#just read an appalling review of mira's book

[queer-geordie-nerd]

If any society as a whole really cared about uplifting and supporting rape survivors as much as we like to pretend we do, or even half as much as we like to make excuses for abusers and rapists, perhaps women wouldn't feel the need to keep the abhorrent crimes perpetrated against them to themselves for years for fear of being re-traumatised by the legal system and the court of public opinion.

[marjaystuff]

Leveled Up

I believe I have leveled up in Net Galley.  I was invited to read the newest JD Robb book!  WooHoo! The In Death series is now up to 58 books and yes, I have read them all. I love all the characters in the series.  I mean Eve and Roarke - sorry Roarke almost always makes me want to sigh!  I love Dr and Mr Mira, such warm and wonderful people.  Nadine has always been fun, but adding Jake as her person is awesome!  Anyway, enough gushing.  I am so happy to have been able to read the new book!  A warning though, the book isn’t out until January.

I also received the newest Chris Keniston book about the Barons of Texas.  It is called Just One Shot and it features Siobhan.  I loved the mystery within this story and how Siobhan’s brothers were so appalled that their little sister was dating one of their friends.  The review will go up later this week and will be available November 21st

Meanwhile, I spent a lot of time last week crocheting madly and several of my larger toys sold!  I will be so busy working on replacing some of them.  I finished putting together another turtle (again) last night.  I consider myself so lucky to be able to use my creative talents in both writing and crocheting.  

Elise sent in a wonderful interview with Amanda Flower and her newest book called Dating Can Be Deadly.  I find Elise’s interviews interesting and always like to read about why an author added a character or a scene to a novel.  To me, adding animals is always going to add a new unexpected dimension to a novel. 

[literature-islit]

David Foster Wallace - Mr Squishy (2000)

Yes, this is a post about another short story. Sorry, I guess I just read a lot of them or something. I guess I retract what I said in a previous post, that they are unsexy and unappealing to read. They’re totally okay. You should read more. And, as usual, there’s a bit of a back story as to how I got to this one... 

So, I’ve considered Dave Eggers to be a great writer ever since I read his 2013 novel The Circle (now a major motion picture starring Emma Watson) which portrays the dystopian perils of a Facebook-like company urging everyone towards maximum disclosure. 

what’s on ur mind? Everyone would love to know haha. Keep refreshing the page for more likes and shares and dopamine hits! Don't be left out! Tell everyone what you are thinking - all the time! Help us help you! We just want you to connect....

The Circle is a great book. I was like - man, I’ve got to read more writing by this man. But, the rest of his writing? 

I’ll let everyone battle it out on GoodReads. Some quotes:

it's *so cool* to be post-dave-eggers, and talk about how you didn't really like this book all that much, and it's even cooler to totally hate this book.

I was reading this book and around page 237 (or was it 327?), I figured it out- he's talking to ME. He wrote this book for me. Dave Eggers looked into the future and saw that I would want to read a self-referential, self-satisfying memoir.

I disliked so very much about this book. 

The reviews above are talking about his debut novel, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, which I... don’t have much to say about. There were good bits. There were incredibly tedious bits. 

I would rate it a solid 3/5

It being pitched as a non-fiction memoir, then using lots of narrative elements that are mostly associated with fiction kind of confused me. I was like - ok, there’s no way this guy actually used his inheritance money to launch a real life street press magazine, and then convinced an actor to fake his own death just for the publicity. 

But he did. 

things u cannot do with social media

And anyway, long story short, kind of fascinated by the idea that in the 90s, at a time before media conglomerates had acquired almost all small press and advertising revenue was at all time lows, and even getting people interested in actually paying money to hold a magazine in their hands and read it was probably the most major barrier to entry to the market; the idea that in the 90s it was fair game and a bunch of college kids could just make a magazine and print it and kind of guerrilla their way into that market, as some kind of genuinely authentic counterculture... wow. I knew I had to try to find out a little more about these types of magazines that Dave Eggers curated and published. 

The 90s

Which brings me to The Best of McSweeney’s, a compilation of some of the best content to be published during the run of McSweeney’s which was yet another magazine thing published and curated and etc by Dave Eggers. 

The whole book is worth a read.

And the stand-out story, Mr Squishy by David Foster Wallace. 

I’m conflicted on how I approach David Foster Wallace’s legacy because he does have  a history of abusive treatment towards women, yet on the whole I feel like his writing is revolutionary and unique, and acts to undermine the dominant paradigm instead of reinforce its ideology. My ambivalence is shared by Electric Lit’s 20 Authors I Don’t Have to Read Because I’ve Dated Men for 16 Years: (”A list like this wouldn’t be complete without DFW, but at the same time his inclusion feels disingenuous, because when it comes to Wallace, I am the literary bro cornering you at a party to ask if you’ve read him and why not. I love DFW’s work in the same over-personal obsessive way this list is meant to mock. Wallace is also an author whose body of work defies the kind of easy summary that can be gleaned from listening to a dude talk at a party about his favorite writer, or applied independent of actual engagement with the writing...”)

BBC Culture considers his magnum opus Infinite Jest to be a cult book that has lost its cool. 

But, if that’s the case, how do you explain Mira Gonzales (in a defiant act of anarchy that would appall even the least-conservative librarian) constructing a pipe out of the book to smoke weed from, BBC? How do you explain that?

Removed from the context of this preceding discussion, however, I regard Mr Squishy as a work of art. 63 pages of DFW’s signature dense prose (the kind of prose that catches you slipping; this is a story to read with your morning coffee, not just before you hit the hay at night) about a marketing focus group for a new Mr Squishy snack, a story that highlights the manipulations of advertising, marketing groups’ ultimate impotence in the face of a brand that knows the kinds of conclusions it wants to have proved, and the way world wide web technology loomed, casting its great shadow over the particular slice of history Wallace is writing in, threatening to rupture the security of the jobs around which people like marketing facilitator Schmidt have based their entire lives. 

This is a story of many layers. 

Many people have already written much better on this story than I could ever dream of. 

Amazing blog interpretation highlighting the multi-layered nature of the narrative (did I mention the narrative has layers?)

570 word sentence highlighted and dissected for its brilliance (don’t let something so ominous as a 570 word sentence deter you, pls)

How are you gonna get yourself a copy of this story to absorb its brilliance, to appreciate the way it delves deeper inside a fake character’s head than other writers make it seem possible to go? I don’t know. I’m sure there’s a PDF flying about on the internet somewhere. You can borrow The Best of McSweeney’s from any library in South Australia. The story also, I believe, can be read in DFW’s short story collection Oblivion. However you find it is not important. What’s important is that you read it. This man does things with words you never knew were possible!

And, yes, I bragged on Instagram about having started to read DFW’s epic Infinite Jest. (Having re-read this blog post I feel the need to clarify that the picture above is not me, nor my hand; I found it on the internet). That was two years ago, and I am still about halfway through the 1079 page tome. It takes time, okay. Time and patience. I am in the (elongated) process of reading it, and anticipate I will finish it soon... 

[tometender]

Spectacle My Rating: 5 stars Written by: Rachel Vincent Series: The Menagerie Series (Book 2) Paperback: 400 pages Publisher: MIRA Publication Date: May 30, 2017 ISBN-10: 0778318206 ISBN-13: 978-0778318200 Genre: DARK Urban Fantasy Itunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/spec... Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Spectacle-Nove... Barnes & Noble: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/spect... In this riveting sequel to New York Times bestselling author Rachel Vincent's acclaimed novel Menagerie, Delilah Marlow will discover that there is no crueler cage than the confines of the human mind… When their coup of Metzger's Menagerie is discovered, Delilah and her fellow cryptids find their newly won freedom brutally stripped away as they are sold into The Savage Spectacle, a private collection of "exotic wildlife." Specializing in ruthless cryptid cage matches, safari-style creature hunts and living party favors, the Spectacle's owner, Willem Vandekamp, caters to the forbidden fetishes of the wealthy and powerful. At the Spectacle, any wish can be granted—for the right price. But Vandekamp's closely guarded client list isn't the only secret being kept at the Spectacle. Beneath the beauty and brutality of life in the collection lie much darker truths, and no one is more determined than Delilah to strip the masks from the human monsters and drag all dark things into the ligh

Spectacle by Rachel Vincent Talk about devastating, after being free for a short time the cryptids find themselves captive once again and even though it might seem the care and circumstances are more humane, when they scratch the surface of their confinement its much worse. Not for the faint of heart reader. Talk about out of the frying pan and right into the fire! You thought things where bad in the Menagerie, Delilah's and her fellow cryptids' situation just went from bad to way worse. Oh, the perceived civility is all there but where is PETA when you need them, because pets have more rights then they do. Disturbing and appalling yet utterly riveting, Spectacle is not for the light hearted. Don't get me wrong the situation are mostly implied and not described but nothing is light in Vincent's telling. Serious white knuckle reading at its best, with lots of heart wrenching moments in between. I can't wait to see where Vincent takes us next. I received this ARC copy of Spectracle from Harlequin (US & Canada) - MIRA. This is my honest and voluntary review. Spectracle is set for publication May 30, 2017.