underthemoonbooks

[underthemoonbooks]

Haunted Massachusetts: Ghosts and Strange Phenomena of the Bay State by Cheri Revai

3/5 ☆

108 pg.

Here I am with a read that’s extremely characteristic of my tastes. Anyone who knows me knows I love spooky stuff, so I figured this would be a fun, light read. I was mostly right in that aspect. For only being about a hundred pages in length, this book is jam-packed with stories of the strange and unusual from my home state. These stories, however, are more so brief vignettes or summaries of individual cases than anything else. While none of the stories were incredibly detailed, I still found this to be an enjoyable read. Points deducted for how Revai chose to write about indigenous people and stories.

[underthemoonbooks]

Check, Please! (Book 1: #Hockey) by Ngozi Ukazu

4/5 ☆

240 pg.

Oh my gosh, where do I even start with this one? I absolutely devoured Check, Please! and completely fell in love with Bitty and his friends on the Samwell men’s hockey team. This graphic novel is sweet, oftentimes silly, and most of all, heartwarming. Each character in Check, Please! has an undeniable personality, and that shines through in Ukazu’s art style and capability for writing great dialogue.

There is a plot here, but it’s rather loose, and at times, the story feels rather disjointed going from chapter to chapter. This might be explained by the fact that Check, Please! was originally published as a serial webcomic right here on Tumblr. Even despite these things, however, Check, Please! is still an incredible graphic novel, one filled to the brim with instances of both wholesome friendships and queer joy. I can’t wait to dig into book two.

[underthemoonbooks]

Tender is the Flesh by Agustina Bazterrica

5/5 ☆

209 pg.

It took me a while to gather my thoughts on this one, and even longer to get through it, despite it being somewhat of a short read. In brief, this book absolutely devastated me. The process of reading it was incredibly difficult, not only because of how horrifying its contents are, but also because of how completely emotionally destructive it is.

Tender is the Flesh is a dystopian horror novel by Argentinian author Agustina Bazterrica. It presents a society in which all animals have been infected with a virus, thus making them inedible to humans. The government’s solution is, to them, simple: breed other humans (referred to deceitfully as “special meat”) for consumption instead. Our main character, Marcos, works at one of the plants responsible for processing human meat, and is all the while reeling from the many tragedies in his personal life. While not giving too much away, the gore and the sorrow in this book are both unforgiving in equal measure.

Tender is the Flesh also serves as potent social commentary, seeming to critique both the corporatized meat industry and late-stage capitalism at once, topics likewise taken on in Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle. But, make no mistake: this is an entirely different novel, to quite a visceral degree (and for those of you who have read The Jungle, you’ll know that’s really saying something). 

Tender is the Flesh both disgusted me and engrossed me. It’s a novel that’s incredibly bleak, but somehow still beautifully written. Tread carefully, however, if you choose to read it.

Content warnings for gore, violence, body horror, animal cruelty, sexual assault, discussion of trauma, and family death/loss.

[underthemoonbooks]

From Here to Eternity: Traveling the World to Find the Good Death by Caitlin Doughty

5/5 ☆

236 pg.

Anybody who knows me well enough knows that I absolutely adore the work of Caitlin Doughty (AKA YouTube’s “Ask a Mortician”). Doughty’s written a few books, but I chose this one specifically to be the first one I would dive into - learning more about the world’s various death rituals and funerary rites sounded entirely fascinating.

In the book’s epilogue, Doughty describes many of us Westerners as possessing “death avoidance”: and who can blame us? From the taboo nature of death in mainstream American culture to the corporate sheen of the American funeral industry, many of us have become accustomed to having a firm layer placed between us, the living, and the death that’s inevitably a part of all of our lives. But, as Doughty argues, “holding space” for ourselves as mourners and for our dead helps significantly with the healing process, and each of the book’s carefully written chapters proves that. From Colorado’s open-air pyre to Bolivia’s Fiesta de las Ñatitas, the living are allowed to hold space not only for their departed loved ones, but for themselves as grievers, too.

This was lovingly written and easily one of the most impactful nonfiction books I’ve ever read.

[underthemoonbooks]

Rosa Parks: My Story by Rosa Parks with Jim Haskins

4/5 ☆

188 pg.

This, as the title indicates, is an autobiography by Civil Rights icon Rosa Parks. Spanning from her childhood in Pine Level, Alabama to the later years of her life, Parks’ autobiography is a hard-hitting and vital read.

Her refusal to give up her seat in a segregated Montgomery bus in 1955 is of course one of the book’s most salient points, but equally important is the detailing of her activism PRIOR to this event. While this incident is what most associate with Rosa Parks, she was already seasoned in Civil Rights organizing by the time this had happened, having served as secretary of the Montgomery chapter of the NAACP. That work continued into her old age, too, post-Montgomery Bus Boycott. From girlhood on, Parks possessed a strong sense of justice - in her own words:

“People always say that I didn’t give up my seat because I was tired, but that isn’t true... No, the only tired I was, was tired of giving in.” (pg. 116)

This is a great (and crucial) autobiography by an incredible woman. A must-read!