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Review: No Easy Way Out

No Easy Way Out
No Easy Way Out by Dayna Lorentz
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

No Easy Way Out is the sequel to No Safety in Numbers, and god help us, there’s a third book in the series. The first one was terrible. Somehow, this second one was worse. I can only imagine how awful the third one will be. No, scratch that—I don’t think I can imagine that at all. I have post-traumatic stress from reading this. I’ve been through the five stages of grief. I literally had bad dreams while reading this book.

And to think that, in addition to an author, this book had an editor, and a publisher, proof-readers, consulting doctors even. There really are people out there who thing young adults are idiots. I mean, the only people I can think of who would buy this nonsense are the unrealistic, unlikable, uninteresting characters in the book itself.

The book is a muddled mess. It has no semblance of self-cohesion, starting not even on the last page of the prequel, but a few pages before the prequel’s ending. And the ending of No Easy Way Out? It just ends. Like the publishers decided to arbitrarily chop a big fat stack of pages into thirds.

But wait, there’s more mess. Here’s a book for young adults, and so, it can’t say, for example the F-word. Instead, the word “fark” is used. There’s cold-blooded, violent murder, torture, even a scene involving premature ejaculation (no, it’s not a scene written to be humorous), but we can’t harm the teen-reader’s mind with the F-word, can we.

No, instead, we’ll just bludgeon them with stupidity. With situations that would never occur, people saying and doing things they would never do. I’m not talking about people being jerks, I’m talking about wishy-washiness, changes in attitude that follow, at best, the cadence of a new sentence. Whatever’s convenient for the author to create conflict, she puts in. A whole mall shut-down, and somehow there’s a team of security guards with riot gear and stun-batons? A you farking kidding me?

I really don’t know what else to say. This was one of the most difficult reviews for me to write. I might be brain damaged. Don’t read this book.

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This Is a Prompt I Don’t Want to Follow

Postaday for January 27th: Embrace the Ick. Think of something that truly repulses you. Hold that thought until your skin squirms. Now, write a glowing puff piece about its amazing merits.

Well, no, I’m not going to do this one. I’m not going to respond to this prompt. The first thing that came to mind was some kind of worm thing I saw on a brief video. Some sort of deep-sea worm, although it was being held in a person’s hand, so I don’t know how it was still even alive. It squirmed around a bit, you know, the way big fat pink worms with pointy orange heads do, sightless and shiny. And then it seemed to spit out this white fluid that spread and branched like fast-growing roots, instantly coating the hand of the person holding the worm,.

There’s no way I’m going to “hold that thought until my skin squirms.” That’s not happening today. Do you even know how the brain works? We see things, and they enter short-term memory. Later, they enter long-term memory by way of dreaming. That’s what dreams are: cognitive interpretations of our brains’ making novel connections between recent sensory input and already stored memory. That novelty is our organization and retrieval system. For all I know my brain will arbitrarily associate this spit-worm’s branching proboscis fluid with, I don’t know, a bike ride through Stanley park, and every time I think about Canada, I’ll get queasy. No thank you.

That’s all I need, having a dream in a few days where I’m sitting in front of my computer, pounding out my 32nd blog post in five days, fingers numb until they elongate, branch out to cover all of the keys, and then intertwine with them while I try to describe the four-person bike I road though North Vancouver on a warm day in 2005. The shade-dappled asphalt, the smell of the sea and garlic fries from the kiosk where we stopped for a snack, that fat worm wriggling around with one pink end wrapped around the guy’s ring finger and the other end slowly opening at the end of a brief reverse-peristalsis shudder and a phlegmy ejaculate groping, reaching for prey.

To think that the same evolution, over 2 billion years, led to my brain and its ability to see, absorb, memorize and use a thousand different disparate facts a day, led as well as this deep-see worm’s ability to see, sense, pursue and capture microscopic plankton to sustain itself for the sake of survival and reproduction. It’s incredible. It’s disgusting. I want no part of it. Count me out.

Nor will I write about spiders, the smell of freshly cut mangoes, the Republican party, or a crazy person’s toenail collection. Not going to happen.

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The Sky Is In The Ground

Postaday for January 26th: Free Association. Write down the first words that comes to mind when we say . . .

  • home
  • soil.
  • rain.

Use those words in the title of your post.

There’s a smell in the air like cherry-flavored magnesium citrate, or maybe that’s the tequila on his breath. Last night was the last night he’d dedicate to doing the things he wouldn’t be doing anymore until he decides to do them again: liquor for his bowels in glass bottles with screw caps, pharmacy bought, chugged and chased with medicine for his head, a thirty dollar fifth for a sixth of his day. Thank god for math, thank god for four hours of darkness before dawn. The sun rises too damn early this time of year.

Clouds and trees argue in his peripheral vision and his sweat’s a thing for stinging his eyes back into focus. Blues in his ears, reds in nostrils, greens in his guts, yellows in his spine because old age is chasing him with fangless mandibles, incisors lost to the sweet decay of not finding laughter funny anymore.

Running three miles but call it half a ten K since he’s training for a 20 K which is half a marathon.

His woggling belly, his belly woggling, the way his belly woggles, the woggles in his belly. Aforementioned and never forgotten, a weight like the moon and his greasy innards an ocean that waxes his orbiting gut and wanes any hope of having ever been been young.

Mystery loves inconstancy and the clouds win, whip the trees, pelt the streets suddenly, sweetly. He cuts through a park to hide beneath the loser boughs, and as the sky penetrates the ground he shivers, longs for that easy chair, that tequila bottle, that ability to feel at home in his own body.

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Review: The House of Silk: A Sherlock Holmes Novel

The House of Silk: A Sherlock Holmes Novel
The House of Silk: A Sherlock Holmes Novel by Anthony Horowitz
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I tried to read The House of Silk last summer. It took me a week to get through 70 pages, but then I gave up. I just wasn’t in the mood. I’m more in a reading mood lately, and this time I polished off the whole novel in a single day. I am definitely in a reading mood now. Also, the book’s very readable.

My last several reviews have contained some form of the phrase “a friend loaned this to me,” and I’m almost done with that stack of book. Honestly, this is not the sort of pick I’d pick out for myself. Does a Sherlock Holmes novel not written by Conan Doyle amount to, essentially, fan fiction? Not that fan fiction is, in and of itself, bad. But certainly there’s something about Doyle’s style that only Doyle can do, yes? So why read Anthony Horowitz’s version?

Because it’s all about character, isn’t it. And I think that when most folks think of Sherlock Holmes, they go with not Doyle but the cartoonified Basil Rathbone version from the late 1930s. On top of that, they may layer the very modern Benedict Cumberbatch. Or Robert Downey Jr’s version. Maybe they’ll even throw in TV’s House, or memories of Encyclopedia Brown.

The point is, Doyle’s Sherlock is not the only Sherlock, and what Horowitz does is take the Holmes trope and write a mystery around it. And that’s pretty much it. He takes advantage of the Holmes legacy and mentions Moriarty and the Red-Headed League and the Baskervilles and the 7-Percent Solution and all that stuff, but really, at the end of the day, The House of Silk is just a mystery novel set in 1890‘s London.

Perhaps that’s underwhelming. Oh well. Like a sci-fi novel that has lots of fun techno-gadgets to play with, Horowitz has the Sherlock observation/deduction tricks to play with, which he does, so that the novel is fun to read, entertaining in that sense. But deep, evocative, thought-provoking? No, not really.

Stereotypical Victorian era London, with snooty aristocrats, ragamuffin street children, pea-soup fog, dens of ill repute, etc etc. All with a modern take on moral outrage to keep the modern reader sufficiently horrified by the novel’s end. If you like that sort of thing, you’ll enjoy The House of Silk. If not, give it back to the friend who loaned it to you and return to your Camus.

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Half a Towel is Still a Towel. I Think.

Postaday for January 25th: Enough Is Enough. When was the last time you were ready to throw in the proverbial towel? Did you end up letting go, or decided to fight on anyway?

I thought I was going to be running a half marathon next Sunday. I had run one, a month or so ago, with a friend, and feeling high from our accomplishment, we agreed to do another one. This one came up, and we agreed to do it.

But I never signed up, and neither did she. I should have suspected something when she didn’t call to do a few training runs. SHE should have suspected the same thing.

I figured I’d show up and limp through the course and be a good friend. Supportive and all that. So I sent an email asking if we should car pool, and she admitted she hadn’t signed up, and I could only think, THANK GOD.

This friend of mine, I have to explain, is a very busy person. She’s got a lot on her plate, and the last think she needs is trying to coax ME along this need-to-run path. So I don’t blame her in the least. And I know for a fact that if I HAD signed up, and if I was going on Sunday, she’s sign up right there and run it with me.

She’s a better runner than me, and wouldn’t need as much training as I do. I know this. And I could have, even though we hadn’t signed up yet, asked her to go ahead and run with me anyway. And she’d do it.

But, like I said,I was relieved. My training has been abysmal. I could survive the darn thing, but only just. I’d much rather skip this one.

To our credit, we’re going to go for a shorter run on Sunday, anyway. So I guess we’re only half throwing in the towel. Or throwing in half the towel. It’s a proverbial towel, so we can rip it proverbially in half, I guess.

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Review: Bury Your Dead

Bury Your Dead
Bury Your Dead by Louise Penny
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This will be a review for people who, like me, have not read Louise Penny before, A friend loaned me a stack of books, including Bury Your Dead, which is itself 6th in a series about Chief Inspector Armand Gamache. Normally, I’d dutifully plow through the earlier books so as to be able to appreciate this one the more. But this time I decided to try an experiment, see if the book stood on its own.

And I’m happy to report that it does. Penny manages to stack four mysteries on top of one another: Who killed Augustin Renaud? Who kidnapped Agent Morin? Did Olivier really kill the Hermit? And just where is Champlain buried? Some of the mysteries are intertwined with one another, but some are not, serving more to thematic support the other mysteries, and help develop Armand Gamache for the reader.

Which is why the book stands on its own. I don’t know what Gamache is like in the earlier books, and maybe I wouldn’t be able to travel with him on his journey of sorrow and shame if I knew him already. Here is man, seemingly, intelligent, thoughtful, and heroic, who is nevertheless all too human and therefore fallible. And what do they say about the mighty when they fall?

But for all that, Bury Your Dead can be taken as just a good cozy who-dun-it. It’s a murder mystery, a history mystery, and book mystery. There’s also a little bit of politics but only a very little if, like me, you’re an apathetic American who can appreciate neither Catholic vs Protestant nor French Canadian versus English. In that sense, the novel’s somewhat exotic, but not too rich to give you a toothache.

I suppose I’ll get around to the earlier Gamache novels eventually. Although I’m tempted to leave my memory of this one intact by not getting to know the younger Chief Inspector more. Perhaps when I’m ready, I’ll try another experiment. As for you who have not read Penny yet: go ahead.

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Grunner and the L’Elf

Postaday for January 24th: Once Upon a Time. Tell us about something that happened to you in real life last week — but write it in the style of a fairy tale.6

All good stories start with “once upon a time,” and this one is no different, except for the first five words, which don’t count, as this opening is nothing more than a lampshade. By happy coincidence, our hero is called Grunner Lampshade, and he was, as our story begins, the saddest hairy bunny bear in the land.65

One day Grunner was running through the streets of Seattle. The sun was shining and the breeze was laughing. But poor Grunner, he didn’t even notice. He was desperately searching for something. And the more he looked, the more he ran. And the more he ran, the more anxious he became. Would he ever find what he was looking for?

There was sweat on poor Grunner’s brow, and a fire in his hair bunny bear chest. But all seemed lost. And then, as he made his way along Roosevelt, just south of 65th street, having spent so much time climbing up from the depths where Harvard ave runs into Eastlake, can you guess what Grunner saw?

Why, it was a Liquor Elf! “Hello!” said the l’elf.

Grunner finally stopped running. The l’elf was dressed in nothing more than a pair of shorts, which for this story we’ll call a loincloth. He smelled of booze. “Hello,” said Grunner, cautiously.

“Can you help me? I am lost,” said the l’elf. “I come from a far away land called Las Angeles. I am here visiting a friend. I went for a run this morning, and now I can’t find my friend’s house!”

Grunner put his hands on his hips. What he didn’t say was, “You smell like booze, Liquor Elf! I bet you just woke up in some stranger’s house after a night of excess and glee.” Instead what Grunner said was, “Okay, I’ll help you. What do you remember?”

The Liquor Elf scratched his curly crown. “Um, 94th and Dayton?”

Grunner smacked his head. “Oh no! That’s three miles from here!”

The Liquor Elf smacked his forehead. “Oh no!”

But then Grunner forgot that he was looking for something, and said, “Well, I guess I can take you there. Come on!” And off they went, running west instead of north like Grunner had been running before.

Up one hill they went, and then down another, and around a green lake (called Greenlake), and then up a very steep hill, until they arrived.

“Here we are!” said Grunner.

“Oh, thank you so much! I never would have find it without you!” the Liquor Elf said. He waved, and disappeared behind a small house.

Grunner went up the hill a little further, to Greenwood. He decided to walk to his house. And you know what? He found what he was looking for! A great big smile, the whole way home.

The end.

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You Don’t Need Kentucky to Have a Derby

Postaday for January 23rd: Easy Fix. Write a post about any topic you wish, but make sure it ends with “And all was right in the world.”

Jason Edwards bursts out of his front door! He doesn’t even bother closing it behind him! He skips across the porch, down the three steps and into the sunshine, across his lawn and leaps! across the flower bed into the driveway. Runs up the drive way. Arms pumping. Untucked unbuttoned Hawaiin shirt flapping. Look at him go!

He’s to the street! Cuts right, looks for cars. Listen for cars, only hears the pounding of his heart and the wind in his ears. Crosses the street so that he’s running against traffic! If there was any traffic! But there is no traffic! His house is halfway down the block and he’s covered that half!

The cross street is busy! The cross road is at a funny angle, it confuses cars! An opportune pause as two cars turning left try to figure out who should go first! Jason Edwards darts between them! He’s next to the abandoned coffee stand now. And now he’s next to the gas station. And now he’s in the 7-11 parking lot. His feet are slapping the asphalt. He’s pounding right towards the front door.

The guy who works there sees him coming. He’s already ready. He knows what to do. Jason is on fast approach. He pulls up so as to not break through the door’s windows. He hauls the door open. He cuts a sharp right, up the aisle past gun magazines and phone cards and gift cards and miscellaneous car interior supplies. You know, cigarette lighter adapters for phone charges and stuff. He’s at the back wall, where they keep the drinks! The first one’s full of milk products!

And now he shuffles left. He doesn’t bother to turn, just shuffles left. Hands tap the cooler handles, one two three, He’s opening the fourth one! He’s grabbing a 20 oz plastic bottle of Mountain Dew! It’s cold in his hand! He closes the door, the bottle instantly humidifies, his hand is wet! He doesn’t even notice!

Jason Edwards is moving with precision. He’s turning to jet up the back aisle. He makes a left at the coffee machines. He all but leaps forward, all but lands right in front of the frozen burrito selection. There’s so many to choose from. His eyes dart over bean and cheese, cheese and chili, green chile, green bean and cheese. Wait, no, he read that last one wrong! It’s beef and bean! The wrapper is red! He grabs the beef and been frozen burrito in the red wrapper!

But it’s not really frozen! It’s only refrigerated! This bodes well for Jason Edwards. His hand is in his back pocket. How is that possible if he’s carrying a cold refreshing Mountain Dew and frozen  I mean refrigerated but pre-cooked beef and bean burrito! He’s holding them both in one hand! Folks, they’re keeping each other cold! He’s fishing out his wallet.

He’s already been run up at the register. He swipes his credit card as he runs by! He hits the door, hears the register beep the beep of credit card transaction approval! He’s out the door! The guy behind the counter adds his receipt to the stack of receipts he keeps for him in case he ever comes back in a more leisurely fashion!

He’s outside! He’s running across that same parking lot! Past that same gas station and abandoned coffee stand! And now he’s crossing the intersection! Oh my word, there’s no traffic! He’s got half a block to go. The sun is shining off the bald spot on his head. He’s got the Mountain Dew in one hand and the burrito in the other! The burrito is getting warmer! I can’t beleive it! It’s warming up in his hand as he runs!

He’s at the driveway! He turns left and runs down the driveway! He leaps the flowers, goes across the lawn, up the porch steps! His front door still open, has been open this whole time! Can you believe it! He slams the door behind him, darts up the stairs, three steps, eight steps, twelve steps, fifteen! Down the hall to his home office. Bounces off the door frame! Lands in his office chair! And the crowd! Goes! Wild!

Jason Edwards is sitting in his office chair. He chest rises and falls rapidly as he gets his breath. He carefully, almost gingerly, sets his warmed-up burrito and cold Mountain Dew on his desk. Carefully, almost gingerly, opens the Mountain Dew. Cautious against the foam. But there’s no foam. Just that effervescent aaaaaah.

He takes a long, slow pull on the bottle. Tears open the burrito, slides a bit out, takes a massive bite. His mouth is full of beef and bean burrito. He wiggles his work computer’s mouse. His work computer wakes up. After a few seconds, a reminder pops up, telling him he has a conference call. In 5 minutes.

Jason Edwards sits back, relaxes. Takes another swallow of Mountain Dew. Takes another bit of burrito. Wishes he’d written this in past tense. But, that was okay. He’d done what he’d set out to do. Which is all any man can ever hop to do. And all was right in the world.

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Radio Silent Cosmonaut

Postaday for January 22nd: Fireside Chat. What person whom you don’t know very well in real life — it could be a blogger whose writing you enjoy, a friend you just recently made, etc. — would you like to have over for a long chat in which they tell you their life story?

Laika is dressed in a cheap white dress shirt, no tie, a black jacket, black slacks that have flares and have seen better days. Her shoes are scuffed, and her socks are too light for this outfit. A cigarette dangles from one hand, idly, the ash too long, precarious. She sits in a beaten up canvas director’s chair, slouched into it. On her head a fedora with a white band— a generous viewer would say the band matcher her socks. She gazes at me, a half-smirk on her face.

I’m in the other director’s chair, in my tweed and loafers. I’m not stylish; I’m unassuming. My hair’s slicked back, in the style, and my horn-rimmed glasses are frosted so as to not catch the overhead lights. Mark, our camera man, gives me a silent count down- three, two, one go.

“Hello and welcome. With me in the studio today, we have Laika. Hello Laika, it’s good to have you here.”

She ashes, takes a drag, remains slouched. Her voice is gravelly, low, but undeniably feminine. “Thanks man, likewise, likewise.”

“Let’s get right into it, Laika. How old are you.”

She takes a deep breath. “I’m three, going on four. Of course, I was born back in, like 1989, sooo…”

“Right. If you had been born in 89, you’d be, what,” I do some math in my head. “99, 2009, 2019, you’d be-”

“Yep, 26, how about that.”

“But you weren’t actually. Born I mean.”

She takes another drag, smirk, leans forward to put out her cigarette. “No, man, I guess I wasn’t. I’m a, what do you call it. A fantasy.”

“That’s right. You’re the daughter I would have had if I’d been, ah, a little less cautious as a teenager.”

“Yeah man. You know, you got, like, classmates who are grandparents now?”

“Ha! Think of that!”

“Think of that, man.” She pats her pockets for her cigarettes.

“Indeed. So you’re three, going on four. Why that age?”

“You mean, why not 26?” She asks, and peers at me with one eye closed as she lights the cigarette and inhales.

“Yes.”

She shrugs and eases back once more. “You were, what, 17 when you would have had me? Life’s weird, man. But you know what, things work out. Maybe some of the details would be the same, but more or less, the you you are now is the same you you woulda been.”

“Except for those three years.”

“Except for those three years, man. So here I am. Talking to you. Your daughter Laika.”

“Why Laika, do you think? Isn’t that a Russian name?”

“I don’t know. I mean, yeah, it was the name of that dog they sent up into space, the Russians. Sad story, really. She was a stray, and they picked her up, you know, and fed her and trained her and all that. Treated her okay, I guess. Had to get her used to smaller and smaller boxes, since they were going to, you know, launch her into space and stuff. But she was a good little thing, took to the training. Smart. One of the scientists, though, I don’t know. Took her home to play with his kids, just the once. Said he wanted to do something nice for her. I guess that’s sweet.”

“But she died up there, ran out of oxygen, right?”

“No, no,” she shifts around in her chair, switches the cigarette to her other hand. “That’s what they said, but actually there was a problem during the launch, and her, uh, fan broke. She got overheated, died a few hours into it.”

“That’s,” I take off my glasses for effect, rub my eye. “That’s very sad.”

She takes a drag. “Yeah, pretty sad.”

“But, anyway. You probably weren’t named after the first animal in space.”

“Nah, probably not.”

“Another question, Laika— you’re only three years old. Why am I talking to what appears to be a grown-up?”

At this she chuckles. Shows her teeth. She’s got one snaggle-tooth, like the father she would have had if she’d ever been born. “You wanted my life story, man, short as it was. But kids can’t talk, not at that age.”

“And neither can dogs.”

“Nope, neither can dogs.”

I turn to the camera. “Well folks, I want to thank you for sitting down with us today.” I turn to the daughter I never had, never, truthfully, ever came close to having. “And thank you, Laika.”

“My pleasure.”

“Good night.” Mark counts me down, the fade as the credits come up, until I’m not on the screen anymore.

I go find a drink somewhere.

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Morning Meditation

Postaday for January 21st: Two Right Feet. What are the things you need to do within 30 minutes of waking up to ensure your day gets off on the right foot? What happened the last time you didn’t do one of these things?

My wrist vibrates at 5:00am. I get up and go to the bathroom. I stumble into my office. I turn on the computer. I open up the Uniqlock website, and turn off the monitor. The Uniqlock wesbite plays a series of simple songs that are each exactly 60 one-second beats long. I sit myself on my meditation stool.

For the first minute, I breath in and out to the beat of the song. The next minute I breath in for two beats, out for two. Then the threes, the fours, and so on. I prefer starting a new minute with inhalation, so, on minute four, I actually do 4 threes first, so that I can end with exhalation.

60 can be evenly divided by each number, one through six. But not seven. So I breathe in and out for seven beats until the song ends, then finish the last seven with an extra breath. Effectively, this is an eight-breath count, and I continue with eights, which ends evenly right on the end of a song.

If you’re doing the math, that’s 7*8+8*8=120.

A similar bit of adjusting is needed for the 9th, 10th, and 11th minute. 9*6=54, +10*6=114, +11*6 = 180.

12 divides evenly into 60, so that’s easy. 5 of those. But 13 and 14 do not. So, on the 13th minute, I do a 12 first. Then 4 complete 13s,and 4 complete 14s.

And finally, 4 breaths of 15 seconds each.

Counting all of this out can somewhat keep my from thinking about things, but I’ve got so used to it, I can more or less do it without concentrating. So my thoughts can wander. But the goal is to shed myself of all judgment, which includes castigating myself for having thoughts. I let them flow however they want, and if it occurs to me, I push them away.

I don’t do this morning meditation 100% of the time, but most of the time. Days when I don’t do it aren’t necessarily worse— but the more days in a row I can do this, the easier it is to wake up. And if I think of it, and have meditation to look forward to, I tend to fall asleep easier the night before, too.

Its just 15 minutes, requires no skill, and doesn’t come with any expectations.