Invisible Monsters Remix

Title: Invisible Monsters Remix
Author: Chuck Palahniuk
Published: 2012 by Vintage
Genre: Palahniuk.
Pages: 301


I've been itching to read Invisible Monsters again for a while now, and decided to finally get the Remix. Oh, joy! It's basically the same book as before, only a 'director's cut', with the chapters organised like one of those Choose your own adventure -books. Every chapter ends with a request to Now, please, jump to Chapter X, but if you don't get lost every once in a while you miss all the extra bits in between! There's more insight to the characters, plus Chuck's comments on writing the book, some of its backgrounds, and other materials that were totally worth buying the book again.

Umm, is there anything I can say about the book I haven't already... (First and second reading) I'm pretty sure this is my second favourite Palahniuk book by now, if it hasn't quite pushed Lullaby from its Numero Uno spot.IT has grown on me, and always makes me think a lot. It's good to think sometimes.


   Jump to this one time, nowhere special, just Brandy and me in the speech therapist office when Brandy catches me with my hands up under my veil, touching the seashell and ivory of my exposed molars, stroking the embossed leather of my scar tissue, dry and polished from my breath going back and forth across it. I'm touching the saliva where it dries sticky and raw down the sides of my neck, and Brandy says not to watch myself too close. 
   "Honey," she says, "times like this, it helps to think of yourself as a sofa or a newspaper, something made by a lot of other people but not made to last forever."


Oh, I also read Chuck Palahniuk's Phoenix, a Byliner short story about a cat, her owner, his wife, and their blind daughter. Rachel has gone on a long business trip and keeps calling home from her hotel room every night, to talk with her daughter, but the little girl, April, is upset with her and refuses to say anything. Her silence grows to such extent that Rachel becomes convinced that something's wrong at home, that this goes way beyond a little kid's annoyance. At only ~260 little Kindle pages, it's a really short story, but still captivating and just as twisted as Mr. Palahniuk makes 'em.

The Graveyard Game

Title: The Graveyard Game
Author: Kage Baker
Published: 2001 by Tor
Genre: Historical timetravel science fiction yay
Pages: 298


It's the fourth Company-book! Yay! And where I had trouble reading the last one, Mendoza in Hollywood, because of pacing and reading schedule, this one I could barely put down. Might be because I prefer Joseph as a character to Mendoza, or because this one was hopping around in time and place, with Company politics and fresh visions of the future of our world.

The Graveyard Game follows Lewis, one of Mendoza's very few friends, and Joseph, her something of a father figure, as they try to figure out what exactly happened to her at the end of the last book. This isn't easy without alarming the Company, who are able to monitor their employees around the clock and world. Time is moving swiftly towards the year 2355, where the Company's recorded history ends, and more than one of the immortal cyborgs have gone missing lately.

Like I said, this one was hard to put down. I'm still reading Michelangelo and American Psycho -which I don't really care for much, it turns out- but I kinda want to jump straight into the next one of the series. Maybe I will.


   Joseph sighed. "We may not be able to do anything for her. Even finding out where she is will be dangerous. I may have some chance, on my own. What I do, what we do, depends on what I turn up. But I may not turn up anything for years. You see what I'm saying?"
   "Yes, I do." Lewis set his chin. "But you have to understand my position. There she was, about to walk into tragedy, and I knew it but there was nothing on earth I could do."
   "Oh, I think I know how you felt," said Joseph bleakly.