Not Even Bones by Rebecca Schaeffer

Nita doesn’t murder supernatural beings and sell their body parts on the internet—her mother does that. Nita just dissects the bodies after they’ve been “acquired.” Until her mom brings home a live specimen and Nita decides she wants out; dissecting a scared teenage boy is a step too far. But when she decides to save her mother’s victim, she ends up sold in his place—because Nita herself isn’t exactly “human.” She has the ability to alter her biology, a talent that is priceless on the black market. Now on the other side of the bars, if she wants to escape, Nita must ask herself if she’s willing to become the worst kind of monster.

Oh my God. I devoured this book. Swallowed it whole in a sitting.  It's all that with a big slice of more.

This book is grim, brutal, edge of your seat... Exactly what you need for a pandemic depression. Not a book for the squeamish or the tenderhearted. I am, obviously, neither. It was sitting on the Kindle (thank you Carolyn!!) and I had just finished reading Book 2 of the Glimmer Lake series (Suddenly Psychic and Semi Psychic Life). Enjoyable books about a group of friends over the age of 40 with chin hairs, tattoos, exhaustion and oh yeah, sudden psychic abilities. Cute books, highly recommend. So I was looking for my next read and opened Not Even Bones to see what it was and got sucked in like blood in a vampire's teeth.

Nita, the protagonist of the book, is young, timid and likes dissecting dead bodies that her parents sell on the dark web. Nita thinks she's a good person and she doesn't even think about the fact that all these dissected bodies were murdered by her mother. Until Mom brings home a living teenage boy that she wants to slowly dissect while keeping him alive.

Nita helps the boy escape and finds herself in his place (kind of). She's kidnapped and is finding herself being sold on the black market, in pieces. And then wow, the story goes to places you'd never dream.

So much happens. I don't want to spoil any of it but there's another character who is a 'zannie', a creature who eats people's pain. He's a great torturer. Untrustworthy. Terrifying.

But he's far from the most terrifying. Because Nita quickly changes in this situation. She's completely feral, her morals become a memory. She's Jane Doe with bad luck and even more savagery.

This is not an easy book and Nita isn't an easy heroine. Kovit, the zannie, is a terrible and yet perfect character. This is Book 1 of Market of Monsters, a trilogy. I just bought book 2, Only Ashes Remain. Book 3, When Villains Rise, the last of the trilogy will be released in September.

I fucking loved this book and I am not suggesting it for others. You know if it's a book you can tolerate. If I had known what it was before I started it, I might not have tried it. I'm glad I did. You might not be quite so glad.

But it's a stunner of a book.

We're Living In A Parody World

There's just no way this is real. I've been trying to wrap my mind around it and there's only one explanation: we're living in someone's parody of the world.

When the President of the United States suggests UV lights and drinking bleach to get rid of the Coronavirus, you know the world isn't real and there's some teenage boy in charge who just smoked weed for the first time and is giggling madly while making this shit up. In fact, LADIES BEWARE!!  We're probably all going to wake up tomorrow with huge, perky boobs that defy gravity. Cause: teenage boy.

And there's adults out there who are trying to make sense of it all and get us through these times but they shouldn't bother. Cause this kid hasn't tried mushrooms yet and once he does we're even more fucked than currently.

So we can pray the kid's mother shows up and tells him to clean his room and maybe some of this will also get cleaned up but don't hold your breath. Bobby or Jack or Marvin or whatever his name is, well, he's in charge right now. Expect our politicians to go even further banana-pants and the world to get more ridiculous. And don't worry about bras anymore, because our new Double Z's will stand up on their own.

Sparking Some Motherfucking Joy in This Time of Corona

Smart Bitches, Smart Choices

So Carolyn sent me this link today from Smart Bitches and this is among the reasons that Carolyn is my BFF, BWB and BXYZ all rolled up into one. She knows me. I mean, she KNOWS me.

So to summarize: instead of using this time in quarantine to try and accomplish things and cross off items on a to-do list, this is the time to acknowledge that many of us can't make our brains co-operate so instead of trying to create, organize to create instead.

It's a fucking wonderful idea. I love it.

I know I'm not going to start any new projects right now. I have a few almost finished quilts/hangings that I can finish (slowly) but there are others that I'm stuck on. So instead I've decided to start 'project bags'. Using the idea that she discussed in Smart Bitches.

My knitting is still rudimentary although I find it wonderfully peaceful to do. So I have a pattern for a simple shawl which I'll choose some yarn and put together for when I'm ready to knit. There's a simple hat pattern that I'd like to try.

I'm also going to start organizing fabric for quilts.

And... a reading list. Why not do it all? Go though the TBR pile and make a list of the books and authors and blurbs and get that together for future reviews? LOVE IT!!! 

This appeals to my creative but super stressed out self. It gets me on track to be ready to create and maybe even create when the urge hits but to organize sparks extreme joy.

Happy me. Thank you Carolyn.

Oh, and btw: I've started having a nightly nightcap. A large shot of Kalua, a dash of heavy cream, a half cup of milk, a squirt of chocolate syrup mixed and then add ice. It's a decadent, adult chocolate milk. So yummy. And one that I think Carolyn's sister has already discovered but Carol doesn't realize that it's spiked. Ha ha!

Life is brilliant even in quarantine.

The Witches Are Coming by Lindy West

From the moment powerful men started falling to the #MeToo movement, the lamentations began: this is feminism gone too far, this is injustice, this is a witch hunt. In The Witches Are Coming, firebrand author of the New York Times bestselling memoir and now critically acclaimed Hulu TV series Shrill, Lindy West, turns that refrain on its head. You think this is a witch hunt? Fine. You've got one.

In a laugh-out-loud, incisive cultural critique, West extolls the world-changing magic of truth, urging readers to reckon with dark lies in the heart of the American mythos, and unpacking the complicated, and sometimes tragic, politics of not being a white man in the twenty-first century. She tracks the misogyny and propaganda hidden (or not so hidden) in the media she and her peers devoured growing up, a buffet of distortions, delusions, prejudice, and outright bullsh*t that has allowed white male mediocrity to maintain a death grip on American culture and politics-and that delivered us to this precarious, disorienting moment in history.

This book is a killer. I read it yesterday and was trying to explain to Carolyn why I liked it so much and I still can't articulate it that well but I think the author has a friendly voice, although a truly angry tone, I agree with everything and it didn't leave me optimistic but it didn't leave me in despair.

Carol asked me if the writer was glass half empty or glass half full and honestly, it doesn't matter because the glasses are all owned by men anyway.

But here's the thing: I was reading the book yesterday and then at dinner my brother started on  a rant about people trying to take away guns and all that nonsense. And usually I get mad and either stay quiet and seethe or argue and seethe. Last night I didn't do either of those things. Instead I responded but simply and with clarity. So he knew which buttons to push and started talking about female politicians who didn't even know about the guns they were talking about and bringing up "ghost guns" and shit that doesn't exist.

I responded that male politicians don't have the faintest clue about women's bodies and reproductive organs but they legislate those all the time. And that kind of ignorance didn't seem to bother him at all. So I can't be bothered to care if a politician believes a gun round has 15 or 15,000 bullets. She knows it kills kids in school. That's what matters.

So then he went into his favorite apples and oranges about how smoking and cars and falling out of trees kills people and I gently explained that it's not the same thing at all and mass falling out of trees isn't killing schoolchildren.

I didn't "win" the argument. But for the first time in a long time I wasn't upset or enraged after a disagreement. I felt stronger. And I felt like there was a little more steel because of this book.

Lindy West is a writer and she's funny and she knows famous people and she's fat and she lives in Seattle and I felt like she was me and is you and is all of us. But I did relate A LOT. And again, I felt that reading her brought something more to my voice.

I'll read the book again because it gave me words. It's there to strengthen our voices. Such a good book.

Good Day

I'm wearing underwear today. Must be a good day.

Isolate Your Ass, Motherfucker!!

The worst part of this whole thing, the worst worst part, is knowing that if one member of your household gets it, it could easily kill all the members of your household.

We are all over 60. We all have high blood pressure. My sister in law has heart and lung issues.

So my brother is working on his car and needs help and invites a friend over to help him. And then my SIL and said friend are sitting chatting, no social distancing. If I say something I'm going to be told to chill because no way is Matt sick. And he probably isn't. He also shouldn't be in our house.

Beyond that we Americans have an inept mob boss running our country into the ground who assumes that daily news briefings are a chance to brag about himself, to call women "nasty" and to suggest new ways people can ultimately kill themselves (listen to the orange shithole and do what he suggests and you'll likely die from it) (he isn't just corrupt, he's truly stupid).

I would make a better president than this scummy, slimy, sickening stain of shit on the world. I hate him. I literally hate him.

Otherwise, I'm living in a state of anxiety that's out of this world. I sleep about 16 hours a day. I talk to Mollie maybe a dozen times daily. I can't concentrate enough to do anything except watch documentaries on Netflix and play computer games.

I hope everyone is doing better than I am at this time. How are you all coping?

Jane Doe and Victoria Helen Stone = My Forever Mood

Problem Child by Victoria Helen Stone is book 2 of the Jane Doe series (God, I so hope this is a series because Jane is the Queen). Anyway, the book dropped yesterday and I finished it today and I'll reread it in about a week to really savor so much more but...

it's as good as the first.

Jane hasn't changed. In fact, she's as sociopathic as ever and her story is, as always, riveting. In Problem Child, Jane's niece is missing and so Jane goes home (ugh) to find her niece and find out if she's as sociopathic as Jane.

I'm not going to discuss the plot because I don't think I read Jane for the plot as much as I read her for her. Jane is a brilliant character and I think she's so fascinating because there's a little Jane in all of us. Now I can hear Carolyn right now saying "I ain't nothin' like Jane" in her Southern accent even though she's a Canadian deep down, but ha! we all have a piece of something inside that's greedy or uncaring or cries out for revenge.

Jane is the answer to the patriarchy (another ugh). Jane is the woman who sees men as they really are and uses them, she's uncaring about being judges and she can't be manipulated because she knows all the tricks.

The men at work who think they can have her do all the work and they get the credit? Dust. The pick-up artists in the bar? Child's play. The man who loves her? Sorry but even he's getting played.

I'll do a better review in a few days but wow, this book is a blast. Read it for Jane. Understand how she's guided by hunger, interest and lack of emotion. And then just for fun, compare her to yourself and others and ask yourself how many sociopaths do you know?