My Week in Books: 3/30/14

I am back in Chicago as of yesterday and I have done nothing with my time. I only finished one book over break. This is because my grandfather did jumping jacks and fell and broke his hip. My 81-year-old grandfather. My 81-year-old grandfather who, 3 years ago, got in an accident on his ADVENTURE MOUNTAIN BIKING TRIP in Utah and displaced his vertebrae, broke his ribs, and punctured his lungs, making his balance from then on quite bad. This man was doing jumping jacks. I have no words. I'm going to talk about books now.

Books I Just Finished:

The Troop by Nick Cutter: 
I was more about this book than I expected to be. The last contemporary horror I read (Breed) left me sort of disappointed, so I hadn't read any for a while. The Troop is a sort of Lord of the Flies situation with some dangerous genetic engineering thrown in there. A man/lab experiment ends up on an island where a troop of (essentially) boy scouts are doing boy scout things, and trouble ensues. The gore was unnerving without feeling excessive. What the boys went through was gut-wrenching, and all of the characters felt real for the most part, which seems hard to do when it comes to adolescent boys. Also in the acknowledgements, Cutter thanked Stephen King, though he didn't think he'd ever read it. Then King blurbed the book. So cute, I died. Full review coming this week.

 

Books I'm Reading:

The Sandman, Vol. 1: Preludes & Noctunes by Neil Gaiman: 
I really want to be a part of the Insatiable Booksluts group read, but I'm admittedly behind. This is my first time e-reading a comic book, so it feels kind of odd, and I was busy with other stuff anyway (midterms, old people who think they're invincible, etc). But I haven't started any other novel as of this moment, so I have an opportunity to go hard with these. It's my first time reading Gaiman, which is exciting.

Books I Want to Read Next:

The King in Yellow by Robert Chambers:
This seems like a strange little book that I hadn't heard of before watching True Detective. If you haven't seen it, it is amazing and does everything for me. Weird ritualistic serial murders, gritty characters, philosophical themes, very noiry, set in the creepy, desolate South. I don't actually go for books like this. Why don't I? What are they and where can I find them? Anyway, if you've seen it, I just learned from this article that it subtly references this book. This book is a collection of short stories that are unrelated except for the mention of a play called The King in Yellow. Supposedly if you read past act one, it drives you insane. This is horror/speculative fiction from 1895 that had a big influence on Lovecraft. And it sounds like everything I could ever love in a book. You can get it for free from Amazon or Project Gutenberg! Life is so beautiful.






What are you reading this week? Did True Detective ruin you/give you everything you never knew you wanted?