Reviews – Page 39 – couldreads

Scary Stories 3: still scary

So my original plan for this week was to read What’s the Matter with Kansas?, Thomas Frank’s 2004 book on middle America’s confusion over which political party has their best interests at heart. But then I figured that, as a serious lover of Halloween—costumes and candy; what’s not to love?—I shouldn’t miss an opportunity to read something more seasonally appropriate. I mean, Kansas is scary in its own way (the way everything about politics is scary right now) but not “boo” scary, not ax murderer scary, not hold-your-pee-for-hours-because-you-don’t-want-to-get-out-of-bed-and-get-your-ankles-sliced scary. For that, I turn to Scary Stories 3.

People tend to have one of two reactions when I describe this book—general apathy/lack of recognition, or sheer terror. For those in the latter category, Scary Stories 3 (and in all likelihood its two prequels) is the incarnation of childhood fear, and of the power that stories about ghosts and monsters and spiders that lay eggs in people’s faces (!) had over us. For me personally, Scary Stories 3 is the book that I wouldn’t let my mother keep in my room because I was afraid of its actual physical presence. It’s also the book I convinced myself changed color overnight, and whose illustrations I can still remember today, more than a decade after first being introduced to them. Scary Stories 3 doesn’t remind me of trick-or-treating, or the time the “sunflower” costume my mom made for me was too hot to wear and I basically asked my neighbors for candy wearing a green sweatsuit. Nope, it reminds me of being freaking petrified of things as a child, in a way that’d be hard to replicate today unless I was approached by a demon or knife-wielding homeless man who swore to kill me and/or made that throaty noise from The Ring.

Tropic of Cancer is totally NSFW

Henry Miller would have loved the Internet.

I don’t mean like role-playing games or white text on black MS DOS screens, for which he was, technically speaking, still alive. I mean like today’s Internet, all self-absorbed and indulgent like it is. All “this is what I ate for breakfast, and this is who I hung out with, and this is the boring shit we did.” That Internet Henry Miller would have been all about.

It’s actually a fun activity to read books written before 1950 and mine them for unintentionally prescient quotes. Tropic of Cancer, the seminal—trust me, semen-sounding words will not be the raunchiest elements of this post—autobiographical novel from Miller, is full of these kinds of snippets, lines like “so fast and furiously am I compelled to live now that there is scarcely time to record even these fragmentary notes.” Seriously, the man would have loved Twitter.

I had few expectations going into Tropic of Cancer, about which I knew essentially two things: (1) It is perhaps the most banned book of all time, whose 1934 publishing predated its actual release in the U.S. by nearly 30 years, and (2) there’s a boob on the cover. And honestly, I think some part of me figured that 1934 smut couldn’t possibly be 2011 smut; like maybe Miller would talk about how he had “lain” with some ladies, or kicked it with a few prostitutes, but that’s it. Hilariously, however, my illusions about this book’s PG-13 rating were dispelled somewhere around page 5 (fahreals NSFW):

The greatest show on Earth

Oddly enough, the most persuasive recommendation I received for Water for Elephants—the circus-themed love story whose movie adaptation stars Reese Witherspoon and sparkly manpire Robert Pattinson himself—came from a marine. During a visit to NYC in May, a high school friend of mine, only recently back from a year in Afghanistan, was scouring my bookshelves when he stopped on H2OFE and exclaimed his appreciation for it. Granted, one’s standards for entertainment are probably different after a few months of living in a tent surrounded by sand, but I thought it only patriotic to abide by the glowing endorsements of the armed forces. (After just a few minutes of mockery.)

I am, it’s worth noting, probably the last person on the planet to read Water for Elephants. For one, I’ve never been a big fan of historical fiction. But the paperback’s super melodramatic cover also discouraged me from carrying it around on the L train, amid all the New Yorker subscribers and casual readers of ancient philosophy. And mustaches.

Not one to shy from my mistakes, I’ll be the first to admit that Water for Elephants is about as good as my marine friend—and the novel’s bestseller status—suggest. Set in the 1930s, it follows protagonist Jacob Jankowski who runs away from home to (inadvertently) join the circus. While there, he meets Marlena, the beautiful ..horse lady performer (?), who is married to August, the seemingly schizophrenic animal trainer. Jacob obviously falls in love with Marlena, August obviously figures it out, and a fairly predictable narrative ensues, amid a thoroughly researched portrait of circus life in the heyday of Ringling Brothers, when circuses still came to people by train and no one had ever heard of a $14.99 plastic souvenir cup.

Also, there’s an elephant.

A dome of one’s own

I’m not even slightly embarrassed to admit that, after finishing Under the Dome on Saturday afternoon, I set it down on my nightstand, took off my glasses and had myself a little cry. No, not because I’m on some experimental medication, pregnant or going through the changes. This is an emotional book! It’s a scary one, sure, but also gripping, tragic and overwhelmingly bleak.

So, context: Although I’ve known of Under the Dome for years (and of the somewhat hilarious similarities between its plot and that of The Simpsons Movie), I neglected to actually buy the thing until last week. Currently4/7ths of the way through Stephen King’s seven-volume (soon to be eight) Dark Tower series, I’ve basically been King-ed out. It was only after dinner with a friend—I’m a huge sucker for glowing recommendations—that I decided to bite the bullet.

It’s worth noting that, Dark Tower commitment issues aside, I’ve always loved Stephen King. Along with Dean Koontz, one might say he transitioned me from the 200-page Christopher Pike novels of my childhood into sprawling stories with dozens of characters and themes that sailed right over my 10-year-old head. And while King’s writing is often concerned with the supernatural, it’s just as often—if not more frequently—concerned with human nature, with what people do and who they become when pitted against something terrifying, or life-threatening, or world-ending. Some of King’s books—The Green Mile, Carrie, Gerald’s Game—wear this theme on their sleeve, while others couch it in vampires or monsters or ancient spiritual forces. Either way, the man’s got a worldview: As a species, it doesn’t (or wouldn’t) take us long to hit rock bottom.

Please advise

So I’m phoning it in a bit this week: I’m exhausted, coming down with some sort of cold that I plan on ignoring, and in the middle of a 1,000-page Stephen King opus that I totally could have finished in a week if that week were not also the start of fall of television (for me, a month-long frenzy of trying out new cop dramas and quirky comedies before deciding what can feasibly be added to my DVR schedule.)

Fortunately for all of us—all five—I have a spare book to review. Because some sick sad neurotic old cat lady inside of me is already hoarding finished books to fill the inevitable gaps in my blog posting; as though the world would end if I let a week pass without word-vomiting all over the Internet. (Note: It would.)

You’re a Horrible Person, But I Like You (from here on out referred to as YAHPBILY) has been a staple in my apartment—appearing intermittently on couches, chairs, counters and yes, in the bathroom—for the last year, during which I would read it in small increments between more ambitious fare. Finally on Friday, when I brought it out with me in lieu of the 1,000-pager (even I’m not that devoted when bar-hopping) I managed to finish this slim volume of hilarity on my 4 a.m. train ride home. Yay productive use of drunk travel!

I suppose there’s no way to not take it easy with a review like this: YAHPBILY isn’t the kind of book one really sits down and reads. It’s a “book of advice,” a slapstick parody of Dear Abby and similar columns, where answers to the questions from “readers” (who are not real people) are provided by a veritable smorgasbord of current comics and actors, including Sarah Silverman, Ed Helms, Zach Galifianakis and Amy Sedaris (among many, many others.)