Hello and happy Sunday!
This is the one before I go on holiday! I mean, technically, I am on holiday, but it officially starts on Monday.
This time last year, I was sharing the pile of books that made it with me on my holiday.
Of course I didn’t read them all, but I still don’t regret taking them with me, especially since we drove to our destination, so I could easily cram them in the boot of my car. Joking, of course I didn’t cram them! I crammed the clothes!
I surely browsed all of them, just because I could. It gave me inexplicable comfort to have books in my hotel room, on my nightstand.
This year, we’re travelling by plane, so I don’t have the luxury of almost unlimited space in my luggage. But that’s what my Kindle is for! And I have big plans.
For one, I have a few unfinished books from this year’s list for the book club, and then there are the ambitious goals we’ve set for August: Les Miserables and The Maid. Secondly, I not only feel reading withdrawal, but a specific Stephen King withdrawal, so I would really like to read a classic of his on this holiday. Watch this space, I’ll keep you posted.
The SFF corner*
(*that’s Science Fiction & Fantasy)
Stranger Things is only the beginning
Lithub is reporting that the two brothers behind the Stranger Things production are starting their own production company and one of their first projects will be to adapt The Talisman by Stephen King and Peter Straub. That might be a good one for me to start with, although I will admit I don’t like the idea of reading a diluted Stephen King. He’s done a few collaborations with other writers, including with his son, and every time, I worry that there’s not enough of the King in it.
One Duffer brother said:
It’s much more fantasy. It has sci-fi. It has horror elements. It has a lot of heart. It has everything that we love. And it’s got the best werewolf character I think, ever.
Lithub.com
Remember Blake Crouch?
Blake Crouch rose to fame before I became aware of him, with Wayward Pines, which was adapted into a TV series in 2015. We read and loved his book, Dark Matter whose discussion is the only one from our book club that I have ever missed. Yes, you read that right, the book discussion happened without me, and not because I hadn’t read it, but because it was way before we were comfortable with virtual conferences, and I wasn’t physically in the same town as everyone else who was attending.
It’s been five year since then, you would think I am over that by now, but it still bothers me.
There have been rumours of Dark Matter being turned into a movie and the latest news seems to suggest we’re closer to it than we think. But until then, Blake Crouch is publishing a new book, and he tells us all about it in an interview with Goodreads. Spoiler alert (or is this a teaser?): he describes it as a gene-editing thriller, which is the same sub-genre as Jurassic Park.
Here is a cute snippet of this dialogue between Blake Crouch and Goodreads:
GR: What would you say is the perfect science fiction book in your opinion? And who are your who are some of your favorite writers?
BC: Love Ursula K. Le Guin. I love Andy Weir. Of course, Michael Crichton. Project Hail Mary, by Andy Weir, which came out last year, is a spectacular novel. It's nearly flawless. It manages to have an immense amount of heart, and it really has only one human character. I loved it. Another perfect one I would have to call out, Jurassic Park, is the gold standard for hard science with a very unputdownable narrative.
GR: And then what books are you reading now?
BC: I’m a little late to the game on this one. I just finished reading Come Closer by Sara Gran. Have you read it? (…) It’s great psychological fiction. And it is mind-blowingly engrossing. I was floored by it. It's one of those books I've heard people talking about forever. She's a writer people have been talking about forever, and I finally jumped into it. I just finished reading Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro. Oh, I’ll tell you a near-perfect novel, Never Let Me Go.
“Arrivals,” a short story by Bryan Washington
Published entirely in The New Yorker, you can read it here.
I came across this one last week, and initially, I was going to do what I’ve been doing for the past few months: save it for later, and then forget about it.
But I read the first line, and then the first sentence, and then the first paragraph, to try and determine whether what I was reading was indeed a short story in the second person. It’s not a new or innovative idea, but every time I tried to read similar pieces, I couldn’t stay with them for very long.
For the record, though, I completely forgot that If On A Winter’s Night A Traveller is second person, although I remember I loved it. Also, I am not sure I would have counted Romeo & Juliet in this category, but there you go!
Bryan Washington caught me by surprise with the topic, the style, the balance of drama and a blasé character, the strained dynamic of a failing relationship. On top of that, I have been using Uber in the last few weeks more than before the pandemic, even, and there was something eerily relatable in how the interactions with the drivers were depicted, half a world away.
Trigger warnings and Karin Slaughter’s books
We have talked about trigger warnings before, and since then, I have become more sensitive and careful of what I read, just like the rest of the world. Here a quick view of some of the categories on the warnings you can look for:
I remember reading books when I was younger that were uncomfortably dramatic. Today, I don’t know if it’s the pandemic or that I am just emotionally drained and tired, but I can’t handle sadness in my stories. I don’t mind gruesomeness and goriness, but tear-jerking stories? Not so much.
The reason I am returning to this topic is that I came across this article about Karin Slaughter (yes, that is her real name!) where she says the violence in her books is singled out and she is treated differently than her fellow male writers of gory stories.
I’ve been buzzing around her books like an undecided bee around a pretty flower, wondering what it might taste like. I don’t inherently like violence in my books just because I like Stephen King. That is not what attracts me to his writing. And the fact that a writer is comfortable describing violence in luxurious detail does not make them a good writer by default, but I am willing to try and verify whether that correlation exists!
I was curious about her book reviews though, so I’m leaving these for your delight, from Goodreads: