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Wordly Obsessions

~ … the occasional ramblings of a book addict …

Wordly Obsessions

Category Archives: Book Review

Hallowe’en Reads – October Book Haul from MCM Comic Con

28 Sunday Oct 2018

Posted by mywordlyobsessions in Authors, Book Review, comics

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Tags

Batman, Brian Azzarello, comic books, ComicCon, dc comics, Frank Miller, Infinity War, Joker, Klaus Janson, literature, Marvel Universe, Master Race, nanowrimo, The Dark Knight, The Long Halloween


Batman the dark knight master race
infinity volume 1
i-batman-the-killing-joke
batman the long H
batman the long H
Batman the dark knight master race
i-batman-the-killing-joke
infinity volume 1

It seems all the good things are just around the corner: hallowe’en is almost upon us as well as the monthly madness of NaNoWriMo. Yesterday I was also lucky enough to have attended the London MCM ComicCon. I came away with a big book haul that is set to enrich my ever-expanding comic book collection, though my bank balance is considerably depleted!

How to describe comic con? A lot of people ask me if it really is an insane geek-out sesh and I have to say, yes, it most definitely is. Everyone is doing their own thing and it’s the only place where no one will ever give you a second glance if you turn up half-naked covered in green paint screaming ‘HULK SMASH!’ in people’s faces. I personally love it for all the bookish goodness I can take away with me (one guy actually had a bubblegum pick suitcase for his haul. That will probably be me next year…) and it’s a wonderful opportunity to meet the creators, illustrators and some big names in the industry.

This year’s attraction for me was no other than Frank Miller and Brian Azzarello from the DC Universe. I got a very special edition of Dark Knight III Master Race signed by him, Azzarello, Kubert and Janson and I managed to meet and talk to Brian Azzarello himself. He signed the black cover copy of Master Race for me (the complete edition). Klaus Janson was also there and I got a cheeky little signature from him too.

Other highlights of the event was an awesome steampunk stand where I met an absolutely adorable steampunk R2D2 and got my picture taken with no other than Ryuk from Deathnote. A girl’s dream come true!

Here are a few of my favourite snaps from the Con:

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

HALLOWE’EN READS

  • Batman: The Long Hallowe’en – I’ll be kicking off with this aptly named title! I’m on a bit of a DC bender at the moment, specifically Batman. I’m watching Gotham on Netflix and I would REALLY love it if they could make an origins story for Fish Mooney, even though she was only created for the TV show.
  • Batman: The Dark Knight Master Race – I’d almost forgotten how awesome Mr. B actually is. I am a Marvel girl through and through, yet there’s something about him that’s different. He has no special abilities, yet his loss and subsequent darkness is the only thing that fuels him on his journey to making the world a better place. I identify with that. And no matter what anyone says, he’ll always going to be the good guy. I just wish he found someone to make him happy.

What will you be reading for hallowe’en?

 

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Summer Reads #2 – The Sandman Saga by Neil Gaiman

10 Friday Aug 2018

Posted by mywordlyobsessions in Authors, Book Review, Philosophy/ Religion, summer reading, Uncategorized

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Tags

american gods, book review, books, christianity, comic books, coraline, god of dreams, greek mythology, literature, mirrormask, moirai, morpheus, mythology, Neil Gaiman, ramadan, Reading, religion, stardust, the kindly ones, The Sandman, the three fates, Vertigo Jam


the kindly ones

According to Neil Gaiman, if the Moirai (the Three Fates) lived among us, they would be harmless old cat ladies with a penchant for yarn-bombing.

 

This year I managed to complete the Sandman Saga, which was a big one for me, because after reading a lot of Neil Gaiman, I was still undecided on how I felt about him and his writing.

He’s one of these authors who is gifted and has a prolific output of work – the man can turn his hand to anything literary and make a success of it. The Sandman comics have also long been touted as his magnum opus, but I just didn’t have the time to get through it due to work commitments.

But 2018 was the year for it, and I’m sooooo glad I got through this, because it was AMAZING! Neil Gaiman is everything they say he is – an absolute genius.

If like me, you weren’t that particularly impressed with Coraline, Mirrormask, Stardust or found American Gods to be too steep and cryptic in terms of plot and character development, then The Sandman Saga is definitely for you.

In my humble opinion, this has to be Gaiman’s biggest achievement. In it he display’s his amazing prowess and knowledge of world mythology; creates a world where all gods, of all races across all times exist in the here and now, some as faint echoes and others as living amongst us, unbeknownst to us. In a way, The Sandman is not just about the adventures of Morpheus the Dream-God (one of the Eternals); it is through his interactions with humans, his losses and gains, his victories and calamities that Gaiman puts together a meta-mythology, a place where all gods are a figment of human imagination and exist as long as we exist.

I love this idea – it’s fresh, new, and something that he goes into in great detail in American Gods where he explores how ancient gods gain new grounds through the diasporas of different peoples’ across the ages, and how genocides are enough to wipe out the existence of others. It is powerful in that it puts the existence of faith into the hands of story-telling. The gods travel and stay tethered to survival through our stories. According to Gaiman, without the tradition of oral story-telling, our gods would come to naught. Being a story-teller, I like this idea, a lot!

Thus I found Sandman to be a bibliophile’s delight, because Morpheus, the god of dreams is the ultimate storyteller. He controls the gateway to the subconscious, he is a merciful god to a certain extent, yet when the world of dreams is in flux (as it is when we are first introduced to him in Preludes and Nocturnes issue #1), it causes chaos in the human world.

The saga begins when a group of Occultists (among them, the infamous Aleister Crowley) gather to summon and entrap Death itself. Their little parlour game goes awry and instead of entrapping Death, they manage to snag Death’s twin brother, Dream. Morpheus, therefore begins his 70 year confinement at the hands of these occultists, which results in terrible consequences for people around the world. Some fall asleep never to wake up again, others die stark raving mad because of their inability to sleep, others are subjected to terrible nightmares that are endless. In short, the world is thrown into flux, but the Lord of Dreams finally finds a way to escape his fate as a ‘genie in the lamp’, and must begin a journey across space and time, and between worlds to claim back the power that was seized in his absence.

This is of course, just the beginning of the saga. So much more happens, and I can’t remember a time when I was so engrossed by mythology as I was with this series. It has made my understanding and appreciation of American Gods much more meaningful as I see now what Gaiman was trying to do.

The Sandman was him playing in the sand pit. He stated himself that the series made him grow as a writer as he became bolder with his world-building, and with those amazing connections he makes between character and the series.

My favourite issues comprise of the stand-alone Ramadan, which has a very 1001 nights flavour to it and the masterful way he put together The Kindly Ones, the penultimate volume to the saga, where he explores the potency of the female in mythology. The Kindly Ones as they are referred to, assume the avatar of the mother, the lover, the female scorned. The way he portrays the Three Fates and the alchemy of feminine ‘madness’ was especially breath-taking.

I’ve made up my mind: Neil Gaiman truly is one of a kind.

I can only hope to meet him in person one day and listen to his pearls of wisdom about writing.

NOTE: Special mention to the illustrator David McKean, whose illustrated the front covers for each volume. His style artfully illustrated the nightmare and the dreamscape of Morpheus’ world. But if you look carefully past the disturbing nature of his images, you will see a balance of symbolism, which like a dowling rod divines the very heart of each volume and issue. A wonderful collaboration.

 

 

 

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Summer Reading – Book #1: Moon Tiger by Penelope Lively

29 Sunday Jul 2018

Posted by mywordlyobsessions in 50 Books A Year, Book Review, Philosophy/ Religion, summer reading, Travels with Books

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

book review, bookerprize, cyprus, historical fiction, literature, Moon Tiger, Penelope Lively, Reading, romance, Summer Reads


moon tiger

4am in Cyprus is the most precious and delicious time of day. Sitting on the verandah of the house I am staying at, I realise that I only have a few hours of this cool breeze before the sun begins its rapid ascent and bakes the island with the ferocity of an open oven. The island (situated as it is) has all the beauty and culture of a typical Mediterranean country, but is only 264 km away from Lebanon. As a result, we get our fair share of the searing middle-eastern heat. Many times have I been caught in Cyprus and witnessed the unbearable stranglehold of the siroc wind that eddies in from the Sahara desert covering the island in a blanket of dirty, red dust. So far however, here in Famagusta, we have been treated to a cool, Eastern Levantine wind. Long may it last…

It has been a week exactly since I arrived, and every year I have the same goal: immerse myself in as many books as possible, not just for reading’s sake but also for writing. Moon Tiger drew my attention partly for its intriguing title and partly because I felt an affinity to the lady on the front cover. Cyprus nights can be as stifling as its days – and it’s not uncommon for its inhabitants to lie dazed and confused on a bed till the early hours of the morning. However it was the green coil burning in the bottom left of the picture that sparked childhood memories of long, mosquito-ridden evenings spent at my grandmothers farmhouse; of nights steeped in the incense of jasmine flowers, the warm exhale of baked earth, the chirrup of cicadas and of the sweet, secret wilderness just outside (and often inside) the green flaking shutters. It was a time before air-conditioning, when fans whirred all night laboriously, teasing our hot skin with intermittent relief and every bedroom had a green coil that burned through the night, warding off the blood-thirsty mosquitoes that would come thirsting for our tender, pale skin.

And that is exactly what a ‘moon tiger’ is, a green circular coil that was a common mosquito repellent in the middle-east. But here, Penelope Lively makes it an unbearable metaphor for the fleeting nature of time, of love lost, of yearning, of desire and life itself.

Claudia Hampton, the protagonist of this slim novel lies in a hospital bed, dying from cancer. She is a historian who has had a prolific career, and is determined to end her life writing decides, “I am writing a history of the world… And in the process, my own”. Anthony Thwaite who wrote the introduction to my edition underlines the starkness and the arrogance of this statement. It is a ‘hodri-meydan’ as we call it in Turkish, which translates to throwing one’s hat into the ring and challenging one’s adversary. In this case, Claudia’s arrogance is aimed at death itself which threatens to erase her from the face of the earth without a trace, with nothing to account for. For a historian, it was her life’s work to painstakingly unearth and record the smallest aspect of human life. However, as Claudia’s life burns away, just like a moon tiger, she begins her triumphant chess-game against her adversary in the most marvellous of ways: by literally collapsing time itself.

Lively manages to embed Claudia’s personal history in the prehistoric era, in the catacombs of Egypt; from the primordial mud that we crawled out of, to the glittering cosmos.

A history of the world. To round things off. I may as well – no more knit-picking stuff about Napoleon, Tito, the battle of Edgehill, Hernando Cortez… The works, this time. The whole triumphant murderous unstoppable chute – from the mud to the stars, universal and particular, your story and mine.

Let me tell you something: she manages it. Beautifully. The book has its moments where you stop, draw a breath of disbelief at the prose, the geometry of ideas, the brush-stroke of imagery and it’s not fair I tell you. It’s not fair. In a little over 200 pages Lively has created a masterpiece that delivers a bitch-slap to Michael Ondjaate’s The English Patient. Here is also a love story set in the middle-east, yet what I loved about it was that it was a distinctly female voice that truly plucked at my heart-strings. Claudia Hampton is a woman I yearn to be: a modern warrior, an Artemis, a Diana who crests the way forward rather than lurks in the shadows of her male counterparts.

She has the temerity to marry her own existence to that of the pharoahs, Prometheus and cosmic chaos itself – she was present, or rather they were present, in her time. She declares that they have lived side by side, breathed the same air, touched each other across time itself. Hell, she even does away with time itself, collapsing it like a toy concertina, proving that the concept of linear chronology is a mental trap, an error of perception. All eras, according to her decaying brain, can be lived in tandem, all at once. The neolithic exists in 2018. All we have to do is go to the beach, pick up a rock and there an ammonite winks at us from across the ages.

In short, this novel has taught me that yes, life is fleeting, yet death never really touches us. We just need to change our concept of what ‘existence’ means. And Claudia Hampton, probably my favourite female heroine of all time, does that exquisitely with lilting prose steeped with all the wisdom and knowledge of a time-keeper. As Ray Bradbury once wrote, women are ‘wonderful clocks’… which is probably why Penelope Lively was able to create a character like Claudia Hampton, who sees the world not in the masculine, linear (like old father time), but rather in the feminine plural.

The sun has come to rest on the nape of my neck now, forcing me to move. The dry creak of a lone cicada has struck up… soon a whole chorus of them will join in. I leave you with the words of Ray Bradbury, and the wonderful notion that we are eternal and time runs parallel with everything that has existed or has yet to exist in the world. In this, I whole-heartedly believe.

“Oh, what strange wonderful clocks women are. They nest in Time. They make the flesh that holds fast and binds eternity. They live inside the gift, know power, accept, and need not mention it. Why speak of time when you are Time, and shape the universal moments, as they pass, into warmth and action? How men envy and often hate these warm clocks, these wives, who know they will live forever.” – Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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HoL Book Club | Part 1 – My Musings, Just in time for World Book Day…

01 Thursday Mar 2018

Posted by mywordlyobsessions in Authors, Book Review, Readalong, Uncategorized

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

book challenge, book club, ergodic literature, HoL, house of leaves, hypertext, japan, Jorge Luis Borges, mark z danielewski, readalong


dc815efc411bf5cc1b40d015e1d3b637--house-of-leaves-book-quotes

It is March 1st – which means I get to mark World Book Day from a busy cafe in a shopping mall, after having travelled 40 minutes (there and back) to work only to find out it is a ‘snow day’ and therefore the site is shut.

I am currently drowning the last embers of my rage in my chai latte and top it off with a blueberry muffin, which quite frankly, I think I bloody well deserve after battling with Storm Emma’s offering on my car this morning. But hey-ho, can’t complain. I get to sit across the way from a Scouse handyman who is commiserating about his personal life to his mate and just eavesdrop (because that is what reader/writers do – we are very Parisian in that fashion).

This is the perfect time and place to write another blog post. Go me.

So, WBD is celebrated all day by reading books, talking about books, writing about books, and that is exactly what this is. MZD, the prodigal author of House of Leaves, began his online book club which looks at one section of this massive genre-defying tome at a time, and we all get to basically go nuts over inferring the shit out of it.

My observations so far of the group talk on the House of Leaves FB Book Club Page  is as follows:

  • Every person has a different edition (full colour, black and white mostly) which means people are now sharing pictures of the inner sleeve that others do not have. There is a lot of camaraderie going on! And I have unearthed some pretty neat connections I never had the chance of learning about 10 years ago, because of the limitations on internet chat rooms and forums (remember those? Yeah, still miss ’em).
  • It is all one MASSIVE GEEK PARTY! I mean, there is one lady who literally got paranoid over a splodge of blue ink on the title page (if you know the book, blue is a significant colour. All references to the HOUSE are in blue.) It was reading into stuff, gone mad. I have come to the conclusion that there is such a thing as too much interpretation, and that can ruin a beautiful thing like HoL. Turns out, MZD even gets exasperated at how deeply and seriously some people may lose themselves in HoL.
  • The conversations are attracting not only the academically minded, but also complete newbies who are entering the horrific alchemy of the novel and realising that YES, this book CAN give you nightmares. A word of warning to those beginning it: make sure you read it during the day, not in your house, and you have someone around to have a light-hearted conversation afterwards. DO NOT READ AT NIGHT. You have been warned. I have personally experienced the horrors of that.
  • It can be a bit confusing, but that is the nature of the novel and the way ideas unspool from it. When you have a piece of work that has been constructed like a daisy-chain from other pieces of literature and literature that doesn’t even exist, but is given the illusion it is a credible piece of evidence, then people begin to echo that in their own surmisings. It is completely a meta-experience. We are the book, the book is us. Simple as.

What ‘Genre’ is House of Leaves?

This is my second read through of HoL, which means I’ll be approaching it from a completely different perspective. When I first read it, I didn’t really get what I was experiencing. Yes, it was a very unique experience as the book is laid out differently from other texts. It is a story about a labyrinth, that grows in a house in Ash Tree Lane, and the text is labyrinthine to mimic that.

A labyrinth, as everyone knows, is designed to throw you off, make you lose your bearings, your sense of ‘self’, induce a sense of panic etc until you ‘work’ to find out the exit. This is what I mean by the ‘structure’ of the book mimicking the content of the book:

House_Of_Leaves_Motto_1462

The text will not obey the laws of literature as we know it. Text will flow backwards, go sideways, be cut off, slide down the page, even be ‘caged’ in a box, which here is symbolising how one of the characters feels as he crawls through one of the ever shifting spaces in the labyrinth.

As for what ergodic means:

“The ergodic work of art is one that in a material sense includes the rules for its own use, a work that has certain requirements built in that automatically distinguishes between successful and unsuccessful users.”

It also needs to be something that requires the reader to interact with the text, (which the book club members are doing, they are digging up meanings, joining up the dots, making new connections and using the ‘interface’ that MZD created.) This book does not come with a manual on how to read it – you need to figure out what is needed to crack it:

“In ergodic literature, nontrivial effort is required to allow the reader to traverse the text. If ergodic literature is to make sense as a concept, there must also be nonergodic literature, where the effort to traverse the text is trivial, with no extranoematic responsibilities placed on the reader except (for example) eye movement and the periodic or arbitrary turning of pages.”

So basically moving your eyes from right to left is not going to get you anywhere with HoL.

Apart from this, HoL is grossly intertextual – to the point where we can say that it doesn’t stay anchored to any one ideology, theme or genre. It passes fluently and fluidly from one to the next at will. In fact, you have control over what those connections are. The suggestions are there, only you have to make the links (if you wish).

So, let’s introduce ourselves to the notion of HYPERTEXT:

Hypertext fiction is characterized by networked nodes of text making up a fictional story. There are often several options in each node that directs where the reader can go next. Unlike traditional fiction, the reader is not constrained by reading the fiction from start to end, depending on the choices they make. In this sense, it is similar to an encyclopaedia, with the reader reading a node and then choosing a link to follow.

HoL, despite proclaiming itself to be a ‘novel’ is actually more of a manual of sorts, an academic paper, that gets lost in the throes of its own urban mythology. It desperately tries to anchor itself in reality. We have at least 3 narrators for starters: Zampano (a blind man who to me resembles Jorges Luis Borges more than anything (more on this for next week!), Johnny Truant (a young drug-addled failing tattoo artist who picks up the mantle of Zampano after he dies, whose voice is a footnote in the margins of the book) and Navidson (a man who may or may not have existed, who moved into a haunted house, that grew a labyrinth one day that was physically impossible according to some shaky home videos). In fact, here is one person’s very useful diagram of how many ‘narrative layers’ one experiences when reading this book:

layersin HoL

 

Can you say ‘unreliable narrator’? Um, yep. So paranoia when reading this novel is inevitable. The hypertext aspect of the book comes into play as you go deeper into the story. You will find yourself breaking off, going away and delving into the story of the Minotaur for a few days, coming back, then realising that the page you are reading has a secret code embedded in it. Off you go again, figuring out what it means, you will go back several pages, pontificate on a word, a letter, a line. Repeat ad nauseam.

This aspect of hypertext is experienced more literally with MZD’s Only Revolutions, where you literally flip from the front to the back to the front of the book constantly to experience that same moment in time, from two different perspectives. It is a physical process and creates a feeling of symbiosis between the two lovers who are, interestingly, alive at two different points in history, and are travelling towards each other from opposite ends of the USA. It is the great American road novel, turned ergodic and hypertextualised (apt, since MZD’s fans had a hand in creating the novel itself).

But I digress… (as is natural for a novel like this). Let’s look at those all important words “This is not for you”.

this-is-not-for-you

Why does this greet the reader before the story begins? Some say it is a warning from Johnny Truant, who let’s face it, wishes he never went to Zampano’s apartment that day with his friend Lude. It is reminiscent of Milton’s “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here” which greets those at the entrance to hell. I would like to agree that it is this an nothing more, as the house is a hell to anyone who enters it and especially goes down the 5 1/2 minute hallway to the great unknown.

However others have stated that the work itself consists of personal notes, scribblings, Zampano’s obsessive writings which are reminiscent of diary entries. The man was a graphomanic and died in a place much like this:

graphomania

So maybe we are NOT meant to read his things, because they are a diary of his mad thoughts. The reader is solely himself (ironic, as the man was blind – another link to Borges!)

Others have suggested that since ‘echo’ plays a big part in the core theme of the book, then maybe we should apply to myth directly, in that if this is Echo’s voice, only the last two words would chime back to us ‘for you, for you’. An interesting theory (and one of my favourites!)

Lastly, one member of the book club made a very valuable contribution about how he had once met Danielewski at a signing, and he said the following ‘I wrote this for you so you could swim in it, not for you to drown in it’. Very revealing, as yes, it is for us and for the reader. Nice to know MZD worries about us and our obsession with his creation.

So remember guys – have fun, don’t drown. From one Pisces to another, just swim with the current*.

*Just an observation but it is WBD, 1st March. That means 4 days to go for MZD’s birthday, and 6 days for mine. Check out the publisher of my edition of the book:

doubleday _edit

*sly grin* Okay, I’ll stop now… I’ll stop. Those of you who got it, have got it. Thank you. I’ll just ‘swim’ and try not to drown. 

 

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Book Review | The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman

03 Friday Mar 2017

Posted by mywordlyobsessions in Book Review

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

America Gods, book review, fantasy, Neil Gaiman, The Sandman


The Ocean at the End of the LaneThe Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I have always had a little problem with Neil Gaiman. He’s one of these prolific authors who I really want to like more than I actually do. I think everyone has one author that makes them feel that way at least once in their life. What makes it worse, is that everyone I know adores him. I mean, the man is a living legend with a body of work that boasts of The Sandman and American Gods (which is being turned into an epic series by Amazon Prime!) So as you might expect, I feel a little bit left out at times.

So imagine my delight at picking up The Ocean and the End of the Lane and discovering that I had found the perfect ‘Gaiman’ story. I can wholeheartedly say that this is a tale full of magic and wonderment that captures the essence of childhood – which is no mean feat when you are an adult trying to remember back to the golden age of your life. His storytelling is absolutely effortless here, I couldn’t spot a single snag (and that is not always the case).

The plot explores the dark shadows that stalk the corners of a child’s imagination. Our protagonist is a young boy who in the true nature of gothic fiction, is nameless. The story is told through a series of flashbacks, the beginning roof which is triggered by the aftermath of a funeral, as our unnamed protagonist seeks the comfort of his childhood days. He finds himself in front of the house he was brought up in and the memories begin to flood back, especially when he seeks out a puddle in the road that was called ‘the ocean’ by a distant childhood friend.

The story from here, melts into the past, and we are plunged into the distinctively sensory world of the adolescent. The imagery here is especially impressive, as the sights and sounds of the countryside, the cottages, nature itself are ‘painted’ so that I almost felt like I was there.

Yet everyone knows that the world of a child isn’t wholly safe or innocent – and Gaiman artfully turns the world of our protagonist upside down, shocking the reader with just how dangerous and inappropriate it could get.

Of course, this is a fantasy story – but I think everyone can relate to it, especially if they (like me) had an overactive imagination and could switch from reality to the make-believe world at the blink of an eye. A dandelion could become a wand, a fairy could be hiding behind a fallen rose petal, a tree trunk could have a hidden face in it. Thus Gaiman builds a world where our protagonist shows us how a child met a family of witches, and survived (barely) to tell the tale.

The most admirable thing about this story, is the potential for it to be carried on. I have so many questions about this world of witchcraft and magic, especially the way things work. Just how old are the wise women? What kind of creatures live in the fold between our world and theirs? I just hope there is a follow up to this, because it would make such an awesome series.

View all my reviews

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Book Review | The Radium Girls by Kate Moore

19 Sunday Feb 2017

Posted by mywordlyobsessions in Book Review

≈ Leave a comment


the-radium-girls

My rating: 5/5 stars

NOTE: This book was sent to me upon request from netgalley.com. The novel will be available to purchase May 1st 2017.

“Ordinary women in 1920s America.

All they wanted was the chance to shine.

Be careful what you wish for.”

The Radium Girls is one of those rare works of non-fiction that reads effortlessly, because besides the artful prose and the meticulously rendered characters, the story itself beggars belief. How could a generation of hopeful, bright-eyed young women be mistreated in such a callous way by their work place? How could a well-known company encourage a young female workforce to ‘lick’ and ‘point’ the ends of paintbrushes that had been dipped into radioactive paint? I certainly didn’t believe this was true – until I researched and realised that yes, life can be stranger than fiction.

The book traces the long-forgotten, landmark case of various female factory workers who had contracted radiation poisoning from painting watch dials. The paint itself (mixed with radium – at the time, deemed a ‘wonder-drug’) seeped into the clothes, hair and very bones of the unsuspecting workers, until they began showing terrifying symptoms of anemia and necrosis.

Kate Moore’s novel is a tribute and an elegy to the working class girls who suffered horrendous agony at the hands of unapologetic capitalist corporations until they found a lawyer who was willing to fight back on their behalf. Moore spends time lovingly immersing us into the naive world of the girls, as they step into the world of work and become painters and artists. The glow of ‘undark’ gives their lives a Hollywood glamour they could only dream of. However the otherworldly light that clung to them like fairy dust is far from magical – unbeknownst to them it was the evil glow of death.

With every rise, there must be a fall. So Moore takes us on the tragic downturn of the girls’ lives, as she begins to paint with painful accuracy the onset of a series of agonising deaths that the mind finds hard to comprehend.

The history of these girls and their suffering resonated deeply with me. It is at once a heartbreaking tragedy and a true life ‘underdog’ story. At parts it evoked memories of Erin Brokovich, and there were moments when I saw it dove-tailing with Per Olov Enquist’s excellent novel ‘The Story of Blanche and Marie’; another incredibly vivid and saddening tale of how radium destroyed of the lives of Marie Curie and Blanche Wittman, her assistant.

When it comes to radium, one cannot help but be fascinated and horrified of it at the same time; especially the relationship has had with women. The Radium Girls is a book that will stay with me for a long time.

 

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Book Review | ‘The Running Man’ by Stephen King

28 Thursday Mar 2013

Posted by mywordlyobsessions in Book Review

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Arnold Schwarzenegger, Ben Richards, book review, Clint Eastwood, dystopian, Hunger Games, Running Man, stephen king


The Running ManThe Running Man by Stephen King

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

“He understood well enough how a man with a choice between pride and responsibility will almost always choose pride–if responsibility robs him of his manhood.”

I was only looking for an entertaining read, something I would’t have to take too seriously and one that I knew would take me away from the copious amounts of marking and grading I had to do at the time.

Let’s put it this way; I got more than I bargained for! This book is all the above and then some. I first met with ‘The Running Man’ in the 1980’s film starring Arnold Schwarzenegger  At the time it felt very much like an ultra-futuristic, distant, dystopian nightmare that thrilled a lot of people with its American take on Orwellian themes.

I am not a big Stephen King fan; at the best of times I have lukewarm respect for his innovative imagery and ability to keep his audience entertained and slightly crapping themselves in certain creepy scenarios. However, I think I have become something of a convert with ‘The Running Man’. Nowadays I feel like I’m a more mature reader, and I can definitely appreciate his scary powers of second-guessing what the near future holds for mankind; which this piece of work definitely showcases.

For anyone who like me, was sitting on a fence in regards to King’s quality as a novelist is at an advantage. If you have never watched the film, or heard about the book then you are in luck, reading ‘The Running Man’ will give you a very clear answer.

Personally, I read this from a post 9/11 perspective. The novel depicts a corrupted America, whose political and social infrastructure rests on rotten foundations. More sinister tones of ‘The Hunger Games‘ prevail across the continent, where the poor are nothing but forgettable pawns that can be used to entertain the rich.

“In the year 2025, the best men don’t run for president, they run for their
lives. . .”

As I said before, the novel contains many parallels to that dark period in American history. It reflects the current culture of the corrupted ‘American Dream’, which Chuck Palahnuik very aptly describes as being able to “make your life into something you can sell.” And what is ‘The Running Man’ if not the reality show turned nightmare? King takes the capitalist, materialistic, consumerist attitude of America and shows us what it can turn into.

The writing is addictive and the pace is wonderfully set. King shows off all his skills as the reader is roped into following Ben Richards; who reads like a ‘last of his kind’ type of Clint Eastwood character fighting to save his baby girl who is slowly wasting away in front of his eyes. As a last resort, he enters the ‘Games’; as this is the only way he will ever find the money to save his family from poverty. What ensues is a true roller-coaster account of his fight to survive the ‘Games’ and save his family.

Even though this sounds like a plot that has been done to death; I recommend everybody give it a try. You will be surprised how fresh and original King’s version of events will be.

View all my reviews

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Best Books of 2012 Round-Up

20 Thursday Dec 2012

Posted by mywordlyobsessions in Book Review

≈ 13 Comments

Tags

banana yoshimoto, book review, daniel keyes, forster, japanese horror story, jeffrey eugenides, ryunosuke akutagawa


It’s that time of year again when I do a little retrospective of best books. I’m quite surprised that I’ve been a little frugal with my 5/5 stars, but 2012 has certainly put me in touch with some awesome authors I have never heard of or read before. So, without further ado, here’s a taste of the best bits of how my reading year went.

Flowers for Algernon

By far the most heartbreaking and astonishing book I have come across during the year. It’s one hell of a story that really examines the fleeting nature of our lives, our achievements and our losses. Nothing prepares you for the amazement and devastation you will feel when Charlie Gordon, a simpleton with an IQ of 18 undergoes breakthrough brain surgery to increase his intelligence levels. His one goal in life is to be intelligent, yet when this wish is granted, he is unaware of the horrible revelations it brings with it. As the veil of dumb ignorance is slowly lifted, his perception of friends and family also change. On his journey of discovery he gets a taste of emotions and thoughts he never knew existed. ‘Flowers for Algernon‘ is a beautiful illustration of how bitter the fruit of knowledge really can be.

Middlesex

My first attempt at Eugenides was absolute bliss. ‘Middlesex’ explores themes of incest and family history through the eyes of Cal, a hermaphrodite. “I was born twice: first, as a baby girl, on a remarkably smogless Detroit day of January 1960; and then again, as a teenage boy, in an emergency room near Petoskey, Michigan, in August of 1974. . . My birth certificate lists my name as Calliope Helen Stephanides. My most recent driver-s license…records my first name simply as Cal.” The opening paragraph on it’s own is electrifying enough. I couldn’t put it down and if you choose to read this, neither will you. Hilarious and tragic in equal amounts with just the right dose of literary intelligence to keep the literary critic in you smiling too.

Kitchen

My first attempt at Banana Yoshimoto also left me with warm, fuzzy feelings. Japanese fiction is so beautiful, and ‘Kitchen’ embodies faithful representations of human emotions with that trademark simplicity that Japanese writers seem to have a knack for. This book is like a celebration of death and life, and reminds us that we must cherish the people around us when we still have them. This book reads like a series of short stories. Here’s my review of it.

Hell Screen

Akutagawa, the father of modern Japanese literature, translated by Jay Rubin. What more could you want? This is a short, short read that packs one hell of a punch. Akutagawa brings out the delicious lacquerwork and intricate embellishment of Japanese folklore in this collection of sharp, disturbing tales about art and sacrifice. Read my review here.

A Room with a View

Romance novels, I do not like. However, I am willing to change that with a book like ‘A Room With A View’. Forster’s perspective of love is what really endeared this novel to me. It’s not lovey-dovey, wishy-wishy. Real love is messy, it’s more to do with gut feelings than rationality. It’s a tricky path to negotiate and our two lovers here certainly fall from grace more than once trying to find their way to one another. Read my review here.

That’s it folks! Those are my best pickings of 2012. What are yours?

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Book Review | ‘The Woman in Black’ by Susan Hill

28 Sunday Oct 2012

Posted by mywordlyobsessions in Book Review

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

book review, daphne du maurier, Ghost story, gothic fiction, Haunting of Hill House, Hollywood, jane austen, Shirley Jackson, susan hill


The Woman in BlackThe Woman in Black by Susan Hill

My rating: 1 of 5 stars

“I have sat here at my desk, day after day, night after night, a blank sheet of paper before me, unable to lift my pen, trembling and weeping too.”

This was one of those books that had come to my attention thanks to the Hollywood remake. The visuals in the trailer were fabulously dark and grotesque and held a sort of promise of the type of Gothic we just don’t get to see nowadays. But that was the movie, and I so desperately wanted to see it that I had to first hunt down the book. Which, as you know, is just the weird order in which I do things.

I finally managed to get a copy and settled down to be scared out of my wits by this ‘Jane Austen-esque ghost story‘, but to my disappointment found it very dry in description and wanting in the scare department. Maybe I had far too high an expectation of what is in reality, just a mediocre chilling tale about a vengeful spirit who haunts a remote backwater village.

The basic outline of the story goes like this: The story begins with Arthur Kipps, who begins to write about his terrible, real-life encounter with a ghost during his early days as an up and coming solicitor. He recounts how a business trip sent him to the remote  and forbidden Eel Marsh House to attend the funeral of the late Alice Drablow and complete the menial task of putting her legal papers in order. However, when Kipps asks about the Drablow estate, no one wants to speak about it. A mysterious woman dressed in black with a decaying countenance also seems to haunt him wherever he goes.

When he asks to be taken across the Nine Lives Causeway to the estate, no one is willing to take him, except one man. There in all its wild beauty and agonising splendor he encounters Eel Marsh House, a solitary Gothic mansion, standing alone, proud and teeming with terrible secrets. As he spends his days and nights there, hears the awful bumping sounds from the locked nursery room and witnesses the ghostly screams of a drowned child on the gurgling causeway, he realises he must leave quickly, or risk going mad.

“Whatever was about, whoever I had seen, and heard rocking, and who had passed me by just now, whoever had opened the locked door was not ‘real’. No. But what was ‘real’? At that moment I began to doubt my own reality.”

This had the opportunity to become a great ghost story. It’s just I’m really upset that Susan Hill sinks into the comfort of Victorian descriptions which make it too stuffy and constricting. Language-wise some areas are far too overly done while other parts could have benefited from more visual description.

I loved the idea of an isolated house that stood almost like a lighthouse in the middle of the deadly causeway. The house itself is very scary and the descriptions of it will stay with me for a long time. I almost half wish it existed, like Manderley in ‘Rebecca’ or the mansion in Shirley Jackson‘s ‘The Haunting of Hill House‘. The sounds across the causeway, and the idea that the death of a child is resurrected and replayed there every night in the swirling mists is also very disconcerting.

What I really wanted was a spotlight on the woman in black herself. She takes a back seat when she really shouldn’t. Even the house eclipses her.

I had some discussions with other people and their experience of the book compared to the movie and theatre versions and all have said the same thing: the original story is quite bland. I am hoping to see the stage version of this with a class of mine and hope it’s as good as they say it is! But one thing is for sure, it will be vastly different from the book, because every stage and film production that has been made in the past has taken liberties with the story and changed it dramatically to make it better. More proof that Hill was being a bit economical with her story?

View all my reviews

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Top Ten Most Hated Books

27 Saturday Oct 2012

Posted by mywordlyobsessions in Book Review, BookTalk, From Life..., Quotes

≈ 12 Comments

Tags

Book Thief, Haunting of Hill House, janet fitch, Marcus Sedgwick, min jin lee, Shirley Jackson, white oleander


Recently I stumbled across a comment made by a reader of mine (Caroline Tien) who expressed, quite eloquently, her complete and utter disappointment of Janet Fitch’s ‘White Oleander’ (click here for comment, and scroll to bottom).  Now I love honest reviews of books and find it really refreshing when someone has the guts to say otherwise. I myself being a reader that prides herself on reading what is GOOD, not what is in vogue value that immensely. However I often find some readers simply join the herd and say how damn interesting it was, when it damn well wasn’t (*cough* 50shades *cough*).

Anyway, Caroline made some really valid points which, even though I could see and feel as I was reading it at the time, didn’t really disturb me much. But it obviously had a huge negative impact on her. She explained how Fitch ruined the story with her obsessive use of metaphors and melodrama. Among other things she touched upon the completely unlikable characters that portrayed women as unstable  nympho types (feminists unite!).

I can’t discount any of the above. It does exist in Fitch’s writing, and in huge helpings, but I personally loved all the metaphors and melodrama. But it got me thinking upon the REASONS people may love one book and completely dislike another. Like most bloggers in the blogopshere, I have my little collection of titles I love to loathe, which I simply do not get (regardless of how many times I’ve sat and tried to read) or because something about the thing offends me be it literary boo-boos or otherwise.

One blogger posted about how renowned author’s also have similar problems with certain books. My favourite is Ian Rankin’s rant, as it really struck a chord:

Ian Rankin, novelist

I haven’t ever wanted to hurl it to the floor, but I’ve started Midnight’s Children several times and been unable to get past the first 10 pages. Not sure why; it’s been a few years since I gave it a go . . . maybe time to try again! I loved Cormac McCarthy’s No Country for Old Men, but was told by author friends that Blood Meridian is his masterpiece. I tried it and couldn’t get halfway through. Just didn’t find it interesting. Also couldn’t finish The Road. How can a book be harrowing and pedestrian at the same time? Enjoyed The Hobbit as a teenager; gave up on The Lord of the Rings after about 30 pages

It’s so good to know I’m not the only one who HATES McCarthy (he’s so DRY) and that I’m not alone in thinking how inaccessible ‘On The Road’ was. Maybe I need to do a bit of hillbillying around the USA to get what it’s all about. I’m from the UK, we don’t really have coming-of-age-bumpkining-around novels… I fear the subject is all too remote for us.

But the sad thing about it is this; I seriously DO want to get these novels. They’re big and beautiful and highly respected. Being the only one who doesn’t get it makes me feel slightly dumb.

So, here is my inspired response to Caroline’s comment and a list of my top ten most hated books in no particular order and why. Enjoy!

1. Lost Souls – Poppy Z. Brite
Lost Souls

Gratuitous violence, sex and gore; vampiric LGBT incest; characters who act without thinking; a plotless plot and eating of placenta’s… Lost Souls? I damn well think so! On the upside, there are oodles of Chartereuse drinking going on, which is about the only positive thing about this novel of vampire’s who have lived for so long that they don’t know what to do with themselves. If you have still NOT grown out of your teenage-ennui, then you might like this. Otherwise grown-ups stay well away!!

2. My Swordhand is Singing – Marcus Sedgwick
My Swordhand is Singing (My Swordhand is Singing, #1)

What could have been a good vampire novel that began to truly look around the geographical period of the times fell flat on its face with a very clichéd, stereotypical representation of the invading Turkish army. Why does this bother me? I’m sick and tired of writers representing my people as bloodthirsty barbarians who are a blight on the face of the earth. When are we ever going to see a good Turkish guy? Never it seems, because it’s just too easy (and safe) to call us the undesirable ‘other’. Do me a favour. Leave it. It’s been done to death, and I think people are getting the idea that it’s all bullshit anyway. Armies invade, they kill, they conquer. Everybody was doing it back in the day. Deal with it.

3. On Writing – Stephen King
On Writing

… we were prescribed this book as required reading for our creative writing classes. I bought it, read it, and was extremely ANGRY. It was a complete waste of money and time as it was King ranting on about the time when he wiped his arse with nettle leaves when he was a boy, with several chapters thrown in about his near-fatal car accident. Very little to do with actual CRAFT of writing itself. It’s all hot-air and pompous reminiscing guys. Only buy if you truly want to read it for THAT purpose. You have been warned.

4. Free Food for Millionaires – Min Jin Lee
Free Food for Millionaires

Don’t be fooled by the gorgeous cover. It’s a complete shambles. I love Eastern writers and writing, yet this debut novel by Korean author Min Jin Lee left a lot to be desired. Full of over-achieving young Korean characters who have all the opportunities in the world but fritter their time away feeling lost and lonely in the family and sexual relationships. All make characters were portrayed as nasty, and female ones – well, I couldn’t identify with. Avoid like the plague.

5. Woman in Black – Susan Hill
The Woman in Black

Works terrible as a novel, but could see the brilliance of it on the stage! The only scary bit was the moments describing the knocking sound in the nursery. For a more superior experience try Shirley Jackson’s ‘The Haunting of Hill House‘.

6. The Book Thief – Markus Zusak
The Book Thief

Simply. Did. Not. Get. I dislike it when something as serious as WW2 is described in a trite, childish manner. This is the same reason why I didn’t enjoy ‘The Boy in Striped Pyjama’s’ so much either.

7. The Catcher in the Rye
The Catcher in the Rye

One I’m ashamed to say I didn’t get either. Holden Caulfield’s immature rants failed to find a place of recognition in me. I’ve never been as petulant as all that. I think I’m seeing a pattern in my most disliked books. Most are centered around teen angst!

8. The Unbearable Lightness of Being
The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Required reading for our creative writing class (again), and only because our lecturer at the time was such a bloody fan of Kundera. He waxed lyrical about him. I failed to see the greatness of his prose. Very inaccessible. I prefer Borges. Any day.

9. Lost World
Lost World

I disliked this novel so much. And made it very clear WHY. And have had a heated debate about the merits of Melo’s writing. You can read my thoughts about it in my review.

10. Spring Flowers, Spring Frost
Spring Flowers, Spring Frost

So bad that it has put me off reading Kadare for life. I really didn’t know where the story was going, and lack of structure really puts me off. Story-writing is an art of blending ideas, thoughts and language. If after reading halfway through it I still can’t find anything of merit, then I give up. I also suspect that it was victim of a very bad translation. Too bad.

So there it is, my embarrassing list of dead-end novels. But at least now I feel better in knowing that even well-known writers have the same difficulties.

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