july 2024
i wrote this one early. i’m learning from my mistakes (this will never happen again). i loved just about everything i read or watched or played this month, so this is a long one! i will not apologize for having good taste.
game: Alan Wake 2 (2023). spooky videogame the first. i played the version of AW2 with jump scares turned way, way down, and still found it both spooky and fun. it follows an FBI agent who goes to the pacific northwest to investigate cult killings and finds herself wrapped up in something much bigger, and much weirder. i loved the mystery-solving parts of this game, the way Saga pieced together clues. I would have happily played that game alone, but the weird, narrative, alan wake stuff was great too. i haven’t written a comprehensive review, because there’s still one dlc yet to come out and i’m hoping it deals with some loose ends.
game: Luigi’s Mansion 3 (2019). spooky videogame the second. a friend insisted i’d love this, despite not really going in on most mario-related games. well, she was right! i had a great time. i loved the fancy hotel setting, i loved the puzzles, and i loved the ghost dog. great game.
film: Touch of Evil (1958). this was playing at my local cinema, and i love to see old movies on the big screen so i went. a WILD ride. anti-cop in a way i wasn’t prepared for, with some of the most egregious brownface imaginable (charleton heston and marlene dietrich! playing Mexicans!). it was so different from the way we make films about police corruption today, and it made me nostalgic for a time when i was definitely not alive yet. a capital-n Noir.
read: Floating Hotel by Grace Curtis (2024). wonderful, wonderful book. the story takes place mostly over a week on a luxurious hotel in space, with chapters devoted to different staff members and guests in a way that is so effective and interesting and gives everyone their personal due while also skillfully unfurling the underlying plot. great prose. loved it. more here.
inbox: Rat Cruise by Vera Brosgol. the highlight of my month has been this email newsletter from artist and writer vera brosgol, who is currently on an artist residency on a research vessel in the alaska maritime national wildlife refuge. her yearly 24-hour comics are some of my favourites, and that frank and funny voice translates well to telling tales of invasive species hunting at sea.
read: Lady Eve’s Last Con by Rebecca Fraimow (2024). full disclosure: the author of this book is my friend. additional disclosure: it’s really really good. one of my favourite genres which has recently, to my delight, come a bit into vogue is Mystery In Space. a lot of these tend to the golden age type, only with spaceships instead of sidecars. i mention this to make clear that i was going to read this book for friendship reasons, but imagine my delight when it turned out to be Exactly My Thing. lady eve’s last con follows a practiced con artist who has come to a satellite specifically to take revenge on the wealthy man who broke her sister’s heart. she didn’t count on the wealthy man’s sister being quite so compelling. this is such a fun book, and a great romance, but the thing about it that i love the most is the PROSE. there are so many fantastic idioms in this book, and they convey so many wonderful little things about the world while still serving their idiom purposes perfectly. i was gasping in delight on every other page.
film: Twister(s) (1996)(2024). despite being an ardent fan of 90s action and adventure movies, i had never seen twister before. i think the tornadoes scared me, maybe? i watched it for the first time last week, and had a GREAT time. watching it in such close proximity to twisters was probably doing a disservice to the latter, as i am always going to prefer 1990s movie aesthetics over modern, but i love a big dumb action movie, and this was the biggest and dumbest. glen powell is very good at what he does (grin handsomely and be unexpectedly sensitive, also handsomely), and i was thrilled to see brandon perea there, as well (with a MUSTACHE, no less). big films for weather.
visit: The National Building Museum, Washington, D.C. the NBM is one of dc’s best kept museum secrets, and i was so happy to have an excuse to revisit it while in dc this month. i was there for their “capital brutalism” exhibition, which i loved and recommend for all fans of the dc metro, but what really captivated me was “mini memories,” an ongoing exhibition of one man’s vast collection of small versions of buildings. i loved the variety of ways they grouped the models, including by material and use. a staff member told us they only had a small fraction out. i wish i could see them all!
read: The Duke at Hazard by KJ Charles (2024). not a shock that i loved kj charles’ newest book. the poor-little-rich-man trope is well-trod by regency romances, but trust kjc to turn it into something delicious and compelling. i generally dislike romances in which a character is knowingly lying to another, but the duke in this book feels so believably trapped by his position, and is so palpably relieved to be temporarily freed of it. his love interest cuts silhouettes, which is SO COOL. i would also be enamored by encountering a silhouette artist in the wild.
read: The Blind Barber by John Dickson Carr (1934). this is one i picked up in glouchester last month on the strength of its cover (same as the one at the link), and i’m glad i did. it’s a farce, which is not going to appeal to everyone, but it definitely did to me. i also loved that it was somebody else (a mystery writer in fact) telling the story to the detective, who then solved it armchair-style. very fun stylistically, and only pretty minor racism for the period. more here.
game: The Case of the Golden Idol (2022). this is a very fun mystery solving game, the kind where you investigate scenes for clues. it goes a step further and collects words from the clues which you then use to fill in what has occurred, mad libs style. each level of the game is linked in a story that goes places you will never expect. i had a BLAST. one caveat: i played it on switch and experienced a frustrating glitch which internet searching has told me is not fixed. so if you have the option to play it on something else, i would recommend doing so.
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