Do not ask what she does with the babies.

.

I know it's early, but I think I've found my favorite novel of the year and my favorite comic of the year and—get this—they're both 2025 books! I'm so zeitgeisty, baby!

But Victorian Psycho was not only a great pleasure to read but it made me want to jump into its evil sandbox. And Raised by Ghosts has me planning a DonorsChoose to finally start teaching comics. And if I want to press it into students' hands, I want to press into yours as well.

.

027) Victorian Psycho by Virginia Feito, finished April 21

I heard a delightful interview with the author a couple months ago and have been hellbent to read this book since. I'm so glad I did. I'm almost distressed how much I liked it because Winifred Notty is one of the worst human beings I've ever encountered in fiction—sort of a funny Quentin P.—and she does things that are awful but her motivations are what are most terrifying. You can't reason with a person like this.

Frankly book this happy with the evil it depicts almost makes me think Tepper was right. What is the social good of creating a monster like this? Other than giving so much pleasure, I mean. It's enough to make me question all my blithe truisms regarding the fair game of literature.

Anyway, I really liked it.

Judge me as you will.

If you want a taste of the voice or some details of what's in store for you, click on the NPR link I opened with.

Incidentally, as is my habit, I spent much of my readtime thinking about how I would adapt it to film and I have three thoughts.

One, cast Florence Hunt of Bridgerton fame as our "hero." Assuming she can play a psychopath. I haven't seen her work but from a marketing standpoint, this is a slam dunk.

Two, the camera needs to spend most (all?) of it's time reflecting Winifred's point of view ala Travis Bickle, but push it even harder. Let us see her soul seeping out from under her dress. Let us see her seeing fiction and imagination and the same time, cut together madly, even overlaid.

Three, speaking of overlaid, her voice is so wonderful but she can't be saying these things outloud, even when she's alone, and so to maintain that aspect of the book, we have to turn to voiceover. BUT DO IT A NEW WAY. Have her saying the same thing, slightly out of sync, over top each other. Have her narrating different things that what we're seeing. Have various parts of the book narrated simultaneously like ghosts whispering in the background. Make the voiceover nonstop but often just background. Make it as interesting as what's in the novel (just use the novel) but not quite accessible, at least not most of the time. Let the voiceover drive us insane simultaneous to delighting us.

Anyway, I'm available if anyone want to pay me to do it.

friday, saturday, monday

028) Somna: A Bedtime Story by Becky Cloonan and Tula Lotay, finished April 23

After finishing that last book I started one called Dangerous Fictions which is all about censorship bad. Which felt right since I'd just been telling you how a book I really loved made me wonder if it was a proper thing to be reading. Which isn't a feeling I've had much, not since high school. (Ask me about Piers Anthony sometime.) But Dangerous Fictions is long (I've read the intro and part of chapter one) and this book was short. And also makes me wonder if a sweet innocent like myself should be reading it.

Also, maybe it's dumb? Certainly it's unsure if we're in America or England, whether these are Puritans or Catholics. Or maybe it doesn't care about such things. The big twist wasn't really justified and, honestly, it really feels like the main purpose of the book is to draw a beautiful woman naked. Well, Lotay mostly does that. In a 90s-era airbrush style (don't know if it's actually airbrushed—certainly she can get that aesthetic without). When Cloonan does the art it's more traditionally American comics albeit with manga-influenced eyes. A witch gets burned, the guy in charge of burning witches won't have sex with his wife who is therefore spending her time with a sexy demon as she dreams.

But it's confused. Our main character's best friend really likes sex ergo she's a villain. Our hero's husband won't do sex ergo he's also kind of a villain. What exactly is the argument here?

Look. The art is amazing. These women can art. But the setting and the characters are a mix of cliche and pornography. So while I'm still not in favor of banning books, I mean, not every book requires your attention. And thus, no matter how beautifully rendered the cliche and pornography, I can't recommend this one and I'm perplexed why my county library picked up twelve copies. Seems like a lot.

three days

 

029) Shadow Life by Hiromi Goto and Ann Xu, finished April 24

And old woman is being chased by death's shadow. She doesn't fear death but she also knows her time has not yet come. And she's right. Death's shadow is cheating. And so she fight back.

It's terrific. Sort of a Canadian slice-of-life with supernatural elements. The writer and artist are such of one mind I have a hard time remembering this isn't a one-mind job.

one long sit

030&031) The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde, finished April 25

Haven't read this with a class in a very long time. I don't know why not. You can tear through it and it is enormously fun. I mean. What's more fun, honestly? It's freaking delightful. In matters of grave importance, after all, style, not sincerity is the vital thing.

tuesday, thursday, friday

 

032) Raised by Ghosts by Briana Loewinsohn, finished April 26

I loved this book. And not just because it takes place at the high school I teach at during the time my wife was in high school. And not because the main character dresses like she did then and has much the same taste in music. And no because, although I'm a tad older and lived in an entirely different part of the state, I too know this milieu.

Although absolutely all those things help.

But I love it because the storytelling is subtle and filled with deep emotions. Because I love the mix of realistic movement and body language with rubberhose character design. Because the mix of daily grind and inner fantasy outwardly manifested captures truths you can't do with straight realism. Because it has real literary merit mixed with legit teen sensibilities. Because it is restrained and thus invites us in, in order to understand.

In short, I think I have FINALLY found the comic I would like to teach.

And not just because my students will recognize this intersection and that streetscape.

But because it is brilliant* and it will move them.

 (* Not literally. Read this book with a good light or you won't be able to make out all the details.)

one day

 

033) Ephemera by Briana Loewinsohn, finished April 26

So enamored of Raised by Ghosts was I that I immediately found her first book on Hoopla and, after cleaning the kitchen sink, read it.

As the title may suggest, this work is more ethereal. It too is about the reality of feelings and memory, but not about the reality of place or dialogue. It's a metaphor, I suppose.

The art is lovely. I haven't investigated this, but I suspect her work is digital even though it retains the taste of honesty that real watercolors deliver. She does some great things with organizing the panels, like you see here:

 
Expecting it to behave like all the other panels to day, I read right to left. But of course before you turn the page you must discover it is read down then down again.

It's a sad story of an adult woman gardening through her memories of her depressed mother. The past is blue and the present orange

 although sometimes the past and present bleed together:

 
Anyway. It is lovely and it is sad.

one sit

 

earlier this year..........

Bro! Tell me we still know how to speak of kings!

001) Beowulf translated by Maria Dahvana Headley, finished January 1
002) Cthulhu Is Hard to Spell: Volume Three, finished January 1
003) Fever Dream by Samanta Schweblin (translated by Megan McDowell), finished January 8
004) My Favorite Thing Is Monsters by Emil Ferris, finished January 11
005) You're a Good Sport, Charlie Brown, finished January 12
005) Into the Headwinds: Why Belief Has Always Been Hard—and Still Is by Terryl Givens and Nathaniel Givens, finished January 24
006) My Favorite Thing Is Monsters: Book Two by Emil Ferris, finished January 25

Maybe we should just pretend this set begins and ends with Wednesday Addams

007) Chas. Addams Half-Baked Cookbook, finished January 29
008) Monica by Daniel Clowes, finished February 3
009) The Unexpurgated French Edition of Fanny Hill: Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure by John Cleland, finished February 19
010) Peach and the Isle of Monsters by Franco Aureliani and Agnes Garbowska, finished February 20
011) Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro, finished February 28
012) Comic Poems edited by Peter Washington, finished March 7

Love, Beauty, and a complete lack of sasquatch 

013) Love that Dog by Sharon Creech, finished March 11
014) Beauty by Sheri S. Tepper, finished March 21
015) Antelope Spring by John Bennion, finished March 24
016) Shelley Frankenstein by Colleen Madden, finished March 28
017) Nancy Drew and the Clue Crew #21: Double Take, finished April 5
018) The Wood at Midwinter by Susanna Clark, finshed April 8
019) Rave by Jessica Campbell, finished April 13
020) The Creeps: A Deep Dark Fears Collection by Fran Krause, finished April 14

 

PREVIOUS OTHER YEARS IN BOOKS

2007 = 2008 = 2009 = 2010 = 2011 = 2012 = 2013 = 2014 = 2015
2016 = 2017 = 2018 = 2019 = 2020 = 2021 = 2022 = 2023 = 2024

 

These are two stories I dreamedDon't worry. These dreams have been peer reviewed.

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January 27, 2024 (a Saturday)

I was blessed to sleep in this day. Not terribly late. In fact, I probably woke up around nine-something which hardly feels like sleeping in at all. But the awaking was gentle and that’s what matters. I was allowed to wander through dreamspace on my way to fully here and thus, when I woke, I had still in my grasp two dreams.

I’m skeptical that what we remember of dreams ever truly captures the experience that was the dream. I suspect that, even upon the moment of awaking, the conscious version of ourselves is already turning memories, fading like rime on asphalt, into something sensible by conscious-mind standards.

Anyway. I woke with two stories and both of them seemed worthy of capture and so I sat in bed with my laptop and typed them.

I started with the older and longer dream, in hopes that the younger and shorter dream would better survive the wait. I finished the initial typeup of Dream One at 10:09am. I don’t know when I started, but that first writing was 1,378 words. Dream Two’s first take was 791 words and was finished at 10:39am.

For some reason, I felt a real sense of urgency about getting these stories out. I did a single-pass rewrite before even getting out of bed. I then sent the second, shorter dream to the Mormon Lit Blitz in an email (where it was longlisted before disappearing). Once out of bed, I printed off the first, longer dream and mailed it to the Santa Monica Review (from which it was rejected in a note that arrived February 22nd).

Generally, I do not recommend sending stories out the same day they were written.

The first, longer dream hit the road again in July when I saw a call that seemed perfect for it. And I guess I was right because it was accepted that same day. Which is. Well. What happened.

The second, shorter dream went to see Dialogue in May and was accepted (with an expectation of rewrites) twenty days later. Which is also so fast.

The first, longer dream was published in August of last year. The second, shorter dream was published last week.

I was pretty delighted to work with Dialogue fiction editors Joe Plicka and Ryan Shoemaker on “I Dreamed of Oil.” One weird thing about working from a dream is that it feels more honest to leave the text in its first-written form. I (generally) follow the relevant Heinlein rule (once it’s rewritten sufficient to to leave the house), but this was a dream! It felt almost like nonfiction, like I had to respect the truth of the dream. Which I suppose wasn’t true—it’s not like I'm passing this off as the mind of God—it would have been fine to rewrite. But I needed someone else’s permission. Ryan and Joe gave me that. That and useful notes.

Joe, incidentally, wrote a short essay about . . . I want to say his young daughter holding his hand? I can’t find it online anymore so I can’t say for sure. But it did inspire a piece I wrote during the early days of the pandemic. And I had just published a startling Ryan story in Irreantum. Having just worked with him (with me as his editor) is why I sent the long dream to SMR; as Ryan had published a story there, perhaps I should too.

They pushed me to make minor changes to real effect, bringing the story into a coherence that makes it work. Thanks, guys.

The finished story begins like this:

I don’t know who was sick. Maybe it was you. Let’s say it was.

You were sick and I was probably more worried than you (as per usual) but we brought our faith to our prayers and we pled that you would be healed. I anointed your head with oil. And I sealed that anointing and blessed you.

This was the last of our oil.

And you were healed.

Later, I was not there, but later you were telling this story to an apostle. And the apostle took a container of oil about six inches high and of curious workmanship—blown glass, clearly, but into such an astonishing shape it appeared the oil was twisting into the air like God in his pillar—and he blessed that oil and gave it to you.

READ I DREAMED OF OIL

The other story got no such love. It got a plain rejection then a plain acceptance. I like being accepted! Don’t misunderstand! But editors engaging in back and forth is one of the finest experiences a writer can be gifted.

“Oil” feels like an allegory, like poetry, and it begins with a dream and ends awake, thus revealing its roots. Learning that “The Orgasmic Orchestra” was born a dream won't surprise, but I doubt it’s obvious enough to guess. But rather than tell you what this one is about, here’s the first paragraph:

It appears a standard orchestra. Smallish, perhaps, just a couple dozen musicians, all women, in black dresses. Experts at their craft. But as the music proceeds, instruments fall out as certain women put down their instrument and slide a hand into a modestly designed slit in the fabric of their dress and begin to masturbate. Masturbation is an unpredictable process and these are regular women, acting outside their musical training, and not porn stars accustomed to this type of public performance. They do not come when their conductor directs them to. Sometimes they do not come at all. Perhaps we should not be surprised that they generally come when the music, too, climaxes, but this is not always the case. Sometimes their cries or whimpers of extasy seem entirely out of alignment with the music. This is part of the artistic statement the orchestra is making.

One thing I’d like to say about Alien Buddha Press who published this story: they punk.

I’ve been around and worked with a lot of publishers who claim to be punk, but this outfit genuinely is. I mean: lookit how ugly their Instagram is. It’s appalling.

Which is why I’m so surprised they accepted “The Orgasmic Orchestra.” I mean—sure, the concept is startling, but the story itself is the opposite of ugly and nothing like punk. But I suspect its calmness might be the most shocking aspect it offers a reader. (Whatever readers there may be. I’ve yet to hear anything from anyone. Perhaps you will be first.)

READ THE ORGASMIC ORCHESTRA

I don’t understand dreams. Why were these dreams set next to each other? What do they share that I do not see? So peculiar.

Subscribe to Thubstack and get these posts in your email.

 

 

ps: Joe and Ryan and I will appear in an upcoming episode of the flagship Dialogue podcast late this month or sometime in May. We'll be discussing "I Dreamed of Oil." It's short. You have plenty of time to read it before then.

From shame to silence

.

Don't worry, though. In between shame and silence we'll find plenty of joy.

.

022) So You've Been Publicly Shamed by Jon Ronson, finished April 15

This has been my read-during-fire-alarm-evacuations-and-related-phenomenon and it's been a terrific read. The book's a decade old now but the world is largely the same. Not identical, but the same.

He explores the ways in which shaming happens (with an emphasis on Twitter) and the various kinds of destruction wreaked  by shame. But also how shame can have positive outcomes. Also there's stuff about prisons (real prisons but also this book completely defamiliarized the Stanford Prison Experiment for me). I was reminded about Jonah Lehrer and introduces to some very online scandals I have no memory of.

 
The book is of that delightful genre of nonfiction in which vignette after vignette builds into a solid whole. And while it's easy to take away a useful lesson about what I, a person, should do, it's not easy at all to know what we should do regarding shame as a society. What role does it play within a civilization healthy? This book softly suggests some questions to ask but it's nothing like a policy guide. And in that sense, this is popnonfiction at its purest. You feel smarter at the end because you have fun party anecdotes lined up and because you know what right and wrong and can judge others accordingly, but has anything been changed on a larger scale? No. Will it? Unlikely.

But maybe it's unfair to expect that of this book. Perhaps just getting us to consider the question is the first good thing.

about eight months

 

023) Keeping Two by Jordan Crane, finished April 16

I suppose I wasn't paying quite close enough attention to this graphic novel as I began it because it took longer than it should have for the book to teach me how to read it. It's the story of a young couple, but with only a change in the panel edges, it can become memory or fantasy or a novel being read. Once that discover it made, the story is much less mystifying. Although I could tell some of this was happening before I deciphered the visual vocabulary, breaking the code made the whole thing much better.

At first, I thought no way this couple will make it. But by the end, I think they will. Anyway, I'm rooting for them. But they really should take a trip to the ER.

Sadly, the only image I could find online of both kinds of panels is this one. In French.

Click for more.

across an evening

 

024) Everything Is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection by John Green, finished April 18

Ironic that this book, a passionate call for humans to just conquer TB already, arrives just as the US government throws up its hand on fighting any diseases out there in the world. Ugh.

Anyway, I learned a lot here. I suspect I know a lot more about TB than the average person, and yet so much of what I knew was incomplete or even wrong. For instance, I had been led to believe that getting the TB test so many times had led to false positives. No. I had TB. Years passed before my doctor decided I should get antibiotics before it went active (the story of how TB hangs out in the body is WILD) and now I don't have TB anymore. But I never even knew I had TB until reading this book.

(I like my doctor, but I'm constantly realizing I'm not getting the most accurate information from him. I think he knows it but just doesn't want to correct me when I get the wrong idea? I . . . don't love that.)

I also knew a lot about how TB was a sexy disease of poets but the borders of my knowledge are both larger and more accurate now. And I like using New Mexico's statehood as a nice microcosm of some issues we have today, but knowing the relevance of TB to this tale makes it all the more useful.

I hate to say this. Although I liked The Fault in our Stars fine, I found Everything a superior work. The author's using the skills he developed in YA lit and applying them to a spot of nonfiction he's devoted to. It helps him get away with some structuring that I often find frustrating, viz, he's telling the story of one kid with tuberculosis in Sierra Leone and cutting it up with chapterlong incursions into history and science. But the interweaving here is so natural it doesn't feel like a cheap to trick us into learning something until the pathos returns.

Also, how depressing that TB is still kicking our butts. No disease we know how to cure should be killing 1.25 million people a year.

What a millstone we're building for ourselves.

a couple weeks

 

025) The Cartoonists Club by Raina Telgemeier and Scott McCloud, finished April 18

This book is brilliant. One chapter is kind of a mini–Understanding Comics for kids and the rest of the book is largely modeling how to be an artist. Which really means how to find likeminded people and how to stick to the work. Two vital lessons that aren't obvious when you're just looking at pros' finished work.

The book does a lot of modeling. To get jargony, how to  have a growth mindset, how to have grit—all the popular education phrasing. It has a super-inclusive cast and normalizes some things like swapping pronouns. Most of this is very natural, though there are a couple moments that feel forced.

After the story ends (perfect ending, btw), there's some more helpful stuff like a glossary and a breakdown of how they split up the work. I was glad to see I was spot-on. But then, I'm big fans of both Scott and Raina and while they meshed styles and sensibilities well on this project, Scott's still Scott and Raina's still Raina.

I feel extremely lucky to have read this already. Apparently, Lady Steed told me about this a while back but I didn't understand that it was Raina AND Scott and that they'd made a book together that they were touring in support of. Very bummed not to have gotten tickets!

So I wasn't really even away of the book until this earlier today (and then reading many more). I went straight to my library and somehow they weren't all checked out already. From the data I can see on the public side of my library's website, I think the first copies were put on shelves three days ago. Perhaps not all branches on the same day. My local branch still had theirs and by the time I got there after school, it was waiting in my name.

I'm excited to push this into the 8yrold's hands.

afternoon and nighttime

 

026) Silence by Shūsaku Endō, finished April 19

For my Easter read this year, I decided to tackle Silence. It's not long but I had some reticence about the translation. (Incidentally, I read the words discussed in that article as the BYU professor says they should be read. So either I had a better experience reading the available translation than he did or I have been swayed by the professor's version as seen in the Scorsese adaptation which I love.

I did not expect this novel to be so peculiarly structured. Postmodern, I suppose. It starts as a presentation of historical document, letters sent by Father Rodrigues, letters that could not possibly have survived. They it moved into third-person (mostly limited). At one moment, at the climax, it slipped into present tense. Then it's back to docs (this time from a Dutchman) then a sudden, neckjerking leap back to narration then back to docs of another type.

One of the controversial things about the movie as an adaptation that people complain about is  Rodrigues's wife giving him a tawdry crucifix to hold as he is cremated. I agree this does not happen in the book and, moreover, is unlikely, but it works as a visual representation of what we see in his mind during the last bit of narration. And it's a much more elegant representation than, I don't know, voiceover or something. I agree with the choice.

The weird way this book ranges from faux historiana to straightup novel gave me regular whiplash, yet the novel as a whole—and specific moments in particular—are powerful all the same.

It is moving and provocative work. Consider it a bucketlist read.

perhaps a month

 

= = = = = = = = = = = = =

 

Bro! Tell me we still know how to speak of kings!

001) Beowulf translated by Maria Dahvana Headley, finished January 1
002) Cthulhu Is Hard to Spell: Volume Three, finished January 1
003) Fever Dream by Samanta Schweblin (translated by Megan McDowell), finished January 8
004) My Favorite Thing Is Monsters by Emil Ferris, finished January 11
005) You're a Good Sport, Charlie Brown, finished January 12
005) Into the Headwinds: Why Belief Has Always Been Hard—and Still Is by Terryl Givens and Nathaniel Givens, finished January 24
006) My Favorite Thing Is Monsters: Book Two by Emil Ferris, finished January 25

Maybe we should just pretend this set begins and ends with Wednesday Addams

007) Chas. Addams Half-Baked Cookbook, finished January 29
008) Monica by Daniel Clowes, finished February 3
009) The Unexpurgated French Edition of Fanny Hill: Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure by John Cleland, finished February 19
010) Peach and the Isle of Monsters by Franco Aureliani and Agnes Garbowska, finished February 20
011) Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro, finished February 28
012) Comic Poems edited by Peter Washington, finished March 7

Love, Beauty, and a complete lack of sasquatch

013) Love that Dog by Sharon Creech, finished March 11
014) Beauty by Sheri S. Tepper, finished March 21
015) Antelope Spring by John Bennion, finished March 24
016) Shelley Frankenstein by Colleen Madden, finished March 28
017) Nancy Drew and the Clue Crew #21: Double Take, finished April 5
018) The Wood at Midwinter by Susanna Clark, finshed April 8
019) Rave by Jessica Campbell, finished April 13
020) The Creeps: A Deep Dark Fears Collection by Fran Krause, finished April 14

 

PREVIOUS OTHER YEARS IN BOOKS

2007 = 2008 = 2009 = 2010 = 2011 = 2012 = 2013 = 2014 = 2015
2016 = 2017 = 2018 = 2019 = 2020 = 2021 = 2022 = 2023 = 2024

Love, Beauty, and a complete lack of sasquatch

.

Going nowhere fast this year.

I'm a bit stressed because I'm in the middle of SO MANY BOOKS and, honestly, it feels like too many. Even given that I am always in the middle too many books, this is SO MANY.

Anyway, I end this set with a couple comics that were easily cranked out to create the illusion of progress.

The most exciting thing below, however, is a book yet to be released. But I'm excited to talk about it with you once you've had the chance.

.

013) Love that Dog by Sharon Creech, finished March 11

I used to read this every semester with AP Lit but I left it behind some years ago. This semester I decided to try it out with the sophomores.

I think it was good? We'll be able to tell as the semester progresses and we see if it returns, into our conversations.

three noncontiguous days 

014) Beauty by Sheri S. Tepper, finished March 21

I've written about this book at length here.

Let me just add that this could be an incredible animated HBO-level show. An updated Belladonna of Sadness vibe in terms of how fluid images overlap and become another. Would be amazing.

at most four weeks

 

015) Antelope Spring by John Bennion, finished March 24

This is a novel obsessed with opposites, starting with its very form. It's a novel about a man who would be alone in deserted space. Yet this novel provides him with all sorts of company, from strangers to his wife, from the living to the dead, from the Three Nephites (one of whom is a woman, did you know?) to cryptobiotic soil. He is visited almost nightly by his dead father, grandfather, and great-great-grandfather. He is visited by polygamists and an Army general. He is discovered by a brilliant Dutch philosopher/scientist.

Yet Antelope Spring, for all the noise and chaos, never stops being quiet and still.

The secret, perhaps, is our protagonist, Christopher Twist. He himself is a mess of (believable) contradictions, but he is the center of some sort of universal crisis. Are the Heavenly Parents considering divorce? If not, where are they? And in their absence (or battle or whatever), who will emerge victorious from this second War of not-just-Heaven?

Even the climax of the book (which I will not go into here) is successful in large part because of its intense quiet.

Protagonist Christopher is confused throughout. Some characters try to remove his confusion by giving him explicit instructions. He doesn't take well to that. Others trust him and believe that if he just behaves naturally, things will work out. (This is something the wiser characters also told the main character of Beauty and something dangerously close to Carl Cranney's biggest pet peeve since episode one.)

What I like most about this book, however, is not just how every potential level at which one might read it finds it engaging in the same psychological quandaries, but how these quandaries matter to the characters and the plot in the most fan-friendly (read: nonprofessorial) way of reading the story.

It shares a familial resemblance to the cheesy novels of the 1890s or 1970s that are deeply allegorical. Some of these, of course, were great. We are all either a fan of or love a fan of Looking Backward or Jonathan Livingston Seagull or Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. But whether you think Mitch Albom is a genius or a hack, what makes the best of these books rise above those that embarrass us as we read them is probably threefold:

1. They are not so simple that their allegory can literally be understood in only one way

2. They introduce us to characters who, no matter how fantastical, are real (or become real) within the bounds of the story

3. Even if you take home a particular lesson, the story is bigger than that lesson and thus lives on, giving you cud to chew long after the final page has ended

Even though I just finished the book, I know Antelope Spring meets all three of these categories because I took so long reading it (letter-size single-sheets in a padded envelope cannot be rushed):

1. While there are a couple lessons the characters state and even learn over the course of the novel, the novel itself does not demand you accept them.

2. Although some of the simpler antagonists behave in peculiar ways, almost as if they are being marionetted, the oddness of all eternity within this novel makes us wonder just what forces may in fact be working on them. In other words, any artificiality is parcel.

3. I could give you plenty of examples, but Bennion's vision of an afterlife that is less "after" than simply more of the same—albeit ineffably separate (literally ineffable even to those afterliving it)—is both entirely different from anything I've ever heard in Church while completely Latter-day Saint in conception and execution. I think I'd be slightly disappointed and utterly unsurprised if the afterlife is exactly as presented in Antelope Spring.

But as a novel, I hear you asking, does it work as a novel?

I think you mean do the characters live on the page and do their conflicts hold real weight and do their choices matter and did I care what happened to them as it inevitably did? Yes. There are a handful of moments where a character utters a phrase or smiles in a way that made me see the generational gap between the author and his character, but those moments are few, insignificant—and my biggest complaint. So much happens in this book. And yet, what really matters, is that nothing happens in this book. That's the paradox of mortal life on Earth.

Antelope Spring is a book that embraces fiction's potential for paradox. And for that I love it and submit that it is an appropriate book for this our moment.

Or perhaps any moment.

For always there is war. Even though it seems nothing is happening.

UPDATE FROM THREE DAYS LATER

My wife and I just returned from the temple where we helped people do sealings for their departed. On our drive back, she told me that she knew that some of those we served through ordinance had been waiting and were happy to finally be gifted with these particular blessings. The conversation reminded me of Antelope Spring which, among everything else it is, is one of the great Mormon novels in terms of exploring the veil. Just what is it, just how it works, just what it is for. It doesn't answer any of these questions, mind, but it does ask them exquisitely well.

about three months

 

016) Shelley Frankenstein by Colleen Madden, finished March 28

This was a fun little book that made me laugh out loud multiple times. I'd avoid reading it through any lenses and some of its story elements might be a little troubling to an overachieving college student, but if you read it as a small child it is utterly delightful.

one sit

 

017) Nancy Drew and the Clue Crew #21: Double Take, finished April 5

We were at the library looking for something else when I saw a long line of thin yellow books. Sure enough, Nancy Drew. But this series (from the late oughts) stars third-grade Nancy, George, and Bess. Which means it's aimed right at my daughter who is in second.

I loved Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys when I was in elementary school. I read all the Hardy Boys probably multiple times and all of Nancy at least once. (By "all of" I mean the series that are now the "classics" they sell. They did start another series when I was in around sixth grade; I read one but I didn't think it matched the ethos.)

These books are right in keeping with what I loved about those books and Daughter has taken right up with them. She's already read maybe five of them and insisted I read one. Which is just what I was hoping. I have nothing against comics, obviously, but I also want her to dig prose. And now we're planning to go to the library Tuesday and check out as many as we can for our upcoming roadtrip.

Thanks, Nancy! You've done it again!

not very long but over more than one day

 

018) The Wood at Midwinter by Susanna Clark, finshed April 8

I love this little tale to be sure, but it's kinda fascinating to read a book where the story is about the same length as the afterward. In which she talks a bit about creation and influence and such. She's a charming host.

I think I'm going to try to trick my second-grader into reading this.....

one sitting

 

019) Rave by Jessica Campbell, finished April 13

 

It's about twenty years ago. An evangelical teenage girl believes what she's taught the same time she doesn't. It's classic teenage doublethink and it leads to disaster.

This is a very quiet story. A big fragmented. And it captures well the length of a teenage day or week. While reflecting how short those years can turn.

We are who we make ourselves to be.

But we only have so much control over the raw materials.

two days

 

020) The Creeps: A Deep Dark Fears Collection by Fran Krause, finished April 14

 I think I might remember this strip from the Tumblr era but regardless, it's a good read. People send in their irrational fears and Fran turns them into comics. Most of them are fears collected in childhood, but clearly some people are still creating little anxieties for themselves.

one swimming lesson

 

 

earlier this year..........

Bro! Tell me we still know how to speak of kings!

001) Beowulf translated by Maria Dahvana Headley, finished January 1
002) Cthulhu Is Hard to Spell: Volume Three, finished January 1
003) Fever Dream by Samanta Schweblin (translated by Megan McDowell), finished January 8
004) My Favorite Thing Is Monsters by Emil Ferris, finished January 11
005) You're a Good Sport, Charlie Brown, finished January 12
005) Into the Headwinds: Why Belief Has Always Been Hard—and Still Is by Terryl Givens and Nathaniel Givens, finished January 24
006) My Favorite Thing Is Monsters: Book Two by Emil Ferris, finished January 25

 

Maybe we should just pretend this set begins and ends with Wednesday Addams

007) Chas. Addams Half-Baked Cookbook, finished January 29
008) Monica by Daniel Clowes, finished February 3
009) The Unexpurgated French Edition of Fanny Hill: Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure by John Cleland, finished February 19
010) Peach and the Isle of Monsters by Franco Aureliani and Agnes Garbowska, finished February 20
011) Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro, finished February 28
012) Comic Poems edited by Peter Washington, finished March 7

 

PREVIOUS OTHER YEARS IN BOOKS

2007 = 2008 = 2009 = 2010 = 2011 = 2012 = 2013 = 2014 = 2015
2016 = 2017 = 2018 = 2019 = 2020 = 2021 = 2022 = 2023 = 2024

 

Two Friends, Our Friends

.

I cancelled Netflix in 2011 when they split their dvd and streaming services. I’m still angry about it. And I only get angrier when movies I desperately want to see get locked behind their shiny red walls. But paying N. money doesn’t feel like it would assuage my anger towards them and so I do not rejoin. All of which is to say: When they do actually put something into theaters, I do what I can to jump through that tiny window. Then, at least, some of my money goes to a local theater. When there is one. I managed to see perhaps my favorite Coen Brothers film in a tiny Netflixian theatrical release, but that theater—like every commercial theater in downtown Berkeley—is now gone.

I missed the Chicken Run sequel last year[1] so learning in the nick of time that Wallace & Gromit were returning to feature-length demanded I move whatever needed to be moved so the family could see their movie—in a theater I’d been near dozens of times but never before stepped inside. And I am so glad we did! I had to wait until December 19, but I have finally seen the best movie of 2024.

An easy way to start this paean is by comparing it to other movies. Tom Cruise can handle the comparison, don’t you think? So let’s start there, with his most recent Mission: Impossible. Don’t get me wrong—that was an intensely entertaining movie. Besides the terrific action sequences and great characters, it dug into the classic comedy toolbox. They dropped a piano. And they looked to the greatest of all: Buster Keaton. The dialogue did engage in technobabble that twice made me laugh out loud, right there in the theater, but I had a great time. I’ll go to the sequel.

But it’s no Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl. Which has drops just as death-defying:

Gromit may or may not out–Tom Cruise Tom Cruise at the film’s climax (your mileage may vary) but the film certainly knows that its AI nightmare is pretty silly. I’m not sure Mission: Impossible can ever admit that.

But let’s come back to that other direction Tom Cruise looked in making M:I:7: the silents. I won’t be the seventieth person to say that Gromit is the greatest silent actor in fifty years, but friends—let’s not sleep on Feather’s McGraw—

—the penguin with the face stonier than Buster’s. He is both the most terrifying villain of 2024 and a source of constant laughs. This is the perfectly balanced villain four-quadrant crowdpleasers must seek—and I’ll admit I haven’t seen Red One or the new Sonic or Mufasa or If—but I’ve yet to hear an argument that anyone in those films can chill your blood and make you guffaw at the same pace as this antarctic master of disguise.

But I suppose great art is supposed to have Important Things to Say about the Issues of the Day, etc etc, so let me note that in addition to making some salient points about AI (eg, it’s actually quite dumb, you shouldn’t add evil as an option, be careful who gets control of fresh tech…), Vengeance Most Fowl also makes intelligent and witty nods at concerns about cops and certain people’s border anxieties.

But the film is not forcing a point of view on you. No, friends, the team at Aardman has too much respect for you to do that. In fact, I saw someone say their only complaint about the film was its pro-police propaganda to which all I can say is: “Did we watch the same movie?”

Great art offers you as much respect as it demands for itself.

Anyway. Where were we?

Another lesson bigger blockbusters could take from Wallace & Gromit is how to offer fan service without locking out potential new audiences. We’ve all sat through plot-dragging scenes that let us see the clever poster on the wall or to allow a passing character to offer an old catchphrase, but Vengeance Most Fowl gives you favorite townsfolk from Curse of the Were-Rabbit without placing neon arrows around their heads. A character from Shaun the Sheep even gets a cameo, but it’s a great bit of slapstick even if you’ve never seen a sheep in your life.

And the Wallace & Gromit films continue to reward fans of films outside themselves. No one dutchangles like these films dutchangle, and although Were-Rabbit was a “horror movie,” nothing in that film is as genuinely scary as the gnomes gone bad we meet here. And if you’re primed with film knowledge, your subconscious is going to see camera and lighting choices to trigger you afresh.

Luckily, the scary references Feathers brings over from prison movies and Bond villainy are mostly played for laughs. My seven-year-old[2] never ran from the theater or covered her eyes—a huge accomplishment on her part due to a huge accomplishment on Aardman’s part.[3]

I want to shout out a particularly beautiful moment before I give my final accolades:

Gromit is the hero of these movies, full stop. No question. Wallace is a loveable dolt who barely manages not to get too much in Gromit’s way. But in this film, at a moment of crisis, Wallace’s peculiar interests and weird skillsets help save the day. There comes a moment in this film where Gromit hands the football to Wallace and lets him make the first down[4]—before Gromit finishes the day-saving. And while this film makes the best use of banana peels in recent memory[5], in the end, it’s just a terrific story about two friends who get into trouble . . . then get out again.

And that’s the very best story of all.

---

[1] Booo, Netflix.

[2] She’ll be eight by the time you read this, but seven, she will explain to you, is seven—even at an additional threehundredandsixtysomething days.

[3] Speaking of kids, I’ll mention that the snootiest of my teenagers thought the animation was too smooth now, the water too realistic; but there’s a hipster at every party. I’m still seeing fingerprints and that’s enough for me.

[4] Sorry for the American sports reference in a review of a Wallace & Gromit film—there’s probably a cheese-rolling equivalent.

[5] I was primed to appreciate thanks to a recent minidoc by a fellow I first learned about via BW/DR.