THT & Books (Week 54: Chekov's Squid Bag)

First week of the unpaid vacation. I did a lot more reading/listening this week, time wise, though I still ended up with the same number of titles finished. A bit of a genre mix this week and only one off of the list. Total tally for the year stands at 95 books, 24 audiobooks.

The List: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1nQonl9yZk7KGdTQ4hADytpxw4a0khfXZTARnigCxjoM/edit?usp=sharing

"Strange Pictures"
Uketsu || translation by Jim Rion
(Mystery, Crime; ~235pgs/160mins)

A psychologist proudly shows off a drawing from her first case. A university student tries to decipher the connection between five drawings on a defunct personal blog. A child draws a picture for mother’s day with a strange grey smudge over his and his mother’s home. An amateur reporter tries to understand the drawing on the back of a receipt left by his mentor before his murder.
I really enjoyed this book. The conceit is that you have the PoV of different characters and they are each trying to decipher something about a drawing. It is written as individual short stories, but it is all brought together in a very creative way. The mysteries are solvable and the logic behind them is pretty clever most of the time, and I had a big “Oh! That’s how it all fits together!” moment about two-thirds of the way through. I will definitely be checking out Uketsu’s Strange Buildings books.

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"Dreadful"
Caitlin Rozakis
(Fantasy, Humor; ~330pgs/330mins)

A man wakes up in the middle of an explosion without eyebrows and without his memories. Soon he discovers that he is the dark wizard The Dread Lord Gavrax, a short-tempered middle-aged wizard with a penchant for immolating those who cross him; he doesn’t feel like Gavrax, though. Trying to keep his loss of memories hidden, Gav must navigate his place in a grand evil conspiracy orchestrated by fellow dark wizard (and terrifying bastard) Zarconar and his own realization that he doesn’t want to be evil.
A fun story of redemption, one of the main throughlines throughout is the idea that everyone puts on an act in order to try and fit the perception of others, whether that be wearing ridiculous robes with flames meant to emphasize power or changing the way you talk. I got this recommended to me by Libby after reading 'How to Become the Dark Lord and Die Trying,' and it has similar vibes in terms of showing that the concepts of good and evil are more nuanced than typical of fantasy worlds, but it is much lighter in tone. The characters are well written (though princess Eliasha does occasionally fall into the ‘not like other princesses’ trope a bit too much) and Gav himself is a flawed lead who makes mistakes and is cowardly but is trying to make a change to be better. I look forward to the sequel and the spin-off comic that are both coming out next year.

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"The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America’s Shining Women"
Kate Moore || narrated by Angela Brazil
(History, Labor Law; ~15h50m)

Kate Moore presents the stories of the women who were part of the radium dial industry, focusing on the women themselves and not just on the landmark cases that they were part of that brought regulation and consequences to the industry that ultimately killed them. Through archived interviews of those who knew them and the personal diaries of the women themselves, Moore gives voice to the Radium Girls from their excitement of joining the radium dial studios, to their struggles to discover the cause of their mysterious illnesses, the loss of friends, the fight to have radium poisoning recognized as a real condition, and the constant legal battles to make the radium companies to take liability for knowingly putting the women in danger.
Profit over people. I had cursory knowledge about the story of the Radium Girls, but Moore goes into the nitty-gritty of how the companies knowingly hid the dangers of the radium paint from their workers for the sake of making money, in many cases outright lying to their faces. The deterioration of the women is heartbreaking and gruesome, with many of them having their bones literally dissolving inside them, and the bastards that caused it tried everything to not have to take responsibility. I would love to think that things were different now (and they are in terms of there being more protection for some industries), but the corporations haven’t really changed. It’s always profit over people.

"Celestial Lights"
Cecile Pin
(Contemporary, Speculative Sci-fi; ~245pgs/195mins)

In an alternate timeline nearly identical to our own with the exception that humans landed on Mars in the late 2000s, Oliver Ines was born on the day of the Challenger disaster. In the late 2020s, Ollie is chosen as the commander of an ambitious ten-year mission to land humans on Jupiter’s moon Europa, completely cut off from Earth. Ollie recounts his life from growing up in the English countryside, to his university life in London, and his career in the British Navy as a submarine engineer, all while reflecting on the way he connected with the love of his life, Philly, and why he made his choice to leave it all behind for the PHOENIX mission.
There is some suspension of disbelief needed for this book if we are to believe that the world would still be almost identical to ours if we had the tech to send people to Mars in the 2000s and having a functional Moon colony by the late 2030s, but it works since that science is just a backdrop to the life story of Ollie. The story was very much of how ambition and the need to do something significant with your life affects the people around you; Ollie is shown to be a very self-centered person who tries to justify his choices with the idea of the greater good, but he isn’t unlikeable. I may not have too many people in my life, but I know that I could never make the choice to cut myself off from them for a decade, let alone if I had a partner or children.

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"The Sisters Brothers"
Patrick deWitt
(Western, Humor; ~340pgs/210min)

Charlie and Eli Sisters are on the trail of Hemann Kermit Warm. He has incurred the wrath of the Commodore and he has to die. What has he done? That’s not something the Sisters brothers have to concern themselves about, they just have to do the job. The journey from Oregon City down to San Francisco is full of misadventure for the two as Eli questions if he wants to continue this life alongside his brother as a killer.
I think this was the first western that I have read, though I have seen plenty of movies in the genre. Like all comedy westerns that I have seen, the humor in this book is very much on the morbid situational side. It was a really enjoyable read and I felt a real connection to Eli; I loved seeing his struggle with his bond to his brother and the realization that the life they were living just wasn’t what he wanted. Also, I loved poor Tub. I have a couple of other modern westerns on deck, and I feel like this was a good introduction to the genre for me. I know there is a movie adaptation, so I think I may watch it at some point.

(Thank you @wadatahmydamie for the recommendation.)

The plan for the rest of my break is to finish one book a day during weekdays; let's see if I can pull it off. I started 'Feet of Clay' this morning, 'I Will Kill Your Imaginary Friend for $200' is for tomorrow, I think I'm going to be reading 'Buffalo Hunter Hunter' over the weekend, and I plan for 'The Mercy of Gods' on Monday. After that is a bit up in the air, though I probably will finally finish 'Demon Copperhead.'

As always, thank you for all past and future recommendations, and feel free to peruse and use the List to your hearts' desires. Have a Thursday!