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...

       I began this experience already a bit uneasy with the initial approach. As someone who makes recommendations a lot, or just from my own experience working with different kinds of professionals, or even hobbyists, one of the most dreaded questions is “What’s a good X ?” with no other follow up. It’s a question that offers no information for the recommender to go on. It’s like being asked to choose dinner when the other person “doesn’t care, you pick.” There are implicitly a thousand wrong answers to a supposedly open-ended prompt. Recommendations are best when they’re personal and specialized, that’s what makes them most effective. And people who are invested in the thing that they’re being asked about tend to be excited to have the opportunity to flex their knowledge and expertise by making good, effective, recommendations. Anyone who’s ever successfully gotten a friend into a hobby, or a favorite author, knows this feeling of success. It’s not so much abo...

 Recommendations of books based on: 1. I am looking for a book by Laurell K. Hamilton. I just read the third book in the Anita Blake series and I can’t figure out which one comes next! - If you've read Circus of the Damned (1995), then the next in the series is The Lunatic Cafe (1996)! Followed by Bloody Bones (1996). Here's the Goodreads list of the series in order! 2. What have I read recently? Well, I just finished this great book by Barbara Kingsolver, Prodigal Summer. I really liked the way it was written, you know, the way she used language. I wouldn't mind something a bit faster paced though. - Following Goodreads' tags of environment and romance, I found Clear to Lift (2016) by Anne A. Wilson! Clocking in at 320 pages, the pacing will be just a tad faster than Summer while following the same themes of adventure, conflicting personalities and romance in far-off environments of nature! 3. I like reading books set in different countries. I just read one set...

 Hello Everyone! My first annotation is posted here for everyone to review! The novel is The Frontier Garrison, an adventure and mystery novel by Hungarian author Jenő Rejtő, under the pseudonym P. Howard.  Rejtő (1905-1943) took to traveling Europe extensively in his youth during the interwar period between WWI and WWII, which would go on to inform his stage plays and written works like Garrison which often featured (and parodied) the French Foreign Legion and their adventurous explorations abroad. His actually enlisting and joining in the Legion is unconfirmed thus far.  Tragically, as the Kingdom of Hungary had allied itself with the Axis powers during the Second World War, Rejtő, having Jewish heritage, took to the pen name P. Howard in order to hide his identity to publish his works. In time he would be outed, and sent via "compulsory service" of Jewish men to forced labor on the advancing eastern front into the Soviet Union, where his life would end in 1943 ...