4 Short Book Reviews

For the last week or so, I've been on the kind of reading binge which normally only occurs when I'm on holiday and am somehow struck with an insatiable urge to consume as many books as I possibly can. I think the main trigger for this is the fact that my library membership is expiring soon, and as I won't be renewing it, this means that I have to read all the books on my library wishlist before I'm no longer allowed to borrow them.

Since I have been reading so much, I thought that for this week's post I would do a little reading round-up of all the books I've read recently. While not all of these were borrowed through my library, most of them were. Also, with the exception of Wuthering Heights, all of these were read in ebook format. With that out of the way, let's move on to the books.

Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte

Ah, the Bronte sisters. Authors of those elusive classic novels which I somehow never get around to reading despite always claiming I intend to. Thanks to Wuthering Heights, I've been able to actually read a second Bronte novel (the first being Jane Eyre), despite buying my copy approximately a year ago. This was an intense, emotional, Gothic read which I highly enjoyed, although in hindsight I wouldn't recommend reading it while ill - every other character seems to fall ill with a minor cold and then die with very little notice. I think Wuthering Heights gets a bad reputation because Heathcliff is romanticised by some, but the book itself makes it pretty clear (to me at least) that the man is a definitely horrible person. Most of the other characters in the book even say as much. Anyway, I liked this book a lot and would love to do some literary analysis of it in the future.

Verdict: darkly fascinating and very dramatic - a Gothic romance legend

Something to Talk About by Meryl Wilsner

I've been seeing loads of hype about this book online, which seems to be one of a few F/F (female-female, for the uninitiated) romance novels which has gone rather mainstream. Of course other books like Carol and Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit have been successful too, but this one stands out as a light-hearted, fluffy love story in which there's little gay-related angst and no lesbians being killed. I sped through this novel in about a day, it was so easy to read and entertaining. Just a warning though: there is a sexual harassment plotline in here, which sort of makes sense given the Hollywood setting and it being published in light of #MeToo and #TimesUp, but it caught me a little off guard. 

Verdict: Very cute, very funny, and very gay.

The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy

This is one of those contemporary "modern classics" which I've been meaning to read for ages but only just now got around to. I had high hopes for this novel based on Roy's reputation as a critically-acclaimed writer, and I'm happy to say it didn't disappoint. TGOST is the story of a wealthy but dysfunctional family in Ayemenem in India, focusing particularly on the lives of the twins Estha and Rahel. Themes of forbidden love (prohibited by the "Love Laws", in Roy's words), caste, and classism feature prominently alongside the importance of both the small and big things which impact us in our lives. I felt utterly immersed in the lives of Estha, Rahel, and their various friends and family over the course of the novel, an experience I didn't want to end even when it took devastating turns.

Verdict: Fluid, powerful, and heart-breaking - a justified modern classic.

Bunny by Mona Awad

Out of all the books mentioned in this post, Bunny is probably the weirdest. I read it because I saw it classed as a "dark academia" novel along the lines of Donna Tartt's The Secret History, but it reads more like a hallucinogenic combination of The Island of Doctor Moreau and Heathers, complete with both mean-girl cliques and human-animal hybrids. While it's definitely an interesting, reasonably inventive concept, in practice I didn't find it that fascinating beyond just a surface level "wow, that's kind of messed up". I'm not sure exactly what the author was trying to achieve (horror? comedy? bildungsroman?) so it's hard to judge if they managed to do it. The characters were too flat to be interesting, the satirical takedowns of artistic creator-speak got repetitive, and the ending took the punch out of the rest of the storyline. 

Verdict: Trippy enough to get a few entertaining conversations out of, but too muddled and vague to leave a lasting impression. 

So if you've made it to the end of this post, I will tell you a secret: this isn't actually all the books I've read recently. I just finished reading The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton and have started reading Tokyo Ueno Station by Miri Yu, but I obviously can't write about the latter yet and I feel it would be too rushed to add in the former now. Still, perhaps you can expect a post about them sometime in the near future. 

Until then, please let me know: would you read any of the books above? Which, if any, sound most interesting to you?

In Praise of the Overwatch Expanded Universe

If you read the title of this post and thought to yourself, "Overwatch? What's that?", then you clearly haven't spoken to me much during the last few months. Those who have enjoyed such a privilege have already been subject to many a monologue from me about Overwatch, my current obsession. For the uninitiated, Overwatch is a video game - specifically a multiplayer, team-based, first-person shooter. After several years of distant fascination with the game, I finally purchased the PC edition last month. I have been obsessed ever since, playing almost every day and spending a good chunk of my time outside of the game by talking about it and reading up on its lore. It was this last aspect of the game, its lore, which first got me interested in Overwatch, and I'd like to use this post to talk about it a little more.

I am a big advocate for video games as storytelling mediums, and there are few things I love more than a story-rich, character-driven game. Most games I'd put into this category put the narrative directly in the game, connecting it to the actions of the player in a way that would make it almost impossible to complete the game without being exposed to the storyline as well. Unlike those games, Overwatch does things a bit differently.

One of the things which makes Overwatch unique is that there is technically little-to-no in-game story. It is, after all, a player-vs-player shooter, which is not exactly the game style most conducive to storytelling. While we are given a little information about the characters you can choose to play, as well as some hints to the game's backstory through said characters' interactions with each other, there isn't really enough detail given in-game to figure out the full narrative.

Yet the creators of the game must have been committed to expanding on the game's basic premise somehow, because they decided to explore the story in a new way that went beyond the game itself. The result of this is what is sometimes referred to as the Overwatch Expanded Universe, in a similar vein to the expanded universe of bigger franchises like Star Wars. Essentially, what Blizzard (Overwatch's parent company) has done is created a series of comics, fiction, and animated shorts that expand on the basic storyline introduced in the Overwatch game. These are connected to the base game to varying degrees: the short film "Are You With Us?" serves as an introduction, even playing the first time you boot up the game; the short story "What You Left Behind", in contrast, tells us more about the backstory of one specific character who wasn't even added until three years after Overwatch's initial release.

The experience of exploring these expanded universe stories reminds me a lot of reading Marvel comics (although I have no doubt it's similar to exploring the universes of DC, Star Wars, and others as well). Each film, comic, or story stands on its own, but it is also a part of a greater whole. There's no set "reading order" for them, but it's as you watch/read more of them that the pieces start to fit together. Reading "Old Soldiers" meant more once I had watched the animated short introducing Ana. Watching "Alive" took on a new meaning after reading "Stone by Stone". I love being able to watch two characters interact, then go back and learn about the backstories which led them to behave in the way that they did - or vice versa. 

While I would probably love the expanded universe even if I didn't play Overwatch, I find exploring these stories gives the game greater depth for me too. When the game loads up a Quick Play match on the Nepal map and Genji mentions how his "soul feels at peace" there, I feel silently pleased at knowing why he said that (he stayed in Nepal with the robot monk Zenyatta in order to spiritually accept his cyborg body, in case you were wondering). It gives the little interactions, voice lines, and even the skins of the characters an extra layer of meaning that makes the game all that more enjoyable.

It also helps that the Overwatch expanded universe is simply very good. The CGI animated shorts in particular stand out, seeing as they wouldn't look out of place playing before a Pixar movie in terms of their graphics and emotional impact, but the short fiction and comics (as well as the 2D animated films and various pieces of writing on the Blizzard website) are excellent as well. Not only are they technically very well done, but they deal with surprisingly heavy topics in a way that is meaningful and optimistic. Overwatch's stories take place in a world devastated by a global crisis caused by artificial intelligence, where humans and robots (called Omnics in the Overwatch universe) struggle to find ways to coexist. They look at issues of life and sentience, the morality of violence (even in self defence), and whether it is worth holding onto hope even if you've been let down every time. Not to give spoilers, but one thing I love about these stories is that they do always come back to themes of hope, redemption, and the importance of trying to make the world a better place. I never would have expected a multiplayer shooter to carry such emotional and philosophical weight in its narrative, but here we are. 

While I would recommend the Overwatch game itself, like I said, it's also possible to enjoy the expanded universe without playing it. If you are interested, I would recommend starting with the short teaser "Are You With Us?" and going from there. Most likely you will start to become interested in different characters or elements in the Overwatch universe after that, from which point you can search for stories involving that particular aspect and go from there. You can find almost all of the expanded universe media on Blizzard's website. The Overwatch wiki is also a great source, especially if you see mention of a certain place or person and need to quickly find out what on earth they're on about.

Overwatch 2 is meant to be coming out sometime soon, although it seems to be indefinitely delayed due to COVID. Apparently it will be released with a new story mode, which I am somewhat ambivalent about. On one hand, I am excited that Blizzard is making the story such a prominent part of the game, and this new mode will no doubt mean lots of exciting new developments in the narrative. On the other hand, I really am fond of the multimedia, expanded universe approach that's currently being used to tell Overwatch's story. I hope that even with the new story mode available, Blizzard will continue to work on the expanded universe. If we get both, that would be an Overwatch story-lover's dream come true.

My Favourite Books of 2020

I know, I know. It's way too far into 2021 to be doing more 2020 roundup posts, especially as I've already done one this month and did a similarly late post last year as well. Still, if I don't do this post now I won't get to do it at all, and for some reason I feel irresistibly compelled to share with you my favourite books of 2020.

Like I said in my previous 2020 summary post, that so-called "year of hindsight" was... an experience, to say the least. Some good things came out of it though, and in my case one of those things was getting to read more than I have in a while. Lockdown in France got quite strict at points, so being shut in a lot of the time provided me with ample reading opportunity. Besides just generally reading more, I also reignited my love for libraries and even developed a newfound appreciation for ebooks - but those are topics for another post.

In this post, I want to tell you a little bit about my favourite books that I read in 2020. To be clear, these are books that I read in 2020, but they may have been published in any year. I'm not sure I even read any books published in 2020, because I am financially deficient and can't afford to buy hardbacks. 

So without further ado, here are my favourite books of 2020 (in the order I read them):

Will and Testament by Vigdis Hjorth

I bought the ebook version of this novel during an April sale on the Verso Books website, along with about five others (don't judge me). While most of the other books I bought still sit, unread, in my phone's Overdrive app, I tore through Will and Testament before we even reached the end of the month.

I wasn't aware of this at the time of buying it, but apparently this book has caused something of a controversy in the author's home country of Norway, as supposedly Hjorth drew inspiration from her own family when writing. This doesn't seem so scandalous until you realise the plot of the book revolves around a family fractured by trauma and abuse.

Regardless of the debate surrounding it, Will and Testament is a brilliant novel and a painfully clear portrait of the struggles survivors of abuse face.

Severance by Ling Ma

I have already written about this novel a few times, so I should keep this quite short. I chose to check this novel out from my local library because it dealt specifically with the fallout of a global pandemic, which as you can imagine felt quite relevant to my recently-quarantined self. I got what I wanted out of the book: a story which mirrored the feelings of isolation and forced normalcy which I was experiencing during lockdown. I also got much more than that: a reflection on day-to-day life under capitalism and the things which still matter to us even when everything else has fallen apart.

Photo stolen from Instagram, but it was from my own account (@marynotavailable if you were wondering) so it's okay.

Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates

Like a lot of people who are non-Black, especially those of us who are white, the Black Lives Matter protests that happened globally during 2020 prompted me to do some reflecting and try to educate myself about the struggles of Black people in America and worldwide. One of the ways I tried to do this was by reading books by Black authors, the most impactful of which turned out to be this semi-autobiography by the American writer Ta-Nehisi Coates. 

First of all, Coates writes beautifully. His work is able to remain a pleasure to read without losing any of its poignancy. In Between the World and Me, he writes to his young son about his life growing up as a Black person in America and how that connects to both his personal story and that of other Black people throughout US history. There are some passages which I still stop and think about now almost a year after reading the book, like when Coates talks about travelling to other countries and how his son will grow up with a different conception of life abroad than he was raised with, because they impacted me so deeply. It's heart-breaking, hopeful, and beautiful.

Moon Tiger by Penelope Lively

Unlike most of the other books I've mentioned, Moon Tiger had been on my to-read list for some time before I finally got round to reading it this year. Another sort of life story, this novel focuses on Claudia Hampton, a historian and former journalist who is now on her death bed. The story moves between the past and the present, alternating between perspectives and intertwining Claudia's history with that of the world. 

While I sometimes like to add little paper tabs to book pages where I find lines or paragraphs I especially like, Moon Tiger was one of those books where almost every single page had a tab by the time I came to the end. Some of the passages felt like they put words to feelings I'd never been able to describe before; others brought to light things I'd never even thought of. In both cases, this book repeatedly took my breath away.

Bastard Out of Carolina by Dorothy Allison

This novel has a lot in common with Will and Testament: it's an allegedly semi-autobiographical novel about the trauma of surviving abuse from a father figure as a child. Unlike Hjorth's novel though, Allison's isn't about coming to terms with that abuse years later, as an adult. Instead, Bastard Out of Carolina takes us through the protagonist's life from her birth to teen years, meaning that we as readers are made witness to her trauma at the same time she experiences it.

I don't know what compelled me to read two books with such similar, upsetting themes in relatively quick succession, but here we are. I don't regret the unconscious decision anyway, as I think the two books' comparability also gave me the opportunity to contrast them, seeing each of them in a new light.

Out of all the other books I've read this year, I'm not sure I know any other novel which broke my heart quite like this one.

Let's Try... Weekly Updates

Hello, dear readers! Welcome back to another irregular instalment of Extra Libris: The Blog. Yesterday I was bemoaning my lack of blog readers to my friend, as I often do, who gently suggested that perhaps more people would like to read it if maybe I updated it regularly for once in your goddamn life, Mary. Okay, she probably wasn't that harsh, but I tend to hear unsolicited advice as being aggressively critical even when it's a genuinely good suggestion. I gave it some thought and decided that maybe said friend's idea was just one such genuinely good suggestion, and maybe I would do well to apply that advice to this blog, if only for a little while.

On a semi-related note, I have also made a deal with another friend that I will attempt to write 500 words each day, every day until they release me from this commitment. My thinking was that this would be the perfect time to feed two birds with one hand, using my 500 daily words from this challenge to feed my poor content-starved blog at the same time. 

All that is to say that I will now be attempting to post once a week on this blog. It's not incredibly ambitious, but past experience has taught me that aiming too high (for example, writing a post a day) can lead me to crashing and burning and only writing a post once every blue moon. So we are starting small, with one post a week. There is no set theme, unlike with that infamously-prolonged 30-day book challenge, so nothing about the content of this blog should change very drastically. The only difference will be that I should be posting slightly more regularly. 

I am going to try to schedule these posts for every Wednesday, starting next week (or this week, if you count yesterday's post). Somewhat counterintuitively, this post doesn't count. I mean, it's not really a proper post, is it? This is just me rambling on about this blog, desperately trying to reach 500 words before the end of it so I don't have to close Blogger and then type furiously into a Word doc for another 100 words or so. 

Alas, I had better stop myself clogging up this post with unwarranted words now and get on with writing some of these soon-to-be weekly posts. If you're reading this, tell me: do you have any tips for writing (or generally producing creatively) according to any kind of schedule? Or, if you're not the creating type, do you have any suggestions for what these weekly posts might focus on? Thinking and writing is just too much work for me, so I'd be very grateful for any ideas I can leech off. 

End of Year Recap // Ranking My Best Posts of 2020

2020 was a hell of a year. I don't think I'm exaggerating to say that, more than any year in recent history, "2020" stands out as what Mrs Windsor would describe as an "annus horribilis" (yes, worse than when Diana died). Some people say that our definition of the year's start and end are arbitrary and have no meaning outside our collective social understanding. 2020 seemed determined to prove that idea wrong, fitting so many catastrophic events into one Gregorian year that you could be forgiven for thinking the natural world followed a calendar too. 

I'd like to say that all that is behind us now, but of course that's not true. We are still in the midst of a global pandemic, not to mention the fact that climate change, racial inequality, and the rise of fascism continue to be urgent problems. 

All of the above is true. However, celebrating the end of one year and the start of another is not without purpose. Viewing the whole scope of human existence as one long, uninterrupted march from prehistory to the present might be useful for cause-and-effect analysis, but it can be a little overwhelming for the individual human. Breaking up our lives into years helps us make sense of it, enabling us to reflect and look forward in a way that seems somewhat structured. 

I am currently in the process of just such reflection and anticipation, specifically with regard to this blog. Every year I plan to do more writing, looking back miserably on the lack of writing I produced in the previous year. In this year, I'm actually surprisingly happy with the amount of writing I've done. I have written a total of 44 posts on this blog in 2020, almost a post a week, which is something I'm very proud of. 

But! Not all posts are created equal. There are definitely some posts I am prouder of than others, so I thought it would be fun to look back on these and rank my best posts of the year. So, in no particular order, here are my top five Extra Libris pieces of 2020:

A Book That Changed My Opinion About Something // 30-Day Book Challenge - Day 26

The bulk of my 2020 posts (30 out of 44, to be exact) owe their existence to the 30-day book challenge I dragged out attempted over the course of the year. It's hard to choose just one of these posts as my favourite, because I truly am happy with most of them, but the one which sticks out the most to me is this one about Dreams of Joy. Writing it required being vulnerable about my past ignorance, which is always hard but still important to do. It also spoke to what I think is one of the great purposes of literature: to change people's minds. I'm pleased that I could share an experience like that, even if it meant owning up to some mistakes. 

Book Review: American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis

If there's one thing I particularly enjoy doing with my writing, it's being a bitch. I recently read an interview with Vigdis Hjorth in which she said that "anger is good for writing" - I'd be inclined to agree with her. Anger equals passion, and passion can help create compelling writing. 

My review of American Psycho is, I believe, an example of some such writing. Angry writing, that is. Whether it's compelling or not is for the reader to decide. Nevertheless, it was fun and cathartic to write, and it stands out as one of my favourite posts of 2020. 

Why J. K. Rowling is Not Our Ally

While this post didn't perhaps do as well as some of my others in terms of views, and there are several things I would do differently were I to go back and write it again, it remains one that I am still very proud of. I put a lot of effort into properly researching and structuring my post, making sure that everything I mentioned was correctly cited and that I referenced the opinions of trans people specifically. It felt important for me to write it, and in hindsight I'm still glad I did. 

5 LGBT+ Webcomics to Read Online Today

Unlike other posts which stood out in my memory for how they were fuelled almost entirely by anger and rage, I remember writing this post as a much calmer, more cheerful experience. Being the bitter bitch that I am, even my previous lists of LGBT+ media hadn't come without a dig at another creator (her name rhymes with Saylor Twift). This one, though, was driven purely by love for queer webcomics and a desire to share them with others. I hope that this comes across in the post. 

Film Review: Slaughterhouse Rulez (2018)

After the American Psycho review of January 2020, Bitchy Mary struck again in October of the same year, kicking off Extra Libris's Spooky Season series of posts with a some-holds-barred rant about the god-awful Slaughterhouse Rulez. Like American Psycho, this movie annoyed me so much that it seemed like its terribleness seeped into my blood, and writing a blog post was the creative equivalent of covering myself with leeches to suck the poison out (sorry Michael Sheen, but it really was a bad film). I felt much better after though, so I guess leeches creative outlets work for anger management after all.

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That's it! Those are my favourite posts of 2020. It was hard to choose just five, because I'm a narcissist and quite proud of my own work, but I think these ones are good representatives of the writing I did on this blog last year. If you're reading this, do you have a favourite post from Extra Libris? If so, why do you like it? Do you disagree with my choices, and if so, why? I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments.

Here's to many more posts in 2021!

Cheers!