Bookmonkey x Penguin Horror Day 31: Endings and Beginnings

Guillermo del Toro begins his introductory essay "Haunted Castles, Dark Mirrors" as follows:

To Learn what we fear is to learn who we are.  Horror defines our boundaries and illuminates our souls, In that, it is no different, or less controversial, than humour, and no less intimate than sex.  Our rejection or acceptance of a particular type of horror fiction can be as rarified or kinky as any other phobia or fetish.

The series covers haunted houses, science fiction horror, psychological horror, gothic horror and swings from subtle to graphic.  With the exception of Ray Russell, I had read most of the selections before, but great fiction is well worth the re-read.

What I like best about the series is just how well the material was respected.  Having a small selection of horror in hardcover is pretty great, especially when introductions, annotations and even some filmographies are included.  Until now, the majority of my collection is mainly comprised of mass market paperbacks, as the genre tends to be left out of the hardcover market.

I do hope the collection gets expanded on, as I for one, would be happy to keep reading wherever it goes.

Thanks Penguin!

Bookmonkey x Penguin Horror Day 30: American Supernatural Tales

The final book in the collection, American Supernatural Tales, edited by S.T. Joshi, is a really fun way to round out the collection.  Using short stories involving the supernatural from as far back as the early 1800s with Washington Irving (the fellow who wrote both Rip Van Winkle and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow) and moving right up to recent Bram Stoker ward winners like Stephen King and Caitlin R. Kiernan, the title works to introduce reads to some really great stuff as well as showing how the form has changed over the last nearly 200 years.

For me, horror has always worked best as a short story, pulling off terror and horror over the extended form of the novel can be trickily at best and tedious at worst.  This doesn't mean I'm not a fan of horror novels, it just means tat if you grabbed a bunch of horror short stories and a bunch of horror novels at random, I think you would find a high count of great ones in the short story collection.

The book obtains a lot of stories by personal favourite authors, like Fritz Lieber, Richard Matheson, and Caitlin R. Kiernan.  A great introduction to some really scary stuff and a fine way to round out the imprint.

Bookmonkey x Penguin Horror Day 24: Haunted Castles

Of the six books in the 2013 Penguin Horror imprint, Ray Russell's Haunted Castles was the only one I had never heard of before.  In effect, I bought this book 50% because I had purchased the others and wanted a complete set, and 50% on trust in Penguin and Guillermo Del Toro.

The book itself is a collection of seven short horror stories written in the 1950s and 60s.  The most famous of these is one called Sardonicus, which was made into a film in 1961 by William Castle.  This movie, called Mr. Sardonicus had actually crossed my radar back when I was in elementary school and looking through a book on the history of horror cinema (yes, I was the monster obsessed kid in my class).  One of the images in the book is the makeup for the main character, Baron Sardonicus, a man whose face has been frozen in a permanent grin, and trust me, as a kid this makeup really freaked me out, but more on the film later, as I'll be checking it out this weekend.

The stories are all pretty great, my personal favourite was called Sanguinarius, which focused on Elizabeth Bathory, a woman famous for bathing in the blood of young girls.  The story, told from her point of view, was really great, and had a pretty great pay off as well.

Like science fiction author Frederic Brown, Russell seems like the type of Horror author that dedicated fans know well, but mainstream audiences may never have heard of - if you have the chance, definitely check out the book, it's well worth the read.

Bookmonkey x Penguin Horror Day 20: The Haunting of Hill House

Shirley Jackson’s 1959 novel The Haunting of Hill House has long been a favourite horror story of mine. Although I’m a longtime fan of monster horror (Dracula, Frankenstein, etc.), there is something really chilling about a well put together haunted house story that just sticks with you.

Jackson’s book is truly insidious, creating in the main character of Eleanor someone that the reader can immediately relate to and sympathize with, and then bringing her to Hill House, a place that is from sentence one, one of the spookiest places to exist in fiction.

"No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream. Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within; it had stood for eighty years and might stand for eighty more. Within, walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone."

Initially put forth as a doctor’s examination of a reportedly haunted house and the events he and his assistants find there, the story is one of the subtlest examples of horror you can find. The evil in the story builds, slowly but surely, and with the author’s straight-forward prose, you find yourself getting lost in the drama of the four leads just before something really horrible occurs.

As with the first three books in the imprint, the book is put together extremely well, and the introduction by author Laura Miller really got me interested in reading more of Jackson’s work that the two stories I know best (this one and the 1949 short story, The Lottery). The cover art for the book is by far the most chilling of the entire imprint to date, and the book does include a “further reading” section for readers interested in reading more works by or about Jackson.

Simply an excellent read.

Bookmonkey x Penguin Horror Day 17: The Thing on the Doorstep

Following a reading of The Raven, the first thing that struck me about Lovecraft’s prose was just how modern and engaging it seemed; yes he sometimes got bogged down in detail, and his characters are not the most well drawn, but wow could that guy build a sense of dread. The collection contains two novellas “The Case of Charles Dexter Ward” and “At the Mountains of Madness” and ten short stories, all of which work amazingly to showcase the sense of overwhelming dread and sheer terror he was so good at producing.

The book itself, although missing a filmography like Frankenstein, is by far the most annotated of the imprint so far, giving each story at least a four paragraph contextual description in the notes (discussing year published, written, and any information the author gave on inspirations for the story) as well as point by point notes for geographic, historic, literary, and folklore-based information which may be unknown to the casual reader. All in all the book is a great resource and introduction to the authors work, containing some of my more favourite stories (“The Temple” being an incredible standout, and a great introductory story for those who haven’t ever read Lovecraft before as well).

Of the series, it is by far the biggest text, and with all of the extra information given, including a “further reading” section both in general and for every story as well, it may be my favourite edition of the imprint so far.

Bookmonkey x Penguin Horror Day 12: The Raven

Beginning the second of the Penguin Horror collection, Edgar Allan Poe's The Raven: Tales and Poems, I was a little leery.  Although I did fine in English in High School, my university background is in Communications Studies, not English, and I've always felt Poe is much closer to LITERATURE, which makes me a little hesitant to review him.

Then I remember that I'm a blogger, and more importantly a life-long horror fan, so I should be a little easier on myself and realize that the worst thing that could happen is comments on my blog (which is - excluding spam - the best thing that can happen on a blog).

So let's go.  

As with the Penguin Horror Frankenstein, this edition is really gorgeous, the cover-image, the fact that it is a hardcover, and even the fact that the edges of all the pages are black add together to make a beautiful object.  Unlike Frankenstein, however, the book lacks in the extra materials department - no filmography, additional notes, chronological info, etc.  Just the opening essay, and an introduction by S.T. Joshi.  Informative, but as compared to the previous book, it pretty much sticks to the original material and that's it.

The stories are great - although it took me a while to get into the rhythms of Poe's writing, a number of the stories gave me chills (especially Berenicé and The Tell-Tale Heart), and surprisingly a couple were quite funny.  Unlike a lot of horror I've read, the stories tend to be focused in a real world setting, with issues of madness, grief and guilt being the focus, rather than ghosts, goblins and other creatures of the night (although one story does have a mummy), and the poems are also quite a treat.

In the end, I missed the extra materials offered in Frankenstein and did wish that the book had contained the story "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" (one of my personal favourites), but as with any short story collection, certain stories get left out or added for editorial purposes.

Bookmonkey x Penguin Horror: Day One

So here we are again at the beginning of October, with a month ahead to examine another aspect of the horror genre. In the past I’ve done deep dives into series like Twilight, Hack/Slash, and Saw, and then over trends in horror like Reimaginings. This month I thought it would be best to go back to some of the roots of horror and hit some great literature at the same time. To do that, I’m going to spend the next thirty days diving into the six titles released under the Penguin Horror imprint last year.  This is largely for two reasons:

1) For my birthday two months ago, my friends and family got me the entire collection, and I thought it would be a nice excuse to use them.

2) As someone who has collected horror for decades, I have a massive collection of mismatched, creased, and roughed-up paperbacks and the idea of some very nicely put together hardcover titles in my favourite genre is too good to pass up.

The six titles: Frankenstein, The Raven, The Thing on the Doorstep and Other Weird Stories, The Haunting of Hill House, Haunted Castles, and American Supernatural Tales, were curated by Award-winning filmmaker and longtime horror literature fan Guillermo del Toro, and as I’ve been enjoying his work in film since my wife and I first caught Mimic back in 1997, I thought I would give the collection he put together with Penguin books a shot.

The stories covered throughout the series cover 182 years of the genre (Frankenstein was published in 1818, and the final story in American Supernatural Tales, was published in 2000), but for a guy who has been reading horror pretty consistently over the last three decades of my life, the series seems like a pretty good place to visit (and in a few cases revisit).

So stick around for the next month, learn a few things about my love of the genre and perhaps even get bit by the horror bug a little yourelf…

NOTE: Thanks to my pal Mike for this month's great Paul Buckley-inspired banner art, which includes an image of the series spines I got from this great article about the cover illustrations done by Paul Buckley

2nd NOTE: I grabbed the fanned-out cover image from The Fire Wire Pop Culture blog in case you'd like to see close ups of each title.

Gearing up for October

As we’re heading into my yearly Halloween-themed month, I’m currently at work reading the primary stuff I’ll be reviewing (the 2013 Penguin horror imprint), and am also hunting down a variety of films, comics and other related texts to chat about as well.

At this point I’ve got at least one movie connected with each reading (except for American Supernatural Stories – it’s my last one so I’ll be researching it later in the month), but have been happy to find related materials from all sorts of places (friends, used-book stores, Amazon, and in one case the special features of a DVD I’ve owned for quite a while now).

I’m still hoping to knock out a Charles de Lint review before we start but my reviews on new genre TV (Constantine, Gotham, American Horror Story: Freak Show, and The Walking Dead) will all have to wait until November.

Looking forward to it!

I've got October Covered!

Hi All, just a quick heads up that I've finally figured out my theme for this year's October Blog-a-thon (is that a word?) and it's kind of crazy but, I'm going to focus on on some books.

Yup - rather than hitting the movies again (although there will be some movies), and instead of checking out some comics (although I may mention some of those as well), this year I'm going to be looking at the Horror imprint from Penguin Classics.

So get ready to join me on a deep dive into six classics of horror literature… if you dare.

Actually, just join me - the reading should be fun and I'm a little hesitant to start a game of dares online.