#3. Kitty Cornered by Bob Tarte
My coworker lent me this book, since her and I share a singular love of crazy, ridiculous cats and both have two that own our homes. Kitty Cornered centers around Bob and Linda Tarte, who own over fifty pets on their property, most of them various birds such as their barn full of ducks.
They notice a stray kitten hanging out in the woods near their home, a white and black kitten who seems terrified of humans but oddly drawn to them.
Over the course of coaxing the cat (Frannie) out of the woods, they find themselves with a fat tabby named Lucy, a caramel cat named Tina, and a huge silly cat named Maynard, in addition to the two house cats they already have.
If you have a a few pets, especially some unusual personalities, you already know the story well: the first moments of connection are moments you will never forget, animal power dynamics are complex and fascinating, and vet visits are completely anxiety-inducing. Bob, Linda, his six cats, and his menagerie of bunnies and birds create quite a lovable ensemble.
This is a fun story that takes mundane activities like buying cat food or watching a cat climb stairs and turns them into hilarious shenanigans.
Cat picture above from Bob’s website, www.bobtarte.com. There are reviews of his other books there, as well as pictures of the Tartes’ animals.
These are the cats that run our home, Nibbler (right) and Jade.
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#2. 20th Century Ghosts by Joe Hill
A collection of short stories that range from ghost stories and paranormal oddities to father-son stories or peculiar tales of friendship that are more heartwarming than blood-chilling. It is an eclectic mix that reads very quickly — most of the stories are about 15-20 pages long, with one in the middle about the ghosts of trees (“Dead-Wood”) being only 2 pages and the final story “Voluntary Committal” being exceptionally long. If you like speculative fiction regarding movie theaters, baseball, superheroes, giant locusts, cardboard boxes that lead to other worlds, mind games in the middle of the woods, childhood, and horror movie cliches played to pitch perfect, you are sure to enjoy this book.
My favorite stories were “20th Century Ghost, “Pop Art,” “Better Than Home,” “My Father’s Mask,” and “Voluntary Committal.” “Voluntary Committal” is a haunting, haunting story. You may never listen to The Ants Go Marching 2 by 2 the same way again.
There is even a story hidden in the Acknowledgements at the end!
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2013 and Millions of Words
So, a year has come and gone since I made my resolution to read 25 books. I almost made it halfway there. It was a busy year, all told: engagement, a wedding, a cross-country move, my first bona fide full-time teaching job, the acquisition of two rambunctious cats. I did manage to read some excellent books in there, too. I am glad I finally finished my massive Lovecraftian tome, and very glad I got into The Hunger Games series.
I am making the same resolution for 2013: twenty-five books in a year. Maybe this year I will make it, or maybe I won’t. I read more books in 2012 than I did in 2011, and that is certainly a start.
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#10 – #11. The Hunger Games and Chasing Fire by Suzanne Collins
The last two books I read in 2012 were from The Hunger Games series by Suzanne Collins. The Hunger Games was really good, and Chasing Fire was even better. I am almost done with the final book, Mockingjay, but I didn’t get it in before midnight. I put off reading these when they first came out because I had no idea what they were about. I continued not reading them when news of a movie came out because the hype of it drove me away. I finally sat down and read them in the weeks leading up to this Christmas vacation, and I am so glad I did. The writing is really quite excellent, and the deceptively simple descriptions and situations give way to complex sentiments and character growth. By the third book, you feel like you have flown way out of Young Adult fiction and are reading a full-fledged war or spy novel.
In the first novel, we meet our protagonist and narrator, Katniss Everdeen. She lives in the poorest, smallest district of a large country called Panem. It is a hard place to a live. Set in the distant future, the districts of the country toil while the Capitol indulges in delicious food, deliriously colorful fashions, and blood sport. They love to watch the annual Hunger Games, in which boys and girls from the districts must go to a huge arena and fight to the death. Katniss finds herself confronted with the cruel task of competing in these games against not just other district children, but against a kind boy from her own town, Peeta Mellark.
In the second novel, their world begins to change. Murmurs of rebellion run through the districts and cracks in the foundation of Panem threaten to start an all-out war. Unwittingly, miserably, in the middle of the revolution is Katniss. Is she a pariah, a hero, or just a pawn in another kind of game?
I would recommend these to anyone, any age. They are fun, engrossing books that marvelously build a world and then painstakingly try to tear it down.
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#9. The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories by H.P. Lovecraft
I actually finished this book on Halloween night (how fitting), but am just now getting around to posting. I had chipped away at a few of the stories in this compilation over a two- or three-year span, but really delved into it as part of my 25 Books Challenge. The language is dense, and many stories are very similar when stacked next to each other, but I can now really understand how revolutionary — though sometimes problematic — Lovecraft was to the horror genre.
Certain stories stick out as my clear favorites. “Rats in the Walls,” read to me by Joe on a stormy night over the summer. “Cool Air” with its chilling twist, “The Colour Out of Space” with its amazing imagery. “Re-Animator” as a series of short stories is quite hilarious, and is intended to be, which was very refreshing amid all the cosmic horror and bleak agonies of various protagonists. The best two, in my opinion, were some of the longest and most elaborately told: “The Whisperer in Darkness” and “The Shadow Over Innsmouth.” The tone, the description of the lands therein, and the sheer madness of their conclusions were very enthralling.
I particularly like this copy I have, a Penguin Classic edition with pages and pages of highly informative endnotes which detail 1920s slang, East Coast cities and Victorian culture, and references to other Lovecraftian stories and admired horror work.
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#7-#8. Gyo Vol. I & II by Junji Ito
I had heard of these graphic novels before, most recently in reference to a bonus story called “The Engima of Amigara Fault,” so I finally sat down and read them the other night. The two books tell an unsettling saga of walking sea creatures coming up onto land, causing chaos and raising many questions. Where did their shiny, strange legs come from? What do they want? And what on earth is going to happen next? The mystery becomes much more complex than anyone could have imagined, and has sinister overtones for the future of humanity. I would definitely recommend this tale to fans of horror!
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#6. Blockade Billy by Stephen King
The title tale is a relatively short story, a sports story with a horrible, dark secret. Joe and I found this book as a present for my dad, a longtime King fan and fellow baseball enthusiast. He read it quickly and tossed it to me, commanding me to read the second short story in the brief book, “Morality.” It really stuck with him, that second story.
“Blockade Billy” is good; a quick story that builds and builds, but it does not really feel like a “King” story. This was my dad’s take on it, being much better read in his works than me, and after thinking on it a bit and comparing it to “Morality” I would have to agree. A strange small-time Iowa catcher fills in for an injured Major League player, Faraday of the long-forgotten New Jersey Titans…forgotten because of the catcher, and what happens during his brief time in the pros. It has an old-timey sports radio feel to it: “Top of the ninth and The Doo’s looking at the top of the lineup. Strikes out Malzone…strikes out Klaus…Then comes Williams, old Teddy Ballgame. The Doo gets him on the hip, oh and two, then weakens and walks him” (21). It’s heavy on baseball and low on suspense, but the ending does pack something of a wallop.
“Morality” feels like a micro-study in bad impulses. The premise is much more King’s signature: a down-on-their-luck couple is offered $200,000 to commit a sin by proxy for an elderly minister’s amusement. The story draws the offer out, then escalates quickly, ending with little fanfare, making it all the more appropriate and unsettling.
Overall, a good little summer read. I read most of this at work the other day while running the community softball league concession stand. Somehow the legend of Blockade Billy rings a little truer listening to bats crack as you shell sunflower seeds with your teeth.
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#5. Every Girl is the End of the World for Me by Jeffrey Brown
I love Jeffrey Brown’s comics. This is one of his many autobiographical stories, a short tale of ~3 weeks one winter when he was obsessed with a number of female friends and former lovers. It’s a cute, brilliant snapshot.
I own a lot of his comics – Unlikely (my favorite, and the most heartbreaking), Clumsy, AEIOU, EGITEOTWFM, I Am Going To Be Small, Feeble Attempts, Incredible Change-Bots – but I have not gotten around to reading all of them! Perhaps I will tackle the rest before this year is done.
I am also currently working my way through the slightly denser fare contained within The Weird Tales of H.P. Lovecraft and (still) Wuthering Heights.
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Earl Grey and A Million Words 