protean depravity

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).

Even though the weather hasn't noticed it yet, the summer is supposed to be knocking on our doors, and that means more events, open air cinemas, new challenges and similar stuff. Let's take a look at what's up in Berlin and in my reading plans in the early summer 2025.

There’s much to appreciate about an author who can, in a short story collection, juggle with a limited and recurring set of ideas without coming off as monotonous and repetitive. Collections are considered accomplished to the degree that they are varied and reflect a mixed assortment of literary devices; differing points of view, thematic and stylistic variation, anything to keep tedium away. It takes a master hand like Evenson to go against that convention and to write a collection of stories thematically focused and subtly interconnected, extremely well curated and arranged, unparalleled in minimalistic writing and laconic dialogues, examining themes like environmental collapse, paranoia, AI, or cruel family ties through heady, composed, original horror.

High were the hopes for 2021 - after a disastrous pandemic year, tons of confusion, losses, sickness, bush fires, earthquakes and other catastrophes the world was going to enter a new, better era in 2021 with vaccination for all, freedom days everywhere, return to normality... It didn't turn out that way. Having reached the end of this year, having seen that the worst was yet to come, that those vaccines don't really work, 2021 actually feels like an extension of the most unpopular year 2020. The good things about the collective state that we are in can be counted on the fingers of one hand and one of them is certainly that there is much more time for reading compared to the old normal. So much did I read this year that it was seriously difficult to choose the winners for the Protean Depravity Best Books of 2021, but finally here they are!

It is always a very strange and a very specific pleasure to read Brian Evenson's short stories - a very own blend of latent dread, existential fears, perturbed presentation of everyday life and a good portion of chuckle humor is sure to grab and not let go until you have finished reading the last page. So, I’m more than happy to have had that pleasure again when this summer his new short story collection The Glassy Burning Floor of Hell was published. Apart from the exceptional high quality of each story, the sequencing also plays an important part in making it easy to step into the dreadful world of Glassy, which starts with a striking piece of writing that instantaneously enthralls: “Leg”. This admittedly short but remarkably absurd and intriguing piece about a sentient shapeshifter leg turning into a serial killer on a spaceship, is only the gateway to a universe of uncanny encounters, environmental urgency, body horror, folk horror but also noticeably often dystopic and eve...