Full Throttle by Joe Hill
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
There are a few things you need to know about Joe Hill. The first is he does not seem to like happy endings. Happy endings do not make him happy. If you are looking for stories of hope or redemption or reconciliation, you will not find them here in any notable measure. The second is that it doesn’t matter, because Hill writes very good short stories, easily moving from fantasy to straight-up horror and stops in-between, while maintaining a tone and voice that is reminiscent of his famous father’s but still uniquely his own. It is a matter of taste when I say I didn’t care as much for certain stories, not a reflection on the talent and skill used to craft them.
Below are mini-reviews of each story. There are minor spoilers, so the non-spoiler summary is: Read this book if you like weird fiction or horror or have enjoyed any of Hill’s previous work.
“Throttle” (with Stephen King): Written as part of an homage to Richard Matheson, this story twists the premise of “Duel” around, making the trucker the hero. Violent and bloody, it is no pun to say this story moves.
“Dark Carousel”: In the notes, Hill confesses to shamelessly riffing on King in this tale of young adults having fun at the expense of the operator of a rather sinister carousel. The premise is absurd on its face, but Hill makes it credible. The ending is great, too.
“Wolverton Station” answers the question, “What would you do if you found yourself on a train in England that seemed to be filled with chatty, refined..and hungry wolves?” Goofy and gruesome, this is the lightest piece in the collection and is good furry fun.
“By the Silver Water of Lake Champlain” starts off-kilter and kind of ends the same way. It’s a melancholic story about kids finding what may be the corpse of a fabled lake monster that captures the absurd logic of kids. And adults.
“Faun” is a twist on the mystic-door-to-another-world story that encapsulates the lack of happy endings in these stories. The biggest knock I have here is that none of the characters were especially likable, and I felt that hurt the overall effect of the story.
“Late Returns” is about a bookmobile that seems to attract ghosts. Hill weaves together the various encounters with the protagonist’s own struggle to come to terms with the deaths of his parents. One of the best in the collection, vintage Hill.
“All I Care About is You” features a rebellious teenage girl in the not-distant-future and the Clockwork automaton that acts as her personal assistant for an hour (after she feeds a couple of tokens into it). This one I immediately started thinking of how the girl would get her comeuppance after the story ended. This left me more satisfied with the story than I would have been otherwise.
“Thumbprint”: A tough as hell woman returns from duty in Iraq, only to find herself hunted on her home turf. Again, the story is delivered well, but the characters are unlikable.
“The Devil on the Staircase”: I read the ebook version of the collection, which dispenses with the staircase effect of the type found in the print edition. I’m kind of glad I didn’t have to read the story that way. Again, horrible people doing horrible things. This is probably the weakest story for me. It never seemed to generate much heat.
“Twittering from the Circus of the Dead”: A story told through tweets. I’ve done this, too. It’s a fun way to present a story and Hill pulls it off well here, right down to the cheeky ending. The people in this story are not horrible for a change.
“Mums” is a devastating look at a “separatist” family and how their lives come unglued while tending to their farm. Here Hill takes a page from Paul Tremblay, presenting seemingly supernatural elements that could also be explained by addled minds, dreams and such. Creepy and sad in equal measure, it captures a more extreme side of America that has all too often come to the forefront in 2020.
“In the Tall Grass” (with Stephen King) is an old-fashioned horror story about people getting lost in a field of very strange and tall grass. This has King’s prints all over it, to good effect.
“You Are Released” was previously featured in the Flight or Fright collection and remains one of my favorite Hill short stories. It’s a harrowing look at the end of the world as viewed through the eyes of the passengers on a commercial flight. I don’t know if the story resonates more with me as someone who grew up in the shadow of the cold war, but this one really hits.
View all my reviews
Snack-free, Day 14 of 30: Some snacking
But also some exercising!
I did not feel well this morning. Some combination of the allergies, smoke and who knows what left me feeling clobbered, tired and wanting to stay in bed. Which I did, for awhile.
This led me to return briefly to using food for comfort, which I partly regretted later. The snacking:
- A Clif bar
- A small piece of toast covered with the last of the Nutella
So it could have been worse.
In better news, I weighed myself at the usual time this morning and came in at 170.9 pounds, which is up over Friday, but not egregiously so, and is pretty decent for a weekend of indulgence and virtually nothing but take-out food.
For the rest of the week and the month my goal is to get under 170, stay there consistently and begin the march to 160 pounds.
Treadmill walk: Smoke edition
Because with the entire west coast on fire and the smoke heading north (here), going for an outdoor walk or run right now seems ill-advised.
I was actually not feeling that great today, a combination of allergies, smoke and who knows what else, but I figured at the very least a treadmill workout would clear my sinuses for awhile. and it did. For awhile.
I tried my Blaux portable AC thinger and it provided minimal cooling. The Vornado fan, set to High, is much more effective at keeping me cool, because moving lots of air helps more than slowly cooling all the air.
In terms of performance, it was very similar to the last workout on August 31st.
Stats:
Pace: 9:26/km (9:28 km/h) Time: 30:05 (30:03) Distance: 3.18 km (3.17 km) Calories burned: 290 (300) BPM: 138 (139)
Snack-free, Day 13 of 30: Miss Vickies steers me wrong
Today was kind of a cheat day, as we were returning from Parksville and snacked on some Miss Vickies potato chips while waiting for the ferry. They were yummy and I’ll regret it tomorrow.
I have no weight-related news to report again, as my morning was once again scale-free at the house in Parksville. I suspect tomorrow will see me having to restart the trek back to 170 and below anew.
UPDATE: For fun (?) I weighed myself after dinner, which I never do because that is when I will be my most weightful. Yes, that is now a word. The result?
173.3 pounds, up 3.3 pounds since Friday. Zounds! But my body fat percentage dropped a full half percent. Yay! But Fitbit now considers me slightly overweight again. Boo.
We’ll get the usual numbers tomorrow morning.
Snack-free, Day 12 of 30: Technically no snacking
This was a full day spent house-sitting in Parksville, over on smoke-filled Vancouver Island. To be fair, everywhere is smoke-filled right now, due to fire all up and down the west coast of the U.S.
I did not snack as such, sticking only to the three meals, but the meals were not exactly calorie-light:
- Breakfast: Sausage McMuffin with Egg and hash brown
- Lunch: Chow mien with lemon honey ginger chicken
- Dinner: Tropical Hawaiian pizza from Panago
Plus a small cup of chocolate mousse for dessert after dinner. This was probably a combined 50,000 calories. It just means I’ll have to dedicate myself that much more on return to the mainland!
No weight report today as the Parksville abode does not have a scale. I’ll just assume (hope) I am under, say, 174 pounds. Maybe.
Snack-free, Day 11 of 30: A little cheesy
Today, as we were heading out to the ferry to Vancouver Island for a weekend of house sitting, I had a few cheese strips, but I was otherwise good.
Weight-wise I edged up a bit to 170 pounds even, but that could easily be due to water or other random body things, not because I’m secretly scarfing giant bags of pork rinds.
Trains to tubs
At the start of the year I set what I felt was a modest goal for reading books: 26. One book every two weeks. I’m not a fast reader so giving myself two weeks to read a book seemed entirely reasonable, assuming I wasn’t going to read the equivalent of Stephen King’s Complete and Uncut Edition of The Stand each time.
Almost all of my reading is done during my commute to work. It is a long commute–just over an hour each way–and I previously would just zone out and listen to music, which was nice in its own way, I suppose. Switching to reading significantly boosted the number of books I read, though, and I feel this is a better use of my time. For one, it allows me to explore more new authors than I might normally, because I have such a generous block of time set aside just for reading.
I’ve not moved much from my preferred genres, though. Some things are harder to break from.
At the start of this year I was in a bit of a funk. Overweight and struggling to get back on track, unhappy with work life, unhappy with having such a long commute and losing a significant chunk of my day to it, reading or not. The end result is I read less than normal, opting more for the blissful escape of music piped through noise-canceling earphones, possibly the best indirectly-related transit purchase I’ve ever made. Sometimes I put them on and don’t even listen to music, just the velvet silence they provide on an otherwise loud, roaring train.
I was keeping up with my book goal, though only just until mid-March, when the pandemic hit. From March 18th until this past Wednesday my commute was gone (we are now obligated to go in once a week to provide on-site support for the few classes that are still happening on campus). Without the commute, my reading place was gone. Sure, I could just use the same time to keep reading, but that’s not the way most people work, I suspect.
You find your routine disrupted, you make changes and adjust. For me, this meant getting up later in the morning. Not sleeping in, but simply getting closer to the proper amount of sleep. A net positive. For the space where the afternoon commute existed I now exercise. Both of these things have made me feel better and have improved my health. I honestly don’t want to go back to a daily commute. The thought sours my stomach.
But what of the reading? Goodreads tracks your reading challenge and lets you know if you are on track, ahead or behind. I fell behind, by a few books, then by a seemingly insurmountable number. I was eight books behind at one point.
As of today that number is about to be cut in half to four and I now think I can catch up and meet my goal. How did I do this?
By taking baths.
My Kobo Libra ereader is water-resistant, so there’s no danger in getting it a little wet, so it has become my companion in the tub. I get in and read for maybe an hour or so, then tend to the actual bath part. It is a very relaxing way to read.
I re-read almost all of The Amityville Horror in the bathtub. While the book wasn’t really worth re-reading, it proved the experience of reading in the tub was a worthwhile one.
I’ve also started reading more often on my iPad when I go to bed (yes, I know they say this is bad, blue light keeps you awake and so on, but I don’t read for long, honest!) and so I typically have two books on the go.
So far this has been working and it’s getting me back on track on my reading goals for the year (I’m more goal-oriented than I realized, I think). The fatigue of the pandemic has been pushed aside, even as I find myself wearing masks and being more cautious than ever, because I need to get back to just doing stuff. And if that means reading in the bathtub, that’s what I’m doing.
I do need to get more bubble bath, though.
Walk 9: Slow walk, faster run
My pace was a whopping 21 seconds slower today, as I once again struggled to get my walking pace under 9:00/km–which I finally managed by the fourth km, just before switching to running.
The first running km was over six minutes, but the second was a pretty zippy 5:35/km and I was satisfied with the fact that I was able to keep running the whole length of the trail, as it was 31ºC at the time. I was once again saved by low humidity (only 32%), the trail being mostly in the shade and the occasional breeze actually feeling a slight bit cool, almost fall-like.
The lower strain also meant a lower BPM. I actually felt pretty good overall, despite the heat.
I will probably try for another full 5K run the next time I am out. Excelsior!
Walk 9 Average pace: 8:15/km Location: Brunette River trail Distance: 7.55 km Time: 1:02:16 Weather: Sunny Temp: 31ºC Humidity: 32% Wind: light BPM: 122 Weight: 169.6 pounds Total distance to date: 68.88 km Devices: Apple Watch Series 5, iPhone 8
Snack-free, Day 10 of 30: A little snacking, a little exercise
The snacking today was a few small cubes of cheese and a piece of toast with (no sugar added) jam, so I wasn’t scarfing bags of donuts.
And I did a full walk/run workout, even though it was a rather unseasonably warm 31ºC out.
But the best news came early in the day when I stepped on the scale and saw I had lost 1.4 pounds, dropping to 169.6 pounds, the first dip below 170 this year if you don’t count flu-related weight loss (which I don’t, because that never stays off unless you find some way to perpetually have the flu, which is probably not the greatest idea).
I may very well be up again tomorrow, but I have now tasted life below 170 and I shall taste it some more.
The Masked Commuter
Which would be me.
For the first time since March 17th, I went into the office today. Theoretically I was the only one there, though a few others showed up or passed through, along with one cleaner and a couple of the guys delivering stuff.
Work itself was a bit odd, just because of the way the campus is set up to allow for safe movement in these kooky pandemic times. Buildings felt more like security checkpoints, with only one point of entrance in most cases, and said entrance staffed by, well, security. The vending machines, currently the only source of edibles, were poorly stocked or broken and I gave up on them. My coworker took mercy on me and bought me a steeped tea from the Tim Hortons a few blocks over.
Speaking of Tims, this lets me segue to my main topic of this post: My first long commute since the virus hit. This is something I had been quietly dreading for months and I was bracing for the SkyTrain to be packed and awful.
To my surprise (but not as far as delight), the trains were substantially less busy than normal. I often don’t get a seat when leaving Sapperton station, but today it was not an issue. The Canada Line was a little worse, only because it runs those runty two-car trains (great planning there), but even if wasn’t anywhere close to capacity.
So in terms of crowding, it was actually okay. I never had anyone sit beside me across five trains and on the three that have single seats, I was able to nab one.
Translink has a mandatory mask policy, but enforcement is soft, as in, there is basically no enforcement as far as I can see. They just kind of hope everyone will wear masks. And nearly everyone did. In all, I saw five people not wearing masks, two on the way in and three on the way back:
- Three (all young men) were drinking coffee from Tim Hortons, so I now view them as unintentional contributors to the pandemic.
- A fourth was a young woman who ate a pizza slice from Broadway to Joyce stations. Once she was done, she did not put on a mask. I stared at her the entire time she was eating. She never noticed.
- The fifth person was another young man, a hulking Aryan type with close-cropped blond hair and tattoos all over everything. When he boarded the train, he threw his pack onto a seat, then plopped down beside it, staring intently into his phone. He had a demeanor of someone just begging to be asked why he wasn’t wearing a mask, so he could explain in a loud voice and through the use of colorful metaphors. No one asked.
I wore a mask and because it isn’t designed for glasses, it fogged up regularly, which was not great. Riding in the newer air-conditioned cars helped, riding in one of the ancient 300 year old cars did not.
I can’t decide how the combo of cap, mask and giant headphones makes me look. Like I’m taking part in some kind of bad cosplay, perhaps. Also, I find a certain irony in the GNC slogan “Live well” being on a mask I’m wearing because we are in the middle of a global pandemic that has killed hundreds of thousands of people. Even better (worse), GNC is permanently shutting down because of the pandemic.
In all, the commute was not as bad as I had expected, but seeing so many people wearing masks provided another tangible piece of evidence that we have slipped past whatever we considered normal times into where we are now.
Also, though I didn’t need a pandemic to remind me, that twice-a-day hour plus commute? It still really sucks. I like having those two hours back. I sleep more, I exercise more and feel better. And even not counting the commute, I was struck by how awful the office was. The air quality is terrible–my eyes felt itchy and it was cool to the point of nearly being cold, my chair is not comfortable, I have a mushy keyboard, the lighting is harsh, the monitors are kind of lousy. Really, my home setup is superior in every way. I honestly would be happy to never step foot into another office ever again.
I’ll see what can be done to make that impossible dream happen.
In the meantime, I’ll look for better masks and hope that future commutes don’t turn into COVID nightmare sardine cans.
Snack-free, Day 9 of 30: Snack-free
Absolutely no cheating today. I was, in fact, a bit peckish by the time dinner came around. We had take-out (bad) but it was chicken and a salad (good). I didn’t do my post-work exercise because I actually went into the office today and had the subsequent Very Long Commute™, but I did clock almost a 3 km walk around the Langara Golf Course trail, as lumpy and root-filled as ever.
My weight stayed the same, a bit surprising perhaps, given I weighed myself much earlier in the morning than usual, coming in once again at 171 pounds even.
Snack-free, Day 8 of 30
A few plain tortilla chips (maybe six?) and some salsa, and a small piece of toast and some jam. Other than that, stuck to the meals and came in under my calorie goal. I’m actually a tiny bit hungry now.
Weight was unchanged, staying at 171. It was a weird and sort of awful day and I feel light-headed from, I think, the nasal spray I use when my allergies get so bad I can’t breathe through my nose anymore.
But at least the entire world isn’t literally on fire.
Yet.