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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 | Spindle’s End by Robin McKinley

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Title: Spindle’s End
Author: Robin McKinley
Publication date: 2000
Length: 422 pages
Genre: Fantasy, Retelling, YA

When met with stress people react in a variety of ways. Me- I delve into the fantastical.

Sometimes that means horror, sometimes science fiction.

This time it meant a fairy tale. Specifically, a retelling of Sleeping Beauty with a less-than-princessy princess named Rosie- who’s more at home re-shoeing a horse than doing any number of standard girly activities. Like the Disney version, Rosie is taken in by a fairy (along with the very young fairy’s aunt) who was present at her name-day ceremony, sheltered by the magical atmosphere as, in this world, the royal family is so incredibly mundane. She is, herself, fairly average- aside from the whole speaking with animals thing (a gift from the fairy), as well as her brash nature. She grows up, a little strange but safe, surrounded by her adoptive family; her best friend, Peony; Gorse- the local blacksmith, Rosie’s eventual teacher and companion; and a whole host of animals. All goes well, until her twenty-first birthday (and the curse’s deadline) approaches and the life she’s known begins to crumble around her.

I was so very excited when I saw this on the bookshelves- because Robin McKinley’s Beauty is one of my fave retellings ever.

I seriously need to quite getting over-excited about these things, cause I keep getting let down.

Not that this wasn’t a good book- not what I’m saying at all.

The world that this story inhabits is full of life and depth, governed by its own peculiar set of magic rules and idiosyncrasies. McKinley here takes a standard fairy tale and transforms it, creating a rich, imaginative landscape that lays heavy with magic- where even everyday people deal with accidental ‘baby-magic’ as toddlers due to how thick it is in the air, where care is taken to clean the grim off of day-to-day objects lest they take on magical attributes.

The story starts so strongly due to this, sucking you in as the world and the cast of characters (the mundane royals, the wise royal fairy, and the ever-uncertain but more-capable-than-she-realizes Katriona) are unveiled.

I saw some of the issues fairly early on, however. You see, the story has multiple narrators- this in and of itself isn’t an issue- it could have worked wonderfully. The problem, however, lies in how one narrrator transitions to the other. You see, the story begins when Rosie is just a baby, and in this story our original protagonist, I would argue, isn’t Rosie at all, but Katriona.  One spends the first quarter of the book with her as our main viewpoint into the world. Then things begin to shift, with Rosie getting a few scenes as viewpoint character- followed shortly afterwards (about 150 pages in) by Katriona taking a side-character role- right as Katriona gets married and has children.

There’s something that rankles about that- about the fact that as soon as Katriona becomes a wife and mother that becomes her central role. The young woman wrestling with her own fairy powers- so often uncertain of her own skills and place in the world- is shoved off with a couple of labels, and it leaves a gap, it seems, in the story, because while I love Rosie, she is also very much not in-the-know as far as what’s going on around her.

Additionally, how the story treats friendship is peculiar at times. Throughout most of the narrative I would have counted this as one of the strongest elements- I love reading a story with strong platonic bonds, especially between girls, because so many of the stories I was exposed to as a teenager absolutely lacked that. It’s the reason I avoided YA fiction for years- the treatment of friendships as characters grow and mature, especially when those relationships are deemed as character defining for both parties. I can’t say much, for fear of spoiling things, but ended up feeling let down by this story as well, in that respect.

It was still a wonderful story in so many ways; it just has a lot of issues as well- ones that happen to be some of my pet peeves. If you can look around these specific things, I definitely recommend trying the story out.

Book Review – Just Ella by Margaret Peterson Haddix

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Title: Just Ella
Author: Margaret Peterson Haddix
Publication Date: 2001
Length: 218 pages
Genre: Retelling, Fantasy, YA

I think most everyone has a particular fairy tale they gravitate to- characters that just attach themselves to a part of your heart as a child and refuse to let go. Now, I grew up in the Disney renaissance, watching Ariel and Belle and Jasmine on the big screen, but none of them were my first Disney princess- no, that title belongs to Cinderella, and maybe that’s the reason I have such a soft spot for that story.

Ever After, the version with Drew Barrymore (one of the only movies I could literally watch on repeat), just made me love it all the more. But perhaps there’s something in that movie that’s spoiled me, because reading Just Ella, a retelling of Cinderella, I felt a little… let down.

Maybe that’s just what happens though, when one starts looking beyond the happily ever after- which is exactly what Just Ella does. The story takes place after the ball, after the glass slipper, with Ella (as she’s known here) now taking residence in the castle awaiting her marriage to the prince. All is not well, however, with the soon-to-be princess, as she finds herself in many ways, more trapped by her new surroundings than she was by her stepmother and stepsisters. It isn’t until she tries to do something about the situation, however, that she realizes just how dire things are.

I don’t think that’s the reason though, since ultimately, I love twisted fairy tales. The plot, upon reading the blurb sounded great, and I really was interested in seeing how this take on Cinderella would work out. I happen to have a weakness for Cinderella taking as much agency as she can get. And I can say that the plot remained one that I enjoyed- complete with a small war subplot that, while not so important early on, becomes vital later in the story. Additionally, Ella is indeed a strong character, both in terms of how developed she is, as well as her own willpower, which was fun to see playing out in the situation she finds herself in.

So why did I find myself wishing for more?

The problem lies in the fact that it’s just as trapped by stereotypes and tropes as the original story was. For instance, a main theme of the story is that beauty isn’t everything- that there has to be depth below the surface. The problem, however, lies in the fact that the book constantly undermines that by many of the character descriptions- the shear fact that unpleasant people are so often described in physically unpleasant ways. For instance, a jailer who is morally loathsome and described physically in many of the same ways, or the constant fat-shaming going on with the evil stepsisters (at least this version doesn’t call them ‘ugly’ point-blank). I think the author tried to save herself by making one of Ella’s friends ugly as well, but the attempt falls short.

Additionally, while Ella is interesting- a character that insists on taking charge of her own story- the characters in the castle (save for two) are so two-dimensional. Flatter than the pages they were written on. Was it really not possible to have a story in which Ella is unhappy- and thoroughly trapped wherever she goes- while also surrounded by round characters? Or at least ones with a slight curvature? It was almost as if the author felt that in order for Ella to appear strong enough, she had to be the only character in that place capable of being so.

All in all, I still found the book enjoyable, but it’s definitely not one of my favorite fairytale retellings, and certainly doesn’t rank as high as other versions of Cinderella I’ve seen throughout the years.

Book Review | The Road From Home by David Kherdian

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Title: The Road From Home
Author: David Kherdian
Publication Date: 1995 (originally published in 1979)
Length: 242 pages
Genre: Memoir/biography, YA

Perhaps it’s morbid of me, but I’ve always had a fascination with the awful side of human nature- what we do to each other in the name of who-knows-what.

As much as it hurts to delve into it, I can’t help but do so.

Considering the large amount of books on the subject it’s probably not surprising that the awful thing I’ve read about the most is the holocaust.

Of course, this isn’t a journal entry about a holocaust themed book.

The thing is, I’ve always wondered why so many other incidences don’t receive the same treatment as those awful years during the 30s and 40s. Perhaps it’s the scope of what happened in WWII, or the more recent quality of it, but nevertheless it’s still a noticeable difference. This isn’t to say that it shouldn’t be such a focus of attention or study, but rather the fact that I’ve always wondered… where are the other books.

Thus, when I found this book sitting amongst all the James Patterson paperbacks I had to pick it up.

Long Road from Home is the story of a girl living in Turkey in the 1910s- Veron, the author’s mother and a survivor of the Armenian genocide.

The story spans roughly from 1913 – 1924, from the time that Veron is about six, until she’s a teenager. The world the reader is introduced to is that of a young child’s, with the focus on the close-knit extended family- nights giggling with a cousin while everyone else tried to sleep, complaints about going to the baths and enduring scrub-downs – until that world crumples around her and her family is torn apart when part of them (including Veron) are forced from their homes and onto a grueling and uncertain journey across the country.

Kherdian does a wonderful job at capturing this changing world and making it as familiar to the reader as he can. So many elements of Veron’s culture are integrated throughout the story, pieces of the puzzle that makes up Veron’s life. Additionally, he doesn’t shy away from the hardships that Veron and her family endure, although they are at times obscured by Veron’s age and lack of experience, at least initially. That world, as said previously, is that of a younger child, even as the horrific events begin to unfold. It isn’t until later in the story, and subsequent events, that the reader begins to get a full open-eyed perspective- which matures as Veron does.

At times, however, the story struggles. There is a heavy reliance on telling, rather than showing, and while the events are harrowing, and tragic, there is sometimes an emotional disconnect. I think part of this stems from the author trying to tell so large of a story in so short a period of time. It feels as if certain emotional beats are underdeveloped- some sections not given quite the gravity that they should have, in order for the whole story to be told. This is, perhaps, the problem at times with stories about one’s family, as this story is. One knows the entire story already, all the elements having already taken place, the question then becomes not where the story should go, but where to begin and where to end and which parts to prune off in the middle.  I feel as if this story could have done with a bit more pruning, or perhaps the opposite- some extended details- especially at the end, which seems to drop off rather sharply.

Ultimately, I’m glad I read the book, as I walked away from it having learned about something, but I hate that I struggled to connect with the protagonist. While I’m keeping it for my classroom library, this one’s probably not a reread for me.