Books

Black River Orchard by Chuck Wendig

March 17, 2024 GuillermoLeave a comment

Rating:

What It’s About:

Something strange is happening to the people of Harrow; they’ve all grown obsessed, addicted, to the apples growing in Dan Paxton’s orchard. It’s an apple so delicious that it can help anyone who eats it achieve their inner desires. But at what cost?

Let’s Talk About It:

Chuck Wendig’s writing never fails to keep me at the edge of the seat. He has this way of spoon-feeding me hope and snatching it from me abruptly which leaves me wondering if I can ever let my guard around the man. His ability to take something as banal as an apple and turn it into this sinister object spreading a demonic mind virus which possesses almost everyone who eats it is insane. I don’t think I have ever encountered a writer with such a talent that I daresay he is this generation’s Stephen King (even though, technically, Stephen King is this generation’s Stephen King. You know what? Shut up! Just go with it!).

His ability to craft scenes and character makes it so there is never a lull in the story. His use of interludes only builds the story, (in this case) a cut-up narrative that lights the path you are on without giving away the ending, letting it build slowly until the big reveal.

What hurt me most is not the story, but how long it took me to read it! Because I am an adult student with a full-time job and a parent, certain things get pushed back. This is why I opt to borrow audiobooks from my local library (and not-so-local libraries), which helps me follow along with the story at a faster pace than I can read on my own. And no matter what anyone else says, listening to audiobooks is reading (even if you don’t follow along like I do). Xe Sands, Brittany Pressley, Sean Patrick Hopkins, Cindy Kay, Kalani Queypo, Gabra Zackman and Victor Colomé all do an excellent job bringing their respective characters (and all the characters) to life.

Until next time, keep on huntin’.

The Map of Tiny Perfect Things

March 6, 2024 GuillermoLeave a comment

Don’t you just hate it when someone on the Internet feels the need to compare a movie to the book it’s adapted from? It bugs the piss out of me, right? It’s so annoying? I am so glad we’re in agreement, because last month, I decided to hunker down and watch one romcom flick a day for all twenty-nine of them (thank you leap year!). One of those movies was The Map to Tiny Perfect Things. Of course, when I learned the movie was based on a short story by Lev Grossman (who also wrote the screenplay), I had to read it.

Part of me wanted to compare the two versions of the story, but I did it in the wrong order. Most pretentious, the-book-was-better people always read the story first. It wasn’t until I was half way through the movie that I questioned if it was adapted from something. It had all the markers of a young adult novel.

So…What’s It About?

Mark finds himself trapped in a time loop, reliving August 4th over and over. The world resets itself each morning and everyone follows the same script unless he interacts with them. What’s worse is that he’s going through it alone. That is until he sees Margaret, an outlier just like him. Together they set off to make the most of August 4th, finding every magical moment and mapping them out until they find a way to break free.

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Books

How to Accidentally Settle Down [With Your High School Boyfriend] by Katherine Ryan

February 26, 2024 GuillermoLeave a comment

Rating:

What It’s About:

Follow Katherine Ryan as she navigates us through her life from her high school on-again, off-again boyfriend to being a single mom while building her career as a stand up comic and how life sometimes comes back full circle.

Let’s Talk About It:

I wasn’t certain if this book would be up my alley, but I needed to take a break from the transgirl/femboy fetish erotica that started the year with. What better way than to read a short memoir about finding your way back to the first boy you loved?

I am unfamiliar with Katherine Ryan’s body of work. And that’s not a slight on women comedians, but a slight against all comedians. However, her style of writing is down to earth and feels conversational. One could almost imagine Katherine sitting across from you at a booth in some cafe, sipping on a latte, while telling you this funny(ish) story about how she met her husband in high school, but wouldn’t marry him until decades later. (Why isn’t this a sitcom, Katherine?!)

Because she is a stand up comedian, there are jokes littered in the book. Not all of them hit their mark for me, pulling me away from the narrative and making me cringe. None of this ruins the overall enjoyment of the story. Her story is familiar, something I imagine a lot of readers can connect with (and not just the women audience because men can experience some of the things written down in these pages. Some, but not all.)

Aside from talking about the ins-and-outs of long term relationships and dating as a single mother, she also dives down on the sexism and misogyny of her profession, listing double standards as she navigates through her life. How to Accidentally Settle Down [With Your High School Boyfriend] is a story of empowerment and how love can actually find you when you’re not actively looking; it’s about settling down without settling for less than you deserve.

This book is free to read through Kindle Unlimited.

Until next time, keep on huntin’.

Books · Stream of Consciousness · Writing & Writers

Indoctrinated As Straight

February 23, 2024February 23, 2024 GuillermoLeave a comment

“There ought to be a time in one’s adult life which is dedicated to rediscovering the most important readings of our youth. Even if the books remain the same (though they too change, in the light of an altered historical perspective), we certainly have changed, and this later encounter is therefore completely new.
–Italo Calvino, Why Read the Classics?

90s Queer

I came out as bisexual in high school. To my friends, it wasn’t a surprise. We were outliers, the damned. The wretched of the high school hierarchy. My whole life, I tried to give a name to what stirred within me, flowed through my blood, lingered beneath my goose-flesh prickled skin. How could I explain to my mother that the same butterflies that fluttered in the cavity of my heart, squirming through my guts whenever I stood near my best girl friend also rose whenever the pink-haired gay boy pushed his lips against mine during gym class–possibly the worst class to not be straight in?

I don’t know if my mother understood what I meant. Or if she did and simply chose to ignore it, as if it was a condition that might go away on its own. Maybe she understood and quietly accepted it as most Latine parents are wont to do. It wouldn’t matter, because by the time I entered college, I no longer identified as bisexual; although, it was clear that I was anything but heterosexual.

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Books · School · Stream of Consciousness

Dear Gloria

February 15, 2024 GuillermoLeave a comment

What follows is a slight rewrite of a class assignment. The assignment was to write a response letter to “Speaking in Tongues: A Letter to Third World Women Writers” by Gloria Anzaldúa which can be found in the pages of A Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color, an anthology edited by Cherríe Moraga and Gloria Anzaldúa. Because I am a creature of habit, I did deviate from just responding to Gloria’s piece.

Dear Gloria,

I tried writing this letter in parts, hoping that it would sound more like a conversation. There was this urge to stitch your words with those of Cherríe Moraga as there moments in both that opened memories, conversations I had with others and those I overheard.

I tried writing this in parts, subsections (more like fragments) that were laced together with an intention of making sense in the end. This is normally how I write these blog posts; they are written as stream-of-consciousness. Sometimes they stay a disorganized mess which aligns with the scatter-brain methods of my thinking. Other times, I make an attempt to put order to the chaos. My brain, much like your floor, is lined with fragments—sentences wanting to become paragraphs wanting to become stories.

Maybe I write because I need the world around me to make sense. Or maybe because if I don’t, I may go mad with the voices that echo throughout my thoughts.

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Books

They Look Alike by Nikki Crescent

January 27, 2024January 26, 2024 GuillermoLeave a comment

The Kindle edition cover (blurred background) was too NSFW for WordPress & the GoodReads (tablet) was too fuzzy to use on its own.

Rating:

What It’s About:

Two years ago, George met the woman of his dreams. There’s just one problem: he lost her number after their first date and he never asked for her name. He held onto the hope that he may one day run into her again, and he does. Only she’s not the same girl he met on that first date. She looks the same, but personality has changed. Could this be the same girl he met that day so long ago?

Let’s Talk About It:

Nikki writes these characters that teeter on the line between being cute, loveable ignorant idiots and gross cishet men. George is only the latter. And while he does wind up with the (trans)girl of his dreams and accepts her fully, getting there is painful to read and a tad disgusting (especially his inner thoughts and constant misgendering). There isn’t a moment where I was rooting for the guy in this obvious story of mistaken identity (if you haven’t already guessed). Are we really hoping this walking epitome should get the girl at the end of the story?

In similar fashion, Kate is no angel either. She knowingly leads George into believing that she was the woman he met and fell in love with when in fact it was her sister Jenn. She embarrasses him and her sister during the big reveal at the end that sent shivers down my spine.

The only character I rooted for was Jenn, hoping that she could run away from her family and this obsessed and partially transphobic man.

I am cautious about labeling They Look Alike as an LGBTQIA+ romance or even pro-queer story. There’s a lot to unpack in its 45-page (or so) run. And perhaps I’m just being an overly sensitive (elder) millennial (xennial?), but this is a no-go for me. It doesn’t feel like a romance, but a fetishization of trans people (which I didn’t feel with The Sissy Spell, because sissification is a fetish/kink and we don’t kink shame on this blog).

In short, I do not recommend this one.

Until next time, keep on huntin’.