May 2020 - How Many...?

[JasonUK]

Joe Abercrombie - The Blade Itself (6/10) Medieval fantasy in the style of Game of Thrones. Lacks the complexity of character and plot of GoT but is a decent action adventure.

Richard Laymon - Your Secret Admirer (7/10) Laymon takes a teen romance and imbues it with some genuine menace and suspense and a good twist ending.

Robert Bloch - American Gothic (5/10) Based on the true story of HH Holmes. More of a mystery than a horror with the revelation of the murders only coming at the end. Okay but not great.

Stephen King - If It Bleeds (4/10) Title story is an unnecessary rehash of The Outsider serving only to allow King to give some indulgent details about the tedious Holly Gibney. The other stories, while told in King's amiable style, are very lightweight. Disappointing collection.

[kresby]

Books read and recommended for May, 2020.

Hard cover -

1. Jane Goes North by Joe R. Lansdale from Subterranean. Nobody writes like Lansdale. Love this stuff.

2. Repairman Jack: Scar-lip Redux by F. Paul Wilson from Dynamite. Good graphic novel of great fiction.

3. If It Bleeds by Stephen King fromM Scribner. 4 stories - 1 really good, 1 pretty good and 2 boring ones.

4. Hap and Leonard: Blood and Lemonade by Joe R.Lansdale from SST. Lansdale is the real thing. These stories rock.

5. Mystery Road by Kevin Lucia from Cemetery Dance. Well-written, good ghost story.

6. The Best of Cemetery Dance II edited by Richard Chizmar from Cemetery Dance.

7. A Little Green Book of Grins & Gravity by Ramsey Campbell from Borderlands. Well, this one did nothing for me.

8. The Delicate Dependency by Michael Talbot from Centipede Press. This is one of my all-time favorite vampire novels and quite unique.




Paperback -

9. Coleridge by Tom Deady from Silver Shamrock. I will keep reading this stuff. Drags you in.

10. Growing Dark by Kristopher Triana from Blue Juice. God collection with a couple real good ones.

11. In the Scrape by James Newman and Mark Steensland from Silver Shamrock. Good coming of age novella. Sometimes kids are smarter than adults.




Favorites = #1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10 and 11.




Support Indie Publishers and Enjoy

[Martin]

Joe Abercrombie - The Blade Itself (6/10) Medieval fantasy in the style of Game of Thrones. Lacks the complexity of character and plot of GoT but is a decent action adventure.

Richard Laymon - Your Secret Admirer (7/10) Laymon takes a teen romance and imbues it with some genuine menace and suspense and a good twist ending.

Robert Bloch - American Gothic (5/10) Based on the true story of HH Holmes. More of a mystery than a horror with the revelation of the murders only coming at the end. Okay but not great.

Stephen King - If It Bleeds (4/10) Title story is an unnecessary rehash of The Outsider serving only to allow King to give some indulgent details about the tedious Holly Gibney. The other stories, while told in King's amiable style, are very lightweight. Disappointing collection.

I do not think I had heard of Your Secret Admirer before. May have to seek that one out, thanks. I did enjoy If It Bleeds more than you did.

[Martin]

Books read and recommended for May, 2020.

Hard cover -

1. Jane Goes North by Joe R. Lansdale from Subterranean. Nobody writes like Lansdale. Love this stuff.

2. Repairman Jack: Scar-lip Redux by F. Paul Wilson from Dynamite. Good graphic novel of great fiction.

3. If It Bleeds by Stephen King fromM Scribner. 4 stories - 1 really good, 1 pretty good and 2 boring ones.

4. Hap and Leonard: Blood and Lemonade by Joe R.Lansdale from SST. Lansdale is the real thing. These stories rock.

5. Mystery Road by Kevin Lucia from Cemetery Dance. Well-written, good ghost story.

6. The Best of Cemetery Dance II edited by Richard Chizmar from Cemetery Dance.

7. A Little Green Book of Grins & Gravity by Ramsey Campbell from Borderlands. Well, this one did nothing for me.

8. The Delicate Dependency by Michael Talbot from Centipede Press. This is one of my all-time favorite vampire novels and quite unique.




Paperback -

9. Coleridge by Tom Deady from Silver Shamrock. I will keep reading this stuff. Drags you in.

10. Growing Dark by Kristopher Triana from Blue Juice. God collection with a couple real good ones.

11. In the Scrape by James Newman and Mark Steensland from Silver Shamrock. Good coming of age novella. Sometimes kids are smarter than adults.




Favorites = #1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10 and 11.




Support Indie Publishers and Enjoy

I love Mystery Road and would like to read more from Mr. Lucia.

[Martin]

Trying to get back into daily reading. Starting with mostly novellas and audio books as my attention span is not yet to the point I need it to be.

13 Reads in May. I was working my way through all the Hap and Leonard stories available on Audible. Stopped several months ago because I wanted to pace myself. Decided to start back up in May and went on a bit of a binge. I have now worked through all Hap and Leonard available on Audible and must start seeking out print stories to get my fix!

Dead Aim (Hap and Leonard 8.6) by Joe R. Lansdale:
With Hap and Leonard I know what I am going to get and always enjoy it.
4 Stars

Cold Dead Hands by Jeff Strand:
First time I have read Jeff Strand but will not be the last. Somewhat predictable but very entertaining story.
5 Stars

Honky Tonk Samurai (Hap and Leonard 9) by Joe R. Lansdale:4v
4 Stars

Unearthed by Richard Chizmar, Ray Garton and Brian Keene:
This novella contains two stories written by Richard Chizmar long ago and updated by Mr. Garton and Mr. Keene. Enjoyable stories.
4 Stars

Rusty Puppy (Hap and Leonard 10) by Joe R. Lansdale:
4 Stars

Jackrabbit Smile (Hap and Leonard 11) by Joe R. Lansdale:
4 Stars

The Elephant of Surprise (Hap and Leonard 12) by Joe R. Lansdale:
5 Stars

Nothing O’Clock by Neil Gaiman:
Have never watched or read anything related to Doctor Who but I really enjoyed this. A little to Sci Fi for me but a good story.
4 Stars

Veil’s Visit (A taste of Hap and Leonard) by Joe R. Lansdale:
4 Stars

Four Killers by Peter Straub, Joe R. Lansdale, Brian Keene, Ray Garton:
Novella featuring four stories all appropriate to the title. Each story is unique and enjoyable.
4 Stars

The Human Touch by Mitch Albom:
An Audible serialized story set in the Covid-19 lockdown. If you enjoy Mitch Ablom’s stories you will like this one.
4 Stars

Bag of Bones by Stephen King:
Have not read this since it was first released. I remember it as being OK but not great. Listened to it on Audio read my Mr. King and my views remain the same. There are flashes of a great story but not enough to make it a classic. I also remember that this is an ode to Rebecca and at the time I first read I was not aware at how linked the stories are.
3 Stars

The History of Bourbon by Ken Albala:
This is a part of Audibles Great Courses series. It is a fascinating look at the history of Bourbon.
4 Stars

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[brlesh]

Finished 7 in May.

The Skinless Face was a pretty solid collection by Donald Tyson. Tyson's Lovecraftian stories are his strong suite and most of the 14 stories in this collection fall in that category. His attempts at stories outside the Lovecraft pastich are less successful, in my opinion. Favorite stories were the Skinless Face & The Organ of Chaos (one of the darkest stories I've ever read), both reprinted from the Black Wings anthology series. Fans of Lovecraft should definitely seek out Tyson's work. 4 / 5

La Belle Fleur Sauvage by Caitlin R. Kiernan is a post-apocalyptical story of a plague of alien parasites that infest the wombs of women of child bearing age, essentially placing the human race on the slow path to extinction (making it the perfect reading material when lockdown due to a pandemic!). Kiernan tells the story through a series of vignettes (none more than 5 or 6 pages long), offering numerous points of view on the species-ending plague. It takes a little while to see how all the vignettes relate, but once you get into the story they all fall into place. Excellent novella. 5 / 5

Into the Drowning Deep by Mira Grant is a pretty solid creature feature. It tells the story of a young marine biologist who joins a research crew headed to the Mariana's Trench to try to find out what happened to her sister, a member of an earlier crew that disappeared several years before. This was the first thing I've read by Grant, and I was fairly impressed. She handles the science deftly (and that's something you can't say about a lot of writers of horror fiction) and provides a plausible hypothesis for the creatures existence. This a fast paced story with a lot of action to it. One drawback is that some of the character interactions tended to be quite melodramatic. Don't know if this is due to Grant's YA background or if it is just her writing style. However, she doesn't dwell on the melodrama and usually moves quickly on to the next action sequence. Looking forward to the next book in the series. 4 / 5

I Am the Abyss was an anthology with the theme being of stories set in the afterlife. The nine novella length stories tended to be too surreal and over the top for my liking. The two bright spots were 'Faith' by John Little and the 'The Burning Wood' by Michael Marshall Smith, easily the best story in the anthology. The Jeffrey Thomas story, 'Acheron', set in his Hades world, was also pretty good. Unfortunately, the rest of the stories were pretty much forgettable. 2.5 / 5

The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova is a long & complex story that juggles three timelines (early 1930's, mid 1950's & mid 1970's) while addressing the question of whether Dracula, in the form of the Wallachian prince Vlad Tepes, still exists. The story is slow paced, though not necessarily boring (though it does help if the reader has at least some interest in European history). There are several big coincidences throughout the novel used to move the storyline along, though for the most part the author does address these coincidences (though there is a big one towards the end of the story that just gets completely glossed over). I found the ending to be too quick and anti-climatic to be truly satisfying for a story as long and complex as The Historian. Overall not a bad read, but I went into it expecting more from the story. 3.5 / 5

The Twisted Ones by T. Kingfisher started out interesting enough; a women in her mid-30's is asked by her elderly father to clean out her recently deceased grandmother's house in the woods in North Carolina. After spending a few days at the house (with her dog Bongo) she discovers that the quiet woods are not all they seem to be. OK, a great premise for a horror story, but about half way through I just found myself growing bored (& annoyed) with the lead characters internal dialogue and eventually I just lost interest in the story. I put it aside with about 100 pages to go. DNF

The Autopsy & Other Tales was a hefty collection of stories by Michael Shea published by Centipede Press. Most of the stories I would categorize as horror tinged with science fiction, though there a few fantasy stories and several aimed at a mostly comedic effect. My favorites were 'Fat Face' (classic Lovecraftian), 'Salome' (horror story of a crossed love avenged) and the classic 'The Autopsy' (IMO one of the best examples of SF/Horror ever written). 4 / 5

B

[Sock Monkey]

Only two for me in May, though one was rather long. Like Martin, I'm trying to get back into daily reading though my success has been hit-or-miss. I am reading more than I have in the last few years, which I am very happy about. I don't know about you guys, but reading greatly reduces my stress level.

The Miniaturist by Jay Bonasinga: This was my first read from Mr. Bonasinga and I did enjoy his writing style. This was a brief read, which was also the book's downfall. The story is set in world where magic is used for all types of crimes and is policed by special agents. While I thoroughly enjoyed the setting and felt like there was so much potential, due to the length of the book, it felt like Bonasinga was world-building all the way until the story's climax which made certain events come off as a deus ex machina versus a well-thought out set up. Hard to recommend, but I will be checking out more of Mr. Bonasinga's work in the future. (7/10)

The Passage by Justin Cronin: This was a reread for me. I had initially read it--and loved it--a few years back, but never got around to the next two books in the trilogy. I'm horrible about finishing series fiction in general and really want to rectify that this year, so I decided to start from the beginning with the trilogy. As I did the first time, I really liked this book. Cronin is obviously a talented writer and the reader can feel his literary influences throughout the work. The book is dense with characters, but each one has a history and the world building is fantastic. I'm looking forward to the second book in the series. (8/10)

[James Newman]

Books read and recommended for May, 2020.

11. In the Scrape by James Newman and Mark Steensland from Silver Shamrock. Good coming of age novella. Sometimes kids are smarter than adults.


Favorites = #1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10 and 11.

Thanks, old buddy. Glad you dug it.