Watchmen by Alan Moore

4 Stars

The games humans play and the inevitable shades of gray.

This was very good, conflicted, and did a lovely job of whipsawing the reader back and forth between positions. Some obvious and some far more subtle.

Good intentions. Does the end justify the means?

The parallel symbolism between the Watchmen and the Black Freighter comic was sublime. The paths chosen by each of the characters, the consequences, the terrible choices, the good ones, and in the end I have to say either I go the way of Doctor Manhattan or Rorschach.

Because an imposed end is never an end, merely a hiccup to be replayed. Jon is correct in his words to Ozymandias.

I think I shall read some Shelley, now: Ozymandias :

Btw. there's some lovely parallels between V for Vendetta and Watchmen.

Doctor Manhattan from Watchmen

Space Opera by Catherynne M. Valente

4.5 Stars

Like being at the best cocktail party--EVER!

So funny, clever, over-the-top, philosophical Eurovision/Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy that had hints of This is Spinal Tap and cameos by:

How you ask. Simple. After nearly annihilating the universe, the varying factions created the Grand Prix, a song competition. The descriptions of the all the species and their peccadillos were fabulous, entertaining. Trust me, you love red pandas? You'll love them even more. Organic, inorganic, substantial, insubstantial--it's all good. Clearly, some species are always going to be more friendly than others, but there are always outliers too. And it's the work of one being in the book, the murder of stupidity that really helped keep me grounded as I read:

The fateful weapon? A large-print, mildly venomous picture book for which the general galactic population feels a level of affection and tender attachment that falls somewhere between Newton's Principia Mathematica and Goodnight Moon. Goguenar Gorecannon's Unkillable Facts contains 99.9 percent pure reliable and comprehensive laws of the universe as observed by an underachieving socially anxious mutant murderhippo and is considered to be as essential to a healthy, balanced childhood as hugs, night-lights, and cellular division.

I borrowed this book from my library, but I'm going to my local bookstore to get a copy so I can hand it out to people who really matter to me. And because there's at least one person who finished AP Calculus took the exam and still had a month of showing up to class, wherein the the teacher said do what you want and they teamed up to created/record a song called "Concave Up" set to the music of "Bottom's Up" by Trey Songz and Nicki Minaj; they deserve a book that speaks to them:

Second place went to the machine intelligences known as the 321 for their precision-tuned, eighty-nine-minute, neo-gangsta math rock anthem "This Program Has Encountered an Error and Must Shut Down," coded, compiled, and submitted by the Entity Known as Monad.

This is a wild ride on the pop culture tilt-a-whirl that critiques life and humanity. I got dizzy once while reading this and had to stop. Didn't stop me from jumping back on. Just don't have a corndog before hand. It was only once-- I swear. 

Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy

3.5 Stars

Moral law is an invention of mankind for the disenfranchisement of the powerful in favor of the weak.

This is a book I probably need to read again because I believe I missed the allegorical nature of the story. I didn't realize it, perhaps the unrelenting graphically described acts of maiming and murdering distracted me. Those were countered by these gorgeous panoramic views described so precisely that they were stunning.

"In a night so beclamored with the jackal-yapping of coyotes and the cries of owls the howl of that old dog wolf was the one sound they knew to issue from its right form, a solitary lobo, perhaps gray at the muzzle, hung like a marionette from the moon with his long mouth gibbering. "

"They found the lost scouts hanging head downward from the limbs of a fire blacked paloverde tree. They were skewered through the cords of their heels with sharpened hustles of green wood and they hung gray and naked above the dead ashes of the coals where they'd been roasted until their heads had charred and the brains bubbled in the skulls and steam sang from their noseholes."

The description of their demise continues for another two elongated sentences to truly illustrate the horror. You can see how it is distracting. Add in McCarthy's frugal use of punctuation, and you can see that it at times overwhelming. There is a weird niggling in the back of my mind whispering Canterbury Tales or some other such work, but honestly, it was so long ago that I read it, didn't enjoy it, and thus have failed to retain critical components. I'm sure there's a smashing review out there critiquing it--this is not that review.

Anyway, it was repetitive in nature and seemed to drag on. I'd probably have enjoyed it more if it were tighter. Oddly enough, it had a feel of the movie The Highlander to me by the end, but I didn't see it until over 50% of the way through it. Another reason I need to reread it. I can see where McCarthy's The Road gets it's trajectory though that ended more optimistically in my opinion.

Is that why war endures?
No. It endures because young men love it and old men love it in them. Those that fought, those that did not.

Overall, the ugly, brutal truth about how the West was won.

Circe by Madeline Miller

3.5 Stars

A different point of view.

This rendition of Circe, daughter of Helios, witch, and Titan is told from her perspective. A reckoning and analysis of the hows and whys of what has been told before might have come to pass. This isn't redemption per se, but rather a retelling with less demonization. I like Greek mythology a lot, and I liked this, too.

Rebellion is for prosperous islands, or else those so ground down they have no other choice.

Circe is an easy target for vilification: plain, insolent, lack of groveling, and power. This version is more complex, but it also rubbed me almost the wrong way by the end. Circe comes across as wise and compassionate to the point of being taken advantage of, and she knows it. She accepts it willing. The reasoning Miller makes is a fine one, but I don't like it. But hey, it's her life I don't have to like what Circe chooses for herself, but it made me wish for more.

Frankly, I understood her father's logic much more.

"Tell me," he said, "who give better offerings, a happy man or a miserable one?"
"A happy one, or course."
"Wrong," he said. "A happy man is too occupied with his life. He thinks he is beholden to no one. But make him shiver, kill his wife, cripple his child, then you will hear from him. He will starve his family for a month to buy you a pure-white yearling. If he can afford, he will buy you a hundred."

Whelp. That explains politics, doesn't it. 

And to be honest, my estimation of where this story was going went downhill fast with Miller's inevitable introduction of Odysseus, the liar and thief, whom Circe seemed more than amused by. I get it, she's bored and isolated, but he was the worst sort. Additionally, Ajax's character summary I vigorously deny. Dull-brained and lacking a silver tongue are not the same thing.

Prior to that, I loved the glimpse of Prometheus. Daedalus and the Minotaur were wonderful. After Odysseus, there's Telegonus and Telemachus and Penelope. I suppose these were fine, but I drifted down to the end. So this ends up ranking under four stars, but certainly not three--I'd go with three and half.

What We Do Is Secret by Thorn Kief Hillsberry

4 Stars

Finding a place.

The one thing in all LA, I love the purple sky at night.

All the zeitgeist of the early eighties in Los Angeles and the changing punk scene, and while there's a definite warning bell of the skinhead coup, it's not the primary focus. I went in expecting crazy stories--I got them, but there's this real deceptive undertow of emotion that builds and builds around Rockets, a young teenage boy living on the streets of LA and trying to figure out his place and what to do, and I got pulled under. By the end, I just felt...heartsore.

"Why was it hard to watch me?" I ask. "you never said."
He thinks about it all the way down to the sidewalk.
"Because it felt like someone should be stopping you," he says finally, "and nobody was."

The story is told from Rockets' viewpoint and you get this front and center seat to street life and what the characters wanted, what they were willing to sacrifice to have it, but there's the growing question in Rockets' mind about why. It shows issues of race, sexual orientation, and policing and not in heavy-handed ways, but as a part of the daily fracas of Rockets' life.

"But it's so blatant," Tim says. "The police don't notice?"
"What they really notice is a black dude north of the Santa Monica Freeway, period," Blitzer says. "A lot more than a white daddy, comma, looking for a pink boy."
"Pink?" David says.
Time echoes it, and there's that fuckin silence again, like after "How old," it's stale as hail on the Yukon trail.
"Fuck all of you! I've got pubic hair! Here! Look!"

Rockets is a young, gay male trying to navigate life with no resources aside from general group goodwill. A group that revolved around the punk scene, how they looked out for each other and did the best they could with what little they had. Not going to give more backstory because reading the unveiling is a big part of the punch in this one.

Waiting's basically wanting, there's only one letter difference, you can't be waiting without wanting the wait to be over. So when you're waiting you're controlled by wanting, and wanting's what controls everything.

Punk. The primal scream I can relate to, but there is so much beyond rage that never fit for me. I don't have that destructive force in me, the hermit dissociated always appealed more. So much of life was a train I didn't want to get on; I never believed in Willoughby, a dream stop. Nonexistent. Even so, the references and the language are compelling. There's a cadence to the storytelling and it gets stronger at times, just pulling you along.

I love this story like I love LA: All the fun parts, the wild parts, the broken parts.

Let you see, what you wouldn't, the woman's face first seeing me, soft warm breath, sudden in-drawn deep, "How old are you, boy, how could, who would, who did this to you, tell me."
"I did."

More beloved quotes that didn't make the cut above:

"But I don't trip on it too hard now, how the Go-Gos are number one from sea to slimy sea when Darby said they've got no lyrics, they've got nothing, they're going nowhere, how it's maybe morning in America to Reagan, but midnight in Hollywood to me, and I can't get there from here."

"Somehow the freeway part is what makes it feel possible, make's it real, that unbroken pavement so no map's necessary, unwinding like a licorice whip to I-want-Candyland, pine trees, rivers, grizzlies, a thousand fuckin miles, my country tis of fuckin thee, and the you-are-here is just a bus ride away."

Darby said.
You know what's fun? You take like ten hits of acid, drink a six-pack of beer, and you go to the Santa Monica pier, there's a bridge there that goes nowhere, 'cause their suppose to lower it for boats, and you can go out on the end and jump off, right? And you can swim, and it's so great 'cause it's dark, you know, and you can just swim and it doesn't matter if you live or die or anything, just swim and swim, and you feel the fish nibbling at your feet." 

"It's football jock who last year saw us on the street and yelled and spit, and now they've got their number-one crops and their motor boots and their bandanas, and they're punk rockers, a different breed of mommy's little monster though, with mommies to go back to, mommies and Mustangs and anarchy posters over their soft beds."

And trends are for terminal morons, I don't follow them at all, like for example last year's top-drawer trend, the one before ska was being bisexual. Which on-fire fags like Tony the Hustler were down for completely, because they were first ready, able, and more than willing dudes who came to mind to all these clueless vals and surf boys who wanted in on the latest. Though what I heard from those in the two-way know was double your pleasure in theory, double your trouble in practice.

"Shhhh!" Tim says. "We don't want to wake them."
"Why not? It's your fuckin room. And anyways what the--"
"It's not our room," David says. "The phone in our room's avocado. This one's harvest."

If this didn't take you back...

Dexter is Delicious by Jeff Lindsay

2 Stars

You'd think with cannibalism it would have been more exciting.

Sure it had the fun slice and dice of knife play, but frankly it was less artistic and lacking in the panache that Dexter has perfected. More like getting a dish called "rustic" when all it really means is that the sous chef has the prep skills of a blind monkey, not a beautifully prepared plate. It lacked the cleverness that I expect from Dexter, there's a few zingers, but in general there's a high degree of stupidity in this episode from all the characters. All. Multiple whacks of the stupid stick and Dex, Deb, Chutsky, Deb's partner are all piñatas.

Except Brian. Hello, long lost family member who's existence really does highlight the shared hobbies in the ever-increasing domesticity of Dexter Morgan's life.

I think my disappointment is echoed here:

My Dark Passenger fought back, of course, and my rational mind sang harmony. Seriously, Dexter, it crooned with oh-so-sweet reason. Could we really let all this predatory frolicking go unchallenged?