Straightening Up the TBR and Other Exciting Things

 

The world keeps on turning and once again the nicer time of the year has arrived; the warm time. At least hopefully, because in this part of the world you never know - Remember last summer? And again, I have been merrily taking and taking review copies of books, and reached the point where they have accumulated to a degree that I'm about to lose track, but haven't quite yet. I am at a point where I need to straighten up the tbr pile - make a priority list so that no important book gets left out, but also make sure my personal goals, group reads, buddy reads and challenges are fulfilled too. It's not easy being a professional book worm, let me tell you.

Speaking of professional, before getting to the books, there is one exciting thing in my life right now I want to share with you. As you know, a couple of years ago I had resigned with a heavy heart from the Otherland Bookshop due to irreconcilable differences and that's the way it is. But very recently I have been offered a part time side job at the Otherland's sibling bookshop Hammett (just two doors apart from Otherland), a genre bookshop focusing on thrillers, noir and police procedural! The plan is that I start as soon as next month. Nothing has been signed yet, though I want (and financially need) this and it will be fun going back to selling books, sitting behind the counter, talking books with people at least for a couple of hours a week. I will be given a certain creative liberty too, so I can try and create a little horror corner, hehe. I hope this goes well. But, as I said, it's not official yet, we'll have talks mid-May.

Let's go back to the books I recently received and will be reviewing for various sources in the weeks to come.

The Book of Denial written by Ricardo Chávez Castañeda, illustrated by Alejandro Magallanes

Just listen to what the cover description of this beautifully monochrome graphic novel says: "at once a horror story and a literary ghost story that uses flashbacks and stories within stories to deny our denials and harness our power of refusal to redeem time." Looks gorgeous too. I admit I'm not the biggest reader of graphic novels but when I do, it is all the more important that it's a selected special book, not just any, and The Book of Denial seems to meet that criteria. 

The Best Horror of the Year: Volume Fifteen edited by Ellen Datlow

Each year I'm anxiously waiting for Ellen Datlow's best horror stories of the years and each year I refuse to buy the digital copy (which is published earlier) because I like to collect them, they have their own shelf in my home, and I'm aware that the makers of the series pay equal attention to the cover art as they do to the quality of the short stories within those beautifully dark covers. I see familiar names like Tananarive Due, Gemma Files, Jeffrey Ford, and John Langan but I'm more excited to read the stories of the lesser known authors who aren't featured on the cover. Let's see which authors wait to be discovered in this tome!

Soul Jar edited by Annie Carl 

Finally holding this beautiful anthology in my hands, and the cover is the color of teal... I love it so much. But more important is that this anthology features 31 fantastical tales by disabled authors which reflect their life experience, stories which don't cure, or alleviate, or pretty up their life conditions but reflect them, and even imagines them as super powers. I'm super intrigued by this and with that cover, it's a win already.

Warriors edited by George R. Martin and  Gardner Dozois

I can see in my mind's eye how this title raises eyebrows. Well, the reason it's here is that I needed, or still need to read one Grimdark book for the Deep Dark Depths challenge Emmett from Goodreads set up. As every single interesting Grimdark book I found is in a series - for some reason there are no Grimdark standalones -, and I don't want to start endless series, I went to Otherland and Caro and I went through their whole second hand section until we finally found this short story collection. At almost 750 pages, this will not be a walk in the park, but I see names like Landsdale, Novik, Martin and it could be worse, to be honest. I was bound to suffer for this prompt anyway, so I might as well suffer at the hands of short stories. 

Blood from the Air by Gemma Files

Gemma Files writes so incredibly much... I feel like she publishes a new short story collection every year and they're all always of high quality, written in her signature quirky/heavy style. Have you seen the cover art of this one? I'll put in a picture in case you missed it.

Sixteen new short stories brought to you by Grimscribe Press, I have no idea what awaits me before going into this, as there's no cover description and no content anywhere. One of my favorite GR reviewers Char says in her review that almost all the stories worked for her, which means a lot. Usually, even the best collections have a weak spot, and the last time I could say that every single story worked for me was The Black Maybe. So the bar is very high for Files, let's see if she reaches it.

Oracle by Thomas Olde Heuvelt

I like Olde Heuvelt's books. I can't say they're always super original, but they engage you in an almost comforting way, he knows how to wrap you up in a sort of horror which is safe, you know the rules, yet you read it for comfort. After some small town witch horror and a mountain that kills, he now writes about a ship wreck which, according to the cover description, is a doorway to the apocalypse. I have been waiting for the apocalypse since it was announced in 2012, and it's yet to come. Maybe it's in this ship after all.

You Are My Sunshine by Octavia Cade

I really need to step up reading short story collections by single authors, as I've barely read any this year and I need at least five for my end of the year selection. So this is a collection I saw on the Bram Stoker Awards shortlist and I have zero expectations going into this. Maybe just keep it that way and be surprised in a nice way.

The Underhistory by Kaaron Warren

OK, confession: I have only read Austalian author Kaaron Warren's short stories in Ellen Datlow anthologies and never sought her own work. But that changed when I saw the publication details of The Underhistory, which revolves around an elderly woman whose family was killed, and who lives from the haunted house tours she offers of the house they used to live together which she built from scratch after a plane crashed into it. I'm intrigued already, one of the blurbs says it combines locked-room thriller with gothic novel, and that sounds like an exciting combination.

Myrrh by Polly Hall

Apparently the stories of two separate women, one woman looking for her birth parents and another being pushed out of her marriage as her husband bonds with his daughter to leave her out, intermingle and lead to a "horrific climax". Actually I can't wait to read that, I'm all for horrific climaxes.

Schrader's Chord by Scott Leeds

It's no secret I love and live for music, hard music and I'm always thrilled to discover books, especially horror books in which music is featured. As an aside and before going any further with Schrader's Chord, I'd like to recommend to anyone who's reading this John Hornor Jacobs' short story "My Heart Struck Sorrow" (which is one of the two novellas published in his book A Lush and Seething Hell - one of my all time favorites, please go read it immediately, it's deliciously Lovecraftian!).

In Schrader's Chord, our main guy Charlie's father who used to own a record shop (what a dream) dies and Charlie gets to go through all those records with his friends. BUT it is common knowledge that certain records can open certain doors you might want to keep closed, so beware! This sounds like fun and I don't even know why I haven't started reading yet. Probably because I'm reading fifty other books who also sound fun.

Venomous Lumpsucker by Ned Beauman

So last but not least, this one. I have put it here because I keep on saying I will read it, and I got myself the library copy which I didn't read and returned it and I bought myself the paperback copy and still haven't read it. I'm trying to push this book in my reading groups and book clubs but of no use, nobody will read it with me, so I'm putting it here and hope that gives me the pressure to finally start this eco thriller. (By the way, the number one GR review by Barry Pierce just cracks me up every time I see it.)

These were only the physical copies on my painful tbr list. I still have the invisible digital books waiting for me in my readers... The Plastic Priest by Nicole Cushing, Thirst by Marina Yuszczuk, The Inconsolables by Michael Wehunt, The Cadaver of Gideon Wyck by Alexander Laing, Girl Flesh: An Extreme Horror Novel About Love by May Leitz, The Roots Grow Into the Earth by Bert S. Lechner, The Vile Thing We Created by Robert P. Ottone...

These titles are but the tip of the iceberg that is my mountain of pain tbr... There is a trend on GR, people take ""bookcations", which is exactly what it sounds like - they take a leave from work not to go on vacation, but to stay home and read. I was returned my vacation days for the botched Berlinale, so a week just for reading sounds heavenly and I may just do that. Since I already have been traveling a lot and will be away this week too, I need to save some money for new trips in the fall, so I think a couple of shortish bookcations when I can bike to some lake in and around Berlin, swim some and or go to a park and read books under the trees sounds really good. Honestly, the sheer mass of the books I accumulated over the years is a little disheartening yet I still hope to be able to finish as many of them as possible. Sigh...