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What I have been reading
The Stories of Eva Luna by Isabel Allende. Allende is one of those authors i read everything by, and then I stopped. I haven’t read any new books from her in 15 years. But I still love the earlier books, especially The House of Spirits and this one, which is a collection of short stories. There were a lot of refugees from Chile at the housing estate I grew up in, so it was one of the first countries I became really aware of. I had a classmate who had been with his parents the day they got arrested by the junta. His mother had been shot in prison and his father severely tortured- he was still very ill when they came to Sweden. Daniel was considered a disturbing and naughty influence in the classroom, in retrospect I think it was a clear case of PTSD. But no one thought children could have that 40 years ago.
But I digress. A few days i got the hankering to re-read one of the short stories, “Two Words”, and ended up reading the whole book. Allende’s protagonist is almost always a woman, usually poor. They are servants, workers, housewife and prostitutes, usually hardworking and forced to endure a lot. Some of the short stories I love, some not so much. Some are too implausible. I mean, if someone doesn’t speak Spanish and want to say something important, you don’t wait 40 years to find someone who can interpret- you get yourself a dictionary. “Two Words” I love, a story about a woman who make her living selling words, and I also love the Cyrano de Bergerac-like story about a woman who is wooed by letters, only to find out it wasn’t written by the man she falls in love with and marry. But I can never re-read the story where a young girl is locked into a cellar for 40 years. Allende’s writing is beautiful, though.
Death Notes by Sarah Rayne. One of these days I will grow so tired of Rayne’s tropes that I will stop reading here. But I’m not quite there yet. Nice little mystery about a song which follows a family through the centuries, a song which brings death, every time it’s sung. But Rayne really loves the tropes of the mad perpetrator, and it robs the latter half of the book of a lot of its mystique. Also, not fond of tales where people are buried alive.
Cryptozoology A to Z: The Encyclopedia of Loch Monsters, Sasquatch, Chupacabras and Other Authentic Monsters by Loren Coleman and Jerome Clark. I have a great fondness for ancient mysteries and cryptozoology. I don’t believe in them, but I love the idea of the unexplored and not yet found. Well, I think there may very well be some truths in some of the myths. I happily read any book I can find on the subject, but they often annoys me. They are written by people who are extremely invested and often have a very narrow POV. If I read that the figures in the Nazca desert must have been done by aliens because it would be impossible to make those figures unless you can fly, I get the giggles. Because it’s not difficult at all- I could do it with a great length of rope and a few people to assist me. It’s called The Radial Projection Method:
Of course, it’s impossible to say that it was a known method to the Nazca people, but I say it’s a lot more plausible than aliens. They also have a tendency to pick and choose their evidence. If you, in the same book, first use the lack of fossils as proof something didn’t exist, you just can’t say, later, that the lack of fossils in another matter, has no bearings, as so few things gets fossilized.
Anyway, I enjoyed this book because it was matter of fact and didn’t try to convince the reader. Each entry gave an overview of reports and usually some speculations of what something could possible be. It also talked a bit of the history of cryptozoology and how fashion changes. For example, a plesiosaurus used to be the go to creature when it came to lake and sea monsters, now extinct whales have become the popular theory. An enjoyable read, in other words.
But I digress. A few days i got the hankering to re-read one of the short stories, “Two Words”, and ended up reading the whole book. Allende’s protagonist is almost always a woman, usually poor. They are servants, workers, housewife and prostitutes, usually hardworking and forced to endure a lot. Some of the short stories I love, some not so much. Some are too implausible. I mean, if someone doesn’t speak Spanish and want to say something important, you don’t wait 40 years to find someone who can interpret- you get yourself a dictionary. “Two Words” I love, a story about a woman who make her living selling words, and I also love the Cyrano de Bergerac-like story about a woman who is wooed by letters, only to find out it wasn’t written by the man she falls in love with and marry. But I can never re-read the story where a young girl is locked into a cellar for 40 years. Allende’s writing is beautiful, though.
Death Notes by Sarah Rayne. One of these days I will grow so tired of Rayne’s tropes that I will stop reading here. But I’m not quite there yet. Nice little mystery about a song which follows a family through the centuries, a song which brings death, every time it’s sung. But Rayne really loves the tropes of the mad perpetrator, and it robs the latter half of the book of a lot of its mystique. Also, not fond of tales where people are buried alive.
Cryptozoology A to Z: The Encyclopedia of Loch Monsters, Sasquatch, Chupacabras and Other Authentic Monsters by Loren Coleman and Jerome Clark. I have a great fondness for ancient mysteries and cryptozoology. I don’t believe in them, but I love the idea of the unexplored and not yet found. Well, I think there may very well be some truths in some of the myths. I happily read any book I can find on the subject, but they often annoys me. They are written by people who are extremely invested and often have a very narrow POV. If I read that the figures in the Nazca desert must have been done by aliens because it would be impossible to make those figures unless you can fly, I get the giggles. Because it’s not difficult at all- I could do it with a great length of rope and a few people to assist me. It’s called The Radial Projection Method:
Of course, it’s impossible to say that it was a known method to the Nazca people, but I say it’s a lot more plausible than aliens. They also have a tendency to pick and choose their evidence. If you, in the same book, first use the lack of fossils as proof something didn’t exist, you just can’t say, later, that the lack of fossils in another matter, has no bearings, as so few things gets fossilized.
Anyway, I enjoyed this book because it was matter of fact and didn’t try to convince the reader. Each entry gave an overview of reports and usually some speculations of what something could possible be. It also talked a bit of the history of cryptozoology and how fashion changes. For example, a plesiosaurus used to be the go to creature when it came to lake and sea monsters, now extinct whales have become the popular theory. An enjoyable read, in other words.
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Anything about Nazca (and archeology in general) is always fascinating!
"Death Notes" sounds intriguing - although, as you say, Sarah Raynes does love her tropes. Still, I think I'll add this to my reading list.
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That video was strangely fascinating and now I'm picturing the Nazca using this method to create those figures in the desert. However they were created, they're fascinating.
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I read a book on crop circles once about how it was all done by two men with planks and wood and string.
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Yeah, I read something about that somewhere. Rather funny, I thought, how people were fooled.
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I don't get why this stupid show is so damn popular. Almost the same premise as ghost hunter shows (bunch of idiots with night vision wandering around the dark saying to each other "Did you hear that?"). The one big difference, instead of demanding a ghost show itself, they leave food for Bigfoot.
FUN FACT: Squatchs like doughnuts.
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