protean depravity

Editor Ellen Datlow's new collection of short stories inspired by the infamous Shirley Jackson is simply SUBLIME. Believe me, I'm saying this as someone who isn't even an overly great fan of Jackson: each story in this book is magic! In her introduction, Datlow explains the essence of a Shirley Jackson story as "filled with hauntings, dysfunctional families, and domestic pain; simmering rage, loneliness, suspicion of outsiders; sibling rivalry and women trapped psychologically and/or by the supernatural", adding that Jackson embodies the "dark undercurrent of suburban life". And indeed, in each and every one of the 18 stories in this collection there is a piece of good old Shirley - haunted houses bring about madness, poisoning women in abundance, evil mothers, collective guilt, small-town horror... As I already mentioned above, I am not the biggest Jackson-fan but it was a great pleasure to recognize traces of say, "The Lottery" or Haunting o...

The weekend before last was a horror fan's "that time of the year" again and I hope you had the opportunity to read lots of spooky ghost stories, watch tons of gory films, decorate your house in various shades of orange and eat lots of candy on Halloween. But autumn in Berlin is all the more special because each year the lovely team of Final Girls Berlin does a Halloween special to fuel up your horror tanks before the dark season really starts and it ends in a crazy masquerade where you can go wild, dress up in mad costumes and/or just be and enjoy yourself. If you have good dress-up and make-up skills, you might even win one of the super original prizes FGB has in store for you. As for me, I don't need a prize as long as I can watch the short films. As is the case each year, there were some absolute gems in the selection this time too and here are my favorites amongst this year's Halloween shorts:

October is gone and so is the intense race to read as many horrific stories as possible until the scariest night of the year... Here I am emptying my bag of horror goodies I collected during this dark time of the year, and hope you enjoy!

I have never been the one to wish to be able to fly in the skies, but Nupur Chowdhury’s A Flight of Broken Wings sure made me think about how cool it would be to have a pair of huge, beautiful wings with which I can float around and which look like those on the awesome cover, my god, look at the beauty of that!

Enjoy the new shorties!

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...

Until recently, I hadn’t managed to finish Laird Hunt’s dark fairy tale In the House in the Dark of the Woods , although I always meant to and always kept on recommending it. Now that I have finally crossed that title from my TBR list and although I’m left with lots and lots of question marks in my mind, I feel really satisfied finally having accomplished it.

These are the warm up days for Halloween, guys! I have two Halloween-group reads scheduled for next month: first one is The Mammoth Book of Halloween Stories , edited by Stephen Jones, from which I'll be reading one story on each day of October and second one is House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski that has been sitting in my bookshelves for way too long! Until I get to finish those, you have to be content with my smaller reads here, but since I'm a little late this month with my wrap up, you will find that there are more books than usual. Hope you enjoy!

  Talking about movies - I will certainly continue doing my watch-at-home-festival thing BUT we can actually go back watching movies in theatres again! I have opened the post-corona season with Dennis Villeneuve's Dune yesterday and I can't wait to go back for the Fantasy Fimfest in October/November and The Final Girls Berlin Film Festival at the City Kino Wedding around Halloween, I'll keep you posted about the schedules and my selection.