Devouring Books: Rosemary's Baby by Ira Levin

*ADVERTISEMENT: I use Grammarly for english proofreading because every grammar error spawns a new devil baby and THAT MUST BE STOPPED.*

I read Rosemary's Baby almost immediately after reading The Stepford Wives, which, is not only the way I used to read pre-blogging (same author, ALL their books) but should definitely be taken as a ringing endorsement for Ira Levin. Whilst I felt like The Stepford Wives was maybe a bit... brief, and I knew too much about it for it to be really effective, I also got what Levin was trying to do and I liked it a lot. So, Rosemary's Baby it was!

I knew a little bit about Rosemary's Baby before I read it, but not nearly as much as I knew about The Stepford Wives, so it had that going for it from the outset. The things I knew (which I won't tell you about because what if you don't know?!) are sort of the big twist of the story, BUT there were still enough details and things I didn't know, like the twist at the end (it's a very twisty book) that made it completely worth reading, and completely excellent to read.

The story goes like this: Rosemary and her husband Guy are looking for somewhere new to live, and have actually agreed to live in one place when an apartment in a beautiful yet possibly cursed building which, of course, they can't resist. Upon moving into the apartment whose previous inhabitant died after being in a looooong (and obviously creepy) coma, Rosemary makes friends with a girl living next door with the old (and dare I add again, creepy) couple next door, and her apparent suicide kicks into motion a chain of horrifying events that could make a reader very very uneasy about a number of different things.

Because, here we go, things Rosemary's Baby has made me uneasy about:

• Trusting old people: They could be out to get you in ways I won't describe but let's just say it has something to do with religion. Of course.
• Moving out: So, of the few books I've read since leaving home, at least two of them (this, and The Stepford Wives, funnily enough) have involved characters leaving the safety of where they lived before for a new location where strange and terrible things start to happen. THANKS FOR THAT, IRA. Waiting for something weird to happen any day now.
• Having a baby: Yeahhh, that's kind of the whole deal with this one. I think there are a lot of interesting links to be made between the way women are treated when they're pregnant, and the ultimate badness that happens in this book. There's a real sense in which women are not allowed to think for themselves whilst pregnant, and whilst normally doing whatever doctors tell you to do is probably fine, what if it isn't? And also, what if bad things are happening and there are conspiracies and aghhhhhh *hyperventilates*. Basically, this book makes having a baby seem terrifying in quite a few ways, not just the obvious.

Speaking of that feminist thing*, Rosemary's Baby not only speaks out against women having no control over their bodies whilst pregnant (something which STILL happens today) but also makes it clear just how difficult womanhood was in the sixties. Rosemary is from the Midwest and doesn't speak to her family, which leaves her with Guy and Hutch, a father figure who mysteriously falls into a long coma somewhere in the middle of all the drama, leaving Rosemary with only Guy, who we can't be sure can be trusted. Somewhere else in the middle of all this is a marital rape (sort of- by which I mean, it's sort of marital, but it's definitely rape), which Guy tries to explain away by basically saying that he wanted to do it so it's fine. Thankfully, narrative-wise, it's not brushed over and Rosemary DOES have bad feelings about it, BUT it's also very clear that she has nowhere else to turn, and there's not much she can do other than go back to the husband that raped her (again, sort of.) It's very frustrating, but also thought provoking and, you know, I think we need that.

Other than thought provoking though, this book is just very very effective at making you feel uneasy and troubled and all of those other good things. I couldn't even tell you how Levin does it, but I guess it's something to do with the normal, everyday things that any of us could be doing, being combined with some occurrences that are very strange, scary even, that we then have to agree could also happen to us because the other things are so realistic too. I can see exactly why it was so popular in the sixties and was made into a film right away (or so the last season of Mad Men told me) because it's just so... gripping and scary but in a completely normal setting. Very effective stuff.

So, come one, come all! Read Rosemary's Baby for the thrills and chills, stay for the feminist discourse. Or... You could probably just read it for what it is (a pretty great horror novel) and skip all that boring stuff** because it's pretty fantastic either way. Just... Maybe don't read it tonight, ok? Because I feel like Halloween is the night when unease can turn to, you know terror. Especially if you're pregnant...

*'Oh, is that what we were doing?' I hear you cry! Yes. Yes it was. It always is, even when it seems like it's not.

**By boring stuff, I obviously mean the stuff that MAKES ME GO ON EVERY DAY. You know, the usual.

Devouring TV: Extreme Couponing

One of the most astute things that my dad (and maybe anyone) has ever said about me is that I only watch really really good or really really bad TV. It's so incredibly true that I couldn't even say anything about it, just nod in agreement because, yeah. Absolutely. I can't explain this paradox, but the fact is that I want to watch Breaking Bad and I want to watch Hoarders, and I don't want anything in between. The best or the worst, that's all I want.

One thing that no one has ever said about me, but which I know to be true about myself, is that I like to mix the highbrow with the lowbrow- talking about parts of pop culture in a ridiculously over-analytical way for what they are. And that's what you're going to get here, so I can try to justify watching all the Extreme Couponing Netflix has to show, except for the stupid episodes where they've messed with the format and made couponers compete against each other for some reason... That, apparently, is where I draw the line. Weirdly.

So, Extreme Couponing. It's an American reality show wherein people who coupon basically for a living get huge amounts of shopping worth hundreds (and sometimes thousands) of dollars for about $5. It is RIDICULOUS, and so much more exciting than it should be, and it's a shameful yet excellent thing to watch. There are quite a few reasons I suspect I'm so into it, not least of which is that you literally can't do this kind of thing in the UK. We don't have nearly as many coupons, there's no such thing as 'doubling coupons' (Americans: Your shops really do that?!) and most money off vouchers have small print that say 'cannot be used in conjunction with any other offer'. So, there's no possible way for me to ever be, say, paid to take things out of shops, so I have to live vicariously through these people.

A weird and unexpected side effect of watching Extreme Couponing has been that I've started to see the logic in doing what these people do. I mean, don't get me wrong- mostly I watched it because it's completely compulsive and also slides down so easily after a day of unpacking, but, of course, I've thought about it a bit more than that. At first I had a lot of criticisms, like 'whyyy are these people doing this in their free time?' and 'Do they really need that?' and 'Well, they can't get anything healthy with those coupons, anyway.' and it was like the programme had anticipated each of my criticisms and had an answer for all of them.

Like, 'whyyyy are these people doing this in their spare time?' Well, they're doing it so that they can save money. Or so they can support their extended family. Or because their husband lost his job (yeah, it's mostly women who do it...). I'm not saying there's not some kind of compulsion involved, but frankly, I think that if someone wants to do couponing instead of, say, a full time job, then I think that's an equally effective use of one time and also it's kiiind of the opposite of Capitalism, to which I say YAY. I have slightly more of a 'whaaaat?' reaction when people have a full time job, and in their spare time they coupon, because when do you start living, people?!

And 'do they really need that?' Well, they sort of do. Obviously no one needs a fifty year supply of toothpaste all at once, or an entire room for sweets (I actually do need an entire room for sweets, so) but on the whole, the people featured on Extreme Couponing kind of buy things they at least like (apart from this one woman who made her son eat cereal he didn't even like because it was free, which seems a bit against everything I'm trying to say here) and if they don't like them, or won't use them, then they donate them. And you can't really argue with that. Couponing for the good of humanity? That's cool.

'Well, they can't get anything healthy with those coupons anyway.' Well, for the most part, this is pretty true. I've seen people buy many many bottles of vitamin water, packs of oreo cookies, this same brand of noodles over and over again (there must always be coupons for them!), but, as the narration constantly reinforces, coupons for things like meat and produce and basically raw ingredients of all meals are pretty much like unicorns. So, I could watch with the smug belief that, well, at least I eat better than these people. BUT THEN I watched this episode with a vegan couponer, and well. I mean, what can you do with that? She must be pretty healthy AND she saves money. So, my conclusion is that you can be an unhealthy couponer, but you don't have to be.

Obviously, I've overthought this a LOT. But it's fun to do and I like it, so leave me alone! Here are a few random side effects I've experienced watching Extreme Couponing:

• I've wanted to smack the voiceover person so much whenever he says 'a x% savings.' NO. It's either 'a x% saving' OR 'x% savings'. NOT BOTH.
• They almost always get tons of vitamin water and it makes me crave vitamin water so badly. This wouldn't be a problem, but vitamin water is SO EXPENSIVE over here. It's not just a little bit more expensive, it's like the same as the dollar price, only in pounds but also with more money added to that? I can't afford that shit, someone find me a coupon!
• Extreme Couponing is the only thing I've ever watched that makes me kind of want to live in one of the crappier states* in the US because they have better coupons. This is RIDICULOUS, and yet.

So basically. You probably shouldn't watch Extreme Couponing because MY GOD the amount of time you'll spend doing so, but if you feel a compulsion to watch really bad TV (I can't be the only one...) then you couldn't do much better, or in fact worse, than this. I love it, really.

*By crappier, I basically just mean not California or New York. Their couponing deals suuuuuck.

Sunday Sundries: Looking After Myself

It's Sunday agaaaaaaain!

I would be more excited about this, but I have to go to work later (don't even get me started on why the office opens on a Sunday now. I don't want to talk about it. Let's just say it's VERY ANNOYING, and should probably be illegal) so it's basically just Monday. Which is STUPID. But anyway, at least here the clocks have gone back which means I get an extra hour, with which I am writing this, so be grateful that I'm talking to (writing to?) you all.

Or... Just tell me to shut up. Whatever.

So I was planning to do a room tour for this weeks Sunday Sundries at the request of Frances, but... I kind of sort of didn't get round to it? Or, more accurately, my room has been way too messy most of the week to take pictures of, and yesterday I moved a few things around anyway and built a chest of drawers all by myself thankyouverymuch, so yeah. That's not happening, obviously. But NEXT week... I will see it done.

NOT the Les Mis gif I wanted... But just in case you thought I was over that, NOPE.

And instead, this is going to be about... Not much. I don't know, guys, I don't do stuff, stuff is annoying and involves leaving the house and I have ALL of American Netflix to watch, so there's that... But, ok, yeah, I went to Twickenham on Thursday just for a mooch around, and I do declare that it is the weirdest laid out place I think I've ever been to. I don't know if there's a centre to it that I just completely missed, but it was all a bit like BLARGH here are some places and GAHH here are some more. But whatever, they had many many charity shops which obviously I didn't buy anything from because I'm being good.

(Ok, I bought two books. But two isn't that bad. Except when you're not reading much. Yeah, I suuuuuck!)

Other than that, the only other exciting thing I have to share (and I use exciting in the loosest possible sense) is that yesterday I had THE most domestic and making things and whatnot day possibly in the whole history of life. I got up- made bread- went and built a chest of drawers, pausing only to put the bread in a loaf tin and also to get a hammer- I baked the bread and while I was waiting for it to rise more did ALL the washing up (there was a lot. A LOT.)- I put some washing on- I rearranged things in my room- I filled my new chest of drawers, reorganised my cupboard, had to lay down for a bit because TIRED- I hung out my washing and made my own dinner. 

I know that was enthralling for you, but it's just... I haven't had the opportunity to do most of those things in a very very long time, and even though basically all of that is essentially chores, it was just like 'yep. This is me. I'm taking care of myself now,' and even though, you know, I wouldn't want to do all of those things every day (why would I ever have to?!) I'm just happy that I have my own room to organise and my own oven in which to bake bread and my own place to be all domestic and whatnot.

Basically.

So all of that was really just padding to disguise the fact that I don't really have anything to say. So tell me things- what have you been doing with your extra hour? I hope it's sleeping because that's the besssssst.

"An old unresolved confusion gathered like asthma in Denise. She felt a need to get away and cook."

So what, we're on week ninety billion of The Corrections readalong now?

I think this will come to be known as, at least in my brain, the week I gave up on The Corrections with my soul. My eyes and my brain will still be reading it, but my soul is pretty sure that there's no hope for it ever getting, you know, actually good. Or of any characters being great. Or of anything happening that I remotely care about. I just... don't.

I got really bored this week, was the thing. For the last two weeks, I've been pretty much going 'ewwwwww' or 'OMG I hate you' or 'WTF, talking poo?!' but this week I just couldn't summon up the energy to care about anything that even happened. I had high hopes for Denise's life story, but that pretty much boiled down to 'she has an older dude complex because she lost her virginity to an old dude, and also she's probably a lesbian.' Which, I'm sure could have been interesting and complex if the whole time I was reading I wasn't thinking 'I bet this is how Franzen gets himself off...'

I know.

As to whether I still like Denise or not... I don't know. I know I don't hate her (she's not even interesting enough to hate) but she definitely has some loose morals going on, and Franzen's included stuff like this: "There was never much satisfaction for Denise in competing with girls" which makes me haaaaaaaate him because OMG obviously girls who are really good at things don't like competing with girls because ALL OTHER GIRLS (except his character) are bad at things. But Denise is good at things because she comes from his brain and he's a man (in fact, he's Jonathan fucking Franzen) so that's ok. 

THIS IS NOT HOW WE OPERATE, SHUT YOUR DISGUSTING SEXIST MOUTH I HATE YOU.

Let's see, what else, what else? Well, I'd love to have gone on Denise's food journey across Europe because HOW AWESOME DOES THAT SOUND (minus, you know, the proposition from the married man at the end, WHY DO ALL THE MARRIED MEN WANT TO CHEAT ON THEIR WIVES?!) and also I kind of want to be the head chef at my own restaurant? Minus the shagging the owner's wife, of course. Important question- is Brian even allowed to fire Denise for having sex with his wife? Because... it kind of seems like he isn't? I want to bring the Citizen's Advice Bureau into this. 

I don't know, other things probably happened, but I stopped caring about 50 pages in? Oh, wait, Alfred is alive somehow! I completely predict a change of character in the last section, where he nearly died so he's all grateful to be alive. Has to happen. And Chip came back! I'm sure we were all really glad about that, am I right? I really really skimmed the Lithuania stuff, but I did pick up on a couple of things:

"If his sister was on her way out as a lesbian... then she could definitely now use the support of her Foucaultian older brother, but Chip wasn't ready to go home yet, and so he assumed that his memory had deceived him and that her phrase had referred to something else." 

Oh really Chip? You're going to do whatever you want instead of being there for another human being? HOW SURPRISING.

Also, this:

"Chip put his arms around his friend... He felt as if he were hugging himself, feeling his own primate shoulder blades, the scratch of his own woolen sweater."

As if we needed any more evidence that Chip is in love with himself.

Official theme song for this book. 

Devouring Books: Warm Bodies by Isaac Marion

"I don't want to hear music, I don't want the sunrise to be pink. The world is a liar. Its ugliness is overwhelming; the scraps of beauty make it worse."

Way way back in February, the lovely Ellie read Warm Bodies and was a little bit enamoured with it. Because she wanted to discuss it with people (which, you know, is what we do here) and was really VERY enamoured with it, she sent me a copy in her lovely way of loveliness (I like people who send me books, can you tell?!) and... It's October and I've finally read it!

Yeah, I'm really bad at doing things. Leave me alone. 

But anyway. Read it I did, and let's just say that Ellie was not wrong to be enamoured by it. 

In this gif analogy, Warm Bodies is the bath water and I am the cat. And Ellie is the one who filled the bath. Where am I even going with this..?

Anyway. Warm Bodies, in case you haven't heard about it (IT'S BEEN A MOVIE, GUYS! WHO DOESN'T SEE MOVIES?!) is the story of R, a zombie who is just as bloodthirsty and brain hungry as all the other zombies but possibly with a few more thoughts and emotions than them, and his journey as he sort of kind of falls in love (as much as a zombie can) with a girl called Julie (R... and Julie. Hmmm.) and all these other things happen. Because I'm really being specific here.

Now, I honestly don't think I've read another book about zombies* so I can't really say what I'm about to say, but the first thing I really like about Warm Bodies is that it has it's own interesting twist on the whole zombie mythology. I think I've said before that I really like when vampire things (which I have a lot more experience of!) add to the whole mythology of vampires** and the twist on this is something that I don't think has been done before and it turns out to be very sweet and is the kind of thing that directly appeals to my nature and things.

No, of course I'm not going to tell you what it is. It's kind of the whole crux of the book, duh!

The next thing I really liked about Warm Bodies is that I reaaaaally liked the writing. Like, really really really liked. I'm told by people smarter than me (other bloggers, basically) that this is a YA book, and I guess it is (it's a bit teenage love-ish, not in a terrible way, but just oh well?) but in my overall experience those have not been so well written, and this is just... great. The sentences flew through my brain in a good way, and made me feel all the emotions and things. Not to the same intensity as, say, Tell The Wolves I'm Home or something, maybe, but still. EMOTIONS.***

Even more weird is that I enjoyed the writing in spite of the fact that it's written in first person present tense, which is normally my LEAST favourite in the world. But in Warm Bodies? It all made sense because for the zombies (or at least for R) there is no past they can remember, and no future they can think of that doesn't involve BRAINS. So, for me, it made complete sense that I was in R's head (because, hey, maybe the other zombies can't even think) and that we were in the present tense. But that doesn't mean that I'll tolerate it all the time... *looks sternly at authors*.

There were just so many little things I liked about Warm Bodies. The way that zombies eat brains not for nourishment, but to remember what it felt like to live and to have memories and whatnot, the way that an impending zombie apocalypse changes the people unaffected, making them crueller, taking away their dreams and turning them into people they don't even recognise anymore. Whilst R and Julie are really well drawn characters, some of the secondary ones are slightly less well developed, which is sort of fair enough considering R's really limited perspective, but Nora, who is not in the book long enough or verbally enough is really excellent and probably my favourite, even though I've had to make up a lot of her in my own head. I didn't really mind.

Basically. I really enjoyed Warm Bodies, in spite of (or maybe because of...) my zombie inexperience, and I especially enjoyed Isaac Marion's writing- in other words, I'd probably read his next book whatever it was about because yessir, you write nicely. I don't feel like I've been that convincing about why you should read this, so you should definitely read both Alley AND especially Kayleigh's reviews (Kayleigh is ALL about the zombies, and she thinks this was great. So, yeah) and they'll give you more reasons. Or just, you know, read it already and join the conversation. Yeah, I said it.


*I KNOW. Wait, has Stephen King done zombies..? *googles* Ok, he has, but I haven't read it yet
**That's ADD to, Stephenie Meyer. Not completely mess up.
***Which is pretty weird for a zombie novel, I guess.
"Memories you capture on purpose are always more vivid than the ones you pick up by accident." (p. 84)

Sunday Sundries: The Glorious Return

Guys! It's Sunday and I'm doing blogging!

I know, I know, the three Sundays that have passed without my presence on the internet have been almost unbearable, but it's all ok now because Sunday Sundries are BACK and I must have a lot to tell you because 4 weeks in a person's life is like an eternity, right?

Well. Yeah, not really. Let's see. I've been:

Moving all of the things I own from one house to another. It only took 3 car loads...

Building bookcases that nearly destroyed me. Top tip- always just buy the IKEA ones.

Hanging out in London. Always the best. I LIVE THERE NOW (again, sort of...)

Discovering new bookshops. This one honestly made me a little bit high.

And... That's kind of it? I don't know, it seems like getting used to cooking for myself and doing my own washing and just generally taking care of myself completely takes more time than I remember, and all of a sudden it's like 10pm and I haven't done anything useful with myself. EVERY. NIGHT. Which is fine, and this is a whole adjustment time, AND most of that time is basically spent watching TV and being awesome with my housemates, which is never a waste of time, but still. I miss blogging! I need to make more of an effort to write things and to always write my Sunday Sundries because, yeah, it takes more effort than shooting the shit with ze housemates, but also I love it. So Imma make more of an effort.

Plus, I have every morning free which I could probably NOT spend watching Extreme Couponing. Even though it's AWESOME and also I'm going to write a post about it because I have feelings about it that the world needs to know.

Hmmm, what else..? Well, I can definitively tell you that it's awesome to live not-that-far-away from your mother but totally in-a-different-house, because INDEPENDENCE is awesome, BUT also she can come and pick me up and take me places and I don't have to pay for the train or bus. I should add that this isn't something I take advantage of to a huge extent, but it is fab having her pick me up to go food shopping or to go to my nan's on a Sunday (like she's about to in about 15 minutes... I'm still in my pjs, natch) and just to be able to see my whole family more often than I did when, say, I was at Uni. It's alllllll good.

Moving out: I recommend it.

So. I'm definitely going to go and get dressed now, but tell me things: What have you done in a month (I know we've almost definitely talked in the past month. But play along)? What would you like to know about my new house? Should I just go away and leave you alone on Sundays? You know where to tell me things.

"It was unfair that the world could be so inconsiderate to a man who was so considerate to the world."

I feel like, before a certain incident in this week's section of The Corrections, I had a lot to say about misplaced ambition and parental... issues and clinical depression and a few other things, but now all I can think about is

I mean, just, WHUT?! I understand that Alfred has medical issues, and I guess he kind of keeps crapping himself, so obviously the natural step to take from there is for him to hallucinate a talking poo? And by 'obviously the natural step', I clearly mean, WTF FRANZEN, WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU?! I just... For a start I don't understand how he can take himself so seriously when he has written a novel that involves a talking poo, so I'm going to have to seriously re-evaluate my feelings about him, and for another thing, what the hell even was that?!

Exactly.

Moving swiftly on... So, this week, we got to meet the lovely (excuse me, 'lovely') Gary and Caroline, eldest son and daughter in law of Enid and Alfred and all round terrible people. At one point, I did take a note that said 'Gary's not depressed- he's just an asshole', and while I stand by the second part of that statement, I'm willing to accept that he is depressed, but for very specific reasons- such as, his mother says things that make him dissatisfied with his life ('oh, you work all day and then do the cooking too? Doesn't sound right to me' THANK YOU ENID, FEMINIST ICON) and he's not as rich as he should be, and and he can't be right all the time even though he'd love to be and ARGH.

Just that whole section, being inside Gary's pathetic, moany, terrible little brain made me feel all angry and claustrophobic and also angry some more and did I mention that I hate him? He and Caroline manipulate their children to form factions against each other, and obviously that's not going to mess them up in the future and ruin all their relationships with people and make them all into Chips now, is it? Just, STOP BEING BAD PARENTS, FICTIONAL PEOPLE!

And then we get to the worst parents of them all, and was it just me or was it more than a tiny bit heartbreaking to see tiny Gary and Chip have to deal with their parents' moods and unfairness and also their complete-refusal-to-do-anything-except-what's-expected-of-them-to-the-detriment-of-everyone-around-them, yes I'm looking at you Alfred

So here's an interesting parenting method- leaving your child at the dinner table for HOURS because he won't eat disgusting food, ignoring the fact that he's sitting there because 'it's Alfred's business' and just generally being terrible people. In one way, this second section annoyed me because, well, I don't want to feel sorry for Gary or Chip, or to allow their past to explain away everything they do that's bad now, but then there were things like this:

"It was in their nature to throw their arms around [Alfred], but this nature had been corrected out of them. They stood and waited, like company subordinates, for the boss to speak."

And it broke my heart just a tiny bit because those poor boys who just want to hug their daddy but they can't because he's an asshole and waaaaaaaaah

Edward Scissorhands just wanted to hug people too.

And no. I don't think we just let that explain away everything that these grown up people who make their own decisions do now, but I don't think we can just let it go either because the way you're brought up does have an impact on the way you behave, because that's kind of the context you exist in- Gary exists in a context where his dad should have made more money but wasn't bold enough, because that's all Enid ever talks about, and Chip lives in a context where he really likes boobs for some reason (yeah, I don't know either...)

Just to finish things off on a really happy note, can we talk about the part where Alfred rapes Enid? You might think I'm being kind of strong by using the word rape here, but by my calculations, Enid says no FOUR different times, and still Alfred has his way with her, feels guilty not for raping his wife but for getting his, ahem, fluids over his unborn child and vows to be nice to it always (thus giving a really easy explanation for his relationship with Denise). Which, fine, whatever, but REALLY Franzen? You're using rape as a means to character development of the rapist while Enid just stays silent about it? Fab.

On to the next part. Hopefully there aren't anymore marital rapes, because CHRIST don't make me smash things.