protean depravity

Hello back with the first short reviews in the new year 2026, a year who saw a turbulent start already, but will hopefully be better for us all (later 😭). Enjoy!

Here we are again, standing at the end of the year, taking a last look back before moving on. Moving on has been the motto for the entire last year, honestly, as I feel like I was standing before a heap of shards and rubble from the year before and decided to completely concentrate on myself and, fitting the Chinese year of the snake, shed my skin, I let go - I removed many many things that are unnecessary and superfluous in my life, and focused on my healing and well-being, but also let older things back in that I feel are important to who I am and that I have been neglecting. So overall I feel good about myself and this past year. Of course, everything around the world is still going south and the rage that ensues from watching stupid politicians and death and destruction and fear makes it hard to find inner balance. I have no idea where the world is heading and I'm not very optimistic nor very enthusiastic to find out but there's nothing else to do but go with it. There'...

All right, friends, can you already hear the snare drums rolling in the distance? Before announcing the bests of the year 2025, I need to come to a closure with all the challenges I plead to finish this year though. It didn't look very rosy until this morning, but I made use of my Sunday to finish some books and rearrange my prompts as well as I can, so that I have finished most of my challenges of the year, except for one. Can you guess which one?

After breaking routine in the last installment of "The Short Story Lover's Guide to Stephen King" and comparing a novella with its film adaptation, here we are back to our usual, continuing discussing the short stories in the second King collection Skeleton Crew . It would be good if you read along, or at least know or be familiar with the stories because I will spoil everything! Let's go!

  End of the year also means deciding which books to take along into the new year and which ones can find their way to new owners who will appreciate them more than I do. Before they wander into the second hand sections of the Hammett or Otherland Bookstores, or the phone booth little free library at the end of my street, I'm giving you guys the choice to take any of the books in the picture you may want. 👉 These are mostly review copies, but I included some books I bought myself, some I have never read, and presumably never will read, or some I want to listen as audiobook rather than eye read. It's better and only fair someone who will actually read them takes them, and not just lets them sit around. Please don't hesitate at all and seize the opportunity!

Hey friends! Here some short reviews, hope you enjoy them!

It is almost the end of the year again, ugh... Almost time for the end of the year post, but not quite. Before we look back at my reading year and choose the best books of the year, let's see what's going on in and around Berlin in terms of events and films. Let's also take a first little peek at the upcoming Fantasy Filmfest White Nights, which, this year, is scheduled for the end of January. But there's a lot going on before and after, so let's see...  First off, next Wednesday, December 10th, 8pm, there's a screening at the Odeon cinema of the horror documentary  Häxan: Witchcraft Through the Ages . The appealing visuals suggest a quasi-serious, silent movie which uses brief episodes to explore witches. I've got my ticket already and I'm very excited for this! If you always wanted to meet the science fiction author Charles Stross, you can have your chance on Thursday, December 11th at 7.30 pm, because he will be at the  Otherland for a Q&A , seemi...

It is not very often that an epigraph reflects the overall atmosphere and mood of a particular book ideally, but Samanta Schweblin's latest short story collection Good and Evil and Other Stories opening with Silvina Ocampo's words "strange is always truer" is a great example. It is an atmospheric, quite unique, strange work about seemingly everyday situations and people that are just a little bit eerie, but never openly horrifying, yet always slightly terrifying.