This is the new Bockoven, author of Fantasticland. It seems similar to Fantastic etc in that the book is a compilation of interviews of survivors of an interactive theater performance turned bloody and fatal. Color me intrigued. There are still certain portions of Fantasticland that I still remember very vividly. Picked this one up at my local library, so price was right 📚📚

IMHO, Alex North's novels are underrated clever atypical thrillers. I have read, & loved, every single release since The Whisper Man. His latest opens at a rest stop where the Pied Piper killer is discovered shortly after stopping. Decades later, one of the people at the rest stop is called back home because of his father's death; which ends up tying to the main case. This is definitely worth reading, but if you haven't read AN it's not the (Cont)

Several weeks ago I reviewed the Day side of this Saga Double, edited by Datlow. I just finished the Night side & while some of the stories from the other side are favorites of the year, I would say that the Night is a consistently stronger selection. I loved every single story featured-with the exception of the Cardigan which left me indifferent & the frankly silly one by Malerman. Otherwise -SGJ, CM Chapman & Percy really nailed it.

This was the post @Amiable...I saw this before the Reiner posts he did & everything afterwards. I feel like under the current administration it's like dog years. One year equals seven years.

You know what they say about men who feel the need to rename culture centers after the themselves? 🙃

“... After that, she would not think of him leaving, for on the weekend was a harvest festival. And after the festival, it was someone's birthday, and one of the greenhouses was done up as a disco with colored lights, and cats of all description wore festive hats ..“

TWO months after the assassination of Kirk, and the ensuing fallout where *literally* anyone who even had the audacity to post a mild criticism of Kirk with his problematic views could automatically lose their livelihoods... We have the leader of the “free world“ wildly mocking Reiner and his wife after their brutal homicides..... This is AMERICA

*Currently 130; pages into the tagged, which I'm very much enjoying. Thrawn may very well be my favorite SW villain of all-time.
*Two stories into a crime anthology: A Darker Shade of Sweden.
* Halfway through the novella ebook of David Sodergren's “Hard Luck Jenny,“ which reads like an Edgar Wright movie with a screenplay by Sodergren.
#weekendreads
@rachelsbrittain

I don't know *Why* in the world I thought it would be a good idea to try 2 of the Blazing Knockout (aka spiciest wings you can order from Buffalo WW) from my brother's meal, NOR why he encouraged me in the spicy dark side 🥵🌶️🔥.... but chalk this up to top 5 interesting experience of the year!

I was very happy to receive this in the mail. I was a bit bummed out to not find a page-a-day bibliophile calendar for last year & Workman publishing has produced several great such calendars in the past. I noticed that they also produced wall calendars, if that's more your speed.

Bolaño's 2666, initially published 21 years ago (I remember!) & totalling a bit over 1k pages has always been one of the longest that I've read, but WT Vollmann just said, “Hold my beer.“ The tagged 4 volume set, due to be published in March 2026 will clock in at 4x the length of the Bolaño. ☠️

It's early days for me with this one, but I'm riveted!

My #tuesdaytunes selections are my top 5 songs, according to Spotify wrapped:
*Mazzy Star: Take Everything
https://open.spotify.com/track/4f8igDpWLaLB8FyhitEdqy?si=e4d3daf6318b456d
*Waxahatchee: I Think I Love You
https://open.spotify.com/track/066w5Tk5Bcb3AQImUsktKw?si=86f9cc1e18d14449
*Cypress Hill: Insane In the Brain
https://open.spotify.com/track/1oTHteQbmJw15rPxPVXUTv?si=9316e4b05b68459b
*Phoebe Bridgers: Funeral
(CONT)

This recent NYRB Classic is not the version I read. The one I read was included in a box set I picked up at hpb which includes 5 other Woolf books. The only other one in the set I've read is Orlando. Due to recovering from a cold I honestly don't have the energy that Woolf's masterpiece deserves. Stream of consciousness doesn't always work for me, it is either laborious or very engaging depending on how it is structured. MD follows several (CONT)

The tagged book opens with the dramatic destruction of the major Italian cities on 9-11 2077 from a meteorite. This catastrophic event, & scientific advancement, leads to a watch organization for future events. Eventually an object of interest, traveling at unusually high speed, is flagged & spaceship Endeavor is sent to intercept & investigate. What they find is a massive ship that is described as more of a world & by the end (CONT)

“The columns were not transparent from every angle or under all illuminations. As one walked around them, objects would suddenly flash into view, apparently embedded in their depths like flies in amber, & would then disappear again. There were dozens of them, all different. They looked absolutely real & solid, yet many seemed to occupy the identical volume of space.“

👆 has seriously been the energy of my books lately. My current read *might* be a bit over a 4 star, otherwise, the last 4 have been 5 stars:
*Robert Harris: Munich
*Nat Cassidy: When the Wolf Comes Home
*Lucy Rose: Lamb
“Samantha Downing: Too Old for This
I honestly don't recall the last time I had a streak of 5 star reads. Feel truly blessed 💙📚💙📚

Just curious... what reading challenges are y'all doing next year,? I'm still working on the 50 states, 50 horror books (50 percent complete); the past couple of years I have been slightly intrigued by the 52 book club challenge and I've knocked off a few new favorites I might not have otherwise... but I'm thinking '26 will be challenge/prompt free.As a mood reader, it's just so hard to commit!

Clarke's 2001 is one of my favorite SF books of all time. I think it's even better than the movie, which is saying a lot bc I love Kubrick. This is my second Clarke read & a word that keeps popping up is perihelion: the point of a planet, asteroid, or comet at which it is closest to the sun
#weirdwordswednesday @cbee
Side note: Villeneuve hinted at an adaptation, but typing the definition, I'm reminded of the excellent D. Boyle movie “Sunshine“

There was a time when Kristin Hersh, of Throwing Muses fame, was in heavy rotation for me. Lately I have been reminded of her genius:
Me & My Charms:
https://open.spotify.com/track/5eSgNBa53yJrzat1y1SiYZ?si=224b8d56a6f943f7
Another favorite from around the same period (who I had the extremely good fortune to see perform)
Morphine: Cure For Pain
https://open.spotify.com/track/3hO9gaVixKDoYDrlTBrEWf?si=c2428891df934069
#tuesdaytunes
@tiedyedude

I finished this one earlier today & while I don't really have the mental energy for the review it deserves, I loved it. Everything in the book was seamlessly working on both literal & metaphorical levels. This will undoubtedly be on my best of the year list. The audio is *chef's kiss* I just noticed that this is a '25 release. I'm hoping it gets the attention it deserves!

*Only 70 pages left in the excellent When the Wolf Comes Home by Nat Cassidy
*Alex North's The Man Made of Smoke
*Finish the delicious,(pun intended) Lamb by Lucy Rose: audio/print combo. Audio narrator is stellar.
#weekendreads
@rachelsbrittain

Me... waiting for the Aardvark December selections 🙃📚

I've read 200 pages of this werewolf novel today and absolutely love it, but it is also a very tricky book to discuss without wading into spoiler territory.

100% agree with this Lit HUb article:
https://lithub.com/the-dentist-should-let-you-read-instead-of-watch-tv/

December #botm selections are live. Their picks the past few years have been rather hit & miss, but it does seem like in recent months they have slightly improved their choices. Maybe feeling the pressure from Aardvark? Anywhoo, I was delighted to see a Demeester as one of the choices. I have read several of her stories & loved them.

I was off from work all of last week & was able to read A LOT. Out of the 13 books finished during my PTO, these are my favorites (in no order):
*A. Cessre- Influencer
*J. Ketchum - Offspring
*R. Brautigan - In Watermelon Sugar
*W. Mosley - Long Fall

I just finished the Day side of this anthology & wanted to note my favorites before I move onto Night. Of the 9 stories featured in Day, there weren't any that I strongly disliked but I definitely had my favorites: Brian Evenson, Rachel Harrison, Robert Sherman & Sophie White all had great works of daylight horror.

This was a random library find, I did not realize that it was the second book in a trilogy. I was intrigued by the book description on the back (along with it being published by Hardcase Crime), throw in the Tarantino blurb calling Faust, “a Veronica in a world full of Betties“. Sold! Angel is living incognito in Arizona when her past catches up to her & she hits the road with two professional fighters: one is a a cautionary tale of the (CONT)

Apparently I have no sense of time, because I just googled how many days are left in the year & 😭 ☠️🤯
My question, just out of curiosity, is are there any specific books that you definitely want to finish before the end of the year...or is it just mood reading? I had a couple big doorstoppers planned for 2025, but I'm going to have to choose one of them as I'm such a mood reader.

What a strange surreal novella shadowed by death & suicide (made more ominous reading about brautigan online). I read this as an audio book, and Bronson Pinchot rivals Ed Harris narration of Don Winslow for best actor audio book narrator I've experienced this year. In Brautigan's novella, the unnamed narrator speaks of the strange history & customs of their land: living in a factory called ideath, the history of the speaking tigers that (CONT)

One of my current audio books, narrated by Bronson Pinchot @ 40% and this soft surrealism novella feels like a bit of an acid trip to explain....🙃

One of my reading quirks is that if I read a terrible book, I must immediately follow up with a better book on the same sub-genre. Last night I finished Serafini's “Feeders“, a novel filled with unlikeable characters, heavy reliance on slang & in need of editing. I'll admit that the ending was a bit bonkers, but 400 pages of Main Character Energy from all of the characters gets tiring. It ended up as one of my lowest rated books this (CONT)

After watching some new movies over the past month I have rearranged my top movies of the year, and my top 5* (7) definitely looks different. As of today these are my rankings for movies released in this unholy year (2025):
*Sinners
*Frankenstein
*Weapons
*Eddington
*The Monkey
*Long Walk
*Companion

Today I read the vast majority of this 400 page novel, about young social media influencers, that get sucked into the disturbing app:MonoLife. One aspect that really bugs me is the use of free indirect speech: that is third person POV while allowing the writer liberties of first person. This has been a great device for many years, but Serafini seems to want to have it with all angles: have the MC be a psycho and sympathetic, but pretty much (Cont)

Twins Jack (Jacqueline) & Jill (Jillian) find themselves in a strange land in book 2 of McGuire's Wayward Children Series, read by the author. One decides to stay in a mansion with the master, while the other leaves to learn science. There is a reveal approximately halfway through the novella which I won't spoil, but I feel added an additional sinister layer to what to that point had felt like a fairy tale. I will say that this is a novella (Cont)

I have been using Goodreads for a decade and have never been as gobsmacked by the annual reader choices as this year. No graphic novel/manga category, allowing 3 McFadden nominations in the Mystery/Thriller category..I'm not naive, I know that the GR awards have always been based on reader sales, but this year honestly feels like a total joke. Also, very bizarre as there are tons of sales of manga...why remove this category?!

With as much as I've posted about SK, it's pretty obvious that I'm definitely a Constant Reader, but some of the discourse is just ridiculous. Two of my top 6 favorite movies of the year have been King adaptations. I have yet to watch the new HBO series, one thing I loved when I read the Dark Tower years ago was seeing the connections but recently it's gotten a bit out of hand (see image). Pennywise in the Running Man? Really?! Clickbait!

This is not the cover of the copy of the book I read, but I'm using it as Magritte is a favorite. The tagged book, one of Simenon's Romans Durs, tells of a murdered woman discovered a few blocks away from the title character. As the police interview witnesses, the concierge of the building where Hire lives states she “thinks that maybe“ she let Hire inside the building late the night of the murder. A towel with a few blood spots is found (CONT)

*Setting out of office notifications on outlook (So satisfying)
*The support received on here with what my brother recently experienced, truly means so much 💙
*Finding that there's an audio book of the tagged read by Bronson Pinchot
*Books
*Hats for days when I have to wake ungodly early that read: Born to read books, forced to read emails
@debinhawaii #5joysfriday

I feel serious deja vu looking at this cover.... first book that springs to mind is the truly excellent Ghost Variations by Brockmeier, but I feel that there's others

As someone who greatly respects Robbie, including her role in the recent adaptation of Emma, & who loved Elordi as the creature in Del Toro's Frankenstein, my two word response to the Wuthering Heights trailer?: No, thanks. Ew. (Okay, that was 3, but this is my favorite Bronte book & as many others have pointed out, it is not a love story)

Late posting, but I love this question: the long friendship between Sam Mesur and Sadie Green. Also can't forget their loyal friend Marx. Also adding: Frodo Baggins and Samwise (I love the theory of Samwise being the true hero of LoTr). Sherlock & Watson, the Losers Club in IT, several great friendships in French's DMS series & finally: Jon Snow & Samwell from ASOIAF.
@bookmarktavern

It's been a few years since I read the first Wayward Children book, I noticed that volume 2 was available via Libby and thought it would be perfect for #novellanovember Narrated by McGuire, who is a fantastic audio narrator, I'm so glad I checked this out. Audio book plans from now through the end of next week: finish the McGuire, the Lucy Rose and listen to the Running Man. On top of regular physical books.

A man finds himself in Hell's waiting room after dying in a car accident. Baffled, as he was convinced that he would be going to a heavenly afterlife due to his Mormon beliefs, he discovers that there is one true religion it just doesn't happen to be Mormonism (the reveal of the religion made me chuckle). He is then dispatched to a Hell that seems especially suited for him as someone who loved reading while alive. Based on Borges' story (CONT)

Two more days and my full week of PTO will be brought to life ⚡🔌 Books, movies, restaurants I haven't visited in a hot minute, books, books, late nights doing whatever I want.. it's going to be glorious.... I'll be like Frankenstein's creature enjoying a smoke 🚬
#weirdwords #PTO
@cbee

Incoming rant: questioning humanity when brother tells me that a customer says something along the lines of, “No wonder there was a shooting, when you can't fill a prescription on time“ JFC. Thankfully this particular beam of sunshine was banned. *Note, there's a 24 hour location literally 15 minutes away.It costs *so* little to be decent to one another, yet seems to be the biggest struggle for some.

I had previously read So Late In the Day, Keegan's story collection & was honestly a bit underwhelmed. Small Things etc was the exact opposite experience. To say I loved it is an understatement. One of the greatest novellas I've ever read. I do have to say that the discourse on it makes it seem like a seasonal book & while the experience is probably enhanced by reading it during the fall/,winter, the underlying message of religious (CONT)

Current audio book. Still have 5 plus hours, but it's pretty intriguing so far.

#10beforetheend update:
I read, & very much enjoyed Botchan. Considered a classic in Japan, it made me laugh & although it is not a point for point comparison to Catcher in the Rye, it had not a phoney vibes.
Will definitely be listening to The Running Man on audio this week.
Planning to slot the Highsmith in during murder Holidays.
Definitely want to read the Clark story collection (loved Penance) & ideally I will finish the Indian Lake (Cont)