Salisbury.Fake book review, Life

Let’s Talk About Books

I was the kid who didn’t get TV taken away when I was in trouble, I got my books taken away. I still found ways to read even when I was not supposed to. Telling me I couldn’t go outside wasn’t a problem for me, because I preferred escaping through the world of books. We didn’t live close enough for me to walk to my friends’ houses, so that wasn’t an issue for me either. My parents would have to find more creative ways to punish me for disobedience.

Books have always been my vice. When I lived with my mom for a bit and had my books in storage for over a year, the first thing I grabbed when I moved into my place was my crates of books. I add more and more to my “to read” shelves faster than I’m actually reading. Home is not home without my books.

But today we’re going to do a bit of a discussion about how brains work.

When I’m at the height of a depressive episode, I tend to shut down the parts of my brain that activate on creative stimulus. Easy distraction is how I live my life in those times, and so I watch a lot of Netflix, or I spend hours on YouTube trying to find ways to give my brain an easy way out from thinking so much about the stuff that makes my chest hurt.

The thing about that though is it becomes a habit. I struggle to focus on reading now because I got so in the habit of switching on easy media to keep my brain from spiraling. This isn’t to say I don’t read anymore, because I do, but it’s nowhere near the “read the entire Harry Potter series in five days over Spring Break” level I used to be.

I also have a full time job, and I have a home to own, so there are added responsibilities to my life I didn’t have when I could be so carefree with my time. I miss those days, though, when I could spend entire days reading a series and finishing two books in a day. I’ve considered devoting weekends to that, but then the adult part of my brain reminds me I have dishes to wash and laundry to get done. This reasoning also feels like an excuse sometimes, especially when I don’t get either the dishes or laundry done.

So, today’s post is more of a gentle reminder that it’s okay to let yourself get lost in a book every now and then. It’s okay to find your way back to the part of you that misses that feeling, whether it’s about books or some other hobby you could lose yourself to. I think breaking out of bad habits is excruciating because as we know change is something most people dig their toes into the sand over. For me, my goal is two books a month until I get my mojo back.

Small steps forward seem insignificant until you realize you’ve gone three miles.

Salisbury.Fake book review

The Invention of Murder by Judith Flanders

Anyone who knows me will be able to attest to my somewhat morbid fascination with true crime stories. I used to fall asleep to Forensic Files before Netflix did something weird with their auto play function. So, when I first came across this book, The Invention of Murder, I was pretty stoked. I’ve been interested in how modern detecting came to be, and so I hoped this book would go into that as well as go through how murder became more mainstream.

I wish I could explain how disappointing this book was to me. There’s murder, yes. But it’s sprinkled between a discussion about newspaper articles, broadsides, penny dreadfuls, melodramas/theatrical performances, and every now and then novels. I understand what Ms. Flanders was attempting to do. By showing such a vast range of media produced for the public, it showed how the Victorians became enraptured with death and crime. But all it really did was bore me.

What time was spent on discussing the actual cases was well written, and I enjoyed those parts entirely, which is why I’m even putting this book up here for review at all. It’s clear the research that went into this book was insurmountable, and I don’t envy the author such a task. I think it could have been presented differently. Especially in today’s world where everyone and their Netflix budget is producing a crime documentary. I think the book is not as timeless as it could have been because it was published in 2011, a bit before the explosion of in-depth documentary series about modern day crime. There’s a show (Murder Maps) that mentions several of the cases brought up in The Invention of Murder, something I only drew connections to because I’d just read about the case.

It is certainly an interesting look at how mass produced media and “up to the moment” reporting on trials brought murder into the forefront of crime. With the advent of detective units within police departments (something that was created later than I thought), the public could see firsthand how the investigations were going. The newspapers also presented problems if the cases weren’t progressing to the satisfaction of the editors. In that respect, I appreciate the book for thoroughly showing evidence to support the notion the Victorians were the ones who elevated crime and detection.

I think in terms of enjoyment, I hyped it up too much for myself. I started reading it in August 2020, and I finished it this last week, with reading other books between. Usually when I take so long to read a book, it’s because I want to savor it, to follow it at a leisurely pace. The same could not be said for The Invention of Murder. I think it was about 100 pages too long, and the amount of references could have been lessened and the impact would not have suffered. The back of the book blurb hints at what’s inside, but gives it more of a narrative, something that disappears in the pages of examples of articles, stories, and so on.

I feel like this sounds unduly harsh, and if it does, that’s not my intention. I think it’s important to be honest in reviews especially when a lot of the “influencer” world is based solely on promotion. (I’m not saying I’m an influencer, hah, not by any stretch of any imagination) I know I didn’t like it, but it may not be the same for other readers. In fact, by the quotes in the “praise” sections, several people did enjoy it.

All in all, I appreciate the work Judith Flanders put into this, and I appreciate the approach she took to present a timeline of how sensationalized murder came to be.

I give this book a 4/10

*******I read the 2011 Thomas Dunne Books paperback edition*******

Salisbury.Fake book review

Light by M. John Harrison

All right, first book review of the year! In all fairness, I finished this a while ago, I just haven’t taken the time to photograph it. This book is one I read on the recommendation of a former friend, and I have to say I’m not overly thrilled by it. I was excited to read it because Neil Gaiman’s got a positive review on the front cover. I have to say the ending was my favorite part. Not because it meant the book was over, but it was some of the best writing I’ve ever read. Spoilers ahead, but this book’s been out since 2002.

To be honest, I don’t know if I fully understood this book until the end. Maybe that’s how it was supposed to go, but it was very aware of itself for most of it, and I found that off-putting. It followed the trend I see in a lot of science fiction where sex is a major aspect of the book, and that is also something I find puts me off a book. I’m in no way a woman who disapproves of sex in books. I’ve written a few spicy scenes myself. But in my opinion, sex in sci-fi usually distracts from the story more than it helps. Space and science are already such vast subjects to try and condense into a workable fiction that adding in copious amounts of often violent, unnecessary scenes of lust tend to take away from the richness of the world presented.

One could argue that this kind of environment is suited for the desolate character of Ed Chianese, He’s a drifter, addicted to alternate reality tanks where he can avoid his own life. He doesn’t even have a life. He goes from place to place, witnessing murders and participating in some. He eventually joins a circus type crew and becomes a sort of fortune teller, or someone who sees the future. While his time is spent finding places to exist and having sex with people he shouldn’t, his story for me was far more compelling than that of the “main character,” Michael Kearney. Kearney is a serial killer who found a way to travel through time/space in order to do his killing. While this sounds like it should be interesting, I found myself incredibly bored with his sections of the story. He jumped from place to place, meeting up with his scientist friend, Sprake, or reuniting with his estranged wife for some uncomfortable sex in an even more uncomfortable setting. He’s forever chased by a creature called the Shrander that always seems to find him no matter where he runs. The story wraps around Kearney and Chianese, but there is one more character, Seria Mau, who comes into play. She is someone who ran away and got transformed into a ship. That is, her conscious mind did. She is forever linked to her spaceship, and throughout the course of the story, she starts to remember more and more about her life before she became who she is by the end of the story. Through each of these three main characters, the story opens up and constricts around you in such a way you don’t know it’s happening until you get devoured by it.

The way it all connects at the end is probably some of the best writing I’ve ever read, and that honestly saved this book for me. There is something intense when you realize what’s happening, and it propels you onward even though you don’t really want to stop reading because you want to stay in the decadence of the world Harrison created. There’s still no clear answer as to what the universe is about, but the way it’s all tied together makes it easy to forget you don’t get an answer.

I think if someone asked me to recommend a book, I probably would choose other sci-fi before I went with this one. It’s not bad, but it’s not my cup of coffee.

I give this book a 6.5/10.

********I read the 2007 Bantam Mass Market Paperback edition********

Salisbury.Fake writing

I Feel That: a small opinion piece on Emotive Writing

I was going to do a book review today and while I do intend to post book reviews on here eventually, I had a discussion with myself the other day while I was watching some stuff. First, I’m not an expert, so please don’t take my words as true advice. Second, it’s important to develop your own thoughts on how you approach writing. I see on writing forums the endless thread creations of “should I be a writer?” “How do I start writing?” “What makes a good writer?” And the eons of variations. Writing is so subjective. There’s no right or wrong way to do it. Not everyone is going to want to read your work, and that’s actually preferable. Then you can get a perspective from outside those who appreciate your style. It can help you grow as a writer and a person to hear from people who don’t necessarily jive with your jimmies. There are limits, of course. People end up being rude just because they can, and those people don’t matter to your growth. You are worth exploring your interests and you are capable of separating the shit from the shine.

So, that disclaimer/weird pep talk out of the way, let’s get going. I think a lot of people are faking emotion, or presenting something in a way that’s emotional without having the reality of the feeling behind it. Hold on, we’ll get to why, but let’s be real here. With the amount of distractions and the way the world is these days especially, not many people are able to tell the difference between what they’re feeling and what they think they’re feeling. If we’re not paying attention to ourselves, we can start to associate certain things with feelings instead of actually just feeling the feeling.

This might sound confusing, so let me try and go a bit further into it. Two things I came across recently for this: a video about how a singer wasn’t able to actually emote the feeling behind the lyrics of the song, and an episode of Criminal Minds from the earlier seasons. In the video with the singer, the commentator said it sounded like he was trying to make it sound emotional. “There’s something that comes across as very thought through. . .it’s about the dynamics of the singing. It just seems like he’s trying to make you feel something instead of feeling it and getting it out there with his vocals.” (Semi-quoted from this video here: https://youtu.be/ddUBW9Ms0mA link opens in a new tab) While he’s talking about a song I secretly like (don’t come at me, Justin Bieber can really sing when he puts his mind to it), he’s 100% accurate. Maybe there are some preconceived expectations of Mr. Bieber because of his history as a person, and perhaps we’re not really sold on how true this song is to him because of that. That idea is a completely different post, however, so let’s move on.

I’m not putting a spoiler warning here because Criminal Minds has been out for over 15 years and so if you haven’t seen it, that’s on you, not me. In one of the seasons, a character, Elle Greenaway, gets shot by an unsub (unknown subject–cute, yeah?) and while she’s in surgery, she sees the light at the end of the tunnel and her deceased father is waiting on the private jet to take her to heaven. It sounds like it would be an intense, emotional moment, right? But it wasn’t. Maybe it’s how the actress did her job, or maybe it was the writing of the scene, but it fell flat and pissed me off because it was forcing me into an emotional moment I didn’t believe in. This is also a pretty common trope in television series, but within the same series a few seasons later, Aaron Hotchner is in the hospital fighting a wound/scar tissue issue, and he sees his murdered wife and the guy who killed her. This was a far better use of the trope because we’d had time to learn about Hotchner and we’d had time to appreciate him.

All of this leads me to the topic today, emotive writing. I’m not talking about books that make you ugly cry, not completely, but I’m talking about writing that makes your readers feel something other than “I am here reading this book.” When I think about my favorite books, they’re designated as such because I usually had an emotional response to them. Again, not the kind that made me cry. Tana French’s In the Woods is a mystery and the entire time my anxiety built and by the end, I was ready to never set foot in woods again because of how intense the emotion was. The Green Rider series by Kristen Britain is one of my favorites because I have an emotional connection to the main character as she does her best to help keep her home safe. Through her challenges and failures, I am invested in what she does. I feel like I’m right there with her as she fights off the bad guys. Neil Gaiman plays into the part of me that still tries to be a kid full of wonder because of how imaginative his writing is. He grabs onto that and runs with it so by the end of the book, I’m ready for another adventure.

I think it’s impossible to list all the ways writers can work emotion into their stories, but the idea is it has to be genuine. It has to be real and honest. If we’re writing a death scene for a beloved character, have we really given the audience time to invest in them enough for this death to matter? Or are we playing on what we hope they’re bringing with them to the reading? This is getting a bit into some literary theory, which one day I might do a series of commentary on that, but for now, I think trying to reconnect to the characters we’re writing, the stories we’re telling, that’s what we should focus on. Yes, writing for a market is always the driving force, but even while doing that we can write for ourselves, too.

When I get too bogged down by “this plot doesn’t even exist” or “how many times has this person looked at someone with a glare” or “I’ve used these words too much in the last twelve pages,” I remind myself of this: remember why you started.

But Carla, that’s such a silly thing to think when you’re telling me to be more emotive in my writing. Is it? Why are you writing the story you’re working on, then? Is it because you got excited to tell it? You … felt … excited? Hmm? That’s a stretch, and I know it is, but there’s a level of truth to it. We write for ourselves first, and then the audience later. We’re telling stories we want to share, and if we don’t believe in them, you can sure as the wind blows bet your readers won’t either.

If you made it this far, thank you. I hope it wasn’t too disorganized and wordy. Stay safe and good luck to you and yours during the upcoming holiday season.