Month: August 2020

Book Review |Rhett & Link’s Book of Mythicality by Rhett and Link

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Title: Rhett & Link’s Book of Mythicality- A Field Guide to Curiosity, Creativity & Tomfoolery
Author(s): Rhett McLaughlin & Link Neal
Publication Date: 2017
Length: 269 pages
Genre: nonfiction, humor, memoir, 
TW: (to be honest I didn’t keep track on this one as well as I could have…) Um… mentions of hospitals, alcohol, death (of a character, and pets) and discussions of death and funerals. 

This is one of those books that are kind of hard to categorize… kind of like the writers. If you are in any way familiar with Good Mythical Morning, and its creators, Rhett and Link, then you’ll have some inkling of what I mean. If you aren’t then I suggest taking a short trip over to youtube and clicking on a video. Preferably one that involves these two, but you do you. Part Memoir, part coffee-table-book-esque journey with oddball/almost-surreal humor, the book takes the reader through the different ways find the mythicality in anyone- such as unique ways to say ‘I love you’, embracing immaturity, and speaking at your own funeral.

One of the appeals to Rhett & Link is the balance that they manage to strike in what they do. Having been friends since first grade they work well together as a streamlined comedy team, yet they also have their own unique voices- their differences being clear within just a few minutes of watching them. Sometimes, however, people’s voices don’t translate well to a page, losing the vibrancy and individuality that makes them… well, them. Thankfully, that was not a problem here and the Rhett & Linkness still flowed through the book. They even managed to hold onto that balance spoken of before- some sections being completely cowritten, while others are put together solely by one or the other, allowing their individual voices and stories to shine through.

And, of course, while the comedy is a major pull- it wouldn’t be a Rhett & Link book without it- the best part, in my opinion, were those stories. I’m already familiar with a lot of it, since some of the same material was part of a kind of docu-series they made prior to the release of their novel last year, but there are stories I hadn’t heard before, and besides, stories are always a little different any time you tell them. There’s a scrapbook quality to the book, with older candid photos and notes, illustrating stories not only from their time growing up in Buies Creek NC but also behind the scenes bits from more current years- such as the story of Craig the office Python. 

Of course, I’d be remiss if I didn’t come back to the coffee-table-book comment from earlier. This book, beyond even the candid photos and pictures from GMM, is full of visual components- whether that be an illustrated guide to creating a show-stopping dance circle or guide to five ‘best worst inventions’ or the ads for ‘TestiKill!- Hours of Pain-Free Fun!’ and ‘Matlock Reloaded’. It’s a strange mixture of stuff, for sure. 

If you aren’t at all familiar with Rhett & Link, you may not get as much out of this book, of course, but I think even those who’ve never been exposed to them would get some amount of pleasure out of the book. The humor within the pages doesn’t require familiarity, nor do the stories, really- though it would definitely help.

Book Review | The Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue by Mackenzi Lee

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Title: A Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue
Author: Mackenzi Lee
Publication Date: 2017
Length: 513 pages
Genre: Adventure, Fantasy, Historical, LGBT, Mystery, Romance
TW: Violence, blood, serious injury, murder, body horror, corpse, skulls, bones, abduction, hostage situation, incarceration, threatened institutionalization, child abuse, medical procedure, needles, drugging someone against their will, seizures, lifechanging injury, alcohol consumption, smoking, mild sexual content, suicidal ideation, c-ptsd, sexism, racism, references to/mentions of slavery, slurs, homophobia, ableism

When I picked up this book, I honestly didn’t know what to expect. I mainly just noticed the quirky cover and thought, ‘I need to read some more reasonably current YA lit’ and, after a cursory glancing at the story blurb, picked it up from the used bookstore. It was another of those books that I nearly put back down- after all, I’ve got to big of a TBR stack (or box(es) rather) already and I’ll be honest in that YA just has never been my thing. No offence to the hordes of people who love it; it just wasn’t ever my thing. It only took about ten pages for me to start adjusting my thinking.

To quickly sum up the premise of the story, Monty (our upper-class English protagonist) has once again gotten into trouble and his behavior on his Grand Tour of Europe will be the deciding factor in his future. And so, what was originally meant to be a time of vice and frivolity with his best friend (and crush) Percy, turns into a dry chaperoned affair with his little sister in tow. It doesn’t stay dull for long, however, when Monty once again lands himself (and his companions) in trouble; trouble that will chase them across Europe from one danger to another.

Monty, if you can’t tell already, is thoroughly exhausting. He’s incredibly immature, constantly gets himself into hot water, and is a selfish, privileged ass. And I love him so much. He is so incredibly flawed, and somehow that’s endearing because he’s just as aware of it as the audience is and he’s trying to fix himself, no matter how slow the progress at times seems to be. It felt realistic though, in his constant slipping back into old ways of thought or action, because that’s the way progress is.

The author does a wonderful job, overall, of filling the story with rich complex characters- a diverse group of characters to boot. We’re presented with a bi protagonist, a poc main character (Percy), nuanced intelligent women (including our third main character Felicity), as well as representation for chronic illness (epilepsy) and possibly the ace community. All of the possibly connected issues are, thankfully, handled with care.

That’s not to say she never veered into stereotypes- using Monty as an example, he’s a flirt and almost perpetually a damsel-in-distress- though the first is at least partially a defense mechanism and there’s a textual reason behind Monty’s cowardice/inability to physically stand up to people. Thankfully, this issue doesn’t come up often, and is somewhat minimized by having a cast of characters that so often fly in the face of people’s expectations. The teenage rebellion is strong with this group, in a delightful way.

The best part about the story, beyond the characters, is the fact that it was just plain fun.  As previously stated, I often veer away from YA, partially because by the time I started reading it when I was younger, I ran into a lot of standard boy meets girl romance blahness, with not a lot of mystery or adventure to be seen. This story has it in spades- highwaymen, pirates, a mystery that must be solved… the adventure elements and the romance elements dance around each other wonderfully. Never too much of one or the other.

Not that the story wasn’t without flaws. The acknowledgement that, in this world, alchemy is a real thing, was very sudden, with little lead-up. I’d assumed I had assumed that it would be in the same sense of historical accuracy as the other various medical mentions (a la bleeding, or having a hole drilled in your head- and yes that was an actual medical procedure- thought thankfully not used in the book). So when the more fantastic elements of the story were introduced I was left feeling a little frustrated. Thankfully, my ability to suspend disbelief is fairly agile- if yours isn’t quite so, this part of the story may bug you a little.

Overall, however, I am so glad to have found this book. I’ve heard it’s the first in a series and I think I’ll be doing a little adventuring of my own soon, trying to hunt down a digital copy of the next book via my local library.

Book Review | A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess

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Title: A Clockwork Orange
Author: Anthony Burgess
Original Publication Date: 1962
Length: 213 pages
Genre: Dystopian
TW: Um… by this is by no means exhaustive, cause this book is something else, but it certainly has- violence, murder, rape (both of age and of minors), torture- mind control, attempted suicide, blood, mental illness

To be honest, being at least partially familiar with the story already, I’m not certain what possessed me to pick it up. Perhaps it comes down to the fact that I love dystopian writing, and there’s a certain amount of masochism left over from grad school- the mentality of ‘the more difficult the text the better’. Plus, my best friend loves the book, so there had to be something to it. 

I may have underestimated it.

For those of you unfamiliar with the novel, or the movie adaption, A Clockwork Orange is essentially the story of a young hoodlum who, with his small gang, essentially terrorize the community (as, evidently teenagers are wont to do in this story)- stealing, murdering, raping…

It’s the murdering part that eventually gets Alex, our protagonist, a fourteen year stay in state prison, where he’ll be known only as a number, but is thankfully at least able to listen to his beloved Bach and Beethoven by running the stereo during Sunday Mass, assisting the chaplain. It is a few years into his stay that he hears about the Ludovico Technique- a therapy meant to end violent thoughts. The program and its effects on Alex leads us to the major theme in the book – can good or bad even exist without choice. 

This is a strange book to review. It makes for an interesting read if one can get past the violence, but that’s a feat. It’s split into three equal sections, the first of which is almost all composed of Alex raping and pillaging along with his ‘droogs’ (friends in Nasdat slang). The purpose of that first section is, ,of course,  to show us just how much of an (excuse my french) unforgivable bastard Alex is. It’s a necessary, but difficult to stomach, element. Without it, the second section, where he’s exposed to the government’s therapy (cough: brainwashing cough:), would fall flat. Still, I nearly stopped reading several times during that first section. 

What kept me reading, I think, was the strange charisma of Alex. He’s a horrible person, unrepentantly violent and manipulative, but he speaks with an intelligence that’s fascinating, even through the blur of Nasdat dialect. He narrates the story with a weird mixture of brutality and blandness- the violence bringing him joy in a very normal and everyday way. The only time we get any real rapture out of the narration is when it deals with music. 

Of course, as previously stated, we get all this via the Nasdat dialect, making sure the audience knows that they are getting the story completely through the filter of Alex’s mind. He is very much the storyteller and he (as well as the book’s language) never lets the reader forget that. 

It’s a headache. As soon as one opens to the first page there’s an onslaught of unknown words- Russian-derrived (britva and devotchka), rhyming slang (cutter & rozz), or childish (eggiwegg & baddiwad); enough to make you dizzy. It’s as fascinating as it is excessive (who really needs three slang words for ‘cup’), but the story wouldn’t be the same without it. It clings onto you, getting ‘stuck in the ol’ gulliver’ as our protagonist might say, which certainly makes for a weird experience. 

Still, as fascinating as the language and the protagonist are, if it weren’t for the moral questions the book raises I probably would have set it aside quickly. I wouldn’t have had the patience for Nasdat and Alex’s ‘ultraviolence’, otherwise. Questions about the nature of good and evil are never very far in that second and third section and are as relevant today as they were in the sixties. Unfortunately, at times I felt a little as if the ‘meaning’ of the book was a little too on-the-nose. I felt vaguely spoon-fed at times. Maybe part of this was due to the way that government officials felt overtly villainous- just as overdone as Alex, but in the opposite way. It was the cold, scientist-with-light-glinting-of-the-glasses evil, the stereotypical evil of authority, and it all felt a little much. 

All in all, A Clockwork Orange isn’t an easy book, and I’m not certain if I’d ever be able to recommend it to anybody. Nor, however, am I going to tell someone not to read it. It was certainly an experience, if nothing else, whether you choose to try that experience is up to you, ultimately. 

O my brothers (and sisters), personal choice is very horrorshow.

Book Review | Fairest by Gail Carson Levine

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Title: Fairest
Author: Gail Carson Levine
Publication Date: 2008
Length: 326 pages
Genre: Fantasy, Fairy-tale Rewrite, Middle reader
TW: Fatshaming, negative body image, serious injury- head injury, amputation, body horror, imprisonment, murder (attempted), suicide (attempted)

Fairest is the story of Aza, an innkeeper’s daughter who, while never having been considered beautiful, has a heart of gold and a voice that would be the envy of any Grammy winner, if her story was set in the modern world and not the fairy-tale kingdom of Ayortha. Through a twist of fate, she finds herself lady-in-waiting to the new queen, forced to use her voice for deceit and in prime position to watch as her country slowly falls apart under the queen’s ever-tightening rule. It’s when she finds the queen’s magic mirror and the queen’s mysterious advisor, however, that she realizes how far the queen will go to remain the fairest. Aza must step out of the shadows, and into the light, in order to save the land and the people that she loves. 

Often, I’ve ran into books that catch my interest quickly, pulling me along for the ride until something happens and I hit the proverbial potholes which make me either put the book aside completely or push myself through the rest of the story in hopes of improvement- often times ending up feeling like I’ve wasted a small bit of my life.

Fairest did the opposite. It failed to impress right away, for a few reasons, before slowly growing on me, making me so glad I didn’t decide to set the book aside too early. 

The thing that stands out the most is Levine’s world-building. The hallmark of a truly good fairy-tale reimagining, in my opinion, is the ability to put your own stamp on the world- to take it past the generic fairy-tale kingdom and give it a life and a culture. Levine did that with Ayortha, creating a land where the appreciation of beauty- and especially that in music- reigns over all, where people half-speak half-sing their conversations, like a piece of musical theater, where people gather around to sing when someone is ill, or injured, as other cultures might pray. Later, the underground world of gnomes is given a similar treatment, though not with as much attention paid to detail. Sadly, Queen Ivi’s home country of Kyrria is left a little blank. I think it would have been much more effective when portraying the antagonist if we had been given a bit more of her background- especially as part of the conflict comes from her being from a different culture. 

Another thing I very much enjoyed about the story is Aza’s relationship with Prince Ijori, the King’s nephew, and the love interest. I’ve been conditioned I think through years of bland princes to expect the same treatment in all fairytales- a character that has little in the way of actual opinions or thoughts. I was pleasantly surprised to find an actual person in Prince Ijori, a character that disagreed with the protagonist without being obnoxious and villainized, who seemed to have motivations of his own. Prince Ijori isn’t perfect, by any means, but that makes him more interesting in my opinion, and a good match for Aza, who has flaws of her own- being timid at times to a fault, her inability to speak up and tell the full truth at times gets her into trouble. The interactions between these two felt believable, failing to fall into romance stereotypes for the most part, and they’re well-paced, building throughout the story without the conflict or resolutions feeling tacked on.

Unfortunately, as previously stated, the story felt as if it started a little slow. We begin with Aza’s life in the inn and although it’s nice to get a good solid starting point for her character and story, the individual points in the chapters (especially in comparison to the rest of the book) feel unconnected and a little choppy, although in hindsight the various points all set up something of importance in the story. 

In addition, it is difficult at times to read the various sections where Aza laments her lack of beauty, or to see how people treat her because of that; the characters are often cruel- both intentionally and unintentionally. And for a good portion of the story, that element was never far away, it seemed, and I worried that the story was simply indulging in that particular fairy-tale (and girls-lit in general) trope. Thankfully, the story doesn’t just leave it at that. That self-same trope is later addressed and turned on its head. The preoccupation with beauty, when taken too far, acknowledged as the flaw that it is. Though it does take a while to get there, ultimately, Fairest, is about self-acceptance- realizing your self-worth despite what others may think of you

Book Review | The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle

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Title: The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
Author: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Publication Date: originally 1892, republished in 1982
Length: 317 pages
Genre: Speculative fiction- mystery-detective, short stories
TW: Death-murder, Injury, violence, guns, dismemberment, drug use, period-normal sexism, racism, captivity, abuse-physical (mentioned), snakes

In the world of publishing, as with the world at large, there always seems to be much replacing- new editions with new covers and details and illustrations (if you are lucky enough to keep the illustrations in texts not meant for younger readers). All updates meant to keep the text inside fresh and new for audiences with ever-changing tastes. 

I’m admittedly a bit of a history nerd, though, especially regarding pop culture, so I consider myself very lucky to have found this version of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes– a facsimile of the original publication form 1892- complete with illustrations from Sidney Paget. 

Sherlock Holmes, at this point, has been depicted so many times- breathed back into life on stage and screen and radio- for over a century at this point. It’s interesting to be able to see the character through a similar lens as that of the original readers, to get a glimpse back at the original Victorian Holmes (who, incidentally, was never shown- in these twelve stories at least- wearing the infamous deerstalker). They make turn-of-the-century Britain come a little more alive. Well, for me at least- what can I say, I’m evidently a visual person.

I’d be remiss if I just continued on about the pictures though, since the stories are so good. There is, after all, a reason why we as a society, keep bringing back Holmes and Dr. Watson. The stories are fun. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle had a gift for concocting strange scenarios and people to present to his detective, whether that be a society paying redheads to sit and copy the encyclopedia by hand, a mysterious death following a strange whistling noise, or a controlling father with a thing for wild animals; nothing less would have kept Sherlock’s (or his readers) interest after all. I must admit that I’m fairly poor at actually deducing the who, what, and where of the mysteries myself, but the details are all there to put together as the story goes forward- something I can’t say about some other mysteries I’ve ran into. 

Additionally, they are thoroughly re-readable. I had, once before, read a few of the short stories from this text and despite being familiar with them, I was just as interested the second time around. Possibly moreso, to be honest, because now I could see all the parts come together- really see, as the story progressed, how ACD sewed the story (and Sherlock the case) together. 

There were, of course, a few things I could do without. Like much of the writing from the time period, the language was a little dry at times. In addition, the dialogue could vary from long- running paragraphs where the clients are telling their story, to a ping-pong game, words bouncing between characters with little room for physical directions or reactions to break things up. This isn’t always the case, and neither issues are overly distracting, but it is a stylistic element that was at times a bit of an annoyance. 

And, of course, it is a product of its time regarding some content- though I’ve definitely seen worse. It’s definitely kept down to a minimum here, which I appreciate, though you can still expect some negative stereotypes regarding the Romani, a bit of imperialism, and some patronizing attitudes regarding women. 

Overall, the Adventures of Sherlock Holmes is still very enjoyable, however, despite its flaws. There’s a wealth of depictions to choose from, regarding these famous characters, but all in all, the originals still stand the test of time.