3 Books That Defied My Reading Slump

My blogging absence has sort of felt like the elephant in the room - for me at least. Blogging was a big part of my life, so I admit that it does feel strange not to be doing it on a regular basis. The reality is that reading has been very difficult for me for almost a year now. Maybe I'll get into that more another time. While my reading has slowed to a mere fraction of what it was before, that doesn't mean that I've stopped reading entirely. Every once in a while there is a book that brings back that excitement about reading that I've missed. Here are three of those books that I've read in the past couple months.

Fever Dream by Samanta Schweblin
Publisher: Riverhead Books. January 2017.
Genre: Literary Fiction
Source: Library
Pages: 192



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Holy shit, this is my kind of book. If you like your literature short, tense, and deeply unsettling, Fever Dream is an absolute must read. The whole (tiny) book is a conversation between main character, Amanda, and a mysterious little boy named David. She is in a hospital. It's not clear why. David asks her to recall what happened that got her there from the very beginning, fixating on small details here and there. Once I picked this book up, there was no chance that I was going to put it down. They talk about children, worms, motherhood, dying horses, pollution, fate, weird spirit stuff, etc. It is all the scariest. Nothing explicitly horror-y happens, but the dread throughout is so so real. And some seriously weird shit goes down... or does it?? This book feels like a dream for sure, and it will not disappoint you. Highly recommended for fans of Helen Phillips, Clarice Lispector (sort of, in her very close focus & claustrophobic writing), or Jesse Ball. So beautiful! So amazing! Read it and be astounded by Schweblin's clarity of voice and vision in her murky and hypnotizing story.

Waking Gods by Sylvain Neuvel
Publisher: Del Rey. April 2017.
Genre: Science Fiction
Source: Publisher
Pages: 325



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Last year I read a book called Sleeping Giants, which was a glorious combination of Ancient Aliens and Pacific Rim in a a super fun and easy to read interview style. I had some problems with flat characters in the first book, but the sequel, which came out this year, really blew me away. It was action packed, the characters felt less forced and more confidently written, and it was an incredibly quick read. We also got to learn more about the nameless narrator who I thought was kind of cheesy as an idea in the first book. He's just like your general nameless spy dude who seems to have his fingers in every governmental activity (classified or otherwise). Part of me sort of didn't want any actual background, but I ended up really enjoying what we got. This book did not pull any punches AT ALL and it kept surprising me throughout. It is a great read, and it's worth checking out the first book to get here.

His Bloody Project by Graeme Macrea Burnet
Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing. October 2016.
Genre: Historical fiction
Source: Library
Pages: 300



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I've definitely been on a true crime kick these past couple months, and it was a delight to experience this fiction book that reads like bonafide true crime. His Bloody Project was a finalist for the Man Booker Prize in 2016, which I find to be a super interesting, and well deserved, pick. In it, we have a series of documents that all pertain to the case of Roderick Macrea killing a family in his village. There are neighbors' accounts, his own personal written account, and a transcript of the trial - all of which are biased. Roderick Macrae is such a fascinating guy to be in the head of - and to see from the outside after you know what's going on in his head. It's not a book where you come away knowing exactly what happened at the end of it. It's one that you'll keep thinking about, trying to puzzle out the details and decide who exactly to believe. Burnet places some amazing little hints throughout the book that close readers and true crime fans will be delighted by.

What books have helped you during a reading slump?

3 Startling Short Story Collections

One of my favorite parts of #weirdathon has been the chance to jump around and explore a bunch of short story collections. And I found some really good ones. These stories will startle, unsettle, and intrigue you. Don't worry, they're not all scary. They're just the right amount of strange.

A Guide to Being Born by Ramona Ausubel
Publisher: Riverhead Books. 2013.
Genre: Literary Fiction - Short Stories
Source: Independent Bookstore
Pages: 208


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I am going to try to be brave like you asked me to, but I don't have any idea yet what that means. Is it braver to allow the sadness of your leaving to spread into each of my bones until it is as big as you were to me? Or is it braver to let you drift out into what may very well be a brighter, finer place than this and be happy to think of your joy there? I hope, Petra, that I get it right.

This collection of short stories made me ugly cry twice, then tear up another time. Right out of the gate, Ausubel hits hard with her surreal, but emotionally direct, creations. Some stories are stranger than others. There's a ghost, there's a man who grows a cabinet of drawers in his chest, a ship with only confused grandmas on it, and a world where people grow arms only when they love someone (and there's no limit as to how many that could be). You're thrown immediately into these less than normal scenarios, or you watch them grow over time and share the fright of the characters as they change.

No matter what outlandish method is used to explore life in these stories, they're all about how our bodies and our selves are not entirely our own. How we belong to others, and how the loss of others affects us. Unafraid, Ausubel visits all different sorts of humanity and graciously takes us with her. Her writing is absolutely stunning, where her stories go will surprise you, and she will give you all sorts of feelings.

Warning: In the story Welcome to Your Life and Congratulations, one of the main topics is the loss of a pet cat in an accident. It gets minorly borderline gory. If this is a topic that you'd find upsetting, skip it. It's one of the weaker stories anyhow.

FAVORITE STORIES: Poppyseed, Chest of Drawers, Safe Passage, Magniloquence

Songs of a Dead Dreamer by Thomas Ligotti
Publisher: Subterranean Press. 1986.
Genre: Horror - Short Stories
Source: Library
Pages: 288



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It was those stars, I knew that now: certain of them had been promised specific parts of my body; in the darkest hours of the night, when one is unusually sensitive to such things, I could-- and still can, though just barely-- feel the force of these stars tugging away at various points, eager for the moment of my death when each of them might carry off that part of me which is theirs by right.

Songs of a Dead Dreamer is startling in a completely different way than A Guide to Being Born. This is by far one of the best collections of supernatural horror that I've ever read. At first I was a little off put by Ligotti's flowery often-gothic language, but I got used to him playing with styles and using it to his advantage in exploring old horror tropes with new breaths of imagination. I got a lot of The King in Yellow vibes in that a frequent topic was whether or not madness was actual insanity or knowledge of a different plane of existence. Ligotti's stories are so original, that it was hard to guess where their dark paths were leading. Very creepy, very otherworldly. Definitely the kind of horror that I'm into. I'd highly recommend it to any horror fan who's tired of reading contemporary haunted house kinds of stories.

I read these out of order over a long period of time (shortest first, because I read them aloud over a campfire while camping in the summer). When I started reading them again from the beginning, I learned that the first story (The Frolic) about a criminal psychologist and his patient packs a huge, creepy punch. You can read it here. It's not gory, but it's not for the faint-hearted. Prepare to be all SORTS of startled.

FAVORITE STORIES: Vastarien, The Music of the Moon, Drink to Me Only With Labyrinthine Eyes, The Frolic

Three Scenarios in Which Hana Sasaki Grows a Tail by Kelly Luce
Publisher: A Strange Object. 2013.
Genre: Literary Fiction - Short Stories
Source: Gift
Pages: 170



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A sharp, crunching sound pulled his eyes to one side, where they fell on the wet-haired boy. The child looked away quite obviously -- he had been watching him. To be observed so closely by a child felt a great honor.

I'm not sure why I expected this collection of short stories to be creepy, but I did and I was slightly misled by that. Though certainly strange, they're often delightful or beautifully haunting. Bizarre things happen, like people growing tails or a toaster predicting how people will die, but these are fully stories about reality and humans' relations to one another.

All of these stories are based in or focused on Japan, where Luce lived for three years. What was so lovely about these stories was how they were all told by or about outsiders, be they gaijin (foreigners) or Japanese people who feel like they are on the outskirts of their communities. I was startled by the appearance of demons and magical karaoke machines just as much as I was by how gently Luce could break my heart and tenderly stitch it back together again with her hope for our world.

FAVORITE STORIES: The Blue Demon of Ikumi, Ash, Rooey, Cram Island

What startling short story collection have you read recently?

My 5 Favorite Stories in Hall of Small Mammals by Thomas Pierce

Hall of Small Mammals by Thomas Pierce Publisher: Riverhead Books. January 8, 2015.
Pages: 304
Genre: Short Stories
Source: Library
First Line: Mawmaw's throwing the party, and her own son is three hours late.


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I'm so happy I read this book of short stories! I was really close to not reading it. Want to know why? The cover was too good. Yup. Luckily I changed my mind about not reading it after looking more into it. These stories were weird and often moving. Even when they get really surreal, deep down they're about people and their relationships with each other. AND the stories are (mostly) all interconnected very sneakily, which I always love. Here were my favorites:


1. Shirley Temple Three

A man works for a tv show where they clone long-extinct creatures from their DNA. Due to some strange rules, if they accidentally clone two, they have to kill one of them. But instead of killing an extra dwarf wooly mammoth, he sneaks it home to his mother in the south. She keeps it in her back yard. She's frustrated with the situation, but at no point is this like the weirdest thing that will ever happen to anyone ever. Watching the woman's relationship with the mammoth and her son really affected me.


2. The Real Alan Gass

I brought the synopsis of this up at work and it sparked a lot of debate. In it, a physicist alerts her boyfriend that in her dreams she has a husband. And it isn't him. His name is Alan Gass, and he doesn't exist in real life. The dreams are really vivid, to the point where she is practically just living another life with another man in her sleep. Of course, she wants her boyfriend to be cool about it. And he tries to be cool, but he can't help himself from grabbing a phone book and trying to find out if Alan Gass is out there somewhere, dreaming about his girlfriend. Very bizarre. I would not be cool, for the record.


3. Grasshopper Kings

I liked this one a whole lot. A father brings his son to a Boy Scouts-esque camping trip, only to learn that this group is a little bit cult-ish. I was so in. Even though this story is weird and kind of creepy, it's more about the strained relationship between the father and son, as well as how humans relate to each other in group dynamics.


4. Videos of People Falling Down

This story is so clever, I can hardly stand it. This story consists of many small segments that each start with a class youtube falling video name like "CRAZY WIPE OUT FUNNY" (not a direct quote, but you get what I mean). In each, a person falls. But we also get to know them and see what was going on in their lives and their heads around the time of the fall. It's hard to think about the stars of videos like these as real people with real concerns, and this story highlighted that excellently. And all the falls are interconnected, YES.


5. More Soon

A man comes to the airport to pick up the body of his dead brother that was just shipped overseas to him. Much to his surprise, the body wasn't on the plane. It turns out that it had to be reexamined. Then eventually quarantined, because they believe it holds a deadly disease. When it starts killing doctors and scientists who come in contact with it, it's classified as a biological weapon. An interesting look at and interpretation of grief and family.

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My only issue with these wonderfully strange stories was that a lot of them just kind of stopped. Not an enormous amount of clear resolution. I think that was mostly frustrating to me for two reasons. 1) I felt like it was probably profound in some way, but I didn't have the energy to figure out in what way it was profound. 2) I really just did not want these stories to end.




Some Quotes:

"Inside every group, he decides, there are more groups. Circles within circles, and inside of those, more circles still, all of them infinitely divisible. You could spend your whole life wondering which ones you're in and which ones you're not and which ones really want you and which ones are holes that have no bottom." - 79, Grasshopper Kings

"Sometimes when he hears Hungarian Dance No. 5 he has a funny feeling that is difficult to explain to others. He's told only one or two people about it. The feeling involves the possibility of a past life." -144, Videos of People Falling Down

"Directly behind us in line, a man with a comb-over fished around in his neon green fanny pack and produced two Wetnaps, one for himself and one for his wife, a somber-looking woman in a zebra-print dress that I gathered she had picked out specifically for this excursion. I watched them unfold their antibacterial napkins with care and scrub every inch of the hands--palms, fingers, creases, wrinkles, even up past the wrists. Watching them groom was exhausting. All of this was exhausting." -224, Hall of Small Mammals


Outlandishness Rating: 8/10