skipping it

A trip to the library brings home 5 books to the reader over at A Wayward Life. One of the selections is by Joyce Carole Oates, My Sister My Love, a twisted fiction version of the murder of JonBenet Ramsey. Another, Stewart O'Nan's Songs for the Missing also includes an ever present quirky theme around the story of JonBenet. I wonder if the reader would skip finishing this too, leaving it in the return bag with the Oates book, just by knowing it may touch collateral affects of the story of JonBenet --

A Little Not-So-Light Sunday Reading

Posted at A Wayward Life

"A few weeks ago I checked out several books at the library. I read the first two very quickly....Then I started on Stewart O'Nan's Songs for the Missing.

...Also in the bag waiting to be read, Salvation in Death and My Sister, My Love. Although, given the reaction I had to Songs for the Missing, I may need to skip that last one since it's based on the JonBenet Ramsey story...[...read more]

popular appeal

Pointing out how Nancy Grace's cold case feature article by Rupa Mikkilineni failed to mention JonBenet's impact on society, (?), True Crime Report presents (just) 4 of the ways JonBenet's story has shaped pop culture--

The JonBenet Effect: Four Ways the Ramsey Murder Influenced Pop Culture
True Crime Report

"...The article doesn't really touch on just how deeply this murder mystery has become embedded in our national dialogue. The JonBenet murder mystery ranks up there with the OJ Trial, may even outrank it, for the way it's provided grist for the merciless mill of popular culture...

...Plenty of folks just want to discuss a confounding and tragic unsolved crime, one filled with likely suspects -- the social-climbing parents who paraded the child in front of pageant audiences, the older brother in the shadows, various family friends, a sickly old guy who played Santa, truly scary, predatory malcontents who may have been creepy-crawling homes in Boulder at the time -- but some seem much more drawn to the pathos and tragedy of it all.

1. My Sister, My Love: The Intimate Story of Skyler Rampike
2. The Jonbenet -- Music
3. Family Guy References
4. The Sob Sister Cult of JonBenet on YouTube and Elsewhere
These are the folks who act as if JonBenet was their own kid, probably while their real kid goes blissfully ignored by the parent in question. The most extreme example ever of this type of sob sister (okay, that's a stretch, but still, it's true in some respects) was probably the JonBenet Ramsey case's most onerous contribution to pop culture -- fantasist and all-around spooky dude, John Mark Karr. He could easily be number 5 on this little list -- but the less said about him, the better."

Exploitation of JonBenet, albiet indirect

As summed up be the Times Online today - This is - perhaps inevitably - a harsh book, written without pity or sentimentality. The Rampikes are not the Ramseys; but Oates has used the tragic events that happened to them to produce a savage commentary on lives very like theirs. She has also “solved” the murder, coming up with a solution that makes sense of Skyler's agonised self-loathing but seems likely to cause further grief to surviving members of the Ramsey family. Some readers might consider that too high a price to pay for this cold, clever and ultimately parasitic novel.