Books Read 2025

[hitbyambulance]

Banana Yoshimoto - Kitchen : i really enjoy her writing - it's not for everyone, but her minimal style and turn of phrases (in translation) is just really comforting to read*. the main novella is from 1988 and the short story is from 1986 - these were her first two published pieces and it is kind of now a nostalgic look at a slice of then-contemporary 1980s Japan. it's fascinating to see the sympathetic-but-weirdly-muddled depiction of one of the novella's main characters who is transsexual? transgender? (it's not made exactly clear, not sure if the author herself knew) from a Japanese woman's 1980's POV.


* in a way, it's also the same reason i really enjoy Kazuo Ishiguro's writing - although he is an author on a whole 'nother level - and even from Haruki Murakami (in translation), to an extent. also, tho Yoshimoto hits some heavy topics, Ishiguro tends towards the deeply disturbing

Jim Carroll - The Basketball Diaries : it was recommended on some Goodreads review of Jack London's _John Barleycorn: Alcoholic Memoirs_ to read this book right after as a back-to-back 'the kids aren't alright' set. well, i just happened to have this one on my shelf, so i did - i was not prepared at all for how outré this was going to be. never knew the guy was a heroin addict, 'hustler' and knife-point robber at age 14, and considering also the exploits from his diaries at the time (the mid 1960s) are only the ones he actually decided to publish and share... raw and brutal. (surprised he lived as long as he did, but he did succumb eventually to Hep C.)

[Jaymann]

Better than succumbing to hepcat.

[YellowKing]

The Girl Next Door - Jack Ketchum

I have been wanting to dip into the waters of "extreme horror" fiction for some time, but didn't know where to begin. So I stumbled across a Reddit post with the "Extreme Horror Starter Pack" list of around 25 novels that were suggested reading for first-timers in the genre. It's not necessarily that I am enthusiastic about the goriest/sickest most depraved horror-lit out there, but as a fan of all things horror, and this being a sub-genre I haven't really explored much, I wanted to at least give it a try. I was also REALLY impressed with "Tender is the Flesh" (see my review earlier in the thread), and that one could in some ways be considered extreme.

Anyway, this Jack Ketchum novel was listed as one of the earlier examples or foundational extreme horror, so I chose it first. And if this is one of the tamer examples of extreme horror lit, it may very well cut my journey down this road short. It's not overly graphic, but it is a fictional re-telling of a horrific torture case that occurred in the 1960s. Knowing it was based on true events really amps up the horror, as well as the fact this involved minors.

About halfway through I was thinking it seemed really familiar, then realized I had watched the film adaptation of it a couple of years ago. It's an extremely faithful adaptation of the book, and yes, it's really disturbing. However, I do think it's an important story in that it exposes that the 1950s (in which this story takes place) was not necessarily the innocent wonderland it's portrayed as in hindsight. Really dark stuff still went on, and it shines a light on that. As well as how easily the innocent can be manipulated into performing unspeakable acts.

[hitbyambulance]

Various - Native American Songs and Poems: An Anthology (Dover Thrift Editions) -

1) at 55 pages of actual content (and usually one poem per page), how can this be considered an 'anthology'?

2) the back cover says "In this carefully chosen collection, encompassing both traditional songs and contemporary Native American poetry" but the editorial introductory note literally says "I have adapted the traditional 'song-poems' from the originals ... They were chosen almost arbitrarily" - uh... what??

well, that's Dover Thrift Editions for ya (this was borrowed from a Little Free Library, at least)

[ImLawBoy]

Finished The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendrix. I grabbed this from the e-library while browsing the Libby app. It reads to me like an old school '80s horror book (complimentary) with modern sensibilities. Set mostly in an upper middle class town in South Carolina in the 1990s, the titular book club consists of five housewives, and they read and discuss mostly true crime books. A mysterious stranger moves into town and quickly ingratiates himself with the families, despite his strange condition that makes it painful for him to be out in sunlight. Only the mother-in-law of primary protagonist Patricia has issues with him, and she's in late stage dementia so everyone brushes it off. They're able to simply ignore the children who go missing from a nearby poor, Black town as they're barely mentioned in the news. Patricia, however, starts to have some serious concerns.

The horror elements of the book are, as I said, old school. I gorged on cheap horror books while I worked at the public library in high school, so this is comfort reading for me. Grady Hendrix, however, uses the story to talk about gender roles, class issues, and racism in a subtly effective way. Mrs. Greene, the Black nurse from the poor part of town, isn't just a token, a stereotype, or a magical figure. She's a well-rounded character who holds her own with the ladies in the book club. With that depth on top of some great tension and an appropriate amount of gore, this was a really good read.

I have been wanting to dip into the waters of "extreme horror" fiction for some time, but didn't know where to begin.

I've been reading about that a bit, but I'm not sure I want to go there at this point. If you read any more from the genre, though, I'll be paying attention!

[ImLawBoy]

Finished House of Bone and Rain by Gabino Iglesias. Last year I read The Devil Takes You Home by Iglesias, and I thought it was great. I described it as a narco-horror-noir, as it melded elements from those genres. It won a Bram Stoker award for novels. It could get challenging at times with passages in Spanish without translation, but it was worth the read. This new novel from Iglesias is a self-described "barrio noir". It's set in Puerto Rico before, during, and immediately after Hurricane Maria and follows a group of 5 friends who are just out of high school and trying to figure out their lives. The mother of one character is a small time dealer who works the door at a nightclub, and she is gunned down one night. The boys vow revenge, but that involves taking on the drug kingpin of Puerto Rico and his minions. Hurricane Maria's destruction provides cover for them to put plans into action.

This one leans more heavily into the horror element of things, including referencing Lovecraftian mythos. I thought it lost its way a little bit with that toward the end, but the ride was still tense and exciting. There is still a decent amount of Spanish dialog, but this time Iglesias usually provides a translation with it. Lots of bro bonding, dark gods, and gunfire - hard to go wrong!

[hitbyambulance]

John Steinbeck - The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights : Steinbeck intended this to be be his ultimate (and possibly final) project - a complete 'American English translation' of Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur. according to the hundred pages of letters appended to the end of this unfinished and posthumously published work, he started this in high spirits, read literally hundreds of books and visited England several times (and Florence, Italy once to view old manuscripts) and wrote a first part - then became disillusioned with his work on it and abandoned the whole project. what sections _are_ completed definitely do not hold together - the first four or five portions are essentially exactly what Steinbeck's initial aim was, with a ton of editing (repetition removed, dropped plot points removed or picked up, etc). remove the middle English and it's not exactly compelling reading, imo - another person in my book group who is a massive Steinbeck fan couldn't get into this part at all. *however*, with the final two chapters ("Gawain, Ewain, and Marhalt" and "The Noble Tale of Sir Lancelot of the Lake") the tales are fleshed out considerably. Steinbeck puts his writing talent to work here to fill out areas of the original text, and what we now have are very entertaining stories utilizing Malory's plot bones. it's really too bad we couldn't've gotten more of Malory's work 'enhanced' like this - Steinbeck clearly had the talent to do so.

[hitbyambulance]

James Gleick - A History of Time Travel : i feel if one is already generally conversant in physics and sci-fi and experimental/postmodern literature and film, there isn't a need to read this. i didn't get a whole lot out of it other than the name-dropping of some of my favorite authors... way too rambling and surface-level at times.