March Madness
No, not that kind. I do, occasionally, miss the days when obsession with college basketball got me through the end of winter but hey, I still have books and I’ve read and listened to a lot of great stuff since last I tangled with this damn app. Think of this as a selection from which to choose when you don’t want to leave the house on those cold mornings and need something to bring along to enjoy on the lovely, balmy afternoons.
Icarus by K. Ancrum (Harper Teen)
https://bookshop.org/a/56337/9780063285781
This is an absolutely gorgeous book: sensitive, visceral, strange, and perfect. So exquisitely embroidered despite being sparsely populated with words that it triggered my synesthesia (something that typically only happens with visual imagery). Ancrum is one of those extremely talented authors who can spin a tight, quickly paced narrative while, at the same time, developing characters with whom the reader identifies and about whom they come to care.
Using the minimum number of words, each carefully chosen and perfectly placed, she creates that rare sort of book that hooks a a reader by activating all of their senses and engaging their brain so thoroughly, there isn’t much room for anything else. The structure of the novel itself parallels the emotions of the characters and adds an inescapable, real-time, real-life urgency to the story that will keep you up turning pages until the end.
It feels like everything these days is a retelling or a reboot and, honestly, I’m getting a bit bored; there are too many new stories out in the world for us to have a bunch of ad nauseum repeats to choose from. Icarus, despite sharing a name with a figure from Greek myth, however, and borrowing elements of his story, is in no way familiar ground; Ancrum combines these story elements with her own innovative and original ones to create a narrative that’s entirely new and one of the best I’ve read this year so far.
Otherworldly by F.T. Leukens (Simon and Shuster YA, 4/2)
https://bookshop.org/a/56337/9781665916257
It turns out, one can make crossroads deals with beings other than the devil though one does have to be just as conscious, and careful, of the consequences because shades, those naughty, naughty critters, sometimes exceed what we in the medical world like to call, “scope of practice.” And when that happens, the familiars they throw into the world sometimes decide to rebel. And when the familiars rebel, the human world can get a little messed up and end up stuck in… say… five years of winter.
Which is why human Ellery isn’t so big on the supernatural and not a huge fan of familiar Knox when first they meet. Well… when Knox is running from the shades who have hunted him down and knocks Ellery down a hill on their bike. Which is, technically a meeting.
If you liked Lukens’s So This is Ever After (https://bookshop.org/a/56337/9781534496866)(and how you could not like that book, what are you a monster?) you’ll love this quirky little… deep annoyance to lovers (?) too. There’s the aforementioned paranormal mystery, creature busting, adorable fish out of water moments, misunderstandings galore, obnoxious gods, and excellent sapphic big sisters to keep everything on track. It’s a fun read with the literary equivalent of bright colors and fireworks and shiny starts and goddesses know we all need that right now. There’s kissing but not much more which means pretty much everyone can be comfortable with it, found family is the best family, and the fairy queen is dramatic as hell.
Big thumbs up.
Blood Debts by Terry J. Benton-Walker (Tor Teen)
https://bookshop.org/a/56337/9781250825926
Blood Debts is so good that there were times I would put off listening to the audio book because I didn’t want it to end (full audio play, by the way, with three different readers, do recommend). This is an absolutely stellar story that focuses on a Black magical family in New Orleans that’s been whittled down by racism, jealousy, misunderstanding, and fear to the point where their enemies have been able to infiltrate their house and nearly murder their matriarch. Told primarily by the current generation, twins Christina and Clement, who are struggling to find their places in magical society, their infamous family, and the world at large, Blood Debts follows the pair as they unravel a generations long mystery, delve deeper into the darker aspects of their family abilities, and reclaim their rightful places in generational magic society.
This is another one I can’t say enough good things about and I am so glad there’s going to be more. The setting, New Orleans, is one of my favorite places on the planet, and it’s a city with a long, extremely complicated history which is, and probably always will be, very much in process and in conflict and the relationships in the magical community (whites claiming authority in a city built by black labor and talent) reflect those in the mundane world around it. There’s a magical mystery. There’s family drama. There’s a little bit of shadiness going on. And, most importantly, the characters aren’t perfect; they grow, they change, they make mistakes (I’m talking about the MCs here, not the side characters who make mistakes and deserve to be eaten by alligators in swamps). Mistakes are important because real people make them and characters in books should be as much like real people as possible. No one wants to read about paragons, not even if they’re heroes; they’re boring and also, they make us feel real shitty about ourselves. Give us humans. It means not only do we get to go on adventures like those we read about, but that maybe our foibles aren’t so bad after all. Unless there’s a volcano lair involved. That’s a choice.
Zhen Hun (Guardian) by Priest (Seven Seas)
https://bookshop.org/a/56337/9781638589365
This is my new danmei obsession because these two fucknuckles are the absolute best.
“Whoops, I got drunk and my spirit left my body,” I mean honestly.
Also, if smoking bad, why so sexy?
Van Gogh: A Life by Steven Naifeh and Gregory Smith White (Random House)
https://bookshop.org/a/56337/9780375758973
So, I have a Van Gogh Obsession because almost all of his paintings trigger my synesthesia which is unusual for a single artist (Monets for example, only get me if that have that very specific blue - which may actually be on the ultraviolet spectrum. Turns out you can still see if you lose your lenses and you can see ultraviolet and Monet did lose his lenses. I learned this from a different book). This is doubly interesting because it is likely that Van Gogh likely also had synesthesia but his was different from mine - he took piano lessons at one point during his career claiming that it helped him understand color better. His paintings also give me a lot of feelings and it may because the mental illness he manifested first, and at a relatively young age, and my mental illness would have played together really nicely (his was eventually compounded by third stage syphilis; chronic mercury poisoning because mercury was the treatment for syphilis; the treatment for psychosis; and several other types of heavy mental poisoning from his paints, including: arsenic, lead, cobalt, and cadmium. Interestingly, his brother Theo died of complications from syphilis because they both really liked the ladies.
Anyway. I’ve tried to read this book eleventy billion times but it has eleventy billion pages and while y’all know I don’t mind a door stopper, when reviewing books is part of one’s job, long books often get interrupted. Audible was having as sale a couple of weeks ago, however and voila, this one was marked down by a significant percentage.
It is 44+ hours and I finished it in less than a week because wow, Van Gogh was a Very Interesting Dude.
I think the biggest takeaway from Van Gogh: A Life is that living with a mental illness hasn’t gotten much easier since the 19th century and the stigma is still going strong. Mater Van Gogh was absolutely unforgiving about it despite having what sounds like a combination of OCD and anxiety herself and a pretty tremendous family history of diagnosed mental illness (whatever that meant back in the day) and suicide in her family. Theo likely had anxiety prior to contracting syphilis and Vincent’s sister Will committed suicide in an asylum in… I think it was her 50s. This was a family issue and yet his family shunned him as the oldest son who wasn’t fulfilling his responsibilities to the family.
Rumors of Vincent’s suicide however, have been greatly exaggerated.
This is the quick and dirty version but seriously, listen to this book or read it, it’s fascinating: Vincent did not own a gun. He barely knew how to shoot one. The gun was a type of pistol that wasn’t common in France at the time but it was common in America - one resident of the town was known to own one; a sixteen year old boy whose father had bought it for him because it went with the cowboy outfit he bought when he saw Buffalo Bill at the Paris Exposition. This young man was a known antagonist of Vincent’s.
Vincent left with his painting gear. When he returned with the gunshot wound he didn’t have it but it was never found. People knew where he was painting at the time. They checked and they also checked the surrounding areas. Crime scene clean up much?
Statistically, people who aren’t familiar with guns don’t shoot themselves in the stomach. Vincent’s wound was in his stomach. There was also enough forensic knowledge to state that the entry wound was at an angle and size that suggested it came from a distance beyond Vincent’s own reach.
The theory the authors laid out is that the young man who owned the gun accidental shot Van Gogh and Van Gogh covered for him.
When that boy was a man in his 80s, he confessed but the movie Lust For Life, which was built on the suicide myth had just come out and the myth was so popular as part of Van Gogh’s tragic legend that no one paid attention to the actual story.
Propaganda is a funny thing.
Also, per this book, to all of my friends in Ireland who kept correcting me: You’re wrong. It’s not VAN GOCHK. It’s Van Gough. That’s the Dutch. Fuck you.
And on that note…
Happy reading and listening!