Bookish Thoughts

This is a haunted house story about a couple who moves to a new town looking for a fresh start. But I kind of felt like the woman should have been looking for a fresh start without her husband. Where she's an organized, ambitious, kind person who really deserves the best in life, he's a gambling addict who coasts by at a job he's barely competent at. (He's a lazy software engineer, which I have a personal vendetta against). He's dragging her down with him, and she needs to break free. But she doesn't. The book just reaffirms their connection, as I knew it would. Oh well.  Aside from not liking one of the main characters, I felt like the pacing of the book was a bit off. The house escalated things way too quickly. I can see how people get trapped when things build slowly, but this went from zero to sixty, and I couldn't believe that the couple would stay as long as they did. Then they managed to escape way too easily, without ever worrying about the next vict...

People are always surprised that I haven't read much Stephen King. I read a ton, and he's incredibly prolific with a number of modern classics under his belt. But there are a lot of books out there, and no one can get to all of them. I didn't like The Dark Tower as much as I expected to, and I wasn't sure I'd ever give him another try. But some of his classics are not only classic; they're short. I picked up Carrie and got exactly what I wanted: a fast, spooky read, perfect for October. I enjoyed this story immensely, and I'm glad I finally got around to it. Maybe I'll try one of his longer books someday.

This was such a compelling little story. The premise is that every time Molly bleeds, the blood grows in to a clone of her that tries to kill her. There's no explanation for this, just a look at what would happen to a girl who grows up constantly having to kill herself. It's a weird story, but I really enjoyed reading it.

I read Silvia Moreno-Garcia's first book, Signal to Noise , years ago and loved it. She's been releasing new books steadily since then, with a slowly growing profile. I kept meaning to pick up another of her books, which are always interesting Mexican twists on western classics. Then Mexican Gothic came out to huge acclaim and everyone everywhere was excited about it. I actually got a bit lucky, getting it as early as I did. After my husband passed, a friend signed me up for The Bloggess's book club. She sends out a new book every month, and I was just under the wire to receive this one. It was a wonderful surprise in a not-so-great year. This book was fantastic. So good that I ended up staying up way too late to finish it. It was smart and creepy and it renewed my desire to read everything Moreno-Garcia has ever written. She's a fantastic author who keeps getting better, and I can't wait to see what she comes up with next.

This was a book club pick, and it's not exactly something I would have picked out for myself. I tend to do a decent amount of research about books before I commit to them. I want to be reasonably sure that I'll like something. This was written by a neighbor of mine and released by a small, local press, which made for a dearth of reviews and recommendations. I knew virtually nothing about this book going into it. It's billed as fantasy, but I would actually classify it as more of a horror story. Jeanie Maxwell has been possessed by the ghost of someone with unfinished business. She's first made aware of this by a psychic she visits on a lark, though she's understandably skeptical. But as her life starts falling apart, the ghost is able to take over and seek out closure in her former life. Meanwhile, the psychic is dealing with the death of her sister and the demands of her nephew regarding the will. The story was compelling, and I especially liked the description...

This is one of those stories that imprinted on me. I was slowly becoming obsessed with Neil Gaiman when I first read it, and I hadn't quite realized that you could do stuff like this, yet. Remix fairy tales, mix and match genres, change the perspective and the story so completely and yet leave it wholly recognizable. It helps that I've always loved vampires. But really, Snow White as a vampire just makes so much sense. When I first read this story, I couldn't believe that I hadn't thought of it first. And I loved and hated Neil Gaiman a bit in equal measure giving me this beautiful, horrifying tale. This is about the recent graphic novel version of this story, though. It's gorgeous. The art is amazing and the perfect complement to this lovely story about a demon and the woman who tried and failed to save her kingdom. It's always haunted me, and now it can haunt me in technicolor.

This book has one of the strongest openings of any book I've read in recent memory. I fell in love with it from the second sentence and never looked back. The entire book was atmospheric and lyrical and I can't wait to read it again. Unfortunately, one of the reasons I'm going to need to read it again is that I felt like I missed a lot the first time through. That's more my fault than the book's. It demanded more focus than I could give it. When I tried to read it five minutes at a time between my kids' demands, I kept losing the thread. I had to go back and re-read sections, sure I'd missed stuff, only to discover that the book was simply too subtle for my sleep-deprived and kid-distracted brain. But man, was it beautiful. Hopefully next year I'll have a chance to revisit it, to really sit down and give it the attention it deserves.

I have no doubt that this book will resonate strongly for some people. They'll read it and love it and find meaning and connection. But I'm not one of those people. And because of that I couldn't really enjoy this book. This is a quick horror story about a punk anarchist collective that's being tormented by a spirit. A handful of them summoned said spirit to help them maintain their anarchy. It's supposed to kill anyone who wields power over another. But now it's killing the original summoners and the town can't decide whether to stop it or embrace it. The book makes some basic assumptions about anarchy that I can't bring myself to agree with. It's based on a lot of ifs that I don't think hold up well in the real world. So I found the whole premise difficult. Then there's the submersion in the punk subculture. It makes for a nice shorthand for world building, but my lack of familiarity with it just meant that I knew I was missing things. ...

This was a delightfully quick read that reminded me rather strongly of We Have Always Lived in the Castle . The book opens on Korede helping her sister Ayoola dispose of the body of her most recent boyfriend. Ayoola claims she killed him in self-defense. But this is the third boyfriend she's killed and Korede is starting to wonder. And when Ayoola starts dating the man that Korede has a crush on, she finds herself with divided loyalties. Ayoola is a terrifying creation. She's beautiful and charming and she has always gotten her way. Men fawn over her, and she uses her power over them to get whatever she wants. She's so good at playing the victim, naive and innocent and badly in need of protection, that sometimes it's hard to tell how much she believes this role she's playing, how much it's actually a role at all. I had so much fun reading this book, anticipating Ayoola's next appearance and wondering how Korede would react to her, what she'd decide t...

This book immediately appealed to me for the nostalgia. I can remember playing "Light as a Feather, Stiff as a Board" and "Bloody Mary" all the time when I was younger. Seeing them collected here with a bunch of other games I'd never heard of made me wish I'd had this book as a kid. The games are divided up by category, getting progressively more "dangerous" as the book goes along. There's a brief history of each game followed by instructions for playing it. And a whole lot of tongue-in-cheek warnings about the danger of each one. The book balances the fun of these games with that bit of fear that makes them so much more fun. I can only hope that my own kids discover this book on the shelf some day and spend countless hours summoning spirits with their friends.

As I've begun to embrace my love of horror over the past several years, I've come to understand the key to horror stories. They're not about being scared, not really. They're about catharsis. They're about facing your fear or dealing with your trauma or even just acknowledging that sometimes life is terrible. And if you can say that and share it, it gets a little better. So it makes sense, in a weird, twisted, horror-novel-logic sort of way, that Jack and Jill would escape from their stifling household and too-strict, largely absent parents and find comfort and solace in the trappings of a classic horror story. Jack as the apprentice to a mad scientist, Jill as the protege to the vampire lord. Really, though, this story is pretty light on the horror. It's got the shape of a horror story, with the details fading into the background. In the foreground we have a story about family and sisterhood, about disappointment and loyalty. It's an excellent prequel t...

The cover of this book shows a creature that's half woman, half octopus and has an unsettling number of teeth in a slightly too large mouth. My son was obsessed with it, and kept stealing the book while I was reading it or requesting to see the monster book. At one point he attempted to use it to threaten his dad into giving him a cookie. It was a pretty great use of the book. The stories within the book are classic children's stories with a twist. Ortberg has an uncanny ability to hone in on the most horrifying aspect of any given children's story and expand on it. Without changing much at all, he can take a story from comforting to terrifying and leave you questioning everything. As with any short story collection, I was more drawn to some stories than others. But everything in here really forces you to contend with the default point of view. What do we mean when we talk about daughters or love or abuse or redemption? Where is the line between good and evil and how do...

I've been meaning to read The Changeling  since I first heard about it. And I'm so glad I finally got around to it. I hesitated because the premise seemed genuinely upsetting - a woman kills her baby and then disappears, leaving her husband wondering what the hell happened and trying to track her down in an increasingly magical New York City. Probably not the sort of book you should read when you've just had a kid, or when you're pregnant again. But I clung to the hint in the title and decided to take the plunge. And I'm so glad I did. I've read a lot of books over the years that claim to be similar to American Gods , but this is the one that comes closest to hitting that mark for me. It is very much about America and how the tales we tell shape our lives, how we do and don't repeat the mistakes of our forefathers, how we don't always interrogate our traditions when maybe we should, how this country has been shaped entirely by immigration. Like that bo...

Any collection of short stories ends up being a mixed bag. Some of them just speak to you more than others. I really liked half of the stories in this collection, and the other half felt dense and over my head. Inaccessible in a way that meant that they probably just weren't for me. But the ones that worked worked really well. "Especially Heinous" flips Law and Order: SVU on it's head, accusing the audience of being the real monster at the heart of all these stories while Stabler and Benson slowly unravel from the pressure of their lives. "Real Women Have Bodies" and "Eight Bites" were also deliciously creepy, and I enjoyed "Inventory", which has one woman coping with the end of the world by making a list of everyone she's ever had sex with. The rest fell a bit flat for me. Or left me feeling confused or unsettled in a not-particularly-illuminating way. Carmen Maria Macahdo reminds me a bit of Kelly Link and Helen Oyeyemi. Her wo...

The Winter People  was my All Hallows Read gift this year, but I decided to save it to read in colder weather. And I'm so glad I did. Something about being surrounded by a fresh blanket of snow made this book a lot more affecting. Freezing weather and fresh snow make outdoor activities so much harder, and being attuned to that added an extra layer of tension to this book. The story alternates between 1908 and the present day. In the past, Sara Harrison Shea and her husband lose their young daughter. But Sara knows a spell to bring her back to life, at least for a few days. And when she decides to do just that, the consequences are beyond what she could have imagined. In the present day, Ruthie's mom has gone missing, and Ruthie suddenly finds herself responsible for her younger sister while searching for her mom and accidentally digging up some family secrets that ought to have stayed buried. This was a delightfully creepy story about grief and consequences. It got tighter ...

The Ballad of Black Tom  was Tor.com's free download back in October. I'd been hearing good things about Victor LaValle for years ( The Changeling  is currently sitting on my shelf waiting to be read), and besides, who can say no to free? So I downloaded it. But it took me a while to get around to reading it. The thing is, this novella is a direct response to one of HP Lovecraft's stories: "The Horror at Red Hook". And I really meant to read that one first. It's available for free on line and I even have a copy in a collection of Lovecraft's work at home. But I never quite got around to it. It's widely considered the most overtly racist piece of work by a horrifically racist author. And who wants to read a story with an endorsement like that? I ended up skimming this article about the original story and then dove in to LaValle's response. I really ought to have actually read Lovecraft's original story first. The Ballad of Black Tom  is suc...

The Doll's House  is my least favorite arc in the entire Sandman  series. For me, the horror in this installment crosses the line and makes me truly uncomfortable. John Dee slowly torturing and killing everyone in the diner in 24 Hours  is disturbing. But there's an element of fantasy, of metaphor, that makes it a bit more palatable. This arc has some pretty horrific child abuse coupled with a serial killer convention. And while Morpheus metes out justice to everyone involved, I find myself squirming through a lot of this. Then again, The Doll's House  introduces Rose Walker and Hob Gadling, two of the best characters in the entire series. Men of Good Fortune , Gadling's introduction, is one of my favorite single issues. Gadling declares that he's not going to die, and Morpheus sets up a recurring meeting with him - once every hundred years - to see how his life is going. The story leans into the old adage that the more things change, the more they stay the same, ...

For years I claimed to hate horror. I can see now how absurd that statement is. When I was growing up, my favorite television show was Buffy the Vampire Slayer . And while it's a bit trite to say that Sandman  changed my life, it certainly awakened any number of nascent interests in me, from mythology to non-linear story-structures. Two of the most formative works from my teenage years, and both are classic examples of horror. But for a long time I didn't know this. In my world, both of these series were classified as fantasy. Horror was Scream  and it's various sequels and spin-offs. Saw  and Halloween  and Final Destination . All those movies were characters died in ever more gruesome fashions. It's a subset of horror that's been popular for a while now. So popular that I thought it was the whole of the genre. It wasn't until I heard someone describe Sandman  as horror that I began to open my eyes and understand how much I actually loved this genre. I like...

The Halloween Tree  was one of my favorite movies as a kid. The VHS tape was bright orange, and we rented it so often that my parents eventually bought it from the rental store. My mom probably picked it up because Leonard Nimoy is the main voice actor. And even though Ray Bradbury himself narrates it, it took me decades to realize that the movie was based on a book. The book follows a group of friends who get side-tracked from trick-or-treating when their friend falls ill. They end up chasing him through time, learning about the origins of Halloween as they hope to catch up with him and save his life. This book is definitely a product of it's time. They made some significant changes to the movie, which were all for the better. But it's still a fun romp through history, as the kids learn about this celebration of death which is really a celebration of life. A way to make our fears smaller so we can deal with them. The book was short enough that I might end up reading it a...

Red as Blood  answers the burning question: What if the Disney Princesses were all Satanists? That's probably not fair. Especially since this book was written before Disney Princesses became a thing. But it retells a bunch of fairy-tales and twists them around so that the good guys become bad guys, and the bad guys become misunderstood underdogs. Mostly by making the princesses worship Satan. Like most short story collections, this was a bit of a mixed bag. There were a couple that I really liked. Anyone who makes Snow White a vampire has my heart forever. And the Beauty and the Beast tale was fun, even if it didn't seem like it belonged in the book. It's a science-fiction romp about falling in love with an alien, rather than a more traditional creepy fairy tale. But it was fun. Some of them never quite came together. The Sleeping Beauty story was so ambiguous that I was just confused. And the Red Riding Hood tale, which admittedly had a great idea (Grandma is a werew...