What I’m reading

Baby Teeth by Zoje Stage

Emotionally brutal. As I mentioned last month, the story is told from limited first person perspective from Suzette’s (mother) and Hanna’s (daughter) point of view. Seeing both sides of the story, as it were, is just emotionally devastating as you see the missed opportunities and miscommunications that lead to this family’s devastation. The story does suffer a little from the limited perspectives; I wish that we could have seen more of Alex’s thought process as he resists the idea of his daughter’s mental disturbance–especially as it becomes more profoundly disturbed–then, when he comes around to it, the mental anguish it causes him. The tick-tocking of perspectives gets a little monotonous, but I can definitely see why Stage constructed the story that way. There is a sequeal, entitled Hannah, which I’ll be picking up sometime in the near future.

I will say that it was slightly disappointing that Hannah’s baby teeth played very little part in the story.

Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett

There’s a line from Avatar: the Last Airbender that I love: Sokka says, “This is the kind of wacky, time-wasting nonsense I’ve been missing.” It’s a line that comes toward the end of the final season, which saw the characters engaging in fewer side adventures and instead saw major leaps forward in the plot and resolution of the major conflicts. It’s a line that reminded me that I was watching what was intended to be a children’s show. And it’s a line that had popped up for me when reading Good Omens.

I read mostly horror, which by and large, takes itself Seriously. Looking at the last dozen or so books I’ve read, they were not only not funny, but did not have any memorable funny moments in them. That’s mostly because there’s no wacky, time-wasting nonsense. That’s fine. But Good Omens is a great reminder that even a story about Armageddon can be written with a light-hearted flair.

It’s certainly longer than most of the books I’ve been reading. That’s important to note, because the crux of the story is the week leading up to The End. The first six days happened in the first two hundred pages or so. When we got to the Last Day, I wasn’t even halfway through the book, and I said, “They’re really going to drag this out, huh?” My wife, who had read the book before passing it to me, laughed. But the story doesn’t feel like it’s being dragged out. There’s just a fair bit of very entertaining nonsense.

Slender Man

What intrigued me about this book is something you’ve probably already noticed: it doesn’t have an attributed author. I checked the copyright page, thinking that the author just wanted their name left off the cover to build mystique. But no, it’s the full nine. Immediately, that made me think of the concept of the movie, The Number 23. If you haven’t seen it, do yourself a favor and correct that.

A lot of horror is built on the idea of the ancient invading the modern day, so I am excited to read a story built around a modern boogeyman.

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