This review was originally posted on Goodreads.com and reviews.wheelerc.org on Dec. 21, 2014.
The UnDelightened is an enjoyable romp marred by clichés and lazy settings.
I like the UnDelightened. It’s quick enough as a read, it’s enjoyable, it’s fun.
It has major, but not insurmountable issues. The issues don’t make it a worthless read. Rather, I can only hope the author, Mr. Deyo, strives for something better during the next iteration of the series.
This review was originally posted on Goodreads.com and reviews.wheelerc.org on Dec. 7, 2014.
Despite the praise, Bettyville by George Hodgman is not particularly illuminating, it does not have a gratifying end and it is mostly a compendium of the same thoughts and scenes, slightly tweaked, repeated ad nauseum.
While Bettyville certainly had the potential to be poignant and illuminating, “gorgeous” as one author describes it on the back blurb, it squanders all of this potential by relentlessly repeating the same pointless scenes. Once is fine, five times is inane.
This review was originally posted on Goodreads.com and reviews.wheelerc.org on Dec. 6, 2014.
Women’s Work is another entry into the post-apocalyptic genre, a surprisingly well written first novel for the author, Kari Aguila. It is an ideal novel, but, nothing much ever happens to make the idea worthy than more than a short story.
The problem with Aguila’s book is not what might be expected from her premise: following a world war and an effort of semi-global oppression of women by men, women take control of the non-functional central government. More importantly, the previously oppressed women take the reins of their local governments and become the oppressors under the guise of security in the face of roaming bands of evil, rapist men.
This review was originally posted on Goodreads.com and reviews.wheelerc.org on Nov. 17, 2014.
I have many problems with the book, on two separate levels: poorly plotted and ridiculous on the first level, badly designed and poorly printed on the second.
When it comes to the plot and the like, please believe the other reviewers with the one and two star ratings: the plot is so ridiculous as to be throw away. I’m all about the suspension of disbelief, but, this book pushes far beyond any galaxy I know of into the bounds of the stupid. An 18-year-old running a marijuana growing operation, who’s also a private eye, who has his own house and thinks like a 40-year-old man? Give me a break.
Teenagers who solve a murder mystery? Again, break please.
This review was originally posted on Goodreads.com and reviews.wheelerc.org on Nov. 17, 2014.
Man Alive! by Mary Kay Zuravleff is a decent read. It starts strong, it seems like it has a decent enough middle but ends up just sort of plodding along to its ending. Despite some plot turns, some ratcheted-up drama, it just ends and by the end of the book I was happy just to be done.
In the end, I just don’t care that much about the characters, or maybe, I stopped caring.
I want to write more. I want to make this a long, in-depth review. I want to hit 600 words. But I can’t, because there isn’t enough to write about. It’s well written enough. It starts our interesting. Blah, blah, blah. Not bad, but the lack of a finish makes it just blah.
This book was received, free of charge, from the Goodreads First Reads program.
This is not a review of Robot & Frank, an enjoyable film. This is about the future Robot & Frank imagines.
One critic does write specifically about the future imagined.
Joshua Topolsky at The Verge summed up his opinion in the last paragraph of his review:
“It’s also one of the few movies I’ve seen where the future is not a dystopic nightmare, 3D-generated phantasmagoria, or otherwise unbelievable peek into a not-too-distant hellworld. It’s future that seems real, palpable, and just around the corner — one where we have to figure out not just what our technology will do to us, but what it will mean to us.”
But Topolsky is wrong. Let’s be clear: I’m bias. My job as a criminal justice reporter for a weekly newspaper in a small community means I’m more aware of what police may be able to do, and what they may not be able to do and when they’re violating somebody’s rights.
Very few, if any, of the critics I read picked up on the fascist state director Jake Schreier and writers Christopher D. and Christopher Paul Ford conjured up. It is, I imagine, the result of a creeping fascist state.
The main character, Frank (played by Frank Langella) is a retired cat burglar with varying degrees of dementia. His son gets him a robot to take care of him and the robot’s main directive appears to be Frank’s health, even if that means helping and allowing him to commit burglary, something that engages him intellectually.
(Far more than the robot’s love, gardening.)
And here is where the fascist state begins to show itself: the sheriff is friends with the new owner of the library, which has destroyed all its physical copies of books except for a few special bound copies kept under lock and key.
Spoiler alert: Frank and the robot break in to the library and steal the book. Frank leaves his reading glasses at the library. After the theft, when he goes to a gala at the new library, devoid of books, with the librarian, the new owner of the non-profit that bought it points Frank out to a man we will learn is the sheriff and asks Frank about his criminal record. He then tells Frank not to come back to the library.
While this might not be a hellscape, fascist qualities begin to seep in. The library, a thing normally owned and operated by the government and for the people (which means no one can be banned without very good cause and, possibly, a court order) is bought by a non-profit which immediately begins to use its power to exclude people with criminal records. Having been convicted of a crime in the past is now a right and true basis for exclusion, as well as a further curtailment of your rights because having broken “the law” equates to probable cause.
Because your criminal record, in Schreier’s future, is enough to have you banned from a library and marked for harassment. For a man with dementia, none the less. (Frank was only convicted of tax evasion and another small, non-violent crime.)
Frank wants to get revenge on that damn yuppie and he has the sheriff, his friend, take him to Frank’s house (the robot lets them in) and take them to the back porch. There, the yuppie accuses Frank of stealing from his safe, and are finally told to leave.
(Most police are like vampires: they have to be invited in to private property and that consent can be rescinded. Once it is, or if it’s never granted, a warrant is almost always required for them to get into the property.)
Later, the cops start to stake out Frank’s house (apparently, with the victim). Eventually, they mount a raid and search a car without a warrant, and then his home, without a warrant, with the victim of the theft.
I love it! Warrantless searches. It’s like the county sheriff has become the NSA.
It’s not a hellscape, but, much like Fort Lauderdale, Florida, it’s not a place where I want to live.
This review was originally posted on Goodreads.com and reviews.wheelerc.org on Nov. 2, 2014.
The Paying Guests, despite the critical acclaim, is nothing more than an extremely bloated exercise in supposedly literary fiction.
At 564 pages, big pages, it’s a door stop and a slog and a bore. Really, The Paying Guests could be 150 pages and not lose a single thing. Around page 260, something actually happened. The first thing of any real substance.
Any real plot developments in The Paying Guests are overshadowed by the endless parade of bloated thoughts from the narrator. The bloated thoughts aren’t interesting or engaging. Rather, they’re pointless drivel.
The book is a period piece, it speaks to a certain time and it might actually carry some great weight about the status of women in a patriarchic society. It might, but I don’t know because all of the worthless words bogged it down so far that I ceased to care a long, long time ago.
The paying guests is not worth reading, or buying. Maybe an abridged version would carry less real weight and more of the metaphorical kind. I can only hope.
This book was received, free of charge, from the Goodreads First Reads program. All quotes come from an uncorrected proof for limited distribution and may, or may not, reflect the final copy. Just don’t know!
This review was originally posted on Goodreads.com and reviews.wheelerc.org on Oct. 19, 2014.
Josh Young is a five-time New York Times bestselling author, and I want to write, based on the quality of his writing, I am entirely baffled as to how. That is not accurate: many New York Times bestselling authors are terrible writers and based on And give up showbiz?
Josh Young falls into that category.
There are a bunch of things that strike the wrong tune with And give up showbiz?, but the most glaring I the book should not be for sale, but should be given away by the book’s subject, lawyer Fred Levin.
Let me clarify: This is a badly written, book-length public relations pamphlet for Fred Levin.
The subtitle of the book is: “How Fred Levin beat big tobacco, avoided two murder prosecutions, became a chief of Ghana, earned boxing manager of the year & transformed American law.”
A poem
Sept. 22, 2014
La Puebla, New Mexico
I buried my cat today.
She died the night before but they told me today, late morning. I should not just write my cat, she she had and had a name outside my own existence. She proved she had her own.
Apricot. I buried Apricot today. I buried here at the end of the orchard, next to a corner. The ground was orange-red clay. I thought it was fitting with her fur.
I dug her grave first. I made sure it was plenty deep.
Then, I grabbed a box cutter and the box the vet gave her to me in and I walked over to her grave, with a polar fleece blanket she should sleep on, resting on my feet.
I opened the box, taped, with the box cutter. She was in a plastic kitchen bag.
I cried. But that’s a given, the bouts of bawling and tears and sobs. Tears, the by-product of the bawling and the sobbing.
I opened the bag with the box cutter and I took her cold body out. When I first touched the bag, I felt her. Frozen.
I moved the blanket, that I had brought, further under the cover of an overhanging tree and put my frozen cat’s corpse on it. I cried. I petted her. I observed her frozen tongue sticking out of the side of her mouth.
I laid her on her left side, the side of the vomit, the yellow liquid had frozen to her fur. I looked at her face and I did not know, I did not want to now, I do not want to know, how much pain she was in. Her eyes were almost completely closed. Just a silver open. I should write something poetic, about either her fair at the end, being in a strange kennel, or about her nature as a cat. I reject these.
Most likely, she died in pain.
The vet said she likely died of an infection, that she had a lot of fluids in her her body cavity, when they did the surgery, and she had an infection.
I did not know if anyone was there to check on her on Sunday, the day before the night she died. I know she died from an infection.
I saw her slightly bloated belly, her body still frozen, and I petted her a few last times. Her fur was as soft as ever.
I wrapped her in the blanket, put her in the grave (I do not want to acknowledge its nature as a mere hole) and put a few handfuls of dirt over her wrapping, of her and her front paw, where her IV line had been.
I noticed her back paw was dirty or bloody. Her body, slightly curved, a crescent or half circle. The former sounds so much more regal. Half moon. Her her coloring, a calico, white and black and orange. The moon on a normal night, the moon in a wildfire or engorged or close to us here. Orange. And black, the new moon.
I buried her proper, with shovel upon shovel full of dirt. I tried to keep the topmost layer of the orange-red clay dirt, in keeping with her own coloration.
I came to peace with the black and grey decayed earth, matching her own black. I raked her grave, and the area around, not to mask the intrusion, but to make it even.
Four bottles not mark the corner of her grace: one white wine bottle (clear), two green ones and a single stubby brown beer bottle. They are to represent her tri-coloration, her female caliconess. Clear for her white. Green for her orange. Brown for her black.
I’m still crying over her. I am in a shock.
My dad wrote me, the point is now how she was injured, or received her injury. The point is she is gone. (The point is she is no longer suffering.)
She will not come back; her body will thaw and decay, shielded only slightly by the synthetic burial shroud. Or, just, her blanket shroud, or her synthetic shroud.
In the early morning, she will not wake me with her her razor claws on my face, demanding attention. When I come home, I will no longer listen for the tell-tale sign of her collar’s bell or feel heartened as I watch her run to me.
She is dead, killed by an infection, following two surgeries. One done in the middle of the night, one done in the middle of the day. She is dead, killed by an infection, after something happened, causing an extreme hernia, causing internal bleeding and shredding her urethra between one of her kidneys and her bladder.
She was missing her collar when I saw her Thursday night. I suspect she had been lying under my bed. She came out and I found her distended belly, her extreme lethargy. (I have told his tale now many times, and I will tell this tale, of her finding, many more. My opinion of it is, as my dad wrote about the nature of her injury, moot.)
The last time I touched my living car, she was sitting in a litter box in a kennel, in “extreme amounts of pain.” She meowed, in anger or pain or acknowledgement at me, and I did my best to maintain my composure. The prognosis was good.
The second to last time I touched my living cat, my Apricot, she was in another kennel, lying on her right side against the wall, hopped up on pain medication. It was a better meeting.
My only wishes were to bring her some pain relief and, in that moment, be with her in her passing. In her dying moments and her death.
She died sometime Sunday night in a kennel. They told me Monday, late morning.
I picked up her body in a plastic bag, in a cardboard box.
I buried my cat today, and touched her for the very last time. A feeble, senseless attempt to comfort her in her already long-gone last moments.
I buried my cat today.
Apricot’s grave in La Puebla
Here’s the thing about being a journalist, at least, being a newspaperman.
I think about what I’m going to write while it’s happening. It’s not always pleasant. Most of the time, I’m sure it mucks up what I should be doing or feeling.
It means I look at too many things, and think, would that make a good lede? It’s not things I look at. It’s events, it’s actions, is components of existence. That is, a good first sentence, or more broadly, a good start, to my story? To whatever story I’m writing. To whatever story I assume I will write.
Although I try to avoid recording life (I will take pictures at parties, if that’s my delegated role) I often cannot help myself, often when alone, from thinking about how event, the idea, the moment and the feeling, will and would be written.
I buried my cat today. Really, I buried Apricot today. She lead her own life. But that’s not the point of this post. That’s the point of another post. This is the reporter’s notebook about how I buried my cat, Apricot, today, as NPR would put it.
That is, the bits of the story that didn’t go into the story, but still should get a little air time, get a little more personal. Which is not applicable in this instance, considering this is a blog post, and the preponderance of “I,” thematically, literally and in real terms.
I wrote something. Either a journal entry, or a prose poem, or maybe a story. Maybe a cross between the three, a story that is a little bit of a prose poem that I will eventually paste into my journal. (I write journal entries on my typewriter, then paste them into the journal itself.)
I wrote about Apricot’s death, about her burial, about what happened. But I left much out, as I came to my ending sentences, as I made my final structure.
I left out the part, where I think about picking up her corpse at the vet, after paying the bill. ($230 something, roughly 90 percent less than the emergency vet at $2,300 and change) (The total cost came in around $3,000).
They hand me a cardboard box. It weights a little over 8 pounds. Maybe even over 8.5 pounds. I know they listed her weight on the bag-tag, (the veterinary equivalent of the toe-tag?) but I don’t remember.
I left out the part where the pretty vet who dealt with her abscess comes out, and touches my shoulder, and says they did all they could.
(The lady who takes my card asks my how long I’ve been working at the Rio Grande SUN. I’ve never spoken to her before this moment, where I’m paying for dead Apricot’s minuscule vet bills, the big ones having already been paid).
I likely did not respond, more than to say, thank you, or some other courtesy. One of them tells me, it’s always hard, it never gets easier, and this is the worst part about having a pet. That’s the lady I’d not seen before, who took the card.
I will write: the worst part about having any relationship, animal or human, is its ending, especially if the ending is done in death.
The vet, the cute one who came out to say they did all they could, tells me I should come in some time. They often have kittens needing adoption, and I seem like a good pet owner, like a good cat owner. I think she says this, partially, because the bill and receipt and invoice for Apricot’s emergency surgery were attached to the sheet. Everyone saw the $2,320 receipt.
(This comment strikes me something terrible, because it presses on the guilt I feel for allowing her to go outside in the first place, in my reasoning, allowing her to have her own life.)
I do not want a kitten. (I prefer cats, for various reasons). I smile. This is my social obligation. I want to say, what happened? Why wasn’t she on higher levels antibiotics? More intense ones? How much pain was she in when she died? If you knew she was going to die Sunday, if she was doing that bad, why didn’t you call me? I wanted to say one last goodbye, to pet her one last time, to have that kind of closure. I believed, until I received that phone call, she would be doing fine: she would be coming home with me, if she and I were lucky, that day. I had just finished telling one of my co-worker’s that when I got the call. I want to ask, was anyone even here Sunday? To check her temperature? To see if she needed another surgery, or a change in her meds or even more pain medication?
(It appeared the entire veterinary office knew about her death).
(Shortly after the call, I went home, grieved, came back to work).
(In case it’s not clear, this, and the related posts, are also a form a grieving, although public by nature).
The orderly comes out with my frozen cat in a box. I fold the invoice and receipt, take the box, hold back tears and walk out the door. Once outside, I begin to cry.
In the car, I cry. As I drive away, normal speed, no theatrics here, I cry. I don’t stop until my co-worker calls me. He wants to talk about work. (He was in ABQ covering a trial for me, because I still thought my cat would be coming home with me that day, and require care).
Later, when home, my landlady asks me how I’m doing. I reply, horrible, but I’ll make it through. She is surprised by this answer, and comes over and she wants to talk about what happened to cause Apricot’s injury. She continues to speculate. I become more uncomfortable.
This is not something I want to discuss. She says, we can take a walk and look for the collar. I tell her, maybe in a few days, but I’m not ready for that.
We talk about a dog she had, beat up by other dogs. She footed the $900 in 1998 dollars vet bill. The dog got beat up again, and died.
I reply, thinking and hearkening back to my conversation with my dad about how much I was willing to spend on the cat to save her. I say, and mean, I would have been happy to spend $10,000 if she had just lived. I had told my father, around 10k was my breaking point.
This is the truth, and as I say it, I begin to lose it again. She tries to comfort me, puts a hand on my shoulder. I pat her shoulder in return. It’s the only thing I can think to do.
(I’m not particularly into being touched by people whom I do not consider to be close to me).
I think, now, a lot about the nature of bawling, crying, sobbing and tears. It is not something I do often. Once in awhile, a movie will make me shed a few tears. But full-on sobbing, that’s reserved for death or the possibility of.
I’ve lived a sheltered life, and a lucky, life. I might deal with death professionally, but I rarely must (as of yet) deal with death in my personal life.
When I received the call from my dad (I was living in Reno at the time, finishing up my degree, or maybe I’d already gotten it) that my cat, the one I left behind with him in Carson City, had been run over (and consequently she might die) I bawled my eyes out. (She lived). As I remember, I bawled pretty steadily. At 18, she’s going slowly, but steady. She cant jump well any more, but, she can still walk.
Now, for Apricot, the bawling comes in fits and spurts. Really, the bawling was limited to once I got home from work, after I’d got the call. Now, it’s the sporadic sobs.
Really, though, I’ll expand on that later. I’ll claim it’s all part of the grieving process.
When I got her cardboard box out of the car, I set it on one of the chairs I leave outside, while I went and dug her grave.
Thinking about it, I don’t think the disbelief has yet left me.
At the end here, I will include a picture of my dearly departed pussy cat. I put it at the bottom because I reduce the physical affectations to the bare minimum. In doing so, though, I think about how I did not take enough pictures of her. I always thought, there would be time to take more. I was wrong.
It seems like a metaphor for everything.
I didn’t take enough pictures because I thought there was always more time. I was wrong.
Here’s to you sweetheart. I miss you.
In both shots, Apricot lies on the blanket I buried her in. This picture, in particular, hits me hard for two reasons. The first, she is lying in her splayed-turkey position, one of her favorites. The second, and more important, I see her as she was, and as I let her down. I feel guilty for allowing her to come to what would be her death.
Apricot’s grave
