The reviews for "The Grip of It" 'by Jac Jemc sounded pretty good, so I took a shot and wasn't disappointed, it was an appropriately creepy haunted house story with unreliable narrators, so at the end of it I wasn't sure if the house was *actually* haunted or if the husband and wife were just whackjobs. James gambled away his savings, and Julie suggests they move away from the city (and the temptations) and give themselves a fresh start. They find themselves with a fixer upper that was too good a deal to pass up. The neighbor next door is kind of a creep, and no one wants to talk about the house's sad history. Major red flags right there. James and Julie alternate chapters, talking about the escalating weirdness in the house: the strange drawings that appear on the walls, the secret passages, the mold in the water, the stains on the walls that get bigger. Julie finds herself covered in bruises with no idea where they came from, and James just stops showing up at work, obsessed with discovering the history of the house, and gets fired. Neither of them talk to each other, so they're both wondering why the other one is acting so strangely. The kicker comes when Julie throws herself off the roof.
Getting caught up on the "Walking Dead" graphic novels by Robert Kirkman. I stopped watching the show a few years ago, but I heard they killed off a major character that I really liked, so I'm glad I don't watch anymore. This one picks up where Vol. 27 left off: the herd of undead the Whisperers have unleashed is heading straight for Alexandria. Andrea takes off on a horse with a few others in an attempt to turn the herd and drive them into the ocean. Rick stays behind with the others to defend the walls of Alexandria. When they collapse, Negan actually ends up saving his life (Negan turns out to be sensible character in these novels in a *long* time, oddly enough). Andrea is successful in getting the majority of the herd to jump off the cliff into the ocean, but she is bitten in the process and goes home to die in Rick's arms. That sucked :( Carl and the other Hilltop survivors pitch in to help defend Alexandria, and in the end they're working on rebuilding, with poor Rick devastated about Andrea and unsure how he's going to go on without her.
Douglas Murray's "Strange Death of Europe" is a wake up call to anyone who still thinks open borders are a good idea. In just a few short years, a lot of Europe doesn't resemble Europe anymore. With hundreds of thousands of refugees arriving yearly, countries are scrambling to find shelter and food, in addition to medical care, jobs, and schooling, for all the newcomers. People are angry, and one of the best points he makes is that we can't even have a dialogue about it because if anyone dares to ask why European culture doesn't matter, they are labeled racist and xenophobic. What does it mean to be European? What shared cultural norms are there? It's heavy stuff, and while everyone wants to be compassionate, at the same time the question has to be: at what cost? When do you draw the line and say enough? No easy answers here, but lots to think about.
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