2018 Reading: The Crow: Lazarus Heart

#16 A book with an animal in the title

God, I forgot how much I love Billy's writing. Ugh, it's just so flowing and beautiful. Whole passages about severed limbs and vivisection read like poetry set to soothing classical music. If only we could find someone with an amazing voice to read all Poppy Z. Brite books, I would fall asleep every night listening to the sounds of Steve and Ghost driving in the dark, to Zillah and Nothing opening a vein to share a drink of fresh blood, to Zach and Trevor's psychodelic fever dream of insanity and talking cartoon animals, to Andrew and Jay discovering their love for each other over a dismembered human head... Every. Night.

And I have gotten into the habit of breaking books up into their chapters and pairing them with other books with the same amount of chapters so that I can read more than one book at a time, but I found myself wanting to power through this one all at once, even though I knew that I would hate myself later. UGH, it was such a tough decision to stop after every chapter and move on to the other book. But, I wanted savor each chapter BECAUSE IT WAS SO GOOD!

...

Sorry, went off on a tangent there.

The Crow is one of my favorite movies, based on one of my favorite graphic novels of all time. Always has been. And to put that concept together with my favorite author of all time? Yes, please!

2017 Reading: D*U*C*K

#36 A book written by someone you admire

**Note: For the purposes of this author, I will use the male pronouns in my description. Poppy Z. Brite (Melissa Ann Brite) has, since publishing this book, become Billy Martin. So, though I will forever call him "Poppy," I will use appropriate pronouns when referring to the author in my book review.**

It's been a while since I've read anything by Poppy (Billy, now) let alone anything having to do with Rickey and G-Man. I always love reading PZB's work because it's always vastly different than anything else I've ever read before in my life. His books could have recurring characters (like Steve and Ghost) but they are still so very different from each other that you can sort of forget that they are set in the same universe. And the fact that he writes about the south (not just New Orleans) if fascinating to me.

He is the reason that I look at New Orleans the way that I do. I mean, I hate the place and I don't ever think that I could live there for long periods of time, but listening to how he describes it, I can see the beauty in the filth and depravity.

These characters always make me wonder if they are based on Billy himself and his husband Gary. And if so, which is which? Gary is even the real name of the character "G-Man," but is that a coincidence? Or does Billy think of himself as the Rickey in their relationship? Maybe I'm looking too far into it than I should be, but I can't help it with him. I love his work and I don't think I will ever get tired of reading and rereading everything I can get my hands on of his.

I liked this book. It was short, yes, but it was a nice reminder of the other books in this series, especially the ones that dealt with how Rickey and G-Man got together. I love those books.