Restlessness on Review Friday

With the move now officially in full swing (we pick up the keys/gate openers on Tuesday) I am starting to feel the sway of complete wanderlust. So be on the lookout for a complete site redesign over the weekend. The place may be down for a day or so whilst I get everything organized.

Or I'll get lazy and never actually get around to uploading all the changes.

Either way.

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Short review day, because I have no attention span at all right now.

Books

Lisey's Story, Stephen King - I have such a disconnect when I read Stephen King books. Despite their tendency to run wildly long and go absolutely off the wall in terms of crazy plot devices, I almost always come out satisfied. After the very fun departure that was Cell - just a straightforward zombie horror-fest - this book is much more standard late-career King, very much in the vein of Insomnia or Bag of Bones. That is: widow(er) discovers deeper meaning/horrors in their now-dead spouse's past, leading to violent/horrific events in the present.

It's very well done (and better written than usual for King, by a good margin) although the seams tend to show a little bit in the structure of the plot. The whole book runs in continual flashbacks of the "Oh I remember something horrible from the past that I had repressed" variety, which can get old really fast. Especially when the thing you are remembering is someone telling a story. A flashback of a flashback of an 8 year-old child's narrative stretches my reading mind to near the breaking point.

But like I said, very well done and well written. So while you see exactly where the story is going (he actually give you the ending around page 100 but couches it so that you've pushed it out of your mind by the time it comes around) you don't mind the trip.

World War Z, An Oral History Of The Zombie War, Max Brooks - Seriously, just let that roll off your tongue a couple of times. An Oral History of The Zombie War. There is practically no way that this book could be bad. Until you start reading it and realize that it is a much more difficult task to manage than you thought.

The idea is great - a pseudo-documentary of interviews with key figures in the carefully imagined near-apocalyptic war against the walking undead. There's enough room for juicy story that by the end I was absolutely amazed at how well he pulled the whole thing off. Because it really is fraught with peril - going overboard, losing the narrative in all the winding interviews, keeping the tone in-character as you shift. Except for what I saw as a few melodramatic missteps (the downed Air-Force pilot and the soap-opera worthy submarine story) the book is tightly focused on giving you the timeline, highlighting it with personal vignettes, and then leaving you to fill all the blanks in for yourself.

It even manages some genuinely touching moments, even against a ludicrous backdrop of zombies who neither breathe nor pump blood overrunning the entire world. Big time recommended reading.

Music

Mates of State - Bring it Back. I will not lie, I have never been a huge Mates fan. More appreciative than anything else, I'd never actually bought one of their albums, just listened to a few of their songs and was decidedly "Eh." But on a recommendation from my music advisers, I picked this one up and I'm much more on board now.

Catchy, lo-tech, what I swear is an organ/drums combo, it's all just very listenable. It's gone into my main rotation as a CD that can run uninterrupted straight through. Not going to win any awards, but I'll keep my eyes open for anything they do in the future.

Amy Winehouse - Back to Black. How weird is it that these two albums have near matching titles and I got them in the same week? Anyways, I refuse to gush about this CD like everyone else. I do love a good throwback song, though, and this thing is chock full of them. It's very much old-school Motown crossed with a lot of Billie Holiday torch standards, which is very refreshing. I like a return to old things I love made new.

That said, I'm not super big on the album. I do love a couple of the songs, particularly Rehab and the title track, but the sum total is a little boring to me. I feel like a little variety would have really helped keep me more interested. I dunno, I feel sort of bad for not liking it as much as I should.

Mika - Life in Cartoon Motion. Have I not written about this one before? I really feel like I have, because in real life I couldn't stop gushing about this CD for two months straight, but I don't see it in the archives. Oh well. I love this album so hard. I can't do a coherent review, so instead I direct you to the Amazon page, which has a fever-dream-induced editorial review which is much better than me at describing such things.

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God, that took way more concentration than I expected. Back to flailing in every direction!