My Favorite Things with Shara White

They might not be raindrops on roses or whiskers on kittens, but that doesn’t mean that we love them any less. Welcome back to My Favorite Things, the weekly column where we grab someone in speculative circles to gab about the greatest in geek. This week we sit down with our very own Editor-in-Chic, Shara White. What does she love when she’s not marking up blog posts with the proverbial red pen? Spoiler alert: a Chic-approved author, movies that wreck you, the return of violent delights, the soul of a city, a book she loves so much she can’t read it again, and mommy issues. Come on, you know you’re curious! Read on for more!

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If you know me, then you know I’m very devoted to my fandoms. And if you’ve followed this blog for any length of time, you already know that Orphan Black, Star Wars, and Hannibal turn me into a giddy fangirl, so I don’t want to be a broken record. Instead I want to share some new(ish) favorites, as well as an cherished old favorite.

It should come as no surprise that I’m a fan of Seanan McGuire’s work; after all, I’m the one approving all of those review posts, and McGuire was one of our very first guests on My Favorite Things! While I can’t say with a straight face that I’ve read everything she’s produced (not yet!), I’m amazed at the quantity, quality, and diversity of the work she’s produced since she debuted Rosemary and Rue in 2009. Since then, she’s produced at least seven different series published under her own name and her pseudonym, Mira Grant. Each series has a distinct flavor: looking for a seemingly traditional urban fantasy series with a kickass heroine? Check out her Hugo-nominated October Daye books. Want an urban fantasy with a humorous touch that features all manner of creatures from all kinds of folklore and mythology, but also embraces ballroom dancing, highly religious mice, roller derby, and different viewpoint characters after every few books? Check out the InCrytid series. Zombies in a post-apocalyptic world where society hasn’t collapsed? You can’t go wrong with the Hugo-nominated Newflesh series. Want a Hugo winner? Check out Every Heart a Doorway, the novella that kicks off the Wayward Children series — a series where I want to re-read every story all over again when I finish the newest installment.

Currently, I’m bingeing on McGuire’s short fiction. Whether it’s free from her website or downloaded from her Patreon, I have a bad habit of letting all of those short stories pile up. What inevitably happens is that my desktop gets so cluttered that I can’t see anything anymore, so I move said stories to my Kindle and start reading, hoping I’m going in something resembling “publication order.”

It’s never boring. The stories come from any one of her fictional universes, from October Daye to InCryptid (oh, how I love the backstories to the InCryptid universe!). There’s something juicy for everyone. However, two of my favorites on this current binge are actually standalones (I think): the first, “Heart of Straw,” is something I may need to read again when Halloween comes back around, and maybe every Halloween thereafter. It’s delightfully creepy. And then there was “Now Rest, My Dear.” Oh, if this one doesn’t pack a punch! It’s a good punch mind you, but there is so much happening in this wonderful story that the end nearly left me in tears.

So if you’re a fan of McGuire, don’t miss out on her short fiction. If you aren’t a fan yet, what are you waiting for? There’s a treasure trove of delights just waiting for you; all you have to do is take your pick!

Next up, a movie that is criminally not talked about near enough: A Monster Calls. Based on a book of the same name by Patrick Ness (which I haven’t read, because Ness absolutely murdered me when I read The Knife of Never Letting Go, and I still haven’t recovered), the film features a star-studded cast (Sigourney Weaver, Felicity Jones, Liam Neeson) and led by an awesome child actor, Lewis MacDougall. The trailer doesn’t look like anything special; if you watch, I’m pretty sure you’re going to have your own ideas about what this movie is about. Since it’s based off of a children’s book, it seems easy to dismiss straight-away if you don’t have kids and/or don’t care about children’s lit.

That would be a mistake. This movie…. y’all, this movie has made the list of movies my husband and I love so much we cannot watch again, because it is absolutely, thoroughly, wonderfully heartbreaking (yes, three adverbs in a row. I’m telling you, this movie WRECKED me). From a story that’s deeper than you’d think, to the cinematography and the artwork (oh, the artwork!), to the acting that is so believable you want to reach through and just make everything okay for everyone.

I cried through the entire end. I expected my husband to make fun of me for doing so, but then I realized he was upset too. We just watched this gorgeous movie, crying, saying nothing even as the credits rolled and the film managed to find just a few more ways to break our hearts in new and wonderful ways. If you haven’t seen it, make it a priority, and be sure to have a box of tissues handy.

At the time of this writing, Westworld has premiered its second episode of its second season, and can I just say? I’m so glad this show is back on. My only regret is not sitting down to re-watch season one to refresh my memory properly. So far, the second season is just as compelling, just as time-loopey (to watch this show is to pay very close attention, because it slips through its various storylines and timelines like water through your fingers) as season one, and it’s already raising interesting questions about the nature of free will and control and what it means to have power. The acting is still top-notch, and the stakes are getting raised higher and higher. I can’t wait to see where this season takes us.

This next favorite isn’t very speculative, but that’s okay, I’m allowed to gush about one non-speculative thing. It’s no secret that I’m a cat person, so it should be absolutely no surprise that another favorite thing is the documentary Kedi. What’s it about, you wonder? Kedi is about the cats who live in the streets of Istanbul, and if you like cats at all, that’s probably all you need to know to go find this adorable documentary for yourself. Need more? You get specific stories of specific cats and how they relate to those they visit in the city. Sounds simple, but it’s about so much more than that: it’s a documentary about Istanbul, about the spread of modernism overtaking the old soul of the city. It’s about how cats can give people purpose, even when they don’t necessarily belong to you. Watching Kedi put a stupid smile on my face that never left the entire length of the movie, and it makes me want to visit Istanbul immediately.

Have you ever loved something so much that you’re actually afraid to recommend it to people, out of fear they won’t love it as much as you and it’ll just break your heart? That’s how I feel about Karin Lowachee’s criminally under-read space opera Warchild. It was recommended to me by my Seton Hill Writing Popular Fiction mentor Tobias S. Buckell, and there’s not a day that goes by that I don’t send a mental thanks his way. Prior to Warchild, most of my space opera reading involved the Star Wars Expanded Universe (R.I.P.), Catherine Asaro, and Allen M. Steele. I was slowly but surely immersing myself in the genre, particularly in those works written by women, so I didn’t say no when Buckell put Lowachee on my assigned reading list for the term.

How much did I love it? Here’s a snippet of my old review from 2006:

I want to say, first and foremost, that this is the best book I’ve read in a very long time. I’ve read lots of books I loved this year, but this one beats them all. If you write SF, especially SF involving outer space and other planets of any kind, you must read this book.

If you want to read the rest of my old (spoiler free!) review, just click here. But it’s a glory of a novel, and it uses point-of-view in a very unique and intentional way that immersively correlates to the main character’s psychological state at the moment. Seriously, when you read it, pay attention: this book is a masterclass in POV.

After reading it, I devoured the rest of the trilogy. I tracked down Lowachee’s short fiction. I even became online friends with her after she read my review of her book (!!!!). I own multiple copies of Warchild, one of which is signed. Yes, I know this book is rare. No, I’m not letting go. This book is my ideal, how I wish I could write, and I love it wholly and selfishly.

Have you ever read a book that you loved so much that you’re afraid to re-read it for fear it won’t be the same? Yeah, Warchild is that for me too. So if I want to recreate that feeling, I need more new fiction by Karin Lowachee. In fact, that reminds me: I need to get my butt in gear and check out Lowachee’s Patreon!

Okay, last but not least: it’s something of a joke among the editors at Speculative Chic that I can’t talk about anything without devolving into spoilers, so it’s fitting that my last favorite thing involves spoilers of epic proportions. So consider this your warning: if you haven’t watched the second season of Jessica Jones and you want to go into the season spoiler-free, STOP NOW and come back when you’ve caught up.

Seriously. I’ll still be here when you get back. With a bottle of Maker’s Mark, because clearly, that’s Jessica’s favorite.

Still here? Okay, last warning: spoilers below the image!

My final favorite thing comes courtesy of Jessica Jones’ second season, which may surprise some of you, because it’s been the recipient of some lukewarm reviews and some problematic elements. Sure, it wasn’t as tight or as compelling as season one (it’s hard to beat Killgrave as a villain), but it had a quiet tension that had me engrossed as a viewer, and it all boiled down to the relationship between Jessica and her mother.

Wait, what? Yeah, you read that right. The second season reveals that Jessica wasn’t the only survivor of the car accident that supposedly made her an orphan. Her mother was rescued too, and like Jessica, her mother also received superpowers. However, her mother’s situation was much more dire, and her powers and temper made her far worse than Jessica ever dreamed of being.

But here’s the rub: Alisa Jones is what Jessica fears becoming, and watching that relationship unfold in all its bloody glory was brilliant. Jessica, who wants to do the right thing, is so very conflicted: she knows what her mother has done is wrong, but it’s also her mother, a woman who’s suffering from such severe psychological trauma that she can just completely snap, and pulling her back from the edge is nearly impossible. Yet against Jessica’s better judgment, they find commonality. They find ways to bond.

Is it a healthy relationship? Hell no. It’s complex and it’s interesting, and I can’t help but imagine there’s fan fiction already posted on Archive of Our Own detailing the scenario where Jessica and her mom do manage to get away, where Jessica does manage to help heal her mother and her mother helps heal her, and they both get to be good superheroes for a change and no one fears them.

In reality, it’s not meant to be; one of the season’s more frustrating side plots climaxes in Trish Walker tracking down and killing Jessica’s mom, right in front of Jessica, and you know? She’s not sorry about it: she’s convinced she’s doing the right thing. For Trish, right and wrong is as clear as black and white; for Jessica, it’s not so easy.

I loved the character and acting work that went into those scenes between Krysten Ritter and Janet McTeer. Alisa Jones didn’t make a good villain, but she made an excellent foil, and if you’re a sucker for dysfunction parental relationships in fiction like me, I think you might find the second season of Jessica Jones is compelling as I did.

Oh, and Carrie-Anne Moss’ Jeri Hogarth is amazing. That entire arc, Moss’ acting, is an absolutely shining star of the second season. Watch it for the mother/daughter relationship, but watch it for Jeri too. Holy crap.

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Born in the Gateway to the West, Shara White currently hails from the mountains of East Tennessee. She graduated with a Bachelor of Arts from Hollins University in 2003 and received her Master of Arts from Seton Hill University’s Writing Popular Fiction Program in 2008. While she was deciding what to be when she grew up, Shara spent six weeks in 2005 attending the Odyssey Writing Workshop. She’s trained miniature horses, sang opera, and now works in the finance industry. She ran a book review blog, Calico Reaction, for 7.5 years, and sometimes (read: rarely if ever) blogs at Calico Writes. She is an avid reader, an entertainment junkie, and also writes original fiction in her spare time, which exists somewhere on the space-time continuum. If you find it, please let her know.

Author Photo by Wolfe Creative Media Services