Dobes Zone

       I realized, to my slight shame, that I never finished writing this review for The Island of Dr. Moreau, a book that I read months ago for the first ever assignment for the book club I'm running. So far we've also read Watership Down , Under the Skin, The Lives of the Monster Dogs, and now Cycle of the Werewolf! I'll have to write my reviews for the other books as well, but one step at a time I suppose.     I'd read a fair bit of H. G. Wells as a kid, being a huge sci-fi fiend and also a precocious early reader that got into a lot of heavier adult books while my peers were still on middle grade or YA books. I'd dug into War of the Worlds and The Time Machine but somehow had missed The Island of Doctor Moreau the first time around. If you've seen any of the movie adaptations, you might be lulled into the idea that you already know the story, but the book offers a lot more complexity and nuance than a lot of film adaptations are able to accommodate...

       As most of you probably know, I ended up getting covid, as have the other members of my household. The three of us are doing well but we were laid up for about a week forcing ourselves to take things as easy as possible. In that time, I tried to mostly occupy myself with drawing, reading, and watching films. As it happens, I'd just acquired both the Day of the Triffids DVD as well as the novel it was based on. My copy of Day of the Triffids, with a beautiful dust jacket cover by Gary Viskupik       When I was a child, I was absolutely terrified by and obsessed with Day of the Triffids. My family had it on VHS and I think I was about at the age where I liked to scare myself with movies. I had a highly active imagination and it didn't take a lot to scare me- just a good concept was enough and my brain would connect the dots. The movie of course, to an adult, is a pretty tame affair, but the concept of it all is still compelling. The book illu...

Pen Tree Cat Seven Tuna Tuesday What exactly counts as an intrusive thought? Connell remembered seeing an online argument years ago about the phrasing but couldn’t recall who’d won. There was someone insisting that intrusive thoughts strictly involved thoughts that were violent, upsetting, and unbidden. Drive your car off a bridge, drop the baby on his head, dice your finger like a carrot on the cutting board. Others suggested that this also included random annoying ideas, absurd notions. Shitposts, jokes. Well, that’s just having thoughts isn’t it? A lot of thought comes unprompted, unconscious. The phrase stuck in Connell’s head, intrusive thought or not, was definitely unasked for and not caused by any stimuli in his environment. In the 8 th grade during a science lesson, Connell’s teacher had provided the class with a memory exercise. They were learning about the brain, the different lobes and the areas that controlled bodily functions like appetite, breathing, fear. Thin...

 Kindred by Octavia E Butler is an incredibly heavy book and perhaps the one that the author is best known for. It's the kind of book that definitely is important while being unpleasant, gripping and utterly terrifying. If you want to read sci-fi/fantasy that's socially relevant, it's something I'd consider essential reading. Not my own copy, just the first edition cover which I like better than the edition from the library. Laughing at the Harlan Ellison quote though, cruel yes, sensual? No.       In Kindred, Dana, a black woman living in 1976, finds herself spontaneously traveling back through time to rescue a white boy from drowning in the river, and then again to save the boy from a fire he'd started in his room. On this second visit she pieces together that this boy is her ancestor and he is somehow calling her to him in times of danger. Dana has to protect Rufus, her ancestor, in order to assure that her own family and existence is preserved. Most horrifyi...

       Octavia E Butler really is one of those authors whose work is impossible to put down once you pick it up. I read Fledgling as part of my book club (a special benefit for those supporting the excellent Girls Guts Giallo Patreon ) and it was almost impossible to not zoom through the book in a couple evenings. World building and exposition in sci fi and fantasy stories can really be make or break with how they're handled, and even quite skilled authors can lose me a little when they get lost in the reeds dumping a ton of info about the politics, culture, etc about a fictional world or people. A lot of the brilliance of Fledgling is how effortlessly Butler leads us into the world of vampires and making things like their customs, their biology (and even court proceedings) unfold in a way that's natural and riveting for the reader. Her style is sharp, precise and highly digestible while dealing with difficult concepts that have multiple interconnecting layers. ...

 2021 was a bad year in a lot of ways but it was a stellar year for me in terms of watching new films (or at least films that were new to me). I spent a lot more time doing solo watches as well as hosting movie streams over discord with a fun and friendly group of folks who share my passion for weirdo cinema. I'll admit that this year was not particularly one where I watched a ton of current releases but I'm hoping to catch up soon- still need to see Titane, Benedetta, tons of other stuff. So here in no particular ranking or order are a bunch of my faves from this year. I'm also listing at the end the movies I didn't enjoy. I'm not including short films on this list either but might consider making another post about favorite shorts by theme. You can also check out my letterboxd to see all the stuff I watched in 2021 and years prior. My Faves viewed in 2021 1) Shirley (2020) I started my year off strong by catching a digital screening of Shirley (paired with Leigh...