Corey Deogracias Reader Blog

 One of the prominent book controversies in my memory came in the early 2000's with the release of Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code . I was in a Catholic-based elementary school at the time, and the novel's premise of Jesus Christ marrying Mary Magdalene and their subsequent lineage of children was causing a fervor. At least that's what it seemed like from the news broadcasts I remember hearing in the morning, and from a few cheeky references made by the priest during homilies. There certainly was some amount of public outcry and boycott against the novel, and especially against the author, who stubbornly insisted in interviews that although his characters were fiction, the mystery they were engaging with was based in fact (which have been heavily disputed by religious and historical scholars). He was not the first to submit such claims, but the pop culture status of his novel elevated the conversation to a global talking point. What I remember though, is that that anger a...

 There are a myriad of new interesting ways that horror is being crafted in the digital space and the realm of the internet. Of course there are viral sensations like Five Nights at Freddy's stemming from video games, but there are also ARGs (alternate reality games) that can span across all manner of platforms like social media and Youtube in text and video form, hidden text in coding files, copypastas, video edits, all kinds of things creative people across the world are taking advantage of. I think the library has an opportunity to promote horror reading by embracing these things. Collaboration with the digital media department in teaching video editing skills, coding, or having viewing parties or discussion groups about multimedia indie horror projects I think can really drum up interest in horror at the library location. From here, librarian's can make reading suggestions to those attending based on the genres and references that the projects are taking. We would be givin...

 My next annotation, The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks, is live here ! In more colorful words than the annotation, I thought this book was bad. I found nothing striking, subversive or even interesting about the main narrator character. Nothing about the circumstances of Frank’s life made me understand or empathize with the cruel violence and psychopathy toward animals and children. A lot of this book is sold on shock value, but I didn’t find myself ever so repulsed as to come around again to being allured, like a macabre carnival sideshow. And I like shock value. I like John Waters and Pink Flamingos . In Factory I found nothing to latch onto. There’s no je ne sais quoi. I mostly just wanted these characters to get the hell away from me. It’s bad punk rock, like the Pistols wearing swastikas.

  Criticism is perspective, and each individual perspective provides its own cache of information to the reader. How much that reader values that information and perspective is variable. The amount of trust that reader has in the institution, or even the commenter within, informs them of how much they will value that perspective. And that can change given the context the reader finds themselves in. No, I don’t fully trust a lot of Amazon reviews, knowing that many bot accounts and algorithms exist to write out reviews for products. The one-star “SUCKS!!!” review doesn’t give me much to go on. But if I’m just looking to buy a new phone charger cable, “it works fine” on the first review I read would be enough for me to click “Buy”. And often times these reviews from the people may be fairly entertaining. Reviews from an establishment are a bit more polished, coming from the perspective of writers who provide draft after draft of their work to editors before being published. These...