The New Horrors of My Unfinishable TBR-List

 

I guess my life would be infinitely more miserable without a few little rituals which help me get through life and help me make it a little nicer - like the candles I light in the evenings. Or the tasty, creamy coffee from that expensive South American café around the corner I reward myself when I accomplish something like a job interview or a translation I kept on procrastinating... The picture of a goofy bull terrier I printed out and have hanging at my work place to boost my dopamine levels when things get stressful... Or the bad weather Saturdays when, after a week's work, I visit my favorite former team-mates Caro and Wolf at the Otherland Bookstore to goof around and talk about books. And dogs.

I love these Saturdays, and I was there yesterday again. The thing is that, I also love to review books for the Otherland newsletter and each time I tell myself I won't accept new books, I always, always leave with a bunch of review copies of books I wanted to read anyway. Which is fine, but add to that the group reads I need to do for my goodreads group Shine and Shadow, buddy reads I commit to and finally my personal goals and here I am as the living definition of someone who has too much on their plate. But I genuinely want to devour them all. So I made the above pictured pile of imminently to-be-read (physical) books and photographed them nicely - these are books which I either need to read and review for the newsletter, for my remaining reading challenges or for Shi&Sha and I'm publishing this here in order to put pressure on myself and actually read these books and not some other smut or extreme horror trash (which I also love to read but I tend to use them to distract myself from the fact that I am not reading what I ought to read). Let me introduce them shortly, maybe you'd like to read some of them too.

Books for the Otherland Newsletter:

Nothing's Worse Than A Clown Gone Bad by Ponk Vonsydow

If this cover struck you, just wait until you have read the synopsis of this crazy book;

"After the second coming of Christ, the human race is extinct due to a genetic experiment that caused every man woman and child to mutate into living, breathing, funny looking clowns. Now, 2000 years later, Satano, the devil clown, introduces hard candy which when ingested by clowns causes them to get serious. This results in a new development in clown civilization because clowns everywhere are starting to go bad. Sicko, the worst clown gone bad, starts the clown supremacy movement declaring that "all mimes must die!" The always hysterical World Circus is converted into the serious Carnival of Despair, where clowns are baptized in liquid Obvious, the most potent hard candy. Things just aren't funny anymore. Meanwhile God and Jesus find themselves in a galactic crisis which causes them to go to the Greatest Extreme in search of the All Knowing Owl in the hopes that the Owl can find a solution to their very serious problem. They eventually discover that everything hinges on the planet Earth. But the Earth is in peril as Satano and his minion Sicko are ushering in Armageddon. God, Jesus, Satano, Sicko and the clowns collide in the exciting climax of this great satire."

I have no words for this, so I just copy pasted the cover text. I started reading it too and it has a style that you need to get used to... The dialogues go as clowns would speak, apparently there's a clown lingo which I wasn't familiar with, and the book is written in that style. I'm curious what this one will bring, sounds like absurdism at its finest, let's see. 

Fresh Dirt from the Grave by Giovanna Rivero

Even though such a small book, I kept on delaying reading this little collection of six stories by Columbian author Giovanna Rivero, which deal with themes such as "the legitimacy of revenge, incest as survival, indigenous witchcraft versus Japanese wisdom, the body as a corpse we inhabit". Sounds super compelling to me.

Agony's Lodestone by Laura Keating

Agony's Lodestone is one of the books I chose because of my end of the year list, for which I need to have read a certain number of novellas among others, so I can choose the best one I read that year. It's about a woman, whose sister's death holds more secrets than apparent, and there's a video tape involved.

Christmas and Other Horrors: An Anthology of Solstice Horror ed. by Ellen Datlow

A new anthology from Ellen Datlow!!!

I actually only read one Christmas anthology in my life, Hark, the Herald Angels Scream! edited by Christopher Golden, and that one was sublime... I don't know, I think that time of the year I'm especially receptive for horror, probably because all my Vitamin D reserves are gone, and those creepy religious rituals just go so well with horror... 

It looks like the authors are the usual Datlow-suspects; Terry Dowling, Jeffrey Ford, Stephen Graham Jones, Cassandra Khaw, John Langan, Kaaron Warren etc.

We will probably read and review this more than one person for the Otherland Christmas newsletter, so I still have some time. The last few Datlow anthologies did, in my opinion, not live up to the usual high quality they had before, so I'll be interested how this anthology turns out to be.

Attack of the Killer Tomatoes by Jeff Strand

I'm a fan of the 1978 comedy movie Attack of the Killer Tomatoes and I was really excited to hear Jeff Strand wrote a novelization of the movie which is heavier on the horror side, so my hopes are high. I only ever read short stories by Strand and I have never ever read anything bad by him, so there's that. And the plot? Well, it's about tomatoes attacking humanity. This song will give you a good idea what it is all about, and please don't be mad at me for giving you an earworm for this whole week, he he he.

The Transgressionists and Other Disquieting Works: Five Tales of Weird Fiction by Giorgio de Maria

"...I think that the dimension of the fantastic, as much as this may seem paradoxical, is the most fitting one to express a reality as complex as ours today."

The Transgressionists (1968) revolves around a cell of malicious telepaths who meet in the cafés and jazz clubs of 1960s Turin to plot world domination and an embittered office clerk joining them, "cultivating twisted mindfulness techniques to awaken his inner sociopath." Wow...

The remaining titular "disquieting works" are; "The Secret Death of Joseph Dzhugashvili" set in a fictional Soviet Union, "The End of Everydayism," a group of futuristic artists using corpses as medium, "General Trebisonda" about a commander who prepares for a war crime.

I'm not even going to comment on this one, it's self-explanatory that I'm psyched about it. I had recommended this book to the Otherland earlier this year but the info that I'd love to review it somehow got lost and we found it yesterday in the regular shelf rather than in my shelf! So maybe the time wasn't right for me to read it and it hid from me, but now I'm ready!

Dead Inside by Chandler Morrison

2023 is the year I discovered Chandler Morrison thanks to his disgustingly spellbinding #thighgap and I mean to expand that discovery. So, Dead Inside, his debut is about two peculiar and morally questionable main characters and apparently it's a "dark exploration of the nature of death, individuality, and generational identity." Sounds perfect.

Nails and Eyes by Kaori Fujino

So, after taking a break from Japanese literature due to all the school bullying books I no longer want to read, I will dip my toes into the dark waters again and see if I cope better with a novella categorized as pure horror, about a young girl obsessed with her step mother. I'm getting creepy kid vibes, yay!

Books for the Shine and Shadow Reading Group:

As the members of the ShiSha Group, including me, don't want to cancel the World Tour (WT) Reads, but nobody really wants to moderate the discussion for their country's book, I took that task upon myself. My idea was to visit bookstores during my Orient Express (for the poor) Tour this summer and get recommendations and buy books from that country and read them in the WT reads. I did do that to a certain degree, to the extent that I started my trip with a simple big backpack, but needed to buy a travel suitcase in Istanbul because by the time I was leaving Hungary, my shoulders were already screaming, accusing me of trying to kill them, which my neck and back agreed with. As I told before, I got sick and weak in Bucharest, I had so much fever one night I felt like poor Jonathan Harker in Dracula, like I would never be able to leave Romania and I would die there and they would never find me - I tend to get a little dramatic when I'm sick and it's usually one of my biggest fears to get sick in a strange place. When I was doing better, all I wanted to do was getting out of there and not visit bookshops, and when I reached Prague, I got a stupid stomach flu and just visited the major places to visit there and only wanted to return home, which I did.

In summary, I was able to get only Hungarian books for the WT reads, but the help I got was amazing, as was everything else in Budapest! Thank you so much the crew of the Bestsellers Bookstore, köszönöm szépen, who took the time to recommend me books and helped me making a hopefully good selection: If you ever happen to travel to Budapest, they have a nice section of Hungarian literature translated into English, go there. The Hungary WT read will be in April (the second quarter of the year, the first quarter is Peru), and I will start preparing by reading the following two books. It is always four books being nominated for the WT reads, and I will of course include Attila Veres' The Black Maybe because I fucking love it so much I want to read it the third year in a row in 2024 and I want everybody I know to read it too. That leaves just one more book I need to find for nomination, which I hope shouldn't be a problem.

The Fawn by Magda Szabó

So Szabó is apparently THE female Hungarian author and there were so many books by her that I had the choice between various of them. I decided on this one which is about the apparent friendship ("plastic" friendship the bookseller called it) between two women, the narrator being a famous actress. I don't know what to expect at all, but I've read some reviews and it sounds really good, like "I finished this in one sitting" kind of good!

Satantango by László Krasznahorkai

Of course I had set my eye on this a looong time ago but grabbed the opportunity to buy the book where it comes from. I wanted to read this before I bought it for the WT read and again, I'm not sure what to expect but a group of inhabitants of a small town, drunk people and their lives.

I also didn't know there's a Béla Tarr movie - SIX-HOURS-LONG! Now, as a stupid nerd who boasts of having endured Frank Castorf's Faust production at the Berliner Volksbühne which went whopping SEVEN HOURS LONG, I'm very very tempted, I have to say. I love a challenge when it comes to movies and books and I know one when I see one. If I ever watch that movie, I'll review it here.

Blackfish City by Sam J. Miller

This is a book I need to read for the current dark read and all I can feel is confused. Climate wars, a woman warrior riding a whale, and traveling with a polar bear, a floating city, crime and corruption, poverty, a new disease, cyberpunk... And four people planning to save their city. I'm at 10% and not very impressed so far.

The Adventures of China Iron by Gabriela Cabezón Cámara

During her reading evening at the Otherland this past summer, Samanta Schweblin cited this book as belonging to the new generation Argentine authors' trend genres - gaucho punk. We follow the adventures of Mrs China Iron, an abandoned wife, in her travels across the pampas with a Scottish woman named Liz. While Liz explains to China the British Empire they also travel through the breathtaking landscape of Argentina’s rich flora and fauna, cultures and languages, and struggles.

The second discussion I'll be moderating, and my first ever "Light" read, so this is neither horror nor dark anything, but a nice enough story of two women traveling together.

The Crane Husband by Kelly Barnhill

Next month's "Light" read. A single mom, a tapestry artist, with two children, brings home a "crane husband", yes, a bird shaped man, who wants her to weave a masterpiece of a tapestry. I have no idea what all this is supposed to mean, yet I will see when I read.

Books I want to read for myself:

Finally there are always the books of my heart's desire or books I want to read for my personal projects... Here they are.

Nubia: The Reckoning by Omar Epps and Clarence A. Haynes

Well, Clarence may have left us for New York City, but it seems to have been worth it since here is the second tome of the Nubia series already, in which we will follow Zuberi, Uzochi, and Lencho, Nubians kids who awoke to supernatural powers, into a kind of revolution.

I'm very happy for Clarence, so well-done! I knew he'd make it and hope there'll be more successful projects for him to come!

Le Locataire Chimérique by Roland Topor

The Tenant/Le Locataire Chimérique has, again, been on my radar for quite some time now and I didn't need to visit Paris to buy my copy, speaking of which, will you please take a look at that cover? This is also the edition I have and I decided to buy the French edition because of the cover art. And I haven't read anything in French in ages and want to get rid of that rust.

 

So, apparently a kind of possession/this place is evil kind of story which delves deep into the psyche of the tenant and the former tenant of a certain apartment.

I have been trying to push this book into my goodreads groups but it hasn't worked yet, not many people want to read it.

The San Veneficio Canon by Michael Cisco

I first bumped into the name Michael Cisco during my bizarro phase in which I was trying to find and read as many absurdist books as possible. I have two books by him, both of which I haven't yet read. It's time to change that - I included this book into as many reading challenges as possible, so there will be no way around it.

 

As far as I remember, this is a collection of novellas or short stories which were first published independently although they are thematically linked, but were then united under the title The San Veneficio Canon. The story is about the so-called Divinity Student who was struck by lightning, resurrected, cut open, and stuffed full of arcane documents and who subsequently learns to pick the brains of corpses and gradually sacrifices his sanity for a dubious mission. This will be weirdly dark. Or darkly weird, whichever way you want to look at it.

Muckross Abbey and Other Stories by Sabrina Murray

Muckross Abbey and Other Stories is supposedly a Gothic ten-story-collection set in haunted sites from West Australia to England to Cape Cod.

To be honest I'm not very crazy about Gothic right now, the last few neo-Gothic books having spoiled the genre for me with how bad they were. So, amongst all others, I see myself pushing this book into next year's list. 

Concerning Those Who Have Fallen Asleep by Adam Soto

This is the book I keep on bringing up, the one with the black holes on its cover but which I still haven't read... So the stories in this collection range from nightly visits by people in a coma; murders of abusive husbands; to a one-armed soldier discovering his arm returning when his uniform is altered by a German tailor and many more.

I'm still excited to read this, so why don't I?

Beş Sevim Apartmanı: Rüya Tabirli Cinperi Yalanları by Mine Söğüt

OK, this one has a story.

I belong to the post-coup generation born slightly before and raised in the aftermath of the military coup of September 12, 1980 in Turkey. Being beaten, broken, tortured themselves and as a result of their direct trauma, our parents' generation, especially in the western parts of the country, tried to keep us out of and shield us from anything political as fiercely as possible so that we wouldn't be arrested, and in the worst case tortured. I remember, for instance, when I was leaving home for university and because universities are the infesting nests of political activity, my friend's mother trying to teach me a chant "ne sağcıyız, ne solcu, futbolcuyuz futbolcu" (meaning; we're neither right-wing nor lefty, we're footballers), lol. And although I could understand their fear that we would be broken too, it is a sad lack of freedom which marks my childhood and early youth.

The only times I felt I could break that kind of silencing was every Friday afternoon after school when I bought myself a copy of the satirical caricature magazines of the time LeMan (weekly) and LeManyak (monthly) which had an anarchist bent and miraculously were writing and drawing whatever the fuck they wanted, criticizing whomever and whatever they wanted. I was so in awe with the creators of these magazines and their writings definitely shaped my personality to a bigger degree than any real person involved in my upbringing. The knowledge that here in this very place I live, there are people who are living the freedom of expression I am longing for, gave me a sense of great relieve.

One of these creators is Bahadır Baruter, who used to draw a series of caricatures about his life with his girlfriend Miki, which was rather sweet in nature than political. Well, while browsing some bookstores during my stay in Turkey, a few cover arts and titles caught my eye, amongst which I found the weird writings of Mine Söğüt especially tempting. It took me a while to realize that Mine Söğüt is in fact Miki, and she's now Baruter's wife and he does her covers too. Another one of those sweet surprises in life. I will keep on reading her because I think hers is the kind of writing I wished would be translated from my language into other languages, notwithstanding it's one of the few authors who uses elements of horror in her writing. I have read one book of hers already which wasn't really my cup of tea, but I'll keep reading her, I was recommended this one by a publisher, so maybe I'll like it better.

So, this is it, I guess. If you're interested in joining me in reading and doing a buddy read, I'd love that, just write me a mail and let's start!

I have a friend who regularly takes "bookcations" (I can't remember if he calls them bookcation or readcation, but you get the point), which means, he takes time off from work just to sit at home and read. With the weather getting darker and colder and the number of books I have before me, this sounds like a great idea to me, but I think I don't have any more days off this year. In any case I'll realistically won't be able to finish all of these this year but I'll give my best shot.

Have a great time!