Read 2020 - 46 - Smoke Gets in Your Eyes by Caitlin Doughty

It is a truth universally acknowledged that Caitlin Doughty aka Ask a Mortician is brilliant. The Bestwick bought me Smoke Gets in Your Eyes last Christmas, alongside another of her books (name currently escapes me). I've been desperate to read it, but am strictly following my number generator guidelines so that books don't end up on the shelf for years. Although, some have been and despite my best efforts (not really trying all that hard), they continue to do so.

Smoke Gets in Your Eyes, Doughty's first book, details her early years in the Mortuary business, from when she joined a crematorium through to mortuary school. Interspersed are comments on death cultures across the world. I highly recommend this book.

If you haven't caught the Ask a Mortician blogs on You Tube, you should. They are full of wonderful death facts, historical and current.

Read 2020 - 29 - Ten Sorry Tales by Mick Jackson

Someone with less experience might have thought her quite calm,

but Finn could see all sorts of tempers and tantrums

niggling away at her, just under the skin.

Oh, what a delight Ten Sorry Tales by Mick Jackson is. Quirky and heartbreaking, with illustrations by David Roberts that are reminiscent of Edward Gorey. This is not a book you give away*. This is a book you guard with your life.

*I've lent it to a colleague (who, coincidentally, has lent me a book that is my current read). She assures me she will guard it with her life.

This gorgeous book was bought for our wedding by one of the Bestwick's dearest friends (who also played witness and photographer on the day), Vicky Morris. Who is also a brilliant poet and all round awesome person.

Read 2020 - 16 - The Cabin at the End of the World by Paul Tremblay

I'd heard Paul Tremblay was good.

I'd heard Paul Tremblay was very good.

Those people did not lie. The Cabin at the End of the World is gripping and heart-wrenching, real edge-of-the-seat stuff.

Maybe under different circumstances the four strangers might've sounded like a strong breeze rustling through the forest.

Little Wen lives with her adopted parents, Eric and Andrew. They are holidaying in a lonely, but beautiful place. A perfect, loving family. Wen is playing in the field outside the cabin when four strangers appear. They're carrying home-made weapons, long and lethal (and in my head rusty). As this is an apocalyptic tale, I thought perhaps they were the four horsemen/women of the apocalypse, and maybe they are, then again, maybe they're not.

This is a tale of sacrifice, whether chosen or not.

*

 

This book hadn't lingered on the to-read-shelf for too long. The Bestwick picked them up just after Edge-Lit in 2018 (I know that sounds a long time ago), where Paul Tremblay was a guest of honour. It only hit my shelf though at the end of 2019. That's my excuse. Is that an excuse?

 

I'm so far behind the times, I still wear flares.

Read 2020 - 8 - The Matrix by Jonathan Aycliffe

Back in the 1990s (last century - mega old), I loved Jonathan Aycliffe's fiction. Mum loved his stories too. I think I read this book back then, but my mind is a sieve and things are always getting lost.

I don't normally re-read books (at least not in adulthood), but this was signed to me by the man himself.  One of the highlights of the World Fantasy Convention 2013, in Brighton, was getting to meet Jonathan Aycliffe, a lovely man who almost seemed to have stepped from another world. WFC wasn't my favourite con - too big and I felt lost half the time - but I'm glad I went, if only to meet Mr Aycliffe. It's shameful to say this book has been on my to-read-shelf since then, and underwent two house moves.

This one won't be going to the charity shop.

A side note: In 1998 one of my short stories appeared alongside a Jonathan Aycliffe story in the anthology Oktobyr '98 edited by my now-husband.

Read 2020 - 7 - We All Hear Stories in the Dark #25

Onto my seventh read of 2020.

In April, PS Publishing will be publishing Rob Shearman's 101 stories book We All Hear Stories in the Dark. For last year's Fantasycon, PS produced mini-chapbooks for five of the stories - beautiful wee editions, which I thought I'd missed out on. I wasn't at Fantasycon - woe is my tale. However, PS had some left over (how is this even possible?) and so I was lucky enough to pick up a set just after the convention. When random number generator (going to have to give him a name)... When Dom picked one of the chapbooks as my next read, I was delighted.

Delighted.

And it was delightful.

#25 - Petty Vengeance

Beautifully illustrated, this tale of a writing teacher and a critic, of revenge, grew gradually more and more disturbing, as is often the way with Rob's fiction. Highly recommended.

A delightful five stars.

*

You may note that number six is missing. Can't she count? I hear you declare. Well, not always, but in this instance it's because I only read half of the book. I suspect there will be several unfinished books this year - there often are.

Book 3 of 2020 - The London Satyr

It was going to be a tough job following The Essex Serpent but The London Satyr by Robert Edric held its own. I don't know how long this book sat on my to-read-shelf because it was deposited there by the Bestwick. 

Again, we visit 1890s London with fictional and real-life characters (Henry Irving, Ellen Terry and Bram Stoker), set in theatre-land and in a seedy underworld of pornographic photography, with a side-trip into spiritualism. An interesting look at 19th century London. Highly recommend.

 

*

I'm enjoying allowing a random number generator to pick my books for me. It's also encouraging me to read faster than usual. 

Book 2 of 2020 - The Essex Serpent

This book is delightful and I'm glad it only languished on my to-read-shelf for just a couple of months. A beautifully-written story of a suspected monster, 1890s London and Essex, folklore, fear, illness and love both forbidden and other.

Here are some of Sarah Perry's words:

...puts on her black dress, and sits in the window looking like an artist's idea of grief.

"She's the kind of woman who's misunderstood. They think because she's so pretty and wears clothes so well, and because she gossips and chatters, that she's nothing but a ballerina in a jewellery box turning round and round..."

The Motorcycle Man - or the post where Cate attempts a review

Fourtold is a collection of four novellas, which refuse to be pigeon-holed into any one genre, scraped from the weird mind of Michael Stone.

SAN FERRY ANN is, in my opinion, the most haunting of the four stories. Set during the great influenza pandemic that swept Europe in 1918, Spencer and Mackenzie are reluctant to return to their pre-war lives in England and Australia. There are flashes of magic and darkness (especially when we journey back to the trenches of WW1) as our heroes stop to help a sick girl and she in turn helps them.

THE RECONSTRUCTION OF KASPER CLARK is my favourite story. A surreal tale about a man who goes to a special clinic to have his mouth removed from his forehead and placed back on his chin. A funny, dark tale that proves that no matter how odd the method of reconstruction (no plastics are involved) it can become very, very addictve - just ask Jigsaw.

THE TERRACOTTA WARRIOR is a good old-fashioned monster story set in the early 20th century. Solomon Barley, an insurance assessor, arrives on his motorbike at the ancestral home of Charles Morris who has just taken delivery of a terracotta statue that he has had shipped from China. Both men soon discover that something unnatural hides within the statue and it is looking for a fight. Creepy and unsettling, this tale will make you look twice at the Emperor's famous terracotta army. In fact, I'm sure I can hear their boots marching even as I type this. (*reviewer shudders*)

LEMON MAN is both the most bizarre and the most normal story in the collection. It is a story in two parts. We have the trials of the narcoleptic Russell who is dealing with sleep paralysis and the break up of his marriage, nestling alongside Heaven and its angels. I don't know what else to say other than read it.

With Fourtold, Michael Stone proves a master and diverse storyteller who I get the feeling has a love of classic motorcycles.