Sunday Morning Book Thread - 10-27-2024 ["Perfessor" Squirrel]

HT: TRex

Welcome to the prestigious, internationally acclaimed, stately, and illustrious Sunday Morning Book Thread! The place where all readers are welcome, regardless of whatever guilty pleasure we feel like reading. Here is where we can discuss, argue, bicker, quibble, consider, debate, confabulate, converse, and jaw about our latest fancy in reading material. As always, pants are required, unless you are wearing these pants...("I AM THE PUMPKIN KING!")

So relax, find yourself a warm kitty (or warm puppy--I won't judge) to curl up in your lap, enjoy a pumpkin spice Snickers bar, and dive into a new book. What are YOU reading this fine morning?

PIC NOTE

TRex sent in today's pic. LEGO minifigs can be set up in all sorts of cool diorama situations. In this case, it's a bit hard to tell, but it looks almost like something from an Agatha Christie story. All of the minifigs are sitting around in the library. One appears to be a police officer who might be on the scene to question witnesses to a murder. And the library has a cat!

FOUR KINDS OF HORROR:

When it comes to horror there are quite a few subgenres, a little something for just about every horror afficionado out there. I think most of them can be described as some combination of the following categories of horror:

Biological Horror

This type of horror feeds on one of our most primal fears: death. We are mortal creatures, but we seldom like to confront our own mortality directly. Biological horror--or horror of the body--exposes us to that fear, if only vicariously, through the adventures of the protagonists confronted by evil that seeks to deprive them of their lives or otherwise damage their physical forms. Mary Shelly's Frankenstein is one of the most famous examples of this, as Victor Frankenstein seeks to conquer death itself by reanimating his own Creature composed of the decayed remains of numerous human victims. The Creature is almost always depicted in literature as a scarred, disfigured behemoth with freakish strength, nearly invulnerable to conventional weapons. Bram Stoker's Dracula preys on more subtle fears, as Dracula has the power to turn his victims into lesser copies of himself. He and his minions feed on the blood of humans to survive. Both Frankenstein's monster and Dracula pose difficult physical challenges to the protagonists of their respective stories, and both use biological horror to terrify their victims.

Psychological Horror

Although we all fear death deep down inside, we also fear being driven mad, when we are convinced that we now occupy a different reality than the one we were raised to believe in. Psychological horror explores our fears, our insecurities, our anxieties, and our phobias. In Dean Koontz's The Face of Fear, the main protagonist, Graham, must confront his deepest fears about climbing after suffering from PTSD due to a bad fall while climbing Mt. Everest. Meanwhile, a serial killer is stalking Graham and his girlfriend through an empty office building. The Butcher is intent on causing as much fear and chaos in New York City as a prelude to taking over the world! (Yes, this plot is straight out of Pinky and the Brain despite being written decades earlier.)

Supernatural Horror

Whereas biological horror and psychological horror involve terrors of the body and mind, respectively, supernatural horror has a spiritual dimension. Evil ghosts, poltergeists, and demons inhabit this domain. Often one of the greatest challenges for the protagonists is to accept the existence of supernatural horror, as they've been raised to be rationalists, pragmatists, and otherwise skeptical that supernatural entities are real. Supernatural horror can be deeply personal for the victims as the demonic forces target us in our innermost heart, striking at us where we are most vulnerable to their influence. Depending on the writer, there may be an even more powerful spiritual force for good that can save the heroes, but they must relinquish their old belief system and take a leap of faith. Frank de Felitta's Golgotha Falls is a good example of this. A demonic force corrupts and desecrates a small rural church so thoroughly that it declares, "Christ was defeated at Golgotha Falls!" Naturally, it is proven wrong by the end of the story, but the protagonists need to bring in the big guns, i.e., the Pope himself is called upon to intervene spiritually. (NOT the current Pope! It was written in 1984, so he's clearly an expy of Pope John Paul II.)

Cosmic Horror

Of all of the types of horror, this one is the youngest, I think. The works of H.P. Lovecraft are among the most famous examples, though Lovecraft was drawing upon earlier inspirations such as William Hope Hodgson and Lord Dunsany. Unlike supernatural horrors, which take a direct interest in the affairs of mortal creatures, cosmic horrors see us as insignificant bugs in the greater scheme of things. The universe is so vast and strange that humans are barely an afterthought to beings that are so far beyond our understanding that to even gaze upon one can drive us to madness. It's a cold, unfeeling world out there and we have no place in it.

Many authors like to mix and match these to evoke the desired reaction in their reader. For instance, Hannibal Lector from Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris is a cannibal (bio horror) but he's also a highly skilled psychiatrist and loves to toy with his victims' minds. F. Paul Wilson's Repairman Jack series features quite a bit of both biological and cosmic horror, but also features a protagonist who is not above using psychological horror on bad guys who are messing with his clients. One notable example: A couple of thieves steal Christmas toys from a charity that helps crack-addicted and AIDS-afflicted children. Jack tracks them down. To send a message, he dresses up as Santa Claus, straps on a couple of lead-weighted boxing gloves, and beats the crap out of both of them. He then straps them to the front of the truck they used to steal the toys, and drives the truck back to the charity before calling the cops. The thieves are now terrified of Santa Claus (as they should be!).

FEATURED MORON REVIEW:

Biden's Dog has been working his way through The Life of Lenin (1964) by Louis Fisher and has some comments:

This book took me over 4 months to read. It was a tedious effort. This was due to the small size of the print, along with the author's going into minute detail on the historic aspects covered in the book.

I learned a lot about the fine differences between Mensheviks and Bolsheviks and those in between. I learned how Lenin was an anti-utopian who nevertheless sought a utopian communist world. When that didn't happen neither outside of Russia nor inside Russia after the Revolution, Lenin breaks numerous of his own rules in an attempt to control the damage brought about by collapsed agricultural and industrial economies and the draining of Russia's "bourgeois" intellectuals, artists, and capitalist financiers and factory managers.

The book covers Lenin's early life, his moving up the Marxist ladder, his endless dialogs and disputes with other players including Trotsky, Stalin and so many more comrades. The book covers in great minutiae Lenin's daily micro-management of the vast former Tsarist Empire. Lenin ruled via tyrannical dictatorship. Along the way, Lenin was almost killed in a failed assassination attempt. At the end, he died of one stroke too many. Before he died, he saw what was coming if he would not derail Stalin from climbing up the party ladder. But it was too late. The rest is history.

Those who loved him worshiped him as a god, both during his lifetime and after his embalmment and long term public display in Moscow's Red Square. Oh, the irony!

Should you read this book? I love history books but this one is geared more toward a student of Sovietology.

I think it's important to have a look at the author's bio page on Wikipedia. He led an interesting life:

Louis Fisher - Wikipedia

In spite of everything stated on Wikipedia, Fischer clearly waxes cynical numerous times throughout the book on communism in general and with regard to many of Lenin's actions. And it is clear throughout the book that he was no fan of Stalin--not at all. I do not know how to bridge what is reported in Wikipedia versus what the author himself wrote here and there in this book.

At Biden's Dog's recommendation, I did check out Fischer's bio page on Wikipedia. It does seem like he was very conflicted when it came to Communism. He wasn't a fan of Stalin's brutality, I guess, but didn't quite make the connection that it was that very brutality that was the endpoint of Communism. It's always someone else's fault when Communism inevitably fails.

MORON RECOMMENDATIONS

I'm finishing up my send reading of Vampires of Michigan. I enjoyed it the first time but rushed through it because I just had to find out what happened to Zip. I'm enjoying it even more the second time.

Zip is the lead singer in a local rock band. They're good. He has big dreams but the other band members have lives and day jobs. For them it's a hobby; for Zip it's his life. Besides, because of some past mistakes, he feels he's unemployable in a regular job. His old girlfriend has moved on and is now engaged. He's living out of his van. He can't seem to move forward.

Zip has recently noticed a beautiful, mysterious blond woman at his shows. She always slips away before he can talk to her, but one night Zip manages to catch up with her. One thing leads to another and Zip has unwittingly been drawn into the world of the Vampires of Michigan, a cross between Dark Shadows and The Godfather.

Who knew that vampires lived in Michigan? What happens when the discipline and sense of duty of the older generations breaks down? What is the meaning of life when life goes on almost endlessly?

Posted by: KatieFloyd at October 20, 2024 09:28 AM (EsfzF)

Books of powerful magic always have to be written in an obscure language. That's so that nobody can see what bullshit they are.

I'm not just being cynical here. A lot of the "practice of magick" was invented by failed seminary students in the late Medieval/early Modern era. Flunk out of priest training, hit the road as a "wizard" or an "alchemist." You can spin the jargon, you've got some strange books in Latin (probably a bootleg Satyricon), and you're just educated enough to put one over on provincial merchants and minor gentry. Naturally they played up the Halloween decoration aspects -- skulls, blood, etc. And because you've always got to "cool the mark" before you blow town, invite them to some ritual in a cemetery and maybe pretend to stab your girlfriend or something equally serious, so there's no way they can run to the local authorities.

See Elliot Rose's A Razor for a Goat for a good hard-nosed look at the bullshit behind the bullshit in "occultism."

Posted by: Trimegistus at October 20, 2024 09:21 AM (78a2H)

More Moron-recommended reading material can be found HERE! (1000+ Moron-recommended books!)

WHAT I'VE BEEN READING THIS PAST WEEK:

After reviewing some of OregonMuse's old Book Threads, I thought I'd try something a bit different. Instead of just listing WHAT I'm reading, I'll include commentary as well. Unless otherwise specified, you can interpret this as an implied recommendation, though as always your mileage may vary.

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REAMDE by Neal Stephenson

After the success of Snow Crash and The Diamond Age, Stephenson apparently decided he preferred writing doorstoppers. Most of his output since then has been quite lengthy novels exploring some topic in *excruciating* detail. He also likes to give you the full backstory on characters, even when it's not necessary to the novel, if only to explain some of that character's quirks and eccentricities.

Although the blurb for this book seems to indicate that it's about a computer virus delivered via a file called REAMDE.txt, that's just a McGuffin to kickstart the actual plot. A young woman is caught up in shady shenanigans when her boyfriend gets mixed up with Russian mobsters. They abduct both Zula and Peter on a mad quest to track down hackers in China that stole a great deal of money. They find the hackers, only to then get caught up in the Global War on Terror as Zula is kidnapped by Islamic terrorists plotting attacks in America. Most of the story is about a bunch of different groups all trying to track down Abdallah Jones before he can launch his grand scheme here in the heart of the good old U.S. of A.

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Tips, suggestions, recommendations, etc., can all be directed to perfessor -dot- squirrel -at- gmail -dot- com.

Disclaimer: No Morons were physically harmed in the making of this Sunday Morning Book Thread. We disavow any emails from us that may include a reamde.txt file as an attachment. Open at your own risk.

posted by Open Blogger at 09:00 AM

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