This is very much a bookclub horror book. So many layers to it. So many angles. There is a T. rex virus that renders men into violent, feral creatures. All that‘s left in the world are women, trans women, and trans men. Instead of trying to just survive together, a group of TERFs try to eradicate trans people. All the characters were complex and diverse. This book was deeply affecting and I urge every one to read it.

It‘s that time again.

Did you know that mushrooms are the sex organs of fungus? I had no idea, until I listened to an episode of the podcast, Ghoulish, where Nicholas Kaufmann revealed that his editor rejected a book of his but gave him a mycological book called The Entangled Life from which he wrote this fungus packed apocalyptic horror book that starts in a small New York town. He did a great job of balancing the coloring in the people of the small town and the 👇🏼

@AmyG Thanks, AmyG, for this package on VDay! I started the book last night and finished it this morning. So readable. It made me think of that movie, Cobra, with Stallone. Anyways, what a great book about two less than perfect fathers who avenge the murders of their sons who were gay. So much grit, so much of me flinching, saying ‘Jesus!!!‘, so many reveals. What a great book. Thanks again, AmyG!

I think McQueen has more than decent writing chops. However, I think the the construction of this story needed work. This is about a Black woman named Mira who is going to her white friend, Celine‘s wedding which is being held at a plantation house where all kinds of horrors were done to slaves. McQueen has very valid things to say about allyship and the through line of slavery into the present. The story just didn‘t work for me. Thanks Jenni 👇🏼

Thanks for the tags, Cassie and Andrew. I‘m hoping to finish this one up this weekend. Pretty decent so far.

My favorite 2 stories are in the back. The Last Porn Star, V Castro‘s final girl story, and Truck Stop, her very weird story. The thing I realized is V‘s stories aren‘t scary stories for us but the bad guys. Which isn‘t bad it‘s just not what I‘m used to. Once in a while she gets stuck in tell not show. Other than that I really enjoy V Castro‘s unabashed sexuality and her Chicana culture that comes through in every story. Insert grito here.

Super excited to get to this shorty story collection. 1991-92 I remember the cholas at my middle school. Always dressed in black, a lot of Raiders attire, the shhh shhh noise of their black and grey, puffy Raiders jackets in the halls during cold days. The heavy makeup on point, the hair, The Hair!! with the bangs standing straight up in the front like some badass fan. The attitude. So excited for this first story.

@Chili thanks for picking this for our group. I really enjoyed it. Those crazy twins. Lol. It made me think of Clive Barker who I‘ve been thinking about a lot lately. This will be on its way to you tomorrow, Jenni. @sprainedbrain

😭Margie, thank you so much! You shouldn‘t have but I so appreciate it and it‘s made my day. We‘re getting snow later so the socks will definitely come in handy. I look forward to all three books. LOVE the Stephen King bookmark. And girl please, I‘ve been to the gym 23 times in January and gained 3lbs, mostly cause MickeyD‘s is right next door. Lol. So this candy is most welcome. Thank you so much, Margie! ❤️

This book reminds me of one of my favorite movies ever, Monsoon Wedding. The picture top right is of the niece, Ria, who the night before the wedding reveals that one of the uncles, the rich one throwing his money around, had molested her when she was a girl. The father of the bride, a different uncle comes to take her home where the day of the wedding he tells the rich uncle to leave. He believed her. Such a powerful moment. In this book, 👇🏼

It‘s been nice belonging to a library again. Last time I was around there were no ebooks, so notifications like this are a delight.

So this is a five huge star read for me. Alice, a trans woman who sees ghost in every wall of every place she has lived for the past 3 years, and Ila, a cis woman who now actively participates as a Terf, were once part of a trio of friends who went into a hateful, full of rage, antiSemitic, haunted house and were the only two to leave. They have different views of what actually happened and will have to meet again to try and find peace. This👇🏼

Hey, Sue. I came home from work last night and it was here. Thank you so much! I‘ve been seeing nothing but love for this on here by a lot of people I like and what you wrote on the card makes me want to read it that much more. Thank you again, my friend, and hope you‘re staying warm. ❤️

Ughhh, I‘m so pissed. I left a pen from work in my pants pocket and can now see and hear it tick against the glass. 🤞🏼 the ink doesn‘t leak! Anyways, this is pretty creepy so far. Happy reading, Littens!

Things that will make me think of this book: squirrels, chocolate, pandemic news, people named David, Edward, and Charlie, insurgents, talks of personal freedom, gay parents, gay relationships, Hawaii, New York City, the ongoing erasure and rewriting of history, friendship, people calling their old kids baby, peaches, the inability to make correct decisions based on the data available, bears, space suits. So much to discuss in this book. So good.

There‘s a certain game of Yahtzee being played with the characters names. Where each section, I‘m only in book 2, and I‘m sure it happens in book 3, Hanya throws the barrel and the names land differently and I‘m trying to figure out what it means when they land where they land. This is how I feel.☝🏽

I‘m super late to the party but I really liked this. It‘s a gothic tale of a girl named Noemi in 1950‘s Mexico who is dispatched by her father to check on her cousin Catalina who lives in High House, a house in disrepair, high up on the hill, that one must take a windy road through the mist that ends by a cemetery to get to. This was wonderfully creepy. This is my 4th Moreno-Garcia book, and she always delivers a good solid story. A gothic pick!

Thank you, Margie, for all the books with all the cool notes on what you thought of them. I read Call Me Max a week ago, and didn‘t want to get crazy on it. Because I loved this book about a kid who is born with one sex but feels a different gender inside. It such an easy and simple book explaining trans identity to kids. It kills me that my community would rather go after Dave Chappelle (yes he misses nuance) than after politicians trying to 👇🏼

This was very disturbing. This won the 1995 Bram Stoker Award for best novel and I can see why. Oates based this off Jeffrey Dahmer. The whole book we‘re inside the mind of serial killer Quentin P. who just wants to make someone into his own personal zombie. This was on par with Jack Ketchum for me. I will be reading more Oates. Sidenote- this is my first library book in over a decade. Which is funny because when I opened this book, I thought👇🏼

In your hehhhheaddd in your heeheheheaaaaad
Zahombie…….. lol, Happy reading this Saturday morning Littens.

1. They kind of follow you everywhere right? 2. My copy, she went through alot. Got her cover ripped at the laundromat and has Aunty Chun‘s vegan sweet chili noodle sauce on a couple of the pages. 3. This was the fun book I needed to start off the New Year. Thank you again for the book, @CarolynM Tippy Chan is an 11yo in a small New Zealand town where her and her Uncle Pyke and his bf Damon will band together, call themselves The Nancys and 👇🏼

Thanks to all who tagged me. The top row are my top 5 and books that have come back to talk to me. And yes, 2 of them are written by Tananarive Due. Please check her out. I ended up with 94 books and an average 4.2 star rating. I‘m not gonna set a goal next year. The pressure got to me this year. I‘ll just set it for one a week. I hate to do this to you all because it‘s a bummer but my special mention is this short story called Doomsday Father👇🏼

Last load of the year. Thank you @CarolynM for the book. Very cute and funny so far with a lot of innuendo going over Tippy‘s head. Lol And thanks for the card, the bookmark and the cloth. Hope everyone has a Happy New Year‘s Eve! My resolutions for the next year: Read more, lose weight(of course), go vegan the whole year and not just six months, and no more gambling.

This is barely a pick because it has some very creepy moments. Faye and Felix go spend a weekend at a cabin in Colorado where something starts talking to Faye during her sleepwalking episodes. This scene gets repeated too many times in this book over and over. Also, the horror comes from Native mythology. The author has a note in the back with the title A Word on Natives in Fiction which talks about how sensitive he wanted to be when writing 👇🏼

@Centique 😍Thank you so much!!! I love John Langan and look forward to the anthology whose cover is Candy to my brain. Thank you so much, Paula!

I cheated and opened my #Jolabokaflod package early. Missing is the bag of Reese‘s chocolate I left at home. You know, chocolate hands and the laundromat don‘t go together well. Lol But thank you so much @MeesesPieces for the package. I just read the prologue and holy crap I didn‘t want to turn my head after for fear of what might be there. Even though it‘s my usual laundromat and it‘s the light of day. Merry Christmas!

Growing up, monkeys, just based on tv, were animals who loved bananas, looked cute in tutus, and were pets for Michael Jackson. You grow up and find out they have complex social systems- like when a dog kills a baby monkey and they retaliate by taking 250 puppies and drop them from trees as retaliation in the Beed city of Maharashtra state in India. These two books make mention of these behaviors which is why this article caught my attention.

I loved this book. Somewhere around page 155 last night, I realized I had laughed on almost nearly every page. And it mostly went on like that until the end. Olive is a grad student at Stanford trying to do something nice for her friend when she accidentally falls into a fake dating relationship with a dreaded faculty member. Olive has these moments where she will internally spin out into the extreme that had me chuckling the whole time. 👇🏼

@Jas16 Thank you so much for the gifts. Missing is the big bag of kisses I snacked on while I read the tagged book. It‘s the Gay Xmas romance I didn‘t know my dark, dark, horror heart needed. Adam and his daughter, Gus move to Garnet Run, WY after Adam‘s partner realized he didn‘t want to be a parent. They move to Knockbridge Lane where hot, scientist recluse Wes has been living. This was lovely and had some very real human lessons to impart.👇🏼

Best book I‘ve read all year. Indigenous people are being hunted in a climate change ravaged world where people have stopped dreaming and the only cure is the bone marrow of indigenous people. We follow teenage Frenchie as he and his group of found family must navigate the wilderness and come back in touch with who they are. This book was scary, poignant, tender and everything I wanted in a coming of age tale. All the dystopian picks!!!

There is an introduction in here by Kealan talking about how every year during Christmas he writes a wintery horror short story and sends that out to all his e-mail contacts. I just imagine poor unsuspecting people who lose all their ability to be happy because these were doozies. There is one about Santa‘s last ride that made me shed a tear at the laundromat. The list of 50-60 wintery horror books he provides in the back is worth the buy alone.

Two girls? women? lesbians? connect online that starts off seemingly innocent having to do with the sale of an apple peeler but then devolves sometimes slowly and sometimes quickly into this dark relationship. I laughed at some parts and there was a part so disgusting I thought I was gonna throw up my coke I had just drank. I look forward to more LaRocca. Thanks to Charles from Barnes and Nobles for letting me read his copy.

Couple of things. Laundry time sucks on cold days. @MaleficentBookDragon I mailed out my #Jolabokaflod package today. Also, going to Barnes and Nobles tonight in Albuquerque because Eric LaRocca‘s book is sold out but the associate on the phone said he owned one and it‘s so good he would let me borrow it. How‘s that for nice!

I loved Birdbox and Inspection, but this was bad. This was that YA that gives YA a bad name. There are better ways to write the special place at a special time trope. Two 17yo‘s, who have no character development, go on a first date and discover a house under a lake, make very questionable decisions, “fall in love” (roll my eyes here) and right when there might be a spark of life to this book it ends. No style to the writing. Big time pan.

Earlier this week I was gonna post a photo of a bridge and comment how I was going to throw myself off of it if I didn‘t reach 100 books for the year(I‘m joking) Instead now I‘m gonna show how I‘m gonna cheat my way there. I was shopping for a swap and wandered into the kids section and picked up this book all about labor disputes depicted by a group of cows who band together to withhold their milk until their demands are met, of 👇🏼

I really liked this coming of age cosmic horror novella. A cosmic creature is given life and strength by the insecurities it feeds off of the MC Heath, a young Australian teenager who is on the cusp of puberty and is just starting to question his sexuality. Dries does a really good job of drawing the 1990‘s setting and Heath‘s normal, loving family life, which makes it all the more painful as hunger in the creature grows. Tears were spilled. Pick!

42 yo Reggie can laugh now at this commercial with age and medical advances made but I can totally see how in the 1990‘s it would have scared the hell out of any questioning Australian teen with any kind of imagination. Also, I forget how big bowling was in the 80‘s. Watch it here: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_lhFc_9U_UY

Going into this, I thought this was going to be torture and pain rough, but it wasn‘t. Yes, some were gross and I wouldn‘t recommend eating while reading this, but besides one meh story out of 29, they were great. There was a lesbian couple and their daughter at the beginning of a mold apocalypse, a description of a werewolf woman eating of a fat accountant that sounded so sumptuous and delicious, an autopsy whose ME‘s blood sacrifice into 👇🏼

I liked this sentence. From “I‘m Always Here,” by Richard Christian Matheson. Photo is of artist Peter Pavlesnkiy in his artistic form of protest against the Russian government.

In a book of body horror themed short stories, I would never have guessed there would be one about the fashion industry. As someone who watched the first 6 seasons of America‘s Next Top Model back in the day, I was into it. It‘s so satirically scathing, making fun of all the pretentiousness, and yet, it manages to boil it down into a moment of beauty right before that last paragraph that knifes you in the back. Sooo good this story.

Just picked up this anthology of body horror yesterday. The cover looks like something Clive Barker would have done. The table contents is pretty awesome. Read the first story and even though it is about a family being caught at a roach motel and turning into roaches themselves it had a nice little lesson about life. I 🖤 horror.

@teebe this happened a couple of years ago. My entry this year into your #CreepyChristmas scary stories. Enjoy! 🧟 🧟🧟

There is this comedian, Katt Williams, who does this bit where he‘s talking to the ladies saying that there are no 100% men. That some of them are sitting next to 70% men hoping for an upgrade they can‘t even laugh at the joke because he‘s looking over at them. How some of them have a 98% man going to his job, paying the bills, cooking them food, taking care of her children better than he takes care of his own, and she throws him all away 👇🏼

This novella was good but I‘m glad it was only 122pgs because I kept hoping the mc would die in a fiery crash. We follow a very Karen-esque father driving in his Maserati from the city to the country village of Rookfield, where his ex wife has taken their son to ride out the pandemic with family. Once he gets there he is shocked that almost all pandemic protocols are being strictly enforced and do not gel with his agenda. The part of this 👇🏼

Today‘s story is brought to you by the letter H, which is for hacking. Tried to log into Netflix and found out I no longer had an account. Went to email and found out someone from Nicaragua hacked my account, changed my password, then cancelled my account. Lol. Then I decided to clean out my email and found this gift from Margie from weeks ago and then came home to this gift that might have been in the Postal Bermuda Triangle. 👇🏼

Just started this for my LPMBC pick and the writing is Appalachian exquisite.

This book disturbed me a great deal because it‘s much more than it seems and I found myself drinking the Kool-aid which I think was real. So we get a novelization of Camp Ghoul Mountain 6. It a story of Henry the Horror and how he butchers all those camp counselors but this entry into the franchise is different because of the extras. The ufos, the cults, the conspiracy theories. The author gives you footnotes to give you more info but then 👇🏼

#21DaysofHorror Day 21. Ever since I read Yo! by Julia Alvarez, I‘ve been a sucker for interconnected short stories. And in here it‘s basically a man collecting stories from all over the world from before, during, and after the Zombie World War. There have been stories from when I first read it over 15 years ago that still talk to me. One is a woman who falls out of an airplane into zombie trouble when a woman over the radio leads her to 👇🏼

Only 40 pages in and am LOVING it so far.