My Week in Media: April 30
Everything I read, listened to, and watched
Hello, friends,
We’re experiencing an Extremely Rainy Sunday over here—so much so that we’re basically just waiting for our cellar to start flooding. But we have a standard operating procedure for that—hooray for sump pumps!—so it shouldn’t be a big deal. Just crossing our fingers that we don’t lose power?
Reading
Young Adult
Some Shall Break, by Ellie Marney
This is the sequel to None Shall Sleep, the 1980s-set Silence of the Lambs-ish procedural about a girl—the only survivor of a serial killer who kidnapped, sexually assaulted, and eventually murdered his “brides”—who is pulled in by the FBI to interview a DIFFERENT (teenage, incarcerated) serial killer.
I’ve loved both of them for a couple of reasons. First, they’re both solid procedurals with the requisite team-building dynamics, forensic fun, and head-butting with authority figures. But more interestingly (to me) was how the trauma/PTSD of our heroine is foregrounded—her past informs her investigatory instincts, but at an emotional cost—and I love that there is absolutely NO romantic tension between her and the murderer she’s interviewing. I’ve been thinking a lot about that dynamic, and I really suspect that if this series had come out ten years ago, there’d have been a romantic thread there.
The Night in Question, by Kathleen Glasgow and Liz Lawson
Sequel to The Agathas! If you haven’t read the first one yet, and you like lots of Teen Drama and Quick Banter and Classic Mystery Tropes and Noir-ish Narration and Rich Kid/Poor Kid business, you’ll love it. This new one involves unraveling a decades-old mystery in ADDITION to a contemporary one. For me, the mysteries are secondary to the friendship dynamics, character development, and growth arcs—both girls are figuring a whole lot of stuff out, and it’s not easy to behave perfectly all the time when you’re dealing with Roiling Emotions. It’s clear from the Acknowledgements that there’s a third one in the works, and I’m already looking forward to it.
Comics, Graphic Novels, and Manga
One Year at Ellsmere, by Faith Erin Hicks
Clash, by Kayla Miller
Watching
Movies
Zombie AKA Zombi 2 AKA Zombie Flesh Eaters
Lucio Fulci, 1979
The Beyond
Lucio Fulci, 1981
Lucio Fulci is the only director I can think of who’s made me gag multiple times during every single one of his movies I’ve watched to date—I’d seen The Beyond before, and I think I gagged more this time than the first time, even? It’s all practical effects, and all CLEARLY not real, but there’s something about how VISCOUS all of the liquids are—it’s amazing how absolutely disgusting masticated canned peaches* can be when they’re endlessly dribbling out of a zombie’s mouth—and how STRETCHY the skin is, and how much SQUELCHING there is. The gory sequences go on and on and ON, to the point where I go from grossed out to giggling to grossed out again. You wouldn’t think that a clearly-fake face getting eaten by clearly-fake spiders could be quite so icky, but Fulci had some kinda talent for that.
The music absolutely RULES, the storylines are borderline incomprehensible, the dubbing is always way off, the sets are great, he seems to love Blunt Punctures and Reallyyyyy Slooooow Eyeball Stuff. I love him?
*I have no idea if they were canned peaches—I’m basing that guess on color and texture?
Television
Father Brown, The Last Drive-In, Doctor Who (still on Pertwee), Bob’s Burgers
Listening
Art, Culture, and History
I listened to the first season of this history of fashion podcast way back when it was a spin-off on 99% Invisible, this week I blew through the whole second season, and I think it’s safe to say that I’m going to marathon the rest of what’s available over the course of this coming week. Looking at history and culture through the lens of fashion is one of my favorite, favorite things, but even if that’s not an immediate go-to for you, I’d highly, highly recommend the episode about Knockoffs. Also particularly loved the ones about Suits and about Perfume.
Tara and Dave from Extra Hot Great and a million other things team up with Pamela Ribon of My Year of Dicks fame to go through Sassy magazine, issue by issue. I had to add this one to my list of Things I’m Not Allowed to Listen to While Driving because it makes me laugh so hard that it isn’t safe.
Maintenance Phase
This Day in Esoteric Political History
All Songs Considered
Into It
Who? Weekly
Books & Language
The more I listen to this one, the more I love it—particularly because so often, people call in to find out what is CORRECT, and it ends up being more a conversation about how language is CONSTANTLY EVOLVING. In other words, I love that the hosts are the antithesis of gatekeepers, and that they push back HARD on folks’ tendencies to use language as a way of looking down on others/ingrained snobbery connected to differences of economic/social class. It’s a show that celebrates curiosity, and I’m always here for that.
If Books Could Kill
The Allusionist
TV/Movies
Short Stories, Storytelling, Audiodramas, and Audiobooks
The Incident at Ong’s Hat (BBC Limelight)
Wolf 359
The Bride Vanishes (Suspense, CBS Radio, 1942)
Till Death Do Us Part (Suspense, CBS Radio, 1942, with Peter Lorre!)
Two Sharp Knives (Suspense, CBS Radio, 1942)
The Pit and the Pendulum (Suspense, CBS Radio, 1943)
Nothing Up My Sleeve (Suspense, CBS Radio, 1943)
Previously
Wish me luck with the Possible Cellar Floods!
Talk soon,
Leila
Okay, I've had None Shall Sleep and The Agathas both physically in my house since they came out and still haven't read them! What on earth! I neeeed to pick them up.
It's raining here too and our water table is so shallow that we are planning to install a backup sump pump on backup power because they can't bury the lines in the Canadian Shield, so rainstorms often comes with power outages... All of which is to say, good luck to both our basements!