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Anne Rice's books are my guilty pleasure lowbrow beach reads. Sue me.

The Vampire Chronicles

Interview with the Vampire
1976

I read this one ages and ages ago, as a teenager, which started the whole "reading Anne Rice" thing. Then after the first three vampire chronicles, I kind of forgot about her for several decades and have only recently come back through them. Anyway, the first one is kind of a classic and still stands out as the best modern vampire novel.

The Vampire Lestat
1985

See above. Terrible movie, pretty decent book.

The Queen of the Damned
1988

More interesting than Lestat, for sure. The Old Ones and their lore are more aligned with traditional vampire novels.

The Tale of the Body Thief
1992

I really think Rice comes into her own when she is combining different monster stories. This one is much like a marriage of Jekyll and Hyde with the vampire mythos. It's hilarious to read Lestat having to be human again. Top 3 for me. (Oh, and David and the whole Talamasca subplot is great.)

Memnoch the Devil
1995

Yawn.... is this when Rice started to convert to Christianity? A total snoozer. Some people really dug it though.

The Vampire Armand
1998

OK, Armand's story is much better. She got my attention again.

Merrick
2000

Yay, vampires and Candomble! And lost jungle cities! Now we're back to the Rice I know and love.

Blood and Gold
2001

Blackwood Farm
2002

Vampires and personal hauntings! Very nice. Great characters, lovely setting, poltergeist-y with southern charm.

Blood Canticle
2003

Prince Lestat
2014

Prince Lestat and the Realms of Atlantis
2016

New Tales of the Vampires

Pandora
1998 (a Vampire Chronicle)

Vittorio the Vampire
1999

The Lives of the Mayfair Witches

The Witching Hour
1990
I tried reading this one a long time ago and couldn't get into it. I'll try again later, same for the other witchy books.

Lasher
1993
Taltos
1994

And all of the sleeping beauty books, because life without spice is bland.

Current Mood: productive

OK, this is Steinbeck. He is one of the finest writers there is. You know anyone better with the language, let me know because I want to read them.

I can't even write about this book. It would be better to quote it over and over again but the good quotes would run to pages.

The basic gist is about how people view their own lives and how others influence them- what do we want? Is it good enough? Could there be more? Do we get addicted to the thought of having "more" and what does that do to us? How far would you go for "more"?

I love this book and I want to marry it. It's now one of my favorite Steinbecks, along with Grapes Of Wrath and Sea Of Cortez.

Current Mood: rejuvenated

I came across this book via an article on the Pima County Medical Examiner. This is the morgue that works with the Colibri Project. When a body is found in the Sonoran desert, the medical examiner tries to identify it. They give the information to the Colibri Project who tries to find the family of the deceased and let them know who it is, and if possible, send the remains. The book was written by an anthropologist who has made their field of study the deaths that result from various US immigration policies. These policies force migrants to take the most dangerous route possible, through the Sonoran desert, where temperatures are regularly in excess of 105 degrees Fahrenheit. Without enough water and shade, people slowly cook. Robbery and rape are common, as is abandonment by the coyotes who are supposed to guide them. Death is common.

Why did I read this and shove the horror into my brain?

This is going to sound weird, but I feel like it is my civic duty. Little migrant kids are still being kept in camps. Every one of the people heading north is trying for a better life. I've been a tourist in Mexico twice in the last few years. One of our dollars is worth 20 of theirs. Imagine if you could go work in Canada and instead of making $20 USD an hour, they paid you $400 USD. That is what coming to America is like and that's why they do it. That money gets sent back to Mexico or Guatemala and supports whole multigenerational families. I wanted to really understand why people would take such huge risks to migrate and this book succeeded in getting that across. If you had the potential to bring your whole family out of poverty by migrating, you'd do it too, given the right disposition and abilities. I'm sure there are other books about it that would have had the same effect but given my morbid disposition, this one got the point across uniquely well. And after the four? Four books now that I've read examining daily life in Mexico and migration, I have so, so much more empathy for the situation of the kind and wonderful people I'm blessed to visit occasionally.

Current Mood: contemplative
Current Music: Hovhaness

Around the time that little kids were being forced to appear in court after being kept in cages in ex-Walmarts, separated from their parents without so much as a hospital band (I mean--- seriously? All you would need is a pack of party bands and a notebook! Write down the number of the band the parent has and the kid has and match them together later!!!! But I digress.) I started realizing how little I knew about what happened at the southern border of our country.

This book is about a group of walkers from Mexico who try to make it through the Sonoran desert with not enough water and an inexperienced guide.

It is both fascinating and totally horrifying.

(edited on completion)

This book made me so angry I couldn't speak. I'd read and have to put it down because I felt like finding the nearest INS office and going in there and punching someone. To treat people so horribly that walking through the desert in killing heat seems like a viable alternative to living where they are is not right.

No human should have to go through this.

Of those that survived, one went to prison (the coyote who left the group to die). The rest were eventually sent back to where they were from, except for two who were allowed to stay, I forget why now.

This is what stuck with me the most: of those that died, that could be found, it cost $26,000 USD to embalm them and ship their remains back to their villages. Many were from the same area. The author makes the very good point that if $26000 were invested in, say, the ten villages from which the most migrants come--- no one would have to migrate. Chew on that for a bit.

What if the money that goes to ICE and INS and border patrol (and walls! Oh, don't forget those walls!) went to USAID instead? Wouldn't that be a more humane solution?

Current Mood: sad

Most recently, over a long weekend, I finished Dharma Punx by Noah Levine. I'd read Against The Stream earlier and this finally arrived on library hold. It seems to be a pivotal book for a lot of people.

I'm not a punk, I'm a goth, but I've had plenty of dear punk friends through the years and I understand the anger. In fact perhaps the most salient difference between punk and goth is the reaction of anger to the state of the world, versus a reaction of sadness and quiet acceptance that things are fucked.

However, it was pretty neat to read about the young Noah heading out with his skateboard to see shows from bands I've listened to occasionally since the 80's. He is three years older than me and also lived in Cali during the 80's so that is another neat thing- lots of personal overlaps.

The meat of the book has to do with his getting clean and sober and working the straightedge philosophy alongside some pretty hardcore buddhist practice. This is very different than the punk ethos, even though he's done a good job reconciling the two in his mind, as one does every day. He is uniquely positioned to see the similarities. But I know I'm not alone in rejecting the suggestion that slam dancing with someone helps them towards enlightenment, and this is where I have one major problem with his ideas: I don't get the self righteousness of the bodhisattva vow, that his work is in any way helping the rest of us sentient beings. The great merit of buddhism to me is that when I practice it I stop being an asshole. But my practice ends at my house. Nothing I can do or say in terms of mantra or sitting will ever affect anyone else, and I'm fine with that. Maybe I'm missing something.

And again, there's a lot, a LOT to be said for any belief system capable of making a large segment of society collectively stop being assholes to each other.

This is a book that took me a long time to get through. I renewed it twice. It was worth it.

It's about Mexico City and the government and people that live there, in the bubble that is the Distrito Federal (aka the DF). Having just visited for the second time, I was really interested. It sheds light on some things that are rather unsavory, like the Heavens Levanton case in which 12 people were kidnapped from in front of a bar and found dead outside the city later on. The police were actually implicated, and it took place a few blocks from the Hotel Century where I stayed my first time there. (As an aside, I always seem to find messed-up places to stay and be fine in them- I totally innocently booked a room at the Cecil Hotel in DTLA for a conference, then found out about Richard Ramirez and Eliza Lam later. Yikes.)

The author is an amazing, vivid writer who has been through so very much, and his sorrow but also his reconciliation and grieving come through clearly. It's about moving through loss, about knowing things, about his love for the city that seems to be wild and full of life, but has a dark side as well. I loved reading it because I'm of a morbid turn of mind, but it's not everyone's cup of tea. I understand much better now why people were so happy to elect AMLO and why they are not pleased with Peno Nieta.

I've just started another Noah Levine book called Dharma Punx, on the vein of reading about sobriety and buddhism. (Since I'm neither sober at the moment, nor buddhist, it's one of those reads that is just filling me in on what it's like to go through these things.)

I also skimmed an old book called How To Retire Early, which is tremendously outdated and not worth the effort.

Onward--

I hadn't realized it had been almost a year since I created this and started posting. Silly of me to forget.

Just finished reading Imperial Bedrooms by Bret Easton Ellis. His characters are always so horrible and empty. This protagonist is particularly monstrous, an alcoholic zombie who is flirting with death along with all of his friends. Well written, though. Like a good realistic horror novel.

Current Mood: moody
Current Music: Bach

How I love this movie. Like 1984, it tells deep truths about the human heart and mind. Ignorance begets evil in many ways in this story- from Dr. Frankenstein creating a monster without thought of consequence, to the monster's ignorance of the little girl's frailty, to the townspeople burning him because they couldn't understand him and thought him evil when he was really unaware. An old and perpetual story.

Karloff is an amazing actor.

Current Music: Fishtank hum

So what is it about a new format or forum that is so tasty? Why the drive away from the blue monster? I really feel like of the 400+ friends I have on facebook I am seeing entries from only the tiniest few of them. In fact it is clear to me that like a Pandora station, the content keeps shrinking. I once left a Pandora station on for 8 hours and it ended up with 5 different versions of "I want to marry a Lighthouse Keeper" in rotation. It kept deselecting new things in response to one thing I said I liked. Well, I don't like monotony, so it got nuked.

And yet, I don't consider myself someone with a lot to say. I know a lot of things and I have opinions but mostly I keep them to myself.

But occasionally it would be really nice to have a place to post about music or fashion or film that doesn't feel like a high school courtyard. I'm also aware that my interests in occultism and goth culture are something that's hard for several contingents of my fb friends to understand- mostly the scientists and the relatives. I think therefore that this might end up being a music and culture blog on the face of it, with the esoteric posts limited to personal contacts. That way, people don't have to think about potentially uncomfortable things and everyone is kept happy.

Current Mood: nostalgic
Current Music: Frankenstein playing in the background