Wednesday, May 29, 2019

Blogging Challenge: Lessons I Learned from a Book Character

Right, so, the usual: Weekly Blogging Challenge over at Long and Short Reviews. (If you're just joining up, swing by their homepage and add your response to the current post each Wednesday.)

This week's prompt is Lessons I Learned from a Book Character.

"Of all the rash and midnight promises made in the name of love, none, Boone now knew, was more certain to be broken than "I'll never leave you." It's the opening line to Clive Barker's Cabal, which was (perhaps unfortunately) made into the movie (and accompanying comic, which was how I found it) Nightbreed. Nightbreed suffered from the studio's attempt to edit it into a traditional horror movie, and from some amazingly bad marketing. (Among other things, the movie posters they shipped out were the wrong ones.) Cabal was... something else, and late-teen me found a home in it. And the lesson in the book (and to some extent the movie) is that the premise of that opening line is both true... and very false.

In my first couple of years of college, I was... kind of a mess, socially and emotionally. Grimjack, while sometimes dark, was heavy with themes of friendship and loyalty. ("Friends are family. Family we choose.") Reading that comic may very well have saved my life.

And a few years after that I would discover Spider Robinson's Callahan's Place books. It's more a series of short stories that grew into a series of books (the first stories were printed in Analog Magazine back in the day), but between the puns and the weirdness and the occasional alien, there's an explicit message: pain shared is diminished, joy shared is increased.

...And that's what I've got so far. If I think of anything else, I'll come back and add it.

7 comments:

  1. You picked such interesting books this week. I haven't heard of any of them, but now I want to read them.

    And how on Earth did they send out the wrong promotional posters for Nightbreed? That's hilarious and terrible.

    My post.

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    1. I think you'd really enjoy the Callahan's stories, in particular.

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  2. Love your inclusion of the darker themed books. You'd be amazed at how much you can take away from a well-crafted horror novel sometimes.

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    1. I don't read as much horror as I used to, but it's still a big part of my influences.

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  3. Though I've heard of (and read) Clive Barker, I haven't heard of (or read) the one you mentioned. I absolutely love the lessons on all three books, though. And I agree with Aymee about often finding amazing lessons in darker books. I read a lot of Dean Koontz, and in his later (darker) books, there's so much about love, and strength and redemption. Thanks for swinging by my place earlier :-)

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  4. Thanks for coming by... and I'm not familiar with the books you mentioned. I'll have to check them out! Thanks for the heads up :-)

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  5. I've never read any of these. I'll have to check them out.

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Feel free to leave comments; it lets me know that people are actually reading my blog. Interesting tangents and topic drift just add flavor. Linking to your own stuff is fine, as long as it's at least loosely relevant. Be civil, and have fun!