"Oh Hexy You So Sexy"

“Oh great, another god damn witch book,” is exactly what I thought when I opened the first page of HEX, by Thomas Olde Heuvelt. I don’t know about you but I am pretty burnt out on witches and chicks walking around in oversized felt hats trying to read my aura and crap because they saw that season of American Horror Story.

But just give me a second. This novel successfully manages to pull off a tongue-in-cheek, pop culture laden, fun style with a genuine doomed sense of utter dread and hopelessness. Once I saw how it was written, with it’s quirky references to social media and GoPros I was like “Oh boy I get it you understand young people,” but then I killed a few chapters I couldn’t sleep that night. I keep seeing the witch in dark corners in my apartment and when I close my eyes I picture her sewn up eyes and mouth trying to whisper curses at me.

Heuvelt juxtaposes the modern style writing with the haunting, spooky historical background of the Black Rock Witch. It was her story, the story of Katherine Van Wyler’s struggle in colonial, witch-hunt-maddened, New England that kept me up at night. I think most times the scariest part of horror stories is what situation was the catalyst that caused supernatural antagonist to be so dangerous. That’s the part that haunts me about The Ring movie. Is the well. And how scared she must have been.

Originally written as a Dutch horror story the author custom wrote a new ending to fit with the North American witch hunt. Using colonial history as a backdrop for the modern day story the reader is taken in and out of comfort zones in their own backyard. For many people it's easy to relate to this conservative, small town where there's a terrible secret. It goes from humor to fear to humor to fear to humor to only being able to read it in the daylight because your boyfriend is sick of you having nightmares after reading at night and of you kicking him in the nuts while you sleep during said nightmares. I started only reading it at work in the safety of the fluorescent lights.

The ending is intense. I love it. Please read this book, you probably won’t be disappointed. After completing it I spent a few nights really thinking about familial love, parental sacrifices, mob mentality and how the internet has really changed everything, even horror stories. Although I know the technology in horror is really becoming a trope I'm still impressed with the creativity. I’m sorry but the way (this is not a spoiler it’s in the first chapter) they track the witch via smartphone is amazing and makes total sense to a millennia

Fun. Scary. Heart wrenching. What more could you want from a spooky book? 

I'm sorry. I don't normally think reviews belong on this blog, which I wanted to be more events and musing based. However this book left a huge impression on me. I'm still thinking about parental love, mob mentality and the horrors of the human race every night. So deal with it. 

Buffalo Reading Invasion Finishes Up For Season

Readers gather around Symphony Circle for the final installment of this years Buffalo Reading Invasion. 

   
        The Buffalo Reading Invasion ended its fourth summer today at Symphony Circle, a completely new location for the grassroots event.
       Founded in July 2012, by Geoff Schutte, the monthly invasion invites readers of all ages to gather in parks and other public spaces to sit and read together. It's a weird concept. "Let's all gather together but not socialize." However as much of a skeptic as I was I have to admit this worked for me, very well in fact.
      For months I've been struggling with Mark Z. Danielewski's "House of Leaves" and honestly I was about to give up until this event. I guess forcing myself to sit there with a hundred or so other people engrossed in their books wasn't as much of a distraction as I thought it would be for extremely social me. It really helped me bring my focus into the book I've been struggling with.

Anti-social socializing. 

      The crowd was mostly older, though there was a scattering of parents reading to children and thirty something couples making me feel vaguely jealous, and very dedicated despite several distractions. A few passersby had honest, curious questions about what was going on, but we did have to deal with a few people screaming out of cars or the guy screaming from his bicycle dressed as Freddy Krueger.
      All in all it wasn't any more distracting than being at home surrounded by my biggest weakness, Facebook. It was also empowering to have the courage to read in public, something I absolutely hate. Allentown is full of weirdos day and night, especially the park areas surrounding Symphony Circle.
      All good things must come to an end and as the crickets sang in the grasses in Charlotte's Web, "Summer is over and gone, over and gone, over and gone. Summer is dying, dying." We'll have to catch up with the invasion in 2016.

Magical Realism And The Black Hole I've Been In Since 2013

Funny how things work. This thing is always here no matter how distracted I get with my many slew of personal life crisis’ or bitter I get towards writing. So Adrienne, what have you been up to since 2013? Well, I’m glad you asked, assuming you did. If you haven’t I assure you that has never stopped me before. noteworthy

Since 2013 I have been inadvertently focusing on magical realism literature. Sure with some scatterings of romance and bestsellers in-between but for the most part I have been drawn to that specific genre. I’ve always went through life hoping, wishing and believing there was more to this miserable real-world existence. I think the way this genre molds fantasy together convincingly with reality really hits home with me. How have I never realized all of this before? It’s fantasy but less desperate, with less dragons and more ominous decay. The streets are cracking, the paint is fading and the secondary characters are so gray and perfect. The fantastical elements pinned against a real world setting made me feel like I had discovered a more grown-up, relatable version of fantasy. A less cheesy answer to dystopian novels and pure fantasy. 

At the time, I wasn’t really realizing what attracted me to all of these novels. Only earlier in this year, as I read 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami, did it hit me that all of these sorts of books and authors I was loving all reminded me of Gaiman. The multi-dimensional story telling, dividing the real world and the spiritual or fantastical, makes me ache for adventure that probably doesn’t exist. The mysterious characters meeting up with unquestioning protagonists ready to plummet into something dangerous and magical pumped me up. And instead of me ending up LARPing at UBCon or something dressed as a warrior princess, this is my release for that yearning. Isn’t it sweet to think that I could enter London Below like in Neverwhere or avoid a dangerous, magical cult in 1Q84 Tokyo like in Murakami’s work? Maybe I hate living so much that I prefer to think there’s an option to leave it all behind for something cooler, a different world. Sure we all want to be special but maybe I’m just bored. Who knows what my deal is, this isn't about me. 

I blew through Isabelle Allende’s books and let her take me to Latin America, the Caribbean and New Orleans for some feminist, latina perspective. As someone constantly telling stories to others Eva Luna lit a spark in me that I loved and could not shake and I quickly devoured several of Allende’s other books. In her books magic, spirits and hoodoo come alive casually, weaving a way through violent revolutions to help ease the oppression of the people who believed in it and depended on it. She often switches narrative POV and jumps around chronologically in a more fluid style than Murakami’s more rigid approach, but the comparison is there. 

All of these works and authors I’ve mentioned share so much in common despite being from different parts of the globe. Gaiman, Murakami and Allende, from England, Japan and Chile respectively, all write these heavy, unnerving books. They make you walk through a dangerous fog and fight to see the whole picture. The dark mood of them lure me in, the strange mysteries keep me reading, and all of these have kept me up at night nervously wondering if that sound outside is really just the wind or if maybe something bad has finally come for me. Am I allowed to be excited about this? Yes, it’s about damn time I’m excited about anything and coherent enough to type words to share with whoever on earth would read this. 

       I have so many more thoughts on Haruki that I would like to share, especially a great comparison of his themes to objectivism. However that is for another night when I don't have to wake up extra early to clean out all the airpots at work with Cafeiza. Also-from now on I'm using Helvetica in this thing. We all make mistakes when we we.re young, but really....TNR? 

Gaiman's New Book Depresses, Pleases, As Usual

A book that captivates the loneliness and helplessness of childhood, The Ocean At the End of the Lane is a short taste of the Neil Gaiman we all know, love and secretly envy.

Jamie Lynn Kerner's designs are just as
beautiful and haunting as the story.

Initially began as a novella for his wife, singer “Amanda Fucking Palmer” of the Dresden Dolls, it evolved into a short novel.

The story is based around an unnamed narrator who returns to his hometown and suddenly begins to remember a traumatic, supernatural childhood incident that happened to him at age 7. The story, in typical Gaiman fashion, involves a person from a boring life accidently gaining access to a hidden, magical dimension.

The story itself unravels slowly in a peaceful, tense and mourning fashion. The rural setting is just as lonely as the seven year old boy, running from strange, malicious, magical beings. This is the part of the novel that will stay with me, the reminder of how helpless and lonely childhood could be.  To children the fantastical is much more real and dangerous than the cloudy, far away, adult world.

Many descriptive moments in the novel made me very uncomfortable because they were so specifically gross, particularly one part where the protagonist removes a living being from inside of his body with stainless steel tweezers. The way Gaiman describes a lot of scenes are very vivid and haunting, and I still cringe thinking about them days later, goose bumps on my arms.

At 181 pages the main issue I had with the book is the lack of explanation of whatever mystical dimension is involved in this particular Gaiman plot, the reader does not get a lot of detail and I felt a yearning to know more and to understand more about what the danger truly was.

However, it is fascinating that Gaiman has revisited the Hempstick family, many of its members appear in his other works. Daisy Hempstock  is a character in Stardust and Liza Hempstock in The Graveyard Book. In The Ocean at the End of the Lane, Lettie Hempstock, of unclear relation to those two, protects the unnamed narrator from the trouble they both released onto the human world.

One of the most touching moment of the story is when the narrator chooses to remember something unpleasant rather than have the memory removed. “I want to remember…because it happened to me. And I’m still me,” reasons the seven year old in a moving moment of maturity and clarity.

Memory is a large focus of the novel, with the adult narrator in shock of how he could have possibly forgotten the most exciting memories of his life. It is that idea that will bring you back to mourning your childhood, and wondering what forgotten adventures you yourself have lost.

                I don’t normally put my book reviews on here, I normally just leave that sort of thing for my Goodreads account. However, the Gaiman is one of my favorite authors and since its release on June 18th I’ve been waiting for the time and money to get my hands on it.

Printers and Punks Join Forces

            Small printers, publishers, punk rockers and crafters gathered underneath the echoing ceiling of the Karpeles Manuscript Library Museum this weekend.

The first floor of the Buffalo Small Press Book fair
from the buildings balcony. According to Fritter, vendors who
 needed more wall space for displays were placed upstairs.

            Selling everything from greeting cards printed in small batches, paper flowers and buttons featuring the likes of Andy Griffith and Vampyra, the fair’s vendors offered much more than just the small batch printed literature most people would expect.

For the first time the annual Buffalo Small Press Book Fair, now it’s in seventh year, has two full days of operations and, due to that, now has more vendors than ever. 

Some vendors can only make it for one of the two days, but making it a two day event gives printers from longer distances from Buffalo more incentive to be a part of the fair, said Christopher Fritton, founder and organizer.

“Spreading it out over two days means more people can come to the show. I always hear ”oh, I work all Sunday or oh, I work all Saturday,” so this gives more people an opportunity to come,” said Fritton.  

Every girl needs a pin with Sheriff Andy Taylor on it.
Buzzcocks and Andy Taylor pin by Rochester Teen Set Outsider.

This year the fair has 140 vendors, mostly from the Great Lakes region, but some as far away as the mid-Atlantic. Cathy G. Johnson, graphic novelist, and her table of comics, patches and various other printed materials, traveled from Providence, Rhode Island to be a part of the fair just for Saturday. 

Though a small part of the fair, zines were a noteworthy item for sale, particularly among the younger crowd, in all their chunky, black-glassed glory.

            The “Rochester Teen Set Outsider”, a zine printing material written by punks, misfits and people who seem to identify as general weirdos had a large crowd of all ages at their table. They also sold illustrations, small cards and many, many eclectic buttons featuring classic pop culture stars and punk rock icons. They certainly stood out in compared to a lot of the other booths and sold me some one-of-a-kind items. 

            The local food truck scene is providing dining options for the fair. The newer Amy’s Truck and the seasoned veteran Lloyd’s Taco truck were parked in front of the museum, at 453 Porter Ave. 

The Buffalo Small Press Book Fair continues tomorrow, Sunday, April 7, from 11 a.m. – 5 p.m., with brief readings from authors and poets throughout the day.

Nicholas Sparks Draws Inspiration From Family Romances

           Bestselling author Nicholas Sparks went above and beyond his obligations to fans at his book signing and lecture Saturday afternoon at the Seneca Niagara Casino.

Fans eagerly await to get their books signed by Nicholas Sparks

Sparks, author of 16 published novels, 7 adapted to film, did a free book signing in the hotel lobby before his 5 p.m. lecture in the casino’s intimate Bear’s Den venue. Sparks was originally allotted an hour and a half to sign books. However, due to the incredible turn out, he extended those hours and signed the entire line’s books.

“We extended the hours to be nice…well…he extended the hours to be nice,” said Tony Astran, Manager of Publicity at Seneca Niagara Casino.

Sparks finished up signings around 4:30, and the entire line of mostly women that had went all the way through the lobby down the hall, had met, signed and taken pictures with him.

                According to Security Operations employee, Eric Miller, fans started lining up in the queue for the 2 p.m. signing at 10 a.m.

Sparks’s lecture found the author discussing how he uses real life, family stories as inspiration for his novels. For example, he discussed in length how his signature novel, “The Notebook,” was based off of his wife’s grandparents, their dramatic war time correspondence and her struggle with Alzheimer’s.

The lecture itself capitalized on the wholesome, emotional nature of Spark’s novels in an engaging way, his slight southern drawl endearing and his hands expressive. He told a succession of romantic and uplifting, but occasionally hokey, stories from his family to a crowd eager to hear more.

                After the lecture there was 15 minutes allotted for an audience Q &A session. During that Sparks discussed his, as of yet, untitled, next book, his increasing involvement in the film adaptations, as well as his apathy towards fame.

“I tolerate fame…I can live without it…I’m internally motivated I guess to write the best book that I can and that’s what I need,” said Sparks.

                Despite the large, enthusiastic crowd at the book signing the lecture itself had seating gaps left.

“They didn’t advertise enough, they didn’t promote it. Wayne Newton’s coming but I wouldn’t know unless I had come here,” said Rick Chojecki, who was given comp tickets right before the event and took his very pleased wife.

Local and Chain Bookstores Kick-off Holiday Shopping Season

               Both local and big-box booksellers kicked off their holiday season this Thanksgiving weekend, marked by Black Friday as well as Small Business Saturday.

                Barnes and Noble in Amherst, NY did a first, as many chain stores did, and opened at 8 p.m. on Thanksgiving, rather than wait until the next morning to start. Bookseller Melissa Genier said that though it was completely dead that night, as soon as the store opened the next morning it was ridiculously busy, all day.

“Pretty much everyone worked that time from 8 o’clock Thursday to Friday at some point,” Genier said.

                “Anything really movie-based like the Hunger Games or the new Lincoln movie sold real well. Anything Lincoln was popular. Teen, any teen book series is always popular and our Nooks, we sold like a billion,” said Genier on what topped the store’s sales this weekend.

                Movie based items are always a popular seller, especially around Christmas. Films such as “Lincoln” help create buzz around a new topic. Films based off popular teen books, such as Suzanne Collins’ “The Hunger Games” trilogy, act as gateway to for movie fans to become book fans.

                On the other side of town, “Small Business Saturday” went well in the Elmwood Village of Buffalo. Talking Leaves...Books on Elmwood had extra staffing on hand to help with the rush and offered special holiday gift wrap.

                “There’s usually only two of us but there were more people on this weekend. We put on extra help because we knew it would be busy,” said bookseller Doug Zerby.

                The store has also ordered a stock of E-Readers to sell soon, said Zerby. Including Talking Leaves…Books in competition with one of the season’s hottest gift items, and not just for literature junkies, but for casual readers as well.

             The Elmwood Village Association promoted the national day, created and sponsored by American Express, leading up to the weekend. The association also rewarded customers, including those at Talking Leaves…Books, who bought locally with “I Shop Local” buttons.

   “We had those buttons to hand out and those came from them [The Elmwood Village Association] said bookseller, Brittany Moroz, who opened the store on Small Business Saturday along with Zerby. 

The Elmwood Village Association announced that most of its stores have extended, seasonal hours now, and will remain open until 9 p.m.