I Love... Whodunnits

Not this Who, but close. Very, very close. Via. 

OK, here's something you should know about me if you're ever going to watch a movie, TV show, or read a book with me ever:

I hate suspense.

I don't mean "suspense" as in when an author leaves you hanging at the end of a book in a series.  It's more like the "what's going to happen next? Is there a killer in the next room? Is this character going to die?" (If what I'm watching is Game of Thrones, then, yeah, probably). It isn't that I think suspense is contrived or stupid, or whatever - I hate it because it winds me up and makes me anxious and nervous and I feel like I have to leave the room because there is TOO MUCH TENSION GUYS. WHY IS THIS STILL HAPPENING. Suspense makes me completely unable to watch or enjoy a perfectly good movie or TV show or book or whatever.

(It doesn't have to be serious suspense. Hell, when I was ten I left the room while watching The Little Mermaid 2 because yeah. I'm a baby.)

But for WHATEVER reason, a classic whodunnit mystery is one of my favorite things in the whole wide world.*

I think it what sold me on the whodunnit front, no question asked, was Agatha Christie's absolutely marvelous book, And Then There Were None. Agatha Christie is now one of my absolute favorite authors (usually for this precise reason), but then in the eighth grade, when the only thing I was reading was Harry Potter fanfiction? Oh my god it blew my mind. Agatha Christie's books are famous for being impossible to predict, and And Then There Were None is no exception.

I'm not going to spoil the ending for you, but And Then There Were None was a light in the dark. It was a lightening bolt that I needed to make reading even more active and fun than it already was.**

I moved on from And Then There Were None to other Agatha Christie books. And then I saw her play, The Mousetrap, which is like f*cking whodunnit theatre. And while I really liked what I was finding, I always felt like there should be... more.

Enter Clue.

J'accuse! Via.

I was a huge fan of the board game when I was a kid (I mean, come on, I was allowed to accuse my mom of murder, what kid wouldn't enjoy that), but for whatever reason, I had never decided to watch the movie until this past summer, when I was in the middle of a Netflix haze and decided that I might as well. What's the worst that can happen? I figured. Maybe I'll stop watching it because I hate it. That's the worst. 

Well, I didn't hate it - I loved Clue completely. (And have rewatched it at least twice because it's necessary)

I'm not going to pretend for a minute that Clue is a serious movie in any respect. It's dramatic and hilarious and homicidal, and basically had me trying to figure out the murder(s) for myself as best as I could. I failed, obviously - but it got me thinking: Why aren't there more Whodunnit movies? I've been trying to get a hold of Gosford Park for a while (I let it slip through my clutches because I suck), and in looking for lists online, the movies suggested are... well, they're old. They're old movies, and a bunch of them are just adapted from Agatha Christie books and I think that's silly. There need to be more Whodunnit movies. They're suspenseful in all the best ways, they're creative, and sometimes they're silly or overly dramatic, but I don't care! They're great!

Sorry, Wrong Number is Grade-A drama. Via.

So, this is my grown up Christmas list  reasonable request: More Whodunnits in 2k14, please. I'm looking for them as best as I can as far as books are concerned, but come on, guys - this is 2014 and we have face computers and wrist phones and we don't have more Whodunnit movies? That needs to change. Whodunnits are fun and crazy and dramatic and they engage people in ways that are pretty unique to the genre, and they're one of the few ways I like not knowing what's going to happen. They can be scary, but they're, like - the good scary I guess? (But that's more subjective) I may still strongly dislike/hate suspense, but thanks to this awesome genre of books and movies available to me, I'm able to recognize the necessity of it.



* I'm trying really hard not to swear too much. You should appreciate my restraint. 
** Or maybe it was Scooby Doo instead...

I Love... Bite Me!

So, one of the problems in writing a book blog is that it's hard to talk about books I've read in the past; I want this blog to be current and keep it as a sort of diary about the books that I'm reading now and my thoughts on them. So I decided that I wanted to start a new blog feature titled "I Love..." Due to the weird, hectic nature of my summer vacation schedule, I'm still trying to figure out a decent update time. Hopefully once I go back to school, I'll be able to commit to something concrete, but for now it's whenever I can get either the time or the gumption to write.

But enough about that. This post, I want to talk about the magical, fantastical, hilarious and revolutionary webcomic Bite Me! by Dylan Meconis.

Via

Some background about me: I really love comics. 

I'm not one of those people that can name issue numbers and list obscure comic details that only a "real fan" would know (which, really, the entire concept of a "real comics fan" is just bullshit). But I am familiar with certain artists, and I do love and appreciate how some stories that can be told in comics aren't possible in just prose. I am all about visuals, and as someone who personally loves to draw, I love taking in comics pages just so I can look at the artwork. 

But because I didn't have a disposable income as a child, and had (correction: still have) a mother who really would rather have me reading "literature" than comics, I had to find other (read: free) alternatives. Enter, webcomics.

Dylan Meconis's Bite Me! was one of my first discoveries, and it has more than held up over the years. It's about a group of vampires trying to rescue their coven from French revolutionaries. There are tons of jokes about Robespierre, mobs, how to raise a riot, and chickens. (Revolutions are a surprisingly fabulous time and place to make jokes about the ruling class.) Meconis is absolutely hilarious, and the variety of characters means that each one is a screwball in their own right.

Claire. Literally one of my favorite characters ever. Via. 

The art is absolutely fantastic, and this work (? what else should I call it?) continues to inspire me every time I read it. I'm asking for it for my birthday, but it's all online!

Although Bite Me! is over, the story (kind of) continues in her comic Family Man, with the werewolf Luther Levy. Like Bite Me!, Family Man is fantastic, and I cannot recommend it enough.

Has anyone else read Bite Me! before? Or is anyone else interested in webcomics? List the title in the comments, and I'll give them a try!

Happy reading!
-M