Last year, my husband read "The Infinite Jest" and he has been a little bit obsessed with David Foster Wallace since then: we had a little road trip pLast year, my husband read "The Infinite Jest" and he has been a little bit obsessed with David Foster Wallace since then: we had a little road trip planned to visit his family and we spent a significant amount of that drive listening to DFW’s surprisingly warm and soft voice as he read some of his short stories and essays. This audiobook also has a few interviews he gave to various platforms, as well as his famous Kenyon College commencement speech.
I haven’t read any of his work, though I am about to correct that, because I found myself enjoying this collection a lot more than I anticipated – even if I can’t really figure out why some of these pieces were selected for it, as they are kind of all over the place. Due to the fuzziness that I associate with listening to audiobooks on the road, I would be hard-pressed to give very specific examples of what drew me in, but I found the intricacies of his thoughts, his dedication to making the reader feel the setting he had drawn and the tragic yet hilarious humanity of his characters really fascinating.
The very insightful and erudite way he explores the topics of the various short pieces of this collection were really fascinating, and while I am well-aware that those words were strung together 30 years ago (in some cases), there was a freshness to them that really engaged me. A lot of the work explored here was really dark, often getting squarely into bleakness, and I know enough about DFW to see the battle with mental illness behind the words. But mostly, what strikes me is the nuanced thinking and intellectual rigor and honesty that informs his writing.
I think Jason was hoping to get me excited about reading "The Infinite Jest" myself after listening to this, and while I have been meaning to do it for a long time, I am definitely more excited about it now than I was before, though I will start with some of DFW’s slightly lighter work first. A very good little amuse-bouche to pique one’s curiosity about a man who cast a rather imposing shadow on modern literature. I am not sure this is the ideal way to dip your toes in his work if you’ve never read it before; the collection might be too dark for some palates, but I enjoyed it a lot, and would definitely recommend it to fans who haven’t gotten around to it yet....more
It’s always a delight to dig into any work by Gemma Files: she has delightfully twisted and dark ideas that avoid clichés and provide the most wonderfIt’s always a delight to dig into any work by Gemma Files: she has delightfully twisted and dark ideas that avoid clichés and provide the most wonderful shivers of terror! I loved this collection even before I opened the book, just by the look of the cover art. It reminded me of the Aleister Crowley Thoth Tarot paintings, surreal and filled with strange symbolic meaning my brain can’t ever fully process. These short stories hit the mark with me on many levels: the GTA (that’s Greater Toronto Area for non-Canadians) setting is quite familiar, obviously, but a lot of her stories talk about archaeology, which is one of my great passions, there is plenty of weird occultism going on, and strange creatures unlike any I have read about before. Also, I am total sucker for eerie, atmospheric stories – and when it comes to that, she always delivers.
I wouldn’t know how to pick a favorite from this book. First off, it is quite dense: each story is rich with images and ideas that push the boundaries of the real world, there is a lot of creepy folklore that date from back when the world was savage and dark, and while there is often a decent amount of body horror, nothing in here is gratuitously gory. I’ve seen her writing describe as ‘fever dream-like’ and if you have read “Experimental Film”, you know that it’s true, but that she can nevertheless anchor her readers as she blends their brains. I would also call her stories more unsettling than typical horror, which is what I like about them so much, the vague sense of wrongness her characters wrestle with is so much more interesting to me than jump-scares. While her characters are often women, she tends to stay far away from stereotypes, and all her narrators are very distinct from each other – and quite diverse – so the perspectives and backgrounds always take me by surprise at the beginning of every tale.
The only gripe I had with this book is that one story contains some lines of dialogue in French, and it was clearly not checked by anyone who speaks even a tiny bit of French, and that really annoyed me because those lines are not hard or complicated. In fact, I checked and even Google translate got them right, so I have no idea what happened in the editing process that resulted in those lines not being proof-read adequately, but it was disappointing. I just think that if you are going to include lines in another language in a story to give it a context vibe, the least you can do is make sure you are using said language properly.
If you like weird fiction and literary horror, Ms. Files deserves a serious spot on your radar and bookshelves. Not every story in this collection is perfect, but everyone will leave a wonderful, creepy impression....more
Steve Stred managed something only a short list of other horror writers have accomplished: he gave me the creeps. I’m the first to admit I’m a bit blaSteve Stred managed something only a short list of other horror writers have accomplished: he gave me the creeps. I’m the first to admit I’m a bit blasé about horror: I have lost count of how many times I was promised a novel would freak me out only to read it and go ‘meh’ at the end. But “Churn the Soil” was a remarkable piece of folk horror, and I was very impressed by it, so of course, I went looking for more works by the man who managed to give me such delightful shivers of terror. The numerous warnings on the back of my copy were kind of ominous and I’d like to add some nuance to them: yes, there is very violent and sexual content, but it’s not described in excessive details, a lot is left to the reader’s imagination, which I appreciated. Stred writes about brutal stuff but doesn’t make a point of being gratuitously gross.
This book is a collection of three connected novellas, with an additional fourth story to wrap things up, and I would have probably been interested in reading it even if I hadn’t read “Churn the Soil”, because I am the kind of person who gets excited when a book is about demons and/or cults (I blame the Catholic upbringing and subsequent lapsing). Now novels about cults are not exactly rare, but Stred apparently spent some time in an actual cult as research for this, and I find this dedication to research positively chilling.
“Ritual” is about a lonely and disturbed man who is preparing himself for a life-defining ritual. “Communion” is about the investigation that follows the climatic events of the first story. “Sacrament” is about someone who has lost everything that matters to Father and is determined to stop him. Giving more details would spoil the fun, as the way Stred shifts perspective from one novella to another is challenging at times but also deepens his exploration of each topic. The back and forth between the current timeline, and related events that took place in 1929 are weaved skilfully to draw a picture of a horrific plan long in the making so well that I devoured this book in a single day.
Rounding up this collection with an essay by Stred on his research and on why he wanted to write this book was a great idea. Nick Cutter did something similar for his novel “The Acolyte” (a personal favorite, if you like your horror religious and dystopian), and I really appreciated getting into his head about why he wanted to write such a twisted book, and Stred’s thoughts on this one are fascinating and his experience researching this is truly creepy.
A haunting collection, not for weak stomachs but very rewarding for the kind of readers who see the warnings on the cover and don’t let them cancel out their curiosity....more
This book was a lovely birthday gift from my husband, who wisely knew that he couldn't go wrong with anything by Ursula Le Guin; the real trouble was This book was a lovely birthday gift from my husband, who wisely knew that he couldn't go wrong with anything by Ursula Le Guin; the real trouble was finding a book of hers that I did not already have!
This is a lovely collection of various short stories, organized in chronological order. Some revisit famous settings of Le Guin's work, such as Earthsea or Gethen, others explore new worlds. What is constant is the gentle luminosity of her prose, and the profound humanity of her characters. In fact, it struck me while reading this that Le Guin might have been the most human sci-fi writer to ever put pen to paper, and that no matter where her stories are set, what strange planet they explore or amazing creatures we encounter in them, they truly are about the most human part of every one of us.
A little treasure to be added to my shelf of her other works. I especially loved the stories "Nine Lives", "Vaster than Empires and More Slow" (which reminded me of Silverberg's "The Man in the Maze" only better - sorry, Robert!), and I shall be forever haunted by the idea of "Darkness Box"....more
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