Yzabel / January 9, 2010

Review: Are You Watching?

Are You Watching?Are You Watching? by Vincent Ralph
My rating: ★★★★☆

Blurb:

Ten years ago, Jess’s mother was murdered by the Magpie Man.

She was the first of his victims, but not the last.

Now Jess is the star of a YouTube reality series and she’s using it to catch the killer once and for all.

The whole world is watching her every move.

And so is the Magpie Man.

Review:

[I received a copy through NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.]

Ten years ago, Jess’s mother was the first victim of a serial killer that proceed to claim many more—one woman every nine months since then. Tired of said killer still being at large, Jess decides to apply to a YouTube reality show that will give her one day of air time every week, which she plans to use to appeal to potential witnesses, and basically keep the case hot so that her family can finally see justice being served.

All in all, this story turned out enjoyable and fairly well-constructed overall, with a nice balance of red herrings and suspense, even though the premise is slightly over the top. (The first thing anyone should think when it comes to Jessica’s means is “if that killer’s still around it will attract their attention and she’ll be their next victim for sure”, so it’s kind of baffling that the adults around her were relatively easily on board with it—especially in that time and age, when the flip side of social media is not a mystery.) It also has something very simple, but that I enjoy in this kind of novel: short chapters (sometimes 1-2 pages long, not more), which means that, since I mainly read while commuting and during breaks, I could easily stop and pick it up again pretty much at any time, even when I only had five minutes to read. And I did want to keep reading, and knowing what would happen next.

Of course, the heroine being 17, her decisions were often reckless and bordering on stupid, which is definitely not unheard of in YA stories… On the other hand, it does make up for twists and not-so-happy consequences for the characters, so that’s that. All TSTL tendencies set apart, though, I really liked the other aspects of the story. Jess’s relationship with her close firneds. How her family has been spending the past ten years mired in grief, with her father trying to function as best as he could but never becoming who he used to be again. Her meeting the families of the other victims of the “Magpie Man”. It wasn’t only about catching a killer, but also about (re)discovering how to live after such gruesome events, after a loved one is snatched away from you—and after realising that yes, one’s actions always has consequences.

Conclusion: 3.5 stars.

Yzabel / October 21, 2006

Updating The Books Page

It had been months I hadn’t kept up with my current & past readings listing, and it was high time to dust the place off. The past readings page is now up to date, at least when it comes to the present time–it was too much of a hassle to remember exactly when I had read each book during spring and the end of winter, so I just kept these out for the time being.

Also, I’m not sure I’ll put everything I read in there. Lots of these are/will be for school, and I’m not sure I want to brag much about the ‘How to write a proper text analysis’ books and the likes. I’ll see what I’ll do about these.

Yzabel / January 31, 2006

Self-Printing In A Virtual World

I know I haven’t done much in terms of blogging this past week, but this is something I plan on remedying to. Somehow, this mini-break was a good thing anyway.

In the meantime, I’ve found (completely by chance) a few interesting things in Second Life. I’ve had an account there since the summer of 2004–I like building houses and creating clothes, it helps in furthering my graphic-related abilities–and although I’m a casual player most of the time, there are moments when I like to explore and see what the world has to offer. This is how I stumbled over a system called THiNC, that allows a player to create and distribute their own book in world.

It’s not regular writing, of course. The book itself must be made of textures, which means that one needs to prepare it offline in images before uploading it all, and this can take a lot of time. Albeit very basic, the result is interesting enough–a book that can appear as an item, and which pages can be flipped. Nothing to do with simple text, since the author can give it whatever look and paginating s/he wants.

Another interesting tidbit: last summer, Cory Doctorow allowed his book Someone comes to town, someone leaves town to be distributed in Second Life, under the shape of an animated book and under the Creative Commons license.

Reading this way is special, to say the least, and I’ll still prefer printing a PDF of the book; on the other hand, it’s interesting to see that the online boundaries of writing don’t stop at websites and blogs, but also extend to other means of distribution.