The Gaol, by Kelly Grovier

3 stars

A fascinating and very readable look at the long and murky history of Newgate prison, this features a parade of some of the characters to have haunted its cells and looks at its role in society, the changing attitudes of the English to crime and punishment, and its influence on the popular imagination. 

Regardless of the prison's incarnation (it having been rebuilt after being razed to the ground in the Great Fire of London and the 1780 anti-papist Gordon Riots) the picture it paints is an incredibly gruesome one - the prison a hellish labyrinth of dark corridors and overcrowded cells (it housing more than 4 times the inmates intended along with their families, dogs, pigs and poultry!), Press Yards and Ketch's Kitchens (where the executioners would boil the heads of those they'd recently dispatched), sending its stench and noise far across London. 

Whatever unlucky sod was sent there (as many were for such paltry crimes as being in debt) was soon a victim of the corruption of the institution - being charged on entering the prison, for each chain they wore, for their food and board, for having chains removed and for leaving prison - if they hadn't already become the victim of Typhus. So riddled with the disease that doctors would refuse to visit, it's thought that Gaol Fever carried off more than 4 times as many as the Executioners did and, considering their fearsome tallies (with one noted to have been hanging, drawing and quartering more than a dozen men a day during the Bloody Assizes), that's a heck of a lot of dead people.

Tyburn, site of executions which drew spectators in their thousands

With executions held at Tyburn and (later, outside the prison itself) drawing upwards of tens of thousands of spectators to watch the drama as families fought with Resurrection Men for the bodies of their recently departed loved ones, or the crowd itself attacking the executioner if he'd been particularly brutal, it's small wonder such scenes had a huge an impact on the popular imagination with hundreds of plays, pamphlets and novels written about the characters involved - an early precursor to the criminal biographies I'm addicted to today - reaching its pinnacle with the strutting highwaymen of the 17th & 18th centuries often cast as folk heroes.

Any history fan couldn't be disappointed with the ton of interesting facts contained within, though I'd have liked more information in some cases and less in others.

I also appreciated the criminal slang which headed each chapter, and am totally saving 'gape-seed' up for future use...

The Freebie 5 - TV Edition

After all that ranting yesterday, it’s probably time for a nice list. What better way to put that list to use than to be a complete hypocrite and objectify some men?

You may have noticed that I already have more than one Freebie 5 floating around. This is because I am greedy and free with my affections, and couldn’t bear to cut a single one. This time around, it’s the TV edition and those men who, even if their shows were crap, would still have me tuning in. Most of these shows have been around for yonks (and none are crap), but my crushes have been long kept alive thanks to frequent repeat viewings.

5. Game of Thrones – Khal Drogo

I’ve always had a bit of a thing for men with a touch of the Neanderthal about them (check out the eyebrow ridge on Drogo – the best feature I believe a man can possess), and so I already had a pretty hefty crush on this dude after reading the books. Then the show went and cast Jason Mmmmmmmmmmomoa, who even manages to look good while ripping out a tongue:

(warning for the squeamish: clip features said tongue ripping)

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4. Eric Northman - True Blood

This spot ought to have been Mathew Baynton in Horrible Histories, but it seems YouTube is now blocking anyone in the UK from watching it, the wankers. If only I could set Eric Northman on them...

Not only a vampire, but one who happens to have been a Viking, Eric Northman is over 6 feet of badassery. Right up until he lost his memory and started loving Sookie, but thankfully that seems to be mostly over, for now... 

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3. Deadwood – Sheriff Bullock

There are a number of characters from Deadwood who are constantly jostling for position as my favourite (hi, Doc!), but only one can claim the spot as Show Crush. Sheriff Bullock nearly scorched my retinas as he clenched, growled, smouldered and punched his way through the show.

(warning for the squeamish: if you’re new to Deadwood, this clip contains language and the major loss of some teeth)

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2. Buffy The Vampire Slayer – Spike

Unlike many Buffy fans, for me Angel never held that much appeal – all that angst, and no sex, and t’ai chi – but Spike…Spike might have been evil (most of the time) but he was fun. And had cheekbones you could cut yourself on. And wore a leather duster extremely well, even if he knew it. And while his character may have taken a turn for the emo in later seasons, he remained one of the show’s highlights.

(And I'd like to take a moment here to say a big 'ugh' to all the emo Spuffy videos littering YouTube. Stop making Spike suck, people!)

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1. Oz – Ryan O’Reilly & Simon Adebisi

So I’m cheating – so what? This is Oz, and cheating is to be expected. Besides, I couldn’t bring myself to choose between them, and while O’Reilly might have the edge thanks to his Machiavellian shenanigans, Adebisi has those wonderful eyelashes and a lot of teeth kissing going on. Eventually, I realised that these two were at their diabolical best when they worked together:

You'll have to click away for this one as YouTube won't let me embed it, for some stupid reason. I promise it's worth it.

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Honourable mentions:

Blackadder (but only in 2) and Jimmy McNulty (you naughty, infuriating and lovely man).

Fanny cupping

You’re a woman. You’re out with your friends, drinking and dancing up a storm, when you head to the bar. Between then and getting back to your friends, and especially while you’re holding your drink, how many times do you think your fanny will be cupped? 

Let me be clear here – I’m definitely not using ‘fanny’ in the American sense. Men are not gently cupping your behind as you pass (which would be a nuisance in itself). I’m using it in the very English sense. Your fanny, your fanjita, your foo, moo, tuppence, front bum, muff, minge, whatever you want to call it – I’m talking about your vagina. 

Call me crazy, but I thought it was generally understood that a woman’s fanny is her own. Not the sort of thing usually shared casually with strangers, and certainly not without her invitation. My own experience seems to say I’m wrong.

In recent years it seems to have become something of a trend – odds are fairly high that a woman standing in a bar, club or pub will at some point feel a stranger’s hand slip between her legs. Usually accompanied by an intense stare as the cupper awaits your throwing yourself at him, they always seem surprised when you dare to slap their hand away. Of course, that obviously means you are a ‘fucking lesbian’ (as bellowed in my face by someone who took offence at my taking offence at being sexually assaulted) and is usually taken as a license to get even more aggressive (I believe my objection was about to earn me a slap before I scarpered).

The first time it happened to me I thought it was an isolated incident involving a particularly unpleasant inebriate. Then it happened again. Is it me? I wondered. Am I dressing in a way which would attract that sort of attention? Am I giving off the wrong signals? (Isn’t it funny how women are conditioned to first blame ourselves in these situations?) I asked my friends – and found out I wasn’t the only person who’d had this experience.

For some reason, some men now think it is a perfectly acceptable way of approaching a woman. Sod talking to her or anything silly like that – just go straight in for the kill and focus on the only body part that matters to you. 

Urban Dictionary has the practice termed:

“Jobson: successfully pull a girl on the dancefloor in a bar/club without speaking to her and only getting in by cupping her fanny.”

Seriously? Who are the women being lured in by this approach? Do they even exist other than in the booze-fogged minds of sad bastards? Has any woman ever turned, with a moan of desire on feeling her fanny cupped, and waltzed off with her cupper? I can’t imagine so.

I can imagine that these men don’t feel there’s any harm in what they’re doing, and that it’s all just a bit of a laugh when they’re out with their mates. Some of them might even be under the illusion that this is alluring behaviour. It’s probably men like these who have just helped fund, to the tune of $16,000, some douchebag called Ken Hoinsky to produce a book giving tips on how to sexually assault women.

THIS SHIT IS NOT COOL

To all the fanny cuppers out there, the next time you get the urge to stick your hand, uninvited, between a woman’s legs, resist! I can assure you that her happening to simply be in your vicinity is not an invitation to sexy-times, and forcing such contact upon her will only lead to the opinion that you’re a fuckwad like Hoinksy.

As for him, regardless of the weak statement he’s since released defending his rapey little project, I sincerely hope that the next unwitting victim of his ‘seduction techniques’ elbows him in the throat.

Me, today...

This morning, I woke up to this notification from Goodreads:

*Names blurred in case some people hadn't counted on appearing on my blog*

That's right. Neil Gaiman just liked my review of Ocean at the End of the Lane. As you can probably imagine, my reaction wasn't entirely dissimilar to this:

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A Kiss Of Shadows, by Laurell K. Hamilton

1 star

A few years ago I started to read the Anita Blake series, by Laurell K. Hamilton, when wanting a new vamp series to try out. It started out decently enough, with Anita as an ‘animator’ (a necromancer, able to raise the dead) and a P.I. who worked with the cops on any supernatural type cases. Sadly, it soon devolved into a parade of awful outfits, douchebag love interests, over-reliance on plots including threats of and attempted rape, and a grouchy, arrogant and humourless heroine who was desired by all and whose powers inexplicably grew until she was, at the point I stopped reading, not only 'The Executioner' (liaison to the Regional Preternatural Investigation squad, and necromancer) but also the vampire Jean-Claude's human servant (and part of a power triumvirate with he and werewolf Richard), lupa to Richard's wolf pack and leopard lionne/munin/Nimir-Ra (and the kitchen sink) to the wereleopards. With her being easily more powerful than anybody that she came across, soon the actual plots were pushed into the background and the focus became on all that sex instead. It had this effect:

Last year, I thought I'd give Laurell K. Hamilton another chance, that my problems with the Anita Blake series might be confined to that series and Anita herself. I was wrong. Starring Merry Gentry, the half-human sidhe princess, this time around everything that irritated me most about Anita was front and centre; pages and pages of descriptions on the most awful outfits imaginable, the heroine standing around while those around her discuss how beautiful she is, every male she meets lusting after her, and every circumstance dealt with through liberal application of sex, all of which is decidedly unerotic. There's no real effort at characterisation other than Merry being the most beautiful, most fascinating, most wonderful creature to have ever walked the earth - take it as read that every male will want her more than they've ever wanted anyone before, and every woman will see her as a threat. It amuses me to think Hamilton just writes down her fevered daydreams - I'm convinced she's not getting enough.

As for what there is of plot, Merry is in hiding from her sidhe family, and working at a detective agency. Not for long though, as she's summoned back to the Unseelie Court, goes to see the Queen, and is ordered to have sex with loads of men. And that's it. The initial 'mystery' is solved without Merry really even thinking about it, as she instead rubs herself up against anyone who crosses her path, including those with tentacles.

I'm no prude by any stretch of the imagination so my problem with the constant sex was really less to do with being squicky about it and more to do with being insanely bored by it all. I find that the most erotic scenes I've read have usually had some sort of build-up and some investment, emotional or otherwise, is always helpful. Sex is used in this book as almost akin to shaking hands, and it strips it of any eroticism it might have otherwise had. 

There's not much else for me to say other than to try and remind myself not to pick up any more Hamilton in the future, as we really don't get along. In Merry and Anita's worlds, that would mean I was sexually threatened or jealous. Bless.

The Ocean At The End Of The Lane, by Neil Gaiman

5 stars

Two days ago I (thrillingly) got to see Neil Gaiman talk about his new book, billed by many in the run up to its publication as his best. This couldn't be entirely true, I thought. After all, he's written some real blinders in the past...Having just come up for air, my vision still swimming with lovely tears, I'm thrilled to say I was wrong. 

A novel about childhood and memory, fear and love, that's told with a wonderful simplicity and bruises your heart while making it swell, raising goosebumps all the while - if I'd given in to my urges to highlight all of the wonderful passages that resonated so deeply inside me, my book would now be one big highlight.

Our seven year old narrator feels like the child I might have been and it was deliciously easy to wrap myself up in his world, captured by the magic and wonder of childhood while trying desperately to be brave and make sense of a lonely world that can be so casually cruel. He soon stopped feeling like a character to me, and more like a little boy I once knew.

At one point, he observes:

"I liked myths. They weren't adult stories and they weren't children's stories. They were better than that. They just were."

The best books are like that, making you forget you're reading someone's invention. In the very best way, I wouldn't tag The Ocean At The End Of The Lane as an adult's book, or a children's book. To paraphrase Mr Gaiman, it's better than that. It just is.

Now come here, and give me a hug.

Loki, by Mike Vasich

2 stars

All about one of my favourite gods and supposedly bringing the story of the "God of Mischief, Father of Lies, Harbinger of Destruction" to life as he brings about Ragnarok, this ought to have made my head explode with joy. Instead, I was mostly like this:

For starters, and for a book purporting to be all about Loki, he's not even in it for much of the time (especially the second half), and though we did initially get multiple chapters from his point of view more often than not we were with Balder, or Tyr, or Odin instead, with Loki fading further and further into the background as the book progressed.

Something in Vasich's writing style fell flat for me ("He had the weight of Ragnarok on his shoulders, as usual..."), with Loki nowhere near as much fun as he usually is to read about, and even the most outlandish bits of myth (like his birthing of the eight-legged horse, Sleipnir) rendered rather pedestrian. Unfortunately, Vasich also had the odd habit of effectively spoilering his work by constantly giving us an italicised synopsis of a particular bit of myth before going on to tell his version of it, with only a little additional detail and barely deviating enough from the source material to make it worthwhile. This echo effect may have ensured certain things stuck more than usual, but the repetitiveness soon dulled the reading experience and made me feel strangely detached, not at all emotionally invested and suffering from a severe case of deja vu. 

There were some positives, and the battle scenes that featured (particularly Ragnarok) were one of them. Others included the characters and unjust treatment of Fenrir and Hel (Jormungand, the Midgard Serpent and Loki's other child, gets barely a look in). I also rather enjoyed how the gods were shown to be raging dickbags most of the time, but sadly the positives didn't do enough to outweigh the negatives, and overall I was disappointed.