Skulls in the Stars

Book 7 of my 26 books for 2024 goal! Getting closer to catching up.

Okay, so this is one of those books that I’ve meant to read for years and never quite got around to! I came close about a year ago, when I finally broke down and bought a copy… however, I left it on the floor next to the couch and a cat managed to puke on it. I only got around to getting a new copy a couple of months ago, and have finally read it.

The book in question is Horrorstör, by Grady Hendrix.

As is clear from the title and the image, Horrorstör is a haunted house story set in what amounts to an Ikea! It is a quite entertaining story, though I wouldn’t exactly refer to it as “horror comedy” as it is referred to on Wikipedia.

Book 6 of my 26 books for 2024 goal! Way behind in reading now due to life, but working on it.

One of my big hangups in life is that I suffer from “already seen it” syndrome, as I just made up a name for it: if a story has permeated the public consciousness sufficiently and I am even familiar with a bastardized version of it, I am very unmotivated to visit the source material.

For this reason, in part, I had never gotten around to reading the novel that largely launched modern science fiction and horror, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. The other reason I had never gotten around to reading it is because the printed versions of it, being an old public domain novel, have largely been very cheap and disposable, and I like pretty books.

But check out this Union Square & Co. deluxe edition!

This gorgeous edition includes lovely illustrations by John Coulthart, and finally convinced me to read the book.

There probably isn’t that much I can say about such a famous, hyper-analyzed book that hasn’t been said before, so I’ll share a few of my random observations.

Book 5 of my 26 books for 2024 goal! Still behind in my reading, but have another that I will finish within a few days.

It doesn’t take me very long to read anything new by Ramsey Campbell — assuming I am aware that something has been released! As longtime readers of this blog are probably aware, Campbell is my favorite horror author, and one who in my opinion really demonstrates the literary potentials of horror. His writing is precise and subtle, and he is a master at conveying a mood with a careful choice of words.

So when I saw Fearful Implications, his latest compilation of short stories, had been released in 2023, it didn’t take me long to get it.

Before I talk about the stories, let me give a shoutout to the cover art by Ilan Sheady, which is clearly an homage to Henry Fuseli’s famous 1781 painting The Nightmare!

This is particularly apropos, because one of the stories in the collection is about fears of inadvertently copying the works of others! (Incidentally, read the linked Wikipedia article about The Nightmare, which may have inspired in turn some of the greatest writers of horror in history.)