by | May 7, 2012

Drowning Instinct

Word to the wise: if you want to avoid going to the loony bin, put all sharp objects out of reach. Also stay out of the way of your psychopath father and drunken mother. Ilsa J Bick’s Drowning Instinct is chock full of all of this and more. 

Holy cow is it.

Jenna Lord is in a lot of pain, both physically and mentally:

They think they’re doing you this big favor keeping you going because you’ve got your whole life ahead.  Because you think there’s only one kind of pain?  That pain is pain is pain?

Uh, that would be a no.

When the novel opens, Jenna has just finished a stint in a mental facility for help with self-harm and spends her days being home-schooled. Months later she knows she’s not healed from the compulsion to harm. She knows that it might always be there, lurking and prodding her to act. She has only herself to count on since her brother enlisted in the service and was sent to Afghanistan. He was her protector from a raging father and an alcoholic mother, a woman who has dark tendencies no one would suspect. 

Jenna’s brother Matthew saved her from a house fire that burned much of her back and required skin grafts from her thighs. This bonded them more than a regular sibling relationship. She’s determined to stay close to him and has to email him on the sly, creating an email account her parents can’t find out about. They disowned Matthew when he enlisted and if they find out Jenna is still talking to him, well, there goes the computer and any further “us against them” bonding between siblings.

Jenna gets a chance to start all over again at a new school where there are the usual stuck up girls applying three coats of lip-gloss in the bathroom while trashing every dweeb, geek, and yes, the troubled new kid. The worst is Danielle, the über stuck up pretty girl who especially seems to have it out for Jenna.   

Jenna tends to avoid contact with anyone and seeks solace in the library. But before she can go any further into herself she meets Mr. Anderson, her chemistry teacher and track coach. He takes an interest in her. Now, wait. I know what that sounds like: “takes an interest in her”. Creepy and very Mary K. Letourneau. 

But he encourages her to join the cross-country team, makes her his assistant in his lab and eventually (to Jenna’s horror) sees how her home life is unfolding like a Hefty bag with an amputated arm inside. He invites her into his life and home where Jenna sees picture after picture of a woman in various stages of pregnancy. She’s Mr. Anderson’s never seen wife. When questioned, he says that they are estranged and she’s in Wisconsin taking care of her sick father.

Mr. Anderson makes her forget about hurting herself. He helps her to see she’s more than damaged goods.

But he has his own secrets. Where is his wife? Where is his child? Why did Danielle say to Jenna that Mr. Anderson liked “the broken ones”? Did something happen between him and Danielle? Does he see Jenna simply as someone beyond repair that he pities?

Just when you think you’ve figured out what’s going on, Ilsa J. Bick’s Drowning Instinct throws in a whopping slap of events that are both unnerving and enthralling.

I’m still unnerved.

Jennifer

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by | May 3, 2012

Creepy and Hilarious

Here’s how I’ve been introducing Croak by Gina Damico to my friends:

Me: Did you like the TV show Dead Like Me?

Friend: Yes.

Me: You must read Croak!

While Croak by Gina Damico has a similar feel to the TV show, there are enough differences to make this story stand out on its own. Sixteen year old good girl Lex Bartleby is going through a bad girl phase, and she doesn’t even know why. She’s angry all the time, sparring verbally and even physically with classmates and teachers, until finally her family has had enough. They announce over dinner that Lex will be separated for the first time from her twin sister Cordie. Lex will be spending the summer at her Uncle Mort’s farm. Her parents hope a couple of months of honest, hard work will set her back on the good girl path. Cordie just wants Lex to survive the summer without punching anyone new.

Things no one knows about Uncle Mort:

  • He doesn’t live alone.
  • He doesn’t even live on a farm.
  • In fact, he’s never farmed a day in his life.
  • He’s the mayor of Croak, a small town in the Adirondacks.
  • He knows why Lex has been acting like such a bad girl lately.
  • Oh, and he’s a Grim Reaper.

Lex is immediately confronted with the reality of her Uncle Mort’s true profession when they ride into the town of Croak on the back of his motorcycle and he explains how everyone in the town is working the same job in one capacity or another. Every Croak resident helps transport souls from one life to the next: they’re Grim Reapers. Some are Killers, who touch a person just before the moment of death and release their souls from the doomed body. Some are Cullers, who finesse the freed soul into a special container used to transport the soul to the next world.

Uncle Mort tells Lex she has been acting out lately because it’s a sign of becoming a Reaper. While still trying to come to terms with everything, she is thrown into her new job as a Killer with her new Culler partner, Driggs, who’s also living with Uncle Mort. She’s immediately successful at Killing, which surprises all of her new friends and even intimidates a few. Reaping starts to take an emotional toll, though, as day after day our young heroine witnesses death to the old, the very young, alone in their homes or as part of a massive plane crash. Witnessing an endless string of deaths can really take the wind out of a girl’s sails.

Then people start dying who weren’t supposed to die. Worse still, some of their souls are being eternally trapped in their bodies instead of moving on to the next world. While it’s true these people had committed various unthinkable crimes against innocent people, Reapers are taught that no one deserves to have their soul trapped forever in their bodies. At first Lex thinks these people got what they deserved. But then Reapers become targeted, too. Lex and her newfound community realize that it’s up to them to put a stop to the rogue Reaper.

Voya reviewed this book as being, “Creepy and hilarious.” I have to say I agree. While the thought of dying makes many people squirm, the folks of Croak will win you over to the dark side.

Carol

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by | May 1, 2012

Zombies: New and Improved, with 20% Less Brains

One of the things I always enjoyed about vampire movies is that the vampires had to follow a (somewhat flexible) set of rules. It’s comforting to know that if you haven’t invited a vampire into your house then he cannot enter it, and you are more-or-less safe.

Then filmmakers and authors began to play with these rules, and this too was interesting. Charlaine Harris’s vampires, for example, have a blood substitute available so that they do not have to use humans for their nutritional needs.

Zombies also exist within a fairly tight set of rules. They typically crave brains and thus try feed off humans, they can survive loss of limbs and other severe bodily damage, they don’t sleep or breathe or feel pain, they do not remember their previous lives, typically they moan but do not talk, and they are strong but slow moving. The standard method of dispatching a zombie is to destroy its brain.

Zombie infestations are generally caused by objects from space, chemicals, or disease. If a living person is bitten by a zombie, he or she joins the ranks of the brain eaters. Most zombie stories feature groups of the living trying to survive zombie attacks and to wipe out the zombies.

So what fresh zombie twists have been unleashed on our zombie-hungry nation?

In Handling the Undead by John Ajvide-Linqvist, strange weather causes the dead to come back to life. In addition to your typical zombie mayhem, the author examines the psychological side of the undead.

In Dead Mann Walking: a Hessius Mann Novel by Stefan Petrucha, a criminal is executed, exonerated, and then brought back to “life” as a zombie. This story looks at the details of zombie life, culture and slang.

In My Life as a White Trash Zombie by Diana Rowland, Angel Crawford dies in a car crash and then comes back as a zombie. In life Angel was a drug addict, but in death her only addiction is to brains. Fortunately for her, a local serial killer seems to prey upon a victim whenever Angel craves brains.

In The Zombie Autopsies: Secret Notebooks from the Apocalypse by Steven C. Schlozman, a medical team studies zombies in an attempt to find a cure for the zombie epidemic. This book details the unique biology of zombies and includes anatomical drawings.

Breathers: A Zombie’s Lament by S. G. Browne is a romantic zombie comedy that details the day-to-day life of zombies.

 

World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War by Max Brooks tells about the zombie wars as if they were an historical event. Included in the text are interviews with survivors of the zombie apocalypse.

In I Kissed a Zombie, and I Liked it by Adam Selzer, a high school student starts dating a zombie without realizing that he is undead. When she does find out and tries to break up with him, things do not go as easily as planned.

 
In My So-Called Death by Stacey Jay, a freak cheerleading accident leaves Karen undead. She is sent to a boarding school for the “death-challenged” and discovers a mysterious plot that might bring about the end of all the students.

Ron

 

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by | April 27, 2012

Heartwood 2:5 – Lumen

Lumen, originally published in 1872, is the first science fiction novel to address the concept of relativity (30 years before Einstein) and to describe possible life forms on other planets. 

The book is structured as five dialogues between Lumen, the spirit of a man who has recently died, and Quaerens, a young seeker of knowledge. The Q & A conversational style and Lumen’s wide-ranging, imaginative speculations bring Plato and Socrates to mind. Readers open to this didactic narrative style are rewarded with a novel of ideas that explores the frontiers of science, time travel, reincarnation and the possibility of moral evolution.

Camille Flammarion was a French astronomer and popularizer of science who wrote numerous fiction and non-fiction books. Brian Stableford’s tremendous introduction and annotations situate Lumen within the cultural and scientific heritage that preceded it, while also noting Flammarion’s influence on various science fiction writers who followed him. If you’re interested in the history of science fiction, or like your SF on the philosophical side, be sure to take a look at Lumen. 

Heartwood | About Heartwood

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by | April 25, 2012

All The World’s A Stooge

The Three Stooges have entertained us for over 75 years. Their career on stage, film and television spanned more than 40 years. From 1930 to 1970, they appeared in over 200 film shorts and features.

The Stooges also have a very healthy fan base. The Three Stooges Fan Club, based in Pennsylvania, has over 2000 members and runs ‘The Stoogeum’, a museum packed with Three Stooges memorabilia. Three Stooges film festivals and conventions are held worldwide.

If you want to find out what all the fuss is about, you are in luck since The Three Stooges are well represented in the holdings at the Everett Public Library. Here are some examples:

The Three Stooges: Amalgamated Morons to American Icons: An Illustrated History by Michael Fleming is a good, short history of the Three Stooges. The book traces the childhoods of the Howard brothers (Moe, Curly, and Shemp), their early days on stage, their short comedies with Columbia Pictures, the decline of Curly’s health and Shemp’s return to the act, and their features with ‘Curly Joe’ DeRita.

One Fine Stooge by Steve Cox and Jim Terry is the authorized biography of the frizzy haired stooge, Larry Fine. Fine gave Terry a collection of clippings and photos and his blessing to write a biography worthy of the Stooges. With the help of Stooges fan Steve Cox, Terry’s work was finally published in 2006. The book includes a number of unpublished photos, including some of Curly Howard, taken after his forced retirement from the Stooges due to a stroke. Of the dozens of books written about The Stooges, One Fine Stooge is one of the finest. (Pun intended)

In 2010, Sony Pictures Entertainment completed an eight volume release of the 190 Columbia shorts. Everett Public has volume three of The Three Stooges Collection which has 23 shorts, produced between 1940 and 1942.

The Stooges’ films were often a reflection of the world at the time they were made. In You Nazty Spy, Moe is Moe Hailstone, who has a striking resemblance to Adolf Hitler. The Stooges were the first to satirize Hitler on film, 9 months before Charlie Chaplin’s The Great Dictator. As You Nazty Spy begins, the Stooges are wallpaper hangers, an occupation reportedly once held by Adolf Hitler. They are recruited by businessmen Iznay, Onay, and Amscray to overthrow King Herman the sixth and seven eighths of Moronica because ‘There’s no money in peace’. The ‘Nazty Spy’ is the boys’ secretary ‘Mata Herring’ who, with the help of her ‘magic 8 ball’, predicts a grim future for them. The masses rise up and revolt, the trio end up on the run, and eventually become lunch for a den of lions.

The Stooges are employed as census takers in the 1940 short No Census, No Feeling, making four cents for each person interviewed. As the short opens, the boys, like over eight million others in 1940, are unemployed. Some were fortunate enough to draw a paycheck, temporarily, working for the 1940 census. The census takers had to work hard for their money, asking individuals questions about age, employment, income, marital status and so on. In one memorable scene, Moe stands at a man’s front door and asks “Are you married or happy”. Immediately following the question, the man ducks and Moe is hit in the face by a piece of flying dinnerware.

The Three Stooges are being reinvented for a 21st century audience. The Farrelly Brothers, who made the film There’s Something About Mary have filmed a Three Stooges feature for release in April, 2012. The movie promises to retain the traditional slapstick style of the classic shorts, with a modern-day storyline. Stooges purists may not approve of this ‘update’ which includes scantily clad ladies, Lobsters stuffed down trousers, and members of the cast of ‘Jersey Shore’. However, the impersonations of the Stooges are spot-on.

Over forty years since their last filmed performance, The Three Stooges remain popular. Books continue to be written about the boys and the majority of their film and TV work is available on DVD. The Three Stooges should eye poke and bonk heads for another 75 years, to the dismay of mothers everywhere.

David

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by | April 23, 2012

Books You Have Always Meant to Read: The Secret Agent

But what is one to say to an act of destructive ferocity so absurd as to be incomprehensible, inexplicable, almost unthinkable; in fact, mad? Madness alone is truly terrifying, inasmuch as you cannot placate it either by threats, persuasion, or bribes.

You could be forgiven for thinking that the quote above was from a recent op-ed piece concerning terrorism and the perils of the world we live in. But in fact it is from the disturbing Mr. Vladimir who is a character in The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad.

Does the book title sound vaguely familiar? Perhaps you remember it from an old course syllabus or being mentioned by a friend. In fact, it fits perfectly into our latest series titled Books You Have Always Meant to Read and is the next title to be discussed on Tuesday, April 24th at the Main Library auditorium starting at 7 pm.

Everett Community College professor Roger Berger will lead the discussion of Conrad’s absurd and dark tale of anarchists, revolutionaries and the hapless Mr. Verloc  as he attempts to create a “series of outrages” against the status quo.

If you feel inspired by the discussion and want to learn more, definitely take a look at our resources on the author and his works. Perhaps even some information on Greenwich Observatory which, thankfully, still stands…

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by | April 20, 2012

Taking a Chance on Drive

There are many lofty reasons to be fond of public libraries. Their promotion of literacy, the way they bring the community together, and, of course, ensuring access to all kinds of information. But there is another reason and it is one of my favorites: The ability to root around in pop-culture’s closet for free.

My latest example of this phenomenon is the 2011 film Drive. With the title suggesting one long car chase, it is not the kind of film that would normally pique my interest. Having read a review or two that mentioned its imminent cult status, plus only needing a library card to view it, I decided to give it a try.

Now there definitely is a car chase or two in the film, but don’t let that scare you off. Drive is essentially a quirky modern day film noir with 80s highlights. A nameless anti-hero, played by Ryan Gosling, works as a part-time stunt driver and hires himself out as a getaway driver for cash. As with all film noir, things eventually fall apart but not before he develops an attachment to a single mother (Carey Mulligan) who lives down the hall in their seedy apartment complex. There are also great supporting performances by Albert Brooks, as the lead villain no less, and Bryan Cranston, who will always be Mr. White from Breaking Bad to me.

While the plot description sounds pretty standard, the tone of the film is not. Dialog is kept to a bare minimum and the odd romance, comprised of lots of significant stares but not much else, is contrasted with the hyper-violence of the crime plot. Though I definitely liked the film overall, I must admit that I got a little lost towards the end and began asking myself questions like “Who is that guy, and why is he getting killed?” 

Luckily, the library has the book the film was based on, Drive by James Sallis, to help me try and sort things out. With hardly a whiff of romance, this book is hard boiled and as straight down the line as they come. A quick read, at a mere 158 pages, it is stark and plot driven, but a lot of fun. If you want to continue the story, there is a sequel, aptly titled Driven, which has recently been published.

Are you a fan of 1980s synth music? Do you think it is perfectly acceptable to explain plot points with a montage and a cool song? If so you definitely want to check out the Drive Soundtrack. I would have sworn the bands were from the early 80s but they are all modern and hail from France, Montreal and Portland. Is it retro, a new trend or some odd version of nostalgia? Quite frankly, who cares? It is just freaking awesome to me.

So remember those lofty reasons for loving public libraries, but don’t feel ashamed to take a chance now and again. What have you got to lose?

Richard

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