Book Backlog

[essentialsaltes]

 Given the cruise, I'm a bit behind (and getting behinder)

After Dark, Haruki Murakami

Naturally, there's some stylish choices, but ultimately this tale of the wee hours fails on a couple points, mainly due to authorial cheating. We're given a tense set-up, and the resolution is just a deflating rabbit out of a hat rather than a release of tension. Similarly, the whole novel just ends. I can't even add an adverb to that. It stops.
 

Mexican Gothic, Silvia Moreno-Garcia

Gothic romance/horror is full of tropes and this (naturally) hits them. But I appreciated the phantasmagorical sense of our protagonist getting unsettled by the mansion and getting to doubt her senses. If our heroine were just slightly less competent, she'd share the fate of her cousin she's come to rescue.



 

The Future was Now, Chris Nashawaty

A non-fiction look at the origin stories and making of 8 classic science fiction(*) films that blasted into theaters in a short summer span in 1982. Nicely follows the threads of writers, directors, producers as they move from recent projects into the featured ones. Probably only of great interest to people (like me) who were sentient and movie-going in 1982 -- of the 8 films, I own 5 on disc. For the record, the 8 films are Blade Runner, Tron, ET, Poltergeist, Wrath of Khan, The Thing, Mad Max, and Conan [*definitely not!]. I fear Nashawaty's right about the ultimate effect of summer blockbusters on the industry:

 

By the dawn of the ’90s (continuing right up till the time this book is being written), what should have been a new golden age of sci-fi and fantasy cinema became a pop-culture beast that would devour itself to death and infantilize its audience in the process. Four-plus decades ago, we were entertained, enthralled, and enlightened. 

Now we get a firehose of MCU and unnecessary Ghostbusters-flavored or IntellectualProperty-flavored content.

 

Ladylord, Sasha Miller

Fantasy set in a vaguely Japanese milieu, where a daughter is declared the heir (and son) to one of the 5 kingdoms. She has to prove herself to the Big Cheese by cutting down the tallest tree in the forest with a herring. It starts a little ham-fisted, and ends in an absurdly abrupt courtroom scene, but the middle of the book has lots of nice scheming and political machinations that's mostly separate from the protagonist's far less interesting quest. Goes slightly too far out of its way to be spicy sexy.

The Guncle, Steven Rowley

An intoxicated cruise guest pressed this into our hands when he saw us reading quietly in a space on the ship. I vaguely remember seeing a favorable review, so why not? It owes a lot to Auntie Mame. I mean a LOT; it's practically a modern retelling. It doesn't quite absolve it of its lack of originality, but it does clearly make this debt explicit. Rather than an aunt 'inheriting' a nephew to raise, we have the gay uncle inheriting his brother's kids after their mother dies (and the brother goes into rehab). A good job of touching on both the humor and tragedy/humanity of the situation. Some truly funny moments.