The Psychopath Test: Laugh So You Don't Cry

I spent most of my week debating what to write about this week: a book I'd just finished or an episode of a TV show that I really like.  I've decided to go with the book, since I told a friend on Twitter that I'd review it, and there are a lot of things that I've been trying to work out since listening to it.  Yes, listen--I listen to a lot of audiobooks and podcasts during the day.  Noise keeps me focused, and if it's something educational or entertaining instead of just music, I consider my day well-spent.

I first heard about The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry on one of the podcasts I regularly listen to, The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe.  The author, Jon Ronson, was on as a guest and talked a little about it: namely, one part of the book that compared a theory held by some of the psychiatrists he had spoken to while researching (that a lot of higher-ups have personality traits consistent with psychopathy and that is why the world sucks) to a theory held by another previous interviewee who the SGU like to roll their eyes at every once in a while (that a lot of higher-ups are secretly lizards and that is why the world sucks.)  It intrigued me enough that I used my spare Audible credit to download it and spent the next day and a half devouring it.

While most of the books that I read are fiction, and the vast majority of those are in the sci-fi/fantasy/horror genre, I do love nonfiction about history, science, sociology, that sort of thing.  I'd classify my interest in that as more "nerdy" than "geeky"--and to me, there is a difference.  One of my dormmates in college once said that to them, nerd had more of a connotation of an academic interest in a subject, and geek had a connotation of a more pop culture interest.  I've redefined it further for myself: when I nerd out over something, I'm being academic and nitpicky about it, whether it's biology or X-men.  When I geek out over something, I'm just generally loving on it.

Semantics aside, this was the kind of book that I liked: one in which the author admits their own bias, where the history of a subject is explored, and where several different viewpoints are shown, both positive and negative.  The reader is, at the end, allowed to draw their own conclusions about the information that is presented.  And it really is entertainingly written--the best way to feed me knowledge has always been with a little bit of humor on the side.  As with a lot of things that you never really think of, there's so much absurdity to be found that no jokey humor is needed.  And the humor was needed.  You know how in some horror movies, they have to lighten up a really awful, tense moment with a joke to get the audience giggling nervously before plunging you back into it?  It's kind of like that.

Unwritten #24: Hippitus Hoppitus

The third part of my "all love and praise be upon Mike Carey and Peter Gross' The Unwritten" wraps (so far; it's still an ongoing title) with issue #24, "Stairway to Heaven."  This issue really benefits from having read issue 12 first, by the way.  It's another diversion from the main story of Tom Taylor and his companions, after the arc about him winding up in Moby Dick wraps, though elements of the conclusion to that arc are used in #24.

Artistically, it's beautiful and grotesque.  Most of the characters are refugees from children's stories, and are adorable talking animals.  Piglet from Winnie the Pooh makes a brief appearance.  And then there's the one character who shows up and is consistently drawn in a pretty unnerving way when contrasted against the others.  It's like... did anybody else watch Ren and Stimpy back in the mid-nineties?  Remember how every now and then, the animators would do an extreme focus on something gross about a character and just really drive the point home with the amount of detail that yes, it was disgusting?  It's like that, and it emphasizes how out of place this character is.

Before I get to this character, I'd like to start at the beginning.  It really sets the mood for what you can expect in this issue.  The narrator, a hippo-like character named the Quark Maiden, is telling the story of how her band of storybook escapees came to trek up an M.C. Escher-like staircase that doesn't seem to have an end.  She relates how a rat who claimed to have seen the top of the stairs ranted and raved about a world that sounds kind of like ours, with voiceless animals, and then finally died.  Having no ground to bury him in and no wood to burn him on, the band of animals pitched him over the side of the stairs.  "As he fell, we said the oldest prayer we knew.  Happy.  Happy ever after."

I can't overstate how much I love this first page.  The thought of characters from books I read when I was four or five--the duck from The Story About Ping, the teddy bear from Corduroy--on a journey where they could die, and where they're clinging to nothing but hope and prayer to get through?  It's hard to think about, if you loved those characters and think about them as those characters instead of made-up ones for the comic.  Spoilers for the rest of the issue follow.

Unwritten #17: An Unreliable Narrator

Tackling the second part of my "Why I love Mike Carey and Peter Gross' The Unwritten so much" series, I move on a few issues to number 17, "The Many Lives of Lizzie Hexam."  If the Tommy Taylor series of books in-universe seems to be a very Harry Potter-esque series, then Lizzie is the character who whole-heartedly grabbed on to the Hermione role in a trio of characters and ran with it.

This is mostly her backstory (sort of?) and delves into her extremely confused world view.  She's a great character, but one who has been twisted and whose motives are very... I don't even know some times.  I want to say that she's got a noble purpose, but then I think that if I met someone like her in real life, my first instinct would be to back away very slowly.  And that's why I like her as a character.  Again, spoilers under here.

Unwritten #12: Why Children's Literature Is Terrifying

Let's start this off with something that not a lot of people think of as traditionally "girly": comics.  A bit of history: my cousin gave me a stack of comics for my birthday when I was little and I've been hooked on X-men ever since.  I got back into the scene in 2001 with Marvel's Ultimate line, branched out into non-capes stuff, and every Wednesday my husband patiently waits for me to come back from spending money at my very friendly local comic book store and I try to hide the bag full of single issues like it's porn or something.  (We have an agreement.  He doesn't say anything about my comics, I don't say anything about his board games and we both share the roleplaying books.  Things are peaceful and nerdy in our apartment.)

Anyway, the angels at my LCBS saved me a copy of the first issue of Mike Carey's The Unwritten (link goes to Wikipedia and has spoilers) a few years ago, and I've been anxiously awaiting every new issue every month since.  The short summary is, it's about a guy whose dad wrote a series of Harry Potter-esque books with a main character with his name, he grew up bitter about it much like the real-life Christopher Robin.  And then the line between real life and fiction gets blurred, and it's all very meta and makes a lot of literary references and I'm a happy nerd every month.

It's fantastic, and the entire series is worth a read, but there are three issues that really stand out to me as absolutely amazing.  This one covers the first of the three, issue #12, "Eliza Mae Hertford's Willowbank Tales."  In essence, this is what happens when you force a thug from a Guy Ritchie movie into a Beatrix Potter book.  And then it gets scary.  Spoilers abound.