Cheezits, this is a grim, bleak story. 100 boys set out on a walk that only ends when all but one are ☠️. Somehow, it‘s worse than you imagine. It‘s a purposeless Vietnam era dance-a-thon inspired by Jackson‘s “Lottery.” You like the Hunger Games but find it too uplifting? Craving a novel abt totalitarianism in America?! You‘ll love The Long Walk!

I appreciated the queerness of the MC; the layers of attraction, shame, and emotional bonding.

But aside from the demon in her head, and her frequent nightmares, and her excessive drinking, and her insomnia, she was happy and productive.

Trick or treat! 🎃

The number of men that came up to me last night saying: “Carly Beth!” Not “Goosebumps!” not “The Haunted Mask!” but her actual name! Warmed my 🖤 heart.

🥀 She remembered the day they met, and the way he had looked at her, and how it had filled her with a mad ecstasy, which in retrospect had been a nervous breakdown.

😆

Discarded by my library last year. This seemed like a good time to read it 🎃

It‘s Southern Gothic, with a stalking italicized POV killer and preoccupation with MC‘s theatrical mother. The writing is strange poetry shot through with humor, like here: “She developed a taste for her own misery, though she did not exclude her sister‘s. She was a lover of bitter chocolates.” 🍫

Not even 40 pages in, but glad I picked it up.

The language & snowy atmosphere of this weird & ambitious sci fi novel immediately grabbed me. The voice is so exciting and unique, the set up bleak and Gothic, complete w/a cast of unsavory noblepeople. Like Mexican Gothic, it‘s a contemporary ex. of the genre‘s enduring relevance.

I wld‘ve loved to waller in the mood of the 1st 1/3, but it takes a turn that is less interesting both philosophically and narratively. Towards the end, it dragged.

A team of scientists and Navy crew descend a thousand feet below the surface of the South Pacific to investigate a spacecraft. 🌊 ⭕️

It‘s got dread, psychological tension, giant sea monsters, and a touch of existential horror. But what most fascinated me were the complex racial and gender dynamics at play, which made me feel I needed a comprehensive critical knowledge of the 1980s to understand. It‘s a suspenseful and twisty story.

Old Cape Cod overrun by killer cockroaches. 🪳

The author leans into the story with such gusto you can‘t help but be swept along. It is gross and gory and cheesy: I loved it. If you want a horror story to read this October, I recommend this. It‘s a brutal and trashy delight.

Props to audiobook narrator Brittany Pressley! She really does a convincing job with the often inane writing and personalizes each voice. The interactions in this book are often hilariously stilted, as when sexy big-eared Stu flirts with the MC and she responds with the non sequitur “Pee-yew, what is that smell?” Every conversation with her mom is fraught with surprising wellsprings of rage. It‘s a messy book, but Pressley sells it.

A movie—any movie, even one that fails—is a conversation with the viewer who chooses to engage. This movie will communicate emotional truths that can only be communicated by the language of film and horror. If we do it right, the movie will speak to us now as it would‘ve 30 years ago, and as it will 30 years from now, if any of us are still around, projecting movies onto the walls of ruined buildings.

Caught this pic of my husband reading while in line at the Telluride Horror Show this weekend. When we weren‘t watching fantastic horror shorts or features, we were reading horror novels! I am finally reading Cabin at the End of the World.

The pitch: It‘s phantom of the opera but instead of a chorus girl at the Paris opera house she‘s a cashier at Muffin Mania.

On free cart at library. Yes, please!

Shakespeare in the Park last night! Couldn‘t have asked for a better evening.

Picked this up last w/end while visiting lighthouses w/my Mom along Lake MI. We met the author while she was volunteering at the 1860 Light Station.

Death‘s Door is narrated by the wind, water, and rocks that make up a treacherous passage between Lake MI and Green Bay and related 5 stories of people who dared to cross it. The illustrations are gorgeous and evocative, the stories raise a mix of excitement, fear, empathy, and wonder. 🌊

For so long I thought this was a novel of “lingerie horror,” which I figured was a term I just hadn‘t heard but could figure out what it meant.

No, that word is LINGERING. Which, yes, accurate. This book stuck with me while reading and after finishing. It‘s the kind of thing I usually avoid, the bleak horror I don‘t want to experience, a book that left me crying in bed in the fetal position.

It‘s not a fun read. It‘s powerful.

Absolutely love this terrifying cover by Trevor Henderson.

Just started reading this for our book club (great preface!).

AKA my 20s

Ok, so Percival Everett‘s James may be the BEST book I will read this year, but McDowell‘s Katie could be my favorite. It has everything I could want in an entertainment: melodrama, romance, gore, humor, revenge. There‘s a boarding house of young women that reminds me of Stage Door, a Pride&Prejudice style romance, and of course, the psycho psychic Katie, terrifying in her brutality, stupidity, and love of blunt force trauma. Loved it. 🔨 🩸 💰

Just when Philo‘s plight was becoming unbearable, McDowell really introduces us to the Slapes and damn if I don‘t like them (or at least, reading about them!). They may be dumb as bricks (I love the way he writes their dialogue) and mean, but there‘s something endearing about their love of theater and unambitious pleasures.

“Hasn‘t the sense of a creeping baby” is a phrase I want to work into conversation.

In her big, neglected house in Carstairs, she had entered a period of musing and drinking, of what looked to everybody else like a slow decline, but to her seemed, after all, sadly pleasurable, like a convalescence.

Men are very finite in the interest they take in things, and if a fellow creature were to rise from his grave to-morrow, he would be speedily forgotten, and have to resort to the variety stage if he wanted to make resurrection pay.

And in that moment he saw her, really saw her as she now was. Her empty eyes were suddenly afire, and her panting was hot and noxious on his face and neck, and her lips, those full pouting lips he‘d always loved so, were thinned to translucence over the multitude of teeth behind them. It was a mockery of her, a Gahan Wilson portrait of his beloved. And it was going to kill him.

Reading Nightblood along with a friend. I only brought vampire books on vacation. 🧛🏻‍♂️ 🦇 ⚰️

🍸 🚬

ADORABLE! I love Mr. Putter‘s cozy life.

“She was last seen in a Los Angeles bar smoking cigarettes and talking about moonlight and why you could find so much of it in Hollywood.”

#goals

Dang, Johnny gets a lot (“alot” as he‘d write) of action. He‘s gotta be so brooding lank-haired 90s boy hot, a real sexy tortured package.

To Kill a Mockingbird on Herbert Anthony Eastman‘s grave marker in Calvary Cemetery. Celebrating a friend‘s 60th in the cemetery.

I really like Ellis‘s work and am so excited he‘s released this collection of horror comics. The book is gorgeous (I love the green ribbon bookmark, referencing a classic story he adapts here), the stories are creepy, and the art slick and lush.

Orris is a curmudgeonly rat who must decide between self-protection & mercy when an owl gets trapped near Orris‘s nest. What sways him is literature, or, reading, to be more exact. His conscience has been built up by fables like the lion & the mouse and the slogan from a treasured can of sardines. I love what that implies about the nests we make around ourself & how they can remind us of our better selves when faced with a crisis. Sweet & clever.

“It is still the truest rendering of love in marriage that I know. Call me a romantic.”

Yes! My Sant Jordi‘s day gift from the man I love and married, @Howardsimmons

This is one of my top favorite movies, I love to rewatch it. So excited to read this book.

Like my bookmark and cocktail pick?

Paired with tonight‘s reading: Technicolor Paradise exotica album.

It‘s a steamy night in Missouri. Nine o‘clock and still almost eighty degrees. 🥵 Great night to read this book.

[…] made her shudder as if a gorilla were caressing her gums with one finger.

[Her] biggest problem was the unwanted thoughts that—like cockroaches—laid eggs inside her head.

Teenage secrets. 👂

So it‘s only April but I‘m pretty sure I already read the best book I‘m going to read this year. It‘s my first Everett novel (though I loved American Fiction) and damn, this man does not waste a word. I was completely invested from the first sentence and his story telling did not let me go until the last line, and honestly, not even then.

This book is fantastic. It‘s so dense I am certain I missed a lot and I want to reread it already. A book club friend described the writing as “resisting momentum.” It utilizes structure and language in unusual ways to create a disorienting narrative full of references to creepypastas and horror lit that is about so much, but mostly how absolutely feral, powerful, and frightening teen girls are and how thin the line between clique and cult.

These teens sure have a lot more sexual experience than I did!

Terrible glare, but it‘s read Tolkien day!

Happy St Patrick‘s Day! I normally hide out during the day‘s bacchanalia (I went to a single St Patrick‘s Day parade and realized with such clarity it was not for me) but it‘s nice to observe the day through literature. Anyone else feel the same?

@Howardsimmons reading with the newest member of our household, Gracie!

She‘s about ten, ended up at the shelter when her person died. She‘s about as sweet as can be! Not the temperament we expected from a chihuahua. Just wants to cuddle and nap. 💤

Ok, this book is more intense than I expected. Couldn‘t put it down the other night and then I couldn‘t sleep because I was so keyed up. 😳

I need something frivolous after finishing Anthony Seasana So‘s Afterparties, so this is next up for me, courtesy of my library‘s discard cart.

Five upper-class corporate wives are stranded on a tropical island after a terrorist attack. They have known each other in the “slightly bitchy atmosphere of genteel suburban competition” but now are each other‘s only hope!

Saunders is teaching me how to read again and it is a beautiful, exciting experience. Loving this so far.

There‘s a lot going on in this: a relocated family, a serial killer, animals in suicidal death spirals, ghostly visitations, but even in 500+ pages it doesn‘t quite meld. Side characters, motivations, events (my interest), got lost along the way as the book shakes out.

The writing was loaded with references, similes, and onomatopoeia, which works for some (but not for me).

Dominic Chambers “Palace” 2023 on exhibit at the STL contemporary art museum. Chambers “sees the library as a literary palace filled with prescient voices housed in books.”