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A Head Full of Labyrinths: Susanna Clarke's "Piranesi"

As the whole world is shutting down, requiring people to withdraw into tiresome isolation and to see even less people than before, I feel myself more and more drawn to literary characters who are going through the same experience, dealing with various degrees of solitude, albeit under different circumstances. I had mentioned this strange kind of comfort before, in my review of Ottessa Moshfegh's books which feature insanely peculiar female characters in situations of extreme solitude. During the first lockdown in spring I read both My Year of Rest and Relaxation and Death in Her Hands by Moshfegh and found myself oddly fascinated by these women who, out of their free will, chose lonesomeness and told how they go through their days as if nothing else in the world mattered (and strangely enough, I never felt bored reading both these books, they are extremely captivating). That exactly, the ability to zoom out anything else going on around you and focus on your own microcosm is wha...

...the Soul of Wit

I guess we're all happy to leave the old year behind, so here's to a new year and hopefully a better one too! I hope you had a tolerable festive season despite all the new restrictions. As for me, I took the work-free time to read an awful lot of books and think it best to tick off the shorties as quickly as possible – because their number is raising almost by the day, incredible what even more lockdown can do- and to get to the more interesting ones that I’ll be discussing longer and in detail. Last week I already announced the 2021 plan of the Final Girls Berlin to split their popular horror film festival into two parts - the first being next month virtually and the second in October, hopefully in person. Another happy announcement for 2021 is that I will be monthly reviewing the “Rewind or Die” series for the Otherland Newsletter this year – a sum total of 21 retro-horror paperbacks which are inspired by 80s and 90s horror fiction. I can’t tell how excited I am for this ta...

A Terrific, Horror Filmic Start Into the New Year!

  Happy and healthy new year 2021, everyone! The year starts with great news for Berlin horror fans - the program and time schedule for the Final Girls Berlin Film Festival is ready! I have to say I'm super excited for this year's selection - especially, as always, for the short film selection, squee! Here goes their message: Final Girls Berlin Film Festival, a festival showcasing horror directed, written, and/or produced by women and non-binary people will be doing things a bit differently this year - we are splitting our 6th edition! Part 1 of the festival will take place online on February 4-7 2021 and Part 2 will be on Halloween weekend, October 29-31 2021, at City Kino Wedding in Berlin. Here is what we planned for February! Our opening night film is Sabrina Merten's debut feature FELLWECHSELZEIT  (Berlin Premiere), a disturbing, brilliantly conceived psychological thriller about young Stephanie who is trapped in a dysfunctional family set-up with no way of ge...

Last Ugress Live Show of 2020

Don't miss the grand season finale of Ugress livestream - this Thursday, December 17th, live 8pm CET on Youtube , Twitch or Facebook . What has Gisle prepared for us this time? I hear there will be some mad cybership experiments, battle houseplant duets and multiple vintage competition winner requests. The streaming starts as usual around 30 minutes before 7:30pm on Youtube just in case you want to hang around or chat, and the show starts at about 8:00pm. Thank Gisle for providing a little light in this dark winter 2020, see you there!

End of the Year Blues? Not This Year! Protean Depravity Celebrates the Greatest Books of 2020

So having talked to Caro from Otherland this morning who is preparing the store's Christmas recommendations and bumping almost everywhere into the 'best of's and 'worst of's of this worst year of all, inspired me to make my own end of the year list with the books I liked best. At first I came up with a draft of runners-up; but then again, I thought I already know which books will win. Seeing no need to pretend that I have gone through an intense elimination process in an attempt to create suspense, I'll directly post both my 5 runners-up and the winners of this year without further ceremony. Let me just quickly note that some books are just a tiny little bit older than 2020 because I have left some room for books from my old TBR-list I carried into 2020 with me. Reason is that some great books I have recently read still should have a chance up here, even if they aren't necessarily buzzing new. Since this is a purely personal list I took that liberty but ho...

...the Soul of Wit

It is finally time for the shorties of my recent reads and here they are for you to enjoy!

A Gothic Novel of a Different Kind: "The Garden of Bewitchment" by Catherine Cavendish

Well played, Catherine Cavendish, very well played… You had me fooled throughout the bigger part of this book, had me thinking I had figured it out, rolling my eyes at the ostensible Victorian banality of it all... And then you speed up toward the end and come up with that bombshell in the last quarter that I can only applaud. The Garden of Bewitchment is an exquisitely crafted, wonderfully astonishing, plain fantastic book! Forget all you know about cozy Gothic fiction because Cavendish is here to push the boundaries of convention and rewrite it all in letters of dread!

Lovecraftian Skeleton in Gnostic Clothes - An Interview With "Stonefish" Author Scott R. Jones on His Mind-Expanding Debut Novel

With a discussion that stretched over two days, we had a rather unusual Otherland book club session last weekend on a rather unusual book - Stonefish by Scott R. Jones. And I'm using unusual in the best sense of the word! A Lovecraftian skeleton and existential body in gnostic clothes, as described by its author, this great debut centers on Den Secord, a journalist who is set on the mission of finding the eccentric tech guru Gregor Makarios. And that mission is a truly, distressingly, depressingly mind-bending experience which will turn all reality toroidal and poloidal . Stonefish is a very thought-provoking and profoundly interesting work which will grab, occupy and frighten your mind while playing with and yes, even reinventing traditional tropes and notions. It is a blast to discover new good books, new authors and when those authors turn out to be great people who are genuinely interested in their readers, the whole experience turns into double the fun. This is what happen...

Don't Miss the Next Ugress Live Show This Thursday

It's Ugress time again! Don't forget to tune in on Thursday, November 12, at 8 pm; the warmup starts at around 7:30 pm. http://www.ugress.com/live/ or participate live with comments on Youtube , Facebook  or Twitch . I'm really excited about this upcoming show because listeners can determine the locations this time! How, you say? Just take a picture of your living room and send it to ugress@ugress.com , and let the show in your living room begin!