Tag: Tracking the Chupacabra

WWW Wednesday – December 14, 2022

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WWW Wednesday is a weekly book meme run by Sam over at Taking on a World of Words. Check out her post and others over on her blog!

The Three Ws are:

What are you currently reading?
What did you recently finish reading?
What do you think you’ll read next?

Currently Reading

Nothing to update here this week.

Recently Finished

Tracking the ChupacabraA couple of days ago I managed to finish reading Tracking the Chupacabra by Benjamin Radford. It feels weird that it took me as long as it did, since it’s not even 200 pages long with all said and done. I think perhaps the font size and number of words per page makes it appear deceptively short. At any rate, I really like this book, but I would say my experience with it was just good not great. It was well written and well researched, but what stood out most to me was that I am perhaps not the target audience for something like this; it was more or less preaching to the choir the entire time. I needed no persuading, it was not a topic I was even agnostic about. Still, it made for an interesting read and I’m glad I did it.

Reading Next

Manga Diary of a Male Porn Star 2It is becoming more and more apparent to me that I will probably not be reading another full book this month, other than A Carnival of Snackery by David Sedaris, if I can manage to actually pick the damn thing back up again. Nevertheless, I have some comics I’d like to get through to get myself to a certain point in my Goodreads challenge, even if I’m far from my goal of 50 books overall. I’ve just been able to borrow a copy of the second volume of Manga Diary of a Male Porn Star by Kaeruno Erefante, which I’m looking forward to as a nice amusing read. It’s been a little over a year since I read the first volume, but I think I remember enough that that won’t be a problem.

Until next time, thank you for reading! Feel free to share your own post down below.

WWW Wednesday – December 7, 2022

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www_wednesdays

WWW Wednesday is a weekly book meme run by Sam over at Taking on a World of Words. Check out her post and others over on her blog!

The Three Ws are:

What are you currently reading?
What did you recently finish reading?
What do you think you’ll read next?

Currently Reading

Tracking the ChupacabraI’ve managed to make some more decent progress in Tracking the Chupacabra by Benjamin Radford since last week. The chapters I read through were a lot more up my alley, as they dealt with looking into actual supposed sightings and even recovered bodies of supposed chupacabras, as well as the experiences of the people who found them. I was especially interested in one account where the woman who found the body, who has turned it into something rather lucrative for herself, remarked about assumed photos of the creature from 100 years ago. It’s fascinating that the common assumption among people, including myself growing up, is that the chupacabra is old folklore. The most startling thing about this book is still the fact that accounts of the creature only date back to 1995. I want to try and get this done before next week, as I really need to move onto other books if I’m going to get them finished before the year is out.

Recently Finished

Nothing this week either. I really need to crack open some comic books.

Reading Next

The Myth of SisyphusWith only three weeks remaining in December, I’m really not sure if I can start anything bigger than graphic novels or Galatea by Madeline Miller. I really want to try though, so we’ll have to see how things go. What is most important to me is that I finish reading A Carnival of Snackery by David Sedaris rather than something I haven’t even started yet, though, so I will be prioritizing that. Another prospective read that has popped up for me though is The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus, which I bought a little while ago. It’s only a little under 150 pages long, despite looking longer than that, so I’m considering maybe squeezing that in. We shall see.

Until next time, thank you for reading! Feel free to share your own post down below.

WWW Wednesday – November 30, 2022

RyanLeave a comment
www_wednesdays

WWW Wednesday is a weekly book meme run by Sam over at Taking on a World of Words. Check out her post and others over on her blog!

The Three Ws are:

What are you currently reading?
What did you recently finish reading?
What do you think you’ll read next?

Currently Reading

Tracking the ChupacabraI am ashamed to say I’ve still kept my streak going with neglecting A Carnival of Snackery by David Sedaris. I have to finish it before the end of the year or I will lose my mind, though, so it’s getting done one way or another. In the meantime, I have been able to make some decent progress on Tracking the Chupacabra by Benjamin Radford despite the last six days having been busier with one of my jobs. It finished up examining the folkloric side of vampires and the like, with the latest chapter recounting the author undertaking an expedition to Nicaragua to search the jungle for the creature. I may have been projecting, but the chapter had a tongue-in-cheek feel that I related to but also found myself impatient with. I can gather that the author doesn’t take the creature’s existence seriously and nor do I, but this resulted in this chapter feeling more like a waste of time. It was still fun to read, but I just couldn’t shake that feeling either.

Recently Finished

Nothing this week.

Reading Next

Wolf in White VanI still intend to read Galatea by Madeline Miller sometime soon. I probably just need to set aside a single sitting to do so. With it being December tomorrow and knowing that visiting home for Christmas will likely result in no time spent reading there, I have to wonder what other books I can actually expect myself to finish before the New Year. If you don’t know, I don’t like books to bleed between years. I’m sure this is a common sentiment, but I’m equally sure others aren’t held back by this, so it bears bringing up. I’ll have to take some time to consider what I think is actually realistic for me; some of the books on my to-read list for this year, like Wolf in White Van by John Darnielle, don’t seem to be too long, so I may pick one of those.

Until next time, thank you for reading! Feel free to share your own post down below.

WWW Wednesday – November 23, 2022

RyanLeave a comment
www_wednesdays

WWW Wednesday is a weekly book meme run by Sam over at Taking on a World of Words. Check out her post and others over on her blog!

The Three Ws are:

What are you currently reading?
What did you recently finish reading?
What do you think you’ll read next?

Currently Reading

Tracking the ChupacabraI managed to get a nice modest start on Tracking the Chupacabra by Benjamin Radford finally, though regrettably I didn’t get to any of A Carnival of Snackery by David Sedaris as well. At any rate, I’m enjoying the book quite a bit, as Radford’s style is making the subject a lot of fun to read while still being critical and informative. One of the early chapters is a brief history of vampires, since the creature is vampiric in nature, which led things down a path to how deeply colonialism has influenced the folklore of certain places in the world. I had no idea there were urban legends of white colonizers stalking the streets, wanting to harvest body parts from innocent bystanders caught unawares. Can’t say I blame them, all things considered. It was also amusing to have it pointed out just how inconsistent accounts of what the chupacabra is supposed to look like are. It seems a chupacabra can be whatever you want it to be.

Recently Finished

Nothing this week. Boo.

Reading Next

Galatea (book)I’ve still not made up my mind about a bigger book to read next, but I have recently made a purchase that I’m going to read through as soon as I can: Galatea by Madeline Miller. The book is actually a short story that Miller first published ages ago; in fact, I already own it on Kindle. Nevertheless, once I heard they released an actual book, I knew I had to buy it. Even at it’s tiny size, the story is only 50 pages or so long, so it should take virtually no time at all to complete, and I look forward to finally reading this story. I’ve put it off long enough, but I guess being a bit of a Luddite with Kindle has paid off; I get to enjoy this physical book now.

Until next time, thank you for reading! Feel free to share your own post down below.

WWW Wednesday – November 16, 2022

RyanLeave a comment
www_wednesdays

WWW Wednesday is a weekly book meme run by Sam over at Taking on a World of Words. Check out her post and others over on her blog!

The Three Ws are:

What are you currently reading?
What did you recently finish reading?
What do you think you’ll read next?

Currently Reading

Nothing really to report on this front again this week, though it’s because I’ve actually managed to get yet another book finished. I will hopefully start reading more of A Carnival of Snackery by David Sedaris again soon.

Recently Finished

The King in YellowLast night I finished reading The King in Yellow by Robert W. Chambers. I definitely liked this book the further I got along in it, though my feelings are more middling overall; it’s definitely a three out of five read for me. I don’t know what influences Chambers may have had, but I find this book really interesting as an early work of weird fiction all the same. Specifically, I wonder how his readers of the time must have reacted to it. Though it’s still niche, this genre is fairly well defined these days. Even people who don’t read it probably know the name Cthulhu. With the vague yet repeated references to the contents of the play “The King in Yellow” within these stories, making reference to a world under dark stars, twin suns, and strange moons, I have to wonder how much things like this had been written about before or if his readers were having an experience truly weird and new to them I wonder if this real book, though it originally included more stories than these, also inspired a fragment of the macabre fixation the play instills in its victims.

Reading Next

Tracking the ChupacabraI still want to start reading Tracking the Chupacabra by Benjamin Radford soon, I just wanted to get The King in Yellow finished first. With so little time left in the year I really do have to wonder how much I’ll actually manage to make time to read, and more importantly, which books matter most to me that I actually go through soon. Part of me really wants to make sure I read Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer, but what deters me is the fact that I would be start yet another trilogy. Since it’s looking like I won’t be finishing my scrappy to-read list of 12 books this year either, I wonder if I should maybe turn to some of my other challenges for the year so that they’re not completely left in the dust. I have a lot to consider and not a lot of time left at my disposal.

Until next time, thank you for reading! Feel free to share your own post down below.

WWW Wednesday – November 9, 2022

Ryan3 Comments
www_wednesdays

WWW Wednesday is a weekly book meme run by Sam over at Taking on a World of Words. Check out her post and others over on her blog!

The Three Ws are:

What are you currently reading?
What did you recently finish reading?
What do you think you’ll read next?

Currently Reading

Nothing at the moment. Technically, I’m still in the middle of both The King in Yellow by Robert W. Chambers and A Carnival of Snackery by David Sedaris, but I still haven’t made any further progress with either yet. The former of the two is rather short, though, so I’m going to push to get that finished ASAP.

Recently Finished

Pet SemataryLast night I pushed myself to finish reading Pet Sematary by Stephen King. I’m still ruminating on my final impressions of the book, but I can confidently say that I quite liked it overall. The only thing I’m a little stuck on is just how much everything is drawn out until a climactic finish, when I was expecting that his son would be resurrected for a better part of the novel. I suppose I had expected that there would be more of a sense of hope, even just a fool’s hope, that Gage could come back normal. It’s pretty much a foregone conclusion that there is no hope for such a thing, however, and so much more of the final parts of the story is just Louis doing his macabre work to get his son’s body to the burial ground. It’s not so much that I didn’t like it and more that I have to reconcile my expectations vs. reality.

Reading Next

Tracking the ChupacabraIt turns out a lot of the books I have left on my to-read list are all horror adjacent, if not outright horror, so my middling October efforts may well be supplemented by some of the books I want to read next. I still want to put better emphasis on what I’m currently reading in the short term, but in the slightly longer term I think I will try to read Tracking the Chupacabra by Benjamin Radford anyway, Halloween’s end be damned. I have had a particular interest in reading this soon, and I especially don’t want to put this one off until next year, so I’m going to commit to starting it here and now.

Until next time, thank you for reading! Feel free to share your own post down below.

WWW Wednesday – October 5, 2022

Ryan3 Comments
www_wednesdays

WWW Wednesday is a weekly book meme run by Sam over at Taking on a World of Words. Check out her post and others over on her blog!

The Three Ws are:

What are you currently reading?
What did you recently finish reading?
What do you think you’ll read next?

Currently Reading

Unfortunately, I’ve not made any progress in A Carnival of Snackery by David Sedaris. I’ve been emotionally compromised due to the loss of a pet so I just didn’t make time for it.

Pet SemataryI have however managed to read more of Pet Sematary by Stephen King, though only about 50 pages or so. Things have finally taken a spookier turn in the story, as Church the family cat has met his untimely end and Louis and Jud are currently taking his body to the real cemetery where what you bury doesn’t stay buried. I’ve not finished reading this chapter yet, but I really like how hauntingly King describes the landscape on the way to the burial ground, especially with whatever massive creature passes nearby them on their way there. I’m almost positive that will not be revisited in the story, but I just love it as a little detail, that there’s a lot paranormal or unnatural going on at that location.

Recently Finished

Nothing once again.

Reading Next

Tracking the ChupacabraI figured I would supply you once again with a Halloween hopeful for the month. Again, with my pace, I probably won’t get to all that I’ve been sharing here, but I want to make the attempt anyway. The book is Tracking the Chupacabra by Benjamin Radford, which is also on my yearly to-read list. This is spookiness from a nonfiction angle, investigating the history of the cryptid known as the Chupacabra, alleged sightings with which actually only date back to the 1990s. I know the gist of some things this book explores, but I’m looking forward to a proper deep dive. I’ve been wanting to read this since I first heard about it on The ParaPod many years ago, so I’m really hoping I’ll be able to get to it this month.

Until next time, thank you for reading! Feel free to share your own post down below.