#straydog's reading resolution

[straydog733]

Reading Resolution: “Fabulosa!: The Story of Polari, Britain’s Secret Gay Language” by Paul Baker

10. A book written in Europe: Fabulosa!: The Story of Polari, Britain’s Secret Gay Language by Paul Baker

List Progress: 7/30

Queer history has its own unique stories from all over the world. Queer people exist everywhere and they have throughout history, and different communities have developed in conversation with and in response to mainstream cultures. Britain in particular has an intriguing angle with Polari, a coded language that gay men in the 1950’s developed to be able to talk about their lives and loves while avoiding prosecution. Paul Baker is one of the most prominent academics to study Polari, and the entire story of the language is collected in his popular history book Fabulosa!. He traces it from early influences, through its heyday, into its rejection by the queer liberation movement, and finally to the modern rediscovery and appreciation of the 2000’s onward. The topic is a particularly niche interest, appealing mostly to fans of queer history or linguistic enthusiasts, but for those groups, this is a fun ride.

Fabulosa!: The Story of Polari, Britain’s Secret Gay Language sets out to give the full breadth of Polari’s history, along with a bit of Baker’s own personal journey with Polari. He was born decades too late to be a “native” speaker, but has spent most of his professional life studying it and interviewing the original speakers, dwindling as their numbers may be. One of the more intriguing aspects is how Baker has to acknowledge his own influence by the final chapters of the book. Many of his earlier works, like 2002’s Fantabulosa: A Dictionary of Polari and Gay Slang, have been major resources for the contemporary re-discoverers, influencing groups such as the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence and the writers of the Polari Bible. Linguists and academics are generally supposed to have a level of remove from the subjects of their study, but Polari exists in such small pockets of the world, and was always such an underground culture, that Baker cannot help but become one of the preeminent figures.

The book ends up being a nice blend of linguistics and history, with the opening being a debate about what makes something a language, as opposed to a dialect, a collection of slang, or an “anti-language”, a term for when a type of speech is formed to deliberately keep out the mainstream. Academics would have to go into Baker’s other works to find deeper analysis, but for lay people, this is a lovely, warm introduction to a chapter of British and queer history. This book is positively bona.

Would I recommend it: Yes.

[straydog733]

Reading Resolution: "Dumb Witness" by Agatha Christie

21. A novel by a famous author, other than the one(s) they are best known for: Dumb Witness by Agatha Christie

List Progress: 1/30

There’s an old saying that goes “Sex is like pizza; even when it’s bad, it’s still pretty good”. While that is not in fact true for either sex or pizza, it is true for Agatha Christie novels. Christie’s 1937 novel Dumb Witness, starring her famous detective Hercule Poirot, is competently written, has enough engaging character moments, and moves along at a decent pace. But there is a reason that this one has not stood the test of time like Poirot adventures Murder on the Orient Express, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd or Death on the Nile (released the same year as Dumb Witness). It is a perfectly readable book, but for someone introducing a person to Christie’s work, it would be fairly far down the recommendation list.

Hercule Poirot receives a letter from elderly spinster Emily Arundell, suggesting that a recent “accident” was actually an attempt on her life. Her nieces and nephew have been chomping at the bit to get her inheritance, and she believes one of them set her up to trip over her dog’s ball and fall down the stairs. Poirot is intrigued, but by the time he and his compatriot Hastings arrive to investigate, Miss Arundell has already died by natural causes. Hastings thinks this means that their work is done, but Poirot points out that attempted murder is still a crime, and that just because the attempt failed does not mean that they should reject the case. Arundell’s relatives and members of her staff all had reasons to want her out of the picture, and it’s up to Poirot to sort out who actually tried their hand at the killing. Unfortunately, the novel feels like it is still setting the stage well into the second act, and it takes far too long for Poirot and Hastings to even agree that there is a case to solve.

The suspects are fairly stock characters, and a subplot about a pair of spiritualists feels tacked on to the central mystery. And the smoking gun piece of evidence ends up being a bit of a contrivance, someone wearing and doing things in a very strange manner in order to leave a set of intriguing clues. But nothing about Dumb Witness is outright frustrating or incorrect; it’s just more lackluster than anything. Agatha Christie wrote a total of 66 novels and 15 short-story collections; unless someone is doing a complete read through of her bibliography, or of just the Hercule Poirot novels, there are bound to be better choices than Dumb Witness.

Would I Recommend It: Not really. My personal Christie recommendation is The Murder of Roger Ackroyd.

[straydog733]

2023 in Books and Movies!

Another year of books and movies! I didn’t complete my full lists in 2023, but I still read and watched a lot of good things that I would like to talk about.

Books

Best Book: We Had to Remove This Post by Hanna Bervoets

A weird and chilling look at the world of content moderators, We Had to Remove This Post shines a bright light on the people working in the background of every part of the internet, and will stay with you for a while to come.

Honorable Mentions: My Sister, The Serial Killer by by Oyinkan Braithwaite, Bad Girls by Camila Sosa Villada

Worst Book: Money Shot, Vol. 1 by Tim Seeley and Sarah Beattie, illustrated by Rebekah Isaacs

Maybe this comic gets better in later volumes, but I will not be reading in order to find out. A story that loudly proclaims itself to be raunchy and weird has no business being this mundane and pedestrian.

Most Frustrating Book: Spaceman of Bohemia by Jaroslav Kalfař

A book that wants to use the trapping of sci-fi to tell a literary fiction story, but just ends up failing at both genres.

Dishonorable Mentions: Shadows of the Workhouse by Jennifer Worth, Hangsaman by Shirley Jackson

Biggest Surprise: Bad Girls by Camila Sosa Villada

This was a random grab in the library, but ended up being so gripping and rich that it topped my yearly list and will stay with me for a while. 

Movies

I saw a lot of older movies this year, but for my recommendations I will mostly focus on those from this or last year.

Best Movie: Talk to Me (2022)

Just a truly exceptional horror film.

Honorable Mention: Polite Society (2023)

Worst Movie: Silent Night (2023)

This almost feels unfair to put here, as my wife and I walked out of the theater halfway through, but I highly doubt the ending redeemed this incredibly boring “thriller” with its twisted vigilante morality.

Most Frustrating Movie: Knock at the Cabin (2023)

If a novel has one central question, A or B, it is a bold choice for an adaptation to choose B when the novel chose A. Bold, but not necessarily good.

Biggest Surprise: Theater Camp (2023)

The trailers did this indie comedy no favors, but I ended up laughing out loud in the theater several times, and I would put it right up there with several Christopher Guest movies.

[straydog733]

Reading Resolution: "Bad Girls" by Camila Sosa Villada

30. Wild Card: Bad Girls by Camila Sosa Villada

List Progress: 16/30

The lives of queer people are far too often filled with both beauty and pain. In Latin America, the travesti community (AMAB people with female gender identities) is often subjected to abuse from the police and their neighbors alike, but they can find community and solace with one another. Bad Girls (Las malas in the original Spanish), is a semi-autobiographical novel by Argentine author Camila Sosa Villada, telling a magical take on her younger days as a sex worker in Córdoba. Poverty, abuse and addiction are kept somewhat at bay by friendship, love and freedom among her peers, but the pain is still there. And the way they intertwine makes for a beautiful novel.

One of the most fascinating things about Bad Girls is how it smoothly weaves magical realism into an otherwise very grounded story. Auntie Encarna is a matriarch travesti who runs a sort of boarding house/commune for the other travestis. She is also 178 years old and her lover has no head, after being decapitated before he emigrated to the city. Maria the Mute is a normal sex worker in the park, navigating the same struggles as the rest of them, until she starts turning into a bird. This is magic without wonder, everyday magic, while the actual awe-inspiring things are holiday dinners around a crowded table and vigils by the hospital bed of a sister dying of AIDS. The narrator Camila is the main character, but only part of the story is about her, with more page space dedicated to chronicling the world she lives in and the people she loves. The great family is rocked when Auntie Encarna finds an abandoned newborn in the park and decides to raise him as her own. But this choice made out of deep love brings further scrutiny to their already scrutinized lives, as small minds hate seeing children and queer people cross paths.

Bad Girls is not for the faint of heart; it is very matter-of-fact about the realities of prostitution, from the dangers to the thrills and joys to the humdrum nights just trying to get by. The reader feels the losses as people leave Camila’s life, through death or distance, and it’s a powerful ache. But the joys and loves that lead to those aches are beautiful while they last, and chronicling them is important. Late in the book, city officials install street lamps in the park where the travestis solicit clients, and the women are forced to work on their streets or out of their homes, in smaller, more dangerous groups or completely alone. Those glaring lights are an imposition and a threat, while the narrative light that this book shines on its characters is warm and soft. And nearly every queer person in this world deserves more warmth than they get.

Would I Recommend It: Very much so.

[straydog733]

Reading Resolution: "Money Shot, Vol. 1" by Tim Seeley and Sarah Beattie, illustrated by Rebekah Isaacs

28. Wild Card: Money Shot, Vol. 1 by Tim Seeley and Sarah Beattie, illustrated by Rebekah Isaacs

List Progress: 13/30

In the not-too-distant future, humankind has withered. After being contacted by, and then rejected by, intelligent life from across the universe, humanity has turned away from the stars and given up any sense of exploration or curiosity. Even carnal pleasures have lost their intrigue. So when a group of scientists need to get attention and funding for their cutting edge stargate, they come up with the one thing that could entice a planet-wide audience: sex with aliens. Money Shot, Vol. 1 by Tim Seeley and Sarah Beattie follows the intrepid XXX-plorers, scientists determined to fund their research with intergalactic pornography broadcast back to Earth. But for a premise where the skies are the limit, the results are often pretty mundane.

Volume 1 of Money Shot finds the explorers already on the distant planet Dry Reef, with flashbacks to show how they concocted their porn plans. Their adventures have a very Star Trek-feel, with humanoid aliens and very human-like cultures, and it works well enough as a broad sex comedy. But the story’s aspirations seem so modest, especially when it claims to be trying to shake up all of humanity. All of the scientists are conventionally attractive, and even the aliens involved in sex scenes are shaped like attractive humans with one or two cosmetic differences. And the sex scenes are trying so hard to be sexy that they cycle around and become sterile. There’s no vulnerability, no flaws, no weirdness even when humans are copulating with fish-people, just conventional sex and screaming orgasms. The aliens even have human-style genders and sexual characteristics, which is just the most boring route to take. Among the five scientists, the three women and two men, there are at least plenty of same-sex match-ups, but they interact like naked dolls being knocked together. The most interesting pairing is between the two female scientists who dislike each other, as it forces tension into their dynamic, but by the end of the volume, even their edges have been softened too much to have much spark.

If Money Shot didn’t purport to be such wild, weird sex, it would be a lot easier to forgive the comic’s shortcomings. For a broad planet-hopping comedy, it’s a fun idea with some interesting points and very polished, professional art. But it lacks heart and heat, and falls short of what should have been a galaxy’s worth of possibilities.

Would I Recommend It: Not really.

[straydog733]

Reading Resolution: "Camp Damascus" by Chuck Tingle

25. A book released in 2023: Camp Damascus by Chuck Tingle

List Progress: 20/30

Religion has been used as a weapon against so many people, and those who have been victims to it can find themselves adrift as they try to sort out their feelings about faith, belief and their own place in the cosmos. Rose Darling, the protagonist of 2023’s Camp Damascus, has spent all twenty years of her life in the Kingdom of the Pines community, peacefully living as a member of this conservative cult in small-town Montana. When she learns a twisted truth about the cult’s titular famous gay conversion camp, her whole world shifts on its axis and she has to reevaluate everything she has ever known. The emotional impact has to come together very quickly to keep up with the fast-moving plot, and the end results feel a bit rushed, but the journey of faith is still an engaging one to take with Rose.

Chuck Tingle is internet-famous as the pseudonymous author of scores of self-published gay erotica, such as My Billionaire Triceratops Craves Gay Ass  and Bigfoot Sommelier Butt Tasting, and parody works like Trans Wizard Harriet Porber And The Bad Boy Parasaurolophus: An Adult Romance Novel. Camp Damascus is his first mainstream publication, and the novel takes itself seriously while still having a sense of both fun and the surreal. The imagery of the first half of the novel, as Rose’s eyes are gradually opened to the horrors around her, is haunting and creepy, and the most effective scare is by far the most subtle (“What door?”). 

But the returns are somewhat diminishing when Rose makes a break for freedom at the middle point of the book. She is startlingly clear-eyed for a twenty-year-old who just deprogrammed herself from a lifetime in a cult, and it would have been more poignant for her to still have the cobwebs of the conformist mindset lingering even after her break away. And a late-arriving character who is still strongly religious after escaping Kingdom of the Pines feels like a blatant attempt to “have it both ways” and deflect accusations of the book being anti-religion. The build-up to the climax manages to both over- and under-explain a lot of the rules of this world and that is more than a bit frustrating.

Camp Damascus is not the tightest novel in the world, and it does feel like Tingle’s first time having to wrangle this long of a page count.  But for all its flaws, it is easy to fall in love with the blunt and awkward Rose and go on this journey with her. And the more pieces of media that call out the absolute cruelty and evil of conversion therapy, the better. Tingle’s mainstream novels may evolve with time, but the spirit is already there.

Would I Recommend It: Yes.

[straydog733]

Reading Resolution: "Darkly Dreaming Dexter" by Jeff Lindsay

16. A book you’ve seen adapted: Darkly Dreaming Dexter by Jeff Lindsay

List Progress: 19/30

When it comes to a guilty pleasure, style is key. Everything related to the Dexter franchise is gory and morally twisted, but the upbeat style of author Jeff Lindsay (and the television show inspired by his books) keeps the story of a vigilante serial killer from being too grim. Darkly Dreaming Dexter, the first book in a series, follows Dexter Morgan, a serial killer who only kills other serial killers. His foster father was a policeman and realized from an early age that Dexter was going to become a killer, so instead of trying to curb that instinct, he instilled a strict moral code within him. Dexter works as a blood splatter analyst with the Miami police, where his foster sister Deb is trying to make her own name and reputation. But Dexter’s rules are challenged when a showy new killer begins staging murder scenes that seem to speak to Dexter and his internal Dark Passenger personally.The book is told in the first person from inside Dexter’s head, so the reader gets to see his perverse amusement and joy at finding another monster like himself, and that is mostly enough to carry the story along, if not quite enough to stick the landing.

An issue that both this book and the television show contend with is that Dexter and his serial killer opponents are the only truly interesting parts of the story. So much attention and care is put into developing Dexter that the people around him end up feeling like caricatures and chess pieces, exactly as stupid as needed to let him keep getting away. When Dexter gets a sort of psychic premonition that leads him to a confrontation with the other killer at four in the morning in an isolated area, literally none of the trained police detectives have any questions about what he was doing there. Detective LaGuerta gets the worst of this, a Cuban woman positioned as an idiotic backbiter with a crush on Dexter seemingly just to play into Spicy Latina stereotypes. The prose keeps saying that his sister Deb is developing into a smart investigator, but her brother is holding her hand every step of the way. Dexter is an interesting character in the middle of a wasteland. 

Enjoying the Dexter franchise involves turning off a lot of parts of your brain, the ones that suspend disbelief and the ones that suspend moral thoughts about vigilantism and justice via retribution. But if a reader can turn those off, Darkly Dreaming Dexter is an undoubtedly fun ride, even with a bit of a rushed ending. Lindsay has a way with atmosphere and action, and the development of a strong narrative voice for Dexter himself. Perhaps later in the series, the world around the star fills out in a more satisfying way, but even without that, it makes sense that audiences keep coming back for more, even across mediums.

Would I Recommend It: Soft yes.

[straydog733]

Reading Resolution: "The Harrowing of Hell" by Evan Dahm

29. Wild Card: The Harrowing of Hell by Evan Dahm

List Progress: 14/30

In much of Western culture, Christian stories have become so rote as to not invite much analysis. Jesus was crucified, died, was buried, and three days later rose from the dead. But what happened in those three days? The graphic novel The Harrowing of Hell, created and illustrated by Evan Dahm, follows Jesus as a character, as both a man and a symbol, descending into Hell and enduring those three days. The text is taken from both canonical and apocryphal Christian gospels, but the art is what the reader comes to this work for. Bold, huge illustrations done entirely in black, white and red give the story a grand scope and feel like descending into the pit along with Christ. 

The Harrowing of Hell meets Jesus at the moment of the crucifixion and follows him into Hell, where he is mocked, taunted, and attacked by the denizens of the pit. Flashbacks show him teaching his gospel on earth, but Hell is where he has to struggle to live that gospel, staying true to his message of love and resisting despair when it seems like all of his work has come to nothing. The reader really feels it when this Jesus asks God “Why have you forsaken me?”. The big-eyed, expressive design of Jesus works well for this story, forcing the reader to see his fear. When compared to the horrible grandeur of his surroundings, he is one small, beaten man. But he also fears the opposite: the Devil’s most effective threat is when he predicts that the followers of Jesus will reinterpret him as a warrior and go to battle in his name. This small man will have an eternity of blood shed for him, and nothing could be further from what he wants. And when he emerges from the pit, will he ever really escape that future?

The Harrowing of Hell isn’t going to hold much interest to readers who do not already have at least some investment in Christian mythology. This comic isn’t going to convert anyone to religion or atheism, and it’s not really trying to. It is just setting out to tell a very over-told story in a unique way, with some truly beautiful art to deliver the message. A simple story, a simple text, and a simple color palette all work together here to make something exquisite. 

Would I Recommend It: Yes

[straydog733]

Reading Resolution: "The Incredible Events in Women’s Cell Number 3" by Kira Yarmysh

9. A book written in Russia: The Incredible Events in Women’s Cell Number 3 by Kira Yarmysh

List Progress: 12/30

When we as a society hold someone captive in a prison, jail or detention center, what are we trying to achieve? The main character of Kira Yarmysh’s The Incredible Events in Women’s Cell Number 3 is sentenced to ten days in a detention center in Moscow after she participated in an anti-corruption rally. Is society safer without her in public life for ten days? No, because she was never violent. Will she learn a lesson from her time in prison? No, because she was protesting corruption in the first place, and exposure to the prison system certainly won’t change her mind. Will anyone’s lives be better because of her ten day imprisonment? No, and yet carceral systems all over the world are based around holding people for various lengths of time for no real purpose. The Incredible Events in Women’s Cell Number 3 is at its strongest when it is investigating this system and the assumptions built into it. Unfortunately, these messages get buried in a lot of lackluster character work and some underdeveloped attempts at magical realism, making the novel as a whole a bit of a jumble.

Kira Yarmysh is the press secretary and assistant of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, and The Incredible Events is her first novel. While it is a piece of fiction, Yarmysh shares a lot of backstory with Anya, and has spent time in detention centers after protests and political actions. The novel shines when it is just about Anya navigating the absurdity of the detention center. She is held in the titular Cell Number 3, the only women’s cell in an otherwise male facility, with five other women from various walks of life, each serving similarly short sentences for petty crimes. The inmates serve as a cross-section of contemporary Russian culture, from an older woman who has spent time in an actual prison camp and considers the center a cake-walk, to a young sugar baby who wants to get back to her life of thinly-veiled sex work with rich men. They are all tossed in together, but no one is around long enough to develop a real prison culture, so it is just an odd break from the rest of their lives. 

Unfortunately, Anya ends up being the least interesting of the inmates, and the novel spends long periods of time flashing back to formative parts of her life. It is notable that she is a queer woman in Russia, and she navigates some difficult situations throughout her life, but none that feel especially worthy of close study. She also starts seeing visions while in the detention center, the supposed incredible events, and it is unclear whether there are supernatural elements at play or if some latent mental illness is coming to the surface in the face of the stress of incarceration. But the book keeps with this ambiguity far too late into the run, making the final conclusion feel very abrupt and tacked on. Moving some of the revelations earlier and cutting some of Anya’s story would make for a tighter, more powerful book, rather than the slightly bloated final product.

Yarmysh has a good sense for atmosphere and dialogue, which will hopefully be honed in later works, but The Incredible Events in Women’s Cell Number 3 still needs a fair amount of tweaking in the plot and character departments. But the parts that are powerful still work, which all adds up to a bit of a shrug.

Would I Recommend It: Soft yes.

[straydog733]

Reading Resolution: “We Had to Remove This Post” by Hanna Bervoets

27. Wild Card: We Had to Remove This Post by Hanna Bervoets

List Progress: 11/30

On any social media site, or truly any website that accepts user submissions, there is a team of people working behind the scenes to keep some basic rules in place. The anonymity and sheer volume of the internet can bring out the worst in people, and professional content moderators spend their days wading through hate speech, pornography, spam, abuse and violence. Moderation cannot and should not be left entirely to machines and algorithms, but what about the impact on the moderators themselves? We Had to Remove This Post, the 2021 novel by Dutch author Hanna Bervoets, follows one such moderator, Kayleigh, as she reflects on what working at the moderating company Hexa did to her, her friends, and her relationships. It is a bracing, disturbing, sometimes unpleasant read, and if the book were much longer than its novella length, it would be too much. But for a story about the very concept of “too much”, this book is just the right amount.

We Had to Remove This Post is framed as Kayleigh’s tell-all, her interview with a lawyer to explain why she won’t join her former coworkers’ lawsuit against Hexa for unsafe work environments. Kayleigh knows that working at Hexa damaged her, but she also sees her own actions as shameful enough that she won’t publicly take a stand against them. Because Kayleigh started a relationship with her coworker Sigrid fairly soon into her tenure at the company, and with the combination of a toxic relationship dynamic and the trash they pumped into their brains every day, they brought out the absolute worst in each other. Sigrid starts to see the appeal of the conspiracy-theory videos they have to watch for content violations, and Kayleigh starts to crave the rush and revulsion of seeing incredibly depraved acts in a constant stream. They both think they are handling things better than the other and don’t see the rabbit holes they’ve gone down. Their whole job as moderators is to evaluate things from the outside, so of course they are better at that than the introspection to see their own actions. It’s a canny dynamic that Bervoets sets up, one that is easy to get sucked into.

This book is not for the faint of heart. Slurs, hate-speech, racism, descriptions of violence, self-harm, animal abuse and child abuse are all to be found in this short page count, and no one would be wrong to decide that it is too unpleasant of a matter to engage with in their media. But for everyone on the internet, there are people working day and night to make sure that you don’t have to engage with it, and Bervoets does powerful work highlighting that. While Remove this Post is a work of fiction, it is based explicitly on several real sources, including lawsuits that content moderators have brought against companies like Facebook. It’s a rough job, and someone does have to do it, but those people deserve all the support they can get.

Would I Recommend It: Yes, with the large caveat that the reader be comfortable with the content mentioned above.

[straydog733]

Reading Resolution: “Space Invaders” by Nona Fernández

3. A book written in South America: Space Invaders by Nona Fernández

List Progress: 10/30

Even more of a threat than “may you live in interesting times” is “may you come of age in interesting times”. In all of the dramatic and tumultuous moments of human history, there have been children and adolescents growing into adults in the midst of them. Space Invaders, the 2013 novel by Chilean author Nona Fernández, tells the story of a group of youths coming of age during the Pinochet dictatorship. One of their classmates was the daughter of a government official, and one day she was simply gone. Their memories of this disappeared girl come in waves and bursts, and are threaded through with imagery from the video game Space Invaders, one of the only ways these children can conceptualize the horrors happening around them.

Space Invaders is subtitled A Novel, but that feels slightly misleading, with its very short chapters, non-chronological story and loose, impressionistic story. The book is quite light on plot, but dense in feeling and sensation, rich with the sense of being in over one’s head. Many of the experiences are based on Fernández’s own childhood, and she captures the feeling of looking back through the haze of time. There is not much to tell about what happened to the little lost girl Estrella, but it had a huge impact on her peers and bruised them for the rest of their lives. Space Invaders isn’t going to take the reader along for a mystery or teach them facts about Pinochet’s regime, but it is going to let them feel what it is to be a child in a big, overwhelming world, and sometimes that is enough.

Would I Recommend It: Yes.

[straydog733]

Reading Resolution: “My Sister, The Serial Killer” by Oyinkan Braithwaite

6. A book written in Africa: My Sister, The Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite

List Progress: 9/30

How far can familial love go? Is there such a thing as unconditional love, love that has absolutely nothing that could stop or lessen it? Most people, if pressed, have some conditions they put on the love they feel for others, even their nearest and dearest. But Korede, the protagonist of 2018 Nigerian novel My Sister, The Serial Killer, has no conditions on her love for her younger sister Ayoola, the titular serial killer. She doesn’t particularly like Ayoola, she resents her and carries a lot of anger towards the ways she has hurt Korede and others, but at the end of the day she has a cold, fierce love for her baby sister that is free of any and all conditions. And that is truly a terrible thing, but makes for a tense novel.

Author Oyinkan Braithwaite tells the story of Korede, a meticulous nurse working in a small hospital in Lagos, and her gorgeous, charming, magnetic sister Ayoola, who holds the spotlight in every room she walks into. Bonded by a traumatic childhood, Korede sees it as her job to protect Ayoola, even when she calls her in the middle of the night to help her deal with a boyfriend that Ayoola killed in self-defense. But the novel opens with the third dead boyfriend, and the claim of self-defense is ringing more than a little hollow. Korede can’t turn Ayoola in without revealing her own role in cleaning up the crime scenes, but far more important than that, she can’t turn her back on her sister. Korede gets by by unloading her soul to comatose patients at the hospital, but things reach a boiling point when Ayoola sets her sights on the object of Korede’s affections, as her next conquest and potential next victim.

Braithwaite keeps the book moving at a fast clip and the tension high, with very, very short chapters that move as quickly as Korede’s harried thoughts. The plot itself is not complicated, so this tension carries the novel. For a reader who doesn’t click with Korede, this could be a frustrating book, especially as Ayoola is an intentionally-frustrating character, but both of them get under your skin in a very engaging way. You sometimes want to yell at the page, but in the same exhilarating way that you yell at the screen for someone not to go into the haunted house. The haunted houses in My Sister, The Serial Killer are people, but they are just as filled with ghosts.

Would I Recommend It: Very much yes.

[straydog733]

Reading Resolution: “Spaceman of Bohemia” by Jaroslav Kalfař

20. A debut novel: Spaceman of Bohemia by Jaroslav Kalfař

List Progress: 5/30

Science fiction can hold up so many metaphors and meanings, and has been used to do so since the very beginnings of the genre. But underneath the layers of larger meaning, the central story should still hold up as a narrative in its own right. The problem with Jaroslav Kalfař’s 2017 debut, Spaceman of Bohemia, is that it has so much to say about the Czech Republic, marriage, and the burdens of legacy that it barely finishes the space travel story that it starts. There are a lot of interesting things to say about emotional abandonment in a marriage, but it’s hard to get too engaged with them when they are taking time away from the cosmic refugee spider alien.

Spaceman of Bohemia follows Jakub Procházka, a Czech astronaut. A cosmic dust cloud, called “Chopra”, has mysteriously appeared near Venus and has resisted all mechanical attempts to study it from Earth. The Czech Republic has stepped into the global spotlight by being the first country to send a human being to study the cloud, and Jakub will leave his wife Lenka for eight months to embark on the solo mission. Jakub was raised by his grandparents, but lives in the shameful shadow of his father, an interrogator/torturer for the Communist Party, and seeks to rehabilitate his family’s name. But he doubts his ability to do that, as well as his sanity, when he meets a spider-like alien aboard the ship, who he names Hanuš. Hanuš is from a distant telepathic race and is on a mission to learn as much as he can about Earth and humans, and he is fortunate to have found a lone human with all the time in the world on his hands.

The space travel in the present alternates with memories from Jakub’s life, but it is clear that Spaceman of Bohemia cares far more about the “Bohemia” part than the “Spaceman” part. Hanuš is telepathic largely to facilitate in-depth flashbacks, and what the reader learns about his species and world is very loose and vague. For all that it is the instigating event, the Chopra cloud ends up playing very little importance in the book as a whole and just serves as a way to get Jakub away from Earth (and it is unclear why the mission needs to be a solo expedition). The journey feels like it could have taken place under the sea, in the center of the planet, or in a magical fairy realm, as long as it separated Jakub from Lenka for a long time and gave him time to reflect on his life. There is nothing necessarily wrong with that, as that is clearly the story that Kalfař is interested in telling, and nothing says that a sci-fi novel has to hew entirely to sci-fi. But Jakub frankly isn’t an interesting enough character to build the majority of the novel around, so when the alien isn’t taking center stage, it feels like a letdown.

This book is sure to find its fans, most likely among lovers of literary fiction rather than sci-fi. But for a book that promises spacemen in the title, the narrative feels far too stuck on Earth.

Would I Recommend It: Not really, no.

[straydog733]

Reading Resolution: “Fence, Vol. 1″ by C. S. Pacat, illustrated by Johanna the Mad

17. A graphic novel: Fence, Vol. 1 by C. S. Pacat, illustrated by Johanna the Mad

List Progress: 3/30

School sports stories are a classic for a reason. They’re relatable to audiences who are in or have been in high school and feel like the things they are doing are the be-all and end-all of their lives. Competitions, tournaments and seasons give stakes and structure, while social life at the school balances it with levity. And audiences do not need to be keyed into the intense and often toxic worlds of professional sports, as the professional world exists largely as a distant goal. Many works have codified these tropes, especially in the world of sports anime and manga, and fans of Free! and Haikyuu! will find a lot to appreciate in the first volume of Fence, a Western comic written by C.S. Pacat and illustrated by Johanna the Mad. But aside from the choice of the less-popular sport of fencing, Fence doesn’t bring much new to the table, at least in this opening volume.

Fence follows Nicholas Cox, an aspiring epee fencer trying to make a name for himself. He is the illegitimate son of a former fencing Olympian, and while he has had no privileges or serious training in his life, he does have some innate talent. But in a very technical sport like fencing, that can only take you a very small way, and he is humiliated in his first tournament by the aloof and superior Seiji Katayama. Six months later, they cross paths again, when he has gotten a scholarship to the Kings Row Boys School and Seiji has surprisingly gone to Kings instead of the far more prestigious Exton. They are immediately thrust into one another’s lives as roommates, and tryouts for the school team only exacerbate their anger towards each other. The rest of the team is made up of colorful characters who mostly serve as background in the first volume, but you can see where they have room to grow.

Fence has a lot of queer characters right off the bat, which is a definite plus compared to many school sports stories that contain a lot of gay subtext without having any concretely queer characters. But it is almost so accepting that it seems to take place in a different world. One of the boys on the team, Bobby, has long hair and wears skirts, and it would be refreshing to see a casually gender-non-conforming boy in a comic…except that he is drawn exactly like a girl in a manga, all big eyes and pixie chin, just without breasts. It is a way to have GNC characters that seems oddly uncomfortable with actual gender-nonconforming people. The team lothario, Aiden, runs into a similar conundrum; he sleeps his way through the all-male team, but his love interests are written with a very feminine sort of twitterpation. The comic clearly has all the best intentions, but feels like it was trying so hard to be accepting of all genders and sexualities, that it circles back around to being off put.

For a teenage audience, Fence could be a lot of fun. But in a big world full of other school sports stories and comics, this doesn’t feel like an essential addition. If you read one Western sports comic about an outsider with physical capabilities but a lack of comfort with a core fundamental of the sport, featuring the son of a sports legend trying to live up to his father’s legacy and several queer characters, Check, Please! by Ngozi Ukazu is right there. But if you read two, give Fence a try.

Would I Recommend It: Soft yes. A good comic to grab from a library.

[straydog733]

Reading Resolution: “Hangsaman” by Shirley Jackson

21. A novel by a famous author, other than the one(s) they are best known for: Hangsaman by Shirley Jackson

List Progress: 2/30

Some stories just don’t coalesce. The pieces are all there, and you can see what the author is going for, but the whole ends up being just a bit less than the sum of its parts. Hangsaman, an early novel by horror giant Shirley Jackson, has a lot of big ideas, but when they don’t gel together by the end, the result is a small story. Not a bad one, just one that seemed like it was going to be a lot more impactful than it ended up being.

Jackson is known to this day as an author of atmospheric, creeping horror born out of social mores, typified in her biggest successes The Lottery, The Haunting of Hill House and We Have Always Lived in the Castle. The lead of Hangsaman, Natalie Waite, is a typical Jackson protagonist: a repressed, disturbed young woman who retreats to fantasies when the world around her is too restrictive. Natalie has grown up under the controlling guidance of her academic father, and when she steps into a world partially beyond his grasp (a women’s college hand-picked by him), she gravitates to other big, controlling personalities. She feels adrift, even when pulled into the orbit of a dysfunctional married couple: her English professor and his former-student wife. Nothing has prepared this young woman to forge her own path, and her world cannot withstand the lack of boundaries for long.

Hangsaman is divided into three major sections, and while each of the three is interesting in its own way, they don’t seem to communicate much with each other. This works well in the transition from the first to the second: a traumatic event that happens at Natalie’s home is quickly moved past as she is caught up in the chaos of going to school, and the narrative reflects Natalie’s refusal to cope with her trauma. But moving from the second section to the third feels like entering the ending to a different book, as aspects that have been slowly simmering are suddenly brought to a full boil. This coincides with the introduction of Natalie’s strange friend Tony, who is such an escalation of previous themes of the book that she should have perhaps been left on the cutting room floor.

Shirley Jackson was a talented author, and there is a lot of effective uneasiness threaded through Hangsaman. But all in all, it ends in neither a bang nor a whisper, but a bit of a shrug, and it is clear why this is not one of Jackson’s most-remembered works.

Would I Recommend It: Not really.

[straydog733]

Reading Resolution: “I, Robot” by Isaac Asimov

13. A collection of short stories: I, Robot by Isaac Asimov

List Progress: 1/30

It can be a strange experience, reading formative classics. Isaac Asimov is a titan of science-fiction, and his work has had a lasting impact on the genre to this day. But he was also one of the first writers to extensively explore artificial intelligences and sentient robots in his work, so while he was breaking new ground, later authors could build on his foundations to dig deeper into conversations about personhood, autonomy, and how technology interacts with humanity. Reading I, Robot in a week when the film M3GAN, a horror movie about a sentient robot doll, is in theaters, gives a real sense of the scope of conversations around artificial intelligences, and how these conversations have grown and evolved past much of Asmimov’s work.

The collection I, Robot unites nine short stories with the framing device of an interview with the world’s leading robopsychologist, Dr. Susan Calvin. In the year 2064, she looks back at her decades of work with robots, and recounts notable occasions when robots were particularly odd or troublesome. All robots are programmed with the unbreakable “Three Laws of Robotics”:

First Law: A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.

Second Law: A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.

Third Law: A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

Most of the stories read like logic problems, where the interactions between the Three Laws cause strange occurrences to take place and human scientists have to sort out why it happened and how to fix the problem. Characterization takes a backseat, with Dr. Calvin being the only person to really stand out. Two recurring characters, Powell and Donovan, are played for workplace comedy, but they are virtually indistinguishable from one another and fairly bland. Dr. Calvin distinguishes herself mostly by being grumpy and taciturn, though that comes with some unfortunate implications that she is unhappy because she is “plain” looking and can’t get a date. None of the robots are considered people, by the characters or the narrative, so the stories have little interest in investigating what it means to be a human, except in contrast to what it means to be a robot.

There are a lot of interesting concepts in Asimov’s world, and his clear prose and simple plotting probably helped these stories to become as popular and foundational as they became. For devoted science-fiction fans, it is worth the time to explore the roots of the genre. But over the decades, other stories have grown from those roots and bore fruit that has far surpassed Asimov’s work, and there is a big universe of science-fiction out there to explore.

Would I Recommend It: For fans of logic puzzles or sci-fi history, but not for casual readers.

Bonus Recommendation: M3GAN is a well-crafted horror movie and a great exploration of both the role of technology in child-rearing and methods of coping with grief and trauma.