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.