May Content Consumption

What I liked and what I thought

Hi hello, thanks for reading Crone Life, my small but mighty substack all about getting older and living with the consequences. I’m a librarian in the mid-Hudson Valley who used to live in Brooklyn and work in publishing. I’ve been off work since early May, recovering from shoulder replacement surgery. I’m kind of bored and the weather has been disappointing, to say the least. What happened to Spring? It will be over in 3 weeks!

Between the raindrops

I didn’t have anything better to do

I read 14 books in May, which might be a personal record. Very few of them were of what you might call tiptop literary quality, but I will capsule-review them anyway. I included two I DNF’d at the end.

1. Beautyland (Marie-Helene Bertino). This is charming, I really liked it, it’s hard to say why. My youngest sister didn’t like it, or didn’t finish it or something. But many people do like it a lot. It’s one of those books with an unreliable narrator, but she’s very appealing and her conundrum (is she truly an alien or just delusional?) is gripping. I don’t know that I liked any of the subplots though and I am always suspicious of long-lasting childhood friendship characters. They seem too pat to me.

2. The Priory of the Orange Tree (Samantha Shannon). One of those epic fantasy books that everyone who's into epic fantasy has read but it’s not a notable part of broader epic fantasy reader culture, unlike, say, anything by Brandon Sanderson. My take is that it went on forever and when it got to about 80% through it was clear it would end either in a cliffhanger, or with all the storylines pretty much tied up, or rocks would fall and kill everyone. I forced myself to finish even though by then I was beyond caring.

3. The Tell (Amy Griffin). An Oprah’s Bookclub Choice. I didn’t remember why I put a hold on the ebook by the time it became available, but I read it anyway. It’s a memoir of childhood abuse from a very tightly wound, accomplished, upper middle-class white woman originally from Amarillo, Texas. It was heartfelt but kind of clinical. It was frank, but subdued. I never felt she truly managed to express the depth of her emotions and rage about what happened to her.

4. Siren Queen (Nghi Vo). I like Nghi Vo. I liked their retelling of The Great Gatsby as a queer vampire story from the viewpoint of champion woman golfer Jordan Baker (The Chosen and the Beautiful) and I liked this one, about Hollywood as a supernatural soul-eating milieu and one woman’s triumph over the star-killing machinery, too.

5. The Staircase in the Woods (Chuck Wendig). One of those horror-fantasy books that doesn’t live up to its premise but would make a perfectly fine movie.

6. The Gone World (Tom Sweterlisch). Lots of stuff about relativity and time travel and secret government agencies and conspiracies and the end of humanity. The central murder case gets diffused through alternate-reality sidequests and by the end I’m not sure what did happen. It reminded me of Dan Simmons’s Hyperion Cantos series, probably because the protagonist’s vision of the world-ending Terminus brought about by interstellar travel made me think of the Shrike and the Tree of Pain. I gave it a 3 on Goodreads.

7. Rediscovery: Science Fiction by Women 1958-1963 (ed. J. Marcus). I happened upon this collection because B.D. McClay wrote about one of the authors, Pauline Ashwell, in her substack,

   A Writer's Notebook
   , specifically Ashwell’s novella “Unwillingly to School.” I read that first and then the rest of the short stories and novellas (all by different women authors). McClay is working on Weird Sisters, about women who write science fiction, and I want to read it once it’s published.

8. Black Wolves (Alis Rasmussen writing as Kate Elliott). This was the first volume of a series that followed her Crossroads trilogy, about a land called the Hundred and the decline of its magical, egalitarian, diverse culture, but the second two volumes were cancelled by the publisher, which retained the rights until recently. I loved Crossroads and was glad to find Black Wolves and sad to hear the sequels will probably never see the light of day. Ended on a cliffhanger, too!

9. The High Road Trilogy I

10. The High Road Trilogy II (both also Kate Elliott): This was her debut SF trilogy. It’s amateurish in every way. I couldn’t find an ebook of v. 3 so we’ll never know how it turns out.

11. What Makes This Book So Great (Jo Walton). Collection of her blog posts about reading and re-reading books (mostly SF/Fantasy) as originally published on tor.com. Mostly covers ‘80s, ‘90s and ‘00s titles.¹

12. The Witling (Vernor Vinge). Read this based on Walton’s enthusiastic accounts of Vinge’s A Fire Upon the Deep and A Deepness in the Sky, which I have also read and liked. I appreciated, as ever, the use of science to drive the plot, but not the awkward romance. A minor early work by one of the genre’s greats.²

13. The Clockwork Boys (T. Kingfisher). No science here! I think the T. Kingfisher Paladin fantasy universe is right next door to Kathrine Addison’s Goblin Emperor. It’s all the prelates for the different gods.

14. Random Acts of Senseless Violence (Jack Womack). I also read this because of Jo Walton, who described it as one of the best books no one ever reads. (I paraphrase). It is really good, but I can tell you why it wasn’t a big hit–it is a huge bummer. Published in 1993, so presumably written during the presidency of Bush 41, it tells the fate of an Upper East Side private school student whose parents lose all their money and move to Harlem, which is under US military occupation. It is written as her diary, and the changing language perfectly encapsulates her descent into dystopia. At the same time, I hated this because the heroine is white and her story gets primacy over that of the new Black friends she makes in a way I found unfair (I think Womack was aware of the disparity). It is good, though. Read it, if only to upset yourself thoroughly.

DNF’d

Mice 1961 (Stacey Levine). I picked this up because of the story of how there was a 3-way tie for the Pulitzer and they broke it by giving the prize to Percival Elliott’s James. This was the only one of the titles I could find online at my library. But it was the day after my surgery and I was still in the hospital. I could not focus. Maybe it makes more sense if you keep reading and aren’t on opiates.

The Devil in the White City (Erik Larson). Too florid and novelistic. I wrote a senior thesis on Burnham and the 1893 Columbian Exposition and I just couldn’t get into the superimposed drama. I already knew about the serial killer and felt the narrative took way too long to progress.

What I saw

Movies I chose for myself

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016). Your basic Star Wars bingo card. I watched it because I was going to watch Andor and I got confused about which was the prequel.

Alien: Romulus (2024). Creepy and dystopic, as all the Alien franchise movies are. I loved Cailee Spaeny, who has too many vowels in her name, as the quick-witted, quick-thinking heroine who figured things out before she took action.

Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes (2024). Eh. It had good reviews but the CGI was too much for me. Also I was freaked out by how the lead chimp had blue eyes like the human characters. Was that supposed to mean something? And they never addressed the problem of opposable thumbs or lack thereof.

Prey (2022). The Predator vs. the Comanche in the 18th century. I also loved Amber Midthunder as Naru, the smart heroine who doesn’t just guess right, but thinks things through, and Dakota Beavers as her cool brother, Taabe. I was a little worried about the dog, but she made it.

My faves, if you couldn’t tell, were Alien: Romulus and Prey, because both female leads used their brains to survive.

Friday Night Family Movies (chosen by consensus, mostly)

One of Them Days (2025) Such a feel-good movie! Keke Palmer and SZA are so much fun to watch.

Barbershop (2002) Dated, but fun. Eve steals it.

Ford v Ferrari (2019) I had never heard of any of these characters except in the very broadest of ways. Christian Bale was either great or totally overacting. Matt Damon is always Matt Damon. The child actor who played the son was definitely great.

A Brief History of Time (1991) I have never seen so many upper-class, well educated English people with beautiful clothing together in one documentary. I can’t decide if Stephen Hawking was a good scientist or just a sympathetic tragic figure from a privileged background.³

The Gumball Rally (1976) The cast is made up entirely of forgotten/forgettable character actors from 70s TV⁴, but the movie is a hoot.

Streaming Series

Hacks (HBO): Immediately post-surgery, I binged the first two seasons like my life depended on it, but lost interest a couple of eps into Season 3. Hannah Einbender and Jean Smart are both great, it just gets kind of repetitive. The whole cast is great.

Andor (Disney+): My son and I watched the first season together and are into the Ghorman arc of the second season. It’s beginning to make more sense. Loving the Mon Mothma character. Diego Luna, as the title character, seems entirely opaque.

Before (Apple TV+): I binge-watched 8 out of 10 episodes before coming to and noping out. The child actor who plays the troubled youth is adorable. It’s basically terrible otherwise. Billy Crystal is in no way convincing as a child psychiatrist with a murky past, sorry.

Murderbot (Apple TV+): I hear it gets better. Love the cast. The episodes are too short.

News from Veronica

Even heavy rain can’t stop her from wanting to go out on the deck. I feel like I never see her during the day.

She still doesn’t understand how the screen is supposed to work

As ever, thank you for reading. Please cheer me up by clicking on the little heart. This took a long time to write, so please take the time to read!

1. She’s still at it!

2. Vinge invented the concept of cyberspace in fiction. We have him to thank for William Gibson.

3. (Puts hand to ear) I am hearing on reliable authority that Hawking was an actual genius.

4. You probably remember Gary Busey, though.