Misc. Monday: Goosebumps

The things you read as a child have a way of sticking with you forever. The original Goosebumps series was the first set of books that I ever read entirely on my own outside of school. My older brother had a decent sized collection that he passed to me, and I promptly whined to my parents until I filled in the gaps. All told, I ended up reading the first 45 books in the series over the course of a year or so (1st-2nd grade). Of course I later reread my favorite ones. So for today's Misc. Monday, I thought I'd go through a few of them and see what memories I could kick to life.

#1, Welcome to Dead House, sparks zero literary memories (I must not have liked it), but I do have memories of watching the TV episode. Oh, that's right, there was a TV series--a cheesetastic TV series with bad effects and bad acting. I was, I don't know, seven when I saw this and it still sticks in my brain as a quintessentially bad haunted house story.

#2, Stay Out of the Basement, is about a freaking plant monster. Plants are not scary, even to a seven year old, and even back then I remember thinking this one was funny. The protagonists, Margaret and Casey, go down as the stupidest children in the world for not immediately making the connection between their missing BOTONIST father and the plant monster.

#3, Monster Blood, OH GOD, I loved this little book. It's about a boy who buys some flubber that grows and grows and starts consuming things. I'm not sure why this excited my seven-year-old brain, but it did. I remember using my allowance to buy green Gak so I could rein-act the story.

#5, The Curse of the Mummy's Tomb, was another one of my favorites. I remember fixating on it because it's about a boy who ends up wandering through an Egyptian tomb on his own. I also became fascinated with the intensely gross facts of how mummies were made.

#7, Night of the Living Dummy...Umm, Dummies are freaking scary, I don't care how old you are. This is the only one that I remember kind of scared me a little.

#14, The Werewolf of Fever Swamp--Again, I don't so much remember the book as the TV show. I remember that it made me suddenly aware that werewolves were cool and scary. I asked my brother about them, and like all good big brothers, he proceeded to try to terrify me by introducing me to "real" werewolf movies.

#19, Deep Trouble--I remember really liking that there was a mermaid in this. The details are fuzzy now, but I know this was a favorite because of the deep sea theme.

#21, Go Eat Worms--I remember this one because I found it gross. It didn't scare me, it just...creeped me. Worms show up in this kids food and...yeah, EWW. Years later, in college, there was a lab involving mealworms which were being held in pie plates. I had a flashback to THIS BOOK and mentally flipped out a little.

#24, The Phantom of the Auditorium--This was my introduction the The Phantom of the Opera. I read this, and then I watched the Wishbone episode about The Phantom of the Opera, and I was promptly obsessed. Of course, I didn't actually get to see a production of any kind until years later, but I owe the idea of seeing it to Goosebumps.

#34, Revenge of the Lawn Gnomes--This is the last one I can actually clearly remember reading. Gnomes are funny to me. My grandparents always had them, and I think it amused me to think of them as evil instead of adorable.

So that's my little trip down nostalgia lane for the week. Does anyone else remember these books? Do you remember finding them funny, cool, or scary?

Happy Reading!

Fins vs. Legs: A Review of Awakening by Kitty Thomas

A Sleeping Mermaid by Josephine Wall

I decided to give Awakening by Kitty Thomas a try after seeing it reviewed positively by several helpful bloggers. This is a very short story, but it's nicely written and heavy on the erotic elements. It's about a mermaid, Nerina who's taken captive by a human man, Kyros. Legend has it that if a man can arouse a mermaid sufficiently, she will transform for him--growing legs in place of her tail. Kyros is convinced that the legend is true and determined to make Nerina transform for him so that he can keep her as his own.

Positive Comments:

I'm fond of mermaids and other fantasy sea creatures. The use of them in this story is simple, but compelling. Thomas manages to describe a little bit about mermaid culture and way of life, and we get a small glimpse into how important those things are to our heroine. They also serve as a sharp contrast to the new life and way of thinking she encounters after she's captured.

I liked the idea of using arousal as a method for transformation. As far as erotic plot devices go, I thought this one was quite successful--it's unique and makes for beautiful imagery.

The author at least starts to explore the master/slave relationship and skims the surface behind the psychology of that on both sides. It certainly isn't a complete exploration, but it's as much as I can expect in such a short story.

Negative Comments:

This is definitely erotica--pretty, interesting erotica--but it isn't romantic. By this I mean, the connection between Nerina and Kyros never strays outside of owner/possession territory. Kyros is possessive of Nerina and happy to have her--as one might be with a really nice car. Nerina is dependent on Kyros to survive, and she happens to not hate his erotic attentions. The book doesn't have the page space to deal with anything deeper, and that's a shame.

In both the relationship and the mythology, this felt like the prologue to a really good book. I hate to put "too short" as a criticism--that seems unfair. Instead I'll say that it was a bit too ambitious for it's length. A lot more could be done with this world and these characters.

Rating:

This is a well written and very interesting tale. If you like erotica and don't mind the master/slave theme, I'd suggest this book. 4 stars

On Mermaids: A Review of Goddess of the Sea by P. C. Cast

A Painting by Josephine Wall

Goddess of the Sea was one of the books I attempted to read this weekend. When it comes to paranormal romance I try to suspend disbelief and just go with the story, trusting that either the author will create a plausible world or that the story will be so amusing that I won't care about implausibility. This book is a rare case in which the author wasn't successful in either manner to my great disappointment. I did a lot of skimming to the end of this book.

The premise of the book is that on her 25th birthday CC is lonely and drunk and performs a ritual in which she asks the goddess of the earth, Gaea, to bring magic into her life. The result of this is that CC switches places with Gaea's mermaid daughter, Princess Undine. She is also sent back in time to about 1014 I believe. CC is allowed to return to land as a human (in Undine's very beautiful form) but she must return to the water and transform into a mermaid every 3 days. The only way to break this cycle is to find a man, fall in love, and have him accept her completely. On land Undine is "rescued" by a hansome solicitous knight who she assumes will be the man for her. Meanwhile, she has already encountered a merman who she is drawn to, Dylan, and they enter into an erotic relationship.

Now in fairness this book had it's good parts. I liked the use of mythology/fairy tale that made the story seem familiar and comfortable. I liked a lot of the discriptive ideas, like the scene where she actually becomes a mermaid--very well written. The setting was fairly intrigueing, all though the time travel portion of it was somewhat pointless. The romance was passable. And from what I could tell, there are some interesting plot twists thrown in to keep things fresh.

My issues with this book are many. The humor is at best awkward and clumsy. It's never fully commited to. The openning scene of the book has the heroine talking to herself and pathetically drinking alone. At the same time we are supposed to believe that she's a smart professional member of the United States Air Force. I guess my problem with her character and this part of the premise is that I wanted to like her, but she's inconsistantly written. I think that the author either need to commit to making a humorous slightly ditzy character, or a smart well put together one. Or give us some background to justify the lack of consistancy. This problem carries over into the actual story as well. Half of the time the effort is made to give good logical reasons for things, and half of the time no explanation is given at all. The other major issues is that the characters are, for the most part, flat and underdeveloped. An effort is made to show that CC has a meaningful change in her worldview and character...but thats about it, everyone else is fairly static. Overall the writing is rough. 2 stars.