Book Review: SLIGHTS

TITLE: SLIGHTS

AUTHOR: Kaaron Warren

528 pages, Angry Robot Books, ISBN 9780857660077 (paperback, also available in e-book, audio)

DESCRIPTION: (from Goodreads): STEVIE IS A KILLER.

But she brings her victims back to life to demand of them: "WHAT DO YOU SEE?"

Now she's about to find out for herself...

After an accident in which her mother dies, Stevie has a near-death experience, and finds herself in a room full of people - everyone she's ever annoyed. They clutch at her, scratch and tear at her. But she finds herself drawn back to this place, again and again, determined to unlock its secrets. Which means she has to die, again and again. And Stevie starts to wonder whether other people see the same room... when they die.

MY RATING: 5 out of 5 stars

MY THOUGHTS: Most of the horror in Kaaron Warren’s Slights is subtle – hints at dreadful things that have happened, the occasional more solid sensory description – because the main character doesn’t allow herself to really experience/process the things she’s doing/seeing/learning. That doesn’t make the horrific aspects of the story any less compelling. In fact, it makes them almost insidious as the hints and sensory descriptions slowly work in the back of the reader’s brain. There are bits and pieces of Stevie’s story that are lingering with me long after I’ve finished the book (it has taken me a while to finally write this review, for which I apologize to the author), little things that pop back into my head because of something I see in my peripheral vision or half-hear because I’m concentrating on something else. And isn’t that the way the best psychological horror works, planting itself in your hindbrain until something brings it out in stark relief?

I say “most of the horror” because there are several scenes of disturbing body horror sprinkled in during each of Stevie’s near-death experiences in the “room” with the people she’s “slighted.” The damage these figures do to Stevie is more graphically presented, but there’s still a psychological aspect: is this really happening, or is it her subconscious attacking her for the things she knows she’s done but can’t bring herself to consciously acknowledge? Most of the “slights” she believes she’s paying penance for in the room are minor things that the “slighted” individuals probably don’t even remember – but the people she’s really harmed don’t seem to show up, or at least not as often and not as brutally. And we’re never sure what Stevie’s victims see, lending weight to the question of what’s really happening. I think disparate readers will interpret what’s going on here differently, a tribute to Warren’s talent.

Stevie herself meets my criteria for an “unreliable narrator.” Whether she’s talking about her own current circumstances, her childhood, or the lives of her parents and their siblings, there are always details she omits or shares and then recants. There are also the things other people say to her that jog the reader into realizing that Stevie doesn’t remember events the same way as others who were present. This forces the reader to pay attention, to start connecting dots on their own. I am a fan of “unreliable narrators,” so it should come as no surprise that I loved this aspect of the book. I enjoy trying to figure out what the narrator is hiding (whether she’s doing it intentionally to mislead the reader, or honestly doesn’t realize she’s doing it at all). I found Stevie’s voice – wistful yet agonized, firm yet shadowy – compelling throughout the book.

Slights is also an excellent crime novel – not only the aspect of whether Stevie will get caught for the thing’s she’s done (she’s a killer – that’s not a spoiler because it’s right there in the book’s tagline), but also the slow unraveling of the truth of her family’s life before her father, a policeman, died in the line of duty. That truth explains a lot about Stevie and her brother and their relationship which is as much at the core of the book as Stevie’s obsession with the room and the people she’s slighted.

Book Review: AN INDIGENOUS PEOPLES' HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES

TITLE: An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States

AUTHOR: Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz

296 pages, Beacon Press, ISBN 9780807057834 (softcover, also available in hardcover, e-book, audio)

DESCRIPTION: (from Goodreads): Today in the United States, there are more than five hundred federally recognized Indigenous nations comprising nearly three million people, descendants of the fifteen million Native people who once inhabited this land. The centuries-long genocidal program of the US settler-colonial regimen has largely been omitted from history. Now, for the first time, acclaimed historian and activist Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz offers a history of the United States told from the perspective of Indigenous peoples and reveals how Native Americans, for centuries, actively resisted expansion of the US empire.

With growing support for movements such as the campaign to abolish Columbus Day and replace it with Indigenous Peoples’ Day and the Dakota Access Pipeline protest led by the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States is an essential resource providing historical threads that are crucial for understanding the present. In An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States, Dunbar-Ortiz adroitly challenges the founding myth of the United States and shows how policy against the Indigenous peoples was colonialist and designed to seize the territories of the original inhabitants, displacing or eliminating them. And as Dunbar-Ortiz reveals, this policy was praised in popular culture, through writers like James Fenimore Cooper and Walt Whitman, and in the highest offices of government and the military. Shockingly, as the genocidal policy reached its zenith under President Andrew Jackson, its ruthlessness was best articulated by US Army general Thomas S. Jesup, who, in 1836, wrote of the Seminoles: “The country can be rid of them only by exterminating them.”
 
Spanning more than four hundred years, this classic bottom-up peoples’ history radically reframes US history and explodes the silences that have haunted our national narrative.

MY RATING: 4 out of 5 stars

MY THOUGHTS: Squeezing the entire documented history of all the Indigenous Nations of North America, from pre-colonization through the present, into a single book is a daunting, perhaps impossible, task. Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz does about the best job achievable, I think, hewing as close to a chronological account as one can when trying to cover a large swath of overlapping peoples, events, causes, and effects. The book is a mostly high-level look at several hundred years’ worth of history, concentrating on the “big events” (including but not limited to the Trail of Tears, Little Big Horn, Wounded Knee) and the various declared and undeclared wars against Indigenous nations right up to the end of the 1800s, while still paying attention to the effect of those wars, as well as genocide and relocation, on Indigenous populations.

The book covers a lot of material I remember studying in elementary school, high school, or both (I feel like the colonial period was covered more generally in elementary school, but then with a greater focus on New York State history at some point) in the 1970s and early ‘80s, but from the point of view of indigenous peoples rather than the white/Eurocentric prevailing view. I know I learned about the Iroquois Confederacy and its influence on the United States Constitution; I know we studied the events of the Trail of Tears, Little Big Horn, and Wounded Knee (although I guess I’m just young enough that the 1973 Wounded Knee Occupation wasn’t something I was aware of until reminded about it here), as well as the Plymouth and Jamestown settlements. I recall learning about the Navajo “code-talkers” contributions to Allied efforts during World War Two. What I don’t remember learning about at all is the systematic shrinking of the reservations and the horrors of the residential school system. To me as a kid/teen, the reservations were some kind of weird “nations with our nation” with unknown boundaries, and I don’t think I knew anyone of actual Indigenous descent until I was well into adulthood. Dunbar-Ortiz’s work has just confirmed for me that there’s a lot I never learned about the Indigenous people of even the area where I grew up (the lower Hudson Valley), never mind the rest of the country.

An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States is not just a history book. It is also a critique: of the Doctrine of Discovery, of the way the legend of the founding and growth of the United States glosses over, if not outright erases, the destruction of autonomous Indigenous nations, of how our current military’s language and methodology continues to place Indigenous peoples as “the other”/the enemy. The last few chapters are light on history and heavy on sociopolitical commentary regarding the then-current US (published in 2014) and its near-future, and of how reparations are/are not being made equitably to the Indigenous nations that still survive.

If nothing else, Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz’s work has inspired me to read more about the Indigenous populations of the areas I grew up, went to college, worked, and currently live: the lower Hudson Valley, western New York state, Roanoke Virginia, and northwest New Jersey. This book also made me want to read the rest of the titles in Beacon Press’s “Revisioning History” series.

Sunday Shorts: Two By Octavia E. Butler

I love short fiction, and Sunday Shorts is the feature where I get to blog about it. I’ve considered promising to review a short story every day, but that’s a lot of pressure. And while no one will fault me if I miss days, I’ll feel guilty, which will lead to not posting at all. So better to stick to a weekly post highlighting a couple/three stories, as I’ve done in the past.

First released in e-book form in 2014, Unexpected Stories collects two previously unpublished Octavia E. Butler stories discovered among her papers after her untimely passing in 2006. I finally read the book, in the beautiful hardcover edition released by Subterranean Press, in February of this year.

“A Necessary Being” takes place in an alien culture that is based on societal caste and skin coloration. The Hao are revered and installed as rulers of each tribe/village, often whether they like it or not. If a tribe is lacking a Hao, they are willing to kidnap one from someplace else and torture/mutilate them to keep them from escaping, which is what happened to Tahneh’s father, the Hao of the Rohkahn. Tahneh has been unable to produce a Hao heir, so when a Hao named Duit and his companions stumble into their drought-ruined domain, a plan is put in place to keep this Hao from returning to his own people. Butler’s deft interplay of the conflicting wants and needs of Tahneh, Duit, and the people who surround them is absolutely wonderful and thought-provoking. There are no absolute good guys or bad guys here – the antagonist is the moral conflict, if that makes sense. In other hands the reader might be guided to take Tahneh’s side over Duit’s, simply because we are introduced to her and get a feel for her quandry first, but Butler makes sure that we understand and feel for Duit’s situation just as much as Tahneh’s. The story really touches on how societal blinders (“this is the way it’s always been,” “these are the things we need and our needs come first,” etc.) can sometimes keep us from seeing a path forward out of danger and into relative safety. Sometimes complacency is deadly and the ability to change is what enables us to survive.

The author herself described “Childfinder,” the second and much shorter story in Unexpected Stories, as pessimistic, and I can’t really disagree with her. Set in a bleak near future on Earth where The Organization recruits kids with potential for psionic ability, main character Barbara has left the Organization to find the pre-psionic kids The Organization doesn’t want – which means low-income kids of color. The story starts with her encounter with one such kid, and we can see that she really cares about their development and that they don’t get lost or chewed up by a system weighted against them. Of course, The Organization comes looking for her, understanding what their former employee is up to – and Barbara has to make a hard, one might even say brutal, decision. We see the immediate effect of that decision, but never get to see the long-term results. However, the quotes that bookend the story do imply that it doesn’t go as well as Barbara hopes. This is a much darker story than “A Necessary Being,” and yes, it feels pessimistic. It also leaves me hoping for more “Barbaras” (regardless of gender) helping low-income and other marginalized youth in our own world.

Unexpected Stories is available in e-book. Subterranean Press’s limited edition hardcover is currently sold out.

RoofbeamReader's 2022 To Be Read Challenge Initial Post

Most avid readers have a “to be read” pile, in our office or near our bed: books we bought intending to read, but just haven’t gotten around to it yet. Some of us have “to be read” bookcases.

If you perused my previous “2022 Reading Challenges” post, you know that I’ve actually challenged myself to clear 24 books (12 fiction, 12 non-fiction) from my TBR pile this year. I made that decision well before seeing RoofbeamReader’s announcement on his blog that he’s reinstating the 12 book TBR Challenge he started over a decade ago. Since RBR offers raffled prizes for anyone who completes his challenge, I decided I needed to participate. But upping my list of books from 24 to 36 feels like I’d be setting myself up for failure on all counts. SO, I’m considering RBR’s TBR Challenge to be a subset of my own challenge – all the books below can be found on my larger list as well.

You have to go to RBR’s website to officially sign up for the challenge if you want to be entered to win a gift card to Amazon or the Book Depository at year’s end but the basic rules (other than how to enter) are: Choose 12 books that have been on your bookshelf or “To Be Read” list for AT LEAST one full year. This means books with a publication date of 1/1/2021 or later are ineligible; books published in 2021 or earlier qualify as long as they’ve been on your TBR Pile/List. Then choose two (2) alternate titles, just in case one or two of your original twelve end up in the “did not finish” bin.

Per the rules of the Challenge, I’ll be coming back to this post to link to individual book reviews and to show progress. I’ll do this by italicizing the books I’ve read and adding “completed on [date]” to the entry.

MY 2021 ROOFBEAMREADER TO BE READ CHALLENGE LIST:

1.       The Tricky Part: One Boy’s Fall from Trespass into Grace, by Martin Moran (2005) (Finished June 28, 2022)

2.       Hollow Earth: The Long and Curious History of Imagining Strange Lands, Fantastical Creatures, Advanced Civilizations, and Marvelous Machines Below the Earth’s Surface, by David Standish (2006) (Finished July 19, 2022)

3.       Letters to the Pumpkin King, by Seanan McGuire (2014) (Finished November 30, 2022)

4.       An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz (2014) (Finished April 5, 2022)

5.       Something in the Blood: The Untold Story of Bram Stoker, the Man Who Wrote Dracula, by David J. Skal (2016) (Finished November 8, 2022)

6.       Comic Book Implosion: An Oral History of DC Comics Circa 1978, by Keith Dallas and John Wells (2018) (Finished July 23, 2022)

7.       The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, by R.A. Dick (pseudonym of Josephine Leslie) (1945, reissued in 2014) (Finished November 28, 2022)

8.       Excalibur! By Gil Kane and John Jakes (1980) (Finished September 11, 2022)

9.       Slights, by Kaaron Warren (2009) (Finished on February 13, 2022)

10.   Lord Tyger, by Philip Jose Farmer (1970) (Finished August 30, 2022)

11.   Untamed Shore, by Silvia Moreno-Garcia (2020) (Finished September 27, 2022)

12.   A Summer Beyond Your Reach: Stories, by Xia Jia (2020) (Finished December 22, 2022)

Alternates

1.       Horror Fiction in the 20th Century: Exploring Literature’s Most Chilling Genre, by Jess Nevins (2020) (Finished December 20, 2022)

2.       The Red Lamp, by Mary Roberts Rinehart (1925, reissued in 2018)

2022 Reading Challenges

I always set myself more than one reading challenge per year. Some carry over from year to year, and some are new. Some are broad and some are themed. And in many cases, books read will help me meet more than one challenge. Here’s this year’s list.

TO BE READ CHALLENGE

The idea (formulated by RoofBeamReader at his blog several years ago) is to pick 12 books (plus 2 alternates in case you find yourself unable to finish a couple of your main choices) that have sat unread on your bookshelf for a year or more. Books published in 2021 wouldn’t be eligible, nor would re-reads. This year, I’ve again decided to pick 24 books (12 fiction, 12 non-fiction) but no alternates. I did not do well on this challenge in 2021, but I’m getting back on the horse. I plan to come back to this post and add “date completed” for each book. Here are my lists for 2022 (not listed in intended reading order):

FICTION:

1.       The Mystery of the Sea by Bram Stoker

2.       The Ghost and Mrs. Muir by R. A. Dick

3.       Dune by Frank Herbert

4.       Excalibur! by Gil Kane and John Jakes

5.       Lord Tyger by Philip Jose Farmer

6.       The Book of Lost Saints by Daniel Jose Older

7.       Slights by Kaaron Warren - Completed February 13, 2022

8.       Let Me In by John Ajvide Lindqvist

9.       The Red Lamp by Mary Roberts Reinhart

10.   Unexpected Stories by Octavia E. Butler - Completed February 20, 2022

11.   Untamed Shore by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

12.   A Summer Beyond Your Reach by Xia Jia

NON-FICTION:

1.       Twilight at the World of Tomorrow by James Mauro

2.       Something in the Blood: The Untold Tale of Bram Stoker by David J. Skal

3.       Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States by Roxane Dunbar-Ortiz - Completed April 5, 2022

4.       The Celluloid Closet by Vito Russo

5.       The Tricky Part: One Boy’s Fall from Trespass into Grace by Martin Moran

6.       Comic Book Implosion: An Oral History of DC Comics Circa 1978 by Keith Dallas and John Wells

7.       Letters to the Pumpkin King by Seanan McGuire

8.       First Family by Joseph J. Ellis

9.       Classics on Infinite Earths by Julian Darius

10.   Hollow Earth by David Standish

11.   A Kind of Magic: Making the Original Highlander by Jonathan Melville

12.   Horror Fiction in the 20th Century: Exploring Literature’s Most Chilling Genre by Jess Nevins

(NOTE 1: Last year’s two alternates, Classics on Infinite Earths and Hollow Earth, are now in the main list.)

NOTE 2: For the first time in a few years, Adam Burgess is once again hosting the TBR Challenge on his website. Because of the way the rules for his TBR Challenge work, I’m going to make a separate post, and 14 of the above 24 books will officially be a part of his TBR Challenge as well as this larger one.

365 SHORT STORIES CHALLENGE

Every year, I challenge myself to read one short story per day. Some years I keep the pace pretty well, and some years I fall behind and then scramble to catch up (and some years, I catch up and fall behind again, and some years I blow past the goal handily). I used to post thoughts on each individual story over on my now-largely-defunct LiveJournal; this year I plan to review a story or two in-depth each Sunday and then do a monthly “round-up” of all stories read that month. I’m defining “short story” as anything from flash fiction to novella-length. If a novelette or novella is published as a stand-alone book (eBook or otherwise), that story will also count towards my annual Goodreads “Books Read Challenge.”

GOODREADS CHALLENGE

Goodreads allows members to set a challenge. In 2021, I set a goal of 125 books and read 140. For 2022, I’m setting the same goal of 125 to start with, and we’ll see what happens. Goodreads counts magazines as “books,” so I count them for this challenge as well if I read every page of the magazine. Of course, any book read for the TBR Challenge, or the other challenges mentioned in this post count towards this one.

GRAPHIC NOVEL CHALLENGE

I own far more graphic novels and trade paperback collections of classic comics than I’ve read. In 2017 I started trying to turn that around, and I’m again setting a goal in 2021 of reading one graphic novel per week, so 52 for the year, tracking them in the monthly Reading Round-Up Posts.

NON-FICTION CHALLENGE

As with graphic novels, I tend to get intrigued by and purchase far more non-fiction books than I actually end up reading. In an effort to clear some shelf-space, justify the money spent, and increase my knowledge a bit, I’m continuing the challenge I started last year, but tweaking it. I would like to read two (2) non-fiction books per month, or 24 for the year. Twelve (12) of those have been identified above in the To Be Read Challenge, and the rest will be newer books (either purchased in 2021 and so ineligible for the To Be Read Challenge, or newly acquired as the year goes on).

READ THE BOOK / WATCH THE MOVIE CHALLENGE

I have so many books in my collection that are the basis for classic (and sometimes not-so-classic) movies that I thought it would be fun to read some of them and then see how the movies compare. In 2021 I didn’t do so well on this challenge, but I’m game to try again, and of course track them in the monthly Reading Round-Up posts, under the Page-to-Screen feature title and tag. I’ve never set a numeric goal for this challenge, but let’s aim for 12 “Page-to-Screen” posts this year.

COMPLETE THE SERIES CHALLENGE

In previous years I’ve challenged myself to come “up to date” on series I’d started but fallen behind on. Last year, I challenged myself to also read one series that I own but have not read. Titles that I have read in each series are indicated with (read in [month]). Last year, I completed two out of the four series intended. This year, I’m just going to list the series I didn’t complete last year, and not add any new series to the challenge. I plan to come back to this post and add “date completed” for each book individually and for each series as a whole. If I complete any other series on my shelves, I’ll come back and add that series to this entry.

THE VELVETEEN SERIES by Seanan McGuire

1.       Velveteen Vs. The Junior Super-Patriots

2.       Velveteen Vs. The Multiverse

3.       Velveteen Vs. The Seasons

THE CHRISTMAS CHRONICLES by Jeff Guinn

1.       The Autobiography of Santa Claus

2.       How Mrs. Claus Saved Christmas

3.       The Great Santa Search

THE SHADOWSHAPER TRILOGY by Daniel José Older

1.       Shadowshaper – read in 2015

2.       Shadowhouse Fall

3.       Shadowshaper Legacy

MONTHLY MINI-CHALLENGES

In 2019 for the first time, I set myself some monthly mini challenges based on various factors. I’m going to do it again in 2021, but list those challenges here as well:

January: No specific challenge

February: Authors from Africa or of African descent (for Black History Month)

March: Women Authors (for Women’s History Month)

April: Poetry (for National Poetry Month)

May:  Asian/Pacific Authors (for Asian Pacific / South Asian Heritage Month)

June: Queer Authors (for Pride Month)

July: No specific challenge (to catch up on challenges I’ve fallen behind on)

August: Classic and New Pulp Authors (because Pulpfest/Farmercon is held this month)

September: Hispanic authors (Hispanic Heritage Month)

October: Horror! Horror! Horror! (because Halloween, obviously)

November: Noir (because “Noirvember”)

December: Winter Holiday-related Fiction (Christmas, Hannukah, etc.)