What I\u2019ve Been Reading Lately: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Unbelievably one more week in October. I\u2019m still not totally caught up on spooky season reading schedule, this week was not<\/em> the week I read two books, and Noirvember is coming. How could I be upset, though, when this week\u2019s book gave me (and its characters) so much meat to chew on? How could I be upset, when this absolute spellcaster of an author has once again managed to overcome one of my bigger irritants (neo-Victorian syntax) by playing to three of my greatest loves: human-animal hybrids, the revolt of minding-their-business people against soulless capitalists, and Yucat\u00e1n. What marvelous novel this is. I\u2019m talking, of course, about The Daughter of Doctor Moreau<\/em> by Silvia Moreno-Garcia. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Here we have a re-contextualization of H.G. Wells\u2019s The Island of Doctor Moreau <\/em>(without Marlon Brando\u2019s ice bucket hat<\/a>) set against the backdrop of the 1847 Caste War of Yucat\u00e1n (the events of the novel taking place in the 1870s). This Dr. Moreau is no mere mad scientist; no, he is backed by a wealthy hacendado who is hoping the human-animal hybrids he creates will be willing and docile workers. The Maya that this man and his ilk have previously enslaved via debt peonage are rising up, \u201cimporting\u201d Chinese or African \u201cworkers\u201d is too expensive, so\u2026what if we can sci-fi up some farmhands and get fat off aguardiente while soaking up some Yucat\u00e1n sun? Well. Call the doctor that was driven out of France. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The drama at this mad scientist\u2019s remote estate is not the creation of these hybrids, but the interpersonal problems of our two narrators, Carlota (the eponymous daughter) and Montgomery, a British drunkard who owes a lifetime\u2019s worth of debt to the hacendado. Carlota is coming of age, coming into her own, trying to figure out who she is. Montgomery is trying to keep everyone protected from the world a little longer. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The prose here is<\/em> gorgeous, the characters expertly drawn. A huge strength is how little Moreno-Garcia focuses on the animality of the hybrids, simply introducing us to Lupe and Cachito (Carlota\u2019s closest confidants) and occasionally remarking on their animalistic trait. As a reader, you might be prepared to go in gawking at the horror\u2014personally, I was bracing for a different Brando movie, expecting to see the brutal decay of Colonel Kurtz\u2019s camp. Instead, it\u2019s a portrait of a relatively peaceful (despite everything) country estate whose tranquility is interrupted by a confused girl growing into womanhood and discovering her strength, the deceptions of her evil father unraveling, and the greed of the kind of man who thinks he can own people exploding. It\u2019s lyrical, thrilling, and Romantic. I feel as though I am going to wake up one day with a shelf full of Silvia Moreno-Garcia books, and I will not complain. <\/p>\n\n\n\n LINKS!<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n New The Line Break<\/em> podcast! This month, we were ecstatic to welcome the switch-hitting witch of Wrigley Field, Sandra Marchetti<\/a>! It was a blast talking baseball and how an image is more than a visual. Check it out: Spotify<\/a> | Apple<\/a><\/p><\/li>\n\n\n\n Inside the quest to bring basketball hoops back to Beverly<\/a>, with reporting by Crystal Paul at Block Club<\/em>. My stance is simple: bring back the hoops, install more hoops, let more people play basketball. <\/p><\/li>\n\n\n\n Turning into part of the trees\u2019 hive mind? Honestly, better than most afterlives I\u2019ve been told about. \u201cPlease stop trying to run\u2026We just want to sing together.\u201d Check out this fun little flash in <\/a>hex<\/a><\/em> from Danai Christopoulou, \u201cWhen We Became Trees.\u201d<\/a><\/p><\/li>\n\n\n\n Hart Crane is a poet whose work I really loved in undergrad but haven\u2019t returned to since. Still, there are warm feelings whenever I think of him. In that spirit, I enjoyed this poem in <\/a>Bending Genres<\/a><\/em> from Will Staveley, \u201cThe Bridge.\u201d<\/a><\/p><\/li>\n\n\n\n Brendan put me on to this piece from <\/a>The Anarchist Library<\/a><\/em>, \u201cAbolish Restaurants.\u201d<\/a> It\u2019s long, and a touch rambling (says this writer of this blog, ha), but well worth a read, well worth thinking about. I\u2019ve been a restaurant worker, and when the article says \u201cthe goal of most restaurant workers is to not be a restaurant worker,\u201d that\u2019s accurate. Obviously, I am a big lover of food, an unabashed Anthony Bourdain fanboy, and someone who gets a great deal of joy out of preparing food for others. It is amazing how working a restaurant can beat all of that out of you. What is it that we want out of restaurants? This may be a topic for a Wednesday blog. Regardless, we have a lot we need to rethink as a society, and to echo George Orwell in one of the epigraphs, \u201cit is strange that thousands of people in a great modern city should spend their waking hours swabbing dishes in hot dens underground. The question I am raising is why this life goes on–\u201d<\/p><\/li>\n\n\n\n Back to Block Club<\/em>, with a story from Atavia Reed on the Envisioning Liberation<\/a><\/em> exhibit from Chicago Lawn Studio and Shirien Damra<\/a>. I haven\u2019t been yet, but this exhibit opens with an eye towards uplifting the South Side and imagining a better world through mutual aid and artistic solidarity. That\u2019s the good stuff, dudes\u2014doesn\u2019t hurt that the art featured in that Block Club<\/em> article is totally kickass, too. <\/p><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n What\u2019re you still doing here? Go read Vine<\/em>!<\/p>\n\n\n\n If you\u2019re a service worker, may you clean up in tips this weekend. And maybe pass that \u201cabolish restaurants\u201d article along to your coworkers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Sorry you got an email, <\/p>\n\n\n\n Chris<\/p>\n\n\n![\"book:](\"https:\/\/substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com\/public\/images\/4bf3a19c-973c-4a60-abca-ffc6d6504585_3024x4032.jpeg\")
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