Horrorstör

I just finished Horrostör by Grady Hendrix.  I'm not typically one to pick up a scary story, and Christmas break is not normally the time I'd expect to find myself engrossed in something this creepy.  I heard about Horrostör back in October, but my library hold just got to the top of the queue, so here we are.

A few years ago I tried another scary read - House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski.  It was a lot of fun, but ultimately turned out to be too much for me and I had to give it up before I got to the end.  I'm still wondering how it turned out.  The problem was the context of the story, creepy crazy things happening in someone's home.  That gets in my head, and at the time we had a new baby that needed lots of middle-of-the-night attention.  There I was, alone in the dark, and freaking myself out.

The same thing happened even more years ago when I watched the movie Signs.  I'm a big fan of M. Night Shyamalan's early films, and Signs is no exception.  I really enjoyed it, and the ending was a great fulfillment of the whole movie.  I'm glad I didn't give up halfway through, but maybe I should have.  At that time we also had a new baby, and back then I was also spending lots of alone time, by myself, in the dark.  After Signs I was wound up for days thinking every shadow or creak was one of those creepy aliens lurking about the house.

As you may recall, the whole Signs plot is centered around this one family's home, and how the alien invasion gets personal when they have to stand their ground where they live.

Some time later I saw Cloverfield when it first came out, another alien invasion story, and you know what?  I loved it.  It was scary and exciting and new and I really enjoyed it.  But the best part about it was that I didn't "take it home" with me.  I slept like a baby after seeing it that night, and never gave it a second thought.  Why?  Because the alien invader is huge, and it's set in the big city.

Horrostör did the same thing for me, turning the haunted house genre into something I can enjoy because the story is set in a furniture store.  Brilliant!  It was scary.  It was disturbing.  And it was fun.  But best of all, at the end of the day it doesn't stick with me to the point that it makes my home an uncomfortable place to be.  Even in the middle of the night, up in the dark with yet another baby.  I suppose if I ever find myself at Ikea during a power outage I may have end up regretting my choice, but I'll take that chance.

Thanks Grady.

The Last Policeman

The Last Policeman, by Ben H. Winters, is a fun read.  If you enjoy thinking about the end of the world, that is.  If you don't then it's really more of a depressing read.  But it has its bright spots, even so.

Winters' protagonist is an earnest, newly promoted detective named Hank Palace.  The end times are upon us and the whole world is aware because humanity is facing the impending arrival of an extinction-level cosmic collision.  For some reason Hank seems to be the last person left trying to hold together civilization as things progressively fall apart.

There is a mystery at the heart of the novel, and watching it unfold gives the reader a reason to stick with the story.  More intriguing to me was the observations of the characters about how the world had descended into disarray as society unravels and individuals deal with their mortality staring them in the face.

Hank is the ultimate Boy Scout as he pursues truth and justice against all odds, the whole world either turned against him or profoundly apathetic to his cause.  His perseverance is reassuring, that even against impossible odds some people will still do the Right Thing.

I've been intrigued with this sort of doomsday scenario ever since we got the double cinematic whammy of Armageddon and Deep Impact in 1998.  The idea that a large space-borne object could be our undoing seems to live more prominently in our collective consciousness now, as evidenced by efforts to track and catalog transient objects in and around our solar system, and to assign them collision probabilities when they're found.

I find this type of event a likely candidate to fulfill this prophecy from the book of Matthew, chapter 24, verse 30:

And then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven: and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory.

In the story one of the characters tells Hank that waiting for the asteroid to arrive, with the collision months away as it crosses the vastness of space, has left her overwrought by the "unbearable imminence" of the thing.  If we ever find ourselves in a similar situation I'll be processing everything in the context of Matthew 24, and while there may be some trepidation about the future I'd be inclined to see the whole thing as part of a larger plan instead of just Earth losing a high-stakes game of chance.  I would be looking forward to it, although I'm sure that navigating the pre-collision disintegration of the world would present its own challenges.

That's what I liked most about this book.  It painted a plausible picture of how that disintegration might proceed.  It's a good reminder that looking forward to the last days may be a fun pastime, but there will undoubtedly be more than a few bumps in the road.  It will come when it's time.  Best to enjoy the blessing of the moment, and not hurry along the challenges of the future in whatever form they'll arrive.

What is up with these authors?

I enjoy reading the blogs of authors.  I mean, they write for a living, so it makes sense that their blog would be a good read.  Two blogs that I frequent regularly are those of Patrick Rothfuss (The Name of the Wind, The Wise Man's Fear) and Orson Scott Card (Ender's Game, etc.)

The other day I stumbled upon a new author web site belonging to Peter V. Brett, in particular I read this post.  Brett has written two novels, The Warded Man, and The Desert Spear.  Both excellent.  I was looking for information on the third book in the trilogy when I found Peter's own update on the topic.

At first I was disappointed to learn that although book 3, The Daylight War, will be released in a year it is not - as betimes promised - the final book in the trilogy.  The series is, in fact, a "cycle", and will run to five books.  Brett explains the backstory as to how his cycle became marketed as a trilogy, but frankly I don't much care.  Why stretch the story through five books, and cause readers to wait an extra four to six years, if the story can be wrapped up in a trilogy (according to Brett's own comments)?  It seems a bit wasteful, of his talent and of my time.

Then something else about his post struck me, something I found rather odd.  I don't mind if authors want to take their time writing fine books.  Great.  Hopefully we'll all enjoy them that much more when they're published.  And they're art, right, so it's not like they can just be churned out on a schedule.  But in his post Brett goes off on some tangent about how he promised his publisher he would meet certain dates, but they weren't really realistic, and now he's taking more time to complete his next novel.  And here's his explanation as to why it's taking longer than expected:

Oh, I have my excuses. Early this year my part-time assistant (deservedly) went on to a full time publishing job, leaving me with a lot of administrative work that ate away at my writing time. Around the same time I also had major shoulder surgery that left my arm in a sling for months. I’m told it went well and I will be back to full strength without pain at some point, but six months out I’m still only at 75%, and prolonged or strenuous use leaves me in a lot of pain.

And I spend a lot of time with my three year old daughter Cassie. I know I could put her in daycare or hire a sitter as many people do, but these years before she starts going to school all the time are precious, and I don’t want her to ever feel like daddy didn’t have time for her. We do arts and crafts and build marble runs and train sets. We practice her reading and watch Pixar movies. We argue about what she wants for dinner, bathtime and bedtime. And I wouldn’t trade it for anything.

What?  He had shoulder surgery so he couldn't work?  Isn't he a writer?  Does shoulder surgery really preclude him from doing that work?  Couldn't he work with just one arm, or dictate and have his writing typed up for later editing, or something?  You need a little Brett background to really appreciate why he couldn't find a workaround for an arm in a sling.  His first novel, 100,000 words, was written piecemeal during his daily commute to and from work by typing it into his cellphone.  If he had the patience to do that there's no way he should be stopped by a little shoulder surgery.

But then there's his second point: he can't work because he wants to spend time with his daughter?  I get it - I'm a dad, I love my kids, I wish I had more time with them, but is there really no way he can fit daddy time and author time all into a single day?  In other words, do what pretty much the whole rest of the world does?  Come on - how many people can just put off work indefinitely to hang out with their kids?  I'm happy for him, I guess, but to hold this up as an excuse as to why he's not getting his work done just doesn't hold water with me.

But maybe I'm just jealous.

Shades of Grey

Shades of Grey, by Jasper Fforde, is a great read. I picked it up on a blog recommendation from Patrick Rothfuss with no prior knowledge about the plot or the author.

It turns out it's set in a far future utopia where everything is not as it seems. The mysteries of this world unfold with the story. It's at times both disturbing and very, very funny. Here's one of my favorite passages, the kind that found me laughing out loud as I read:

"And we have a ninety-thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle for rainy afternoons."

"But someone lost the picture," grumbled Yewberry, "and there's a lot of sky."

"Challenging, we call that, Mr. Yewberry," remarked deMauve.

Challenging, indeed. Believe me - there are more chuckles where that came from.