Hey Chris, Whatcha Reading?
Roundup of the short stories and books that have occupied my eyeholes in recent weeks.
I recently discovered that with both Amazon Prime and Audible subscriptions you can bundle some ebooks and audiobooks (sometimes for free, sometimes at a steep discount), so you can listen to the narration while reading the book. It seemed superfluous at first - why would you need both? - but with so many digital distractions around to pull my focus from the page, it's been quite helpful to keep my attention where I want it to be. I am not only reading more, I'm absorbing more of what I've read.
(This got me thinking... how long has it been since someone actually read me a story? My last memory of being read to was back in 7th Grade (or perhaps 6th) when our English Teacher read Where the Red Fern Grows to the class. She put a lot of heart into that reading, and I remember the class gasping, cheering, and even crying from her narration of Billy's adventures with Old Dan and Little Ann. Needless to say, this was a core memory.
But, to my shame, I could not remember my teacher’s name. This led me down a forty-five-minute internet rabbit hole, searching for old yearbooks online and checking faculty listings for anything that might jog my memory. When my internet search turned cold, I bit the bullet and posted on my high school alumni's Facebook page if anyone could help me remember, which they did. Thank you, Miss Bray. )
While I have found a love for narrated stories, I cannot abide AI voice-to-text narrations. As my middle school experience reminds me, the best part of listening to someone tell a story is the emotion that the reader would infuse with the words, changing pitch, speed, and volume when the setting calls for it. These AI abominations are not sophisticated enough to nuance the tone to express panic, joy, or desperation, and instead read every word as if reciting items from a mundane grocery list. YouTube is full of narration channels run by unscrupulous people stealing content and passing it off as their own.
Stepping down from the soap box to get back to the topic at hand, here are some of the short stories and books that have taken residency on my nightstand:
Short Stories
It Waits in the Woods by Josh Malerman
This was one of the six stories in Amazon’s “Creature Feature Collection” bundle of short stories, and where I discovered the convenience of the Audible/Kindle sync. I highly recommend listening to the audiobook version as it contains a massive, unexpected jump scare. Probably shouldn’t have been listening while I was driving.
Burial by Kristi DeMeester
A well-written short story in the March issue of The Dark Magazine. The best way to describe the story without giving too much away is what if Neil Gaiman’s Coraline was much, much darker?
One Basket by C.C. Finley
A sci-fi combo breaker about a girl and her grandmother taking a space walk from their asteroid colony in search of water. It manages to capture the terror of the vastness of space when their surface walk on the asteroid doesn’t go as planned. Reminds me a lot of The Expanse series, but on a more intimate, smaller scale.
Books
The Fisherman by John Langan
Horror works best when it takes place at the intersection of personal tragedy and dark folklore. It provides a rationale that allows the reader to sympathize with the protagonist even though they are making a bad decision for the right reasons. Beautiful writing that builds with anticipated dread, feels like a work of classic literature even though it was written in 2016.
Ghost Story by Peter Straub
The first novel I read that wasn’t assigned by school was Peter Straub’s Shadowlands. I borrowed it from my parent’s headboard and read it in less than a week, staying up until 2 am because I was both too scared to sleep and too interested to stop reading. Reading this was long overdue, and I wasn’t disappointed. I feel this novel heavily influenced Stephen King when he wrote It and The Outsider. It’s less direct than novels of today where writers are required to set the hook quickly, which allows the characters to breathe and develop. If modern novels are more of a fast-paced marathon, Straub’s work is an endurance motorsport that twists through the countryside and doesn’t take the most direct path.
In a Glass Darkly by Sheridan Le Fanu
Another one that’s been on my radar for quite some time that I’ve been able to check off my list. A classic story collection that doesn’t get talked about enough, but should be mentioned with the likes of Poe, Stoker, and Lovecraft as influencers of modern horror writing.