 I should just leave it crooked. Fuck with people. How y'all doing? Hello everybody! E here. Welcome back to another Retro Review. Today we are doing a book that is in my top 20 books of all time. And yes, maybe I'll eventually get to that list doing a video just for that list. But every time I plan on doing it, something else either gets knocked off the list or something gets added to the list. But most of the time it's something that gets added to the list and then I don't know what I'm going to remove. So I'll probably end up eventually cutting them down to like my top five in every genre kind of thing. But today we are talking about number 19 right now on that list. The Gargoyle. By Andrew Davidson? Yeah. By Andrew Davidson. This is one of those books that was an impulse buy for me. I was at Gotwell's Books. Never forget it. I was at Gotwell's Books in Warner Robbins, Georgia. And I came across this book on the shelf. It was like four or five dollars. But the cover spoke to me. And I saw the gargoyle and I was like, hmm, this seems interesting. Let me pull it out off of the shelf. And I looked at this cover and I was like, oh yeah, yeah, I'm here for this. And then I opened it up and it's got one of these case wrap deals and that's just gorgeous. So it was most definitely a cover buy, an aesthetic thing. And it sat on my shelf for a little while. It sat on my shelf for a little while. And I went through a pretty hard time in my life. I was in rehab from my back. I was relearning how to walk. It took me several months to relearn how to walk. And then when I came home I was alone for a little bit because my wife and children were still living in Georgia. And I needed to stay here in Alabama and I was renting a room from a guy. And I didn't have anything else to read except for this book. I don't know how this one got packed like it did. But it was in my stuff. And I just opened it up, I started reading and I automatically fell in love with it. One of the things that I remember the most about this book is The Bitch Snake. It's the terrible thoughts coursing through this guy's head. And that might be a little bit of a spoiler, but it's mentioned very early on. Another thing that's mentioned very early on is the main character. And if you're worried about spoilers, you probably need to click away now because I really want to talk about the aspects of this book that I enjoyed the most in this retro review. So let's go ahead and just say there's going to be spoilers. He loses his dick. He loses his penis in a car accident. Now that doesn't get locked up or anything. It gets burned off. I think he's high on cocaine. He was a porn star to begin with. He's high on cocaine and he gets in a car accident. I think he gets ran off the road, something like that, or he runs himself off the road. And the bottle of whiskey he has with him breaks on his lap or he spills on his lap and then there's a fire after he wrecks and his whole shit, he just gets burnt up all over. So this is at the base level. If I'm going to oversimplify this book, this is a romance novel without the sex because there's absolutely no way for him to have sex because he has no penis. Now I guess tongue, mouth, hands, whatever. But he can't use his sexual organ to have sex is what I'm getting at. Then there's the opposite to him. The love interest, I guess it would be. If you want to even call it a love interest, I do call it a romance, but it's not your typical romance. It's not that kind of ooey gooey gushy kind of love story. It's a story about a man rebuilding himself on the inside after a terrible, horrible accident. And Marianne Engel, the woman who helps him through that, tells stories to him and these stories mirror things that he's going through. And there's a fantastic story about a Viking, a Viking's friend, male friend, and the Viking wife where the one male Viking is in love with the other male Viking. And that story really hit home for me because there's been several times in my life, for some odd reason, that I have ended up falling in love with a friend's love interest. You know, I've fallen in love with a friend and they've been taken, that kind of thing. It happens to me a lot. I think I fall in love way too easily. That's another reason why I don't like romance. It's just not, it's not my, love is not my thing. It never has been my thing. Friendship is more how I view love. I know that's a very weird thing, but I fall in love with friends all the time. Deep, deep emotions and even physical attraction to friends all the time. And that can be disastrous if you actually move on that type of thing. And that's one of the things that happens in this book, you know, the disaster of moving in on an unwelcome space. You're a friend and you having to move that. I mean, of course, I've been, I ended up falling in love with my best friend and I've been with, you know, Shell for 2001. What year is this? 2019, so we're going on 18 years. Actually past, no, it'll be 18 years in May. But anyways, so I got lucky. I ended up marrying my best friend and we play video games, we read together, we do all the stuff that I would do with a friend is what I do with my wife. And in this book, there's another one. There's one, I think it's Japanese, a Japanese folktale that really struck home with me also. And every single one of the stories has a little bit to do with love and maybe not physical love, but a almost addiction to another human being. The way the book ends destroyed me. It's one of the bleakest, saddest and happiest endings I've ever come across. But it's a beautiful novel and it's one that came into my life at the perfect time in my life. So am I a bit biased? Yeah, I am going to be a bit biased. So if you don't like it, that's fine. And that's another reason why I don't get too upset when people disagree with me about books that they like or they don't like or whatever and part of the reason why I don't quite understand becoming, you know, full of enraged is the word I was looking for, becoming enraged when someone doesn't like what I like. I understand that books are a personal, for me, a very personal experience, something that you can connect with on a deep emotional level. And that's another reason why I've moved on from horror into the literary realm and this is pretty much the book that started it. I was all horror 24-7 kind of guy before this book. And this book taught me that, you know, there is more out there than just the one thing that I love. I can love other things. So, again, this book taught me how to love things that I wouldn't necessarily love anyways. I did end up trying some actual serious romance novels, books that are deemed romance. I didn't like any of them. I did end up liking one of them, and I wouldn't really call it a romance as much as it's like a domestic thriller kind of deal. And that one was, I Thought I Knew You by Katie... Ooh, I can't remember that lady's name, but we shared a publisher at the time. Can I say... I can't even remember if I can say that or not. Anyways, but yeah, I can say that. I can say that. It was under this name. But yeah, so The Gargoyle by Andrew Davidson, have you read it? Did you like it? Did you dislike it? If you liked it or if you disliked it, please give me a little bit more than I hated this book. It sucks. Or I love this book. It's amazing. Give me a little bit more than that. Give me your personal feeling on why you hated it. I hated it because it reminded me of a bad time in my life. I hated it because the writing was boring and certain. Give me a little bit more. Let me know exactly what it is. That way, we can have a discussion. Because there is absolutely no comeback to I loved it or it sucked. There's no comeback to that and we can't have a discussion. Anyways, but you guys, please let me know whether or not you read this down there. I'd love to talk to you guys about it. But until next time, I have been E, you have been U. This has been another Retro Book Review. I'll talk to you guys later. Bye-bye. Man, this book's so pretty. I mean, it's just amazing. All things in a single book bound by love. I would agree with that. I should have read that during the main section, but I didn't. This book is amazing though. You get back into it and whenever he talks about the bitch snake, let's see if I can find it. It's like blacked out, yeah. See, it's like not ticker tape, but I can't actually see if you guys can see. Hello, peekaboo. But yeah, it's like black lines with white letters in it. But you know, it's like the label printer. That's what it looks like. But the bitch snake was amazing. It's such a great concept. Anyway, bye-bye.