fighters - Best Of You

Fort Minor ft. Holly Brook & Jonah Matranga - Where'd You Go

Fountains of Wayne - All Kinds of Time

Frankie J ft. Baby Bash - Obsession (No Es Amor)

Gabrielle - Out Of Reach

Gary Allan - Life Ain't Always Beautiful

Gary Allan - Nickajack Cave

Gary Allan - Promise Broken

Gary Burr - What Mattered Most

Gavin DeGraw - (Nice to Meet You) Anyway

Gavin DeGraw - Belief

Gavin DeGraw - Chariot

Gavin DeGraw - Chemical Party

Gavin DeGraw - Follow Through

Gavin DeGraw - I Don't Want To Be

Gavin DeGraw - Just Friends

Gavin DeGraw - Meaning

Gavin DeGraw - More Than Anyone

Gavin DeGraw - Overrated

George Strait - Blue Clear Sky

George Strait - Carrying Your Love With Me

George Strait - Heartland

George Strait - I Can Still Make Cheyenne

George Strait - One Night At A Time

George Strait - Run

George Strait - The Best Day

Gin Blossoms - Found Out About You

Goo Goo Dolls - Here Is Gone

Goo Goo Dolls - Iris

Gorillaz - Feel Good Inc.

Grace Potter And The Nocturnals - Apologies

Gwen Stefani - Hollaback Girl

Gwen Stefani - The Sweet Escape

Heidi Newfield - Johnny And June

Hellogoodbye - Here In Your Arms

Hillary Lindsey - Over You

Hinder - Better Than Me

Hinder - Lips Of An Angel

Hope Partlow - Don't Go

Howie Day - Collide

Howie Day - She Says

Ingrid Michaelson - The Way I Am

Jack Ingram - Hold On

Jack Ingram - Make A Wish (Coming Home Again)

Jack Ingram - Maybe She'll Get Lonely

Jack Ingram - Measure Of A Man

Jack Johnson - Better Together

Jack Johnson - Good People

Jack Johnson - Taylor

Jake Owen - Eight Second Ride

Jake Owen - Ghosts

Jake Owen - Hard Not To Love You

Jake Owen - Startin' With Me

James Blunt - Carry You Home

James Blunt - Goodbye My Lover

James Blunt - You’re Beautiful

Jann Arden - Insensitive

Jason Aldean - Why

Jason Mraz - I’m Yours

JAY-Z ft. UGK - Big Pimpin'

Jeff Buckley - Hallelujah

Jem - 24

Jesse McCartney - Beautiful Soul

Jesse McCartney - Just So You Know

Jesse McCartney - The Best Day Of My Life

Jessica Andrews - Baby To Love You Once

Jessica Andrews - More To Me Than You

Jessica Andrews - More To Me Than You (acoustic)

Jessica Andrews - Second Sunday

Jet - Look What You've Done

Jewel - Good Day

Jewel - You Were Meant For Me

Jimmy Eat World - Hear You Me

Jimmy Eat World - If You Don’t, Don’t

Jimmy Eat World - The Middle

Joanna - All I Want For Christmas Is You

Joanna - Screaming Infidelities

Joanna - Ultraviolet

John Mayer - Comfortable

John Mayer - Slow Dancing in a Burning Room

John Mayer - Waiting On the World to Change

John Mayer - Your Body Is A Wonderland

Johnny Cooper - Everything

Johnny Cooper - Texas To You

Jon McLaughlin - Beautiful Disaster

Jonas Brothers - Burnin' Up

Jonas Brothers - Tonight

Jonas Brothers - Year 3000

Joseph Arthur - Honey And The Moon

Josh Kelley - Amazing

Josh Rouse - It's the Nighttime

Justin Timberlake - Cry Me A River

Justin Timberlake - What Goes Around Comes Around

K-Ci & JoJo - All My Life

KT Tunstall - Other Side Of The World

Kanye West - Diamonds From Sierra Leone

Kanye West ft. Jamie Foxx - Gold Digger

Kari Kimmel - Notice Me

Katie Herzig - Fool's Gold

Katie Herzig - Sweeter Than This

Katy Perry - Hot N Cold

Katy Perry - Thinking Of You

Keith Urban - Better Life

Keith Urban - I Told You So

Keith Urban - Making Memories Of Us

Keith Urban - Somebody Like You

Kelis - Brass In Pocket

Kelis - Milkhake

Kellie Pickler - Best Days Of Your Life

Kellie Pickler - Didn't You Know How Much I Loved You

Kelly Clarkson - Low

Kelly Clarkson - Miss Independent

Kelly Clarkson - Some Kind of Miracle

Kelly Clarkson - The Trouble With Love Is

Kenny Chesney - Big Star

LFO - Every Other Time

Landon Pigg - Can't Let Go

LeAnn Rimes - But I Do Love You

LeAnn Rimes - Damn

LeAnn Rimes - The Right Kind Of Wrong

LeAnn Rimes - This Love

LeAnn Rimes - You Are

Leigh Nash - Last Christmas

Lenny Kravitz - Again

Lenny Kravitz - American Woman

Lifehouse - Everything

Lil Jon & The East Side Boyz - Kings Of Crunk

Lil Scrappy - No Problem

Lil Scrappy ft Young Buck - Money In The Bank

Lil Wayne - Go DJ

Lisa Loeb - I Do

Little Big Town - Boondocks

Little Big Town - Bring It On Home

Liz Phair - Everything To Me

Liz Phair - Why Can’t I

Loretta Lynn - Fist City

Lori McKenna - Your Next Lover

Mandy Moore - I Wanna Be With You

Mannie Fresh - Real Big

Mark Wills - Take It All Out Of Me

Maroon 5 - Harder To Breathe

Maroon 5 - She Will Be Loved

Maroon 5 - Shiver

Maroon 5 - Tangled

Maroon 5 - This Love

Mat Kearney - All I Need

Mat Kearney - Nothing Left To Lose

Mat Kearney - Where We Gonna Go From Here

Matchbox Twenty - If You're Gone

Matchbox Twenty - Long Day

Matt Nathanson - I Saw

Matt Wertz - Everything's Right

Matt Wertz - Red Meets Blue

Melissa Etheridge - I'm The Only One

Meredith Brooks - Bitch

Metro Station - Now That We're Done

Metro Station - Shake It

Michelle Branch - Breathe

Michelle Branch - Goodbye To You

Mike Jones - Flossin'

Mindy Smith - Come To Jesus

Miranda Lambert - Bring Me Down

Miranda Lambert - Greyhound Bound For Nowhere

Miranda Lambert - Gunpowder And Lead

Miranda Lambert - Kerosene

Miranda Lambert - Mama, I'm Alright

Miranda Lambert - More Like Her

Miranda Lambert - What About Georgia?

Missy Higgins - Warm Whispers

Mozella - You Wanted It

Morgane Hayes - If Ever There Was

Morgane Hayes - Lonely Anywhere

Morgane Hayes - Train To Tupelo

Mr. Big - To Be With You

My Chemical Romance - Helena

Nelly - Grillz

Nick Lachey - I Can't Hate You Anymore

Nick Lachey - What's Left Of Me

Nickelback - Far Away

Nina Gordon - Tonight And The Rest Of My Life

Norah Jones - Turn Me On

Oasis - Wonderwall

OneRepublic - Apologize

Our Lady Peace - Somewhere Out There

Pink - Just Like A Pill

Paramore - When It Rains

Paris Hilton - Nothing In This World

Pat Benatar - Anxiety (Get Nervous)

Pat Benatar - Fire And Ice

Pat Benatar - Heartbreaker

Pat Benatar - Hell Is For Children

Pat Benatar - Hit Me With Your Best Shot

Pat Benatar - I Need A Lover (live)

Pat Benatar - In The Heat Of The NIght

Pat Benatar - Little To Late

Pat Benatar - Looking For A Stranger

Pat Benatar - Love Is A Battlefield (demo)

Pat Benatar - My Clone Sleeps Alone

Pat Benatar - Precious Time

Pat Benatar - Promises In The Dark

Pat Benatar - Shadows Of The NIght

Pat Benatar - Treat Me Right

Pat Benatar - We Live For Love

Pat Benatar - Wuthering Heights

Pat Benatar - You Better Run

Patty Griffin - Burgundy Shoes

Patty Griffin - Christina

Patty Griffin - Goodbye

Patty Griffin - Heavenly Day

Patty Griffin - One Big Love

Patty Griffin - Peter Pan

Patty Griffin - Rain

Patty Griffin - When It Don’t Come Easy

Phil Collins - Can't Stop Loving You

Pitbull - Ay Chico (Lengua Afuera)

Pitbull - C**o

Plain White T's - Hate (I Really Don't Like You)

Plumb - Blush (Only You)

Plumb - Stranded

Rachael Yamagata - Be Be Your Love

Rachael Yamagata - Worn Me Down

Rachel Proctor - Didn't I

Rasheeda ft. Lil' Scrappy - Rocked Away

Ray Charles - I've Got A Woman

Rebecca Lynn Howard - Forgive

Rihanna - SOS

Rihanna ft. Jay-Z - Umbrella

Rilo Kiley - Portions for Foxes

Rob Thomas - Ever The Same

Rogue Wave - Eyes

Ronnie Day - Outside

Ronnie Milsap - It Was Almost Like A Song

Ronnie Milsap - My Life

Ronnie Milsap - Smoky Mountain Rain

Ronnie Milsap - (There's) No Gettin' Over Me

Ryan Adams - Come Pick Me Up

SHeDAISY - In Terms Of Love

Santigold - L.E.S Artistes

Sarah Connor - Bounce

Sarah McLachlan - Fallen

Sarah McLachlan - Stupid

Savage Garden - I Want You

Savage Garden - Truly Madly Deeply

Seal - This Could Be Heaven

Secondhand Serenade - Maybe

Semisonic - Closing Time

Shakira - Don’t Bother

Shakira - Underneath Your Clothes

Sheryl Crow - It's So Easy

Sheryl Crow - The First Cut Is The Deepest

Shop Boyz - Party Like A Rock Star

Sia - Breathe Me

Snow Patrol - Chasing Cars

Snow Patrol - Chocolate

Solange - Sandcastle Disco

Something Corporate - Ruthless

Space Girls - Wannabe

Staind - Everything Changes

Stephanie Chapman - Cowboy, I Tried

Stevie Nicks & Don Henley - Leather And Lace

Sunny Sweeney - Please Be San Antone

Survivor - Eye Of The Tiger

Susan Haynes - Bottle Rocket

T-Pain ft. Mike Jones - I'm N Luv (Wit A Stripper)

T.I. - Top Back

T.I. - What You Know

Teddy Geiger - I Feel Like Dancing

Teddy Geiger - Try To Hard

The All-American Rejects - Dirty Little Secret

The All-American Rejects - Swing, Swing

The Ataris - The Boys of Summer

The Calling - Wherever You Will Go

The Cardigans - I Need Some Fine Wine And You

The Corrs - Breathless

The Corrs - Summer Sunshine

The Fray - How To Save A Life

The Fray - Look After You

The Fray - Over My Head (Cable Car)

The Killers - Read My Mind

The Killers - When You Were Young

The Lemonheads - Into Your Arms

The Spill Canvas - All Hail The Heartbreaker

The Veronicas - 4ever

The Veronicas - Everything I'm Not

The Veronicas - When It All Falls Apart

The Wallflowers - Closer To You

The Wreckers - Cigarettes

The Wreckers - Crazy People

The Wreckers - Lay Me Down

The Wreckers - Leave The Pieces

The Wreckers - Stand Still, Look Pretty

The Wreckers - The Good Kind

The Wreckers - The Good Kind (acoustic)

Third Eye Blind - How's It Going To Be

Third Eye Blind - Semi-Charmed Life

Three 6 Mafia - Side 2 Side

Three Days Grace - I Hate Everything About You

Thriving Ivory - Angels On The Moon

Tila Tequila - I Love You

Tim McGraw - Angry All The Time

Tim McGraw - Can't Tell Me Nothin'

Tim McGraw - Guess You Get Used To Somebody

Tim McGraw - Telluride

Tim McGraw - The Cowboy In Me

Tom Petty And The Heartbreakers - American Girl

Tori Amos - A Sorta Fairytale

Trace Adkins - Every Light In The House

Train - Meet Virginia

Trillville - Neva Eva

Trisha Yearwood - I Don't Paint Myself Into Corners

Tyler Hilton - How Love Should Be

Tyler Hilton - Kiss On

Tyler Hilton - Missing You

Tyler Hilton - Up Late Again

U2 - One

U2 - With Or Without You

Unkle Bob - Swans

Vanessa Carlton - Who's To Say

Vertical Horizon - You're A God

We The Kings - Check Yes Juliet

Wheat - I Met A Girl

Yellowcard - Only One

Young Buck - Shorty Wanna Ride

Young Jeezy - Air Forces

Young Jeezy - Bottom Of The Map

Young Jeezy - Get Ya Mind Right

Young Jeezy ft. Bun B - Trap Or Die

Young Jeezy ft. Akon - Soul Survivor

Young Jeezy ft. T.I. & Lil Scrappy - Bang

Yung Joc - I Know You See It

Yung Joc ft. Nitti - It's Goin' Down

#taylor swift #playlist #USA Today #brian mansfield #fearless era #baby taylor

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howaminotinthestrokesyet · 5 years ago

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Blur/Gorillaz/Damon Albarn: Random Quarantine Thoughts

Blur

1. Besides The Guy From Gorillaz...Most people know that Damon Albarn was in the band, but I do not think that the average music fan actually knows who else was in the band. The other members are guitarist Graham Coxon, bassist Alex James, and drummer, Dave Rowntree. They were formed in London in 1988, while the group released their debut, Leisure in 1991. Blur would reach the height of its success upon the release of the album, Parklife in 1994. Coxon first noticed Albarn in school playing Officer Krupke in West Side Story at age 13.

2. That’s High Praise...Thom Yorke once said in an interview that he had wished he had written “Girls and Boys,” one of their most well-known songs. The Radiohead front man said they were “bastards” for getting to that song first.

3. Too Many Coincidences...Their track Song 2 was the second track on the Blur album and the second single released on that album. The track was two minutes and two seconds long utilizing two drummers.. The track even reached number two on the UK charts.

4. Oasis Vs. Blur...Blur and Oasis got into a war in the 1990’s over who could sell more singles. They insulted each other quite a bit in the press as magazine New Musical Express really built up the rivalry. They compared it to the Beatles versus Rolling Stones as the two bands battled for Britpop supremacy. Noel Gallagher and Damon Albarn are now friends with the former even playing guitar on a 2018 Gorillaz album. Liam Gallagher still hates everything to do with Blur.

5. Free Studio Time...The drummer of Blur would later say the only reason he joined the band was because Damon Albarn had keys to a recording studio. He did not really like the singer at first, but free studio time was too hard to pass up.

Gorillaz

6. I Do Not Want My MTV...This virtual band was originally created by Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett. The latter is an artist, who is best known for the comic, Tank Girl. The idea for Gorillaz originated from Albarn and Hewlett watching MTV one day. They both felt that there was nothing of any substance on there, so they decided to create this virtual band as a way to comment on that fact.

7. Breaking Records...This animated group consists of four virtual members including Murdoc, Noodles, 2D, and Russel Hobbs. The band is presented through music videos, interviews, and short cartoons. They are currently listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as the biggest selling virtual band ever.

8. A Unique Structure...Albarn is the only permanent musical contributor, but he is assisted by regular contributions from all over the music world. Initially, Albarn would not even appear as the front man for the group as he stayed towards the back hidden from view. He wanted to convey the idea that this was completely a fictional animated band.

9. Hiatus...In 2012, Albarn and Hewlett had a bit of a falling out due to rising tensions over what the musical project had become. Hewlett had felt that the artistic features of the group were being minimized, while Albarn was turning it into more of an actual band. They would not release any new material for five years until the album, Humanz. Both Hewlett and Albarn worked together to create this album.

10. Postmodern Style...The style of Gorillaz has always been what has made their music unique. Many writers and even Albarn himself has described it as a post modern approach incorporating elements of hip-hop, electronic, and pop music. Yet, make no mistake that originally the group was intended to emerge as far away as possible from Albarn’s earlier group, Blur.

Damon Albarn

12. Help From The Kinks...In both of his groups, Albarn probably received his greatest influence from guitar pop groups of the 1960’s. This is definitely the case with his songwriting in Blur. He was heavily influenced by groups like the Kinks.

13. Drugs and Drama...Blur would release its last studio album in 1999. The impression that I always got was that Albarn took time off from music between projects for much longer than two years. Yet, the debut of the Gorillaz self titled album was in 2001. Although, the drama and tension between Albarn and Graham Coxon had worn on him quite a bit. As well as the fact, he and his girlfriend had developed quite the heroin habit by the late 1990’s.

14. An Elastica Relationship...Throughout the 1990’s, he dated Elastica singer, Justine Frischmann. They would break up in 1998, but the relationship along with the use of heroin heavily influenced the album, Blur. A year later he met artist Suzi Winstanley, who he still lives with today. They have a daughter named Missy, who is named after the rap artist, Missy Elliott.

15. No Strokes of Genius...In 2002, Damon contributed to The Strokes album, Room On Fire, but they ended up scrapping all his work. He would later say that the songs must have been perfect, so his contributions were not needed.

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joemuggs · 4 years ago

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DO YOU SUFFER FROM SPYMANIA?

It’s the 25th anniversary of the Spymania label, and to celebrate it they have released a record of unreleased tracks. It’s brilliant, you should buy it. In 2016 I wrote a history of the messy, messed-up, but brilliant Brighton scene that they found their feet in. Sadly it got lost in the archiving of the Red Bull Music Academy site, but I’ve still got the text, so here it is. And to prove I was there, here is me, in an inexplicably bad shirt, with the Spymania crew and friends:

Some Spymanians - far left is Hardy Spymania, next to him in blue t-shirt is Paddington Breaks, third from right leaning forward is MDK and that’s me in the bad shirt on the right.

25th Anniversary EP by SONGBIRD & WAFTA

From the town's 18th century genesis as a playground for aristocrats, Brighton has always been a space for outrageous hedonism. Being the closest point to London on the English south coast makes it an obvious place for escape and misbehaviour. With that has always come something grittier and grottier though. It's no coincidence that the best known fictional depictions of Brighton feature razor-carrying petty gangsters (Brighton Rock) and running street battles and hurried back-alley knee-tremblers (Quadrophenia). The novelist Keith Waterhouse famously said “Brighton always looks like a town helping police with their enquiries” – and it still does. Behind its facade of homeopaths, holidaymakers, students and media folk, it hides rampant corruption and organised crime, a heroin economy to match any British city, and sprawling estates that are among the country's poorest.

In the heat of the 1990s rave fervour when the world and its dog came down to Brighton to party their way through untold seven-day weekends, all of this ambiguity was expressed via a rather different electronic scene. While the superclubs along the seafront pumped to the sounds of handbag house, trance and big beat, hidden away in the nooks and crannies a techno style formed that became known on the European underground simply as “the Brighton sound” – and around it sprouted odd rave and electronica mutations that, though they might have seemed pisstakey or bloody-minded at the time, would alter the course of electronic music for a long time to come. All of this was surrounded by a dense web of art, theory, satire, in-jokes and meat-flinging cabaret, that could be perplexing, even off-putting, but has left a huge creative legacy from a tiny scene that punched way, way above its weight.

This scene of malcontents and squarepegs was by definition loose-knit – but if there was a centre to it, it was Cristian Vogel. Originally from the south Midlands, he and his friend Si Begg already had experience putting out cassette releases and primitive music software hacks (with the Cabbage Head Collective) before he came to Sussex University to study 20th Century Music in 1992. With a head full of Stockhausen and rave tapes, he was boshing out the techno, and by the end of 1994 had two releases on Dave Clarke's Magnetic North label and was resident at the Acid Box club nights in a little sticky-floored upstairs venue in Brighton's North Lanes.

This was the period when techno and hardcore were still part-fused, and along with headliners like Carl Cox and Luke Slater you could expect to hear Belgian hoover noises full-pelt gabber rolled into the more “intelligent” beats, all with nothing but relentless strobes and smoke to intensify the experience. It's a sign of how intense it was that the “chillout” in the backroom consisted of Richie Hawtin tunes playing and Tetsuo: Iron Man being shown on a couple of TVs, and felt genuinely laid back in comparison to the dancefloor. It could be shoulder-to-shoulder packed, or have ten people raving away, but it was pretty much always guaranteed to deliver mental obliteration. It's precisely this delirium you can hear in key early releases like Vogel's “Ninjah” or Tobias Schmidt's “Minus One”.

Si Begg and friends

Cristian, together with Si Begg founded Mosquito Records around this point, around which a motley crew of producers of monstrously banging but sonically razor sharp techno gathered. Neil Landstrumm, Tobias Schmidt (an ingenious pseudonym for one Toby Smith), Ibrahim Alfa and Russ Gabriel, as well as Begg and Vogel themselves, all released in the first couple of years. They were closely allied with the Scottish techno scene, notably through Landstrum but also the Sativae label run by Dave Tarrida and Steve Glenncross, and played to seething crowds north of the border, as well as absolutely huge ones in Germany, Poland and further afield. Yet even though the audiences were tiny back on the south coast, the local brand was inescapable: indeed Si Begg, who lived in London right through the nineties, recalls with some bafflement seeing untold German flyers with “BRIGHTON TECHNO” in big letters under his name.

All of this was great, but taken alone could simply have been another local flavour on the international techno scene. The four-to-the-floor certainly remained the heartbeat of the scene as The Acid Box became The Box, which became Defunkt, which became Freekin' The Frame, and the techno dons kept coming through: Blake Baxter, Shake Shakir, Claude Young, Beltram, Weatherall, Surgeon, Bandulu... but very quickly, things became about more than just that. There was a strongly disruptive element from the beginning in the form of a close alliance with the Brighton “clench” of the Church Of The SubGenius. If you don't know about the Church, that's a whole other rabbit hole to fall down, but for our purposes it's enough to know that the local bunch existed on the fringes of freeparty soundsystem culture and subverted its tendencies to crypto-mystical bollocks, and were big on collage and stencil graffiti, heavy punning streams of consciousness (“Bulldada” in the SubGenius parlance), mischief disguised as culture and vice versa.

Heavily influenced by this SubGenius mischief was Mat Consume, in-house designer, computer animator and frequent back-room DJ for the Vogel-related axis. His art, brain-bent ranting and noisily experimental sets became a vital part of the identity of the scene, helping coalesce obsessions with punk and Situationism and ambivalent embrace of digital progress among Vogel and compadres to the point where when they formed an umbrella organisation for their activities it was natural to call it No Future. Held loosely together by Vogel's partner and manager Emma Sola this acted as a booking agency for various acts, but just as much felt like a chaotic but fiercely independent joint art project between Vogel, Sola and Consume, throwing ideas and aesthetic forms out into the underground and forging alliances with equally bloody-minded creators.

Emma Sola

These included the likes of Canadian filmmaker and stencil artist Pablo Fiasco; animators and sound artists Ruth Jarman and Joe Gerhardt aka Semiconductor; non-techno eclecticist club collectives Mufflewuffle and Slack; the combative cabaret night That Stupid Club which would feature subcultural saboteurs like Stewart Home, Dennis Cooper and The Divine David; and another more rave-influenced cabaret night called Monkey's Lounge full of spoken word, off-colour comedy, offal-flinging and pints-of-piss-drinking, run and compered by... um... me (under the names Rimmington Snuffporn Esq and DJ Dead, with help from my music production and DJ partner Jeffrey Disastronaut). It was at a Monkey's Lounge session that Consume physically pushed Jamie Lidell – already widely known as a wildly innovative techno producer via the Subhead collective and their Growth parties – on stage with the house band Balzac, immediately kickstarting a long running residency as their singer and marking the beginning of a performing career that still continues.

Tom “Squarepusher” Jenkinson and Hardy Spymania

Possibly the most important alliance of all, though, was with the Spymania crew. Their social circle was a motley bunch of Londoners, Midlanders and most notably a large contingent from Chelmsford, Essex. Many of the latter had been to school with Tom Jenkinson, a musician known originally as Stereotype and then, when the Spymania label itself was formed by Paul Fowler and brighton-based Hardy Finn, as Squarepusher. Their ethos was preposterous in all ways, fuelled by unstable fusions of questing intellects and Essex swagger. As teenagers they first congregated around a Chelmsford club night called Club Trout, run by future scene mainstay Jane Mitchell (and later exported to Brighton as Smooth But Halibut); they smoked themselves sarcastic to early tapes made by their friends Cassetteboy; everything they did was shot through with skater-stoner-hardcore-raver pisstake attitude. Their rickety old website, which remains live today, still gives a hint of all this. http://www.spymania.com/pgs/hardcore.html

Yet these were musical connoisseurs too, assiduously collecting hip hop, acid, Detroit techno, British electronica, and especially in the case of Martin “MDK” Wood, death metal, gindcore and anarcho punk. This pile-up of musical expertise and sarky dicking about was there from the first release, Squarepusher's Conumber EP – which featured everything from a track that was nothing more than a timestretched Jenkinson asking “can anyone lend me a fiver” to the jungle-acid fusions that would literally redefine how electronica was made from the Aphex Twin on down for the rest of the 1990s. The Spymania records that followed touched on illbient mismatched time signatures, Drexciyan electro-funk, Deicide samples, eerily blissed out atmospherics, Cassetteboy's peurile genius (via offshoot label Barry's Bootlegs), and a dozen more awkward twists and turns besides, always brain-frying, always funny, never settling on any sound that offered the casual listener an easy handle on what was going on.

A standardly Dada Spymania cover

This added up to a refreshing antidote to the chin-fondling seriousness and purism of much of the electronica scene. And when Finn, Wood and friends went raving at the Acid Box, they naturally found a kindred spirit in Mat Consume who would design almost all the Spymania sleeves, their grainy photocopy style a counterpoint to the garish clashing computer images and animated dancing baby skeletons of his No Future work. They in turn helped inspire Consume, with the urbane Lynton Million (a university friend of Jamie Lidell's), to set up Trash Records.

Trash was a label that would take the horrible and confrontational side of the scene to extremes, with anger and ugliness from label mainstays including DJ Paedofile, Chuck Shite and Shit & Cheap (aka Consume & Landstrumm – sample track name: “SuckingCocksForFishheads”), as well as impossibly intricate turns from the likes of Liddell and another Chelmsfordian Squarepusher contemporary and Rephlex recording artist, Matt Yee-King. Si Begg, too, was close to the Spymania team, and launched the rather more good-natured but equally ridiculous Noodles family of labels, featuring a slew of collaborations and AKAs (including Hardy Spymania's pleasingly literal Barry Pseudonym) from the No Future and Spymania families.

It was a messy and disparate little scene. The bulk of the rave action took place in the big clubs of Germany and the rest of Europe, but the creative processes were at least as much about what happened in smoky shared flats and workshops in Brighton's tatty backstreets as they were about big dancefloors. Vogel once described his metier as “the drug pub rant”, and a lot of work sprung from precisely these. Continually, though, the bulk of Brighton club culture, from the seafront clubs to the free parties on the beaches and Downs, tended to look askance at the belligerence and deliberate obfuscations of the No Future axis, or more often simply ignore it all. Perhaps the glorious cresting of the first wave of activity, and probably this scene's peak visibility in Brighton full stop, was at the Brighton Dance Parade of 1997. This attempt to replicate Berlin's Love Parade was never to be repeated – hippie mismanagement and Brighton's endemic corruption saw to that – but for one day only the ravers had their literal day in the sun.

The Trash crew: top - Consume, Hunter & Million / middle - Million & Consume / bottom - Cristian Vogel & Million

There, among floats pumping out free party trance and funky house, the No Future bus – stencilled all over by Pablo Fiasco with pictures of dead rock stars, and with a stunningly crsip rig playing weaponised techno whose angles and curves were a thousand times sharper and more present than any other music on the day – stood out like a septic thumb. This was also the year that Vogel's musical partnership with Lidell began in earnest – with Lidell's furious remix of Vogel's “(Don't) Take More”, which remains a brain-damage anthem to this day in some quarters, and their first release as the mutant electronic funk duo Super_Collider, “Darn (Cold Way O Loving)”. The latter track, amazingly, emerged on a major label, thanks to it being signed by Skint parent label Loaded, in turn licensed through Sony. It was a year to wave the freak flag high.

Despite untold hard drugs, fights and the incestuous nature of a town as small as Brighton, the scene and the various record labels involved remained vigorous and continued to diversify right through the last years of the nineties and into the new millennium. Super_Collider released one album on Loaded, and another on Rise Robots Rise, the label created by Vogel and Sola for ever more varied output including Catalan girl-punk and German dancehall. Lidell's ultra-experimental first solo album, Muddlin Gear, came out as a joint venture between Spymania and WARP in 2000, accompanied by deranged artwork and live films by Pablo Fiasco. Bands increasingly became part of the mix: whispering neo-Krautrockers Fujiya & Miyagi (on Paul Spymania's Massive Advance imprint), the terrifying Wevie Stonder (who he managed) and space-pop group Chungking (which I was in for a couple of years, and whose multi-instrumentalist James Stephenson played bass for Super_Collider live, creating a Chelmsford rhythm section with Matt Yee-King on drums - both of these two had also been in the aforementioned Balzac too).

No Future’s logo, designed with typical aggression by Consume

There were prominent fans too. John Peel asked the Trash collective to open Meltdown Festival in 1998. Thom Yorke and Radiohead's resident artist Stanley Donwood designed t-shirts for No Future. Vogel is namechecked on the Sabres Of Paradise Haunted Dancehall album, and Andrew Weatherall would frequently call him up, dumbfounded at his latest sonic advances. One memorable 1999 awayday for the Freekin' The Frame club to The End in London saw Róisín Murphy jumping on stage after the live Super_Collider show to duet with Lidell on an impromptu version of “Once in a Lifetime”, a very young Kieran Hebden repping UK garage, Chicks On Speed shouting their hearts out, and Chris Cunningham playing long segments of white noise to puzzled ravers, as well as sets from various No Future / Spymania stalwarts.

Inevitably, like all but the very biggest musical scenes, the micro-one in Brighton dissipated as people grew up, fucked up, or moved on – but its echoes continue. Vogel and Landstrumm continue to be significant forces in electronic music, both as influences on the post-Blawan generation and as musicians in their own right. Si Begg is a respected sound designer and composer. Matt Yee-King runs the computer music course at Goldsmiths college, and is a big noise on the “Algorave” scene. Paul Spymania is an artist manager and agent, and along with Scuba, brought dubstep to Berlin in the legendary Sub:Stance sessions. Semiconductor became artists in residence for NASA, among many other extraordinary commissions. Jamie Lidell supported Elton John. Consume is in Bristol, currently working on a giant mural of DJ Derek. Lynton Million lives on a small island, selling whisky. Ibrahim Alfa took several sharp diversions that are an epic tale in their own right, and is only now picking up where he left off with a Workshop issue of his “lost” album Once Upon a Time in Brighton. And so it goes on...

Unlike some electronic scenes, the one in Brighton was never particularly chic (although it certainly had massive cultural cachet in a few countries if not at home), and its records don't necessarily fetch silly money on discogs (like that's a measure of value, right?). But out of a tiny techno club and its committed few regulars grew something that filled an entire decade with utterly extraordinary art, music, humour and ideas, and which still has relevance and resonance for smart creative minds many years on. Those messy, aggro, awkward bunch of ravers and jokers somehow managed to hold it together just enough to build a creative world entirely of their own, with its own rules and its own distinctive identity: what more can artists hope for?

This history is dedicated to James Phillips, a vital part of this scene and always 100% one of the good guys. RIP

Some tunes:

Cristian Vogel: Ninjah https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ydOFHo9JtI

Tobias Schmidt: Minus One https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YjozNVF7_I

MDK: Sound of Saturday https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FV3KQHGxmcg

Subhead: Ruction (produced by Jamie Lidell) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b5vNX_ylRQM

Squarepusher: Sarcacid https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_IY6cvGnVCA

Cristian Vogel: Bite & Scratch (Blake Baxter Detroit Mix) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PXIB7I3D7ss

DJ Paedofile: I was Rise in Clouds https://youtu.be/WcyrrAwqaQY

Buckfunk 3000 (Si Begg): Future Shock Planet Rock https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lp4b6PE0FkY

Cristian Vogel: Sarcastically Tempered Powers http://youtu.be/Q2G3204pfkY

Yee King: Goodnight Toby https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbnZuv3xHog

Super_Collider: Darn https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dh2kauFcGpw

No Future at Brighton Love Parade: https://vimeo.com/119001501

#brighton #rave #techno #electronica #drill'n'bass #spymania #wonky techno #experimental music #subgenius #maniacs #too much marijuana #white lightning

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kindledspiritsbooks · 5 years ago

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My Month in Books: November 2019

Ninth House - Leigh Bardugo

Galaxy “Alex” Stern is the most unlikely member of Yale’s freshman class. Raised in the Los Angeles hinterlands by a hippie mom, Alex dropped out of school early and into a world of shady drug dealer boyfriends, dead-end jobs, and much, much worse. By age twenty, in fact, she is the sole survivor of a horrific, unsolved multiple homicide. Some might say she’s thrown her life away. But at her hospital bed, Alex is offered a second chance: to attend one of the world’s most elite universities on a full ride. What’s the catch, and why her? Still searching for answers to this herself, Alex arrives in New Haven tasked by her mysterious benefactors with monitoring the activities of Yale’s secret societies. These eight windowless “tombs” are well-known to be haunts of the future rich and powerful, from high-ranking politicos to Wall Street and Hollywood’s biggest players. But their occult activities are revealed to be more sinister and more extraordinary than any paranoid imagination might conceive.

The White Album - Joan Didion

First published in 1979, "The White Album "is a journalistic mosaic" "of American life in the late 1960s and throughout the 1970s. It includes, among other bizarre artifacts and personalities, reportage on the dark journeys and impulses of the Manson family, a visit to a Black Panther Party press conference, the story of John Paul Getty's museum, a meditation on the romance of water in an arid landscape, and reflections on the swirl and confusion that marked this era. With commanding sureness of mood and language, Didion exposes the realities and dreams of an age of self-discovery whose spiritual center was California.

An Echo in the Bone - Diana Gabaldon

Jamie Fraser, erstwhile Jacobite and reluctant rebel, knows three things about the American rebellion: the Americans will win, unlikely as that seems in 1778; being on the winning side is no guarantee of survival; and he’d rather die than face his illegitimate son — a young lieutenant in the British Army — across the barrel of a gun. Fraser’s time-travelling wife, Claire, also knows a couple of things: that the Americans will win, but that the ultimate price of victory is a mystery. What she does believe is that the price won’t include Jamie’s life or happiness — not if she has anything to say.

Claire’s grown daughter Brianna, and her husband, Roger, watch the unfolding of Brianna’s parents’ history — a past that may be sneaking up behind their own family.

Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion - Jia Tolentino

Trick Mirror is an enlightening, unforgettable trip through the river of self-delusion that surges just beneath the surface of our lives. This is a book about the incentives that shape us, and about how hard it is to see ourselves clearly in a culture that revolves around the self. In each essay, Jia writes about the cultural prisms that have shaped her: the rise of the nightmare social internet; the American scammer as millennial hero; the literary heroine’s journey from brave to blank to bitter; the mandate that everything, including our bodies, should always be getting more efficient and beautiful until we die.

Three Women - Lisa Taddeo

It thrills us and torments us. It controls our thoughts and destroys our lives. It’s all we live for. Yet we almost never speak of it. And as a buried force in our lives, desire remains largely unexplored—until now. Over the past eight years, journalist Lisa Taddeo has driven across the country six times to embed herself with ordinary women from different regions and backgrounds. The result, Three Women, is the deepest nonfiction portrait of desire ever written. We begin in suburban Indiana with Lina, a homemaker and mother of two whose marriage, after a decade, has lost its passion. She passes her days cooking and cleaning for a man who refuses to kiss her on the mouth, protesting that “the sensation offends” him. To Lina’s horror, even her marriage counselor says her husband’s position is valid. Starved for affection, Lina battles daily panic attacks. When she reconnects with an old flame through social media, she embarks on an affair that quickly becomes all-consuming. In North Dakota we meet Maggie, a seventeen-year-old high school student who finds a confidant in her handsome, married English teacher. By Maggie’s account, supportive nightly texts and phone calls evolve into a clandestine physical relationship, with plans to skip school on her eighteenth birthday and make love all day; instead, he breaks up with her on the morning he turns thirty. A few years later, Maggie has no degree, no career, and no dreams to live for. When she learns that this man has been named North Dakota’s Teacher of the Year, she steps forward with her story—and is met with disbelief by former schoolmates and the jury that hears her case. The trial will turn their quiet community upside down. Finally, in an exclusive enclave of the Northeast, we meet Sloane—a gorgeous, successful, and refined restaurant owner—who is happily married to a man who likes to watch her have sex with other men and women. He picks out partners for her alone or for a threesome, and she ensures that everyone’s needs are satisfied. For years, Sloane has been asking herself where her husband’s desire ends and hers begins. One day, they invite a new man into their bed—but he brings a secret with him that will finally force Sloane to confront the uneven power dynamics that fuel their lifestyle. Based on years of immersive reporting, and told with astonishing frankness and immediacy, Three Women is a groundbreaking portrait of erotic longing in today’s America, exposing the fragility, complexity, and inequality of female desire with unprecedented depth and emotional power. It is both a feat of journalism and a triumph of storytelling, brimming with nuance and empathy, that introduces us to three unforgettable women—and one remarkable writer—whose experiences remind us that we are not alone

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grigori77 · 6 years ago

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Guilty Pleasure #30

SUCKER PUNCH

Dir. ZACK SNYDER; Wri. ZACK SNYDER & STEVE SHIBUYA; Music. TYLER BATES & MARIUS De VRIES; Starring. EMILY BROWNING, ABBIE CORNISH, JENA MALONE, VANESSA HUDGENS, JAMIE CHUNG, CARLA GUGINO, OSCAR ISAAC, JON HAMM, SCOTT GLENN; R.T. 109 mins; 2011, USA/Canada

WHAT IT’S ABOUT: Possibly somewhere in 1960s America, Babydoll (Browning) finds herself locked away in an asylum by her brutal, corrupt stepfather, with just one week to go before she’s due to be lobotomized. As she seeks escape, she slips into a fantasy world in which she’s been sold into sexual slavery at the brothel run by Blue (Isaac), and as she enlists the help of fellow prisoners Sweet Pea (Cornish), Rocket (Malone), Blondie (Hudgens) and Amber (Chung), Babydoll slips further into her delusions, leading her into epic battles against monstrous foes in far-flung, impossible lands …

WHY IT’S GUILTY: Wow, where do I start? There are DOZENS of reasons why this movie shouldn’t work, and plenty why it DOESN’T – the narrative structure is a twisted mess, riddled with plot holes, wild stretches in creative credibility and more than one shameful use of full-on deus ex-machina, several of the characters are badly drawn ciphers or clichéd caricatures, the pacing can be PAINFULLY inconsistent, and parts of the action sequences drag when they really should race. Accusations of misogyny have been levelled at the film, and they’re not without foundation, while the rapey vibe of the main characters’ core dilemma can sometimes leave an unpleasant taste in the mouth. This certainly is one of the strongest examples of a “Marmite film” in cinema, dividing critics and audiences across the board, and while the film ultimately managed to scrape even at the box office, it was nothing like the blockbuster tour-de-force it was intended to be.

WHY IT’S A PLEASURE: And yet, if you just switch off and go with it, there’s still plenty to enjoy here. This was, after all, written and directed by Zack Snyder (co-writing with relative unknown Steve Shibuya), whose more successful features include 300, Watchmen and Man of Steel, and if there’s one thing we learned from his other (relative) misfires, Batman Vs Superman: Dawn of Justice and Justice League, it’s that even when he delivers a clunker, it’s still an interesting and often ENTERTAINING clunker. While it becomes an incoherent, bloated mess in places, it’s still visually stunning, every shot of the film designed to almost anal degrees of detail, some compositions genuinely transitioning into realms of high art, so the whole thing looks like a particularly rich and glossy graphic novel brought to vivid life. The action sequences are, for the most part, EXQUISITE (no surprise, really, since they were handled by stunt coordinator Damon Caro, who, as well as working on Snyder’s previous two films, also choreographed the Bourne movies), particularly Babydoll’s initial meeting with Scott Glenn’s mysterious mentor, the Wise Man, which progresses into a moody, evocative confrontation with a three enormous demonic samurai, and the spectacular steampunk-flavoured World War I-set adventure where the girls are first put through their collective action paces. Indeed, while many characters fall short, one of the film’s genuine strengths is its five strong female leads – Emily Browning (American Gods) may be deceptively slight but once Babydoll picks up her katana and .45 automatic she’s transformed into truly iconic ass-kicker filled with unbreakable spirit, Jenna Malone (Donnie Darko, The Hunger Games) is all fire and unpredictability as troubled teen runaway Rocket, and Jamie Chung (The Gifted) and Vanessa Hudgens (High School Musical) definitely aren’t underdeveloped eye-candy as they both bring true depth and nuance to Amber and Blondie, but in many ways the true heroine of the story is Sweet Pea, Abbie Cornish (Three Billboards, Jack Ryan) adding a powerful “big sister” vibe that brings additional pathos as the tension peaks in the final act – and a genuinely memorable, compelling and creepily seductive villain in future Star Wars-star Oscar Isaac’s Blue. YES, the film IS misogynistic, but there’s a message beneath the overt sexuality and glossy presentation, Snyder clearly trying to ram a message of feminine empowerment home and sometimes succeeding, even if it does tend to get lost in the noise. More interesting, however, is a more subtle idea buried in the narrative, telling us to keep fighting no matter what, even if the battle really can’t be won. Clearly it’s one Snyder and co took to heart – this is a deeply flawed film that fails on many levels, particularly the genuinely ridiculous twist ending, but it’s not for lack of trying.

#sucker punch #zack snyder #steve shibuya #emily browning #abbie cornish #jena malone #vanessa hudgens #jamie chung #carla gugino #oscar isaac #jon hamm #scott glenn #guilty pleasures #so bad it's good #BUT MORE BAD THAN GOOD #guaranteed to be one of the most divisive guilty pleasures in my collection

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thefinalgirlspeaks · 5 years ago

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The Future of the Final Girl

“She is the one who encounters the mutilated bodies of her friends and perceives the full extent of the horror and of her own peril; who is chased, cornered, wounded; whom we see scream, stagger, fall, rise, and scream again. She alone looks death in the face, but she also finds the strength either to stay the killer long enough to be rescued or to kill him herself.” [Clover, Men, Women and Chainsaws].

As women watching horror films through the lens of the male gaze, we are often encouraged to place ourselves in the inappropriate kitten heels of the terrorised girl running screaming from the killer. This girl has become a horror staple, the one we can root for, hitch our hopes onto. This girl, unlikely as she seems, will provide the eventual satisfying final blow to whichever murderous villain has slain everyone else.

She is the Final Girl.

As feminism progresses, so must the reflection of women in the media; much of horror is historically misogynistic, which is all the more reason to encourage the effects of female empowerment to trickle through to the way women are represented in horror films. There is a change happening, slowly but surely - the Final Girl is morphing from shrieking, inept victim, to armed, prepared badass. For a comprehensive overview of this mutation, we can examine and score a selection of films from each decade since the beginning of this Final Girl phenomenon and track her progression right up to the present.

“Why not more and better female killers, and why not Pauls as well as Paulines?” [Clover, Men, Women and Chainsaws].

Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock, 1960)

Every horror enthusiast knows that Hitchcock changed the game when he killed off Marion Crane, who - until the infamous shower scene – viewers suppose to be the heroine of Psycho. Instead, the film’s true Final Girl is Marion’s sister Lila, a tenacious, petite woman who arrives late to the party bearing no distinguishable personality besides being Marion’s concerned sibling.

Despite the disapproving way Lila speaks about Marion and her light fingers, she is determined to uncover the truth about what happened to her. She does this by immediately roping in a man to assist her: Marion’s boyfriend Sam. Unlike, Lila, Sam’s actions are helpful and smart – he drives them to the Bates Motel, insists on inspecting motel logbook to find Marion’s name, and even distracts creepy Norman Bates while Lila snoops around Marion’s old hotel room (it should be noted that she discovers nothing of import).

Eventually however, despite the ineptitude that she has displayed throughout the rest of her screen time, it is Lila that, while hiding, stumbles upon the corpse of Norman’s mother, thereby accidentally revealing his ‘psychosis’. As a starter Final Girl, Lila is pretty average. She screams and runs about, prattles on about her inaccurate theories, and annoys the hell out of every male character she interacts with.

Final Girl Rating: 4/10

Suspiria (Dario Argento, 1977)

Italian maestro of horror direction Dario Argento is notorious for his gratuitous, often near-unwatchable depictions of slaughtered women. His most famous films form a trilogy, known as ‘The Three Mothers’, consisting of Suspiria (1977), Inferno (1980), and The Mother of Tears (2007). The most famous of these is the first; Suspiria immerses the viewer in a visceral, melodramatic murder-mystery. Within the first few minutes, a young blonde woman is being terrorised, chased, strangled, stabbed, and eventually made to plummet through a glass ceiling, to be hanged before a (different) screaming lady.

I will dub this character, often a feature of the horror formula, the ‘First Girl’. The First Girl is both a decoy and a necessity. In the same way that Psycho’s First Girl Marion makes way for Final Girl Lila, Suspiria’s Pat makes way for Suzy. Suzy is a shy, American sweetheart with a serious case of underdeveloped personality disorder. As a foreign student coming to join a German dance school, she is the perfect outsider, made evident from the beginning, when a few of the other girls are immediately snarky towards her.

It takes a while for Suzy to cotton on to the sinister goings-on behind the scenes of the Tanz Dance Academy, partly due to the mysterious and sudden malady that has her bedridden and unable to participate in classes very soon after she arrives. The creepy doctor prescribes her nightly doses of alcohol to help her sleep, and it isn’t until token ‘Foolish Friend’ Sara points out that she can’t be roused once she’s drunk it, that she realises it might be laced with something else.

Inevitably, after Sara’s mysterious demise, Suzy is the only girl left in the school clued in enough to understand that it’s all a front for a murderous witch coven and must try to defeat the evil. As you may have gathered from the poster, she does this mostly by creeping through the darkened corridors with a lamp, slowly opening doors and sweeping back curtains until she suffers another jump scare and screams.

“The Final Girl looks for the killer, even tracking him to his forest hut or his underground labyrinth, and then at him, therewith bringing him, often for the first time, into our vision as well.” [Clover, Men, Women and Chainsaws].

Although it is relatively unclear whether or not Suzy does succeed in destroying the coven altogether, it is probable that the fire she sets does consume everyone inside the academy. She also earns points for tracking down an outside opinion from a local professor not associated with the school to learn how to take down witches. Still, a fairly standard performance; Argento gives us a disturbingly young-looking Final Girl, whose capabilities do not extend much beyond childlike ignorance. She is perpetually stricken by her own paralyzing fear, and only finds the courage to battle the evil right at the last second, by which time her friends are already dead.

Final Girl Rating: 5/10

Halloween (John Carpenter, 1978)

“The Final Girl of the slasher film is presented from the outset as the main character. The practiced viewer distinguishes her from her friends minutes into the film. She is the Girl Scout, the bookworm, the mechanic.” [Clover, Men, Women and Chainsaws].

Halloween’s Final Girl is perhaps the most notorious of all time, Jamie Lee Curtis’ Laurie, a smart, introverted babysitter overshadowed by her two promiscuous and outlandish friends. As a sexually inexperienced, rule-following young woman, she is the epitome of what it takes to be a Final Girl, as her survival strategy will not be muddied by drugs, alcohol, or lust. Although Laurie must suffer the horror of seeing her friends be slaughtered and their corpses displayed in macabre dioramas, she is feisty enough to last until the very end. She even manages to fight her way through Halloween II, using her past experience to chase off the dogged Michael Myers a second time.

Laurie is not given a lot of backstory, but as successful Final Girls go, she is one of the first, and the best. She endures the horror, but does not let it weaken her. She channels the injustice of her friends’ murders into anger, and strikes the killer down, very nearly succeeding in killing him before she is rescued. Arguably, Laurie paves the way for future Final Girls in the 80’s boom of female-driven horror, out of which spring Alice of Friday the 13th (Cunningham, 1980), and Nancy of Nightmare on Elm Street (Craven, 1984).

Final Girl Rating: 7/10

Alien (Ridley Scott, 1979)

From the outset of Alien, it is made clear that the only rational voice amongst the crew of the Nostromo spaceship is Ellen Ripley, the second in command officer. There are two females amongst the seven members of the Alien cast (not including Jonesy the cat): Ripley and Lambert, and they are polar opposites. Lambert is the embodiment of weakness; actress Veronica Cartwright was told by director Ridley Scott that her character was ‘the audience's fears; a reflection of what the audience is feeling’. As such, she tackles the unfortunate situation of a rogue alien slithering about the ship eating crew members by making rash, stupid decisions, crying, shrieking, and being generally unhelpful.

Lambert is merely a foil, however, for the strong, smart, rebellious performance given by Ripley, the lone survivor of the Nostromo - along with Jonesy. She alone, with her unwavering pragmatism, her cunning strategic mind, and her aptitude for wielding a flamethrower, manages to outsmart the terrifying alien creature, and jet off to safety in the ship’s emergency shuttle.

Treading into and deepening the prints made by Laurie’s dainty feet comes Sigourney Weaver’s Ripley, a Final Girl to be revered. She was so impressive to audiences world over that she earned herself three sequels.

Final Girl Rating: 8/10

The Descent (Neil Marshall, 2005)

This early noughties British flick was an innovation when it emerged due to its all female cast. The Descent follows six adventurous young women who decide to go caving as a bonding exercise following an awful tragedy. The husband and child of one of the group (Sarah), die in a car accident, and in a valiant attempt to move on, she decides to squeeze herself through some narrow underground passages with her friends. Unbeknownst to the rest of the group however, Juno, the organiser of the expedition, has led them into an entirely unexplored cave system, hoping that in discovering the way through, they would all be brought closer together. Unfortunately, this plan goes awry when the passage they came through caves in behind them, and they have no idea of the way out. Left with no other choice, they push further into the caves, only to discover that they are not the only creatures alive down there.

The basis of this film is, unusually, based on the complexity of female relationships. Rather than deriving conflict from sexual dynamics, The Descent uses Juno and Sarah’s strained friendship to maximise the dramatic tension.

“...other filmmakers figured that the only thing better than one beautiful woman being gruesomely murdered was a whole series of women being gruesomely murdered.” [Schoell, Stay Out Of The Shower].

Juno’s immediate reaction to Sarah’s initial misfortune is to run from it, meaning that later in the film, when the group meet to ‘descend’ into the caves, her motivation is guilt. She is desperate to make amends for her cowardice in the face of Sarah’s grief, which is why she makes the foolish decision to lead them all into a death trap.

When Juno explains her reasoning to Sarah moments after they become trapped, Sarah is unmoved by her apologies, and thus the circle of their six-way female bond is broken. From that moment on, each woman has to fend for themselves. By the end of the film, Sarah has accumulated enough reasons to wound Juno and leave her to the mercy of the ravenous ‘crawlers’ while she scrambles for escape. Juno cowered away when Sarah needed her after her family were killed, she led them into an underground labyrinth filled with monsters with no escape, she accidentally murdered Beth with a pick-axe thinking she was one of the creatures, and finally, it is heavily implied that she had been having an affair with Sarah’s husband, Paul. The case for her death sentence in comparison to Sarah, who lost everything and was unwillingly lured into a monster-filled hellscape, is strong; even we, as an audience, want to see her devoured.

The downfall of this mostly progressive horror narrative is that it does, inevitably, play on a fight for a man’s affections. There is no need for the suggested affair between Juno and Paul given all the other reasons there are for Sarah to sacrifice her in the final few minutes, yet it is slipped in as an unnecessary extra motivator. As Final Girls go, Sarah is an inspiration. To go into the cave at all would be a nightmarish adventure for most women, particularly since she is still reeling from the gruesome deaths of her husband and child. But not only does Sarah keep it together in the face of Juno’s treachery, the deaths of all of her friends, and the horrifying ‘crawlers’ that lurk in the caves, she lurks in wait in muddy pools, wields pick-axes, flares, and grapple hooks, spares nobody mercy, and fights her way, bloodied and wild-eyed back to the surface.

Final Girl rating: 8/10.

Halloween (Green, 2018)

In recent years, the most positive representation of women in horror is a Reformed Final Girl: Jamie Lee Curtis from Halloween, who reprises her role as Laurie in a continuation story of the same name. In this 2018 Halloween, Laurie is a weathered, tough old woman with her own daughter Karen, and granddaughter Allyson. It is revealed quickly that Karen was removed from her mother’s guardianship by the state as a result of the strict, overbearing and military parenting style of Laurie the Myers veteran. As a result, Karen and her mother do not see eye to eye; this is the central conflict of the film behind the horror, as Laurie is still convinced that Myers is alive and coming for them all (spoiler: he is), whereas Karen is strongly of the opinion that her mother is deranged from the trauma of watching her friends be murdered as a teenager.

There is, of course, great appeal to the idea of the terrorised Final Girl growing up to be a shotgun-wielding badass with a fully fortified house and zero tolerance for unexpected visitors. My problem with this aged-up Laurie is that, despite how she clawed her way through three films to survive, her life, as it turns out, was hardly worth living. By the end of the film Karen and Laurie are back on good terms, but it is implied that they spent most of Karen’s life estranged from one another. Laurie does not have friends, or a partner, only a drinking problem and a psychotic paranoia about a killer returning to slaughter her once and for all. Props to Laurie for being smarter than everyone else around her that underestimated Michael Myers’ ability to spring back up after being stabbed, shot, or blown up, but I can’t help but feel that as a representative of the Future of the trope, she is almost there, but not quite.

Final Girl Rating: 9/10

To consider the future of the Final Girl is to consider the future of female representation. As a character, she is in one way admirable, and in another, a tool to provide public satisfaction of bloodlust. The horror spectator should ask oneself what it is that they truly want to see from a protagonist, particularly a female one, and why. The Final Girl should be a weapon with which the viewer can arm themselves, a lens in front of the most unspeakable situations of horror through which anyone can align their own eye.

The Final Girl has the potential to represent all women, to define our strength and capability through her response to the worst catastrophe, and the resilience of moving on from it, to enjoy the life she has fought for. As feminism progresses, and the constraints of male-authored perversity are lifted from the horror genre, we will surely begin to see more Ripleys, and less Lilas. We will be able to cheer on our Final Girl as she takes ownership of her body, as opposed to having it plundered by knives and saws. The Future Final Girl will rise up against both the killer, and the oppression of generic, outdated horror tropes, and slash her way through to a more hopeful, equal future.

#final girl #horror #horror film #halloween #suspiria #horror trope #feminism

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merlyozknocker · 5 years ago

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My Month in Books: November 2019

Ninth House - Leigh Bardugo

The White Album - Joan Didion

First published in 1979, “The White Album "is a journalistic mosaic” “of American life in the late 1960s and throughout the 1970s. It includes, among other bizarre artifacts and personalities, reportage on the dark journeys and impulses of the Manson family, a visit to a Black Panther Party press conference, the story of John Paul Getty’s museum, a meditation on the romance of water in an arid landscape, and reflections on the swirl and confusion that marked this era. With commanding sureness of mood and language, Didion exposes the realities and dreams of an age of self-discovery whose spiritual center was California.

An Echo in the Bone - Diana Gabaldon

Claire’s grown daughter Brianna, and her husband, Roger, watch the unfolding of Brianna’s parents’ history — a past that may be sneaking up behind their own family.

Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion - Jia Tolentino

Three Women - Lisa Taddeo

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addictedforbooksquad · 6 years ago

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P I C K (S) O F T H E M O N T H: O C T O B E R

Lie by Natalia Jaster

Villains series by V.E. Schwab

Wolfsong by TJ Klune

All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr

Fall by Kristen Callihan

Scotland or Bust by Kira Archer

Dating the Enemy by Nicole Williams

Save the Date by Morgan Matson

Lie by Natalia Jaster

Genres: New Adult, Fantasy, Romance

Links: goodreads | amazon

Synopsis:

Once upon a time, there lived a liar... In the Kingdom of Autumn, Aspen is a girl of the trees. She’s a girl who knows her way around a falsehood. She’s the artful liar who steals from the Crown. Once upon a time, there lived a knight... In the shadows of a castle, Aire is a man of the wind. He’s a man who sees through Aspen’s treachery. He’s the relentless knight who pursues her. Once upon a time, there lived two enemies... In a fairytale woodland, a pair of mismatched souls are thrown together—only to find an unexpected bond. Both deceitful and passionate.

Why we love it:

beautiful, poetic prose

interesting, unusual take on Pinocchio

flawed, engaging characters who develop over the course of the book

their banter is entertaining as hell

heroine’s “skin condition” (so to speak) is not magically healed (at least not permanently) - she learns to love herself instead

Trigger warnings: ableism

Villains series by V.E.Schwab

Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Science-Fiction

Links: goodreads | bookdepository

Synopsis:

Victor and Eli started out as college roommates—brilliant, arrogant, lonely boys who recognized the same sharpness and ambition in each other. In their senior year, a shared research interest in adrenaline, near-death experiences, and seemingly supernatural events reveals an intriguing possibility: that under the right conditions, someone could develop extraordinary abilities. But when their thesis moves from the academic to the experimental, things go horribly wrong. Ten years later, Victor breaks out of prison, determined to catch up to his old friend (now foe), aided by a young girl whose reserved nature obscures a stunning ability. Meanwhile, Eli is on a mission to eradicate every other super-powered person that he can find—aside from his sidekick, an enigmatic woman with an unbreakable will. Armed with terrible power on both sides, driven by the memory of betrayal and loss, the archnemeses have set a course for revenge—but who will be left alive at the end?

Why we love it:

memorable cast of characters - likeable and morally grey villains, badass women

anti-hero story

a gripping, twisted tale of jealousy, ambition, murder, revenge and superpowers

interesting narrative style with timeline jumping back and forth fluidly with different perspectives

SO. MUCH. TENSION

Trigger warnings: domestic abuse, suicide, attempted rape, drug abuse, graphic violence

Wolfsong by TJ Klune

Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Paranormal, Romance

Links: goodreads | bookdepository

Synopsis:

Ox was twelve when his daddy taught him a very valuable lesson. He said that Ox wasn’t worth anything and people would never understand him. Then he left. Ox was sixteen when he met the boy on the road, the boy who talked and talked and talked. Ox found out later the boy hadn’t spoken in almost two years before that day, and that the boy belonged to a family who had moved into the house at the end of the lane. Ox was seventeen when he found out the boy’s secret, and it painted the world around him in colors of red and orange and violet, of Alpha and Beta and Omega. Ox was twenty-three when murder came to town and tore a hole in his head and heart. The boy chased after the monster with revenge in his bloodred eyes, leaving Ox behind to pick up the pieces. It’s been three years since that fateful day—and the boy is back. Except now he’s a man, and Ox can no longer ignore the song that howls between them.

Why we love it:

so many family feels!

highlights the importance of friends/family/people in your life that are not blood-related

MATES (we do love a WELL-done mates trope)

werewolves whose sexuality is fluid

angsty but worth it!

Trigger warnings: violence, death, emotional abuse

All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr

Genres: Historical, Historical Fiction

Links: goodreads | bookdepository

Synopsis:

Marie-Laure lives in Paris near the Museum of Natural History, where her father works. When she is twelve, the Nazis occupy Paris and father and daughter flee to the walled citadel of Saint-Malo, where Marie-Laure’s reclusive great uncle lives in a tall house by the sea. With them they carry what might be the museum’s most valuable and dangerous jewel. In a mining town in Germany, Werner Pfennig, an orphan, grows up with his younger sister, enchanted by a crude radio they find that brings them news and stories from places they have never seen or imagined. Werner becomes an expert at building and fixing these crucial new instruments and is enlisted to use his talent to track down the resistance. Deftly interweaving the lives of Marie-Laure and Werner, Doerr illuminates the ways, against all odds, people try to be good to one another.

Why we love it:

beautifully haunting prose

set during WWII

two parallel stories that intertwine briefly towards the end

poetically written and full of rich details

there are so many heartwarming and heartbreaking moments

Trigger warnings: n/a

Fall by Kristen Callihan

Genres: New Adult, Romance, Contemporary

Links: goodreads | bookdepository

Synopsis:

The first time I met Jax Blackwood things went a little sideways. In my defense, I didn’t know he was Jax Blackwood—who expects a legendary rock star to be shopping for groceries? More importantly, a blizzard was coming and he was about to grab the last carton of mint-chocolate chip. Still, I might have walked away, but then he smugly dared me to try and take the coveted ice cream. So I kissed him. And distracted that mint-chip right out of his hands. Okay, it was a dirty move, but desperate times and all that. Besides, I never expected he’d be my new neighbor. An annoying neighbor who takes great pleasure in reminding me that I owe him ice cream but would happily accept more kisses as payment. An irresistible neighbor who keeps me up while playing guitar naked–spectacularly naked–in his living room. Clearly, avoidance is key. Except nothing about Jax is easy to ignore—not the way he makes me laugh, or that his particular brand of darkness matches mine, or how one look from him melts me faster than butter under a hot sun. Neither of us believes in love or forever. Yet we’re quickly becoming each other’s addiction. But we could be more. We could be everything. All we have to do is trust enough to fall.

Why we love it:

story written with SO MUCH feeling

deals with depression in a realistic way

wonderfully painful and satisfying slow-burn

actual relationship buildup, unlike the usual instalove that we see a lot in contemporaries

characters that feel very real and utterly relatable

“musician” aspect of the story is not just there, it’s a focus of some scenes

interesting and entertaining secondary characters

makes us long for the next installment!

Trigger warnings: mentions of suicide, depression

Scotland or Bust by Kira Archer

Genres: New Adult, Romance, Contemporary

Links: goodreads | bookdepository

Synopsis:

After dumping her boyfriend, Nicole Franklin impulsively jumps on a plane and heads to Europe. Sure, money and a job would have been nice to line up first. Even a visa, for that matter. So now she has to play tour guide at an Outlander experience for the most obnoxious man on the planet. Until she stumbles into the wrong bed in the middle of the night and wakes up in Harrison’s arms. Now his family thinks they’re engaged, and the entire village is betting on how long before she’ll be running for the hills. Harrison Troy has a reputation in the town for burning through assistants. And the bubbly new one he’s just hired is likely no different. But his family quickly has them “engaged.” He should be upset, but she’s the perfect buffer for his interfering family. She says she doesn’t need another man in her life--even if he comes with a castle--and that’s fine with him. So why can’t he stop thinking about the woman who is charming everyone in the town, and maybe even him?

Why we love it:

fake dating trope

set in Scotland

crazy adorable family

so many outlander and Jamie/Claire references

Trigger warnings: n/a

Dating the Enemy by Nicole Williams

Genres: Adult, Romance, Contemporary

Links: goodreads | bookdepository

Synopsis:

Ms. Romance, Hannah Arden, writes one of the top read relationship advice columns in the nation. Mr. Reality, Brooks North, writes the top read relationship advice column. Ms. Romance believes in true love and soul mates. Mr. Reality believes love is a term humanity has assigned to the primal instinct to procreate. She believes in fate—he in chance. She knows there’s one right person for everyone—he knows there are multiple ones. The two writers couldn’t be more polarized on relationships. They’re professional rivals, and philosophical antagonists. For eight years, their battles have been fought with words and ink. That changes when they apply for the same position at the World Times and find themselves face-to-face for the first time. Brooks isn’t the sour-faced, antiquity of a man Hannah pictured. And Hannah isn’t exactly the middle-aged shrew with cat hair on her housedress that Brooks imagined either. In lieu of competing for the promotion traditional ways, the two writers are presented with playing the leading roles in a social experiment unlike any before. Can a person be tricked into falling in love? Can a relationship be crafted under the right string of circumstances? Hannah knows the answer. So does Brooks. Agreeing to the terms, the two set out on a three-month dating experiment, live-streamed for the world to watch. All Hannah has to do to win is not fall in love with the narcissistic brute. All Brooks has to do is get the starry-eyed dreamer to fall in love with him. Both are so confident in their philosophies, they expect the challenge to be easy. With the world watching, Brooks and Hannah will be forced to confront their beliefs and conclude, once and for all, who’s right. The answer is one neither of them saw coming.

Why we love it:

fake dating (we do have a weakness for this trope!)

interesting dynamic

likeable characters

The-Ugly-Truth-meets-The-Hating-Game premise

Trigger warnings: n/a

Save The Date by Morgan Matson

Genres: Young Adult, Romance, Contemporary

Links: goodreads | bookdepository

Synopsis:

Charlie Grant's older sister is getting married this weekend at their family home, and Charlie can't wait for the first time in years, all four of her older siblings will be under one roof. Charlie is desperate for one last perfect weekend, before the house is sold and everything changes. The house will be filled with jokes and games and laughs again. Making decisions about things like what college to attend and reuniting with longstanding crush Jesse Foster all that can wait. She wants to focus on making the weekend perfect. The only problem? The weekend is shaping up to be an absolute disaster. There's the unexpected dog with a penchant for howling, house alarm that won't stop going off, and a papergirl with a grudge. There are the relatives who aren't speaking, the (awful) girl her favorite brother brought home unannounced, and a missing tuxedo. Not to mention the neighbor who seems to be bent on sabotage and a storm that is bent on drenching everything. The justice of the peace is missing. The band will only play covers. The guests are all crazy. And the wedding planner's nephew is unexpectedly, distractedly cute. Over the course of three ridiculously chaotic days, Charlie will learn more than she ever expected about the family she thought she knew by heart. And she'll realize that sometimes, trying to keep everything like it was in the past means missing out on the future.

Why we love it:

adorable, intriguing and complex dynamic between Grant siblings

Trigger warnings: n/a

#dailylit #litedit #nadaily #book recs #bibliophile #bookworm #villains series #foolish kingdoms #lie #all the light we cannot see #wolfsong #vip series #fall #our edits #pick of the month #dating the enemy #save the date #scotland or bust

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love-little-lotte · 6 years ago

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My Top 11 Favorite Outlander Episodes (Seasons 1-3)

Hello! I’m back again with another Outlander post haha. What did you guys think of the latest episode? Wasn’t much of a fan of it (what the hell, Roger?) but I’m kind of looking forward for the next episodes now.

But that’s not what this post is going to be about. I mentioned from my Outlander Obsession post that I would like to discuss about the cast and characters of Outlander, much like I did with The Handmaid’s Tale before. But then I realized that there are so, so, so many Outlander characters that made an impression and it would be impossible to fit them in one post. So, I decided to make a Top 11 Favorite Outlander episodes.

These episodes are entirely my favorites. So I don’t care if you agree with me. I’m just sharing to you my fave episodes. You can definitely share your own as well. I also chose episodes from the first three seasons because Season 4 is just starting. Maybe I’ll make another one when Season 4 is done.

So, shall we begin?

#11: Season 1, Episode 15 - Wentworth Prison

This episode was such a roller coaster, I swear. Since I don’t know anything about Outlander (I just recently started reading the first book, thanks to a suggestion), I was caught off guard when this episode happened. I don’t really have the stomach for torture scenes, so this one almost made me cry. The next episode is more, um, detailed for sure and is more harrowing than this one, but I couldn’t bring myself to rewatch that episode just yet.

The Wentworth Prison episode, however, is more bearable to watch. I especially love Claire in this episode, since she portrayed a strong modern woman. Jamie rescues her a lot - when she was almost assaulted by Black Jack Randall and the one with the witch trial - and now, we get to see her rescue him. Despite the dangers ahead, she didn’t stay put and she was ready to risk everything.

This also highlighted the acting chops of Caitriona Balfe, Sam Heughan, and Tobias Menzies. They were definitely convincing as their characters, especially Sam and Tobias. I bet this was not an easy episode to shoot (as well as the next one), but hats off to them!

#10: Season 2, Episode 11 - Vengeance is Mine

Ah, this was such an entertaining episode. I watched this in a public place on my phone while I was eating lunch, and I had to stop myself from screaming when the Duke died. The Duke of Sandringham is one of those characters that you love to hate! And it was such a pleasure to watch him die (most fittingly) in Murtagh’s hands. Mary also got her revenge to the man who raped her, which really ruined her prospects with the love of her life, Alex Randall.

Claire, also once again, became the heroine of the day when she sacrificed herself so that the Redcoats would leave them alone. Thanks to her quick thinking, she was able to save Jamie and the others, and crossed paths once again with Mary, saving her as well.

#09: Season 3, Episode 1 - The Battle Joined

Finally! All of the events in the first two seasons led up to the historic Battle of Culloden, and it was a delight to see it. Though they only had snippets of it, it was so satisfying to see Jamie finally end Randall’s life. He finally got his revenge! But this triumph is temporary, when Jamie wakes to realize that most of his friends lost their lives in the battle, and that Claire is not there with him.

Claire, on the other hand, is adjusting to her new life in Boston with Frank. It wasn’t easy, of course, but she was able to make life bearable. She learned to have a new relationship with Frank, even though it was not what they had before. Not only has she to overcome her new relationship with Frank, but also her status as a woman in the 40s, especially since she was regarded as one of the bravest women back in the 18th century Scotland.

#08: Season 1, Episode 1 - Sassenach

The episode that started it all. I started watching Outlander because I was bored one Sunday afternoon, but when I watched the first episode, I knew that I came across something special.

The episode showed a small backstory of Claire in the war and her relationship with Frank, which made us sympathize her character when she time travelled to the 18th century. It also showed us Claire and Jamie’s first meeting with the dislocated shoulder scene! Sparks were definitely flying when they first met, I swear. The title of the episode is also one of my favorite term of endearments Jamie uses for Claire.

#07: Season 2, Episode 4 - La Dame Blanche

I have a soft spot for period dramas and dinner episodes haha. Maybe it’s an after-effect of Downton Abbey.

Other than that scene though, this also introduced us to another villain in the Frasers’ life - Comte St. Germain. That piece of shit tried to poison our favorite feminist icon but being the baddest bitch that she is, she survived. This was also the episode when Claire finally reveals to Jamie that Black Jack Randall is actually alive, and that he will get his revenge. Jamie also got over (more or less) his traumatic experience, and finally has sex with Claire after months.

#06: Season 2, Episode 13 - Dragonfly in Amber

This episode reduced me to tears! So many goodbyes. So many heartache. My poor heart can’t take it. Though there was a small piece of happiness (Claire is pregnant, again!), it was also the reason why Claire has to go back to her own time for the safety of her unborn child.

Claire and Jamie’s tearful goodbye were so heartfelt and real, and both Cait and Sam acted so perfectly in that episode. I especially love Jamie’s lines: “Lord, ye gave me a rare woman, and God, I loved her well” before making love to Claire one last time. In the end, though, we find out that Jamie never really died in the Battle of Culloden and Claire makes up her mind to go back to see him again.

Oh, and we also get to see Brianna, Claire and Jamie’s daughter. She’s an interesting character, for sure, and I can’t wait to see more of her.

#05: Season 3, Episode 6 - A. Malcolm

Yes! The most awaited reunion! After 20 years of being separated from each other, they finally reunite. Even though they’re much, much older than they last met, the passion is still burning and the love they feel for each other is still there.

Aside from the most-awaited love scenes, my favorite scene in this episode is Jamie finally seeing photographs of Brianna. It was such a wonderful moment, that after 20 years of not knowing what happened to his wife and daughter, he is finally aware that the sacrifice he made 20 years ago was worth it. The couple also had a lot to talk about after not seeing for so many years. I watched the whole season 3 in, like, a day so I cannot imagine the agony the fans had to endure while waiting for this episode haha.

#04: Season 1, Episode 7 - The Wedding

Ah, of course. You can’t have a Top Favorite Outlander Episodes without including this episode. This episode showed Claire and Jamie’s first kiss (which was weirdly during their wedding lmao) and their first love scene/s (they had sex, like, three times in this episode).

Like I mentioned in a previous post, I don’t think Claire was in love with Jamie when she married him, but she was obviously drawn to him, and she felt a strong attachment. This was the beginning of an understanding Claire and Jamie shares - may it be physically, or romantically.

Plus, the costumes and setting were breathtaking. Claire’s wedding gown was absolutely charming, as well as the wedding place. It really gave me the 18th century feels. The flashbacks were also nicely put, as it gave more personality to other characters.

#03: Season 1, Episode 9 - The Reckoning

Correct me if I’m mistaken, but this was the first episode that Jamie was narrating, instead of Claire. We finally get to hear what he was thinking about the entire time. It was also in this episode where he truly admitted that he was indeed falling in love with Claire.

Claire and Jamie also get their first major fight as a married couple. The whole screaming match they shared was so... entertaining to watch haha. I could watch the two of them bantering the whole day, I swear. And when they forgave each other? Gah, tears me up all the time.

Though the whole “disciplining the wife” scene was cringey, I guess it was still necessary especially because this was set in the 18th century, and husbands really do that to their wives. Jamie apologized in the end, though, and promised never to do that again and they had the most mind-blowing sex scene in the whole series lmao.

#02: Season 2, Episode 7 - Faith

This was one of the saddest episodes, ever. Or probably the saddest one. Claire losing her baby was such a punch to the gut. The whole scene with Claire singing to the baby was also such a heartbreaking moment. Claire is not a stranger to losing family members, since her own parents died when she was really young, but losing a child is something she never even imagined, also probably because she thought she could never conceive.

The whole scene with the Comte and Raymond was also a nail-biter. The whole thing was directed perfectly and without flaw, and I love seeing the Comte receive his bitter end. Claire is someone you would not like to mess with.

Caitriona Balfe in this episode was such a force to be reckoned with. Her acting chops were truly highlighted in this episode, and I could definitely feel her pain and anguish. I couldn’t imagine how she handled those feels, because ah, she was so amazing in this one.

#01: Season 1, Episode 11 - The Devil’s Mark

This episode is the best, really. The directing, the acting of everyone, the whole thing leading up to the witch trial... ah! Geilles is actually one of my favorite characters, even though she’s a villain. She’s tough and clever, and I have a weakness for female villains because it’s such a breather. Geilles is a very interesting character, for sure.

I’ve already suspected that Geilles was something else, when Claire saw her dance in the woods before, so I wasn’t really surprised when she was also from the future. Lotte Verbeek’s acting was so good, and I couldn’t imagine a better Geilles than her.

Also, I always believed that this was the episode Claire finally realized that she’s really in love with Jamie. She finally trusts him enough to tell him the truth. And despite all of that, Jamie accepts her and even took her to Craigh na Dun so that she can be together with Frank again. He was ready to give up his happiness, his love for her, so that she could be happy.

But Claire didn’t go through the stones. She decided to stay with Jamie because yes, she’s in love with her. She also told him to bring her home to Lallybroch. It was actually in the next episode where they say “I love you” to each other, but her staying is also a sure sign that she was indeed has serious feelings for him.

So, there you have it - my Top 11 Favorite Outlander episodes. Most of them are from the first two seasons, because those two are my favorites are more memorable to me.

This is probably going to be the last lengthy Outlander post I’m going to make, unless there’s something exciting that will happen in the future episodes and I’ll have to rant about it haha.

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dangermousie · 7 years ago

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Like Georgians, Jacobites and some of the most awesome romance novels? A Patricia Veryan pusher post

I have just discovered that Patricia Veryan, a writer of romance novels set in Georgian and Regency time, has had the bulk of her books reissued on kindle.

So this is a giant pusher post.

Who is Patricia Veryan, you may ask. She was a British writer of romance novels who was old school enough to belong to the style of Georgette Heyer and Jeffery Farnol (who deserves his own pusher post), instead of the newer but now old “bodice ripper, rapey” school like Woodiwiss, Rogers et al. Her novels have plots, no sex scenes and are swoonily, amazingly romantic. She also did her research and they feel like true period novels, not modern people in period clothes prancing about.

They are full of swashbuckling, angsty heroes with awful families, strong heroines fighting off villains, conspiracies unmasked, swords at dawn, tons of hero torture and gorgeousness. Does it sound good? It should.

As I mentioned above, she wrote both regencies and Georgians, but I am gonna talk about the latter series today, because they are all on kindle. Her two Georgian series are The Golden Chronicles (set in the aftermath of Bonnie Prince Charlie's 1745 uprising) and Tales of the Jeweled Men (ditto). TGC follow the supposed treasure that Bonnie Prince Charlie amassed to help his Rebellion, which disappears, and which now the good guys are trying to get to the donors and bad guys want for themselves. There are six books in the series (though there are two earlier books, Mistress of Willowale and The Wicked Widow, which tie into it too. MoW is not available on kindle but TWW is and is a delightful Georgian romp with a rakish, cynical hero who ends up adoring the spunky, cheerful, pragmatic heroine. I am rereading it RN). * Practice to Deceive - Penelope Montgomery always meant to marry Quentin Chandler but he went off and joined the Jacobite rebellion and her family died and she's stuck with her awful aunt and uncle. Quentin resurfaces when he comes to her for assistance but he gets captured by her psycho family and tortured for info about the treasure. Penelope rescues him and they go on the run. I loooove this book. Penny is not flighty or dim or anything but calm, a little reserved, very ladylike, yet awesome. And I have a crush on charming, funny, h/c magnet Quentin. My fave Veryan character, Roland Mathieson, first appears in this one as the bad guy's henchman who kinda wants Penelope. * Journey to Enchantment - the hero of this one is Penelope's brother Geoffrey and heroine a Scottish gal Prudence McTavish. I remember liking it OK (short version - Geoffrey is Jacobite Scarlet Pimpernel) but was not particularly in love. * The Tyrant - love this one. Phoebe Ramsay ends up being stuck in an engagement to Meredith Carruthers as a cover for some Jacobite-related smuggling. I love both fashionable, fun Phoebe and cool, common-sense, angstmuffin Mededith (we are introduced to the first but not the last of Veryan's horrific parents in this one - I am not sure whether I hate his father or his mother more) and we see more of Roland who actually ends up helping the lead couple, in a very ironic, standoffish way, while sneaking bad guy bits now and then. * Love Alters Not - super super super obsession. Dimity Cranford, in order to lead soldiers away from an injured Jacobite family friend, ends up in all sorts of complicated embroglios which ultimately lead her pretending to be someone else entirely, that someone a woman trying to disposess Sir Anthony Farrar, an English army captain in the late Rebellion, who has been ostracized by everyone for running at the battle of Prestopans, leading to the rout of his unit and *da-dun* making Dimity's brother crippled. So much angst and hurt/comfort and awesomeness, you have NO idea. I think Dimity/Anthony are my favorite Veryan OTP which is saying a huge huge deal. Also, I believe I was gibbering and screaming at my book during Anthony's trial. Roland appears again and this is the book I fell for him in - he's sort of Anthony's friend and is thoroughly delicious. * Cherished Enemy - follows Robert McTavish (Prudence's brother) and Rosamond Albritton, sister of a recurring character. Tbh, it's my least fave in the series, though I don't hate it or anything, so I don't remember it much. * The Dedicated Villain - LOOOOOOVE! Roland gets a book! And what a book! Roland is on the hunt for the Jacobite treasure, comes across a troupe of actors (or are they?), which includes the tiny (short ladies represent!) but fierce and awesome Fiona Bradford - will he actually change his mind about his obsession? The Dedicated Villain is my favorite of her Georgians (well, that, and Love Alters Not are probably tied). I mean, Roland and Fiona! This series actually manages to do a convincing job of moving Roland from villain to antihero to hero with me buying the transition; also it explains why he starts out the way he does without making it a full excuse. TDV is also one of the very few books that maxed out my hurt/comfort love - PV never really went much for h/c of the physical as opposed to emotional sort in general but Roland's torture scenes in TDV are beyond brutal, I was kinda reading through my fingers and bawling (one of my vivid memories is being high school age, sitting under a tree during the very hot summer, reading that stuff and sniffling). But oddly, it didn't feel gratuitous because it was sort of karma for some of the stuff he did, especially to Quentin in Practice to Deceive (though what happened to him was miles worse than what happened to Quentin). And props to Veryan for having the guts to give him permanent damage. Jeweled Men follows a nefarious conspiracy to take over certain strategic properties to stage an invasion and a bunch of sexay aristocrats who stumble on the plot and decide to fight it (think 18th century Pimpernel). * Time's Fool - follows Gideon Rossiter, a discharged officer who's just returned from the Continent, and his attempts to figure out why his family's properties and wealth imploded. Heroine is Naomi Lutonville, Gideon's erstwhile fiancee. I normally wouldn't like Naomi - she's high-maintenance and dramatic, but I adore her to bits. I ship them like crazy, too. * Had We Never Loved - my first Veryan! Clearly, I was impressed. Horatio Glendenning (remember Jacobite family friend in Love Alters Not? That's him) fought for Bonnie Prince Charlie so his future is not so good. His OTP is a feisty gypsy, Amy Consett, who is NOT discovered to be a Duke's daughter in disguise or anything. It's a lovely lovely book and they are a lovely lovely OTP. * Ask Me No Questions - Quentin's staid older brother Gordon gets his own books. There are all sorts of machinations, but this is not a huge favorite. Gordon and Ruth Allington are nice people but give me Penny and Quentin's humor and reckless courage any day. If you like nice and mature leads though, this one is for you. * A Shadow's Bliss - like amnesia? This book is for you. Ruth's amnesiac bro Jonathan tries to solve the mystery of a shipwreck he was involved in blah blah heroine is Jennifer Britewell and I literally remember nothing about her. Or Jonathan, for that matter, other than he has amnesia. The reason to read this book is the recurring characters of August Falcon, Jamie Morris, and Gwendolyn Rossiter. I read Jeweled Men as if was coming out and remember devouring each book for even the slightest hint of progress between cynical, cutting August and smart, unimpressed Gwendolyn - they are one of my fave Veryan OTPs, together with Dimity/Anthony, Roland/Fiona, and Mitchell/Charity from Sanguinet books. * Never Doubt I Love - Dimity's bro finds love. Once again, I was in it for finding out what makes August tick, Jamie's adoration of August's sis Katrina, and Gwen and August's sexy sparkle. It’s a good book on its own merits though and has a hero with a disability, which was unusual at the time. * The Mandarin of Mayfair - EEEE! EEEEE! I still remember pre-ordering this book and rolling in mad glee (hyperbole. Or is it?) August and Gwen get their own book, plus the conspiracy gets finally unmasked, there is kissing and hurt/comfort and gals being the ones to propose. The OTP is beyond amazing - August is so smart and lethal and functional despite his major issues arising out of the fact that as 1/4 Chinese he’s looked down as a mongrel by “polite” society (I love that Veryan's heroes never wallow), Gwendolyn is full of common-sense and rescues him from prisons and bad guys and won't let anyone bash him (himself included, but also their friends, which turn on him for spoilery reasons. I still have residual rage about it. Katrina, you are the worst sister ever and dead to me!) I think the ending is a little pat to resolve the very real issues he has with marrying Gwendolyn and dragging her into his life, but at that point they've been through so much hell, I didn't even care.

My favorite OTPs in her Georgian series are are four-way time between ladylike Penelope x incorrigible adventurer Quentin in PtD, tormented and self-abasing Anthony and fearless Dimity in LAN, reformed villain Roland x not really an actress Fiona in TDV, and deadly and messed up August x fearless and clever Gwen (btw, Gwen is a heroine with a disability, which, once again, was an unusual thing at the time.) Worst father award goes to Roland's father (die in a fire, please!) and worst mother is either August's or Meredith's. Coolest family is either Dimity's or Horatio's. Favorite brother-sister pair are Gwen and Gideon Rossiters.

Basically, you should go read them yesterday!

PS Disclaimer. I used to run a Veryan listserve in the really old days. So I am biased. But she is a rare author I am rereading 20 years later and still love.

PPS If you are a Veryan fan, come talk to me!

#books #book recs #patricia veryan #romance #romance novels #georgian romance novels #romance books

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williebrookes · 2 years ago

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Breaking Into the Christian Fiction Market

As the Christian market continues to explode in size, publishers still find it difficult to discover new talent. One of the reasons for this is many hopeful writers believe the Christian market is easier to break into than the mainstream market. Nothing could be further from the truth. If you are aspiring to write for the Christian market, not only must you write gripping, compelling prose that keeps a reader turning pages, you also must write within the parameters of the Christian Booksellers Association. Certain rules and dictates apply. Christian readers want the same subject matter as non-Christian readers, only without a bombardment of ill language, gratuitous violence, and adult situations.

A Christian mother does not want to bring a book into her home that would cause an awkward situation should her child open it up. Writing to suit a certain market isn't difficult when you understand the mindset of people buying these books. Ask yourself what you like to read. Would the book appeal to your mother or best friend? If your character or situation would offend a reader of inspirational fiction, you can assume it will also offend a CBA publisher.

That is not to say Christian publishers are not interested in formerly taboo subjects such as spousal abuse, divorce, abortion, and alternative lifestyles. Marketing near me What the Christian publisher does want is a Christian overview on how these topics are addressed. Publishers are getting more savvy every year in providing what the Christian reading public wants to read. Suspense, thrillers, sci-fi, sassy heroines, and flawed heroes are immensely popular. This says nothing of romance, which is the leading seller across the board. If you can write a contemporary romance that endorses chastity and purity in a believable way, your battle is nearly won.

As a writer for the Christian market, nearly any subject is open to you. It is how you handle the subject that matters. Are your characters real? Can your reader identify with them and their problems? Would the reader handle the situation the same way, or can they at least empathize with the character's choices? If your character acts in an unethical manner, regardless of the circumstances, the reader will not identify, thus is not likely to finish your book. Not only is that the last thing you want as a writer, many times you have lost that reader for any future work you produce. When you offend the readers you are trying hardest to reach, you have dug yourself into a pit you may never climb out of. It is a necessary component in Christian fiction that your characters learn something through the course of the book.

Not everyone must be born again within your pages, but they must have had an epiphany of some kind, a growing experience. In my bookStreams of Mercy, the heroine needed to find out if her father was responsible for the disappearance and possible murder of an old girlfriend. Jamie, the seventeen-year-old heroine had plenty of reasons to suspect him. In order to move on with her life, she needed to forgive her dad for the rotten way he treated her mom. In mainstream fiction, Jamie may have exacted revenge on her father or learned to accept the fact that a relationship with him would never be possible. Not so in Christian fiction. Christianity is based on love and forgiveness.

Jamie needed to forgive her father, whether he ever admitted any wrongdoing or not. Finally, and I cannot emphasize this enough, do not preach to your audience. Readers of Christian literature want to be entertained, taught, and inspired as much as any other reader. But no one appreciates having a writer's philosophies and doctrines rammed down his or her throat. Lectures are not an effective means of touching hearts and changing lives.

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ifplfilm · 6 years ago

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The Final Women: On David Gordon Green's HALLOWEEN

This piece contains spoilers for Halloween (2018) and other films in the Halloween franchise.

In 1978, John Carpenter's Halloween flooded its final moments with a breath that left audiences breathless. The respiration follows a truly chilling order of events wherein newcomer actress Jamie Lee Curtis cemented herself in film history as Laurie Strode, whose bloodcurdling scream signified the crescendo of a nightmare realized. A masked killer, drenched in darkness, has already killed three of her friends and Laurie knows she's next. She runs. She hides. She screams and cries. She fights back. The scene lasts far longer than the standard "final girl" sequence found in the slasher genre; it's one which lingers on the details of the final girl in question, studying her face and profiling terror in its purest form.

Michael Myers is eventually shot by Donald Pleasence's Dr. Loomis and falls out a window to the ground below. Moments later, he's gone, and we're left with Laurie sobbing with her back against her wall while the slow, steady breathing of Michael Myers penetrates the empty streets of Haddonfield on Halloween night.

Is he still alive? Of course he is.

In the context of the six sequels that followed, not including the Michael Myers-less Halloween III: Season of the Witch, the iconic slasher continued to unleash his evil on the town of Haddonfield and beyond. It's revealed in Halloween II that Laurie Strode is in fact Michael's sister, a plot twist that influenced the ancestral story arcs throughout the franchise and culminated with Laurie's death at the hands of Michael in 2002's Halloween: Resurrection. But Halloween (2018) had a different resurrection in mind, ignoring everything that followed Carpenter's original and revisiting our heroine 40 years later.

This is the fate of the final girl, now a woman in her late fifties, and both David Gordon Green's filmmaking and Jamie Lee Curtis' performance are masterful in the ways they use the character of Laurie Strode to examine the ripple effects of decades-long trauma. Though it simmers with satisfying slasher-style kills and welcome bursts of humor, Green's Halloween is at its core a profound character study of the people we become when traumatic events intrude upon our lives.

For Laurie, not a day has passed in 40 years where she hasn't thought about Halloween night, 1978. The trials of that evening have shaped the trajectory of her life and are forever a part of her mental and emotional makeup. As is true with most paralyzing life events, you can never quite say farewell (interestingly enough, Green's previous work, Stronger, examined similar themes in the context of physical trauma). Like it or not, this irreversible damage becomes a part of you despite the fact that you had no control over its arrival. Almost identical to The Shape stalking his victims with unbiased predation, trauma trails your every move and if you let it catch up to you, it very well might kill you.

But that's why you fight, and my goodness is Laurie Strode a fighter. But for those with depressive qualities or post-traumatic stress, this battle often involves putting up walls. The film manifests this concept symbolically through Laurie's booby-trap-filled and elaborately guarded home in the woods, as well as quite literally through her equally shielded and survivalist lifestyle.

A broken relationship with her daughter, Karen (Judy Greer), stems from the aftermath of Laurie's own demons, which shaped Karen's childhood with unavoidable consequences. Laurie's well-intentioned upbringing of Karen was built upon a maternal need to protect, but her extreme methods contributed to the creation of Karen's own unique trauma. And like the Halloween slayings that have plagued Laurie's mind for four decades, the echoing effects of her pain have now become the woes of her own flesh and blood. Karen's trauma, unknowingly, has shaped the life of daughter, Allyson (Andi Matichak), too.

David Gordon Green's take on the slasher genre examines less so the bloody aftermath of Michael Myers' victims, but the traumatic repercussions that shape a family's generational growth. A mother's trauma becomes her daughter's, and so on and so forth, flowing through one's lineage like a river.

This makes the movie's final images strikingly powerful. Three generations of women standing above flames as they engulf the collective disturbance of their lives, unified together, watching it burn it to the ground. Laurie, Karen and Allyson escape, huddled up in a truck bed, staring into space and reliving their communal experience. But the sad reality of these concluding moments is the fact that while one demon is killed, countless others are created. Green's final closeup of a bloody knife clutched tightly in Allyson's hand is his own version of Carpenter's original ending; you can practically hear the breathing return once more as our new heroine clings to the now-indelible fear of her experience.

These are the final women, and their ultimate curse is that they survived.

#halloween #david gordon green #halloween2018 #jamie lee curtis

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