Shiver: Selected Stories by Junji Itō

Shiver:
Selected Stories by Junji Itō
translated by Jocelyn Allen, Naomi Kokubo
edited by Masumi Washington

Published: 2017
Publisher: VIZ Media LLC
Genre: Short Stories, Horror, Graphic Novel, Japan
Hardback: 392
Rating: 5
Goodreads

A best-of story selection by the master of horror manga.

This volume includes nine of Junji Ito’s best short stories, as selected by the author himself and presented with accompanying notes and commentary. An arm peppered with tiny holes dangles from a sick girl’s window… After an idol hangs herself, balloons bearing faces appear in the sky, some even featuring your own face… An amateur film crew hires an extremely individualistic fashion model and faces a real bloody ending… An offering of nine fresh nightmares for the delight of horror fans.

1. Used Record or Second-Hand Record (from House of the Marionettes, Ayatsuri no Yashiki)
a story about people fighting over the ownership of a record that has a singer's singing as they died recorded on it.

2. Shiver (from Slug Girl, Namekuji no Shoujo)
a story about a cursed jade stone that causes holes to open up all over a person's body if they're around it.

3. Fashion Model (from Souichi's Diary of Curses, Sōichi no Noroi no Nikki)
a story about an oddly ominous fashion model.

4. Hanging Balloons (from The Face Burglar, Kao Dorobou)
a story about balloon headed dopplegangers out to hunt their counterparts the moment they go outside.

5. Marionette Mansion (from House of the Marionettes, Ayatsuri no Yashiki)
a story about a family who rather than deciding what they do or how they live, they instead hire puppeteers to control their actions via strings from the attic of their home.

6. Painter (from Tomie)
a story about a strange but beautiful woman named Tomie who wishes for an artist to accurately capture her beauty, and all the misfortune that happens as a result...

7. The Long Dream (from The Story of the Mysterious Tunnel, Ton'neru kitan)
a story about a man who claims that the length of his dreams are becoming longer and longer and about how he begins to change as his dreams extend farther and farther.

8. Honored Ancestors (from The Face Burglar, Kao Dorobou)
a story about an amnesiac girl and the encounter that caused her to lose her memories and about carrying on the family line. At all costs.

9. Greased (from Voices in the Dark, Yami no Koe
a story about oil and grease.

10. Fashion Model: Cursed Frame (bonus story)
a bit more of story #3, Fashion Model

PeekAbook:

My two-bits:

PERFECTLY creepy and twisted to give the shivers, indeed. Loved the notes and commentary after each story.

~*~
* monthly theme: True Crime, Hunger, Horror, Harassment

* part of the Blog All About It Challenge (here)

She Said by Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey

She Said
Breaking the Sexual Harassment Story That Helped Ignite a Movement
by Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey
Published: 2019
Publisher: Penguin Press
Genre: True Crime, Feminism
Hardback: 320
Rating: 5
Goodreads

First sentence(s):
In 2017, when we began our investigation of Harvey Weinstein for the New York Times, women held more power than ever before.

For many years, reporters had tried to get to the truth about Harvey Weinstein's treatment of women. Rumors of wrongdoing had long circulated. But in 2017, when Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey began their investigation into the prominent Hollywood producer for the New York Times, his name was still synonymous with power. During months of confidential interviews with top actresses, former Weinstein employees, and other sources, many disturbing and long-buried allegations were unearthed, and a web of onerous secret payouts and nondisclosure agreements was revealed. These shadowy settlements had long been used to hide sexual harassment and abuse, but with a breakthrough reporting technique Kantor and Twohey helped to expose it. But Weinstein had evaded scrutiny in the past, and he was not going down without a fight; he employed a team of high-profile lawyers, private investigators, and other allies to thwart the investigation. When Kantor and Twohey were finally able to convince some sources to go on the record, a dramatic final showdown between Weinstein and the New York Times was set in motion.

Nothing could have prepared Kantor and Twohey for what followed the publication of their initial Weinstein story on October 5, 2017. Within days, a veritable Pandora's box of sexual harassment and abuse was opened. Women all over the world came forward with their own traumatic stories. Over the next twelve months, hundreds of men from every walk of life and industry were outed following allegations of wrongdoing. But did too much change--or not enough? Those questions hung in the air months later as Brett Kavanaugh was nominated to the Supreme Court, and Christine Blasey Ford came forward to testify that he had assaulted her decades earlier. Kantor and Twohey, who had unique access to Ford and her team, bring to light the odyssey that led her to come forward, the overwhelming forces that came to bear on her, and what happened after she shared her allegation with the world.

In the tradition of great investigative journalism, She Said tells a thrilling story about the power of truth, with shocking new information from hidden sources. Kantor and Twohey describe not only the consequences of their reporting for the #MeToo movement, but the inspiring and affecting journeys of the women who spoke up--for the sake of other women, for future generations, and for themselves.

My two-bits:
Per the title of this book, women are in the forefront of the telling of the stories within.

Loved how solidarity and truth prevailed.

~*~
* monthly theme: True Crime, Hunger, Horror, Harassment

Three Women by Lisa Taddeo

Three Woman
by Lisa Taddeo

Published: 2019
Publisher: Avid Reader Press / Simon & Schuster
Genre: Biography, Sexuality, Feminism
Hardback: 304
Rating: 4
Goodreads
Website

First sentence(s):
When my mother was a young woman a man used to follow her to work every morning and masturbate, in step behind her.

Desire as we’ve never seen it before: a riveting true story about the sex lives of three real American women, based on nearly a decade of reporting.

It thrills us and torments us. It controls our thoughts and destroys our lives. It’s all we live for. Yet we almost never speak of it. And as a buried force in our lives, desire remains largely unexplored—until now. Over the past eight years, journalist Lisa Taddeo has driven across the country six times to embed herself with ordinary women from different regions and backgrounds. The result, Three Women, is the deepest nonfiction portrait of desire ever written.

We begin in suburban Indiana with Lina, a homemaker and mother of two whose marriage, after a decade, has lost its passion. She passes her days cooking and cleaning for a man who refuses to kiss her on the mouth, protesting that “the sensation offends” him. To Lina’s horror, even her marriage counselor says her husband’s position is valid. Starved for affection, Lina battles daily panic attacks. When she reconnects with an old flame through social media, she embarks on an affair that quickly becomes all-consuming.

In North Dakota we meet Maggie, a seventeen-year-old high school student who finds a confidant in her handsome, married English teacher. By Maggie’s account, supportive nightly texts and phone calls evolve into a clandestine physical relationship, with plans to skip school on her eighteenth birthday and make love all day; instead, he breaks up with her on the morning he turns thirty. A few years later, Maggie has no degree, no career, and no dreams to live for. When she learns that this man has been named North Dakota’s Teacher of the Year, she steps forward with her story—and is met with disbelief by former schoolmates and the jury that hears her case. The trial will turn their quiet community upside down.

Finally, in an exclusive enclave of the Northeast, we meet Sloane—a gorgeous, successful, and refined restaurant owner—who is happily married to a man who likes to watch her have sex with other men and women. He picks out partners for her alone or for a threesome, and she ensures that everyone’s needs are satisfied. For years, Sloane has been asking herself where her husband’s desire ends and hers begins. One day, they invite a new man into their bed—but he brings a secret with him that will finally force Sloane to confront the uneven power dynamics that fuel their lifestyle.

Based on years of immersive reporting, and told with astonishing frankness and immediacy, Three Women is a groundbreaking portrait of erotic longing in today’s America, exposing the fragility, complexity, and inequality of female desire with unprecedented depth and emotional power. It is both a feat of journalism and a triumph of storytelling, brimming with nuance and empathy, that introduces us to three unforgettable women—and one remarkable writer—whose experiences remind us that we are not alone.

My two-bits:
Three different views and perspectives on the negative after effects of sexual experiences. It is a never totally forgotten.

Got me thinking of how there is a need to teach how to love one another, how we need to prevent abusive behavior and how to help those who have experienced sexual trauma.

~*~
* monthly theme: True Crime, Hunger, Horror, Harassment

Happy Release: The Bride of Northanger by Diana Birchall

The Bride of Northanger
by Diana Birchall
-Historical, Romance, Jane Austen theme | Goodreads
Release date: September 17, 2019
A happier heroine than Catherine Morland does not exist in England, for she is about to marry her beloved, the handsome, witty Henry Tilney. The night before the wedding, Henry reluctantly tells Catherine and her horrified parents a secret he has dreaded to share - that there is a terrible curse on his family and their home, Northanger Abbey. Henry is a clergyman, educated and rational, and after her year’s engagement Catherine is no longer the silly young girl who delighted in reading “horrid novels”; she has improved in both reading and rationality. This sensible young couple cannot believe curses are real...until a murder at the Abbey triggers events as horrid and Gothic as Jane Austen ever parodied - events that shake the young Tilneys’ certainties, but never their love for each other ...

About the author:
Diana Birchall worked for many years at Warner Bros studios as a story analyst, reading novels to see if they would make movies. Reading manuscripts went side by side with a restorative and sanity-preserving life in Jane Austen studies and resulted in her writing Austenesque fiction both as homage and attempted investigation of the secrets of Jane Austen's style. She is the author of In Defense of Mrs. Elton, Mrs. Elton in America, Mrs. Darcy's Dilemma, and the new The Bride of Northanger. She has written hundreds of Austenesque short stories and plays, as well as a biography of her novelist grandmother, and has lectured on her books and staged play readings at places as diverse as Hollywood, Brooklyn, Montreal, Chawton House Library, Alaska, and Yale.

Visit Diana at her Austen Variations:
author page
Twitter
Facebook
Goodreads
Social Media hashtags: #BrideNorthangerBlogTour, #JaneAusten, #HistoricalFicton, #GothicMystery, #Austenesque

~*~

Doyenne of Austenesque fiction Diana Birchall tours the blogosphere October 28 through November 15 to share her latest release, The Bride of Northanger. Thirty popular book bloggers specializing in historical and Austenesque fiction will feature guest blogs, interviews, excerpts, and book reviews of this acclaimed continuation of Jane Austen’s Gothic parody, Northanger Abbey.

Schedule:

October 28 My Jane Austen Book Club (Interview)
October 28 Austenprose—A Jane Austen Blog (Review)
October 28 vvb32 Reads (Spotlight)
October 29 A Covent Garden Gilflurt’s Guide of Life (Guest Blog)
October 29 From Pemberley to Milton (Excerpt)
October 30 Drunk Austen (Interview)
October 30 Silver Petticoat Review (Excerpt)
October 31 Jane Austen’s World (Review)
November 01 So Little Time… (Interview)
November 01 Laura's Reviews (Review)
November 04 English Historical Fiction Authors (Guest Blog)
November 04 Confessions of a Book Addict (Spotlight)
November 05 More Agreeably Engaged (Review)
November 05 Vesper’s Place (Review)
November 06 Jane Austen in Vermont (Interview)
November 06 Diary of an Eccentric (Interview)
November 07 All Things Austen (Spotlight)
November 07 A Bookish Way of Life (Review)
November 07 Let Them Read Books (Excerpt)
November 08 Babblings of a Bookworm (Review)
November 08 vvb32 Reads (Review)
November 11 My Jane Austen Book Club (Review)
November 11 Reading the Past (Spotlight)
November 12 Jane Austen’s World (Interview)
November 12 The Calico Critic (Excerpt)
November 13 The Book Rat (Review)
November 13 Austenesque Reviews (Review)
November 14 Fangs, Wands, & Fairy Dust (Review)
November 14 The Fiction Addict (Review)
November 15 My Love for Jane Austen (Spotlight)
November 15 Scuffed Slippers and Wormy Books (Review)

Lovely Books and Things - 10.27.19

Lovely Books and Things
My Weekly Books and Films Update
Linking up with:
Sunday Post (details)
Mailbox Monday (details)

~*~
HAPPY THINGS:

1. Smoke mask N95 - to combat smoke in the air from the latest Northern California fires

2. Electricity - San Francisco is one of the cities in the bay area that did not undergo power outages

There is an apocalyptic vibe here. I wonder if zombies are on the horizon.

3. San Francisco Tea Festival - sampling pu-erh

~*~
Author event:

City Arts & Lectures presented authors Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey in conversation with author Bernice Yeung. Towards the end of the conversation they were joined by Rowena Chiu, former assistant to Harvey Weinstein in 1998 (seated far left in picture above).

She Said:
Breaking the Sexual Harassment Story That Helped Ignite a Movement
by Jodi Kantor, Megan Twohey
-True Crime, Feminism | Goodreads

Book Passage of Corte Madera and the Curran theatre presented author Ronan Farrow in conversation with Clara Jeffery, editor-in-chief of Mother Jones for the release of Catch and Kill.

Catch and Kill:
Lies, Spies, and a Conspiracy to Protect Predators
by Ronan Farrow
-True Crime, Feminism | Goodreads

The San Francisco Public Library presented author Tommy Orange in Conversation with SF Poet Laureate Kim Shuck in celebration of selecting Tommy's novel, There There for the 15th Annual One City One Book.

There There
by Tommy Orange
-Literary, Native American | Goodreads

The San Francisco Public Library with the Center for Asian American Media (CAAM), Asian American Studies Department at San Francisco State University and Angel City Press presented filmmaker, author Arthur Dong and his new book.

Hollywood Chinese:
The Chinese in American Feature Films
by Arthur Dong
-History, Asian American, Film | Goodreads

AND watched: in theatre

Linda Ronstadt (2019)
The Sound of My Voice
Directors: Rob Epstein, Jeffrey Friedman
Stars: Linda Ronstadt, Bonnie Raitt, Dolly Parton
-Documentary, Biography, Music | imdb | my rating: 5
With one of the most memorably stunning voices that has ever hit the airwaves, Linda Ronstadt burst onto the 1960s folk rock music scene in her early twenties.

FASCINATING. Caught up with what ever happened to Linda moments.

The Lighthouse (2019)
Director: Robert Eggers
Writers: Max Eggers, Robert Eggers
Stars: Willem Dafoe, Robert Pattinson
-Drama, Fantasy, Horror | imdb | my rating: 5
The hypnotic and hallucinatory tale of two lighthouse keepers on a remote and mysterious New England island in the 1890s.

LOVED the Herman Melville speak. Male-centric, mythology and metaphors. Black and white was beautifully done.

Parasite (2019)
Gisaengchung (original title)
Director/Screenplay: Bong Joon Ho (as Joon-ho Bong)
Screenplay: Jin Won Han
Stars: Kang-ho Song, Yeo-jeong Jo, So-dam Park
-Comedy, Drama, Thriller | imdb | my rating: 5
All unemployed, Ki-taek's family takes peculiar interest in the wealthy and glamorous Parks for their livelihood until they get entangled in an unexpected incident.

ANXIETY ridden thriller of the haves and have-nots. Secrets and smells.

~*~
* updated my Blog All About It: Shiver post (here)

* comment and TELL me what you have acquired for your shelves recently

Thanks for stopping by :-)

Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk

Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead
by Olga Tokarczuk
translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones

Published: 2019
Publisher: Riverhead Books
Genre: Mystery, Literary, Poland
Hardback: 288
Rating: 5
Goodreads
Website

First sentence(s):
I am already at an age and additionally in a state where I must always wash my feet thoroughly before bed, in the event of having to be removed by an ambulance in the Night.

In a remote Polish village, Janina devotes the dark winter days to studying astrology, translating the poetry of William Blake, and taking care of the summer homes of wealthy Warsaw residents. Her reputation as a crank and a recluse is amplified by her not-so-secret preference for the company of animals over humans. Then a neighbor, Big Foot, turns up dead. Soon other bodies are discovered, in increasingly strange circumstances. As suspicions mount, Janina inserts herself into the investigation, certain that she knows whodunit. If only anyone would pay her mind...

My two-bits:
LOVED this. The story touches on serious issues in a playful way with its tough-old-lady character to champion the horrors of our world.

Got me interested to add William Blake to my reading pile.

~*~
* part of Man Booker International Prize 2019 challenge (here)

* monthly theme: True Crime, Hunger, Horror, Harassment

Last Ones Left Alive by Sarah Davis-Goff

Last Ones Left Alive
by Sarah Davis-Goff

Published: 2019
Publisher: Tinder Press
Genre: Dystopia, Zombies, Ireland
Hardback: 280
Rating: 5
Goodreads

First sentence(s):
My toenail has blackened, and I have to pull to get it off.

Watch your six. Beware tall buildings. Always have your knives.

Growing up on a tiny island off the coast of a post-apocalyptic Ireland, Orpen's life has revolved around physical training and necessity. After Mam died, it's the only way she and her guardian Maeve have survived the ravenous skrake (zombies) who roam the wilds of the ravaged countryside, looking for prey.

When Maeve is bitten and infected, Orpen knows what she should do - sink a knife into her eye socket, and quickly. Instead, she tries to save Maeve, and following rumours of a distant city on the mainland, guarded by fierce banshees, she sets off, pushing Maeve in a wheelbarrow and accompanied by their little dog, Danger. It is a journey on which Orpen will need to fight repeatedly for her life, drawing on all of her training and instincts. In the course of it, she will learn more about the Emergency that destroyed her homeland, and the mythical Phoenix City - and discover a starting truth about her own identity.

My two-bits:
I liked how this tackles a post-apocalyptic world from the viewpoint to a character born into it. Along with zombies, the characters must grapple with emotional and personal issues.

Got me thinking of loneliness and survival.

~*~
* monthly theme: True Crime, Hunger, Horror, Harassment

The Body Papers: A Memoir by Grace Talusan

The Body Papers:
A Memoir
by Grace Talusan

Published: 2019
Publisher: Restless Books
Genre: Memoir, Feminism, Filipino
Hardback: 272
Rating: 5
Goodreads

First sentence(s):
The recipe for yogurt can be contained in a single sentence: add a spoonful of yogurt to scalded milk and leave it alone in a warm place until it thickens.

Zombie sighting:
I zombie-walked though that year and barely went to classes.
-chapter 13, page 137

Born in the Philippines, young Grace Talusan moves with her family to a New England suburb in the 1970s. At school, she confronts racism as one of the few kids with a brown face. At home, the confusion is worse: her grandfather’s nightly visits to her room leave her hurt and terrified, and she learns to build a protective wall of silence that maps onto the larger silence practiced by her Catholic Filipino family. Talusan learns as a teenager that her family’s legal status in the country has always hung by a thread—for a time, they were “illegal.” Family, she’s told, must be put first.

The abuse and trauma Talusan suffers as a child affects all her relationships, her mental health, and her relationship with her own body. Later, she learns that her family history is threaded with violence and abuse. And she discovers another devastating family thread: cancer. In her thirties, Talusan must decide whether to undergo preventive surgeries to remove her breasts and ovaries. Despite all this, she finds love, and success as a teacher. On a fellowship, Talusan and her husband return to the Philippines, where she revisits her family’s ancestral home and tries to reclaim a lost piece of herself.

Not every family legacy is destructive. From her parents, Talusan has learned to tell stories in order to continue. The generosity of spirit and literary acuity of this debut memoir are a testament to her determination and resilience. In excavating and documenting such abuse and trauma, Talusan gives voice to unspeakable experience, and shines a light of hope into the darkness.

My two-bits:
Loved this story of a strong resilient woman. I especially was interested in the Filipino American narrative.

~*~
* monthly theme: True Crime, Hunger, Horror, Harassment

Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado

Her Body and Other Parties
by Carmen Maria Machado

Published: 2017
Publisher: Graywolf Press
Genre: Short Stories, Horror, LGBTQ, Feminism
Paperback: 248
Rating: 4
Goodreads
Website

Stories:
The Husband Stitch
Inventory
Mothers
Especially Heinous
Real Women Have Bodies
Eight Bites
The Resident
Difficult At Parties

Zombie sighting:
And so as we digested, we looked at Diego's drawings, several panels of a dystopian world ruled by zombies thirsty for knowledge. -The Resident, page 201

In Her Body and Other Parties, Carmen Maria Machado blithely demolishes the arbitrary borders between psychological realism and science fiction, comedy and horror, fantasy and fabulism. While her work has earned her comparisons to Karen Russell and Kelly Link, she has a voice that is all her own. In this electric and provocative debut, Machado bends genre to shape startling narratives that map the realities of women's lives and the violence visited upon their bodies.

A wife refuses her husband's entreaties to remove the green ribbon from around her neck. A woman recounts her sexual encounters as a plague slowly consumes humanity. A salesclerk in a mall makes a horrifying discovery within the seams of the store's prom dresses. One woman's surgery-induced weight loss results in an unwanted houseguest. And in the bravura novella Especially Heinous, Machado reimagines every episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, a show we naively assumed had shown it all, generating a phantasmagoric police procedural full of doppelgangers, ghosts, and girls with bells for eyes.

Earthy and otherworldly, antic and sexy, queer and caustic, comic and deadly serious, Her Body and Other Parties swings from horrific violence to the most exquisite sentiment. In their explosive originality, these stories enlarge the possibilities of contemporary fiction.

My two-bits:
Creepy twist in regards to issues women face with the body and harassment.

After the Especially Heinous story, I am curious to check out a couple episodes of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.

~*~
* monthly theme: True Crime, Hunger, Horror, Harassment

The Fact of A Body: A Murder and a Memoir by Alexandria Marzano Lesnevich

The Fact of A Body
A Murder and a Memoir
by Alexandria Marzano Lesnevich
narrated by author

Published: 2017
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Genre: Memoir, True Crime, Mystery
Hardback: 326
Rating: 5
Goodreads | Website

First sentence(s):
The boy wears sweatpants the color of a Louisiana lake.

Before Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich begins a summer job at a law firm in Louisiana, working to help defend men accused of murder, she thinks her position is clear. The child of two lawyers, she is staunchly anti-death penalty. But the moment convicted murderer Ricky Langley’s face flashes on the screen as she reviews old tapes―the moment she hears him speak of his crimes―she is overcome with the feeling of wanting him to die. Shocked by her reaction, she digs deeper and deeper into the case. Despite their vastly different circumstances, something in his story is unsettlingly, uncannily familiar.

Crime, even the darkest and most unsayable acts, can happen to any one of us. As Alexandria pores over the facts of the murder, she finds herself thrust into the complicated narrative of Ricky’s childhood. And by examining the details of Ricky’s case, she is forced to face her own story, to unearth long-buried family secrets, and reckon with a past that colors her view of Ricky's crime.

But another surprise awaits: She wasn’t the only one who saw her life in Ricky’s.

An intellectual and emotional thriller that is also a different kind of murder mystery, The Fact Of a Body is a book not only about how the story of one crime was constructed―but about how we grapple with our own personal histories. Along the way it tackles questions about the nature of forgiveness, and if a single narrative can ever really contain something as definitive as the truth. This groundbreaking, heart-stopping work, ten years in the making, shows how the law is more personal than we would like to believe―and the truth more complicated, and powerful, than we could ever imagine.

My two-bits:

Whoa! the connections and coincidences.

Along with being a mystery (of sorts), I liked reading about the growth and journey of Alexandria.

fyi: the story continues...

Ricky lost another appeal for freedom this past June. In September, it was announced the he is appealing to the U.S. Supreme Court to try to get his conviction thrown out.

~*~
* listened to the audio version

* monthly theme: True Crime, Hunger, Horror, Harassment

Happy release: What Heals the Heart by Karen A. Wyle

What Heals The Heart
by Karen A. Wyle
-Historical, Romance | Goodreads
Release date: October 15, 2019
Joshua Gibbs survived the Civil War, building on his wartime experiences to become a small town doctor. And if he wakes from nightmares more often than he would like, only his dog Major is there to know it.

Then two newcomers arrive in Cowbird Creek: Clara Brook, a plain-speaking and yet enigmatic farmer’s daughter, and Freida Blum, an elderly Jewish widow from New York. Freida knows just what Joshua needs: a bride. But it shouldn’t be Clara Brook!

Joshua tries everything he can think of to discourage Freida’s efforts, including a wager: if he can find Freida a husband, she’ll stop trying to find him a wife. Will either matchmaker succeed? Or is it Clara, a woman with her own scars, who can heal the doctor’s troubled heart?

Excerpt:

Chapter 1

Joshua Gibbs felt sun on his face and thought about opening his eyes. He decided to wait. He had some blessings to savor that wouldn’t need sight.

He was in a bed, a four-poster with a well-stuffed husk mattress, instead of in a tent on rough ground. He was in Nebraska, far from any of the towns he had passed through — or seen devastated — during the war. The sound nearest his right ear wasn’t the whistle of a shell or the wails and screams of dying men, but the soft grumbly snore of his Irish Setter. And the dog’s name might be Major (or, to give the full grandiloquent version, Reginald Phineas Major), but that was the closest to an officer he’d find for miles around.

And what Joshua smelled, when he took a slow, lazy sniff, was a mix of Major and almost-clean bed linen, and not . . . well, no need to sully a brand new morning with the memory of what he’d have smelled this time nine years ago.

But thoughts like these were not worth staying abed for. He opened his eyes and sat up, stretching out his arm and laying a hand lightly on Major’s side for the warm breathing comfort of it. Major’s eye twitched, and his tail, but that was all. A dog knew, without having to think about it, what safety meant.

Joshua levered himself out of bed. He’d shave, get dressed, and take a walk with Major before frying himself some breakfast.

As a boy, if he could have even imagined himself so old as thirty-three, he’d have assumed he’d be leaving a wife behind staying warm in bed or making breakfast, or better yet, accompanying him on his morning amble. But things change. War changes them. And solitude suited him, these days.

Swiss Vendetta by Tracee de Hahn

Swiss Vendetta
by Tracee de Hahn

Published: 2017
Publisher: Minotaur Books
Genre: Mystery, Thriller, WWII, Switzerland
Paperback: 368
Rating: 4
Goodreads
Website

Agnes Luthi Mysterie series
Swiss Vendetta
A Well-Timed Murder

First sentence(s):
"I thought you'd left."

In Tracee de Hahn's magnetic debut, Swiss police detective Agnes Luthi finds herself trapped in a chateau during the blizzard of the century when she's called out on her first homicide.

Detective Agnes Luthi, a Swiss-American police officer in Lausanne, Switzerland, has just switched over to the Violent Crimes unit from Financial Crimes in an effort to shed all reminders of her old life after her husband's death. Now, on the eve of the worst blizzard Lausanne has seen in centuries, Agnes has been called out on her very first homicide case. On the lawn of the grand Chateau Vallotton, along the edge of Lake Geneva, a young woman has been found stabbed to death. The woman worked for an art auction house in London, and had been taking inventory at the Chateau Vallotton, which is dripping in priceless works of art and historical treasures.

Agnes finds it difficult to draw answers out of anyone—the tight-lipped Swiss family living in the chateau, the servants who have been loyal to the family for generations, the aging WWII survivor who lives in the neighboring chateau, even the American history student studying at the Vallotton castle's library. As the storm rages on, roads become impassible, the power goes out around Lake Geneva, and Agnes finds herself trapped in the candlelit halls of the chateau with all the players of the mystery, out of her depth in her first murder case and still struggling to stay afloat after the death of her husband.

My two-bits:
Lots of suspects that kept me wondering and wandering until the end.

Loved roaming the chateau grounds for this mystery and discovering the secret areas.

~*~
* part of Books, Inc. Foreign Intrigue Book Club (here)

Lovely Books and Things - 10.13.19

Lovely Books and Things
My Weekly Books and Films Update
Linking up with:
Sunday Post (details)
Mailbox Monday (details)

~*~
HAPPY THINGS:

1. Listening to Bach Cello Suite 1

2. Viewing artwork online by Marta Minujin for ¡VIVA! Annual Celebration of Latino Hispanic Heritage month - Impressed with her epic Parthenon of Books in Germany and Babel Tower of books in Buenos Aires made with books!

3. Sumo Wrestling exhibition at Japan town

~*~
For Review:

The Bride of Northanger
by Diana Birchall
-Historical, Romance, Jane Austen theme
courtesy of book tour -Thanks! | Goodreads

Review posts theme for this month: I am in a dark funk and will be reading books related to True Crime, Hunger, Horror, or Harassment.


Library:

We were treated to hearing from so many wonderful authors at the 5th Filipino American International Book Festival (details)

The Dear America: Writing Filipinx Counter Narratives included moderator, Janet Mendoza Stickman and panelist authors, E.J.R. David, Janice Sapigao, Jan-Henry Gray, Juanita Tamayo Lott, Grace Talusan and Jose Antonio Vargas.

I picked up these up...

Bodies of Water
by Yves Lamson
-Folklore, Fantasy, Filipino | Goodreads

The Body Papers: A Memoir
by Grace Talusan
-Memoir, Feminism, Filipino | Goodreads

AND watched: in theatre

To Each Her Own (2018)
Director/Writer: Myriam Aziza
Writers: Olivia Jaudeau (script adaptation), Denyse Rodriguez-Tomé
Stars: Sarah Stern, Jean-Christophe Folly, Julia Piaton

-Drama, LGBTQ, France | imdb | my rating: 4
Simone plans to inform her conservative Jewish family that she's a lesbian, but as she proceeds with coming out she finds herself attracted to a man.

CURIOUS. This is one that has grey areas which is not necessarily a bad thing.

A Journey Through Genders (2019)
Director: Miyuki Tokoi
Stars: Takamasa Kobayashi
-Drama, LGBTQ, Japan | my rating: 5
24-year-old Takamasa Kobayashi has been trying to find his true gender since childhood. Born as a girl, he was one of the first students in Japan to persuade a junior high school to accept a female as a boy. At 20, he underwent surgeries so that he could legally become a man, the youngest case in Japan. But this was just the beginning. Takamasa then discovered that he is not a man either and is now searching beyond gender binaries. We followed Takamasa for 9 years on his journey through gender transformation.

Part of the Japan Film Festival 2019 (here) with a Q&A with director.

INFORMATIVE. Helpful in learning about what goes on in regards to a young person in transition.

Clemency (2019)
Director/Writer: Chinonye Chukwu
Stars: Vernee Watson, Aldis Hodge, Alfre Woodard
-Drama | imdb | my rating: 5
Years of carrying out death row executions have taken a toll on prison warden Bernadine Williams. As she prepares to execute another inmate, Bernadine must confront the psychological and emotional demons her job creates, ultimately connecting her to the man she is sanctioned to kill.

THOUGHT PROVOKING. Gave perspectives of people involved and affected by an execution.


~*~
* comment and TELL me what you have acquired for your shelves recently

Thanks for stopping by :-)

Bunny by Mona Awad

Bunny
by Mona Awad
Published: 2019
Publisher: Viking
Genre: Horror
Hardback: 307
Rating: 5
Goodreads
Website

First sentence(s):
We call them Bunnies because that is what they call each other. Seriously. Bunny.

Zombie sighting:
Where she drinks her spiked gunpowder tea and draws th eworld as a series of zombies.
-chapter 6, page 51

Samantha Heather Mackey couldn't be more of an outsider in her small, highly selective MFA program at New England's Warren University. A scholarship student who prefers the company of her dark imagination to that of most people, she is utterly repelled by the rest of her fiction writing cohort--a clique of unbearably twee rich girls who call each other "Bunny," and seem to move and speak as one.

But everything changes when Samantha receives an invitation to the Bunnies' fabled "Smut Salon," and finds herself inexplicably drawn to their front door--ditching her only friend, Ava, in the process. As Samantha plunges deeper and deeper into the Bunnies' sinister yet saccharine world, beginning to take part in the ritualistic off-campus "Workshop" where they conjure their monstrous creations, the edges of reality begin to blur. Soon, her friendships with Ava and the Bunnies will be brought into deadly collision.

The spellbinding new novel from one of our most fearless chroniclers of the female experience, Bunny is a down-the-rabbit-hole tale of loneliness and belonging, friendship and desire, and the fantastic and terrible power of the imagination.

My two-bits:
Loved how there are references and hints of fairy tales, Alice in Wonderland and Watership Down.

Appreciation for writers and their imaginations.

Plenty of creepy and snickering moments.

~*~
* monthly theme: True Crime, Hunger, Horror, Harassment

Savage Appetites by Rachel Monroe

Savage Appetites
Four True Stories of Women, Crime, and Obsession
by Rachel Monroe

Published: 2019
Publisher: Scribner
Genre: True Crime
Hardback: 272
Rating: 5
Goodreads
Website

First sentence(s):
Until a few years ago, Oxygen was a cable TV channel that targeted a young, female demographic with forgettable high-drama shows with names like Last Squad Staanding and Bad girls club.

Zombie sighting:
"We used to do zombies and vampires, but that's going nowhere. It's all true crime now."
-chapter 1, page 6

In this illuminating exploration of women, violence, and obsession, Rachel Monroe interrogates the appeal of true crime through four narratives of fixation. In the 1940s, a bored heiress began creating dollhouse crime scenes depicting murders, suicides, and accidental deaths. Known as the “Mother of Forensic Science,” she revolutionized the field of what was then called legal medicine. In the aftermath of the Manson Family murders, a young woman moved into Sharon Tate’s guesthouse and, over the next two decades, entwined herself with the Tate family. In the mid-nineties, a landscape architect in Brooklyn fell in love with a convicted murderer, the supposed ringleader of the West Memphis Three, through an intense series of letters. After they married, she devoted her life to getting him freed from death row. And in 2015, a teenager deeply involved in the online fandom for the Columbine killers planned a mass shooting of her own.

Each woman, Monroe argues, represents and identifies with a particular archetype that provides an entryway into true crime. Through these four cases, she traces the history of American crime through the growth of forensic science, the evolving role of victims, the Satanic Panic, the rise of online detectives, and the long shadow of the Columbine shooting. In a combination of personal narrative, reportage, and a sociological examination of violence and media in the twentieth and twenty-first century, Savage Appetites scrupulously explores empathy, justice, and the persistent appeal of violence.

My two-bits:
Fascinating look into five women's lives (including author) that portray different angles of the True Crime genre.

side note: Reading about Frances Lee Gessner triggered my interest in the world of miniatures.

~*~
* monthly theme: True Crime, Hunger, Horror, Harassment

Hunger by Roxane Gay

Hunger
A Memoir of (My) Body
by Roxane Gay

Published: 2017
Publisher: Harper Collins
Genre: Memoir, Feminism
Hardback: 306
Rating: 5
Goodreads
Website

First sentence(s):
Every body has a story and a history.

Zombie sighting:
The term morbid obesity frames fat people like we are the walking dead.
-chapter 4

“I ate and ate and ate in the hopes that if I made myself big, my body would be safe. I buried the girl I was because she ran into all kinds of trouble. I tried to erase every memory of her, but she is still there, somewhere. . . . I was trapped in my body, one that I barely recognized or understood, but at least I was safe.”

In her phenomenally popular essays and long-running Tumblr blog, Roxane Gay has written with intimacy and sensitivity about food and body, using her own emotional and psychological struggles as a means of exploring our shared anxieties over pleasure, consumption, appearance, and health. As a woman who describes her own body as “wildly undisciplined,” Roxane understands the tension between desire and denial, between self-comfort and self-care. In Hunger, she explores her own past—including the devastating act of violence that acted as a turning point in her young life—and brings readers along on her journey to understand and ultimately save herself.

With the bracing candor, vulnerability, and power that have made her one of the most admired writers of her generation, Roxane explores what it means to learn to take care of yourself: how to feed your hungers for delicious and satisfying food, a smaller and safer body, and a body that can love and be loved—in a time when the bigger you are, the smaller your world becomes.

My two-bits:
This memoir strongly portrays the experience of being in Roxane's body and history of it which brings about an understanding of the mind and body connection and how we are shaped.

~*~
* listened to the audio version

* monthly theme: True Crime, Hunger, Horror, Harassment

* part of Our Shared Shelf 2017 (here)

100 Times: A Memoir of Sexism by Chavisa Woods

100 Times:
A Memoir of Sexism
by Chavisa Woods

Published: 2019
Publisher: Seven Stories Press
Genre: Memoir, Short Stories, Feminism
Paperback: 231
Rating: 5
Goodreads
Website

First sentence(s):
In this book, I've cataloged one hundred formative incidents of sexist discrimination, violence, sexual harassment, assault, and attempted rape I've experienced from childhood to now, to paint a clear picture of the impact sexism has had on me throughout my life.

A catalog of one hundred incidents of sexism, harassment, and assault from age five to now by Lambda Literary Award finalist, Chavisa Woods. From gender-based discrimination in work places, to unsolicited groping from strangers in public, to the attempted assaults on herself and the assaults of close friends, Woods uses personal stories to prove that sexual violence and discrimination never just happen once, but that it is a consistent battle women and woman aligned people face every day. "All my life, when I've tried to talk to men about sexism, my main obstacle has just been trying to convince them it exists, and that it is something that actually has a deep and near constant impact on my life. When I talk to most women, though, [. . .] there is immediate understanding that the incidents we are discussing are part of an endless stream of sexist experiences."

100 Things is powerful in its straightforwardness, demonstrating how often women are forced to silently endure sexism and harassment and how men are encouraged to feel entitled to another person's space and body. Woods reveals that no age, orientation, time, or place helps prevent sexual violence and that a more in depth conversation is needed to bring it to an end.

My two-bits:
Whoa! and these are just 100 accounted for.

~*~
* monthly theme: True Crime, Hunger, Horror, Harassment

The Shape of the Ruins by Juan Gabriel Vásquez

The Shape of the Ruins
by Juan Gabriel Vásquez
translated by Anne McLean
narrated by Sheldon Romero

Published: Riverhead Books
Publisher: 2018
Genre: Historical, Political, Literary, Columbia
Hardback: 528
Rating: 4
Goodreads

First sentence(s):
The last time I saw him, Carlos Carballo was climbing with difficulty into a police van, his hands cuffed behind his back and his head hunched down between his shoulders, while a news ticker running along the bottom of the screen reported the reason for his arrest: the attempted theft of the serge suit of an assissinated politician.

Zombie sighting:
The extradition treaty between Columbia and the United States signed in 1979 by signed by Jimmy Carter and Julio César Turbay came back out into the streets like a zombie frightening the Narcos.
-part 6, chapter 3

The Shape of the Ruins is a masterly story of conspiracy, political obsession, and literary investigation. When a man is arrested at a museum for attempting to steal the bullet-ridden suit of a murdered Colombian politician, few notice. But soon this thwarted theft takes on greater meaning as it becomes a thread in a widening web of popular fixations with conspiracy theories, assassinations, and historical secrets; and it haunts those who feel that only they know the real truth behind these killings.

This novel explores the darkest moments of a country's past and brings to life the ways in which past violence shapes our present lives. A compulsive read, beautiful and profound, eerily relevant to our times and deeply personal, The Shape of the Ruins is a tour-de-force story by a master at uncovering the incisive wounds of our memories.

My two-bits:
Some history and politics of Argentina as well as assassinations in this story got me thinking of conspiracies.

side note: I ended up looking up speculations surrounding the death of Princess Diana.

~*~
* listened to the audio version

* part of Man Booker International Prize 2019 challenge (here)

* weekly theme: ¡VIVA! Annual Celebration of Latino Hispanic Heritage

Dinner by César Aira

Dinner
by César Aira
translated by Katherine Silver

Published: 2006
Publisher: New Directions Paperback
Genre: Novella, Magical Realism, Zombies, Argentina, Coronel Pringles
Paperback: 101
Rating: 4
Goodreads

First sentence(s):
My friend was home alone, but he invited us over for dinner anyway; he was a very sociable man--liked to talk and tell stories, though he wasn't any good at it; he'd get the episodes mixed up, leave effects without effects, skip over important parts, and drop anecdotes right in the middle.

Was it a nightmare―the result of a bad case of indigestion―or did something truly scary happen after dinner in the Argentine town of Coronel Pringles?

One Saturday night a bankrupt bachelor in his sixties and his mother dine with a wealthy friend. They discuss their endlessly connected neighbors. They talk about a mysterious pit that opened up one day, and the old bricklayer who sometimes walked to the cemetery to cheer himself up. Anxious to show off his valuable antiques, the host shows his guests old windup toys and takes them to admire an enormous doll. Back at home, the bachelor decides to watch some late night TV before retiring. The news quickly takes a turn for the worse as, horrified, the newscaster finds herself reporting about the dead rising from their graves, leaving the cemetery, and sucking the blood of the living―all somehow, disturbingly reminiscent of the dinner party.

My two-bits:
This quick gory zombie feast read got me thinking of the realities of living.

And, what of relationships with people?

~*~
* weekly theme: ¡VIVA! Annual Celebration of Latino Hispanic Heritage

Blog All About It: Shiver

READ:

Shiver: Selected Stories by Junji Itō
translated by Jocelyn Allen, Naomi Kokubo
edited by Masumi Washington
-Short Stories | Goodreads


Shiver sighting:

Last Ones Left Alive
by Sarah Davis-Goff
-Dystopia, Ireland | Goodreads
I shiver.
-chapter 24, page 159


WATCH:

Parasite (2019)
Gisaengchung (original title)
Director/Screenplay: Bong Joon Ho (as Joon-ho Bong)
Screenplay: Jin Won Han
Stars: Kang-ho Song, Yeo-jeong Jo, So-dam Park
-Comedy, Drama, Thriller | imdb | my review

LISTEN:

Tundra by Ola Gjeilo



~*~
* part of the Blog All About It Challenge (here)

* updated 10/28/19

Fox 8 by George Saunders

Fox 8
by George Saunders

Published: 2013
Publisher: Random House
Genre: Short Story, Fantasy
Hardback: 48
Rating: 5
Goodreads
Website

First sentence(s):
Deer Reeder: First may I say, sorry for any werds I spel rong.

A darkly comic short story, a fable about the all too real impact that we humans have on the environment

Fox 8 has always been known as the daydreamer in his pack, the one his fellow foxes regarded with a knowing snort and a roll of the eyes. That is, until Fox 8 develops a unique skill: He teaches himself to speak “Yuman” by hiding in the bushes outside a house and listening to children’s bedtime stories. The power of language fuels his abundant curiosity about people—even after “danjer” arrives in the form of a new shopping mall that cuts off his food supply, sending Fox 8 on a harrowing quest to help save his pack.

PeekAbook:

My two-bits:
Although this short tale has a whimsical vibe with fox-speak that causes chuckles, it relays serious warnings.

The illustrations are spot on.

On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong

On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous
by Ocean Vuong

Published: 2019
Publisher: Penguin Press
Genre: Literary, Poetry, LGBTQ, Asian American, Vietnamese, Connecticut
Hardback: 246
Rating: 5
Goodreads
Website

First sentence(s):
Let me begin again.

Zombie sighting:
Mai, who had driven all night from Florida, shuffled through the rooms, cooking food and making tea in a zombie-like daze.
-page 198

On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous is a letter from a son to a mother who cannot read. Written when the speaker, Little Dog, is in his late twenties, the letter unearths a family's history that began before he was born — a history whose epicenter is rooted in Vietnam — and serves as a doorway into parts of his life his mother has never known, all of it leading to an unforgettable revelation. At once a witness to the fraught yet undeniable love between a single mother and her son, it is also a brutally honest exploration of race, class, and masculinity. Asking questions central to our American moment, immersed as we are in addiction, violence, and trauma, but undergirded by compassion and tenderness, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous is as much about the power of telling one's own story as it is about the obliterating silence of not being heard.

My two-bits:
Gorgeously done in epistolary form with beautiful and moving passages filled with painful memories of the past.

~*~
* part of Books and States challenge (here): Connecticut