Finished my story about the demon/devil named Larkspur in that I got tired of writing it and engineered an ending which is
- unsatisfying; but
- means I can stop writing it.
I just want to write something new I’m proud of.
Month: February 2016
Dumb brain.
I read:
Thoughts:
I read and reviewed a lot of my Netgalley books this month.
The Cruel Country by Judith Ortiz Cofer: Reviewed here.
A Place for Margaret by Bernice Thurman Hunter: When I was seven, my father bought me this book from a business trip. Now Tesfa is seven, I read it to her, another copy that I found at the Salvation Army store in town. I’d forgotten how earnest a book it is. Everyone is just so plum nice. And many of the side characters have ridiculously alliterative names (Archie Arbuckle, Matilda Maggotty, etc.). I can’t decide whether the book holds up or not. Tesfa liked bits and pieces of it, but didn’t seem eager for me to read the next two books in the series to her. I might anyway, because I can’t rightly recall what happens in the third book.
The Children’s Home by Charles Lambert: Reviewed here.
Modern Romance by Aziz Ansari: I wasn’t going to read this, but then I watched Master of None last month on Netflix and the book was $10 at Chapters so I picked it up. It’s actually quite amusing.
The Night Parade by Kathryn Tanquary: Reviewed here.
The Blue Line by Ingrid Betancourt: Reviewed here.
Skeptic by Michael Shermer: Reviewed here.
A Cure for Madness by Jodi McIsaac: Reviewed here.
The Woman in Black by Susan Hill: Perfect level of spooky. Much better than the spookiness and eventual mess that this month’s earlier spooky attempt The Children’s Home made.
Unnatural Selection by Emily Monosson: Reviewed here. You would have thought though that the publisher would have picked a different name since Mara Hvistendahl’s Unnatural Selection was all over the feminist-blogosphere not so long ago.
The Rabbit Back Literature Society by Pasi Ilmari Jääskeläinen: I really wanted to adore this book. Instead, I feel like yelling Make up your mind — be supernatural or not! Almost worth it though for the ending (non-supernatural) Gotcha!
Hannah Mary Tabbs and the Disembodied Torso by Kali Nicole Gross: Reviewed here.
Fish in a Tree by Lynda Mullaly Hunt: Awwwwww. Such a sweet story. Like eating cotton candy without feeling sick afterwards.
Favourite book:
I cried. The whole way through this book. Like pretty much non stop for the hour it took me to read it.
Most promising book on my wishlist:
I watched:
I wrote:
Fixed up some short stories and sent them out, again. Worked on a story about a demon or a devil or something. His name is Larkspur because it is and I cannot change it now.
This book might win for Most-Descriptive-Title-I’ve-Read-In-A-While. Indeed, there is a Hannah Mary Tabbs, and there is a Disembodied Torso. No bait-and-switch here. Instead we have an overview of a Philadelphia murder case from 1887 stemming from the discovery of a racially-ambiguous disembodied torso, that of Hannah Mary Tabbs’ alleged paramour. Randomly located body parts and illicit love affairs being as salacious then as now, the investigation and trial was well-covered in the press, although as Gross posits, the whole starting point was the inability to determine the race of the torso; since there was a possibility it was white, the investigators did their thing. If it had been obviously that of a black man, then, like the other body parts found later in the book determined not to be part of the torso in question, then it would have simply been discarded.
(Side note: apparently there were just body parts strewn here and there in Philadelphia at the time, which is interesting in and of itself. Also creepy.)
Thus, via saved press clippings and trial notes that Gross has dug out from various archives, we have a glimpse into the lives of black men and women in 1880s Philadelphia, a group generally excluded from any degree of anthropological or sociological study at the time. So that’s interesting, although the crime aspect of the book is pretty cut-and-dry. It isn’t like a riveting true crime story with lots of twists for an engaging plot. The authorities figure out the who-dunnit without much misdirection. There’s bits of analysis here and there, but, based on some of her comments in the introduction, it seems like Gross is trying to write for general readership rather than pure academic audiences, so she likely scaled the analysis and theory back a bit.
But did she need to? If the book is supposed to be a 101-style-primer, then more context about race, society, race-in-society, etc., at the time frame would be welcome, and flesh the story out a lot more (think The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks or Manning Marable’s Malcom X biography). If it’s not meant to be 101, then all we have are the facts of a case with a smidgen of a view into black life in Philadelphia in the 1880s. While such a glimpse is rare, a presentation of such research without analysis doesn’t give the reader much to chew on. The book, both in length and scope, is slight. Diversionary, but slight.
Hannah Mary Tabbs and the Disembodied Torso by Kali Nicole Gross went on sale January 28, 2016.
I received a copy free from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.