I started reading Cujo when I was a young teenager. I didn’t last long, as I was reading in bed, with my wardrobe not far away…

I couldn’t sleep. Fuck that.

74.  Dead Leaves by Kealan Patrick Burke.  Another short horror story collection, this one specifically centred around “fall” and Halloween.  I love Halloween, so this one particularly appealed to me.  The first story, Andromeda, gets things off to a good start, and while I’m not entirely sure what was actually going on, that’s okay; I’m not someone who needs the plot spoon-fed to me, I like a bit of WTF with my fiction.  Unfortunately it all goes rapidly downhill after that.  It’s as if the first story was written by a completely different author to the rest.  Every story that follows is deeply unimaginative and the prose is often poor. The only reason I kept reading was because I was hoping to come across a story with the same calibre as the first.  A real missed opportunity, this one.

I read that one last October, along with The October Country, also by Bradbury.

I’ll be interested to hear your thoughts on that one, davy.  My next sci-fi read will be Death’s End in November.  Bet you can’t wait to hear what I think about that.  

75. Fantasticland by Mike Bockoven. It’s a sort of…Lord of the Flies meets Disneyland? A über-nasty category five tornado sweeps in off the shore of Miami, flooding and isolating a Disneyland-alike theme park. The tourists are evacuated before the full force of the extreme weather event hits the coast, leaving behind about 150 park staff, most of whom are in their late teens and early twenties. It doesn’t take very long for tribes to form and for things to get a bit murdery.

Initially it feels like a bit of a stretch to imagine how things could go south so quickly, but then I remind myself that President Trump happened to America and a bunch hillbilly fucktards stormed the White House not so long ago. But also Bockoven deserves massive credit here, because he works very hard to convince the reader that something like this could go down. It’s still far fetched, but it feels convincing.

The format of the novel is…well…pretty novel. It’s presented as a fictional journalists accounting of the events after the fact, with the meat and potatoes of the story unfolding through a series of interviews with those caught up in the whole mess. It works incredibly well. There are no protagonists here, and each interview is with a different person, with familiar characters popping up in different accounts. I thought the whole thing was carried out superbly, with excellent conversational prose. Will definitely be checking to see what else Bockoven has done.

Just as an aside, I did this on audiobook, and if you’re interested in reading the book then I would wholeheartedly recommend taking this route as it works so well the the interview format of the book, and the two narrators (one for the male interviewees and one for the female) are some of the best I’ve ever heard. They elevate the story to a whole new level. If you happen to have a Audible sub you can find it in their Plus catalogue, which means it’s ‘free’ to listen to as part of your membership.

77.  Carmilla by Sheridan Le Fanu.  I want to at some point soon get around to reading Bram Stoker’s Dracula, but before I do I wanted to read that other famous vampire tale that predates Stoker’s seminal work by 26 years (thanks Wikipedia).  So glad I did, as it’s a very compelling and surprisingly modern work of fiction.  It tells the tale of a young lady who, desperate for companionship, meets and forms a deep friendship with a strange young woman with an oddly magnetic personality, fey temperament, and strange habits.  It might not be quite as flamboyant as the Stoker tale to come, but the prose is to die for; it’s elegant and beautiful.  I loved it.

I would recommend Carmilla to you then, davy.  I think you’ll appreciate it.  I will be getting to Dracula next year.

The Wandering Earth is a short story collection by Liu Cixin, the first of which inspired the big budget sci-fi film of the same name.

The author has a lot of ideas and he uses this collection as a sketch book. The ideas themselves are great and are usually of a grand scale but he's never sure about what to do with them and explore the impact of them on people and society as a whole and sometimes they feel unfinished. This doesn't mean the collection isn't worth looking at though as the ideas are worth it. I wouldn't be surprised to see full length novels based on some of them in the future. I've also heard that some of his short stories have been picked up for development as graphic novels.

I started Mexican Gothic a few months back but didn’t get past chapter three I think.  Wasn’t a fan of the prose.

Yeah, I was eyeing that earlier today.

I’ve read three horrors this year that strike me as being very modern. Fantasticland by Mike Bockoven, Horrorstör by Grady Hendrix, and The Ruins by Scott Smith. Of them all The Ruins is for me the best, with Fantasticland running it a close second.

It’s a great book, and probably in the top three of all the books I’ve read this year.

It’s well worth the £7.99 Amazon are asking for the paperback, in my opinion.

I actually did The Ruins on audiobook, where it’s read by the actor Patrick Wilson, and he makes a phenomenal job of it.

79.  The Fiends in the Furrows: An Anthology of Folk Horror.  Nine fairly substantial short stories by nine different authors, most of them unfortunately awful.  I was hoping I would find some new authors to read through this tome, but I found none.  The writing is often pretty bad, and reaches a nadir with Romey Petite’s Pumpkin, Dear.  It’s about a man who kills his wife and buries her in a pumpkin patch, only for her to come back to life with a pumpkin for a head.  Not only is the story dumb, but the prose is appalling and it’s littered with typos.  When I hear so often how hard it is to get published it just amazes me how some writers are getting into print.  The final story, S. T. Gibson’s Revival, distinguishes itself from the others by actually not being shit.  The story is weak, but at least the prose is competent.  Overall a massive disappointment and I’ve already removed the second book from my TBR.

Not counting this one as it’s very likely little more than a novelette, but I rounded off my Halloween reading today with The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving.  A great little story, this, and written with a surprising amount of wit; and the narrative is bathed in the spell of autumn, which made it a perfect read for this time of year.