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takecoverbooksptbo's reviews
160 reviews
Freedom Is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement by Angela Y. Davis
hopeful
informative
reflective
medium-paced
4.0
Blackshirts and Reds: Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism by Michael Parenti
challenging
informative
sad
medium-paced
4.0
Dark Matter by Blake Crouch
dark
emotional
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
2.5
Content Warnings
Graphic: Murder, Gaslighting, Blood, Pandemic/Epidemic, Self harm, and Stalking
Double Indemnity by James M. Cain
dark
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
Content Warnings
Moderate: Child death, Murder, Suicide, and Gun violence
Slow Down: How Degrowth Communism Can Save the Earth by Kōhei Saitō
challenging
informative
inspiring
medium-paced
4.5
Content Warnings
Minor: Colonisation and Pandemic/Epidemic
The Haunting of Velkwood by Gwendolyn Kiste
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
Content Warnings
Moderate: Child abuse, Sexual assault, Lesbophobia, Physical abuse, and Sexual violence
Pontypool Changes Everything by Tony Burgess
5.0
Pontypool Changes Everyting defies definition in a lot of ways. One of the biggest complaints that gets leveed against it (at least by people that I know) is that it is supposed to be a book about a zombie outbreak and, yet, the zombies in the book are more conceptual than literal. It is difficult to feel afraid of the zombies. But the novel's abstraction is its greatest strength because, at its core, it is a indefatigably complex horror novel.
The scariness in Pontypool Changes Everything (which, especially in a book like this, should be separated from its horror elements) stems from the virus itself. The idea that a lethal contagion could spread through language is unbelievably terrifying, mostly because the virus can be spread through the act of telling somebody not to speak (and therefore spread the virus). The fright of a disease that cannot be cured because it disposes with communication is insurmountable in the novel. This is why the book immediately interrupts its own intelligibility. The book, through a great and absolutely-not-heavy-handed metafictional turn, is infected with the very disease that infects its subjects. It lacks the ability to communicate and rages at the reader because of that incommunicability. Consequently, the destruction that the virus produces is total, which brings to mind my second point.
The arbitrary violence that the disease produces in people is shocking. The fright may not come from the zombie attack, but the novel, through the ingenious device of giving the reader a glimpse into the mind of the infected, adds terror by showing how the infected people transform from relatively high-functioning individuals to snarling murderers. The manifestation of the violence in the novel is completely untempered. Once the first zombie enters the story, the gore piles up. This is, without a doubt, the most horrific book I have ever read. From images of patients being liquified under a crush of people at a local doctor's office to scenes where a father administering painkillers to his drug-addicted infant son to simply stop the boy from going into withdrawal, from passages depicting a TV news anchor engaging in forced pan-sexual intercourse with his interns to the dreamlike moments wherein a brother and sister subsist on zombie meat and eventually copulate and produce a zombie baby, the book is full of imagery and complex symbolism that is hauntingly disturbing and, sometimes, shockingly hilarious. The extremity of the horror in the novel never feels over-the-top, however, because the story is about what people do to one another and what people are capable of when their minds are pushed to the extremities of aphasic rage. The books is also not simple-minded, and does not make the zombies the solely evil presence in the story. People are equally responsible for horrific deeds, and it is the relentless depiction of human depravity that makes the book difficult to get through.
But just because it is difficult does not mean it is not worthwhile. The novel contains beautifully written passages that would be a wonder for anybody interested in the written word. Furthermore, Burgess makes the reader painfully aware of the beauty of Ontario's northern regions while, simultaneously, showing the depravity of the people who live there. Structurally, the novel is divided into two vexing parts: Autobiography and Novel. The play of fiction and nonfiction is difficult, especially because the events in both parts are unrealistic. The dipartite form gestures toward the complex nature of the human mind's ability to understand things. Basically, humans need to know whether something is real or fake. This fundamental categorization of events is the foundation for the rest of our understanding. By depriving readers of this basic understanding between factual and fictional, Burgess makes the story much more unsettling and destabilizing. Did language really cause people to kill and eat each other in Pontypool? The reader is left to decide.
Pontypool Changes Everything is complex to the core, but this makes it fun and unpredictable. Many of the shocks and scares are incredibly surprising, and the story also contains touching and heartbreaking moments of desperate intimacy between people that are simply going to die. The deadly fatalism of the story makes it one for contemplation. From the outset, it is known that many characters will not make it out of the book alive. Like viewers watching Hitchcock's "Psycho" for the first time and seeing Janet Leigh get killed in the first third of the film, the reader of Pontypool will desperately grasp for characters and subjectivities to latch on to. But there are none to be had. Instead, the reader looks for why humanity is killing itself and how a human invention such as language can infect the brain. It is a book that has especial relevance now, with the ever-present manipulation of images and events by news networks. The corruptibility of language and the human mind is the main focus of the story, which is both entertaining and enlightening.
I imagine a lot of readers will hear the concept of the book (Zombies are infected through language?!?!) and be put off by its apparent lack of believability. But to those readers who say that, I question the validity of any zombie virus -- can radiation REALLY produce the zombies that crop up in Romero's (and many of his imitator's) films? are the zombies in 28 Days Later REALLY just infected with rage? does the Necronomicon in Evil Dead REALLY just raise the dead through the utterance of its ritualistic passages? By bringing these works up, I do not mean to disparage the efforts of their creators. Instead, I intend to point out the intrinsic flimsiness of the zombie-horror genre. And yet, the genre is thrilling and thought-provoking. If you cannot suspend your disbelief with this book, then you do not deserve Pontypool Changes Everything.
The scariness in Pontypool Changes Everything (which, especially in a book like this, should be separated from its horror elements) stems from the virus itself. The idea that a lethal contagion could spread through language is unbelievably terrifying, mostly because the virus can be spread through the act of telling somebody not to speak (and therefore spread the virus). The fright of a disease that cannot be cured because it disposes with communication is insurmountable in the novel. This is why the book immediately interrupts its own intelligibility. The book, through a great and absolutely-not-heavy-handed metafictional turn, is infected with the very disease that infects its subjects. It lacks the ability to communicate and rages at the reader because of that incommunicability. Consequently, the destruction that the virus produces is total, which brings to mind my second point.
The arbitrary violence that the disease produces in people is shocking. The fright may not come from the zombie attack, but the novel, through the ingenious device of giving the reader a glimpse into the mind of the infected, adds terror by showing how the infected people transform from relatively high-functioning individuals to snarling murderers. The manifestation of the violence in the novel is completely untempered. Once the first zombie enters the story, the gore piles up. This is, without a doubt, the most horrific book I have ever read. From images of patients being liquified under a crush of people at a local doctor's office to scenes where a father administering painkillers to his drug-addicted infant son to simply stop the boy from going into withdrawal, from passages depicting a TV news anchor engaging in forced pan-sexual intercourse with his interns to the dreamlike moments wherein a brother and sister subsist on zombie meat and eventually copulate and produce a zombie baby, the book is full of imagery and complex symbolism that is hauntingly disturbing and, sometimes, shockingly hilarious. The extremity of the horror in the novel never feels over-the-top, however, because the story is about what people do to one another and what people are capable of when their minds are pushed to the extremities of aphasic rage. The books is also not simple-minded, and does not make the zombies the solely evil presence in the story. People are equally responsible for horrific deeds, and it is the relentless depiction of human depravity that makes the book difficult to get through.
But just because it is difficult does not mean it is not worthwhile. The novel contains beautifully written passages that would be a wonder for anybody interested in the written word. Furthermore, Burgess makes the reader painfully aware of the beauty of Ontario's northern regions while, simultaneously, showing the depravity of the people who live there. Structurally, the novel is divided into two vexing parts: Autobiography and Novel. The play of fiction and nonfiction is difficult, especially because the events in both parts are unrealistic. The dipartite form gestures toward the complex nature of the human mind's ability to understand things. Basically, humans need to know whether something is real or fake. This fundamental categorization of events is the foundation for the rest of our understanding. By depriving readers of this basic understanding between factual and fictional, Burgess makes the story much more unsettling and destabilizing. Did language really cause people to kill and eat each other in Pontypool? The reader is left to decide.
Pontypool Changes Everything is complex to the core, but this makes it fun and unpredictable. Many of the shocks and scares are incredibly surprising, and the story also contains touching and heartbreaking moments of desperate intimacy between people that are simply going to die. The deadly fatalism of the story makes it one for contemplation. From the outset, it is known that many characters will not make it out of the book alive. Like viewers watching Hitchcock's "Psycho" for the first time and seeing Janet Leigh get killed in the first third of the film, the reader of Pontypool will desperately grasp for characters and subjectivities to latch on to. But there are none to be had. Instead, the reader looks for why humanity is killing itself and how a human invention such as language can infect the brain. It is a book that has especial relevance now, with the ever-present manipulation of images and events by news networks. The corruptibility of language and the human mind is the main focus of the story, which is both entertaining and enlightening.
I imagine a lot of readers will hear the concept of the book (Zombies are infected through language?!?!) and be put off by its apparent lack of believability. But to those readers who say that, I question the validity of any zombie virus -- can radiation REALLY produce the zombies that crop up in Romero's (and many of his imitator's) films? are the zombies in 28 Days Later REALLY just infected with rage? does the Necronomicon in Evil Dead REALLY just raise the dead through the utterance of its ritualistic passages? By bringing these works up, I do not mean to disparage the efforts of their creators. Instead, I intend to point out the intrinsic flimsiness of the zombie-horror genre. And yet, the genre is thrilling and thought-provoking. If you cannot suspend your disbelief with this book, then you do not deserve Pontypool Changes Everything.