attempt9000

[attempt9000]

Chuck Tingle - Camp Damascus

more below - spoilers included

Starting with a disclaimer: I started this book only knowing that it had been written about our Lord and Saviour Chuck Tingle and that it had something about religion and sexuality. Now I am thankful for this because not knowing the summary made the initial part of the book more enjoyable to me, and while the summary does not spoil the plot, going in completely blind made it more fun.

The book The story takes place in the town in Neverton, which is home to the church of Kingdom of Pine and also to Camp Damascus, the church's gay conversion camp with a 100% success rate. It follows Rose Darling, a devout follower of the Kingdom of Pine, an autistic young adult a bit older than the other secular high schoolers, and someone that started noticing that another girl was pretty, saw a demon, had her parents push her to get a boyfriend out of nowhere and starting puking flies. All in all, Rose had a no good, very bad day, and little did she know it would only get worse.

Now, as someone from a very old and christian country I thought the religion aspect wouldn't be that super different, but boy was I wrong. I think that this made me think of this sort of religious living being part of this horror fantasy world, and not what for so many people would be a reminder of how they grew up and how many people live. In fact, after this I googled Chuck Tingle and he's from a ghost town that originally was the home of an utopian religious intentional community, so I suspect it's a lot more personal for him. So I'm very aware that this book hit differently to me.

The cover! I really appreciate the cover more after reading the book and I love when this happens! You have Rose projectile vomiting flies and a row of cabins that I immediately associated to Camp Damascus itself. "They'll scare you straight to hell" was also a really clever and fun pun that fits so well with the story. Also love the blue light contrasting  beautifully with the reds of the rest of the illustration. Also, could it be a reference to the camp offering penance - bringing the sinners back to the Lord's light - comparing to the red of a sinner's world?

My spoilery notes

So as mentioned above, I had a great time because I had no clue what the story was about, so I was guessing every step of the way. Loved the initial part of the book where everything just happens so much to poor Rose, and even though her family seems "perfect" it quickly becomes clear something is very off. Their reaction to her throwing up flies was not shocked and surprise like anyone would have reacted when seeing such a thing from the first time, especially from their precious only daughter. But "everything was fine. Everything was always fine". Ominous. The way they go about her getting a boyfriend is so out alarming to Rose that she wonders if it's a trap. That made me pause - why would Rose think her parents would do that in the first place? And then, Rose goes into a rabbit hole of researching the sort of flies that she threw up and her dad goes to her room to tell her it's time to close the computer and go to bed, and his reaction to her research was "Intelligence is a virtue, but curiosity is something else". This, combined with the fact that she is not allowed electronics after a certain hour and is forbidden to use social media, starts painting a concerning picture. But then Rose asks her dad to close her bedroom door as he leaves and he says "you never had a door, honey", and oooh this is when my interest skyrocketed and I started having a bunch of different theories in my head.

"It's good to be thoughtful, but when the desire for more knowledge takes over your life, what you're really saying is 'even in the presence of God's light, I am not full'. Do you understand?" Dad continues. "It's a sin, hon. That feeling you call curiosity is fine in small doses, but when you turn it into a habit it becomes gluttony. A hunger for knowledge is still hunger."

For some time I thought that Rose was being gaslighted and drugged, and that after realising she was attracted to girls that she would end up in Camp Damascus and that the bulk of the book would happen there. I was thinking that maybe the creepy lady was just a possible ghost of a previous crush/girlfriend, but when creepy lady very physically killed someone I had to rethink that. Turns out I was wrong ! It was not that Rose would end up in Camp Damascus, but that she had already been there. This also painted her parent's behaviour in a new light. They were trying their hardest to have her be "normal" since she was supposed to have been "cured" in Camp Damascus. That's why they were pushing for a boyfriend, why her use of the internet was controlled, her therapist was from the church. She was being controlled. But why didn't they react to the damn flies? Turns out that would be answered close to the end of the book! Thing is, Rose was smart, she was starting to put the pieces together and she was curious. When she realises that she had been to Camp Damascus, that she had had a girlfriend and that the weird lady she saw was actually a demon, the book takes a turn. Rose did a complete 180º when it came to Kingdom of Pine and religion as a whole, which is a very understandable reaction to finding out what they were actually doing people. This was contrasted beautifully by a friend she makes later in the book, that had also been part of Camp Damascus but his faith in God was possibly stronger than ever. It was a lovely way to see how different people react differently to the same trauma, and how both are perfectly valid. Better yet, this creates no conflict  between them, and they actually have lovely interactions about this. They also have to face the reality that for the longest time they were also part of the system. Guilt is a hard thing, and considering the memory loss that is a part of the "treatment", they can't even be sure of how much they did. The not knowing can even be harder.

"After growing up a member of the congregation, guilt is an emotional reaction I know all too well. [...] Pushing forward and following the clues has been a wonderful distraction. It's kept me from confronting my grief, but it's also kept me from confronting my regret. The more I separate myself from the villains in this web of lies, the easier it gets, but the raw truth is that I'm a huge part [...]  I was a cog in a terrible machine for years, and now I'm honored to be the monkey wrench dismantling it."

Something that I've really enjoyed was Rose trying to save things from her previous life. She started making her own very bad puns like her dad used to and she started making her very own Bible verses. Even if neither her dad nor the Bible will be part of her new life, they still had a huge part on her life. While it would be even expected to see her reject them, it was lovely to see her making them her own. So even though I enjoyed the book and liked it well enough, it didn't get the WOW factor for me. Somethings stood out to me a bit like a bit of abrupt change of genre in a way (we go from horror mystery and some parts felt like an episode of supernatural). The book is in Rose's perspective, so things like "blablabla," I inform myself" made me stop and blink for a second. There was also one passage of the book that read more like an article about Camp Damascus than a character's perspective, but hey, maybe that's how Rose does it! It just felt a bit odd to me. The main action-y and final part of the book had a section that fell a bit flat for me. So Rose and gang have been preparing to destroy what Camp Damascus is doing, and they go about it in a very action movie sort of way, but when they get to destroy the main thing Rose is not even there, so it felt very anti-climatic. Now, this wasn't the last scene so it wasn't terrible, but it felt like a lot of build-up with little payoff. There was some more fly action which answers why Rose threw some up, but then there was a more violent and gore-y moment that didn't match the rest of the book, so it was another moment that had me go "uh". The description of the last scene on the book was glorious though! I love that they were successful, and the I imagine it'd look incredible in video: Rose and Willow sharing their first kiss after reconnecting, with the fire consuming Camp Damascus illuminating the Neverton valley, and making Rose's shadow so big it covered the city below.

All in all, it was an enjoyable book and I feel like in the words of great Chuck Tingle, love is real buckaroos!

Favourite quotes "The sadness is still there, lurking in the corner like a pale demon in a red polo, just waiting to finally be acknowledged. That acknowledgement could arrive after several decades, or it could happen tonight, but the time will come. Eventually, I'll have to fully contend with the simple fact: the love I was promised was conditional." "We haven't been blessed by some incredible superpower from the great beyond, we're just curious. Sometimes that's all it takes"

[attempt9000]

Susanna Clarke - The Wood at Midwinter

Beautifully illustrated by Victoria Sawdon

click below

A nice novella to enjoy in the bath - only about 60 pages!

It's a short story with beautiful illustrations, and an afterword from Clarke where she explains where the idea came from that I really enjoyed.

So it begins with two sisters in a carriage, with 2 dogs and a pig, on their way to the woods.

One of them, Merowdis who apparently just collects pets, wants to walk in the woods alone and once this happens, the expected fantastical side to it comes through.

The animals speak to each other, and even though it wasn't very clear whether Merowdis understands them, she did hear and see what the Wood showed and told her.

Despite being so short there were to ideas that I immediately fell in love with:

spiders writing in their webs, or more like, their webs are writing. Imagine the possibilities!

the Woods and forests being a whole, including across time - FMA vibes of the one is all and all is one.

It was interesting to see how her sister called her a Saint, because of Merowdis not seeing the difference between people and animals, and because no one understands what she speaks about so of course, saint is the most obvious possible answer. She seems to be almost part of both worlds - human yet not fully like them either. Knows and communicates with Nature, but it is not one of them either. A bridge between worlds, or an attempt to it. 

She wanted a child of her own, like Virgin Mary birthing the Saviour. The Woods show her a baby bear, which she accepts as the answer to her prayers.

It ends with a description of a painting of her inside the church, sitting on a throne in her ruined victorian clothes, baby bear on her lap.

Like Clarke mentions in the afterword, a woman so focused on following the love she has to give she leaves sanity behind.

This happens in the same universe as JS&MN which kinda makes it all make sense now!

[attempt9000]

Sara Aidos - The Wall Clock

click below to read more

25th December 2024

One of the books I got for Christmas and I devoured it in one day! 

This is the first novel of this writer (and I think she’s just 20 or 21!) and I found the plot quite interesting. 

This is part of my personal challenge to read more Portuguese books, and in particular new books of different genres, instead of the more “classical literature” ones. 

For context, since most books I want to read are originally written in english, I just get the english version because I prefer to read the original text and they’re cheaper. So I won’t really be reading a lot of translations (if any, at least in the languages I know enough to read in the original), but instead want to focus on supporting national writers writing in portuguese.

Instead of the most common high fantasy books, this story happens in what looks like to be “nowadays” and it's no epic to save a kingdom or fight a dragon. Even though there is no place or year clearly defined, there are mobile phones and laptops, and I personally felt like it was roughly mid 2010s. Our main character seems to be in high school, maybe even in the 12th grade (last year), but this is also vague, and I believe for two reasons: - not relevant to the plot - school, similarly to the location of the story is vague enough that it can be imagined and adapted to happen pretty much anywhere. Even the names of the characters are not very portuguese - they’re from a couple different languages, which makes me assume it was done in a way to not have to change names in possible translations. The plot itself is interesting, and in a certain way almost more of a ‘magical realism’, with a touch of creepy I wasn’t expecting and it was a very pleasant surprise!  Our main character loves antiques and takes a beautiful wall clock home, and as the title implies, everything happens because of it. Most of the story unravels during dreams, which allows for the fantastic and magical stuff to really spread its wings, and I could almost see what I was reading as a movie in my mind. I honestly think it’d make a pretty good saturday afternoon movie! (non pejorative, I swear!) And of course, if there are dreams there are also nightmares. And it was in these scenes that there were scarier moments that I wasn’t expecting, and I really liked how they were described - things changing from one moment to the other and everything shifts and adapts and then, everything is ok. And why wouldn’t it be, it’s just dreams. Right?  It’s a character-based plot, and the MC character development drives it, so even though there were some moments that had me go “uuh really?” it was all part of it. Well, not everything, there were still some things that had me ?? but what doesn’t. But of course, the best character was the cat, precisely because it is a cat, and temporarily, a catboy.

In general, I enjoyed it and thought it was a solid 4 stars! I think it’s great that we’re starting to have this type of fantasy from national authors, and I hope to see more of them in the coming months and years! 

[attempt9000]

John Green - The Anthropocene Reviewed

click below to read more

24th December 2024

Finally, a non-fiction book I managed to finish this year. Kudos to me.

Despite having known about John Green for well over a decade - vlogbrothers, then tumblr, then the movies and the tumblr drama - this was actually the first book of his I have ever read.

I think that being used to watching his videos and this being a collection of reviews made this book feel familiar despite the novelty.

Inspired by his job at Booklist writing 175 word reviews, I wanted to try the same, failed miserably and then just gave up.

This non-fiction book was written in 2021, still in the throes of the COVID-19 pandemic, possibly during one of the confinements. In the distant 2024 - almost 2025 - those months feel like a nightmarish dream so many are eager to swipe under the rug, but reading past John Green’s thoughts and fears brought everything back to the limelight. I loved the review format, and even though each started as personal stories he managed to tie them to more universal experiences where in each review there was something different to think about or appreciate.  It’s a book about us, as humans. What we do to ourselves, and to Earth. From our meanest and more violent, to the more loving and artistic. From the purely individual to the humans as a community. And the fact this sort of experience can start by reviewing the theme song of Liverpool FC is pretty funny to me. I never knew what to expect chapter to chapter, and it was always interesting to see how each review would unfold.  The chapter on the Halley’s Comet has completely changed the way I look at time, while the one on “Three Farmers on Their Way to a Dance” made me fall into deep existential thought right before I had to go help with the Christmas Eve dinner, which was admittedly not the best timing.  John mentions at some point that maybe there are a lot of quotes in the book - there are, but I appreciate them. Loads of authors and books that I will now look for! Lots of quotes I highlighted as well!   Overall a book I really enjoyed and that I see myself re-reading every once in a while, especially some specific favourite chapters.

Favourite Quotes

"It can sometimes feel like loving the beauty that surrounds us is somehow disrespectful to the many horrors that also surround us. But mostly, I think I'm just scared that if I show the world my belly, it will devour me. And so I wear the armor of cynicism, and hide behind the great walls of irony, and only glimpse beauty with my back turned to it, through the Claude glass." in "Sunsets"

"You can't see the future coming - not the terrors, for sure, but you also can't see the wonders that are coming, the moments of light-soaked joy that await each of us." in "Jerzy Dudek's Performance on May 25, 2005

"Through art, paradoxes of consciousness resolve for me. I see what I will never see. I know what I will never know. And I survive what I will not survive" in "The Orbital Sunrise"