Tag: books

I didn’t use to believe that the past could reach cold hands out towards the living…

Funnily enough, I used this for a post title nearly two years ago, too.  It’s a line from Stephen King’s Christine, which I have been thinking about rereading lately.

Anyway.  I’ve been thinking about Kyle Murchison Booth, a character from an interlinked series of stories written by Sarah Monette (many of which were collected in The Bone Key.  I love the stories very much–they remind me of MR James–and I am just quietly amused that two fairly significant things didn’t occur to me on the first read-through.

(This may be a side-effect of going through them with great enthusiasm, and therefore great speed.)

First, the past is never kind to Booth (I think he may have actually been called Cousin Kyle in one of the stories, and I still can’t imagine doing it; he is Booth, to me, or Kyle Murchison Booth, but not Kyle).  No-one who knew him from before, or who knew of him from before, ever seeks him out to do him good.  There is Radcliffe, who is specifically a break with the patterns of the past, and did not go looking for Booth, and is very nearly still cruel to him anyway.

Second–and this is one the light of my life pointed out to me–the Samuel Mather Parrington Museum is not a safe place.  It is haunted.  But it is safe from other haunts.  They may chase Booth, and they may press against the outside of his window, and they may wait for him at the bottom of its stairs… but they do not go into the Parrington.

Whatever walks there, walks alone.

Books, again.

I’ve been culling our bookshelves for a couple of weeks now.  While I’ve collected a fair number to get rid of, perhaps fifty, it hasn’t made a huge difference.  I have a lot of books. Most of them still aren’t in Goodreads (and I get that funny guilty twinge whenever it recommends a book I’ve already read and have on the shelves to me). And given that Goodreads lists about six hundred books on my “owned” shelf, and yes, I really did mean most of them still aren’t in the system…

…I have a lot of books.

It’s easier to cull them this time than it was in times before, and it’s nothing to do with not wanting to read. On top of the books, I have a particular attitude: I don’t want to be the kind of person who gets rid of a book. I have had this attitude for a long time.

  • I’ve had it since before we bought our house.
  • I’ve had it since before I rented my own place.
  • I’ve had it since before I moved out and went to university.
  • I’ve had it since before I went to boarding school in Switzerland[1], and that was for ninth grade.
  • Like some of the books I still own, I’ve had it since I lived in London as a kid.

I think it’s very easy to embrace absolutes when you’re a kid. And it’s easy not to question those absolutes, especially when they’re not overtly harmful. I don’t want to be the kind of person who lets go of a book. Because books are awesome, dammit. I mean, that hasn’t changed for me–books are amazing, books make me happy, new ones can be a wonder and old ones are a comfort and I don’t see this changing. I love (the best of) my books, and I love the idea of books, and I have a respect for the physical integrity of books (even ones I don’t like) that’s… quite hard to override.

When I developed this attitude, I didn’t understand certain things that I understand now.

  • The fact of limited space in housing, and how sheddy long-haired cats can be, and how books can pile up and collect dust.
  • Shared space, really shared space, and the importance of not having someone you live with made uncomfortable by your housekeeping.
  • The low-level cringe that a cluttered room induces.
  • The embarrassment of finding you already own a book you just got[2]–fortunately I’ve never bought one and had that happen, but there’ve been friend loans and library loans and… yeah, it’s not a good feeling.

I’m still not the kind of person who gets rid of books casually. But I don’t want to look at myself and say I’m the kind of person who won’t get a book out of her house if it’s making her unhappy to have it there. There’s nothing noble or devoted about that.

That’s damaging, albeit in a low-level constant-background what-weight-do-you-mean-oh-this-weight-I’ve-been-carrying-this-weight-so-long-I-don’t-hardly-notice-it-no-more, and I am, finally, too old for that shit.
—
[1] In a former tuberculosis sanitarium.
[2] This is totally different from buying a replacement for a battered copy, or deliberately picking up a second copy for love or loaning purposes. On this note, you should all read Days by James Lovegrove, Stand on Zanzibar by John Brunner, and Mystic River by Dennis Lehane. Seriously.

First book finished of 2013

Johnny Halloween: Tales of the Dark SeasonJohnny Halloween: Tales of the Dark Season by Norman Partridge

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Perhaps oddly, I liked the one of the two straight-up non-supernatural stories in this collection the best. The titular “Johnny Halloween” is something I’d expect to run across in a decent noir anthology.

“The Man Who Killed Halloween” was well-done; it didn’t fit with what I was expecting from the book (non-fiction!), but it’s a decent and evocative piece. Together with Partridge’s introduction, it provides a thoughtful basis for the contrast between Ricks and the October Boy.

Actually, now that I’m thinking about it, this may be why “Three Doors” and “Treats” (which I’ve read before, along with “Black Leather Kites”) didn’t stand out for me quite as much, although they’re both good stories and would normally be the kind of thing I’d expect to be my favourites. The trio of Hallowe’en/Jack o’Lantern-titled pieces echo each other on the question of masks, and real monsters, and the deceit that lets the latter go unpunished, and their supporting each other makes them stand out above the rest.

(Please pardon the fact that this is both terse and a bit shaky; I’m trying to practice writing reviews, and I clearly need to practice writing reviews.)

/The Bleeding Edge/

The Bleeding Edge is a 2009 limited-run (500 copies) horror anthology published by Cycatrix Press. Since I’m having trouble writing, and managing to read, I thought I could at least use my reading as grist for some writing:

A solid collection with one weak point and a few very good ones. There was a distinct disunity of style and format (teleplays and scripts) that was actually rather appealing.

Continue reading “/The Bleeding Edge/”

Monsters and monsters and monsters, oh my.

Dinner out tonight (was lovely), involving a fluffy drink and a wonderful lamb shank (which I think was actually a bit light on the thyme, but then I am very partial to thyme) and much discussion of the Laundry Files series by Charles Stross. It’s British humour/horror, involving a government organization defending the world from eldritch monstrosities which are attracted by complex equations. Like spells. Or mathematics. I’ve read the first book, three of the four short stories, and some notes. The first book is the rockiest, but I think that’s actually pretty common–I can’t think of a series where I recommend the first book written as a good place to start.

Except the Narnia books. (Even with The Lord of the Rings, I would not recommend starting with the first book of the series. I would recommend starting with the prequel–that is, The Hobbit–and just… trying not to think about the jolly elves.)

Stopped at Chapters on the way back. I picked up Dodger and The Killer Inside Me on the same trip and am mildly amused by the contrast.

In case of needing some assistance unwinding for the weekend, I have found that this image (completely work-safe!) is very helpful. May not be suited for ailurophobes, but then again, I don’t think I know any.

Black and white and read all over.

I noticed a certain common colouration in the books I had to hand:

Covers of /Lies and Ugliness/, /Bedlam/, /The Weird/, and /Breed/.

I’m cheating a bit with this picture, since both the hardback cover and the dustjacket of Breed are shown. (I took the dustjacket off because something about the paper just feels subtly repellant–some weird combination of sooty and greasy.)  On the flipside, I’m not including The Rivals of Frankenstein, which continues the black-white-red theme, so it all balances if anyone’s keeping score, which I sort of doubt.

Am mildly amused by this, especially since the other books I am reading, or have just finished, or have just started, have a black-and-white thing going for the covers.  (Apparently the subtraction of red takes you from horror to crime, who knew?  Although Bedlam is an exception to that.)

Not feeling well today; I’m hoping it’s just after-effects of the flu shot, since those should clear up more quickly than anything I might have actually caught.  Managed to get a little cleaning done, though, and get out of the house to pick up groceries and return library books.  (Mildly annoyed that one of the books I have on hold has been in transit for just over a week, now, and is still not at the local branch.  It’s a Lovecraft collection, so I suspect I could find the contents on Gutenberg, but I find I really prefer physical copies of anthologies and collections.  Screens and ereaders work best for single works, for me–novels or novellas or standalone short stories, any length is fine, just not several short stories.

Probably turning in early tonight; the nap after the vet’s was nice, but I’m still wiped.

Ignorance and mass media.

My ignorance, to be clear. That title sounded a lot less snippy in my head.

Rather quick, rather flip notes, as I down coffee before work…

First; There are movies I haven’t seen. Quite a lot of them. Two that came up this morning were Scarface and Johnny Got His Gun (because the morning drive music included “Jack Sparrow” and “One”).

What else am I missing? What movies are really worth seeing (and trust me, the expectation that I’ve already seen it is not to be trusted)?

Second; So I’m on goodreads (as that widget in the lower right-hand corner may have indicated). It allows for a five-star rating system, and for me that basically seems to boil down to (1) I’m rating this because I want to establish I thought it was terrible, not that I just didn’t bother to rate it; (2) pretty bad to not-great, but with redeeming moments; (3) decent way to spend some time; (4) everyone interested in the genre or subject matter should try reading this; (5) everyone should try reading this.

There’s a whole lot of things falling into the three-star category, including some things that I’m feeling a little bad about, because they’d be four-star books if five-star ratings weren’t reserved for truly amazing things. And I’m wondering if I should reorganize, give everyone-should-try-this books their own shelf and stretch my ratings out so that there was a middle ground between “decent” and “everyone interested in the genre or subject matter should try reading this”.

I may be putting a bit too much thought into this, but I wondered.

Memories, all alone in the moonlight…

On my way home on the bus yesterday, I was flipping through my copy of American Supernatural Tales, looking to find the excellent “The Events at Poroth Farm”, when a fragment of text caught my attention:

…not an “animal of some kind,” as he put it. Something with a dragging tail, with scales, with great clawed feet–

And in the back of my head, a little voice is going wait, wait, I remember this…

–and I knew it had no face.

Yes.

“The Lonesome Place”, by August Derleth.

It’s been so long since I read that that I have no idea, now, where I first saw it.  It’s been printed in a ton of places, but none of them ring any bells. I was surprised to discover it was by Derleth; I always thought of it as a children’s story, the kind of thing you’d find sitting on a shelf with A Touch of Chill and Something Wicked This Way Comes and The Witches.  It’s got a sort of calm tone to the horror, nothing giddily overbearing.  Puts me in mind of Bradbury:

“See, baby? Something bright… something pretty!”
A scalpel.

(It occurs to me, as I write this, that I might have a mildly elastic definition of “children’s story.”  Might.  I’m just tossing that out there for consideration.)

But yeah; I just thought I’d make a note of recognizing an old acquaintance, is all, one I didn’t expect to see there.

Oddly content

If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each man’s life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility.
– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Came up, perhaps unsurprisingly, in the context of Game of Thrones.  Martin’s ability to make characters that do frankly reprehensible things into people you actually start to like is unlike pretty much anything I’ve ever seen (although, you know, suggestions for similar writers to check out is welcome).

It actually got to the point where I was deeply uncomfortable with someone’s pointing out exactly how objectionable the behaviour of one of my favourite characters was.  That’s fairly unusual for me, although probably it has to do with the fact that people who commit murders aren’t usually portrayed as sympathetic characters.  It’s not as if I am in a position to stand back and say “well, usually I have no problem with the criticism of characters I like which do bad things, but something about the way GRRM writes them makes it different.”

(Note that I said “people who commit murders” instead of “murderers”.  On the one hand, this illustrates how much focus gets put on other aspects of the character.  On the other, I picked those words, and they are words that minimize the murders in question.)

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I’m putting off being annoyed at something.  I mean, possibly I won’t have reason to be annoyed, but I might, and the possibility is sort of trying to squinch up my spine.  It’s annoying, and between watching The Newsroom and pausing it to discuss Game of Thrones and getting the occasional news squib from the real world (mostly cheerful) I think I am mostly overcoming it.  Which is nice.

Pleasant moments.

So, the night before last, I couldn’t sleep, and was going through my Hallowe’en anthology. (It’s a couple of screens back, in that nifty little WordPress gadget on the bottom right of the page.  Because I keep a few books on the go at once.)  I picked an F. Paul Wilson story as likely to suit my mood, and then, because it was a response to Bradbury’s “The October Game” and because I was feeling awake and unfocussed and faintly worried I might miss a reference, I reread “The October Game” before going to “The November Game”.

I’m so very glad I did.

(Incidentally, if you haven’t read “The October Game,” I highly recommend it.  I suspect a Google could turn something up, if you don’t have it in hardcopy. And it’s quite short, which is good, because I am about to get into things that, while they might not be spoilers, certainly run the risk of minimizing the impact. Continue reading “Pleasant moments.”