What I Read in October

Spooky season has come and gone and I tried my best to do as much horror themed reading as I could to take my mind off the fact that summer has ended and the cooler weather was creeping in...

Not too shabby a month from a number perspective - I read 12 books total, two of which were for publicity consideration so I won't include them here. The rest, well... it was a really mixed bag for me. Some really stellar reads, and others that were just meh....

Check 'em out and let me know if you had the same experience with them as I did : )

Water Shall Refuse Them by Lucie McKnight Hardy

This was sitting on my kindle unread for YEARS, you guys. And I kept seeing it come up as a good book to read in the fall, making references to witchy and folk horror. I didn't find any horror elements in here whatsoever!

What it does contain is grief, family trauma, animal abuse/deaths, and weird small town hysterics. And that twist? I saw that coming so early in the book I was a little disappointed the author waited as long as they did to reveal it.

Pffft. Honestly, I think I got tricked into reading a kind of crappy YA novel.

If you tend to like what I like, and you haven't read this one, skip it. You'd be better off.

Coup de Grace by Sofia Ajram

I had been not-so-patiently waiting for this one to release ever since I saw Kathe Koja rave about it, and finally bought myself a copy a couple of days ago.

It was immediately placed at the top of the TBR. And you guys, it did not disappoint!

A young man is riding the subway to the lake where he plans to kill himself. He dozes off and when he awakens and steps onto the platform of the station, he gets the feeling that something is not right. There are no subway signs, no other trains, no people. And as he wanders up and down the escalators, trying to locate an exit but only finding more empty gray hallways and escalators, he worries that there is no way out of this labyrinthian hell. And what's worse... he senses something else is in here with him, possibly messing with him.

The dark content - suicidal ideation, depression, oppressive loneliness - is delicately balanced by our narrator's sardonic sense of humor as he slowly starts to unravel. Our heads can be terrible places to be stuck in and both his existential and physical predicament do him no favors as he continues to search for some way out.

Claustrophobic, disturbing, unsettling, and good god sometimes just downright gross, Ajram attempts to lighten this guy's mental load by throwing the reader a bone towards the end, allowing us to help Vicken pick his ending with a series of choose your own adventure options, which was a fun, unexpected treat.

Gripping and beautiful, Ajram delivers the kill shot to their reader's hearts with this one.

Fans of books with extreme WTF energy like Kehlmann's You Should Have Left, Harpman's I Who Have Never Known Men, and Graziano's The Divine Farce will appreciate this.

When the Reckoning Comes by LaTanya McQueen

This was another book I saw being highly recommended all over #bookstagram as a good spooky season read. And not gonna lie you guys, for the first half of the book I thought you were all nuts. I mean, the humans as monsters was coming through loud and clear - a white girl wedding at a renovated plantation farm with lots of negative energy because of the horrific and unforgivable history that comes with it, but I wasn't getting horror-vibes. Until, of course, the vengeful ghost stuff started coming into play.

I'm 100% meh on this one. When I finally saw where it was going, I appreciated the storyline but it was just so slow, even when the creepy content was fully introduced. And I never connected with the characters or McQueen's writing style - is it me or was all the dialogue kind of stilted and forced?

A total regrettable case of #bookstagrammademedoit. Well, maybe not totally... I've been hemming and hawing on when to read it ever since I bought it, and I'm glad you all finally convinced me to knock it off the tbr pile. So there's that.

Onwards and upwards, as they say!

What book should I be convinced to pick up next?

The Atrocities by Jeremy Shipp

This was a fun little read that was a perfect choice for spooky season.

It reads like a Victorian gothic horror novel, only it's modern times - an imposing mansion surrounded by a hedge maze with super creepy statues around every corner, horrifying old paintings decorating the walls, complete with a cook and a gardener and a gazillion rooms and hallways to wander, but lets not forget the characters all have cell phones and there are big screen TVs everywhere.

Here's the basic rundown- An eccentric couple hire a woman to homeschool their daughter, who she's led to believe suffers from a strange affliction. The longer the woman remains in the house, the stranger the situation becomes until you realize this is not the ghost story you signed up for... but something else entirely.

I went in not really knowing what to expect and I was pleasantly surprised the whole way through.

I appreciate how Shipp reinvents themselves with every book they write. Have you read anything by this author yet?

Sundown in San Ojuela by MM Olivas

The death of her aunt causes Liz and her younger sister Mary to return to the house they were raised in. The ancestral mansion appears to have been severely neglected even though there's a groundskeeper still employed on property, and when Liz runs into her childhood neighbor and friend Julian, she quickly begins to realize something dark and evil has taken root there.

The book is steeped in Mexican and Indigenous culture and folklore, leaning heavily into the ancient gods, ghosts, and cryptids like El Coco, Chupacabra, La Muerte, and Xolotl who are tied to that unforgiving desert landscape, which was a cool space to world-build in. Who doesn't like dark, calamitous, and ruinous fiction, amirite??

That said, Sundown in San Ojuela is a fairly uneven debut which suffers from pacing issues. It's told from multiple characters' viewpoints, each written in a different POV - Liz and Mary's are told in third person; Julian is in second person; the Sheriff is in first. While initially off putting, it ended up working out for the best because once each character's chapter is first introduced, Olivas doesn't really bother to let us know whose chapter it is anymore. And in most instances, the plot is driven forward by revisiting the past in the form of flashbacks.

A few things to note: Liz developed the skill of clairvoyance as the result of a traumatic car accident when she was younger which plays heavily into the storyline and I'd recommend you play close attention to the prologue, which acts more as an opening chapter, since the events that take place in it are happening nearly simultaneously to the rest of the storyline and is not, as I had originally thought, something that has happened in the distant past...

I think I was left more confused with the way the story was told than with the actual story itself, although towards the end it feels like things just became overly and unnecessarily complicated with its many moving parts.

Dead Inside by Chandler Morrison

Holy hell you guys. This book is absolutely fucked up in all the best ways. I shouldn't like it because it's really gross and makes me feel icky and I can't think of a single person I could sanely recommend this to, but I do like it. I actually really, reaaaally liked it and I'm not ashamed to admit that.

It sets its own trigger warning pretty early in and once you get into it, you realize it's more "oh, the things we do because of our love of dead things" rather than "Ooooh... the things we do to dead things". Because, my god, they sure do disgusting things to them, don't they?

Not for the squeamish or the weak of heart. Unless you really like cheeky, messed up main characters who fully embrace their weird ass fetishes and go all-in on all the gory details. Cause good lord, do they!

Sick... and messed up on soooo many levels, but oh so fun!

It Lasts Forever and Then it's Over by Anne De Marcken

"Sometimes I think the world is better now".

Fuuuuuck, you guys. This book is sooo fricken good! And the messed up part is that if @Josh_is_lanky didn't gift it to me, I would have never known about it, and probably may never had read it.

It's heavy and heady and dripping with grief and loss and it's dark and bleak, but also kind of painfully hopeful. Memory, identity, time, and reality are all explored here and in such a beautiful way.

It takes the zombie novel to a whole new existential level and I loved every freaking minute of it.

If you know what's good for you, you'll put this on your to-buy lists asap.

The House at the End of Lacelean Street by Catherine McCarthy

A quick and easy read, THatEoLS is more cerebral, psychological horror than scare-me horror, and does a fairly good job of keeping all of us, reader and characters alike, on our toes nearly the entire time...

Three strangers, with little to no memory of how or why, find themselves stepping onto a midnight bus that delivers them to a seemingly empty house at the end of Lacelean Street. As each enters, they find a note with their name on it, welcoming them with a room key and a list of rules they are expected to follow during their stay. They have no idea what is going on and they have no choice but to play along.

Catherine McCarthy packs every page with lo-key tension and this constant feeling of always being on the edge of some painful or horrific discovery, which succeeded in making me feel just as unsettled and uncomfortable as the main characters.

I enjoyed it but I wasn't in love with it. It's an entertaining and engrossing read, and I kept finding myself asking over and over again, along with the characters, just what the fuck was going on, but I thought it left things a little too unfinished - what is this place? how did THEY get chosen? were there others before them? why does it do what it does? what's its end game?

Strange and suspenseful, consider this book if you're looking for a fun way to kill an afternoon during spooky season.

In the House in the Dark of the Woods by Laird Hunt

This is a deliciously twisted little thing, isn't it?

You won't reaaaally understand where it's going until it gets there and when it does, hold on to your seat because the book takes on a whole new perspective.

I mean sure, it's a cautionary tale of the strange and terrible wonders that lie hidden in the woods. And yes, it's a story of motherhood and wifehood and otherhood. But the level of trickery and deceit that's written into these pages ... guuurrl!

When a woman walks into the woods to pick some berries as a treat for her man and her son, she embarks on a dark and unexpected adventure. There are little old ladies in cottages, and floating sky boats made of human skin, a stolen wolf cloak, and a scream buried at the bottom of a well. It's part adult fairy tale, part psychological horror, part run Goody.... ruuun!!!

I read it over the course of one day, in great big sips, but I think it'll be haunting me for days and days to come.

The Woodkin by Alexander James

I think I've let #bookstagram entice me one too many times into reading something I otherwise might not have picked up. In this case, I should have left this particular book on the damn shelf where I found it.

First, praise where praise is due. The first 100 some pages were actually quite good. Our MC Josh discovers his wife has cheated on him and he takes to the woods to clear his head. A good long hike on the PCT may be just what he needs, enjoying nature and making small talk with the few odd folk on the path. That is, until he stumbles on a dead body, and takes a quick detour into the small town of Belam to file a report. But help does not come easy there, and he can tell he's not exactly welcome, so he hightails it back to the trail just as night is falling ... and... cue the Woodkin and all kinds of weird ass shit, which marked the beginning of the end of this book for me.

What crap. What absolute crap this book became. Almost none of it made sense and it just felt so uneven and sloppy. I think the author watched one too many woodsy horror movies and tried to evoke the same creepy you-can-try-and-run-away-but-you'll-never-leave vibes but it just didn't work.

Ugh. I'm so mad at it.

The 40 But 10: Greg Fields

 

I had decided to retire the literary Would You Rather series, but didn't want to stop interviews on the site all together. Instead, I've pulled together 40ish questions - some bookish, some silly - and have asked authors to limit themselves to answering only 10 of them. That way, it keeps the interviews fresh and connectable for all of us!

Today we are joined by Greg Fields. Greg is the author of Through the Waters and the Wild, winner of the 2022 Independent Press Award for Literary Fiction, the Independent Publishers Association Award, the New York Book Award for Literary Fiction and two other national recognitions.  His first novel, Arc of the Comet, was published in 2017.   He is currently an editor for his publisher, Koehler Books, and a regular presenter at numerous conferences and workshops including the International Dublin Writers Festival. 

 

Greg is also the co-author with Maya Ajmera of Invisible Children: Reimagining International Development from the Grassroots. He has won recognition for his written work in presenting the plight of marginalized young people through his tenure at the Global Fund for Children, and has had articles published in the Harvard International Review, as well as numerous periodicals, including The Washington Post and the Minneapolis Star-Tribune.  

Why do you write?

I write to try to understand my own life. 

 

I believe that there is no such thing as true fiction.  Everything we write is the product of experience, observation, absorption or interpretation.  When I write, I’m actually trying to consider the central and most critical conclusions of my own journey, and, if I’m truly fortunate and well focused, there may be some universality in all that.

 

But when I sit down to write fiction, I’m writing for myself and from myself.  The themes are personal, and there are seldom any lasting resolutions. 

 

My writing revolves around the critical questions we all must face – Where do I go now?  What do I do?  The questions demand asking, even though the answers are elusive, sometimes illusory, and just beyond our grasp.  But what matters is the asking of them.  As long as we can do that, we remain alive, and open to what’s around us.

 

Do you have any hidden talents?

I can cook.  Really, I can.  I learned a bit of the skill in college when I grew tired of eating ramen or macaroni and cheese every night.  But whatever skills I had took off when I married my amazing wife, who spent part of her time in and around restaurant kitchens.  The woman could turn roadkill into a five-course feast, and I learned so much from her.  Name a cuisine, and I’ll find a way to make something palatable – tapas, dolmas, cavatappi, whatever.  It’s a gift.

 

What’s the most useless skill you possess?

When thinking this over, I asked my son what he thought.  His response: “Being a writer.”  He’s a wise guy, but he had a point.  Writing doesn’t pay, it’s an incubator for stress, self-doubt and rejection, and it’s isolating. In a classic social sense, the lad is absolutely on-target.  What’s the point of it?

But there’s something in our nature that compels connection through stories, through shared perspectives, through the aggressive realization that we are not alone in what and how we think and feel.  Writers build bridges, and extend their hand outward to any who would grasp it.

 

Few writers ever get rich, but all have immense wealth.  So maybe it’s not as useless a skill as my son might think.

 

 Describe your book poorly.

Couple of losers stagger their way through their young years and into middle age. One lives on the streets and the other drifts along like a leaf caught in a stiff breeze. No one’s happy.  Maybe in the end they learn a few things.

 What is your favorite way to waste time?

So much to choose from – doom-scrolling the web, binging on Netflix, crosswords, Wordle and Duotrigordle.  But I probably waste more time watching baseball when it’s in season, and following its off-season machinations when it’s not.  There’s something peaceful about the game, something that ties the time together and makes me think of summer, and youth, and all the potential we once had.  It ties me to my father, and to all the people I either played with or coached. 

Maybe it’s not a waste of time after all.

 

What are some of your favorite books and/or authors?

The most important book in my life has been Pat Conroy’s Prince of Tides. Pat was the most honest writer of our times, and he did it all with a lyricism that made words soar like birds in a blue sky.  At had offered encouragement throughout the writing of my first novel, and was a giving, generous soul whom we lost far too soon. All his works are exceptional, but Prince of Tides reads almost like a prayer.

I’ve also come to love the work of an Irish novelist, Niall Williams – Four Letters of Love, the Fall of Light, This Is Happiness. In some ways he reminds me of Conroy’s exceptional lyricism, perhaps with themes that are a bit softer than Pat’s.

And there are new and brilliant authors coming along every day – Dean Cycon, Finding Home: Hungary 1945, an absolute master of historical fiction; Rachel Stone, The Blue Iris; Deborah Hufford, Blood and Rubies, and so on.  Such a privilege to open up to best use of our language, the best use of our thoughts and talents.

 What are you currently reading?

I’ve just completed James by Percival Everett, a retelling of Huckleberry Finn from Jim’s perspective. Brilliant stuff. 

I tend to alternate between new fiction and rereading the ‘important’ books, so next up is probably a revisit of The Great Gatsby or Tender Is the Night.  Fitzgerald works well in the autumn.

What’s on your literary bucket list?

Nothing.  I’ve already lived beyond my own fantasies.  I’ve published three novels, won awards that I treasure, been accepted as a writer in both the US and Ireland, and developed a loyal readership.  And because of all that I became an editor for my publisher so that I can work with other writers at various stages of their own journeys.  What could be better than spending my days around books, and writers? The challenge now is to preserve what I have.  There’s nothing left to chase.

Well, maybe the Nobel.  But who am I kidding?  I’ve been fortunate beyond all measure.

 

 If you were on death row, what would your last meal be?

My favorite meal has been sitting on my deck with my wife, watching the sun go down, nibbling on fruit and cheese, sharing a bottle of wine, and finding the things that roam around in our minds and in our hearts.  If I had one meal left, it would be on the deck, where the best part of me would also be the last manifestation of everything I love most.

 

What scares you the most?

Losing my passion.  Waking up one morning and thinking that nothing matters, that there’s no point in engaging with curiosity and wonder the people, things and purposes around me.  That would be death itself.

And snakes.  Snakes make me crazy.

 

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Check out the book on amazon here

“In the end I believe our faults define us more than our virtues.  Shakespeare’s greatest plays, the tragedies, revolved around their heroes’ flaws rather than their glories”

 

Matthew Cooney and Donal Mannion shared their time as boys in a rundown neighborhood, without fathers, without comfort, without a sense of tomorrow, then went their separate ways, one to chase the trappings of maturity, the other to the streets.  Their days shrouded in boredom, their nights filled with the thrill of the chase, each sought his place and his purpose.

 

Within their struggles are the challenges of escape, of outrunning the roll of the dice that placed them where they are, and, in the end, of defining what it means to be alive, to constantly strive for the things that are just out of reach.