As much as I enjoyed rereading My Sister the Serial Killer last week for book club, it does mean that I’m now a book behind for reviews. I didn’t want to post a second review of the book because my feelings haven’t changed much since my first read. I could have tried hard to finish my current read in time but, I’ll be honest, I spent much of the weekend playing Animal Crossing and was too busy collecting wood and catching bugs to be reading. So, it left me without a topic for today’s bookish. As it’s October, the scariest month of the year, I thought it would be fitting to discuss some of my top scary books. Disclaimer going in, I’m not much into the horror genre, so this is probably going to end up being massively underwhelming. I thought about including some examples of traditional gothic fiction but decided against it. Partly because I’ve already covered it. Also because they might not seem as spooky to modern readers.
Twitter is a pretty horrible place to be. All you need to do is look at the Twitterstorm that hit Yorkshire Tea a few weeks ago. On the plus side, it gave us the immortal phrase “Sue, you’re shouting at tea!” On the minus, it showed us how fucking crazy people can be. I used to work for the company that owns Yorkshire Tea and met one of the people on their marketing team. He was a nice guy and I’m sure everyone at the Yorkshire Tea marketing team is. Definitely not the kind of people who deserve abuse being hurled at them for something that was beyond their control. But that’s the kind of world that we live in. That a politician can be seen drinking a specific tea and then a whole host of people demand a boycott of the brand in response. Despite the fact that the original post wasn’t an advertisement. The real issue with social media is that it’s fooled people into thinking that their voice deserves to be heard. It’s changed the idea of what freedom of speech means to so many people. It no longer means having the power or right to express your opinions without censorship, restraint, or legal penalty. It means saying whatever the fuck you want and not thinking there are any moral, social, or emotional consequences to them.
Stephen King has written a lot of books. The man is a writing machine. He cracks out so many novels in a year that it’s difficult to imagine him doing anything else. But it is something that has helped him become super popular. I’d say that Stephen King fans are some of the most passionate fans out there. So passionate that they are unwilling to see anything wrong with the man. Recently on Twitter, King made a comment that a critic, Jake Kerridge, had made a comment about the writer’s endings. This annoyed me for several reasons. Number 1, I happen to think Kerridge is right and the endings to King’s recent books have all been wank. Number 2, why is he bitching about a critic anyway? It’s part of the job right. You don’t single out one reviewer and name and shame him if you’re Stephen King. Number 3, his army of fans jumped on the tweet and right up King’s arse. To say the replies were fawning is a major understatement. I was embarrassed for them. I’m the kind of person who gets obsessed about the things I like but, at least, I have enough self-awareness (or maybe shame) to do it privately. So, I was unsurprised to see the huge number of people on GoodReads giving this book 5 stars. If 50 Shades of Gray had been released under King’s name, his fans would have hailed it a masterpiece.
I made a huge mistake last night. I made the decision to carry on reading until I finished this book. I just couldn’t put it off any longer. It meant I went to bed super late and was an absolute mess this morning. I emailed a colleague thinking he was a customer. It wasn’t a massive thing but it could just have easily have been the other way round. Nobody should have to answer emails before noon. And then, to add insult to injury, I had a 45-minute phone call with a customer. Thankfully, it wasn’t a bad one but it went on too long. She wanted me to sort somethings out for her and insisted on waiting on the line as I did it. As we all know, doing your job whilst someone is hovering always makes it impossible so it was a bit of a nightmare. So, I had a dodgy start to the day. But the rest of it went okay. And at least I didn’t have to worry about finishing the book for tonight’s post.
Yipee ki-yay, motherbooker 