moonshadow

Tender is the Flesh - Agustina Bazterrica (2017)

★★★★
Imagine a world where every animal got infected with a virus that kills you if you consume it. Or that's what the government says. And so the meat industry resorts to slaughtering humans, but no one calls it that anymore. Cognitive dissonance on display. This book made me physically queasy in a few parts, and that doesn't happen easily. I felt like I raised my eyebrows in shock or horror every 10 pages or so. The sad part is, I think the things that happen in this book could be possible. People will go very far to not face themselves or why they do the things they do. I felt like the narrator was dissociated the whole time. I guess you would have to be, in his line of work. Nothing feels too real. If he let it in, he wouldn't be able to bear it.

But the pain, he intuits, is the only thing that keeps him breathing. Without the sadness, he has nothing left.

He looked at everyone as though the world had distanced itself a few meters; it was as though the people embracing him were behind frosted glass.

There's a vibration, a subtle and fragile heat, that makes a living being particularly delicious. You're extracting life by the mouthful. It's the pleasure of knowing that because of your intent, your actions, this being has ceased to exist. It's the feeling of a complex and precious organism expiring little by little, and also becoming part of you. For always. I find this miracle fascinating. This possibility of an indissoluble union.

Red Rising - Pierce Brown (2014)

★★★★★
I loved this book. I love how self aware the main character is. How he's always thinking of multiple angles. Putting himself in others' shoes, interpreting interactions, or using events to piece together things in his own mind. Learning from the past and using that to react differently in the present. A study in human nature.

Dracula - Bram Stoker (1897)

★★★★
I've had this book for a long time but never actually finished it. It felt more like a detective novel than a vampire novel but I still enjoyed it. There was a lot of retelling, or the characters telling each other what we know just happened, which took up much of the story.

Devotion is so rare, and we are so grateful to those who show it unasked to those we love.

Frankenstein - Mary Shelley (1818)

★★★★★
I wanted to read the book before Guillermo Del Toro's new movie came out (I had never actually read it). I really liked how it was written. There is such passion and emotion in gothic literature that I feel is lacking in more modern lit. My favorite quote was:

If our impulses were confined to hunger, thirst, and desire, we might nearly be free; but now we are moved by every wind that blows and a chance word or scene that that word may convey to us.

To be human is to suffer!!! But there is also joy, love. I don't think we can have one without the other.

I think both Victor and the monster were both blaming each other for the things they had done, which is why it surprised me in Del Toro's movie that they forgave each other in the end. In the book, Victor's dying wish is for the captain to kill the monster, which I think is a more gothic approach. To succumb to one's nature.

The Exorcist - William Peter Blatty (1971)

★★★★★
This was a fun second read for Halloween time. The movie stays pretty true to the story and dialog; and I felt like the characters were true as well. When Damien finds out that Regan is speaking backwards is my favorite part; there's no denying then that this isn't some kind of hysteria or disorder. My dad had me watch The Exorcist when I was really young - around 5 or 6 - and so it has a special place with me. I usually watch it every year around Halloween.