Book Review: "The Woman They Could Not Silence: One Woman Her Incredible Fight for Freedom, and the Men Who Tried to Make Her Disappear" by Kate Moore

Shout out to my friend Maggie who gave me this great book for my birthday this year! If Kate Moore sounds familiar its because she wrote the incredibly popular "Radium Girls" and Maggie and I actually went to an author event with her a few years ago where she talked about it and she was lovely and nice and it was such a fun night. 

So this is the true story of a woman named Elizabeth Packard. It's 1860 and Elizabeth is married to her husband and they have a small family. Her husband is a preacher who is slowly growing more and more resentful of his vibrant wife. She speaks up in Bible class, has opinions of her own, asks questions, and is overall more liked then her husband. He tries to silence her several times but eventually, with the help of some conspirators (several of whom Elizabeth counted as friends) she is imprisoned in the Illinois State Hospital in Jacksonville, Illinois. It was ASTONISHINGLY easy to get your wife thrown into an institution during this time. (Actually it was much harder to get a single person institutionalized because women were considered...property of their husbands).

 Here's a quote from Elizabeth about some of her fellow inmates:

"It was a matter of great surprise to me to find so many, who, like themselves, had never shown any sign of insanity...the asylum was a storage unit for unsatisfactory wives, put here to get rid of them". 

At first Elizabeth is put on a ward with a lot of freedom and other women in similiar situations to her - not actually insane, just troublesome for their families for whatever reason. But when she beings to butt heads with the head doctor, as a punishment, she is sent to a dark, unsanitary ward filled with women who do actually need mental help, many of whom who are violent. Elizabeth made it her mission to help these women (like, helping to bathe them once every 3 weeks instead of....never). This is the start of a lifetime commitment to helping women imprisoned unjustly like her, and other minority groups. 

This was a thick book, but read really quickly. Was it a bit of disheartening read at time? Oh my gosh yes. But ultimately uplifting as we get to see Elizabeth work towards the betterment of others!

 

Spooky Movie Wrap Up

Hi everyone! Now that it's the end of November, time to wrap up my October activity, haha. 

New to me movies/shows:

Suspiria - As I said in my previous post I went with the new Suspiria because I was intrigued by the setting and cast. It was really interesting, the acting was great, there was a lot of unsettling weird stuff. But it kept me super intrigued the whole time. I love the dance studio setting - I love a crumbling art deco building. Also, there's some subtitles in the movie and when they are speaking German the text is red and when they are speaking French it's blue. Which I just adore for some reason.

Squid Game - Everyone and their mom is talking about this show, so I won't go on any more about it. I like a horror movie that involves people having to take deep looks into themselves and figure out how they would react in a certain situation, that's why this one works for me!

The Cube - Want a thriller/horror movie that relies heavily on math? The Cube is for you! The Cube walked so Saw could run. A group of strangers suddenly awaken in a series of booby-trapped rooms and they try to figure out why and if there's anything that they can do to survive and get out. 

In The Earth - I was intrigued by this one because of the director's horror credentials and the fact that it was written and shot in an incredibly short period of time. It feels real relevant, and it's because it was written JUST at the beginning of the panini. I thought it was fine! Not amazing but entertaining enough.

Repeat favorites:

The Fog - I love me The Fog. I think the first like, 15 minutes is just so perfectly done. Just classic 80's John Carpenter.

Poltergeist - My favorite fact about Poltergeist is that it's directed by Tobe Hooper...who also directed Texas Chainsaw Massacre. I feel like Poltergeist is just a spooky, fun little romp and Texas Chainsaw Massacre is just...terrifying. Tobe has range!

Spooky Movies for October

 Fall is upon us which means - sweaters! scarves! even more spooky movies!

I, despite being a total wuss, do love a good horror movie so I am making myself a list of horror movies that I haven't seen to view during the month of October. I am keeping the list small, I know there's 31 days in October but I just don't have that sort of time. Also I'm pretty sure that would give me nightmares.

Suspiria (the new one) - I can't resist Tilda Swintron or post-WWII/divided Berlin.

Coraline - I read the book a long time ago but everyone says how spooky this movie is, even though it's for kids.

Mothman Prophecies - one of my former bosses said that this movie still scares the shit out of her, and the cast is kind of bizarre (Richard Gere?) so I'm intrigued. 

Paranormal Activity - My dear cousin Amanda suggested this one and since it kicked off a whole new subgenre of horror movies I think it's worth including!

Something by Dario Argento - one of the guys in my favorite movie reviewing YouTube channel (Red Letter Media) loves him some Dario Argento and so I'll pick one of his to get started on. I could do Suspiria, a double feature. 

Amityville Horror - my friend Sally's husband recommended this one for me. I've never seen it somehow. I think Im going to go classic version, though the remake is tempting because it involves Ryan Reynolds. 

They Live - I love me some John Carpenter (The Thing is top 5 of my favorite movies ever) but this is a classic of his that I've never seen.

Graphic Novel Series Review: "The Last Man" by Brian Vaughan, Pia Guerra, Goran Sudzuka and Jose Marzan Jr

A couple of weeks ago I was watching tv and an ad came up for a new show called "The Last Man" and they were like "based on the acclaimed graphic novel". The show looked interesting (a plague wipes out every man (?) in the world except  for Yorick, a smart but lazy loser with his pet monkey Ampersand. I. being myself, was like well if I'm interested in this and I'm too impatient to wait for the show to come out looks like I will have to read the graphic novels instead so I know what happens! And I did. I love a good graphic novel series that isn't superhero related (no offense superheroes, just not my favorite form for you) and I hadn't had a good GN readathon in awhile so I was excited to get at these. The confusing thing about GN sometime is that they come in different editions and issues, my library had the whole series in 10 books, so that's what I read. It worked out well!

So, Yorick, our loveable loser and his (male) monkey Ampersand survive a plague that wipes out every male animal and human on the planet. I really like this concept because of it's far reaching implications, many of which are addressed in the novels. Like think of al of the industries that the men outnumber their female coworkers (government, airline pilots, shipping, oil production, military, etc etc). Yorick's mom is a senator who suddenly finds herself as the President because of the line of succession. She sends Yorick away with Agent 355, a mysterious Secret Service agent, to get him to a famous doctor who may be able to find the secret to Yorick's survival. Yorick agrees to go along with 355 but the whole time is mostly just concerned with trying to find Beth, his anthropology student girlfriend who was in the outback of Australia for school when the plague hit.

The novels take place over a series of 3 or 4 years as Yorick, 355 and a cast of other characters make their way across the US and then the world in search of Beth and the answer to Ampersand and Yorick's survival. There are Amazons (an angry, violent group of women who pillage and murder and burn down sperm banks), the Israeli army, Yorick's super angry sister Hero, drug runners, submariners, rogue agents and more. 

I really enjoyed this series. All of our main characters were inherently flawed but good and cared for each other in a realistic way. It felt like the stakes were high and they weren't afraid to put our characters in danger. I will be tuning in to the tv show when it starts this month!

What I've been reading - Poetry, Mythology, and WWII spying, oh my?

 "Wild Embers - Poems of rebellion, fire and beauty" by Nikita Gill. I have struggled since forever to find poetry that speaks to me, I just feel like I should have poets or poems that I like and I've not been able to find a collection or poet that really speaks to me. Enter Nikita Gil. A poet I found on, wait for it, Instagram. Super short, powerful, feminist poems lend themselves easily to Instagram. I was not even through this short book when I was on my library website ordering her other books and hoping online to buy copies of this book for all of my friends that are having summer birthdays. Love love love. 

Also by Nikita Gill "Great Goddesses: Life Lessons from Myths and Monsters". Lovely lyrical prose and short poems about some familiar (Medusa, Hera, Aphrodite) and some less familiar, along with some personal favorites (Persephone, Hecate) from the lore of Greek and Roman mythology. Mythology doesn't always value women (looking at you, Zeus, you horrible thing) but this book elevates these women and goddesses and tells their stories which so often get swept aside. Also, loved loved loved.

"Transcription" by Kate Atkinson. If the name Kate Atkinson sounds familiar it's because she wrote the INCREDIBLY popular book "Life After Life". I was picking up some library holds and walked past an endcap and saw this book and thought I'd give it a shot. It follows a woman named Juliet Armstrong throughout 3 different time periods - 1940, 1950, 1981. Juliet gets pulled into the world of domestic spying with a mysterious boss, a dog that is being held as ransom, and some home-grown Nazis who are making plans if the Nazis to succeed in crossing the channel. I thought one of the most interesting things about this book was the 1950 setting, you don't hear much about Britain immediately after the end of the war and what the adjustment out of wartime feels like. 

"The Deep" by Rivers Solomon. I heard the premise of this book and was immediately drawn in - it was interesting to me that you could take such a heartwrenching idea (pregnant female to-be-slaves were thrown over the sides of ships that were transporting them from their countries) and turn into something mystical and ethereal (like the babies from these women survived their attempted murders and became sea creatures who have the memories of their ancestors. It has some decidedly Giver vibes. And it's a short story so it's a super fast read! 

"What Should Be Wild" by Julia Fine. A little girl grows up isolated in a crumbling old estate with her dad. They are isolated because anything alive that she touches will die or anything dead that she touches comes back to life. Which you know is problematic but then the more I thought about it the worse it got - uh wooden spoons coming to life? Leather car seats? Eeeeeek. The story is a little convoluted - family curse, something evil in the woods, alternate universe things, CW for torture. Kinda felt like it wasn't as interesting as I wanted it to be, but it has potential. 

Book review: "Exterminate All the Brutes: One Man's Odyssey Into the Heart of Darkness and the Origins of European Genocide" by Sven Lindquist

 I know, I'm coming in hot with the feel good book review. But you can't be that surprised right?

I picked up this book because I was watching the HBO "hybrid docuseries" (whatever that means) of the same name. The HBO program was so well done and interesting and even though it's 4 hour long episodes long I've rewatched it several times. The book is one of three works that they base the series off of. The whole program is about basically, genocide. It covers a lot of areas - Native Americans and the establishment of the United States, the terrifying colonial takeovers in Africa, more modern acts of genocide like the Holocaust, Rwanda and the Balkans and slavery all around the world. It is heavy material but I learned so much and it was really beautifully and artistically done. Also, my boy Josh Hartnett is in some of the recreations (which are not cheesy). Anyway, if you have HBO I'd truly recommend it.

Okay, on to the book!

I love the opening sentences: "You already know enough. So do I. It is not the knowledge we lack. What is missing is the courage to understand what we know and to draw conclusions." Ah yes, the scary part - self reflection and change.

So Sven's book focuses on Africa. It's kind of a historical reflection and interspersed with it is his own travels through Africa as a writer - but it's far more historical reflection than travelogue. (Though it's funny to hear him talking about lugging a wordprocessor and tons of floppy disks (amazing! so convenient!) through Africa on buses through the dessert. Another touch point that he uses is the book Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad. Joseph Conrad was ahead of his time when it came to writing stories that DIDN'T glamorize the British colonial era (looking at you Kipling). There were some real life Kurtz figures in history and he talks about them.

It can't be overstated how much the Africans were viewed as non-humans. An example of this in the book is that there was a certain type of bullet that was prohibited in warfare between "civilized states". It could only be used for big game hunting and colonial wars. No shooting other white folks with it but if you want to shoot a lion or an African, fair game. The bullets were designed to break into pieces which lead to infection and festering. If the initial shot didn't kill you immediately it would eventually. 

This book was also the first time that I had heard of the Guanche people. They were the "first people to be destroyed by European expansion".  They were of African origin but lived on what we now call the Canary Islands. There were about 80,000 of them. Then in 1478 Christopher Columbus' patron sent an expedition with guns and horses to the island. By 1483 there were only about 2,000 left. Mostly women, children and the elderly. Almost complete extinction of a people in less than 5 years.

Here's an interesting quote: "(at the time of Columbus' arrival) many scholar's believe that there was roughly an equal number of people in Europe as in America....during the following 300 years the population of the world increased by 250%. Europe's increased fast by around 450% - 500%. The original population of America fell by 90%".

Book Review: "Ariadne: A Novel" by Jennifer Saint

I must have been on a mythology kick after reading Nikita Gill's book because I found myself drawn to the book that I am reviewing today. I remember parts of this story from the wonderful Myths and Legends podcast that I listen to frequently but this book expanded on the story and told the story not from the prospective of our hero ("hero" is in hard bunny ears quotes, per the usual when it comes to a lot of men/half men half gods in mythology) but from the perspective of our two main female characters - Ariadne and Phaedra.

Ariadne and Phaedra are sisters, and daughters of the terrible King Minos of Crete. If you dig deep into your knowledge of Crete you may remember it as the home of the Minotaur. Through a terrible agreement between King Minos and the government of Athens, 6 Athenian youths (6 of each gender) were sacrificed every year to the terrible Minotaur who was trapped in a impenetrable labyrinth beneath the palace. The Minotaur is the half brother of the princess because, well, gods and goddesses are jealous and terrible and petty and these things happen. (Also if you're like "Why does the name Ariadne sound familiar?" I would say "Hell, good memory - it's the name of Elliot Page's character in Inception - you know the girl who designs the mazes and levels. GOOD CALLBACK CHRISTOPHER NOLAN. I SEE YOU).

Theseus is a prince of Athens who has taken the place of one of the condemned youths and Ariadne is instantly smitten by this man who has made this sacrifice and his steady, calm nature. She finds him in his prison cell the night before the human sacrifices are to be pushed into the pitch blackness that is the labyrinth so that they can get hunted and eaten by the beast. He woos her and she agrees to help him and he promises to whisk her away from her privileged but terrible life in Crete to be his bride in Athens. Ariadne insists that her little sister comes with her and Theseus agrees - they work out an escape plan, from the labyrinth and then from Crete where they all go to Athens and live happily ever after.

It...all very nearly goes to plan. Kinda sorta.

The main thing that I liked about this book is that we get to hear from the women in these stories, usually the women are just the props used by the gods/men in these sorts of stories and they are not much more than "oh wow, yeah it's too bad the gods are awful and petty". It also is told in rotating chapters between the two sisters. It started really strong but then kind of petered out for me towards the end. However, it was a fast read and held my interest most of the time. If you are a fan of mythology this would be a good one to pick up!

What I've been reading...

 F*ck Feelings: One Shrink's Practical Advice for Managing All of Life's Practical Problems by Michael Bennett and Sarah Bennett. Funny name, serious topic. Here's what I liked the most about this book, in each of the different chapters (f*ck communication, f*ck parenting, f*ck assholes) they talk about the things that we FEEL like we should be able to control about the topic and then what we ACTUALLY can control. We think that we have far more control over circumstances than what we do. Then after you get on the same page of what we can actually control we can be more realistic about what we can expect from ourselves and other people. Like "stop letting hurt feelings and anger control your decisions". So much easier said than done, right? A quote that I really liked from the titular "f*ck feelings" chapter was : "if some people don't want peace, stay out of the way of the bullets". Like, for real. Some people just want to watch the world burn.

The Dangers of Smoking in Bed: Stories by Mariana Enriquez. This author also wrote the amazing "The Things We Lost in the Fire" so I was thrilled that this, just her second work, was a another book of super creepy, kind of south american gothic horror. (If you were left cold by the very popular this past year "Mexican Gothic" and were looking for something a little more mature and scary I highly recommend this collection.) I had to make myself slow down and savor these stories, I was so excited I wanted to read through them as fast as I could because I couldn't wait to see what was next!

Murder in Amsterdam by Ian Buruma. I was excited to read this book on vacation but ended up feeling very meh about it. What I was hoping for was "Man, the Netherlands is a country made of a lot of immigrants which makes for some tension and weirdness especially after this murder so let's talk about the tension in a super progressive country that still has some old prejudices that it struggles with". But it was more like "Let's talk about these 3 specific politicians in depth and how they are liberal/conservative/antiMuslim/proimmigration whatever". So, wasn't quite what I was hoping for. I did learn some fun Dutch words though, which is always a plus.

Deacon King Kong by James McBride. My boss mentioned that while she was waiting for her first grandbaby to be born that she read this book and really liked it. She was really excited about it and said I should read it so I said I would pick it up (can you tell I'm a recovering people pleaser? And I really like my boss?) so I did. I tend to avoid the big famous book club book choices (they get so much publicity, they don't also need me to read it) and this was one of Oprah's so about as big as it gets - but it wasn't a book I would have picked up on my own so that's always a benefit. It was a pretty fast read, I found myself getting a little bored and had the big plot twist figured out pretty early but the characters were varied and interesting and there's 2 little background love stories that I really found myself cheering for their success. Hopefully my boss and I chat about it soon so I didn't read it "for no reason" haha.

Milwaukee Film Fest Viewing Part 2

Here's Part 2! (We also watched a couple of different short collections but those would be hard to review so, I'll just say that we did it!)

Coming Home in the Dark

This movie felt very up my alley until I started hearing a lot of people say how INCREDIBLY violent it was and then I got scared. We watched it anyway. It was violent, and a lot of people die but the violence is not shown very close up, so I thought it was fine. But just be aware going into it. Interesting, complex characters, great scenery, very tense and claustrophobic. I liked it. 

MKE Film description: Hoaggie and his family are having a delightful trip in the stunning New Zealand wilderness when they're approached by two mysterious strangers. It quickly becomes apparent this duo has malicious intent. While Hoaggie claims to have no idea why, he has a sneaking suspicion that his unsavory past has come back to haunt him. The brutality and terror that unfolds will have you second guessing that summer road trip you have planned.

Night of the Kings

I don't ever want to go to prison. Especially a prison where the guards don't even fake do anything to keep you safe. This was a really like, artistic, lovely kind of film considering it was in a prison and people def died during the movie. There was a beautiful, graceful, creativeness through it. I know it has been a favorite of many during the fest.

MKE Film description: La Maca is a prison in Côte d'Ivoire run by its prisoners. When a newcomer arrives on the night of the red moon rising, he is entered into a storytelling ritual to become the new king of the prison, known as the "Roman." Rolling Stone calls it "a film steeped in myth and ritual, besotted with secrets, history, and imagination -- with a clear eye on the Ivory Coast's politics."

The Djinn - Like all good creature/horror movies, this movie wasn't actually about the horror of the creature but consequences of ours and the peoples around us actions, and sometimes getting exactly what you wish for. 

I love an indie creature horror movie because I'm always interested in how they are going to make for a good creature on a smaller budget and this movie didn't dissapoint in that way. There's a lot of whipsy/smokeyness to it which looked good and thats all I will say because I don't want to give too much away. The movie started very strong, and got a little weaker throughout but not by much. 

The ending was great but the only thing that irritated me about it was at the height of the suspense at the end they did a flashback and were like SEE, SEE WE'VE BEEN FORESHADOWING ALL THIS STUFF THE WHOLE TIME. DIDYA CATCH IT? And like, yeah I get it but having it shoved in your face at the end while you're in the moment kinda made it lose some momentum. Great acting, loved the dad part which felt like it was perfectly written for Richard Jenkins, but was lovingly performed by the actor cast. A very capable, introspective little horror movie. 

MKE Film description: Dylan and his dad have just moved to start a new life after the tragic loss of his mother. Dylan finds a mysterious book in a closet and reads about the Djinn, a magical beast that can grant wishes. Dylan is mute, so he wishes for a voice, but he fails to realize that he has to survive the night at the mercy of the monster.

Mischa and the wolves

I mean, it's pretty obvious from the description that Misha is not all that she says she is, but the story is more than that. Misha's whole, truthful story is (I think) even more compelling than her famous memoir. Of the two WWII related documentaries that I watched this film fest I liked this one the best.

MKE Film description: Misha Defonseca's story sounds too good to be true - an orphan escaping the Holocaust by hiding in the woods and living amongst wolves - but Misha inspires all she encounters. When her memoir's publisher starts to peel back one corner of this narrative, however, it turns into a detective story with twists and turns you'll never see coming. Hobkinson's film ultimately asks us to examine truth, belief, and trauma in the most tangled of stories.

Some Kind of Heaven

I watched this movie actually in Florida and I was like, well, I don't want to be in the same state as some of these people. The Villages would be a prime location for a horror movie, and I can't stop thinking about how I want to write it, haha. I'll add it on my list of things to write. The four residents (well one interloper and 3 residents) were very interesting personalities and showed, I think, some common situations in this weird, Truman Show, overly manicured existence. 

MKE Film description: The Villages, located in central Florida, is the world's largest retirement community, home to more than 130,000. Following four residents who struggle to find their place in the extreme homogenized culture, this character study delves into the whimsy, banality, and bizarreness of life when you have nothing to do and all day to do it. With gorgeous cinematography, Oppenheim plays up both the serene and surreal images found in this "Disneyworld for retirees".

Tiny Tim: King for a Day

This was the "Super Secret Members Only Screening". The group that watches these movies together are between 26-36 years of age, so the only way that anyone had heard of Tiny Tim was the 26 year old who had heard him on...Spongebob Squarepants. Honestly, a little terrifying. A man who sings in a soprano voice, who plays the ukulele and looks like this.  I didn't know what to really make of this one to be honest. But, I do love me a weird documentary.

Milwaukee Film Fest 2021 Views (Part 1 - I was deep into documentaries this first week)

My favorite time of the year is happening, Milwaukee Film Festival. Again this year it was virtual and this year I purchased the Festival Pass (watch all the movies you want during Film Fest for $75, duh, yes and yes) so I was able to see a LOT of movies this year. I broke my reviews down into multiple posts, chronological by when I viewed them. The film festival goes until the 20th, so if there is something on the list that you like, act fast you might be able to see them!

 The Dry: This wasn't originally on my list of things to see but then I heard someone mention that it was based on a book and I was like "Hold on.....I think I read that book". And I did. If you (for instance) live with someone who is not into indie or weird movies and just want a straight forward, main stream thriller this is a perfectly good choice. I like Eric Bana. It was good to see him. Also, middle of nowhere Australia, hard no thanks. 

MKE Film Description: Based on the best-selling novel of the same name, THE DRY follows Aaron Falk (Eric Bana) as he returns home for the funeral of a friend. The small town is reeling from what looks like a murder suicide, but Aaron employs his detective skills to find out what really happened. Haunted by another mysterious death from his youth, Aaron has to reconcile his present with his past as he is confronted with suspects around every corner.

MC Escher: Journey to Infinity: This movie was a disappointment for me. The pull for this movie was that it was a documentary told in the artist own words, and I was like oh that will be interesting. But that was only the case for like...60% of the movie? And the VO actor was Stephen Fry, who I don't have a problem with but I think that he was the wrong choice for this role. The best part of the movie was the credits because thats when they were actually like "hey, every pop culture reference to this fella? Here it is". Inception, Labyrinth, The Simpsons, The Rolling Stones, he is everywhere!

MKE Film description: Featuring the Dutch graphic artist's own words (narrated by Stephen Fry), this illuminating documentary explores his well-known works through a less-well-known lens. Using animation to help us see these pieces again in a new way, audiences are asked to consider anew the celebrity of Escher, layered here with the philosophical power and profundity of his scientific thinking and biographical details that inform his worldview

25 Weeks: A Wisconsin Pizza Harvest: A hour long, short, sweet profile of a farmer who specializes in growing old fashioned wheat the old fashioned way here in Wisconsin. He grows wheat because he loves pizza and you need wheat for pizza. A great part of this movie was his cute little donkeys!

MKE Film description: Watch as farmer, filmmaker, and general Renaissance man Charlie Tennessen takes archival wheat seeds from planting to harvest with the help of his trusty barncats and three lovely donkeys. This meditative journey across 25 weeks (winter to autumn 2020) of weather, hard work, and persistence will make you appreciate food on a whole new level. Come for the pizza, but stay for the bucolic slice of life lived at a deliberate pace

The Meaning of Hitler: Because I am who I am I knew I was going to watch this one. The problem with this one for me was that I felt like it never really defined what it was trying to say. I was hoping it was going to be a little more focused on like, Hitler's influence on current extreme alt-right groups and it was kind of like that, but there was also a section about a guy who is a famous Holocaust denier. It wasn't a bad documentary it just felt like it kind of wandered. Some good art direction though.

MKE Film description: Taking inspiration from Sebastian Haffner's titular book, in THE MEANING OF HITLER Petra Epperlein and Michael Tucker set out to explore what Hitler means in the current waves of white nationalism and antisemitism. Featuring interviews with historians and scholars like Martin Amis and Saul Friedlander coupled with time spent with Nazi hunters, microphone technologists, and the curator of the US Army's confiscated art collection, this Herzogian documentary offers an unexpected, refreshing yet sobering journey to help us know why this history remains urgent.

Rez Metal: This documentary follows a group of Native American's living on Window Rock Navajo Reservation in Arizona on their quest to bring notice to the plight of Native Americans (especially the very high suicide rate amongst their people) through their heavy metal band. It was interesting, I'll never be surprised by the terrible conditions on many reservations - it's a stain on this country.

MKE Film description: I Don’t Konform is a heavy metal band from the Navajo Nation in Arizona that uses their music to uplift a community devastated by suicide. They catch the ear of acclaimed Metallica producer Flemming Rasmussen, who joins the band in their hooghan to begin recording their next album. REZ METAL is a stripped-down celebration of the heavy metal spirit, and a compelling portrayal of a community channeling their raw emotions, ethics, and hope through music.

Inklings Week Celebration and Vacation Reads

First up, starting next week it's one of the most fun weeks of the year, Inklings Week! A week where we celebrate CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien along with their wonderful works that have made such a profound impact on so many people's lives. My longtime blogging friend Jamie is hosting the celebrations as she does every year! I am taking part in different parts of the celebration. First, on Monday night Jamie, myself and author Katherin Reay will be on a panel discussing Tollers and Jack, some of our favorite works and what they mean to us. A little later in the week I'll also be guest posting on Jamie's blog. Here is Jamie's post with the panel information and a sneak peek of what is to come, we'd love to see you around the old interwebs! 

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I'm very fortunate that I (a vaccinated human) get to see my sister and her husband (also vaccinated humans) for vacation. After more than a year of being cautious and seeing no one and doing nothing the prospect of a vacation feels like a dream.  But what is a vacation without some vacation reading? I picked up and packed two books from Half Price books today, though, if we're honest I might need a few more. I wish I was a Kindle user because I'm sure it would take up less space but it's just not my preferred kind of reading. 

"Murder in Amsterdam: The Death of Theo Van Gogh and the Limits of Tolerance" by Ian Buruma 

Summary from Goodreads: Ian Buruma returns to his native land to explore the great dilemma of our time through the story of the brutal murder of controversial Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh at the hands of an Islamic extremist. It was the emblematic crime of our moment: On a cold November day in Amsterdam, an angry young Muslim man, Mohammed Bouyeri, the son of Moroccan immigrants, shot and killed the celebrated and controversial Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh, great-grandnephew of Vincent and iconic European provocateur, for making a movie with the vocally anti-Islam Somali-born Dutch politician Ayaan Hirsi Ali that "blasphemed" Islam. After Bouyeri shot van Gogh, he calmly stood over the body and cut his throat with a curved machete, as if performing a ritual sacrifice, which in a very real sense he was. The murder horrified quiet, complacent, prosperous Holland, a country that prides itself on being a bastion of tolerance, and sent shock waves across Europe and around the world. Shortly thereafter, Ian Buruma returned to his native country to try to make sense of it all and to see what larger meaning should and shouldn't be drawn from this story. The result is Buruma's masterpiece: a book with the intimacy and narrative control of a true-crime page-turner and the intellectual resonance we've come to expect from one of the most well-regarded journalists and thinkers of our time. Ian Buruma's entire life has led him to this narrative: In his hands, it is the exemplary tale of our age, the story of what happens when political Islam collides with the secular West and tolerance finds its limits.

The War for All Oceans: From Nelson at the Nile to Napoleon at Waterloo by Roy and Leslie Adkins. (My weird obsession with maritime battles continues, obviously)

Summary from Goodreads: Roy Adkins (with his wife Lesley) returns to the Napoleonic War in The War for All the Oceans, a gripping account of the naval struggle that lasted from 1798 to 1815, a period marked at the beginning by Napoleon's seizing power and at the end by the War of 1812. In this vivid and visceral account, Adkins draws on eyewitness records to portray not only the battles but also the details of a sailor's life, shipwrecks, press-gangs, prostitutes, spies, and prisoners of war.

And then literally any of the several magazines that Quinn has with her because she has a slight addiction to cheap magazine subscriptions. Doing her best to keep print journalism alive, that one!

Book Review: "A Woman of No Importance: The Untold Story of the American Spy Who Helped Win World War II" by Sonia Purnell

 If you are here, you know that I read a lot of history books. But the amazing woman who are story focuses on today is someone who I hadn't heard of in any book... I actually heard of her from the classic show, Drunk History. This whole video is full of badass women but Virginia's section starts at 5 minutes, 22 seconds.

Virginia Hall was a woman born to an upwardly mobile Baltimore family. Her mom had all of her hopes pinned on Virginia for a wealthy husband to help the families upward social trajectory. Virginia was like....nah. She wanted to see the world and have experiences so she got jobs at US embassies in Europe and in the Near East (like Turkey. Is the Near East a thing people actually say?) Anyway, she busted her ass for almost no money and no respect but liked being in Europe, A hunting accident (literally shot herself in the foot) and a terrible case of gangrene left her with an amputated leg and fake leg named Cuthbert. (Though she was super guarded about her leg - it makes sense because she was fighting a lot of sexism throughout her life and why would you also add on abelism to that mix). 

Through much persistence, some good luck and the desperation that comes in war time she finally was able to get the British to drop her into France to work with The Resistance. Very quickly she made herself indispensable, working to build a network of people who were reliable and trustworthy so when agents were dropped into France they could be the most effective possible. Then the problem became that the agents who dropped into France spent a lot of time chasing women and drinking - it also didn't help that a lot of times that in the rush to get people in the field they didn't get as much training as they should have. And then it doesn't help that her handlers in London did a lot of micromanaging and sending other people with no experience to be her boss even though she was the only reason any of the resistance was having any success.

Her time in France was marked by close calls, amazing jailbreaks, loss, intrigue and everything else that you could think of. This book is amazing and exciting and celebrates a woman who went out of her way to stay out of the spotlight and under the radar. And because of that and, frankly, because she was a woman in a man's world, she never got the respect, title or paycheck that she deserved. So all hail Virginia Hall - a bad bitch who deserves to have at least 100 primary schools, a cool cocktail and several parks in France and Baltimore named after her. Let's make it happen!

 

What I've been reading...

 Version Control by Dexter Palmer. A couple (5?) years ago I was able to meet a blogging friend IRL while she was working at a bookstore in a town that I was visiting. For a book about time travel (which I love) the time travel came into this book really late into the book. I liked it, I just was surprised how long it took to get to (what it felt to me) the point.

Dead Mountain: The Untold True Story of the Dyatalov Pass Incident by Donnie Eichar.  This book should be the least surprising book to show up on this blog ever. Oh, a book about an unexplained incident in post-WWII Russia with mysterious deaths? Yeah duh. I really liked this book, it felt well researched and full of these hikers humanities. What was great was that literally as I was reading this book there was breaking news about what might have caused the hikers deaths'. Interestingly enough, the theory that is breaking is a different theory than this book offers up. No "for sure" answers!

War of Shadows: Codebreakers, Spies and the Secret Struggle to Drive the Nazis from the Middle East by Gershom Gorenberg. I really wanted to adore this book because it seemed to hit a lot of my interests. I was disappointed in the fact that it didn't really hit for me. I think that the problem was that it tried to cover a lot of topics in a shortish book. Maybe it needed to be two separate books and then we would have been in business.

Book review: "The Street Address Book: What Street Addresses Reveal About Identity, Race, Wealth, and Power" by Deirdre Masks

I love love love love this book. Some of my favorite book things are 1) maps and 2) super super specific nonfiction. And this book gave me both of those things. (Look how the cover art has a crease on it like it's a folded map - be still my heart). Each chapter is it's own topic but the theme throughout it all his street addresses!

I have so many postit notes in this book - sorry in advance for how long and disjointed that this will be, haha.

Also, quick side note, I think if we think about people who don't have a street address we think that either those people are a)homeless or b) living in a squatter or slum kind of situation. Not true! A lot of folks in the good old USA are living in rural roads that don't even have names let alone house numbers. Okay. Now we will start.

- "In recent years more than 40% of all local laws passed by the New York City Common Council have been related to changes in street names". That's...SO MANY.  

-This is a fact not related to street addresses - the British Empire trafficked over 3.1 million Africans in the slave trade.

-Do you know what the "zip" in zip code stands for? Zone Improvement Planning. For as much as I play trivia I can't believe that's never come up. 

-A bunch of roads in Belgium are named after their food specialties - Passage of Speculoos. (I want to live on a street named after a cookie) 

-Only 2.6% of streets are named after women. These folks are on it. 

- Most europeans didn't have permanent last names before the 14th century. You know why those were established? So people could get drafted and taxed. SURPRISE SURPRISE. 

- A bunch of teenagers in Iran were anti-British so they decided to rename the street that the British Embassy on from Winston Churchill Street to Bobby Sands Street. It caught on so quickly that the British embassy made another entrance to their building so people coming to the embassy didn't enter on that street. If you didn't spend your childhood elbows deep in books about irish politics - Bobby Sands was.uh..incredibly anti-British and was held as a political prisoner by them when he died of a hunger strike as a very young man in 1981. 

- I've been to DC several times and I thought I was pretty confident in the city's layout and spoke and wheel thing that it was designed around. Somehow missed: "numbered streets run east to west, lettered streets run north and south...diagonal streets were named for the states of the Union (15 at the time) with longest avenues given the names of the three largest states at the time (PA, MA, VA) and now every state in the union has a street named after it.

-There's a great chapter about renaming or un-naming street names because of wars, revolutionaries, scandals and more. Russia has more than 4000 streets named after Lenin, equaling 5363 miles which is a longer distance than Moscow to Minneapolis. In a few different european countries that have streets that translate in English to "Jew Path". The streets don't cut through the middle of the cities, Jews were forced to use these paths that were far out of the way, to isolate them from others.

Book review: "This is Chance: The Shaking of an All American City, A Voice that Held it All Together" by Jon Mooallem

On Good Friday in 1964 a 9.2 magnitude earthquake centered 75 miles east of Anchorage. It lasted 4 minutes, which is an incredibly long time for an earthquake. Oil tanks exploded in Seward and set the harbor on fire. A large tsunami came in and wiped out small villages up and down the cost. It was so violent that an island southeast of Anchorage was knocked nearly 70 feet out of it's original position. Water levels jumped as far away as Libya, Israel and Belgium. In downtown Anchorage two whole city blocks dropped 10 feet. So, all of this is to say - this was a very bad earthquake. Please see evidence below.

 

Enter, Genie Chance. 

Genie was a reporter/on air personality for local radio station KNEI - the only woman. When the earthquake hit she was in downtown Anchorage with one of her children, stopped at a stoplight. She thought they had blown a tire because as they were slowing down to stop at the stoplight her car started rocking violently but then she looked around and saw that every other car was also rocking. As soon as the earthquake stopped she sped home, checked on her family, and then almost immediately began broadcasting. A lot of the information at the beginning was just safety tips. Then people started coming in and handing her messages like "My name is John Baker, can you please let my parents know I'm okay?" or "There's a need for electricians at the hospital, anyone who can please gather there". Even though there was a city manager, and several other department heads where Genie was set up at the Public Safety broadcasting she became the de facto organizer. Volunteers poured in looking for ways to help, and since Genie was the only person who knew where people were going and what other people needed. She did this for days. This book focuses on Genie, how she got to KNEI, her time during the earth quake and her life afterward. Her story was not always a happy one, but she did a lot of good for the people of Alaska.

And while the damage was horrific less than 15 people died (though the people who did die were killed in awful sort of ways - being swept out to sea, being crushed by falling debris, being literally swallowed by the earth). And though the damage was horrific the people who studied how disaster affects people were shocked at how the residents clung to each other and helped one another. (The one documented case of looting was by a police officer 🙄🙄🙄🙄)

There was a really interesting quote about trauma and how it affects people in situations like this earthquake. Genie noticed that she was repeating tasks subconsciously in the months after the earthquake "...it was as though she'd come back to remember, to test that the orderliness of the world had truly been restored. Maybe this is how trauma worked. Maybe it didn't knock you back, like an earthquake, but infiltrated and destabilized you slowly, like rot".

There were two things that I didn't like about this book:

1. The author writes himself into the story at the end and refers to himself in third person and it's weird and I didn't like it. 

2. The author had this weird habit when he introduced new people in the story. Where he would introduce you to someone and then almost immediately tell you how they died. Like "Wesley Hoffmann was an Anchorage resident who stood at 5 feet 3 inches, worked in an office and refused to wear clothes with patterns for some unknown reason. She was killed in 2028 when she got drunk and tried to fight a walrus". It was a strange choice and it took me out of the story each time he did it.

Overall I really liked this book - if we learned anything this year we know that not all heroes, like Genie, wear capes.

Book review: "The Song of Achilles" by Madeline Miller

 I'm just so fortunate, another great book! I'm ending the year very strong with my reads, which is awesome because for a good chunk of quarantine spring (like....April-June) I just couldn't read anything. Hat tip to my friend Chas who recommended this book to me, I remember hearing about it and that it was popular but never investigated it further.

While I was reading this book I was think about this occurrence at UVM. The author is educated in Classics and languages from some of the best schools that this country has to offer. If you're reading a book blog, I can assume that books (or maybe just me) are important to you so I won't preach to the choir about the importance of arts of the humanities in education. I understand that educational institutions are in a tough position but we have to find better ways. 

Okay, back to our regularly scheduled bookish programming.

Patroculus is a young prince in a little to no consequence kingdom in ancient Greece. He accidentally kills someone (a-hole kid+ shove + rocks= oops) and he is sent in exile to be raised by a king in a different part of Greece. He's scared out of his mind, but his homelife wasn't great so maybe this isn't the worst thing that could happen? This king has taken in a few misfit exiles but Patroculus befriends Achilles, the young prince in this new kingdom. Achilles dad is the king but his mom is a straight up terrifying sea goddess (but she's mad because she was raped and kidnapped so, it's not like it's unwarranted. There's a lot of abuse of women in this book, but a couple of shining moments for them too. Not nearly enough but...) His mom goddess has told him that a prophecy about him is that he will be the greatest greek whoever lived. No pressure. P and A grow up together and become very close and eventually fall in love. But then their pretty ideal existence is imploded by what becomes the Trojan War.

If you wanted this movie to be less bloated and ridiculous and more gay, have I got a book for you!

Like all wars everyone thinks that it will be done in like, a year (it's not) and as usual old men talk and young men die. I really enjoyed how the book talks about the tension between all of the kings (many cooks in the kitchen), what day to day life looks like in a ten year siege, and the relationships built around a conflict. A lot of the names will probably sound familiar to you, but you might now know the details of them (Ajax, Pyrrh, etc) or more familiar ones like Odysseus.

It was a fast, interesting, relationships focused read with a setting of the futility and banality of war. And a love story! I give it 4 out of 5 stars!

Book review: "Fathoms: The World in the Whale" by Rebecca Giggs

 To put it most simply, this book is about whales - but it's so much more than that. The writing is so lyrical and almost poetic that it feels like reading poetry sometime. Poetry with great whale information!

-There was a chapter at the end all about how in the last few years that scientists have opened up the stomachs of dead whales and the amount of plastic that they have found in them is STAGGERING. I immediately wanted wanted to get up and recycle everything that was nearby.  There was one whale that had 88 plastic rice sacks (empty) in it's stomach. And so much fishing nets and fishing line. There are some seagulls in Australia that 8% of their bodyweight is made up of plastic. If that was a 137 pound human that would be 11 pounds of plastic in their stomach. It was heartbreaking.

- One of my favorite parts of the book was when they talked about the sounds that whales made. This was one of my favorite facts from the book: " Songs sung by humpbacks off Puerto Rico, for instance, would be heard by whales in waters near Newfoundland some 1615 miles away; the equivalent to a shout on the streets of Moscow  being made-out, whisper quiet, by people in London". How is that even real life? I love it. 

-Livestock (cows and pigs) make up 60% of the earth's mammals. (Not much room left for other things, like whales)

-You know how the Germans have a word for everything? (And sometimes it's 16 letters long?) I learned another one in this book "heiliger Schauer": the shiver of prey sensing a predator's gaze.

- You know that sometimes if you are threatening to beat the crap out of someone you can refer to it as "whaling on someone?" The reason that it's called that is because police batons used to be made of whalebone. Which is the part of the whales mouth that they use to strain krill.

Also, I love this font

Starting the year with a DNF...and some German vocabulary

 So, starting the year with a DNF isn't maybe the strongest start to 2021. Or...maybe it says "I value my reading energy in 2021, be gone things that don't make me super excited!"

The thing is, I was very pumped for this book : "A Demon-Haunted Land: Witches, Wonder Doctors, and the Ghosts of the Past in Post-WWII Germany." Right up my alley, right? The bummer of the book is that it's really more about 2 faith healing hucksters operating in a super vulnerable time in post-WWII Germany. There's a lot of interesting information out there about how people deal mentally in countries after wars and uprisings but this book doesn't really touch on that and that was one of the ways that I was kinda let down.

But you know where this book didn't let me down?  Ridiculous German words. They are long and ridiculous and all of them look like untreatable venereal diseases. I found some fun ones in this book. 

-Schicksalsgemeinschaft - term to describe a community supposedly bound together by a shared experience of fate.

-Paragraphenschwierigkeiten - red tape! (Or, literally, paragraph problems)

- Teufelsaustreibungen - devil expulsions. (This book says that devil expulsions are what Protestants say and Catholics say exorcisms which...I don't know if that's true)

(This one wasn't in the book but Garrett and I have talked about this one. Also if that is spelled wrong please direct your corrections to him).

- Vergangenheitsbeweiltigung - This is when you have guilt about the Holocaust even if you were born after it happened and had nothing to do with it.

I hope that some of you had "learn some obscure German words" as a new year's resolution.