A-Z Of Books

I saw this blog challenge thingy on the site of the excellent horror author Thana Niveau who picked some great books. So I thought sod it, I'll give it a go too. Because it's basically just another excuse to talk about books... not that I really need excuses.

AUTHOR YOU’VE READ THE MOST BOOKS BY: A score-draw threeway between Ramsey Campbell, Stephen King and Terry Pratchett.

BEST SEQUEL EVER: The Restaurant At The End Of The Universe by Douglas Adams.

CURRENTLY READING: A Cold Season by Alison Littlewood - as you might expect, so far this is bloody brilliant. Oh and I'm also rereading The King In Yellow.

DRINK OF CHOICE WHILE READING: Currently a glass of Marston's Pedigree. 

E-READER OR PHYSICAL BOOK: I read both; in fact I'm normally reading a book on each at any given time.

FICTIONAL CHARACTER YOU WOULD HAVE DATED IN HIGH SCHOOL: Knowing my luck, Carrie White.

GLAD YOU GAVE THIS BOOK A CHANCE: Emma by Jane Austin. I guess my view of what Austin was like was coloured by half-watched TV adaptations. But she's so much more cynical and astute than her reputation for period romance might suggest.

HIDDEN GEM BOOK: Ice Age by Iain Rowan. A stunning collection of weird-creepy-shit stories.

IMPORTANT MOMENT IN YOUR READING LIFE: I've mentioned this before on here, but when my Dad handed me a copy of Salem's Lot from his bookshelves.

JUST FINISHED: The Wanderer by Timothy J. Jarvis, which was fantastic, and the The Best Horror Of The Year 6 edited by Ellen Datlow.

KIND OF BOOKS YOU WON’T READ: Anything where it's so obviously been written aiming for a film adaptation. Plus anything where the blurb is some kind of mashup such as "Like Harry Potter in Space!" or something equally repellent & cynical.

LONGEST BOOK YOU’VE READ: Not sure really. Vanity Fair? Anna Karenina? Crime & Punishment? Spot Bakes A Cake? 

MAJOR BOOK HANGOVER: The Road by Cormac McCarthy. An absolutely stunning achievement. But Christ, it makes most end of the world novels seem like Enid Blyton.

NUMBER OF BOOKCASES YOU OWN: Eight.

ONE BOOK YOU’VE READ MULTIPLE TIMES: The Waste-Land & Other Poems by T.S. Eliot. The language is so breathtakingly poweful and precise, sometimes I just reread the same lines.

PREFERRED PLACE TO READ: Somewhere with a view of the sea.

QUOTE THAT INSPIRES YOU FROM A BOOK YOU’VE READ: I'm not going to pick anything trite and inspirational, I'm just going to pick what I consider to be one of the most perfect openings to a novel ever written. It's inspirational because it's what I'm aiming for, and constantly falling short of:

“My name is Mary Katherine Blackwood. I am eighteen years old, and I live with my sister Constance. I have often thought that with any luck at all, I could have been born a werewolf, because the two middle fingers on both my hands are the same length, but I have had to be content with what I had. I dislike washing myself, and dogs, and noise. I like my sister Constance, and Richard Plantagenet, and Amanita phalloides, the death-cup mushroom. Everyone else in our family is dead.”
We Have Always Lived In The Castle, Shirley Jackson

READING REGRET: That I'll die before I read everything I want to, even if people stopped writing now. And yet, non-reading people get to live on average the same length of time. There's no justice; their years should be mine.

SERIES YOU STARTED AND NEED TO FINISH: The Culture novels by Iain M. Banks.

THREE OF YOUR ALL-TIME FAVOURITE BOOKS: Three? Three? Jesus, it was bad enough picking five for a recent interview. So here's three that I didn't include there:

1. The Robber Bride by Margaret Atwood
2. House Of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski
3. The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad

UNAPOLOGETIC FANGIRL/BOY FOR: Ramsey Campbell. He's the guvnor.

VERY EXCITED ABOUT THIS RELEASE: Too many to mention, obviously, but I'm very much looking forward to The Grieving Stones by Gary McMahon.

WORST BOOKISH HABIT: When I'm reading and someone comes to talk to me and I look like I'm listening to what they're saying, but really I'm still thinking about the book...

X MARKS THE SPOT: START ON THE TOP LEFT OF YOUR SHELF AND PICK THE 27TH BOOK: The Woman In The Dunes by Kōbō Abe.

YOUR LATEST PURCHASE: Bodies Of Water by V.H. Leslie and Oh! The Places You'll Go by Dr. Seuss, for my daughter because it was one of the readings at her Naming Day.

ZZZZ-SNATCHER BOOK (LAST BOOK THAT KEPT YOU UP WAY TOO LATE): Phonogram 3: The Immaterial Girl. I love these graphic novels, in which music really is magic. There's some fantastic use of pop-cultutral imagery and references in this third volume, especially when the protagonist becomes trapped in a murderous version of the video for Take On Me. And the Appendix, explaining all of the musical references is a delight, so I stayed up late reading it and looking up various music videos on the internet.

Recommendation: Horror Uncut

I'm always dubious of reviews of anthologies that claim that 'all the stories are worth reading'. It's as if the reviewer either doesn't have any critical acumen or they daren't upset any of the authors involved.

However...

Horror Uncut, from Gray Friar Press, is an anthology of 'austerity themed horror' in which, uh, all the stories are very much worth reading. Honest.

Of course I had my favourites. Joel Lane's dark and twisted A Cry For Help couldn't have been a more chilling opening tale; Pieces Of Ourselves by Rosanne Rabinowitz contained a brilliantly evocative description of modern day protesting before becoming enjoyable surreal. Laura Mauro's Ptichka was utterly heartbreaking, whilst John Llewellyn Probert's The Lucky Ones was delightfully sadistic. Oh, and Stephen Bacon's The Devil's Only Friend and Andrew Hook's The Opaque District were both wonderfully constructed pieces of weird fiction, and the Gary McMahon and Simon Bestwick stories were up to their usual high standards. Plus there were fantastic stories by Alison Littlewood and Thana Niveau and.. well, did I mention every story here is worth reading?

It's theme of modern day austerity, its victims and its monsters, makes this a timely anthology, but the sheer quality of stories on display makes it one for the ages as well. Thoroughly recommended; buy it before your native currency collapses.

Some Recent Recommendations

With a holiday and lots of reading time recently, I've enjoyed a lot of books that I wanted to recommend but for which I'm unlikely to find time to write full posts for. So here's some brief snippets about some wonderful books that really deserve more words than I'm giving them...

52 Songs, 52 Stories - Iain Rowan: a brilliant concept (52 short stories & pieces of flash fiction, written over the course of the year, each titled after a song randomly chosen from the author's ipod on shuffle) and brilliant execution - these short stories veer from crime to the weirdly supernatural to small, devastating emotional epiphanies, from an author with the talent to make a thousand words or so sparkle and linger in the mind. Most of the time he's got a good taste in music, too.

Shadows & Tall Trees 2014: there's a lot of anthologies these days with titles like "Year's Best Horror..." etc. Shadows & Tall Trees 6 isn't called such a thing, but it might as well be. A stunning collection of stories, with not a bad one among the bunch. Intelligent, well-written, original horror fiction and (along with the editor's introduction) a passionate manifesto for horror fiction in the short form. Superb.

Horror 101: The Way Forward: a non-fiction book of articles about horror writing; as ever with these things, which of the pieces will be more interesting will vary from reader to reader dependent on how experienced they are and whether such things as writing screenplays have any appeal. But overall this was a useful and interesting read and one I'd certainly recommend to any aspiring authors out there.

A Kiss Before Dying - Ira Levin: a masterfully constructed novel of murder, in which the shifting viewpoints really help heighten the tension. Maybe the climax was not quite as good as the build up, but still I devoured this book in a single day, and it's a long time since I've done that.

La Femme: this one is an anthology from Newcon Press, with each story based around a very loose definition of the femme fatale. Most of the stories here are science-fiction, and most of them are very, very good. My own personal favourites were by Holly Ice, Stephen Palmer, and Frances Hardinge (who managed to write a story from the perspective of a household pet that I really liked - no easy feat as that's normally a real bugbear of  mine).

From Hell To Eternity - Thana Niveau: a collection of short, often brutal, sometimes erotically charged horror stories. I've read a few of Thana Niveau's stories before in anthologies, but this really showcased her range and differing styles.

The Testimony - James Smythe: if, like me, you prefer your science-fiction to be metaphysical head-fuck rather than technological fetish, then this is a must read. An engrossing, original end of the world style plot, about what happens when people all across the world apparently hear the word of God. Or not, depending on your viewpoint. 

Recent Book Recommendations

The festive break means I've been off work and able to devote more time to do what I was put on God's earth to do: read books. Mind you, I received more new books as presents than I actually read, so in reality I've slipped back in my fight against the dreaded 'to read' pile.

These were the pick of the bunch of recent reading:

Dark Room - Steve Mosby
A very dark, very grim crime novel with an interesting intellectual premise behind it. After Black Flowers, confirms Steve Mosby as one of my favourite current crime writers.

Ill At Ease 2
A collection of seven horror short stories from Mark West & Co and as good as expected. Here's hoping there's a third volume soon!

The Thirteen Ghosts Of Christmas
The perfect time of year to read this anthology from Spectral Press; thirteen Christmas ghost stories ranging from the traditional Jamesian ghost story to the more modern horrors of Thana Niveau's spectacular And May All Your Christmases.

We Are Wormwood - Autumn Christian
A surreal tales of drugs, madness, and a demon with wormwood eyes, told in dense, lush prose. A true original.

Tales of the Weak and Wounded - Gary McMahon
I've got a theory (it's probably bunkum) that all great horror writers are great short story writers. Gary McMahon certain provides positive evidence here.