3 Books With Monsters From Folklore #WickedGoodReads

October is #WickedGoodReads Month here at Outlandish Lit and GXO. This week, we’re focusing on books with Dangerous Creatures. Today's topic: books with monsters from folklore (see the full list of discussion topics here).

  MOONSHOT BY HOPE NICHOLSON

Starting off this list with some more comics. Moonshot is a collection of short comics by many different Native American creators. Even though they don't all feature monsters, they're super beautiful and interesting and important. And the ones that are about monsters from folklore are SO CREEPY. They just got funding on Kickstarter for a second volume, so look out for that!!

MOONSHOT brings together dozens of creators from across North America to contribute comic book stories showcasing the rich heritage and identity of indigenous storytelling. From traditional stories to exciting new visions of the future, this collection presents some of the finest comic book and graphic novel work in North America. The traditional stories presented in the book are with the permission from the elders in their respective communities, making this a truly genuine, never-before-seen publication. MOONSHOT is an incredible collection.

WHERE WE GO WHEN ALL WE WERE IS GONE BY SEQUOIA NAGAMATSU

This is a perfect pick for this topic. All of the short stories in this collection are super strange, and most of them have some sort of monster or demon from Japanese folklore. I'm going to go ahead and say the stories that do are the best ones. Godzilla (and other kaiju), long necked demons, horrifying shapeshifting beings, etc.

“The Return to Monsterland” opens 'Where We Go When All We Were Is Gone,' a collection of twelve fabulist and genre-bending stories inspired by Japanese folklore, historical events, and pop culture. In “Rokurokubi”, a man who has the demonic ability to stretch his neck to incredible lengths tries to save a marriage built on secrets. The recently dead find their footing in “The Inn of the Dead’s Orientation for Being a Japanese Ghost”. In “Girl Zero”, a couple navigates the complexities of reviving their deceased daughter via the help of a shapeshifter.

THE BRIDES OF ROLLROCK ISLAND BY MARGO LANAGAN

I'm OBSESSED with selkies. I watched The Secret of Roan Inish at a very young age and it was a formative experience. I haven't read this one, but apparently it's wacky and sad and dark and beautiful af. One review said you'll like this if you liked the last episode of Twin Peaks. So I guess I'll like it? It's hard to say.

Rollrock island is a lonely rock of gulls and waves, blunt fishermen and their homely wives. Life is hard for the families who must wring a poor living from the stormy seas. But Rollrock is also a place of magic - the scary, salty-real sort of magic that changes lives forever. Down on the windswept beach, where the seals lie in herds, the outcast sea witch Misskaella casts her spells - and brings forth girls from the sea - girls with long, pale limbs and faces of haunting innocence and loveliness - the most enchantingly lovely girls the fishermen of Rollrock have ever seen.

What are your favorite books with monsters from folklore?

That's it for #wickedgoodreads posts this week, because I have a lot of good stuff coming up for you all this week - plus Readathon on Saturday! But I'll be back Monday with scary graphic novels/comics!

3 BeWITCHing Reads - Get It? #WickedGoodReads

October is #WickedGoodReads Month here at Outlandish Lit and GXO. This week, we’re focusing on books with Dangerous Creatures. Today's topic: books about witches (see the full list of discussion topics here). I haven't read very many at all, but now I'm trying to correct that! Basically I just want The VVitch (amazing horror movie) to be in book form and then I'll be happy.

WYTCHES BY SCOTT SNYDER

The art and color in this comic are SO BEAUTIFUL. It's not horrifying, but it's definitely creepy. If you want an original take on witches, this is definitely one.

Everything you thought you knew about witches is wrong. They are much darker, and they are much more horrifying. Wytches takes the mythology of witches to a far creepier, bone-chilling place than readers have dared venture before. When the Rooks family moves to the remote town of Litchfield, NH to escape a haunting trauma, they're hopeful about starting over. But something evil is waiting for them in the woods just beyond town. Watching from the trees. Ancient...and hungry.

LOLLY WILLOWES BY SYLVIA TOWNSEND WARNER

I've only just started this one, but the writing is SO GOOD. This book about witches was written in the 20s by a woman, which is badass. About a "spinster" who opts to become a witch instead of getting married.

In Lolly Willowes, Sylvia Townsend Warner tells of an aging spinster's struggle to break way from her controlling family—a classic story that she treats with cool feminist intelligence, while adding a dimension of the supernatural and strange. Warner is one of the outstanding and indispensable mavericks of twentieth-century literature, a writer to set beside Djuna Barnes and Jane Bowles, with a subversive genius that anticipates the fantastic flights of such contemporaries as Angela Carter and Jeanette Winterson.

HEX BY THOMAS OLDE HEUVELT

I'm going to be very real - I'm trying this book again right now, but I bailed on it the first time. The writing about technology and the internet is SO cringey. And how the teenagers talk is utter nonsense. But I really really love the idea of this witch, so I'm giving it another shot.

Welcome to Black Spring, the seemingly picturesque Hudson Valley town haunted by the Black Rock Witch, a 17th century woman whose eyes and mouth are sewn shut. Muzzled, she walks the streets and enters your homes at will. She stands next to your bed for nights on end. Everybody knows that her eyes may never be opened.

What are your favorite books about witches?

Tomorrow's topic is Books With Monsters From Folklore - see you there!

4 Books That Make The Woods A Terrifying Place #WickedGoodReads

October is #WickedGoodReads Month here at Outlandish Lit and GXO. This week, we’re focusing on books with Dangerous Places. I tried to narrow it down to 3, but I have 4 scary books set in the woods that I love. (see the full list of discussion topics here).

THE RITUAL BY ADAM NEVILL

In this horror novel, a hiking/camping trip in Sweden goes horribly wrong when a short cut is taken. NEVER TAKE SHORT CUTS. If you liked The Blair Witch Project, you'll like this. It was actually horrifying. Do not read while camping.

Four old university friends reunite for a hiking trip in the Scandinavian wilderness of the Arctic Circle. No longer young men, they have little left in common and tensions rise as they struggle to connect. Frustrated and tired they take a shortcut that turns their hike into a nightmare that could cost them their lives.

Lost, hungry and surrounded by forest untouched for millennia, they stumble across an isolated old house. Inside, they find the macabre remains of old rites and pagan sacrifices; ancient artefacts and unidentifiable bones. A place of dark ritual and home to a bestial presence that is still present in the ancient forest, and now they’re the prey.

ANNIHILATION BY JEFF VANDERMEER

Nothing makes sense in Area X. There's a border nobody can see. Fungus grows in the shape of words. There are strange creatures. Maybe people turn into animals? Doppelgangers? Psychosis? It's so weird and tense, and the wilderness is as much a character as anybody else.

Area X has been cut off from the rest of the continent for decades. Nature has reclaimed the last vestiges of human civilization. The first expedition returned with reports of a pristine, Edenic landscape; all the members of the second expedition committed suicide; the third expedition died in a hail of gunfire as its members turned on one another; the members of the eleventh expedition returned as shadows of their former selves, and within months of their return, all had died of aggressive cancer.

This is the twelfth expedition.

THE TROOP BY NICK CUTTER

This book is definitely more focused on the horror of the "bioengineered nightmare" referenced below (I won't spoil it) and the tensions that appear between these stranded scouts. But it is set in a forest on an island that leaves them all stuck with each other and with someone infected. THIS BOOK IS SO GROSS.

Once a year, scoutmaster Tim Riggs leads a troop of boys into the Canadian wilderness for a three-day camping trip—a tradition as comforting and reliable as a good ghost story and a roaring bonfire. But when an unexpected intruder—shockingly thin, disturbingly pale, and voraciously hungry—stumbles upon their campsite, Tim and the boys are exposed to something far more frightening than any tale of terror. The human carrier of a bioengineered nightmare. An inexplicable horror that spreads faster than fear. A harrowing struggle for survival that will pit the troop against the elements, the infected...and one another.

THE WOODS BY JAMES TYNION IV

A high school is all of a sudden transported to some whole other, slightly magical world that nobody can make heads or tails of. The woods surrounding the high school is filled with monsters and mystery. It's a whooooole other world out there in the forest. It is just my type of weird. There's a hint at maybe aliens or at least something Ancient Aliens-y?? It's like The Breakfast Club, but with more angry monsters. If you're interested in comics, check this out!

On October 16, 2013, 437 students, 52 teachers, and 24 additional staff from Bay Point Preparatory High School in suburban Milwaukee, WI vanished without a trace. Countless light years away, far outside the bounds of the charted universe, 513 people find themselves in the middle of an ancient, primordial wilderness. Where are they? Why are they there? The answers will prove stranger than anyone could possibly imagine.

What are your favorite scary stories set in the woods?

The next #WickedGoodReads topic I'll be getting in on is on Monday - Witches!!

3 Favorite International Horror & Weird Books #WickedGoodReads

October is #WickedGoodReads Month here at Outlandish Lit and GXO. This week, we’re focusing on books with Dangerous Places. I've been looking forward to this topic - International Horror & Weird Books (see the full list of discussion topics here).

REVENGE BY YOKO OGAWA

These horror stories are all interconnected and they are SUCH a delight to read. Creepy, dark, and murder-y. And, bonus: They are pretty distinctly Japanese.

An aspiring writer moves into a new apartment and discovers that her landlady has murdered her husband. Years later, the writer’s stepson reflects upon his stepmother and the strange stories she used to tell him. Meanwhile, a surgeon’s lover vows to kill him if he does not leave his wife. Before she can follow-through on her crime of passion, though, the surgeon will cross paths with another remarkable woman, a cabaret singer whose heart beats delicately outside of her body. But when the surgeon promises to repair her condition, he sparks the jealousy of another man who would like to preserve the heart in a custom tailored bag. Murderers and mourners, mothers and children, lovers and innocent bystanders—their fates converge in a darkly beautiful web that they are each powerless to escape.

JAGANNATH BY KARIN TIDBECK

This is one of my favorite short story collections EVER. Not necessarily horror, but definitely weird. Karin Tidbeck wrote them in Swedish then translated them herself into English, which is pretty impressive. Read more about how much I love this strange, unsettling, and very Scandinavian collection here.

Enter the strange and wonderful world of Swedish sensation Karin Tidbeck with this feast of darkly fantastical stories. Whether through the falsified historical record of the uniquely weird Swedish creature known as the “Pyret” or the title story, “Jagannath,” about a biological ark in the far future, Tidbeck’s unique imagination will enthrall, amuse, and unsettle you. How else to describe a collection that includes “Cloudberry Jam,” a story that opens with the line “I made you in a tin can”? Marvels, quirky character studies, and outright surreal monstrosities await you in what is likely to be one of the most talked-about short story collections of the year.

ONE HUNDRED SHADOWS BY HWANG JUNGEUN

This novella was translated from Korean to English and is being praised by Han Kang (author of The Vegetarian). And, I'm going to be real, I think it's better. With creepy magical realism abound, this novella about shadows detaching themselves from their humans had me completely hooked. I kind of want everyone to read this.

An oblique, hard-edged novel tinged with offbeat fantasy, One Hundred Shadows is set in a slum electronics market in central Seoul – an area earmarked for demolition in a city better known for its shiny skyscrapers and slick pop videos. Here, the awkward, tentative relationship between Eungyo and Mujae, who both dropped out of formal education to work as repair-shop assistants, is made yet more uncertain by their economic circumstances, while their matter-of-fact discussion of a strange recent development – the shadows of the slum’s inhabitants have started to ‘rise’ – leaves the reader to make up their own mind as to the nature of this shape-shifting tale.

What are your favorite international horror & weird reads?

Tomorrow's topic is Books That Make The Woods Seem Like A Scary Place - see you there!

A Day In My Life: A Nonsense Drama Of The Ages

You guys are so lucky. I decided that even though Trish's A Day in the Life event happened on the 27th, I wanted to do it anyway. If you like unreliable narrators and stream of consciousness, this log of my day is for you. It was Monday this week, and pretty typical (except I don't normally work as late or skip my classes). I hope you pick up some useful lifestyle tips. Feel free to replicate any part of my routine, it is very effective.


9:10 Wake up on my own somehow. Go to the bathroom before discovering there's no toilet paper in the room. What a telling start to this project. Take care of business, brush teeth.
9:25 Say a morning prayer to Patti Smith.

9:28 Only manage to do 12 push ups because I stopped doing them for 2 weeks over break.
9:30 Take a look at all the stuff I haven't done yet. Settle into my bed and get on Twitter while my computer's too slow to process what I want. Decide definitely not to go to class.
9:40 Check the chore chart (my roommate is L/yellow) to see how disappointed I should be for the rest of the day. Result: very disappointed.

9:50 Not sure what the 3D modeling homework is today, but start doing things anyway. Listen to book podcasts as I work.

ugh the trees won't render

so here's a screenshot w/ the shrubbery

11:30 Take homework break to write blog post.
11:50 Time to take a shower, do my makeup, get dressed.
11:57 Realize I have no clean towels. Grab the dry shampoo.
 

#nofilter #plentyofmakeup

12:25 Email teacher my lies.
12:50 Was about to leave for the grocery store and library until I realize my roommate took my library card. Sit back down and panic. Online chat with librarian to see if I can get books with my id & proof of address. I can.
1:30 I couldn’t. The librarian told me I needed an Illinois id. I was intimidated and sad. But then she called after me as I went to put my hold books back. I spun around in slow motion, tears streaming down my face to see that tears were streaming down hers as well. "I don't want to lose you," she said/she actually said if I could get a picture of my card from my roommate that would be fine. Proceed to text and call roommate desperately until he responded. All is well.
2:00 Get home with two COOL BOOKS. Only spent $27 at Aldi on food for 3 weeks. Put my shit away. Go to throw some laundry in.

2:20 Sit down on the couch with computer and raisins. Let what happens happen.
3:00 Stop sorting through emails or whatever people do on computers and go switch laundry. Come upstairs to make my first meal of the day.
3:10 Forget what I'm doing and start sorting my bookshelf. Listening to Rider Strong talk about books.
3:20 Start making dragon noodles.

4:00 Realize what time it is. Run and get my laundry. Hurriedly eat and box up food. Get my shit together. Get out of there by 4:18.
4:30 Realize I left the leftovers I intended to take to work at home. So typical. At least I look good. Read some A Little Life on the train. Saw my old roommate. Did everything in my power not to make eye contact. We said nothing.
4:55 Arrive at work with 5 minutes to spare. By the way, my work is sitting in a room at my school handing people hard drives and answering some questions. It is either very hectic or it is homework time. Phone mysteriously loses ability to send texts.
6:20 I have gotten very little done at work. Mostly just talking to my coworkers. Finally start working on the science fiction story I have due tomorrow.
6:26 A friend comes and INTERRUPTS my work to ask me about a 3D project that I should have worked a lot more on over spring break. Back to writing.
6:48 Began staring at nothing for 15 minutes. Feel overwhelming and crushing doubt about all of my choices, wonder how much homework I could get away with not doing without failing. Think about the Chipotle I ate yesterday and feel better about life. Continue writing science fiction story that I hate.
7:23 A student asked me a question I didn’t know the answer to. I sat quietly and waited for someone else to say something.
7:35 Realize I haven’t been doing anything for the past…oh, it’s only been 10 minutes. That’s a relief. Time for an apple sauce break. Bored. Flash accidentally goes off the first time I try to take a picture of my boring apple sauce. Coworker calls me out. I let her know that it is absolutely none of her business why I would take a picture of my apple sauce.

8:56 Decide to start writing science fiction story again instead of dicking around on the internet, which is what I've been doing.
9:36 How have I only had like 2 glasses of water today!! And I’ve only written 4 out of 10 pages needed for my homework oops.
9:42 Wonder if I’m caught up on Catfish. I am. Sad. Still not doing work really.
9:50 Finally leave work. Don't normally work later than 6:30.
10:40 Aaaand I'm home! I read A Little Life on the train. Once home, start skyping with the boyfriend. Eat a snack of canned tuna on saltines, because I'm a cat.
11:00 Lie in bed, Skype with bf, and continue to work on sci-fi story.
12:00 Just kidding I wrote one paragraph then I watched youtube videos. Time for bed!
1:00 Jk fell into the trap of watching a youtube documentary about polyamorous relationships. Time for bed!


Well, that's pretty much what a day looks like for me. If only you could see what I'm like interacting with people. It's a mess. OK THANKS FOR READING.

Were you on the edge of your seat? Was your heart racing? Let me know how alarmed you are in the comments!