This was one of those spontaneous purchases based on Amazon’s recommendations. A superhero novel? Okay, I will try it. I don’t want to imply that I didn’t enjoy it, but my sense is that I would have loved it even more if I was a 14-year old boy. It is also hard for me to follow (sometimes) a story that is told backwards. That said, I did find it to be a highly enjoyable fast-paced read, and one that also explored some heavy themes that will leave the reader thinking about the story for days after the finished reading.
Namely, which one of the EO’s is a good guy, and which one is a monster? Victor’s character has elements of trying to control his monstrous tendencies. Eli, on the other hand, believes that he is doing the Lord’s work (which is even scarier). The book kind of reminded me of that old show “Heroes.”
The lines between the good guy vs. the bad guy are blurred. Just like life. We all go a little mad sometimes.
First of all, as usual, the art that I think is “Halloween Art” is not marketed as such. But c’mon, man!
I forgot to take a picture of the placard, so the one below is just self-titled by me: “Eat Your Heart Out.” I think that pretty much sums it up. Dig the claws!
Eat Your Heart Out
Gratuitous skeleton art. Self-explanatory.
The ShadowSummer Days
I actually find Summer Days by Georgia O’Keefe to be quite peaceful and inspiring. It’s a life / death / rebirth type of thing. Plus, I love those desert southwest mountains.
Edward Hopper’s A Woman in the Sun qualifies as Halloween art because of the color of the light coming through the window, shining a sliver of afternoon death into the room. That light is the color of death. I don’t know how I know, but I know it. I saw it in Eureka Springs, Arkansas, and on another afternoon once, when I was much younger. Now I saw it in Hopper’s painting. I wonder if he knew it too.
A Woman in the Sun
This last one is not obviously Halloween art, but this is the scariest thing I saw. Leidy Churchman has painted the view from 432 Park Avenue, a 1,396-foot-high luxury condominium completed in 2015. The placard goes on to say that the building “sparked an outcry over … the stratospheric cost of its apartments,” and “hinting at the glaring divide between the ultra-rich and ordinary New Yorkers.” Let me tell you something. I would take the ultra-rich view over the poor person’s view AFD (I’m looking at you, Skyliner).
Tallest Residential Tower in the Western Hemisphere
What scares me is this recently growing trend in the media to perpetuate the cultural belief that “ordinary” people should have a hatred of the rich. I find that completely unacceptable and plain stupid. Why all this rich shaming? When was the last time a poor person gave you a good job, and opportunities for growth and development? I’m so sick of this ignorant crap everywhere I go lately! I really haven’t gotten political on this blog, but my visit to New York is bringing some things out in me that need to be said to any liberal imbecile who happens upon this page. My message to you? Quit hating people who are achieving things, you bunch of losers! Keep your heads down and work harder. Make something. Build something. Have an idea and develop it. Or better yet, go live in Venezuela and see how that works out for you.
Hate the rich? Are you insane? I love them. I want to learn everything they know and become one. I don’t want to drag them down to my level. I want to rise to their level. That’s the difference between a liberal and a conservative. We want to pursue or make our own opportunities. We don’t expect someone to hand us money because we were born or because we need something. If we need something, we will go out and work and get it. If we are sick or hurt, we figure out how to work anyway. Rise, bitches. Rise. Or get the hell out of America. I’m sick of paying for your CUSSING safe rooms and supplementing your so-called “living wage” that you think everyone is entitled to somehow.
Okay, that’s all. But I’m not taking it down. And guess what? If you leave me an asshole comment, I’ll just code you to SPAM. So eat it up. Liberals.
Next.
Soho / Chelsea Market / Greenwich Village
Too crowded, but fun to walk around in the neighborhoods for a bit. The Moleskine store – where I am LOVING yellow! Fiore’s pizza – 165 Bleecker Street. Best slices we’ve found in the last three years. Lombardi’s? Eh. Sal’s? Get the hell on with your flat pepperoni. I’m telling you. Fiore’s. They even had that grandma.
New York Public Library
Statue outside the NY Public Library
Beautiful museum-like space, with a gift shop and a small cafe, but I swear to God, we did not see one book the whole 30 minutes or so we walked around exploring. I don’t get it. We did see one giant door that was chained up. I wish I took a photo. It must be where all the New York liberals hid the books that offended them. The experience actually really pissed me off. Because I love libraries, and this my friend, was not a library. It was a commercial monstrosity. Quite frankly, it was a bullshit library, and 5th Avenue is just awful smell-wise and crowd-wise. It’s like being shuffled and beaten in a bad dream, all with the constant stench of human excrement and urine forever stuck in your nostrils. I fully intend to NEVER darken the streets of 5th Avenue again. I’ve never smelled anything like it.
Brooklyn Heights / Brooklyn Bridge Park / Cobble Hill
This was actually the highlight of Labor Day to me, walking through this neighborhood. I wish I took pictures of the views from Brooklyn, looking at both bridges, and from the park in Brooklyn Heights, looking over towards Manhattan. I highly recommend that if you have never ventured over to Brooklyn, you need to do it ASAP for a beautiful neighborhood walk. Really picturesque and almost quaint, even. And, there were no stinky smells in Brooklyn. Zero, none, not one.
At the corner of Henry and Amity Streets in Cobble Hill, a building caught my attention. I looked up and saw the sign:
As always, our analog version of our travels is kept in our “Play” Journal, by Stealth Journals. “Play” is an indexed book journal that should be used to record all of your good times!
Nothing kicks off a holiday weekend like giving Amazon more of my money, so I placed my $1.99 orders and saddled up to the old computer to catch up on what I’ve been missing on the paranormal show front in this year’s Season 3 episodes of “Ghost Adventures, Aftershocks.”
I love to watch the shows that cover places I’ve been to myself. The Jerome Grand Hotel episode had me wanting more footage of the actual hotel. Chris Altherr gave a very heartfelt recounting of his saving Bagans from the descending elevator (the same one where Claude Harvey died). Lonnie Anderson, and his wife, Renee, were fun to catch up with through the show, and I liked that they actually gave a positive story of an additional encounter that Lonnie experienced in his shop (located inside the Clubhouse). Kim Brasher, I can’t even talk to you right now, but I will be sending you a signed author’s copy of “America’s Most Haunted Hotel,” here in the next few weeks to thank you for the interview you gave us.
Rolling Hills Asylum
As to Rolling Hills, there were two new photos that I had not seen before that I found quite compelling. One was said to be of Roy, and the image showed a man’s torso, but not his legs. He was “standing” in front of a desk. If the photo were of a visitor, the legs of the desk would not have shown through! The other was a “scary” white face image outside the window of Emma’s room (45 feet off the ground). This was compelling to me because it reminded me of the photo I took at The Kehoe House in Savannah. I too, took a series of photos of the same window, just like this set that came out of Rolling Hills, and the face captured in both photos at these different locations shared very similar qualities. I have seen photos such as these one other time, and they were taken in the upstairs window at St. Albans in Radford, VA. I am no lighting expert, but of these three photos and three locations, the subject windows are all too high (seemingly) off the ground to be subject to any streetlight or headlights of passing cars.
Normally, I don’t get excited about other people’s “evidence,” but when you see something that matches what you’ve taken yourself, it makes you wonder.
Mostly, it makes me wonder why they are on the outside looking in, and if there can be any implications drawn by their positions. Are they not “allowed” in the building?
Never before has a deal with the devil been such rollicking good fun!
Howard’s portrayal of Johannes, and his vampire brother (Horst), makes for a hilariously dark read that takes you from graveyards, from town to town, and directly into the pits of hell itself. Johannes is a scientist who previously made a deal with the devil to learn the art of necromancy. Now, he wants his soul back and makes a second deal with the devil in order to win it back. One that involves a dark carnival (read as inspired by “Something Wicked this Way Comes,” by Ray Bradbury) in which Johannes must get one hundred souls signed over to the devil in order to win his soul back.
You will see just how far over the line Johannes is willing to step as far as getting evil/corrupt people to sign over their souls (people who are arguably damned anyway) vs. tricking innocent souls into signing their lives away. It makes for an interesting ponder over what you might be capable of doing to others if it meant saving yourself or someone you loved. Would you damn an innocent in order to save yourself? If you say that you wouldn’t, I bet when push came to shove, you would. The fight for self-preservation in order to live is very strong, and is an ingrained instinct that would be hard to change, even if you wanted to.
The writing is full of wit, and the darkness of the subject matter is balanced with the humor of both the situations themselves, and by the dialogue between the characters.
I loved it! We learn at the end of this book exactly why necromancy is so important to Johannes. He doesn’t want to create a zombie army to do his evil bidding, nothing like that. The point isn’t that he wants a bunch of animated corpses to provide free labor to work in his lab. He has a reason for wanting what he wants that isn’t based on an evil desire to harm the world, and this reason is what makes him a sympathetic character.
This is the first book of a series, and I have already ordered the remaining books, with the exception of the fifth (because it hasn’t been released yet).
Montana – Beautiful. Livingston, Bozeman, Emigrant, Big Sky. We will see you again soon.
Yellowstone: Apparently, where the dumbest people in the world congregate, to elbow each other while fighting over the opportunity to photograph buffalo alongside the road. It concerned me greatly that we found our way among them. 35 mph for 3 hours. Can we please have this day refunded to our life bank?
Jackson, WY – Grand Tetons and the Snake River. Taggart Lake secluded hike. Beautiful patio dining at Signal Mountain Lodge.
Idaho Falls – a dignified standoffishness. Steak bites with gorgonzola sauce. Greenbelt river walk.
Salt Lake City – the Mormons seem to be doing very well with their cult out here. Butternut squash on a patio. Ruth’s Diner.
We keep analog versions of our travels inside our “Play” Journal by Stealth Journals. “Play” is an indexed book journal that should be used to record all of your good times!
Dale Chihuly installations. A date night in Atlanta. One gorgeous walk.
NOT Chihuly! Natural beauty.
As always, we keep an analog version at home of all of our travels. We use “Play,” by Stealth Journals. “Play” is an indexed book journal that should be used to record all of your good times!
Addictive, compelling, one of the best books I’ve ever read. Kept me up at night reading. This is the second book of the “Cemetery of Forgotten Books” series.
**SPOILER ALERT**
How much is real vs. what is all a product of David Martin’s tortured mind is up to the reader to decide. This is part of the magic and fun of the book. Compare the scene on p.106 with Cristina displaying the photo of a young girl holding the hand of a man, walking on the beach. She finds it in her father’s possessions after he passes, and she says to Martin: “I don’t know. I don’t remember that place or that day. I’m not even sure that man is my father. It’s as if the moment never existed…” Then, go to the end of the book on p. 529 where Corelli says he is punishing David with bringing Cristina back to him as a child. The moment comes full circle!
David is introduced to The Cemetery of Forgotten Books and “Lux Aeterna,” by D.M. draws him in. When he begins reading, he realizes that the mysterious mansion he’s been renting was also the former house of “D.M.,” and that very likely he typed it using the same typewriter that David had recently been using. Creepy!
There are too many story lines and characters for everything to just be in David’s head, I think. But, what about all the deaths – his previous publishers; Pedro; and Cristina? Did David do it? If it is all in his head, how do you explain what happened to the previous occupant, “D.M.,” and all of those interwoven stories?
A story of a madman or a story of man who made a deal with the devil? I don’t know. It’s beautifully complicated. I’m halfway through “The Prisoner of Heaven,” the third installment. Maybe I will know more by tomorrow night!
A shot of my worn and tattered copy of Carlos Ruiz Zafon’s “The Shadow of the Wind,” complete with “OH MY GOD!” post-its. I write about this book because I loved it, and I want to remember it. In writing, I am forced to reflect upon how much pleasure I derived from reading the book.
It is a gothic tale set in 1945, Barcelona. Daniel, the bookseller’s son, is introduced to The Cemetery of Forgotten Books, and makes his selection of one book from the labyrinth to take home and care for. In doing so, he finds himself involved in a real-life mystery. You see, the book he selected was written by a man named Julian Carax, and very well may be the last book in existence by Carax. Someone has been finding the Carax works and destroying them.
I love that it is a book about a book! I love the story, but I also love the writing itself, and how Zafon has a style that makes me want to keep reading. The man is a beautiful writer. The “Angel of the Mist” story that begins on page 233 is a haunting touch, as is Maria Jacinta’s detailing of her encounters with Zacarias (begin on page 260), and the storyline of Daniel and Fermin visiting her in the asylum.
I loved this first book so much that I immediately started reading the second book in the series, and I am about 200 pages in to “The Angel’s Game,” right now! To think, I found this gorgeous read because of a visit to the Book Warehouse over the July 4 weekend, where I unwittingly purchased the third book in the series first!
As always, we keep an analog version at home of all of our travels. We use “
I write about this book because I loved it, and I want to remember it. In writing, I am forced to reflect upon how much pleasure I derived from reading the book.
