June Reading List
While the sun shone and flowers bloomed, I was scurried away in the dark corners of my imagination, with a horror book seeking out new scary reads and authors.
June was a scary month for me. While the sun shone and flowers bloomed, I was scurried away in the dark corners of my imagination, with a horror book seeking out new scary reads and authors. It wasn’t only books. I also binged on a nightly regimen of “the strange, dark and mysterious delivered in story format” from Mr. Ballen’s videos and also discovered Mr. Nightmare. I love a good story, whether it’s told, written, or filmed. But for now, let’s get to the books.
I’ve been a fan of Tremblay since I read “Head Full Of Ghosts” a little while back, (which I still feel is his best book), and when I read the description for “Horror Movie” I thought it had shades of that novel. “Head Full of Ghosts,” made use of a ghost-hunting reality show the way "Horror Movie" makes use of, well… a movie. Not some superhero four-quadrant blockbuster, but a cult horror movie.
Back in June 1993, a group of young guerrilla filmmakers created "Horror Movie," an infamous and disturbing art-house horror flick. The catch? Only three scenes were ever released to the public. Despite that, it amassed a cult following over the decades. Now, Hollywood wants to reboot it with a big-budget production.
Enter the sole surviving cast member, known as “The Thin Kid” who also serves as a narrator of sorts. He vividly remembers the secrets hidden in the original screenplay, the bizarre happenings during filming, and the dangerous lines that were crossed, leading to tragedy. As he dives back into this world, the lines between reality and fiction, past and present, begin to blur. Determined to be part of the remake, he finds himself dealing with cynical producers, egomaniacal directors, and surreal fan conventions—demons of his past be damned. But what will it cost him?
"Horror Movie" is an obsessively chilling psychological thriller that grips you from start to finish. Paul Tremblay crafts a suspenseful narrative that indeed delivers in its ending
Other writers fall prey to the worst clichés of the genre, but in Tremblay’s capable hands, the story is layered and surprising. In this case, the layering is both figurative and literal, as the story is told in triptych: the past when the movie was being made, the present letting us see what all the characters are up to, and snippets of the screenplay of the infamous movie, which was shot but never released. Tremblay’s writing—his metaphors, his turns of phrase—all evoke moods and images in the reader’s mind, not all of which are pretty, but all of which are thought-provoking. I enjoyed this one.
Swift to Chase by Laird Barron
In Laird Barron's fourth compilation — but my first time reading him — readers are transported to the wilds of Alaska, dystopian societies in the distant future, and macabre worlds inspired by giallo cinema. In Italian cinema, giallo is a genre of murder mystery fiction that often contains slasher, thriller, psychological horror, psychological thriller, sexploitation, and, less frequently, supernatural horror elements.
When a modern-day Jack the Ripper strikes during a blizzard, chaos ensues in a massive apartment complex.
A woman trying to escape her fame for surviving a massacre is met with even more horrors on the road.
Meanwhile, a team searching for a missing B-movie star crashes in the treacherous Yukon Delta and realizes they may have entered hell itself.
In a far-future world ruled by an oppressive empire, a cyborg war dog assists his master in leading a rebellion.
After participating in an occult ritual, a man becomes the target of a psychopathic sorority girl and her disfigured henchmen.
In another tale, a deranged millionaire invites former high school classmates to his mansion for a night of debauchery and CIA-funded experiments.
In addition, Andy Kaufman shows up in an unnerving role in one of the collection’s more bizarre but seriously entertaining stories.
These stories encompass a wide range of genres, including science fiction, Lovecraftian horror, ghost tales, possible vampire lore, survival horror, and more traditional serial killer narratives.
Each story is expertly crafted by Barron and evokes a sense of impending doom. Together, the collection feels like a complex puzzle, with some stories only clicking into place when viewed as part of the bigger picture. For those who enjoy dark and interconnected tales with unreliable narrators and stream of consciousness writing, this collection delivers on its promise.
I also read two non-fiction books this month (well, one of them I’ve taken a month and a half to read). The first, Grinding It Out" by Ray Kroc, is the story of McDonald's, perhaps the most famous and iconic American brand in the world and an unparalleled business success story.
Grinding It Out is a quick read. I’ve read it before, but picked it up again while watching the movie "The Founder" starring Michael Keaton as Ray Kroc. This autobiography paints an inspiring picture of the man who made the Golden Arches a symbol of American success. That said, it is not a comprehensive business biography about Kroc, but a rather sanitized retelling of his successes. Despite this, I found I enjoyed it more the second time around. Though the book gives short shrift to a lot of what Kroc had to do to make McDonalds the massive success it was, there is much to glean here, particularly when it comes to the idea of perseverance.
This is not to say that the way he maneuvered to take control of the business from the original founders, the McDonald brothers, wasn’t more than a little underhanded and ruthless—after all, it was they who, in their original San Bernardino burger stand, invented the speedy system that gave the world the concept of “fast food.” Or that presently, McDonalds does bare a portion of the responsibility for creating America’s obesity epidemic. However, to discount the lessons in the rest of Ray Kroc’s story is to miss some excellent business and life lessons from a man who never stopped striving for success and finally found it at fifty-two years.
The second non-fiction book I read was Washington by Ron Chernow,
Unlike Grinding It Out, Chernow’s Washington is indeed a comprehensive biography. The 2011 Pulitzer Prize winner for biography brings George Washington fully to life, allowing us to see him as a real person. I love American history and am fascinated by the Founding Fathers. Given the challenging times we are facing in America, with our many disagreements about the power of government, the interpretation of the Constitution, I thought spending some time with George Washington might be a good way to cut through all the sound bites and sloganeering and see if any answers might be found in reading about the larger-than-life man who fought for America’s independence and became our country’s first President. Indeed there are.
The stories of Washington’s defects, which in particular, mark his earliest military campaigns in The French and Indian War hold lessons not only in the fortitude of the young man, but also in his ability to bounce back from defeat. Later, the stories of the winter spent at Valley Forge, and Washington’s crossing of the Delaware River, which came on the heels of the loss of New York to the British. Essentially an evacuation of the Continental Army, it was a move that much like Churchill’s rescue of the British army stranded at Dunkirk, helped to embolden the soldiers under his command at a moment of potential collapse. Victory snatched from the jaws of defeat. The tides that turn wars, and Washington was the kind of General who was always at the center of these moments. I complimented my read by occasionally breaking out my copy of David McCullough’s "1776" to get additional detail on the Revolutionary War and some of Washington’s seminal moments as the head of the Continental Army.
Chernow’s biography is thoroughly researched, its depth of scholarly examination complemented by the author’s detailed and insightful prose. It is surely deserving of the Pulitzer, and more importantly it deserves to be read by every single high school student before they graduate. I look forward to the Broadway musical (kidding). I do however, look forward to reading more of his biographies this summer. I’m looking at you Grant.