Day 56: Soulless

Soulless by Gail Carriger.  ISBN: 9780316056632. 

Sorry for the last post on this book, I know it was very close to being a book review.  My intention was really to discuss mythos.  I haven't been sleeping well lately, so we'll blame it on that and not on laziness.  

So this is going to be a rather specific moment to focus on, but while at a party Tarabotti comments about how raw oysters remind her of "nasal excrement."  This reminds of my first time eating raw oysters, which I will happily recount here.  This might not be the most interesting of posts, but since I'm not getting any feedback...yes, I'm blaming the victim.

The first, and only time, I ate raw oysters was when my fiance and I visited my mother for Thanksgiving last year.  This also happens to be close enough to her birthday, which is the 24th and fell on a Wednesday in 2009.  My mother happens to love seafood, so we went to a seafood place.  Her boyfriend asked if anyone wanted raw oysters, and since my fiance and I had never had them we were game to try them.  While I think "nasal excrement" appropriately captures the texture, I liken the taste to "licking the side of a boat."  As in the saltwater faring variety.

Perhaps I did not let it "slide down my throat" as you're supposed to.  I do have a tendency to chew my food and it's a habit that's awfully hard to break.  I even hate eating soups that contain more broth than vegetables, etc. (unless they're of the thick and creamy variety).  I think this says something about what I consider food.  If you have to chew it, even just a little bit, it's food.  Otherwise I'm not really interested.  I'm glad I tried raw oysters.  I would consider trying them again, but if they somehow became extinct or endangered and I never got to eat them again I wouldn't cry about it too much.  Well, except for the fact that we'd killed yet another species.

It's almost funny that I don't like oysters, to be honest.  There are so few foods that I dislike so intensely.  Most I will tolerate and eat if they are placed in front of me.  In order for me to eat oysters again, I think a few things would have to happen.  First, I think I would have to be fairly drunk.  Second, I think enough time would have to pass that my tastes in food change, or that I would have forgotten the unpleasantness of the taste and feeling of eating an oyster.  By the way, I love sushi and even enjoy eating octopus and eel, so it's not entirely the ick factor.  I also enjoy mussels (although I've never eaten those raw).

Other than the encounter with the raw oysters, which my mom's boyfriend had to more or less finish by himself, the dinner was delicious.  Apparently there were also about six or seven other birthday guests because we were bombarded by the song over and over again that evening.  My mother refrained from telling anyone, because honestly I think the waitstaff had been abused enough that evening.

I love food, and have a strong attachment to certain foods, even those that repulse me.  I'd be interested to hear stories from other people about foods they met and didn't like, or that have special meaning for them.  Please feel free to share in the comment section (now called "book chats").

Day 55: Soulless

Soulless by Gail Carriger.  ISBN: 9780316056632.

I think the reason I love vampire and werewolf stories so much is how old the legends are, and how much they share while still having unique cultural and regional differences.  I love when people play with the hows and whys of vampiredom.  I might even have been okay with sparkling if it had been more subtle and had some sort of pseudo-science attached to it.  Of course, nothing could have saved that other series from bad writing, so we'll just move on.

In this particular series, vampires and werewolves and ghosts exist, or rather are able to exist, because they have an excess of soul.  This happens to be a world in which dualities exist, so because there are people with an excess of soul, there are also people with no soul.  These are called preternaturals, and any supernatural that comes into contact with one returns to their mortal state as long as the contact is maintained.  These people are strangely presented as having no innate sense of morality, so technically they would be more dangerous than werewolves or vampires, the latter being able to find willing victims now that society knows about them.

Since preternaturals are extremely rare in Carriger's world, the only one we have to judge is Alexis Tarabotti and to some degree her deceased, but frequently mentioned, father.  Tarabotti is presented as overly strong willed (meaning she has any will at all in Victorian England) and somewhat socially crass.  I think I would have liked to have seen her be more so, and perhaps evincing signs of Asperger's.  I mean, it would be an interesting correlation, not that I think people with Asperger's lack souls, but there might be some correlation of soulless behavior with a lack of empathy, etc.  Then again, I'm not certain why Carriger didn't go the psychopath route either.  In any case, Tarabotti apparently reads a whole bunch on philosophy and moral development and this somehow solves the problem of her having no built-in moral center.

Ah, another thing about the mythos of Carriger's world that I found interesting were the social dynamics of the supernatural creatures.  Werewolves are apparently the more social of the creatures and have lent England's military their social order.  While they're supposedly immortal (or at least long lived), they tend to fight each other, so they don't live nearly as long as vampires.  Vampires tend to live in hives, with a queen being dominant.  Werewolves also place Alpha Females above Alpha Males, but since there are so few of them it hardly seems worth mentioning except that, once again, this is almost hilariously indecorous for Victorian times.  Both supernatural groups tend to shun outsiders, although werewolves more so.  Lone vampires are seen as kind of eccentric, but can apparently gain some status if they're old enough and not too crazy.

In any case, I love new social dynamics and the new stuff made this an interesting read.  Carriger seems to have a good understanding of how much is too much to throw at her readers all at once, and none of the plot or character got derailed or detracted by it.  I was even pleased with the touch of smuttiness in the book, and while we don't see any premarital sex scenes, this is more due to individual decision by the characters rather than blatant abstinence only Mormon driven drivel. 


For something slightly related, the New York Public Library staged a fabulous event where Improv Now stormed the building in ghost and Ghost Buster costumes to the obvious enjoyment of their patrons.  More here.