What Have I Been Reading? (2020 batch #6)

The Fire Never Goes Out by Noelle Stevenson I had not realized that Stevenson is only 28; this memoir only chronicles a decade and only in snippet form. (You can go into a lot of detail about 10 years. This doesn’t; it’s a few doodle comics from each year, some photos, and a year-end blog post. There’s very little in the way of stories and mostly just strings of emotional impressions.) Honestly, this feels like the publisher wanted a book, and this was the material she had on hand.

Safety Protocols for Human Holidays by Angel Martinez – A “humans are weird” story on a multi-species starship as the other officers try to figure out why Human Jen is malfunctioning. Then the security officer assigned to the task develops feelings, so there’s LGBTQ interspecies romance in the mix. This is closer to being a short story than even a novella, but it’s fun.

The Lightning-Struck Heart by TJ Klune – M/M romance set in an anachronism stew (Jethrien called anachronism soup, but it’s too thick for that), featuring magic that works at the speed of plot and the author not knowing how Dukes work. You read it for the snark, and oh man, there is such snark. The author clear tries to set up characters as being menacing, or haughty, or somehow above this nonsense, but anybody who gets a speaking role is a sassy bitch. (The author’s bio notes that he’s queer. Bitch, really?) This isn’t a good book, but it’s a very fun book, and you can tell from the first 20 pages if you’ll like it, because the rest of the book is just more of that.

Jew(ish): A primer, A memoir, A manual, A plea by Matt Greene – A book about being culturally but not religiously Jewish in today’s world. The thing is, this is a scattershot book apparently pieced together from a failed novel and a collection of essays that fails to have a coherent narrative or central idea. Several chapters have his personal history and history of other British Jews he knows. One chapter is just documenting recent antisemitic comments and actions by various British and American politicians. Which is then followed by details of the “holocaust tour” he took of the camps in Poland and Germany. Greene clearly has no love for Jewish tradition (and recounts some unhappy memories of religion in his youth), and seems both resentful of the fact that he’s Jewish but unwilling to let go of it. I hate being the guy who cries “victimhood fetish”, but…kinda? Also, he tells a story about a play he wrote falling flat before a Jewish audience, revealing to the reader if not himself that he’s not actually very good at reading a room. Who’s the audience of this book? Apparently not other nonpracticing Jews (like me), or necessarily observant Jews, or even really non-Jews, who won’t get many of the references he doesn’t explain. I suspect there are much better books about the culturally Jewish experience, and now I want to read one of those.

Movies!

Enola Holmes is a nextflix original starring Millie Bobbi Brown (the girl from Stranger Things) and Henry Cavill (Superman and the Witcher). Brown is given a wonderful script and a delightful bouncing mystery adventure as Sherlock Holmes’ brilliant younger sister. Cavill is given terrible hair that distracts from his oddly chiseled face and allows him to look attractive. This is nothing brilliant, but it’s delightful fun. (Also, ignore the part where their mother was apparently going to enact the Gunpowder Treason if not for the events of the movie.) Side note: Henry Cavill is also now nicknamed SuperWitchLock (…by me).

The Hustle - Anne Hathaway and Rebel Wilson as dueling con artists! …and it was okay? Not particularly great, which was honestly an utter waste of both of them. It wasn’t particularly witty, it wasn’t the craziness Rebel Wilson is generally best at, and it was only predictably clever, which is insufficient. Also, I’m irritated by Hollywood, making someone who’s still as insanely hot as Anne Hathaway as “the older, out-of-touch one.” She’s 37!

Total Recall - Ahnold in his prime. I probably saw an “edited for TV” version back in the day, because while I vaguely remember reading about the three-boob hooker, I didn’t remember seeing her, the f-bombs, or quite so much gore. The science is a goddamn mess, occasionally hilariously so. The interpretation that this was all a dream in the chair at Rekall is pretty reasonable, though I give them credit for leaving that open.

Addams Family and Addams Family Values - These mostly hold up; and the cultural commentary of Wednesday at summer camp is just as relevant now as 25 years ago. (Also, there are more black people singing in the end credits than speak or are named in the movie. Ah, Hollywood.) Fester’s character does change considerably between the two movies (blame the brain damage?), and I think part of that is downplaying the “evil” aspects of a bunch of things the Addams do and making the second movie more cartoony. The first movie focuses much more on the “magic” aspects of the Addams’ home (the books, the bear rug, the gate, etc.) while the second downplays that in favor of the Addams’ strange ability to survive things that should kill them. The tragedy of Debbie is her selfishness: Everything else the Addams Family would welcome and appreciate. Hell, she could still try to murder Fester every week and he’d love her for it. But family is everything to them and she’s only about herself; she could have found a loving and accepting family, but missed out. (Wednesday’s boyfriend, on the other hand, either gets scared to death or, if he shares the Addams strange aversion to death, likely marries her.)

Clue - Man, this movie really holds up. Physical comedy and clever wordplay; Tim Curry being amazing and a cast with no straight man. And can you imagine how insane the word of mouth must have been when they released different ending reels to different theaters?