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text 2017-04-30 11:16
April Wrap Up and Challenge Update Part 1
The Doll-Master and Other Tales of Terror - Joyce Carol Oates
Sedition: A Novel - Katharine Grant
Aurora - Kim Stanley Robinson
I Will Fear No Evil - Robert A. Heinlein
Women All on Fire: The Women of the English Civil War - Alison Plowden
The Breakdown - B. A. Paris

Well, April is pretty much over and as a reading month it hasn't been too bad. The first book I finished was:

 

The Doll Master and Other Tales of Terror by Joyce Carol Oates

This book was an opportune pick at the library. As usual I went in to get one book and came out with 5. I read a collection of her short stories a few years ago and wasn't that impressed but as this was a library book I thought I would give her another chance. I was surprised that I enjoyed it so much. The first story was mediocre and I thought that my opinion was going to be vindicated but I found the other stories much more to my taste. So 4/5 stars for that.

 

Next up was another library pick and the one that I had originally gone in for:

 

Sedition by Katharine Grant.

This one has been on my radar for a while and I wasn't disappointed. At the end of the 18th. century five teenage girls need husbands with pedigrees. But how to get them when all the girls have is money and no connections? Their mothers decide that the girls should shine at a piano concert but first they need lessons. So a piano is bought a tutor provided and many hours are spent in lessons - not necessarily of the musical kind. One of the girls is being abused by her father and decides to turn the tables on the piano teacher and get her revenge on her father. All hell breaks loose.

The story starts off fairly light and amusing but soon becomes pretty dark. This is one I would definitely read again. 4/5 stars

 

Another library pick was Aurora by Kim Stanley Robinson

Green Earth left me somewhat lukewarm but I wanted to give this one a bash. I tested it on my husband first though and it got his approval so no worries. Although ostensibly a space opera I read it as more a tale of the environment. The message I got from it was that you can't have a second Earth so you had better look after this one. I don't necessarily have to agree with that but it has made me think about it. Another 4/5 stars. 

 

The biggest disappointment for me this month was Robert A. Heinlein's I Will Fear No Evil. Set in the early 21st century this is the story of an old man who has his brain transplanted into the body of his young secretary (I should note that she is dead). Her 'soul' still inhabits the body and helps the new occupant to settle in. I have fond memories of reading this book a couple of decades ago but being the kind of reader who can't really remember what happened in a book after I close it, I couldn't remember the story, only that I enjoyed it so much. Having read it a second time I don't know why now. 3.5/5 stars

 

Finally, I come to Women All on Fire by Alison Plowden.

This time a non-fiction book about the Civil War. I found it interesting and easy to read, even for a newbie to the subject like me. There was enough background information to put everything in context without being overwhelming. 5 stars

 

Edit:

 

That's it for April. According to my calculations I'm about 4 books behind my challenge. I'm also lacking 3 German books and 3 classics but as my self-imposed challenge conditions are more guidelines than rules, who's cares? :)

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review 2016-10-19 00:00
The Doll-Master and Other Tales of Terror
The Doll-Master and Other Tales of Terror - Joyce Carol Oates If you are worried that any of these stories are going to scare the pants off of you, never fear, I give them 3 scares out of 5. Seriously though, there is some creepiness here and there, but nothing that is going to make you have nightmares for days, looking at you "It".

I got this collection back when I was still scouting around for Scary (Women) Authors and Diverse Authors Can be Spooky Fun books.

There are only 6 stories in this collection and though some were dancing towards scary/horror most were just more in the mystery or thriller genre to me.

"The Doll-Master" (4 stars)- I liked the set-up to this book. A young boy who mourns his cousin that has passed away. He keeps a doll of hers to remember her by, but it is taken away from him by his jerk of a father. The boy grows up to become obsessed with stealing away found dolls that he finds laying around on the ground, playground, etc. Of course when you start reading you realize what is really going on. I liked this one the most of the six stories though I thought the ending was a real letdown. I think you can guess at what is going to occur, but in all of her stories, Oates endings just kind of peter out. I don't know if that's her way of showing tension/terror, but it got old real quick by the end of the collection.

"Soldier" (5 stars)- I don't think I was in the proper mindset for this story. This hit a little too close to home for me with regards to me thinking about the Trayvon Martin shooting and how a lot of people applauded GZ (I am not spelling out his name) for the actions he took and how we all got a well gee he's a really racist and appalling human being after the fact. In "Soldier" we have a young man being applauded for shooting a young black boy (in his recitation to the police and others he thought he was a man) when the boy and his five other friends tried to attack him. Oates manages to really get under the skin of what a lot of people are saying and not saying regarding violence against African Americans in the U.S. right now. And she slowly peels back the shooter's state of mind until you get to see every little ugly thought the person had concerning black people. This story actually made me tear up a bit. The ending leaves so much unsaid so who knows how things will go. Will this man be lauded a hero or be found guilty in the court of law.

"Gun Accident: An Investigation" (2 stars)-This one was just odd. We have an older woman recollecting her childhood teacher and how she was asked to take care of her Siamese cat, plants, mail, etc. while she was away attending to her husband. I honestly thought the story was heading one way, and then Oates throws in the girl's older black sheep cousin and the story shifts. I don't know exactly what Oates was going with here, maybe look deeper at stories that a person is telling you. Maybe she was also trying to get into how back in the day (and still today I would argue) people don't talk much about the things a man/boy can do to a young woman and how that can leave them. Like I said, this story was odd and I felt like was trying to do too much.

"Equatorial" (1 star)-Sorry the wife in this story (we finally find out her name is Audrey) was not that smart. She obviously realizes slowly but surely something is wrong with the vacation she and her husband (who has been married twice before her) is on. I wanted to ask girl do you even Hitchcock or what?

The flow in this one was not as great as the first two either. The story just builds and builds and we all get talks about goats, turtles, etc. on the Galapagos Island (yes I am serious) which I am sure symbolically were supposed to represent the wife, but guess what i am not in English Lit senior class anymore and I don't feel like trying to interpret people, words, or things. The ending still left things somewhat in the air. But since I am a Stephen King woman I went the dark route and just said ah well so that's how that ended and went about my day.

"Big Momma" (1 star)-apparently this and the previous story were stories of naive women/young girls. I am too tired to even get into this, but a girl befriends someone whose family would make Leatherface's family cringe from. There is obviously something not right there. So yeah the ending was a foregone conclusion and I just kind of went, okay moving on.

"Mystery, Inc." (3 stars)- Look, I love bookstores too, enough to kill for one though.....okay no. I am going to go with no.

But reading the unraveling of one man named Charles Brockden who is going to do whatever is necessary to acquire this bookstore. The guy ends up I guess blundering on (or not) and at least in this story, we can 100 percent guess at the ending.
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review 2016-04-02 23:56
Execellent, beautifully written collection
The Doll-Master and Other Tales of Terror - Joyce Carol Oates

Excellent, beautifully written collection of short stories. I enjoyed each and every one of these stories and found them to be disturbing, chilling, suspenseful and thought provoking and sometimes even sad.

 

My favorite of the six, though it was hard to choose a favorite, was “Mystery, Inc.”, which every mystery book lover will devour like candy (pun not intended for those who have read the story). I felt like I was reading an Edgar Allan Poe story that I had somehow missed over the years.  As for the title story, “The Doll-Master”, I’ve always found dolls to be a bit eerie.  I remember as a child sitting with all my dolls having a tea party when I realized they were all staring at me with those big blank eyes and I’d get frightened and have to leave the room.  This doll story by Ms. Oates was quite different from what I had expected.  “Equatorial”, “Gun Accident” and “Big Momma” all kept me on the edge of my seat with suspense.  “Soldier” is a most timely story.

 

These stories are proof that there is no need for excessive gore and over-the-top fantasy to write a great horror story. I’ve read reviews that these aren’t horror stories but I’m sure if you encountered any of these happenings in your normal day, they would certainly register as total horror.  Joyce Carol Oates proves again that she is a master at quietly finding the dark areas in every-day lives.

 

Whether these stories can be considered thrillers, horror or engrossing character studies, the book is highly recommended by me.

 

This book was given to me by the publisher through NetGalley and Edelweiss in return for an honest review.

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review 2015-11-22 00:00
The Doll-Master and Other Tales of Terror
The Doll-Master and Other Tales of Terror - Joyce Carol Oates Joyce Carol Oates is certainly a prolific, award-winning author, but one that I’d only barely heard of. Each of her stories in The Doll-Master and other Tales of Terror have an unsettling quality to them that bothers you in ways you can’t quite describe.

I think that Soldier is perhaps the strongest tale of the bunch, as it calls to mind some of the (presumably) race-related killings that have happened lately. A disturbing, but well-written read, the mindset of the “Soldier” is believable and I wish it wasn’t.

Equatorial is probably the weakest story in the book It lost my attention halfway through, and it was a struggle to finish reading it. After a certain point, you just don’t care any more, no matter how the ending picks up. You just want to be done, and this tale of a paranoid (perhaps justly so) heiress with her husband seemed to never end.

Overall, Joyce writes of horrors that get under your skin because they are all of the sort which are believably evil (albeit some more-so than others.) There is no paranormal, no outside force, no unexplainable happenings. There is just evil, circumstance, statistics, and the a gathering of the bottom dregs of humanity.

Disclaimer: I received a copy of this book free from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.


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