Cory > Recent Status Updates

This book is propulsive, sure, but I don’t really think I like it. It feels like a writhing thing as I read it, and I kind of want to know what happens and then be done with it. The whiplash between Verity’s autobiography and Lowen’s experiences in her house with Jeremy and Crew is making my head spin.

“Look at how craven pop culture has become. Look how it eats its own films and regurgitates them back onto the screen, again and again. Think of the mother spider whose body feeds its young. The first thing these newborn spiders do after they’ve hatched is devour their mother. These remakes are the same.”

“A Haunted House Is a Wheel upon Which Some Are Broken” is really, really lovely. The most beautiful story so far, and maybe my favorite.

“That’s the true power of story. That it cannot find the secrets both writer and reader didn’t know they had within themselves.”

Lindsay King-Miller's "The Fruit" is maybe the best short story I've read this year.

I dunno, this has yet to grab me. It’s not bad, by any means, but I am shrugsy.

I'm reading this in preparation of leading a book discussion for college freshmen in two weeks, and I am very excited to see what they think. I mean, so far, it is weighty and deep and I think it is going to fly over their heads.

"Imagine trying to hold the tail of a comet as it blazes across the heavens. It's burning your hands, eating you up, but there's no malice to it; a comet can't possibly know or care about you. You will sacrifice all you are or ever will be for that comet because it suffuses every inch of your skin with a sweet itch you cannot scratch, and through its grace you discover velocities you never dreamed possible."

“When they resist the prospect of sleep, of long dark lonely hours, intuiting that this is indeed a rehearsal for death, we murmur to them, we rub their backs, pretending they will never die. Little do they know that behind our backs we keep our fingers crossed, and that our hearts too thump with anguish when we turn off our bedside lamps.”

I mean, we’d all do that...right?

I mean...this shit is LEGIT.

By no means do I want to minimize this book with my Corey-fandom: It is taut, frightening, thought-provoking and completely delightful so far.

Y’all. COREY.

“‘It’s okay,’ he said. ‘Molly. I’ve been there. I wept openly at IKEA last weekend. The lighting section. Dazzling.’”

There is already a delightful character in this book named Corey (name still excellent, even if the spelling isn’t) who wears shirts with slogans like “I Put The Pal in Paleobotany,” attempts to spruce up a convenience-store bathroom with potpourri and fancy soap, and “strive[s] for wittiness, and laugh[s] even if the wittiness falls flat.”

I LOVE MY DOPPELGÄNGER ALREADY.

Elizabeth Hand, the most literary genre writer of her time, knows how to turn a phrase: “But his ecstatic dreams of flight became recurring nightmares of falling.”

I am TAKING ADVANTAGE of this polar vortex day and reading as much as I can get my grubby little paws on.

It’s certainly propulsive, that’s for sure.

Figured I’d start 2019 with one of the biggest books of 2018.

This really is probably King’s scariest one. I haven’t read it since high school, and the creep factor has probably quadrupled since then.

“I wonder, when God permitted us to to fall, if He knew we’d fall so far.”

“And since she will not look, you must—there, beyond the railing—no, a little further still: between that parked car and this—wait, and grow accustomed to the dark; and yes, there you have it, do you not? A figure in—yes!—black; slender, and not tall; looking steadfastly at the bare bulb burning five floors up.”

These first few pages are positively intoxicating. They remind me of how quickly and deeply I fell into The Essex Serpent.

Well, the first six chapters of the manuscript within the mystery here were awfully good.

I’ve got a lot of feelings going on over here.

Uh-oh, I’m already considerably charmed by Daddies Andrew and Eric and their precocious little daughter, Wen. That’s going to make the rest of this book difficult to stomach, I can already tell. Dammit, Tremblay!