Tasha's (aka Beren) Journal

Horror

Saw the oddest horror film the other day called The ABCs of Death - it's an anthology film where 26 different film makers used a letter of the alphabet and a word as their prompt and came up with 26 very different snippets. It makes some of them very esoteric in nature. I was underwhelmed by many of them. There is an argument that art is art, but in this case, some of the time, art is boring IMHO.


Cats

Ruby is our problem child, at the moment :). She has taken to leaping from the kitchen counter, on to the fridge and then onto the top of the kitchen cabinets. I think it started because she was curious, however, now it is the classic "Daddy notice me!". She only does it when Rob is home because she got stuck the first time and he helped her down. Now she wants him to help her down all the time.

We have started to ignore her when she does it so she gets the message that Rob is not at her beck and call 24/7 :). 

Tennis

I had totally forgotten that Wimbledon started this week and I am very much looking forward to seeing Djokovic play since I missed him on Monday. Caught Federer because by the end of Monday I had realised :) Not so much looking forward to watching Roger play our chap today though - I think Willis' (world 772 :)) dream winning streak might be coming to an end when he comes up against the #3 seed. I hope very much he acquits himself well - he's been playing up a storm, but I suspect Federer will put him out.

Sleeping

I have been having a bad week as far as sleeping goes, bad two weeks actually. I think it a combination of things, but over all the sticky heat. However, last night I finally got a good night's sleep. Yay! My head it full of cotton wool this morning and I had to find my glasses so I could focus, but that's because my brain is refusing to wake up :).

Unfortunately, when I don't sleep it affects my productivity, so I haven't gotten as much done over the last couple of weeks as I would have liked. It's ironic that is was a short story idea going round and round and round in my head that kept me awake the night before last.

Hope you are all well.

Seen any good, or alternatively, really terrible horror movies lately? How about the tennis - who do you think will win Wimbledon this year?

Title: Insidious
Rating: 15
Cast:
Patrick Wilson ... Josh Lambert
Rose Byrne ... Renai Lambert
Ty Simpkins ... Dalton Lambert
Lin Shaye ... Elise Rainier
Summary:
When Dalton, son of Josh and Renai Lambert falls into a coma that isn't really a coma, after they move into their new house, evil things start to happen around him.

So Insidious, I finally managed to see the whole thing. On the first watch my husband was so jumpy that he couldn't finish it. However, as I discovered he turned off at just the wrong point.

This is a film of two halves.

The first half is really quite spooky and scary. It made me and my husband jump and hide behind cushions and when I watched it a second time with my sister and mother so I could see the end, it did the same to them.

However, I have to say, the second time through the first half was spooky, but not really scary like it was when I didn't know what was coming. It doesn't have lasting scare factor unlike something like Ju-on - The Grudge which gets me every time. I think it's the noises in Ju-on that do it.

So the first half isn't bad and it's worth a watch. The acting is fine, the plot is reasonable and when you don't know what coming it will scare you nicely.

Then we have the second half. It turns out my husband should have kept watching because the second half totally kills any scare in the first half. The main protagonist flips from being the mother to being the father and the explanations come out and it's just, meh. It's over done, it's heavy, it's predictable and it's not frightening at all. I watched my sister go from hiding behind a cushion to wondering when it would end.

There was only one point in the whole second half that made any of us remotely jump.

It needed a twist or a more interesting big bad, but there wasn't anything. The reveal is supposed to be a big shock, but if you didn't see it coming I think you might have been watching a different film. I don't mean the details exactly, but definitely the general gist.

We're supposed to be afraid and we definitely weren't. It went from good old fashioned horror to more of a dark fantasy without the scare factor. I don't think I will be watching it again.

I do have Insidious 2 and I will give it a go, but I'm not holding my breath for a masterpiece.

Title: On Being Ghosts (The Anonymous Chronicles Book 1)
Author: Matt Rood
Links: Amazon UK | US
Summary from Amazon: Anon is a ghost who has been voted as the Residential Assistant living in a decaying mansion filled with ghosts. His job is to check up on all the inhabitants of the home, as well as to handle any haunting when the living show up. However when the darkness of what lingers in the basement starts to take shape, Anon must choose between taking himself or the other ghosts to salvation.

This book is golden. I could not put it down, in fact I just spent two hours reading it when I should have been doing other things. I started it this morning when I was exercising and managed to put it down then, but when I sat down to have my lunch I made the mistake of picking it up again. After that I had no chance.

Firstly the book could do with some editing. There are occasional typos, missed words or duplicated words - all the signs that it needed one more going over, but, frankly, I didn't care. The protagonist is so engaging and the plot so enthralling that I just kept reading and reading and reading.

So few books can grab me and refuse to let go. I am a very picky reader and this one entertained me completely. It's sometimes light-hearted, sometimes heart-warming and other times almost perfunctory and it's all captivating.

Most of the characters are ghosts and they're not really good guys or bad guys they just are and they mostly like it that way. The book is a journey for Anon, or RA as he is known in the mansion and we see him develop over the story. We take the journey with him and it is a wonderful ride.

Nothing is over explained. Some questions are asked that aren't quite answered even, but, that's the whole point. Anon doesn't have the whole picture so neither do we. It's a story about people who happen to be ghosts and everything that means. Their boundaries and limitations, their sorrows and their joys and, in places, it is amazingly exciting too.

This is a great book; a little rough around the edges in places, but still, a great book. I so, so, so want to read the sequel (since it's book 1, I assume there is going to be another one). Since it only just came out I assume I'm going to have to be patient for the next one.