Weekend in review, plus a giant dog, a book, and history

[scarlettina]

My vision for the weekend was of two days of productive work sweetened by time with jackwilliambell. The reality was a jumble of plans that sort of worked out, naps, a spur of the moment road trip, a giant dog, and other disconnected stuff

Comments

[holyoutlaw]

I read it soon after it came out and really liked it. Right up there with PKD for reality breakdowns.

[irrationalrobot]

I really liked Bad Monkeys. I think it strikes a good balance between genre fiction and mainstream literature, in that it has its crazily fantastical elements, but the story isn't really about those things.

The author has a really great visual sense, which made a recent trip to New York very disturbing- we went into a candy and train store that was almost precisely like the one in the book. It also had one of the few recent Really Scary scenes I can remember in a novel- when she's at the gas station late at night and the attendant keeps trying to get her to leave the car... (brr)

I hadn't seen the ending coming quite as much. After a while, you start getting doubtful, but that kept things fun for me. I also thought it posed moral claims that I found actually interesting, which I don't say often.

Yeah, I'd reccomend that book to people who can handle comic book worlds and are interested in "the ongoing struggle between good and evil." Might make a nice companion piece with Soon I Will Be Invincible, given the narrator.

[jackwilliambell]

I think Christopher Nolan (Memento) or Spike Jonze could make Bad Monkeys into a movie without screwing it up. Only, I think they would be tempted to muck around with the story too.

[mabfan]

In 2004, the New-York Historical Society displayed photographs taken from the 1904 construction of the subway. When the city was building the subway, they hired photographers to take photos using some sort of archival film, because they wanted the pictures to last and they knew that the construction would be of historical interest.

[oldmangrumpus]

I just liked finding out there's a literary joke at the heart of Bad Monkeys.

Plus the Scary Clowns.