Blog Archives
Review: Mr. Monster
Mr. Monster by Dan Wells
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Dan Wells’ gift is that he can make the reader like a sociopath. He captures the skill of creating an anti-hero, and makes it firmly his own. I cannot wait until the third installment of the John Cleaver series. I won a pre-release copy of Mr. Monster from the publisher and Goodreads, and was thrilled when I learned I won, thrilled while waiting for the book to arrive, thrilled while anticipating its read…and now thrilled to have read it. What a rush, what a ride.
Review: Nightmare House (Harrow House Series #1)
Nightmare House by Douglas Clegg
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
I know Doug, and I had already read this book. But re-reading it by listening to the audio version, I spooked myself to the point that I turned on the dome light in my car and checked to make certain no one was hiding in the back seat. 
Comfort in words
I was injured at work, and now am home, fidgety and helpless, unable to do anything except stare at the television (tv without knitting! o, the humanity) or read. Using my good left arm, I’m propping up books and reading, reading, reading. Currently on deck:
- via audio (which I listen to at night–my usual habit is to listen to a book during my commute, but since I can’t even drive right now…) The Murder of King Tut
- Mary, Called Magdalene
- Wicked Plants
- The Mammoth Book of Haunted House Stories
Mary, Called Magdalene has made me realize how much I do not know about the history and vocabulary of religion. In my one-handed peckings online, I’ve found two amazing words of such:
Acheiropoietos: A name of the image of the Lord in the Basilica of St. John Lateran in Rome, which is said to have been initiated by St. Luke, and completed by angels.
Acheiropoeta: The same legend attached to a picture.
Pneumatology:
n.
1. The doctrine or study of spiritual beings and phenomena, especially the belief in spirits intervening between humans and God.
2. The Christian doctrine of the Holy Ghost.
I cannot travel right now to beautiful places, to monuments and libraries of the world, to see for myself. I can’t even dress myself! But my books, ah, my books…
today let the bells ring out
For some, today is Easter. For others, it’s a new spring day. Either day, there is hopefully a freshness to the air, and the sense that
All will be well, and all will be well, and all manner of things will be well.
–St. Julian of Norwich1
In that vein, I share with you some unusually uplifting, hopeful writing from Poe2–his poem The Bells. It’s meant to be read aloud; one can literally hear the bells’ cadence in the speaker’s voice.
Hear the sledges with the bells,
Silver bells!
What a world of merriment their melody foretells!
How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle,
In the icy air of night!
While the stars, that oversprinkle
All the heavens, seem to twinkle
With a crystalline delight;
Keeping time, time, time,
In a sort of Runic rhyme,
To the tintinnabulation3 that so musically wells
From the bells, bells, bells, bells,
Bells, bells, bells–
From the jingling and the tinkling of the bells.
Read the rest of this entry
Dear Johnny, Momma misses you.
or, He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Book Club Selection.
Between 1982 and 1989, Pelafina H. Lièvre sent her son, Johnny Truant, a series of letters from The Three Attic Whalestoe Institute, a psychiatric facility in Ohio where she spent the final years of her life…Originally contained within the monumental House of Leaves, this collection stands alone as a stunning portrait of mother and child. It is presented here along with a foreword by Walden D. Wyhrta and eleven previously unavailable letters…
The Whalestoe Letters * Mark Z. Danielewski
I thought the letters were the eeriest part of the entire novel. Enmeshment comes to mind. I’m intrigued to read the “new” letters.
Trivia: I know it’s a hefty novel…but I noticed on the Powell’s description of the paperback (library-binding size, not trade paperback size) that the pb version of House of Leaves weighs 2.26 lbs. The hardcover? 2.65 lbs. By comparison, the benchmark of heaviness, War and Peace, weighs in at 2.16 lbs (library-binding paperback), 1.31 lbs (trade paperback) and 2.77 lbs (hardcover). Only War and Peace in hardcover is heftier than House of Leaves.
Of course, there’s Stephen King hardcovers (The Stand: The No Really, This Time It’s All There Version = 3.71 lbs)…with which I learned a valuable lesson. Packing all of your Stephen King novels in the same boxes might feel so nice and tidy, but the box will become an immovable object.
Now that’s what they call a tangent.
top-selling horror novels on powells.com for today
Interesting snapshot. Five out of the ten are Dark Tower novels, or are Dark Tower-related. My mind is officially boggled.
1. The Stupidest Angel: A Heartwarming Tale of Christmas Terror * Christopher Moore
2. The Road to the Dark Tower: Exploring Stephen King’s Magnum Opus * Bev Vincent
3. Foucault’s Pendulum * Umberto Eco
4. The Dark Tower IV: Wizard and Glass * Stephen King
5. Angels & Demons * Dan Brown
6. The Dark Tower VI: Song of Susannah * Stephen King
7. House of Leaves * Mark Z. Danielewski
8. The Wasp Factory * Iain M. Banks
9. The Dark Tower V: Wolves of the Calla * Stephen King (hardcover)
10. The Dark Tower V: Wolves of the Calla * Stephen King (paperback)
source: Powell’s: Horror
