3 Scary Short Story Collections #WickedGoodReads

October is #WickedGoodReads Month here at Outlandish Lit and GXO. And it's the last week and my last post! Today's topic: scary short stories (see the full list of discussion topics here).

SONGS OF A DEAD DREAMER BY THOMAS LIGOTTI

This is by far one of the best collections of supernatural horror that I've ever read. It does not at all feel like a contemporary read, so prepare yourself for that. Once you get used to his style, you can fully appreciate the scares and disturbing plots he has created.

Songs of a Dreamer was Thomas Ligotti’s first collection of supernatural horror stories. When originally published in 1985 by Harry Morris’s Silver Scarab Press, the book was hardly noticed. In 1989, an expanded version appeared that garnered accolades from several quarters. Writing in the Washington Post, the celebrated science fiction and fantasy author Michael Swanwick extolled: “Put this volume on the shelf right between H. P. Lovecraft and Edgar Allan Poe. Where it belongs.”

THE LOTTERY AND OTHER STORIES BY SHIRLEY JACKSON

Honestly, everything Shirley Jackson writes is amazing. If you didn't have to read The Lottery in school, READ IT NOW. Another horrifying story I love (I don't know if it's in this particular collection) is The Summer People, so google that.

The Lottery, one of the most terrifying stories written in this century, created a sensation when it was first published in The New Yorker. "Power and haunting," and "nights of unrest" were typical reader responses. This collection, the only one to appear during Shirley Jackson's lifetime, unites "The Lottery:" with twenty-four equally unusual stories. Together they demonstrate Jackson's remarkable range--from the hilarious to the truly horrible--and power as a storyteller.

THREE MOMENTS OF AN EXPLOSION BY CHINA MIEVILLE

I didn't love this collection, but I do love China Mieville. He's one of the most original minds in fiction/genre fiction today. It would be a mistake not to mention this book, just because it has a few of the scariest short stories I have ever read: The Condition of New Death, In The Slopes, Sacken.

London awakes one morning to find itself besieged by a sky full of floating icebergs. Destroyed oil rigs, mysteriously reborn, clamber from the sea and onto the land, driven by an obscure but violent purpose. An anatomy student cuts open a cadaver to discover impossibly intricate designs carved into a corpse's bones—designs clearly present from birth, bearing mute testimony to . . . what?

What are your favorite scary short story collections? I need more in my life!

That's it for #wickedgoodreads! I hope you enjoyed it and read a ton of scary books this month.

4 Horrifying Graphic Novels/Comics #WickedGoodReads

October is #WickedGoodReads Month here at Outlandish Lit and GXO. This is the final week!. Today's topic: scary graphic novels and comics (see the full list of discussion topics here).

  BLACK HOLE BY CHARLES BURNS

Charles Burns' illustrations are so iconic, you have to read this if just to see them. His mind is also particularly peculiar. Black Hole is a bit dark and gruesome, but it's utterly fascinating.

Suburban Seattle, the mid-1970s. We learn from the out-set that a strange plague has descended upon the area’s teenagers, transmitted by sexual contact. The disease is manifested in any number of ways — from the hideously grotesque to the subtle (and concealable) — but once you’ve got it, that’s it. There’s no turning back.

As we inhabit the heads of several key characters — some kids who have it, some who don’t, some who are about to get it — what unfolds isn’t the expected battle to fight the plague, or bring heightened awareness to it , or even to treat it. What we become witness to instead is a fascinating and eerie portrait of the nature of high school alienation itself — the savagery, the cruelty, the relentless anxiety and ennui, the longing for escape.

And then the murders start.

HARROW COUNTY BY CULLEN BUNN

This is a comic series that's still running; currently volume one is out. The art is super charming and so is the main character. The "country haints" are delightfully creepy and so is the story of the witch that rules them.

Emmy always knew that the woods surrounding her home crawled with ghosts and monsters. But on the eve of her eighteenth birthday, she learns that she is connected to these creatures--and to the land itself--in a way she never imagined.
A southern gothic fairy tale from the creator of smash hit The Sixth Gun, beautifully and hauntingly realized by B.P.R.D.'s Tyler Crook!

BEAUTIFUL DARKNESS BY FABIEN VEHLMANN

SO cute and SO creepy. Beautiful Darkness looks like a big illustrated storybook about fairies and little animals, but then it gets so so dark. I highly recommend it.

Kerascoët’s and Fabien Vehlmann’s unsettling and gorgeous anti-fairy tale is a searing condemnation of our vast capacity for evil writ tiny. Join princess Aurora and her friends as they journey to civilization's heart of darkness in a bleak allegory about surviving the human experience.  The sweet faces and bright leaves of Kerascoët’s delicate watercolors serve to highlight the evil that dwells beneath Vehlmann's story as pettiness, greed, and jealousy take over. Beautiful Darkness is a harrowing look behind the routine politeness and meaningless kindness of civilized society.

THROUGH THE WOODS BY EMILY CARROLL

Another one with bonkers good art. This is a collection of creepy short, fairy tale-like stories. I LOVED it. You can read one of the best ones online here. The online format works really well. Upon looking at her site, you might be able to see all the stories there, but if you love them, buy the book!!

'It came from the woods. Most strange things do.'

Five mysterious, spine-tingling stories follow journeys into (and out of?) the eerie abyss.

These chilling tales spring from the macabre imagination of acclaimed and award-winning comic creator Emily Carroll.

What are your favorite horror comics and graphic novels?

Sorry for the delay in this post. I just got a new laptop and scheduling got a little out of whack. Tomorrow is my last #wickedgoodreads post with scary short stories!

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!

Horror AND? :: 2 Books That Push Genre Boundaries

I love a good horror story. I also love a book that can blend more than one genre together into something new. Recently I read two horror hybrids that take their readers interesting new places!

Disappearance at Devil's Rock by Paul Tremblay
Publisher: William Morrow. June 21, 2016.
Genre: Horror & Mystery
Source: Publisher
Pages: 327


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She can't tell her that people always do things that their friends and loved ones never imagined they would do. Not only is everyone more than capable of making the worst decisions possible, those kinds of decisions are frighteningly commonplace and easy to make.

Paul Tremblay, author of one of my favorite horror novels ever, is at it again with a new horror story with mystery/crime/thriller elements. Disappearance at Devil's Rock is about a very real horror: the disappearance of a child. After Tommy, a young teen, disappears in a park, and nobody seems to know why or how this happened. And then his mother is convinced she sees his ghost in the house. All sorts of weird shit goes down and I don't want to say much more than that plot-wise.

When I first finished this novel, I wasn't sure if I liked it or if I would categorize it as horror, though it definitely had horror elements. That was until I remembered that Paul Tremblay is totally a horror fan's writer. He had heavy allusions to several books/movies in Head Full of Ghosts, which led me to remember a favorite horror movie of mine, Lake Mungo. The plot of this book is heavily influenced by the Australian film: beloved teen goes missing, mom believes in ghost, sibling admits something, we eventually discover teen had secrets, doppelganger/future-seeing stuff. I'll stop my analysis before I spoil both film AND book.

What I'm trying to say is that having seen this movie made me completely understand what Tremblay was going for. I believe he was trying to recreate the slow burn pacing of the mockumentary film, because it has a very particular creepy tone. And, unfortunately, while I love the Lake Mungo plot similarities, I don't know if the pacing/tone was captured. Disappearance often just felt slow, regardless of whether some of the reveals and creepy bits were super intense and original, leaving them less scary for me. Another complaint some readers had were of too many Minecraft references. But as someone who teaches Minecraft, I can tell you that if anything Tremblay went light on them for the reader's sake. He captured awkward, annoying, approval-needing teen boys perfectly in this dark, eerie tale of the secrets people close to us keep.

My Best Friend's Exorcism by Grady Hendrix
Publisher: Quirk Books. May 17, 2016.
Genre: Horror & Comedy
Source: Publisher
Pages: 336



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"Corn dogs," the exorcist said, "are all the proof I need that there is a God."

If you're looking for a lighter horror novel, My Best Friend's Exorcism is the book for you. Grady Hendrix is responsible for Horrorstor, the horror novel that looks like an IKEA catalog. The gimmick this time? An 80s theme with binding that looks like an old yearbook. Normally gimmick turns me off, but this book had enough substance and good storytelling to cause me to "have fun." I started reading this book, looked up for air, and realized I was 100 pages into the book. Oops!

Super readable and fun (and that's coming from someone who hates fun), this is a story about teen girls in private school and a possession. Something happens to Abby's best friend, Gretchen, in the woods one night and she's a little different afterwards. And then she's a lot different. In a series of disturbing scenes, we start to see Gretchen's transformation and the havoc she wreaks on his friend group. Even though Gretchen turns on Abby in horrible ways, Abby is determined to save her friend. And she may get a body building god-enthusiast in on it. I laughed several times throughout the book.

There are a lot of things to love about this book. Every chapter title is the name of an 80s song, for example. There weren't quite enough scares for me, but it makes up for it with how fun it is. And the ending is surprisingly moving (I cried). Early on, I was very nervous the plot was going down a "girl gets raped and manifests itself in ways that look like possession" path. Which is a tricky path to navigate. But then that potential plot sort of gets dropped? Which is overall good, but then also feels like a loose thread. I don't know. I also paused for a number of days in the middle of reading, so it's possible that's what caused the feeling of a break in that plotline. Overall, a fun horror novel if you're not looking to get too scared.

What horror combo books do you love?

A Head Full of Ghosts by Paul Tremblay: Review

A Head Full of Ghosts by Paul Tremblay
Publisher: William Morrow. June 2015.
Pages: 286
Genre: Horror
Source: Publisher



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The lives of the Barretts, a normal suburban New England family, are torn apart when fourteen-year-old Marjorie begins to display signs of acute schizophrenia.

To her parents' despair, the doctors are unable to stop Marjorie's descent into madness. As their stable home devolves into a house of horrors, they reluctantly turn to a local Catholic priest for help. Father Wanderly suggests an exorcism. He also contacts a production company that is eager to document the Barretts' plight. With John, Marjorie's father, out of work for more than a year and the medical bills looming, the family agrees to be filmed, and soon find themselves the unwitting stars of The Possession, a hit reality television show. When events in the Barrett household explode in tragedy, the show and the shocking incidents it captures become the stuff of urban legend.

Fifteen years later, a bestselling writer interviews Marjorie's younger sister, Merry. As she recalls those long ago events that took place when she was just eight years old, long-buried secrets and painful memories that clash with what was broadcast on television begin to surface--and a mind-bending tale of psychological horror is unleashed, raising vexing questions about memory and reality, science and religion, and the very nature of evil.- Goodreads

I've talked before about having trouble finding books that actually scare me. Despite loving horror movies, I had come to avoid horror novels for the most part, for fear of being disappointed. I had put off reading A Head Full of Ghosts for a long time, and I hate that I didn't read it immediately when I got it.

Apart from it being horrifying, it's a combination of horror AND reality TV. Yes, you read that correctly. Never before has a book been more perfect for me, combining my two true loves. The tale is told by Merry in retrospect as she speaks to a writer interested in her story 15 years later. After young teen Marjorie starts acting a little bit kooky/possessed, the parents send her to doctors and psychologists to no avail. The unemployed father gets more and more religious and begins to insist on Marjorie seeing a Catholic priest who wants to give her an exorcism. As money runs out from all the doctors, the family is left with no choice but to go the exorcism route and monetize it by agreeing to be a part of a new reality show called The Posession.

This is all told from Merry's childish point of view, because she was young when this all went down. And Merry saw the most of the horrifying, often demonic things Marjorie did and said. At the beginning of each new "Part," we read a blog post by somebody analyzing the the show's episodes, pointing out allusions to other horror movies/books, and identifying broader themes in it as a piece of media. This is all delightfully meta and a fascinating look at the horror we consume, and it just gets better as the book goes along.

I watched the blinking red of the screen and then looked over at the blanket-covered house. In the LED white light the blue blanket looked like it was the same white color as the cardboard house... I stared at or into the blanket, trying to see the blue that I knew was there but wasn't seeing, and then the blanket was sucked inside the house through the shutters of the front window, as though that window was a ravenous black hole.

It's hard to say much more without spoiling the book. It gets super intense and makes you question everything. You never quite know what to expect next from it. Or, you think you know, but you're wrong and you're completely delighted by where it ends up going. Is Marjorie struggling with mental illness or is something more sinister afoot? There are all sorts of psychological twists and turns that will make it a huge struggle to put down this book once you start. An exorcism tale that's highly self aware, modern, and incredibly clever, A Head Full of Ghosts will scare the pants off you and give you a whole new appreciation for the horror genre itself.

I sneak into your room when you are asleep, Merry-monkey. I've been doing it for weeks now, since the end of summer. You're so pretty when you're asleep. Last night, I pinched your nose shut until you opened your little mouth and gasped...

xoxo

Marjorie

The Captive Condition by Kevin P. Keating

The Captive Condition by Kevin P. Keating
Publisher: Pantheon. July 2015
Pages: 267
Genre: Literary Fiction, Horror
Source: Publisher



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When Emily Ryan is found drowned in the family pool, pumped full of barbiturates and alcohol, a series of events with cataclysmic consequences ensues. Emily’s lover, a college professor, finds himself responsible for her twin daughters, whose piercing stares fill him with the guilt and anguish he so desperately tries to hide from his wife. A low-level criminal named The Gonk takes over the cottage of a reclusive elderly artist, complete with graveyard and moonshine still, and devises plans for both. His young apprentice, haunted by inner demons, seeks retribution for the professor’s wicked deeds. The town itself, buzzing into decadent life after sundown, traps its inhabitants in patterns of inexplicable behavior all the while drawing them toward a night in which the horror will reach its disturbing and inevitable conclusion. - Goodreads

The Captive Condition has some intense Twin Peaks and True Detective vibes. The small town location is gritty and unsettling. The multiple characters the story jumps between are bizarre, harbor terrible secrets, and are always watching one another. Another similarity: There are a startling amount of surreal aspects that happen so quickly and casually, it's hard to tell what's reality and what's some character's dark hallucinations.

"The problem is this: Normandy Falls, in all its gruesome comedy, in all its colorful and agreeable horror, could never properly prepare me for the experiences that awaited me on the other side of those gates. Regrettably, the best I can do is render one version of that unhappy fiasco, and I must rely on my imperfect memory, a thing that, like the Wakefield River, flows with maddening predictability in one direction only, far from its mysterious and secret source."

The book is being narrated by a college dropout who fancies himself a writer. A lot of the language slowed down my reading of the book significantly. Not because I was too dumb to understand it, but because it would take a hefty paragraph to say something that could take a sentence. Whether or not this was a stylistic choice due to the main character's situation, the overload of adjectives, adverbs, and similes made the book more of a chore to read than I had wanted it to be. Oftentimes, because I would get lost in the flood of words, it was hard to keep track of what was going on in the plot or what exactly was motivating the characters.

With that said, the story really did pick up after 200 pages. It started to get pretty weird, with some potentially supernatural presences. The characters' stories started to come together to several very dramatic, slightly surreal conclusions. That level of strange darkness was really cool to experience. It just would have been great to have experienced it throughout the rest of the book.


SOME QUOTES:
                       
"When the delirium of love dies and the asphyxiating cloud of romantic ruin finally dissipates, the bruised and battered survivors will often find lurking among the rubble and ashes of the human heart an insidious beast who yearns to wreak more havoc."


HOW OUTLANDISH WAS IT?

6/10 - It starts to get a little supernatural and strange near the end, though that isn't really explained.

Books And How To Read Them For Any Trip

Currently I'm camping and one of my favorite parts about taking a trip is picking out what books to bring with me. There's an art to it. You have to have enough options, but you also want to have room for, you know, anything else. Sometimes you want an e-book, sometimes you need it to be physical. Here are my tried and true picks for basically any situation. Just not cruises, because who can read while seasick?


ON A PLANE

Our Endless Numbered Days by Claire Fuller

Format: Physical, planes have little lights

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When you're on a plane you basically want to be anywhere else at all, despite how much mental and emotional preparation you put into it. There's nothing you can do except immerse yourself in something else to keep yourself from wondering how many hours it will take for your elbow to merge with the elbow the large man next to you, because there's no way in hell you are giving up that arm rest. So why not read a nice story about a girl who lives in the woods with her father? Ok, it's not that nice, but it's completely riveting and you won't be able to put it down. Why did he steal his daughter away and tell her her family was dead?? How will they survive with so few supplies?? Being far from a decrepit cabin in the woods won't look so bad after a while.


ON A HORRIBLE BUS 

When Women Were Birds by Terry Tempest Williams

Format: Physical, buses also have little lights

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There's literally nothing worse than being on a bus for a long period of time and nobody can tell me otherwise. I don't care how fancy the bus is, your legs will never be comfortable and the people around you will never be pleasant. For some reason long bus rides across states always make me my most thoughtful. But the environment of a cramped bus with horrible people in it who declare themselves bus DJ isn't super conducive to that. So let Terry Tempest Williams have the deep thoughts for you, specifically about being a mother, being a daughter, being a woman, and existing in the world. This is a quick, powerful memoir that will match your emotional wistfulness on the bus (maybe that's just me?) And you don't even have to be embarrassed about crying as you read, because there are probably 15 sobbing infants already. You'll be lost in the shuffle.


IN A CAR

All the Birds, Singing by Evie Wyld

Format: E-book or Physical, depending on how late you'll be in the car

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When I'm on a long car ride, I want something vaguely thriller-y. But I can't be able to race through it, because then it's over and what do I do for the next four hours? (Just kidding, I sing along to Sia songs, that's what I do). This is a mysterious and creepy novel that you have to take the time to sort of puzzle out. Two different stories are being told at the same time, but in different directions. A woman who is living alone raising sheep is finding some of her flock brutally killed. By who or what? What else is going on? The writing is beautiful and the sense of unease is palpable. You will be thoroughly entrenched in this story during your road trip.


HIKING IN THE WOODS

The People in the Trees by Hanya Yanagihara

Format: Physical, for the outdoorsy romanticism

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This isn't a fun read by any means, but it is a really, really good one. Hanya Yanagihara writes her island locations so well, you can actually feel the jungle around you, even if you're maybe just near a midwestern lake. It's not a quick read, but it's a great immersive book to revisit over the course of a trip, especially when you're outdoors yourself. When you have to put the book down to do some hiking, it'll stay in your head. If you like books within books that have troubling characters and mystical turtles that give you physical immortality with a terrifying side effect, check it out.


BONUS: DO NOT READ IF HIKING IN THE WOODS

The Ritual by Adam Nevill

Format: Physical, because you do NOT need to be reading this at night

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I actually just read this in a long car ride recently and oh my god, I would not have been able to handle reading it if I was in any sort of foresty surrounding. 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. The tension is built expertly. Just maybe read it somewhere with no trees.


AROUND THE CAMPFIRE

Songs of a Dead Dreamer by Thomas Ligotti
or, A Creepy Out of Print Book of Short Stories You've Never Heard of

Format: Physical, for creepy flashlight usage

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There's nothing better than reading stories aloud or hearing them read aloud. And now that we're not in elementary school, there aren't a lot of opportunities in regular life to show off your reading aloud prowess. Around a campfire is a perfect time, though. The scarier the stories, the better. I like to go in not knowing what to expect, so I tend to choose books of short stories I've never heard of. It's a risk, but it can pay off when you and your friends are completely unable to fall asleep in your tents. Outside is scary.


What do you look for in the books you take on trips?

 

Are We Harder On Books Than Movies?

Recently I've been attempting to read more horror and it's really got me thinking. I read some short stories from After the People Lights Have Gone Off by Stephen Graham Jones out loud around a campfire while I was camping, because I'm rustic like that. I enjoyed them as creepy literary fiction, but I found myself getting mad that I wasn't horrified when it was a book sold to me as horror.

Later, I was reading When We Were Animals by Joshua Gaylord, another book categorized as horror, that ended up being just kind of weird literary fiction and sort of YA. I didn't get scared at any point.

When I'm reading horror novels that are genuinely scary but are poorly written or have questionable character development, I get frustrated and want to get out of the reading situation. But I often find myself defending sub-par horror movies to people criticizing them for the same reason. When it comes to horror movies, I don't necessarily need the writing or acting to be amazing as long as the scares and atmosphere are delivered.

Is it just because books are more of a time investment? Is it because I need to use more brain power while reading a book than watching a movie? Or is it because, subconsciously, I hold the written word to higher standards? And why is that?

Even outside of the horror genre, it seems like perhaps movies are more easily forgiven for their faults than books are. Shouldn't authors be cut a little slack, considering it's (generally) one person plus one or more editors?

Perhaps, especially when it comes to horror, the writing needs to deliver a lot more, considering I have to create the world in my head. I have to spend time immersed in that world and that makes me pickier. It's easier to tune out of a movie you're watching than a book you're reading. I'm not sure if this means my harshness is justified or if I still need to keep it in check.

Do you think you're harder on books than you are movies? Is it the time investment, the "literature" factor, or something else? Should I be approaching horror books more like I do horror movies? 

The Different Objects Books Can Be: Transformation Through Experimental Formats

Books have boundaries. They are words on paper. They can’t do everything that other forms of media can do. But, sometimes, books can transform themselves right before your very eyes. That’s why experimental formats are amazing. They make you rethink everything that a book can communicate and how you interact with it. Some attempts can be gimmicky, that’s true. When structure is prioritized over story, it can be disastrous. But when the structure propels the story and your connection to it, the results can be breathtaking. Here are some of the items experimental books can become:

A GAME

Games have instructions. Games have rules. Games evoke suspense and strategic thinking. The Harlequin and the Train by Paul Tremblay is a horror novella that requires you to interact with it. Your game piece: a yellow highlighter. The novella instructs you to highlight certain lines of the book. As you read, you’re no longer just the voyeur of a violent accident that takes place in the story, you are participating in it. Anxiety heightens as you get closer to the end of a game, as it will by the end of this short book.

A MAZE

The plot of House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski is about a labyrinth of sorts, and the book parallels that beautifully. The majority of the book is a manuscript that the narrator found. The manuscript is about a documentary that doesn’t exist in our world or the narrator’s world. The documentary is about a house that’s bigger on the inside than it is on the outside. And it keeps growing. This massive horror novel plays with your mind in many ways, as the stars of the documentary go deeper into their expanding house. And as the manuscript goes on, the format gets really weird. How you read the pages gets confusing. You have to go back and forth between footnotes, the appendix, and the narrator’s thoughts in the margins. You’re not sure which character is going mad, or if you’re losing it. The journey through its paths is as terrifying as it is fascinating.

A TOY YOU FIND IN THE BACK OF THE CLOSET

You know the one. Each time you find it, you can’t get yourself to throw it away. Not because you’re going to DO anything with it. It’s too old and grimy to display anywhere. But it makes you feel something that you can’t feel with anything else. It’s easy to find nostalgia in books like The Unfortunates by B.S. Johnson, because they’re so reminiscent of time spent paging back and forth through Choose Your Own Adventure books in the school library until you manage to get to an ending where you don’t fuck everything up. The Unfortunates is a book in a box. There’s a first section, and then you read the rest of the chapters in any random order you want. WHAT.

YOUR PHONE'S TWITTER APP

Ok, so this isn’t really an object. But a phone is! Whatever. Once we’re in the impending singularity, I’m sure our robo-fingers will be able to virtu-caress all the apps we want. Works of poetry and fiction found in alt-lit, such as Selected Unpublished Blog Posts of a Mexican Panda Express Employee by Megan Boyle, are turning social media writing into an art form. Boyle’s book is written in tweets, short blog posts, and lists. They read like a very personal diary, often reference pop culture, and explore the malaise of a struggling twenty-something who grew up on the internet. She can be funny, highly intelligent, and poignantly sad all within 140 characters. Reading her book is like stalking your coolest, funniest friend’s social media.

A BRAIN

While some experimental books try to spiral you out of our normal world, showing you the abstract complexities of life, some bore deep into you. The experimental form can be used to mimic the act of being human. A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing by Eimear McBride attempts to do this by creating a whole new stream-of-consciousness style grammar, replicating what it would be like to actually be inside the main character’s head. Words aren’t where you want them to be, and neither is punctuation. It’s difficult both in structure and in topic. You have to learn to read again. How to be a person again. And you have to learn how to really deeply understand somebody’s mind, even when what you’ll find is almost impossible to bear.



What have experimental books become for you? 
 

It's Monday, What Are You Reading? [May 11, 2015]

6-ish days. The final stretch. One final project down (a 3D environment which you can see below), 2 to go. And one test, but I definitely don't have time to worry about that. I haven't gotten a lot of reading done. I keep starting books on trains, just for something new and distracting. HIRE ME.

This week I read:

 

• We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson - Wow, I loved this. So creepy. I knew I loved Shirley Jackson, so I don't know why I didn't get on this sooner. I have officially won the two person book club, as far as book choices go.
  

Currently Reading: 

 

Hell's Waiting Room by C.V. Hunt is a weird little indie horror novella. I started reading it on the train on my phone recently, because I'm ~of the future~. I don't know what to think of it quite yet, because I'm hardly into it. But it's definitely creepy and bizarre.









Yeah, I'm still reading Dendera by Yuya Sato. And shit's going down, you guys. It's pretty gruesome.

What are you reading this week?

 

Review: Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer

Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer
(Southern Reach Trilogy #1)
Publisher: FSG Originals. February 4, 2014
Pages: 195
Genre: Science Fiction
Source: Bookstore
First Line: The tower, which was not supposed to be there, plunges into the earth in a place just before the black pine forest begins to give way to swamp and them the reeds and wind-gnarled trees of the marsh flats.


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I have been telling everyone I know to read this book for the past two months. Oh my god. This is my kind of book. Basically, it fills the hole LOST left in my heart. Minus the ending, yeah yeah, everyone likes to complain about that. But Annihilation is only the first in the Southern Reach Trilogy, so it can only really be compared to the beginning of LOST anyway. What I'm trying to say is this book is that brand of weird inexplicable discovery adventure. And it is just as thrilling.

Maybe I should slow down. What is this book even about? An excellent, hard to answer question. It's about a place called Area X. There's not a lot known about this place, but it's this crazy jungle that's cut off from the rest of civilization. Nobody really seems to know what goes on there and the only way to get in is through a government agency's (the Southern Reach) mysterious "border." Eleven expeditions had previously been sent in to explore the mysteries of Area X, but they all either killed themselves, killed each other, or somehow crossed the border and returned to their homes only to die of cancer shortly after. Strange things are clearly going on in this area, as the menacing name would suggest.

This is a story about the twelfth expedition. It is a group of four women who only go by the names the Biologist (she might as well be called the Main Character), the Anthropologist, the Surveyor, and the Psychologist. They all basically know nothing about the area or what they're really supposed to be doing there. The Psychologist has to put them under hypnosis so they don't like die of fright or something when they go over the weird border. They get there and everything's pretty jungle-y and typical until they find a big stone mound with stairs tunneling into the earth. They were given maps, but that wasn't on there. So they go down these stairs, a great idea, and they find words on the wall. Growing in fungus. THAT'S WEIRD. The Biologist gets a little too close and sniffs a fungus spore. But that makes her immune to hypnosis, which apparently the Psychologist continues to use on them.

The Psychologist says some hypnosis trigger word and the rest get knocked out, so the Biologist has to fake it. She lists a bunch of commands and in them is something along the lines of "you will continue to believe the mound is made of stone." WHAT? WHAT EVEN? That is only in the first 20 pages or so. It gets weirder. More inexplicable things happen. It gets scarier. And you get more and more engrossed in the story. It flips between Area X and occasionally the Biologist before her expedition. I won't say any more.

I raced through this book. My own apartment was suddenly very scary at night. This book created a subtle, intense atmosphere that stayed with me and left me hyper-aware of my surroundings. I really love when stories or movies focus on environments. I feel like they can really set the tone for a plot like very little else can. Sometimes the writing felt a little dry, or vaguely scientific (not in vocabulary or content, but in style) perhaps because the narrator was a biologist. But other than that, I really loved this book. It keeps you wondering what's really going on. What is the Tower? What is the Southern Reach? What the hell is going on in Area X? And how much do these expedition members really know?

I'm pretty confident this won't be a trilogy that disappoints. I can't wait to get my hands on that last book.

I think I'm in love.


Some Quotes:

"The beauty of it cannot be understood, either, and when you see beauty in desolation it changes something inside you. Desolation tries to colonize you"

"If funding for a project ran out, or the area we studied was suddenly bought for development, I never returned. There are certain kinds of deaths that one should not be expected to relive, certain kinds of connections so deep that when they are broken you feel the snap of the link inside you."

"I walked as quietly as possible through the ruined village under just a sliver of moon, unwilling to risk my flashlight. The shapes in the exposed remains of rooms had gathered a darkness about them that stood out against the night and in their utter stillness I sensed an unnerving suggestion of movement."


Outlandishness Rating: 9/10

Need I explain myself? So much weird. It is almost a constant barrage of strange new things that they are finding or learning. And rarely does any of it get explained (in this book at least). I would say more, but I can't! If you're looking for the outlandish, here it is. Read this book already!

Review: The Troop by Nick Cutter

The Troop by Nick Cutter
Publisher: Gallery Books
Pages: 358
Genre: Horror
Source: Publisher
First Line: EAT EAT EAT EAT


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If you want to openly gasp and cringe in front of strangers, read this book on the subway. I had been looking for contemporary, traditional horror that didn't feel like it verged on the side of cartoonish, and I'm glad that I found this. The Troop is a creeping, disturbing book about a boy scout troop that goes to do boy scout things on an uninhabited island. What could go wrong, right? Well, let me tell you. Someone else shows up. Someone who is very, very hungry. Are you interested yet?

This visitor shakes up the previously solid dynamic between Scoutmaster Tim and the five young teen boys in the troop. Something is wrong with the intruder, and nobody is sure what to do about it. Even the adult. And that's where the problem lies for the boys. Tim accidentally exposes them to the bioengineered monstrosity inside of the starving stranger, putting all of them in grave danger. Each of the characters are trying desperately to survive when they realize they're not getting off of the island any time soon, and some are driven to horrifying extremes.

The book switches back and forth between what's happening on the island and various articles/reports/interviews before and after about the thing that has made it to the island. I thought the latter was intriguing, but could have been fleshed out a little more. I most enjoyed the Lord of the Flies-esque tensions between the young boys when they were out on the island on their own, because all of the characters were thought out pretty well and interesting to learn about. Though a few of them (the jock, the nerd) had more stereotypical stories, their personalities still felt fresh and it was fun to see them interact with each other. When and how certain characters cracked kept me from putting this book down. There is some incredibly devious manipulation that goes down that had me nearly covering my eyes and squeaking (making it much harder to read).

The bioengineered worm (as they soon find out) takes its victims fully, sucking all of the life out of them, eating voraciously for them, as well as infecting the brain and telling them how to think. The hunger that consumes the infected characters lead them to eat anything and everything, while they waste away as the host. And it is very easy to get infected. The worm overtaking various characters was gruesome and monstrous, but it never felt like it was being gory just for the sake of being gory. The descriptions left me squirming and feeling sort of...itchy. And maybe a little...hungry.

This is a horrifying story of survival that kept me reading to see who was going to make it out alive, and at what cost.


Some Quotes:

"No parent harboring the hope for a sensitive, artistic child names that child Kent."

"This wasn't a bear or a shark or a psycho axe murderer; those things were bad, sure, but you could get away from them. Hide. How could you hide from a murderer who lived under your skin?"


Outlandishness Rating: 7/10

The descriptions of the worm taking hold of people were pretty gruesome and weird, transforming characters in shocking ways that I didn't expect even after seeing previous characters go through it.