#axe murder

"It's an unfinished painting of a young man in a field. He seems flustered, though it's hard to tell, as his features are unfinished and obscured. The back of the canvas is signed "Vera"... What an odd painting"

I did more paintings btw 🥹

"Hermit"

⚠️ Gore, disturbing imagery, and mouthwashing spoilers below ⚠️

Not a bad book in the lot. All of these I would wholeheartedly recommend.

011. Keep Watching the Skies! Vol 1: The 21st Century Edition by Bill Warren. Keep Watching the Skies is one of the great books about 50s science fiction movies. I read the first edition when I was in grad school, and am now revisiting the updated and expanded reissue. The original edition was split up by year, with the first volume covering more years but being shorter, as it was written in the early 80s before VHS made a lot of the movies available to watch, as opposed to relying on memories and scripts. The new edition is sorted alphabetically instead. Warren discusses the production and reception of the films in addition to just reviewing them, and gives little biographical sketches of some of the people involved, both in front and behind the camera. Just from my recollections of the original edition, the new edition has rather more respect for the tokusatsu films coming out of Japan in this period than the original did: the availability of subtitled versions, plus the fact that Gojira had had a major critical reappraisal in the West a few years before this went to print, probably has something to do with it. One idiosyncrasy of this book is its insistence on using the American theatrical release titles above all others—only in Keep Watching the Skies! Will you see the arty French horror film Eyes Without a Face discussed as Horror Chamber of Dr Faustus.

012. Whack Job: A History of Axe Murder by Rachel McCarthy James. Not gonna lie, this was a book where my interest was completely grabbed by the title. As someone who likes the idea of true crime much more than the actual execution, which can be exploitative and icky, I am happy to report that this book treats the subject with respect despite the lurid pun in the title. The book is interested in how “axe murder” became cultural shorthand, a joke about violence even elementary school children use, and traces the use of axes to kill people from the Stone Age to the 80s. This doesn’t just include murder, but use in warfare and executions as well, and the book traces how axes went from being simple tools to symbols of state and from household commonalities to hobbyist specialties.

013. The Legends of MeoShinKé, Volume 1 by Hwa Hwa Studio & Sung Ryu. Now this is interesting. MeoShinKé is a Korean animated series about the world of monsters that exists just outside of real life. What makes it different from other mons series is that all of the monsters are based on Korean folklore. The first two of five (!) monster books have been licensed for translation and English release, and Volume 1 is the only one so far available. After an introduction explaining the setting and how the monsters are classified (they have types and elemental affinities, like Pokemon except that the elements are yin, yang, fire, water, metal, wood and earth), the book consists of full page illustrations coupled with a few paragraphs about the creature’s lore. The book does a pretty good job of distinguishing what lore comes from actual Korean folklore, and what comes from the series, but there are a few oversights (was that cat-snake monster originally called Meowdusa?), and the book is remarkably well cited for an animated series tie-in. It’s cool getting a peek at another country’s edutainment, especially when the topic isn’t very well covered in English language sources.

014. Replaceable You: Adventures in Human Anatomy by Mary Roach. I love Mary Roach, and have gotten good swathes of my family invested in her writing as well. With this book, she’s back to the familiar well of medical biology, from the perspective of organ transplantation, prosthetics and replacement. Over the course of the book, she goes to a dealer’s convention for prosthetic limbs, travels with the Flying Eye Hospital that teaches cataract surgery techniques to doctors in rural Mongolia and tries (and fails) to spend a night in an iron lung, among other experiences. The overall theme of the book is that the newest, highest tech solutions aren’t always the best, and not all the people performing human augmentation have the best interests in mind. The chapter about the plastic surgeons obsessed with sculpting a mathematically perfect butt is an example of that.

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