darchildre | Entries tagged with horror: books

Friends and neighbors, I have been listening to Dracula on audiobook. It is some new version that audible.com sent me an email about, and apparently has Tim Curry and Alan Cumming in it somewhere, so of course I had to download it. I am assuming that it's going to be like the weird Dune audiobooks where there's a narrator for the narration and different speakers for the dialogue...in some chapters. Though, we haven't actually had a chapter like that yet. I am only 2 chapters in, though, and so far it is all Simon Vance all the time. Which is okay, because Simon Vance is the audiobook reader that always makes me think, "Hey, it's the guy who sounds vaguely like David Collings!" and I like his Dracula voice.

You guys, I really do like this book immensely. I mean, I make fun of it a lot and the characters do a lot of stupid things (OMG, the journey of the Demeter - so scary and yet so dumb), but it's pretty awesome. Revisiting it is a lot of fun and I'm enjoying having an audio version. Maybe it will eventually become a bedtime audiobook.

Other vampire-related things I am enjoying: Dark Shadows! I think what I like most about it at this point is that it is old enough to be able to play its ridiculous vampires completely straight. Nowadays, if you want to make a story about vampires, it feels like you have to be ironic about it, you have to wink at the audience. And that's fun, a lot of the time, but I get tired of it too. It's nice to go back to something old enough where, by god, if we want an entranced woman in a flimsy white nightgown wandering out into the cemetery at night, we're going to have one. Let's have the doctor wonder if the marks on her neck could be from an accidental poke with a piece of costume jewelry. Let's have the at-home blood transfusion from her boyfriend. (Though, thank god, they did manage to check blood types first.) Let's surround her house with howling ~~wolves~~ dogs. That's awesome. Do it. It fills my heart with glee.

Old school vampires makes me so happy.

Current Mood: pleased
Crossposts: http://darchildre.livejournal.com/1799975.html

In which I have trouble with books:

The thing about The Monk is that it's not really a breakfast book. I mean, I am enjoying it. We have yet to get to the Satanism and torture and all, but there has been a pregnant nun (who was taken away for punishment - we haven't seen her since, so I don't know yet what that punishment is) and the titular monk (Ambrosio) has discovered that his best monk friend (Rosario) is actually a woman (Matilda) who crossdressed as a monk because she's in love with him and wants to be close to him. Which means that we have to have pages and pages of Ambrosio trying to send her away for the good of their collective souls but she's so beautiful and might kill herself and she was his best friend when he thought she was a guy and also she posed for the picture of the Madonna that Ambrosio has really inappropriate thoughts about. See, this is what happens when people are raised in monasteries and not allowed to go outside till they're 30. Currently, Ambrosio has been unexpectedly bitten by a snake and Rosario/Matilda is tending to him. Wikipedia tells me that Matilda is secretly a witch, so I imagine Ambrosio will get better.

So it's fun, but it's not a breakfast book. Mostly because of the capitalization, which I have yet to figure out any sort of rhyme or reason for. It's like Matthew Lewis just threw some random capital letters at the pages and let them stick where they would. I can deal with the kind of capitalization where the author capitalizes words s/he wishes to emphasize but if that's what's going on here, Mr Lewis must want to emphasize practically everything. Also, he often capitalizes pronouns and I don't have the mental energy at breakfast to stop and remember that he's not talking about God and instead is just referring to the main character. It's oddly tiring.

Thus, this morning I ended up poking around my kindle to find something that would serve as a breakfast book (not boring, haven't read it too recently, not too mentally taxing, nothing icky). And succumbed to my periodic temptation to poke at The Insidious Dr Fu Manchu. Every once in a while, I remember that I put that on my kindle and I try to read it. And the thing is, Sax Rohmer could write. The first chapter or so (as far as I've ever gotten) is very exciting, in a pulp adventure sort of way, and I love pulp adventure. Nayland Smith bounds into his friend Dr Petrie's rooms and immediately turns out the lights, all Final-Problem-airguns, shows him where he's been shot with an arrow dipped in cobra venom, and then whisks him away to try and prevent a hideous murder. I mean, that's pretty thrilling stuff, right? You'd be intrigued. But then - horrible racism.* Before we ever even get to meet Dr Fu Manchu. I would like to meet him. I love diabolical genius evil masterminds anyway, and I'm fully prepared to root for him over Nayland Smith, who is a horrible racist. Anyone who gets nicknamed the Lord of Strange Deaths is all right by me, y'know? And at least in a book, he can be an actual Chinese person, instead of a white dude in yellow face. So there is always a temptation to try and stick it out, but I am usually defeated by about the middle of chapter two.

Is there pulp adventure that isn't horribly racist? Or misogynist? I would really like some.

*Possibly you are thinking, "This is a person who regularly reads and enjoys Lovecraft." And you are right - Lovecraft was also a horrible racist. I can manage Lovecraft because his stories, while horribly racist, are mostly about squishy squiggly things that drive people insane. Whereas Sax Rohmer is actively writing about Combating the Yellow Peril. It is perhaps a small distinction and useful only to me but there you go.

Current Mood: blah
Crossposts: http://darchildre.livejournal.com/1799281.html

Things:

- Okay, so the big weeding was not as bad as I feared. Mostly because my boss actually had something for me to do this year, instead of having me stand around trying to find something to do. So I have weeded all of our juvenile fiction. Hurrah!

- Also, somehow, during this process, a few of my coworkers and I ended up talking about horror. (Because that's kind of an inevitable conversational trajectory with me.) This was fine when it was just me talking about the awesome of M R James ("We should have a ghost story program!" my manager says), but it gets a little weird when suddenly I'm talking about Carmilla and the advent of the lesbian vampire. How do these things happen? I'm never sure why people don't stop me when I start droning on about things like that.

- On a continuing horror note, I got the dvd of Island of Lost Souls on hold today, as well as The Body Snatcher (the one with Boris Karloff and no aliens). I am excited.

- On my lunch break, I become dissatisfied with my current book and thus starting poking around my kindle for things I have downloaded but never read. What I ended up with was The Monk by Matthew Lewis, because I really should read more early Gothic lit, right? So far, it is already full of ridiculous capitalization, absurdly virtuous clergymen (who, given the title of the book, will be absurdly corrupt clergymen before the end), and stolen babies. The plot summary on wikipedia is amazing and promises me Satanic rituals, secret babies, crossdressing, murder, and the Inquisition. Whee!

Current Mood: good
Crossposts: http://darchildre.livejournal.com/1795877.html

Things:

- Hey, did you know that if you press cntrl-alt-down arrow, your monitor display flips upside down? Because I did not know that and it just happened to my coworker. Which is pretty much the best computer problem to have: it's hilarious and easily fixed. Hurrah!

- The thing about having Christmas knitting to do is that I end up looking at a lot of patterns of other things I want to knit. Like this. But, see, the nice thing about that is that I always have yarn left over when I make socks and I could just make a few at a time and then, eventually, have an awesome patchwork knitted blanket. Which would fulfill my long-standing desire for a new afghan on my bed without feeling like it's a thing that I have to work on all the time. That sounds like an excellent idea.

- I woke up this morning with the desire to reread Dracula in my heart. However, I have way too many other books right now and several of them are interlibrary loans or things that the library purchased because I requested them, which much therefore be read first. I am also currently between audiobooks. You would think this would present an obvious solution, but instead I am full of indecision. There are a hell of a lot of Dracula audiobooks (or dramatizations) out there, you guys! It is hard to choose - do any of you have a favorite?

- One of the aforementioned books that I am reading is Monsters in America by W Scott Poole, which is pretty awesome so far (though I do wish he would have used footnotes instead of endnotes - flipping back and forth is annoying). There are sections on sea monsters and one of the chapters begins with a Mountain Goats quote (from "Lovecraft in Brooklyn"), and the author is not all et up with the Freud, which makes me happy. It is very enjoyable.

Current Mood: good
Crossposts: http://darchildre.livejournal.com/1770318.html

We watched The Haunting last night at Bainbridge, which I had never seen before.

I have a hard time separating my own emotional reaction to the film from what I would say about it to other people. I have an uncomfortable relationship with The Haunting of Hill House, in that I love the book and think it's gorgeous and wonderful and shivery, but I find Eleanor to be very disquieting to read about because I identify with her so strongly. I am not Eleanor but I could be/could have been Eleanor very easily (there but for the grace of god) and so I find her rather terrifying. Watching the film is much the same thing (except that we cannot be quite so firmly and fully in Eleanor's head, even with her constant voice-overs), to the point that I'm not at all sure what the movie is like for people who don't have that extra element of horror working for them. (This film is also especially terrifying for people who, like me, have a particular fear of narrow unstable staircases.)

I would recommend it, I think, because it's a visually pretty film and I'm fairly certain it would be scary for other people. It's a good haunted house story and worth seeing. But I really recommend reading the book, which is not just a good haunted house story but a great one.

Current Mood: thoughtful
Crossposts: http://darchildre.livejournal.com/1753456.html

I have my kindle back and all my things back on it! (Though, oh gods, I had so many things in collections and now my collections are gone and I must rebuild them. Ah, well.)

And I have new horror things on it! Because I have downloaded The Night Lands by William Hope Hodgson from Project Gutenburg. I have not read much Hodgson, except House on the Borderlands and that was many years ago and I don't remember it. (Were there pig things? I vaguely recall pig things. Am I mixing it up with Rats in the Walls?)

Now I just have to find a way to get the Miskatonic U sticker off the old kindle and onto the new one. Then my joy will be complete.

Current Mood: happy
Crossposts: http://darchildre.livejournal.com/1733756.html

This morning, I woke up in the middle of a dream about being lost in an airport. I had ten minutes to get from gate to gate and the plane was going to leave and the airport had wholly inadequate signage and everyone was terribly unhelpful. Also, turned out that my gate was upstairs and the only way to get there was a staircase hidden in the back of a clothing shop.

I am not filled with lingering dread, though, because I know myself pretty well and am aware that, if I were flying by myself and had to change planes, I would have looked up my arrival and departure gates and probably drawn myself a little map with detailed instructions of the route between them. Yes, even if they were only a few gates apart. Because that is one area in which my paranoia is actually kind of helpful.

I also, and this has nothing to do with airports at all, woke up with the creepy planting rhyme from The Ceremonies* running through my head. Which happens a lot - it's one of those things that stick in your brain and pop out at unexpected intervals. In the years between losing my first copy of that book and finding a second, that was about all I remembered from it, but every once in a while I'd finding myself walking around muttering "Scramble thee, scratch thee, jellycorn hill." It's been a while since I've read that book. Maybe I should dig my copy out from wherever I've hidden it.

"Fly thee, fleet thee, jellycorn hill.
If mole don't eat thee, I will."

It's an odd combination to wake up to, though, really.

*Have you read The Ceremonies? It is the only novel by T E D Klein and I think it's awesome. It has insular religious communities and creepy planting rhymes and occult rituals and sacrifices and graduate students studying Gothic horror (so, y'know, if you wanted a handy bibliography...). Do you like Arthur Machen? Then maybe you should try The Ceremonies.

If you haven't read Arthur Machen, you should probably do that first. Here is The White People and here is The Great God Pan. Have fun.

Current Mood: awake
Crossposts: http://darchildre.livejournal.com/1679754.html

Dear Mr Stephen King,

( Tiny spoilers for seriously the first sentence of Full Dark No Stars )

Current Mood: surprised
Crossposts: http://darchildre.livejournal.com/1648990.html

So, The Beetle. I am four and a half chapters in. So far, we've had:

- A giant creepy bug with glowing eyes crawling up the narrator's body and onto his face

- A creepy hypnotic person (the narrator is as yet unsure whether this person is male or female) with huge eyes and no apparent chin

- Creepy person uses some kind of mind control to force the narrator to strip and then makes creepy comments about how nice the narrator's skin is.

- Creepy person then paralyzes the narrator and leaves him lying, essentially naked, on the floor all day. In the evening, s/he comes back and pokes the narrator all over, putting hir fingers in the narrator's mouth and touching the narrator's eyes.

- Also, the creepy person may actually be the bug thing. I'm not sure about that yet.

- Now the creepy person is telling the narrator to break into a prominent statesman's house. These orders are accompanied by random non-sequiters about how the statesman is "good to look at". I don't know what the narrator is supposed to do in the statesman's house yet but I doubt it's going to be simple burglary.

This is a weird little book.

Current Mood: good
Crossposts: http://darchildre.livejournal.com/1647639.html

cleolinda is currently reading and recapping Varney the Vampyre (or the Feast of Blood) and I have been reading those recaps. And now I am torn. Part of me keeps thinking "Hurrah - she is reading it so I don't have to," because Varney the Vampyre (or the Feast of Blood) is like the Mount Everest of trashy 19th century vampire fiction and is immensely long and kinda awful. And part of me thinks "Y'know, you've sort of meant to read that since you were nine and came across a reference to it in one of the numberless books about vampires you read at that age and now is as good a time as any. Also, it is already on your kindle." Because Varney the Vampyre (or the Feast of Blood) is like the Mount Everest of trashy 19th century vampire fiction - it's a hell of a slog, but think how proud you'd be if you managed it.

Also, then you get to tell people that you've read Varney the Vampyre (or the Feast of Blood). Ninety-nine percent of them will look at you like you've grown another head, but that remaining one percent will be extremely impressed.

And the title is ridiculously fun to say. It's almost as good as Hell Comes to Frogtown.

I have been craving vampires the last few days, I think. Usually when that happens, I try to scout around for modern vampire novels that I haven't read that might be satisfying. It hardly ever works. This time, I think that I will try Varney and see if the 19th century does any better. And if that doesn't work, I can try House of the Vampire again, because I liked that one but got distracted in the middle.

...and then I googled House of the Vampire to make sure I got the title right and ended up wandering through "Customers who bought this also bought" on amazon and found Richard Marsh's The Beetle and Marie Corelli's Ziska: The Problem of a Wicked Soul, both of which sound amazing. And which are now on my kindle also.

I have horror-related impulse control problems.

And now, off to my staff meeting!

Current Mood: bouncy
Crossposts: http://darchildre.livejournal.com/1647554.html

Things I have meant to post about today, but have been away from my computer and thus unable to:

- So, someone donated a bunch of hymnals to my church. We've never had hymnals, so we're trying to ease into using them and today was the first time we did so. Which meant that I spent most of the sermon leafing through the hymnal. I wish to share with you John Wesley's Rules for Singing, which were in the front of the hymnal, because I find them utterly charming.

( Here they are: )

"Sing lustily and with a good courage." Isn't that marvelous?

- When I work on Sundays, I drive there straight from church. Sometimes, as today, I get there quite a bit early, so I spend the time reading in my car while I eat lunch. Today, I was starting The Haunting of Hill House, which I haven't read in far too long. Hill House has one of the best opening paragraphs ever so, being through with my lunch, I read it out loud. And then didn't stop.

I forget how much I enjoy reading aloud to myself, because I don't often have opportunity to do it. I flatter myself that I read aloud fairly well, with the right sort of book. I do quite nicely with Shirley Jackson and it was lovely, reading to myself all alone in the car with the rain tapping quiet on the roof.

I forget, too, how good Shirley Jackson is. I do occasionally find it a little disquieting, how easily and completely I identify and sympathize with her protagonists, but I love her stories and her characters and her use of language. I should buy a book of her short stories. I haven't read those in far too long either.

Current Mood: thoughtful
Crossposts: http://darchildre.livejournal.com/1612636.html

Congratulation, Richard Yancey, you have succeeded in totally icking me out.

So, I am still reading The Monstrumologist. Since my last posting on this book, we have had a mysterious and cryptic diary, a crumbling and terrifying insane asylum, and a flashback to a ship full of sailors trapped at sea with a monster.* Seriously, if we end up going to the Arctic/Antarctica, this book will contain everything I love in pulpy horror.

And then, ( spoilers and a squick warning. seriously icky. )

::shudders::

I'm honestly fairly impressed. The ick is not my favorite kind of horror, but when it's done well and built up to well, it's pretty awesome.

*It also contained a rather regrettable flashback prior to the ship, where the sailors were buying the monsters from the king of an African tribe who was, of course, using the monsters for horrific ritual sacrifice. So, apparently we're doing the bad points of pulpy horror as well. There aren't any women who aren't evil or dead yet, either. ::sigh::

Current Mood: pleased

So...about a month ago, I found out about a book and put it on hold. However, because I had too much to read at the time, I suspended the hold so it wouldn't come in for a month. And then I promptly forgot what the book was about and why I had wanted it, until I got it yesterday.

It is called The Monstrumologist and is by Richard Yancey. Now, you are looking at that and thinking, "That is a terrible title". And it pretty much is. Also, it is the kind of title that makes one think that it's kidlit, as indeed I did until about halfway through the first chapter, when things got rather graphically gory and I realized that it was, in fact, a YA novel. Now, I am about 60 or so pages in.

It is about a 12 year old boy who is the assistant to a monstrumologist, named Dr Pellinore Warthrop. Apparently, a monstrumologist is a person who studies and/or hunts monsters. It is a stupid word and I'm a little embarrassed about it on the book's behalf. However! There are anthopophagi, which are pretty cool. I always prefer "real"/folkloric monsters to made-up ones and anthropophagi have the advantages of having a pretty cool design and being unusual. So that's nifty.

Also, Dr Warthrop is awesome. He is so perfectly the ideal of the mad scientist that I find myself imagining him to look like Peter Cushing, even though the book is set in New England. He is so amazingly horrible! I mean, mad scientists are generally bad people, which is part of the reason they're so much fun, but generally the people they mistreat are adults. Having Dr Warthrop's assistant be a 12 year old orphan boy brings his callousness and self-absorption home rather sharply. Possibly, this sort of thing should make me dislike him but honestly, every time Dr Warthrop does something callous and inhuman, I find myself liking him more. I don't read about mad scientists to find people whose company I would enjoy in real life, after all.

So far, the book has contained grave robbing, a gruesome dissection, close-range gunplay, and a chase through a mouldering graveyard, on top of an awesome mad scientist. I'm really hoping that it can keep it up and doesn't fizzle out.

Apparently, there is a sequel due out later this year that, by the title, seems to have a wendigo in it. I will admit that I am intrigued.

Current Mood: content

Things I find irrationally endearing:

Horror writers who use the word "cyclopean". Possibly, it is supposed to be a scary word. Alas, that doesn't so much work for me. But I love it nonetheless.

Things I should know better than to do:

Eat breakfast while reading Lovecraftian horror. (Fungus and bloated frogs and strange puddles of milky fluid and suddenly I am not so hungry anymore, y'know?)

Current Mood: awake

Things:

- Choir tonight. Our concert is in (checks calendar) four weeks and I feel less than ready. I'm sure that things will work out but I'm not used to feeling this ill-prepared this close to performance time. It's stressful.

- I know that I've had TED Klein's Dark Gods sitting in my to-be-read pile for a couple months now, but I was in the mood for horror tonight so I finally picked it up tonight and started it. I only managed to get a few pages into the first story on break at rehearsal tonight but those few pages were enough to remind me that yeah, I really like TED Klein. I feel...hmm. I feel oddly at home in his writing, as though my mind is comfortable there. Not entirely comfortable - it's a horror story, after all - but a little like a place, a room, that you've been in so many times that you can walk around the furniture in the dark. I don't know what's going to happen in this story and I'm glad because horror should be a surprise the first time. But I can sink into Mr Klein's stories like a comfortable chair. It's lovely.

(The little author blurb in the back of the book is kinda hilarious. "He is currently at work on a new novel". Ahahaha. I mean, not that I would not jump up and down in immense glee if there ever was one. But, y'know, I'm not holding my breath.)

- I have also been reading Ursula K Le Guin lately. Every time I do that, I end up thinking "Wow, I really like this. Why have I not read more of her books?" I finished The Dispossessed the other day, which I loved, and now I am reading Always Coming Home, which is really good. And has a huge glossary in the back. I love fiction with glossaries and made-up words. One of the (many) reasons that I keep rereading Dune is so that I have an excuse to say "shai-hulud". Try it - it feels really good in your mouth. It's one of my favorite made-up words; that and Y'ha-nthlei and Elbereth Gilthoniel.

What made-up words do you guys like?

Current Mood: sleepy

I'm browsing audible.com's horror section this morning, looking to see if there's anything that looks intriguing.

Things about this:

- Did you know that there's an audiobook of Stephen King's Danse Macabre? I'm not sure why I find that so surprising. Possibly, it's because I've never done nonfiction audiobooks. Audiobooks are for people to read me stories, y'know? Nonfiction is for actual reading, somehow. Still, I'm a little tempted by it. I like that book immensely.

- I think that if you are a radio theater group and you decide to perform an adaptation of Le Fanu's Carmilla (which is a decision that I fully applaud), you should make sure that you spell the title right. It has an 'r' in it, guys. See, that makes me not want to listen to your show.

- Tender Hearts Taste Better in Butter is a pretty awesome title. Shame the description of the story isn't nearly so good.

- audible.com has a really surprising amount of Edgar Allan Poe in Spanish. That's pretty cool.

- So many version of Dracula, OMG.

- Hey, The Castle of Otranto, read by Tony Jay! Oh, and you can finally get an unabridge recording of The Historian. (Abridged audiobooks are unacceptable, you know.) That's good to know. ::files for later::

Anyone have any horror audiobooks they'd like to recommend?

Current Mood: awake

Things I have thought about posting in the last few days but never got around to:

- So. I finished reading Under the Dome the other day. ( spoilers for Under the Dome and also for The Mist )

- I have been watching a lot of Twin Peaks lately. And okay, I realize that I am 20 years too late to be saying this but,

Dear the people who made Twin Peaks,

I know it's dramatic and pretty but I'm sorry. We just don't have thunderstorms like that in western Washington. No, really. (And despite the crazy geography in the pilot, the trees do imply western Washington.) Also, unless it's July, it really ought to be raining more. You made a really excellent show but stuff like that is distracting.

Love,
A Nitpicky Washingtonian

- Related to that last, you know how when you're kinda obsessing about a particular fannish source and you go through your music collection to find stuff that has the right feel to go with your fannish obsession. My brain has apparently decided that Twin Peaks means I should listen to Poe's Haunted album on repeat. Which, in turn, makes me want to reread House of Leaves. It feels kind of appropriate, somehow. Twin Peaks also makes me want to watch Dune but I can put that down to Kyle McLachlan. Also, that impulse is silly and should probably not be indulged.

Rereading House of Leaves is probably a good idea. I think it's been long enough since the last time that I've forgotten sufficient of the book to read it again. And I'm between books now that Under the Dome is over.

I wonder where I put that...

Current Mood: cold

The film discussion group at the Bainbridge Library showed Bride of Frankenstein tonight, so of course I had to go. There was, alas, somewhat less discussion than I'd really have liked - there were nine people there, not counting the two guys running the program and only one other lady and I had anything to say about the film - but I always always love watching that movie, so it was well worth it nonetheless. I shall probably continue going to the group because hey, free movies, and also I promised myself that I'd start getting out a little bit more. Social interaction is not a bad thing.

It was a little odd, though, watching the movie there. I don't think I've ever seen Bride in an actual semi-formal Film Watching setting before. It's always been either me by myself or me forcing it on a group of people I know fairly well. Sitting quietly in the dark was weird, especially since I apparently find the movie a lot funnier than the rest of the people who were there. Still, it's always interesting to watch a film one loves with a group of people who've never seen it before. I would have liked to have been able to talk more with people about their impressions, but they were a rather uncommunicative bunch, save that one woman. I'm fairly certain she liked it, at least, even if she didn't think it was funny.

Had to confess during the discussion that I have not ever read Frankenstein all the way through and was told again, as I always am at such moments, that I should endeavor to do so. I do keep trying, really. It's just that I hate Victor Frankenstein so very much. I hate him because he is so very irritatingly entitled. Walton too. I don't mind that they're ambitious or that they're determined to find things out and do great things. That's fine - that's interesting. What I mind is that both of them say something along the lines of "I deserve this." Walton deserves to get to the North Pole, Frankenstein deserves to discover the secret of creating life. It makes me want to punch them in the face repeatedly. And, at that point, I end up thinking, "Well, I could continue reading this book, in which I wish to punch the narrator(s) in the face. Or, instead, I could go and watch Colin Clive and Boris Karloff and Elsa Lanchester." I think that you can guess what my answer to that dilemma is. I will freely admit that I find Henry Frankenstein far preferable to Victor.*

It did occur to me tonight that it's probably rather difficult to like Henry Frankenstein if all one has seen is Bride, though. Henry is kind of a drip in Bride, honestly. I love him, but it's true. One really needs to have seen Frankenstein first, in which Henry actually gets to be awesome Mad Scientist Guy, as well as Somewhat Drippy Romantic Lead. In Bride, that dual character-ness is externalized and all the awesome is transferred to Dr Pretorius. (Till the end, at least. Henry gets to be Mad Scientist Guy while they're making the Bride and that's pretty awesome.)

I should read that ridiculous Shadow of Frankenstein again. It's completely silly but very satisfying fanfic and gives very good Henry Frankenstein. Perhaps I will bring it on the bus when I go to visit

bethos this weekend.

The film group is showing Philadelphia Story next month. I have never seen that and know next to nothing about it. Should be fun. 8)

Bookverse!Victor, anyway. Peter Cushing!Victor is wholly acceptable, of course.

Current Mood: happy

Things:

- Had to go the dentist for a filling this morning. At one point, they put a rubber dam in my mouth. I sat there, my mouth full of metal and rubber, unable to speak, and thought, "Right now, I am somebody's fetish." It was odd.

- I am currently reading Stephen King's new novel, Under the Dome. I'm about two-thirds of the way through and I've been enjoying it quite a lot. However, it does seem to have the effect of making me really want to make sure I have some sort of emergency kit tucked away in case of, y'know, whatever. It's a thing that I think about occasionally - in my head, I refer to it as the Zombie Preparedness Kit - but the book makes me really want to get it done.

- Went to Goodwill today after the dentist and found a huge book of horror short stories. It is over a thousand pages long and is full of exciting thing. Some things in there I've read before - for example, I think this is about the sixth time that I've paid money for The Call of Cthulhu* - but there's a lot that I haven't read, or that I read once years ago and have never seen again. So that's cool. Also, it contains The Repairer of Reputations, which pleases me greatly. And, hell, I paid two dollars for it. Made of win.

- Choir tonight! New director, new music - I am excited!

*Which I don't even actually like that much.

Current Mood: happy

( In which I ramble about horror, again: )

Things:

- We got a new book in this morning entitled How Not to Die. I'm sure that it's a perfectly good book and all but really, I can't tell you how much that title disturbs me. Have centuries of stories about how sometimes dead is better taught us nothing? (Okay, alternately, it makes me giggle. Because I'll admit that the first thing I thought was, "Well, just don't let your cells get bored.")

- The book group apparently just read The Yellow Wallpaper and people keep talking to me about it. It's odd because I think that most of them are coming at the story from a very different angle than I am. Because they are all "interesting work of early feminist literature!" and man, I first read that story in collection of classic horror short stories that I bought from a Scholastic bookorder in 6th grade*. And of course, the story is both but which one you think of first really does influence the way the discussion goes.

- I know that I haven't done a Picture Book You Should Read post yet. I was hanging out with the Megan last night and it slipped my mind. Should happen this evening.

*And I really wish I could find a picture of the cover because it was terrifying. There was this freaky blue and purple clown/jack-in-the-box person leering up at you from under the bed and y'know, that book was also the first time I read The Horla and I'm pretty sure that that's what I've always sort of imagined the Horla looked like, if you could see it. The Horla is one of the few horror stories that has ever actually kept me up nights, by the way.**

**Though, admittedly, this is probably less because I am badass and more because I have become smart enough not to read horror stories at bedtime. I also don't read House of Leaves in my bedroom or certain Lovecraft stories (mostly the ones that mention fungus) while I'm eating. Because some things are just not worth it.

One of the best things about working at the library is those times when a patron you've never seen before comes in and you get to connect with that person immediately, just because they've asked you for a certain book.

First patron today is a kid who came up and asked if we have any Lovecraft. Alas, we have none at Kingston because we are a tiny branch so I told him I could put some on hold for him. "Or, well," I said, "I don't know if this would work for you but most of Mr Lovecraft's stories are available for free online. You're welcome to use one of our computers."

Man, I love watching people's faces light up when you tell them how to get just the book they want. And it is always lovely to meet a fellow fan.

First patron of the day. I'm going to be smiling about that for hours.

Current Mood: good

Okay, you guys, I am finally reading The Historian. And yes, people have been telling me to read it for years but mostly, the people telling me about it kept telling me about the descriptions of the scenery which, okay, is lovely but is not really what I read for.

That, plus so many people telling me to read it, which made me contrarily not want to read it. Because that is what excessive hype does.

But besides scenery, it has beautifully evocative writing and just by reading the first several pages I get the feeling that the author will be able to handle subtle horror and thus I am made happy by the book thus far. Alas that I have to wait till I get home to continue reading, now that my break is over.

I do wish we had a paperback copy at the library, though. The hardback is huge.

Current Mood: enthralled

Things about today:

- My lunch was pretty much totally awesome. There was smoked mozzarella and snap peas and sausage and tiny corn muffins and watermelon. Watermelon! And that, friends and neighbors, is why I love taking my lunch in my ridiculous bento box.

- So...with my tax rebate money, I bought me a kindle. And it apparently arrived today. I cannot actually play with it till 8:30, when I get home, but still. Exciting.

- I started reading The Forest of Hands and Teeth this morning because a) sometimes you need to stop reading horror scholarship and start reading horror and b) the Freudian thing was getting overwhelming. So far, it is pretty awesome. Also, it has a truly kickass title.

- Have I mentioned the Freudian thing? The Monstrous Feminine, which I did mention, is by Barbara Creed. Who, as I had forgotten, is the author of the fabled "Jaws is about a giant swimming toothy vagina" article. Yes. The whole book is like that. And, okay, I am willing to read Freudian analysis sometimes (because it's interesting, even if I don't agree with it) but sometimes it is a little much. I mean, I am very rarely the person who says, "Wow, I think you may be reading too much into that" but, really, wow. I was really terribly relieved when the chapter on The Exorcist was over - that was just a little too much incest for me. Freudians are weird.

- Apparently, the heat in the Kingston Community Center has been turned off for the summer, including the power to the space heaters in the library. It's 66 degrees and, well, I'm not cold but apparently this is a really big deal to everyone else.

And that is my day so far!

Current Mood: good

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Renfield

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The Aviary

...a house of crows...

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