WMMHTW 2024.04.19

Things making me happy this week:

• What Moves the Dead: This book by T. Kingfisher had been on my list for quite some time and I finally read it last week… and immediately added the sequel to my list. It’s a retelling of Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher,” expanded into a full (but fairly short) novel- there’s definitely a lot of gore/body horror, so I would put a content warning on that, but that doesn’t bother me so I while I had a reaction to it, it didn’t ruin the experience. We just read Mexican Gothic (which Kingfisher cites as an inspiration) in my work book club, and I’m really glad I read them in this order because I was looking forward to both of them, and Mexican Gothic was a letdown- it wasn’t the worst book ever, but I had been excited for a story seeped in Mexican culture and it really didn’t feel very connected to the setting; I also found the horror underdone, the romance unappealing, and the main character annoying. Which was a bummer, but I felt like What Moves the Dead nailed everything it set out to do and it was even more compelling in comparison.
• “Belong Together”: This may be some super popular song that everyone’s heard on the radio or on TikTok, but I don’t listen to the radio and I’m certainly not on TikTok so “Belong Together” by Mark Ambor was new to me this week when Spotify recommended it- actually, not quite, because Spotify had already given me a sped-up cover of it (which I also liked, but didn’t realize it was a cover since I had never heard the original). It’s a cute song! I’ve listened to it four thousand times.
• This tweet from a fellow pale person