protean depravity

Enjoy the latest short reviews! 

Jenny Kaplan is as New York City as they come – independent and complex, trying to make a living through a severely underpaid job at the lifestyle magazine Bread and Circus , and always one rent away from being evacuated. Her biggest accomplishment is a very personal and honest piece of autofiction that includes her break up and abortion, titled “Drano”, which got her the most views and support she ever had, but also brought along powerful enemies, such as The Brotherhood and, unfortunately, the owners of her workplace.

The new year started so busy that I almost forgot about publishing the short reviews. Luckily, because of that, there are quite a few now since they added up. In the meantime I discovered a new favorite author, Drew Huff, I fell in love with The Divine Flesh,  the way it was written and the subject matter was totally up my alley, so I have been stocking  up on Huff's books (because I'm totally expecting to do nothing and sit on my couch and read books as long as the snow piles up outside, the way it does now). I also really want to focus on short stories this year, and to put a dent in my TBR by finishing all the horror anthologies I collected over the years, and I started doing that. Hope you enjoy my short reviews, have a great winter time! 

It's finally time for some crime, thriller and mystery again, let's go! I've had tons of time to read over the festive days (it was so wonderful), so there are quite a few short reviews today. Enjoy.

Let's start the year 2026 with the hope that these empty cinema seats will be the only places to witness horrors and that horror will stay strictly confined to fiction. And the first opportunity to fill those seats will be during the upcoming film season - our first station is the  Fantasy Filmfest White Nights  on January 24 and 25, which is like a mini winter break weekend for horror fans. I usually only watch a couple of films during the White Nights, but this year I feel like 2025 wasn't that great of a year for horror, and I feel somewhat starved for more movies. So I decided to take a leave from Hammett on that Saturday and to watch all the films on the first day, and three films on Sunday. Let's take a look at the trailers and talk about them, in order of their appearance at the FFF.

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!

Hey everyone! Hope you survived October and Halloween just fine, and as we enter the dark and grisly part of the year, drinking tea and reading books sounds all the more appealing. And reading mysteries while the weather is raging outside is a comfy classic, so here are some recommendations for those days I hope you enjoy!

Probably everyone has some kind of story revolving around the first author they enjoyed reading, and for many people in my broader generation that author is Stephen King, since fear as he writes it moves children and younger people on a deeper level. I first read The Stand  in middle school and back then it was already all the hype to read Stephen King, it was even more impressive to read this particular book because it was so thick and the cover was so crazy. Still, then and now, it has never been my favorite King book. The reasons for that are many, but mainly because I see it more like a dark Fantasy book and it has many religious implications I personally don't very much enjoy. I can still acknowledge the importance of a book without necessarily loving it, though, and that's what I'll do in this case. So, ever since I heard about The End of the World As We Know It , this mammoth project of 35 short stories set in the The Stand universe by 35 contemporary horror authors ...

Hello everyone! I hope you're enjoying the nice autumn weather and prepare for Halloween and the darkness that follows by reading great books! Here are some you might like, enjoy!

In between films and life I have been able to read only a handful of books, but unfortunately none of them felt really great, although all of them worthwhile if you're possibly the right reader, maybe I just wasn't it, and that's fine. Hope you enjoy the short reviews, maybe you find something that speaks to you!

Here are some crime reads for you in this last phase of summer (that we never had this year). I hope you enjoy!

All around the world tens of thousands of fan girls dressed in pink pony shirts or black Victorian attires sipping their mini appletinis and Lady Grey teas are hit with the news... They push aside their bitch curtains, put away the Derrida they've been engrossed in, and start jumping for joy because THE BUNNIES ARE BACK! If you too missed the Smut Salon, the restaurant "Mini", the fiction girls and poetry boys, then it's time to rejoice, as the most infamous clique of literary absurdness doesn't fail to deliver for a second time.

The past couple of weeks were great for reading, so I already have some new short reviews, enjoy!

Sure, I'll gladly play the broken record again and let me not miss another opportunity to express my despondency over the weather this summer, which has been five hot days and raining cats and dogs on all of the other time. I swear at some point I will move somewhere warmer, but not yet. Not as long as there are such great things going on as in this summer so far (just not good weather).

Alright, constant reader, let's finish up this first chapter in the series A Short Story Reader's Guide to Stephen King, by taking a look at the last four short stories in King's first collection  Night Shift . The four stories discussed here are The Last Rung on the Ladder , The Man Who Loved Flowers , One for the Road , and finally, The Woman in the Room , two of them are horror stories and are pre-published before being included in Night Shift , while the remaining two are rather contemporary, or even literary short stories that are rather on the emotional side and which have been written specifically for this work. As usual, it might be better to read the short stories beforehand, because I will spoil everything.