October 2023 - The Witching Month
Book 43: Rosemary's Baby - Ira Levin
Super easy reading horror classic. I've seen the movie several times albeit the last time about 25 years ago so this seemed fresh enough to be unspoiled. Great concept of taking the devilish behaviour out of the gloomy gothic English or European mansion into a New York apartment building. Even half a century old, the clashing of the psychological and the Satanic feels thoroughly modern - an immensely enjoyable read.
Book 44: Frankenstein in Baghdad - Ahmed Saadawi
Another interesting premise - an Iraqi junk dealer repurposes anonymous body parts from the numerous explosions happening during the war and forges a modern day Frankenstein that regains life and begins avenging the original owners of his body parts. The bleak look on war and how it affects the normal lives of people was the real winner here as the horror aspect was a little goofy and didn't really work for me.
Book 45: 30 Days of Night - Steve Niles & Ben Templesmith
Another one that I'd seen the movie of upon release and really enjoyed. This graphic novel proved to be something of a let-down though. While I thought the artwork was quirky and impressive and it accompanied a really interesting take on the vampire mythology, it was just way shorter than I both anticipated and than it need to be. There was very limited character development, the whole thing just seemed rushed.
Book 46: Mexican Gothic - Silvia Moreno-Garcia
Parts of this were alright but, on the whole, another bit of a dud for me. The ghostly goings on being a symptom of a blob-like monster mushroom coupled with dialogue that felt anachronistic for the '50s setting just left me flat.
Book 47: The Queen of the Damned - Anne Rice
Third entry in the series and I've been tackling one each year but this may end up being the nail in the coffin (pun intended) for this series and me. Overly long, insanely repetitive, (not just within this novel but retelling stuff from the previous books too), and it seems like the idea of forging a Ricean History of Vampires was the priority over telling a decent story. When there were fresh bits told, it was good, well written and engaging. Unfortunately, the fresh bits alone should have taken 200pp, not the 500 delivered.
Book 48: "Did You Hear What Eddie Gein Done?" - Harold Schechter & Eric Powell
I enjoyed this a lot. True crime told through a graphic novel. I'm assured by the blurb quotes that it's incredibly well researched and it does appear that way although so much is told through the viewpoint of Gein himself that one would have to assume a lot of this is what 'experts' have deemed happened, including and especially the causation. Still, it reads well, the artwork is impressive and the characters are developed enough to feel like accurate portrayals. My only real critique is the opening and closing reminder of what an influence on popular culture Gein's tale has had. As true as this is, it felt a little too celebratory and sort of irrelevant to make it worth bookending the actual events as a focal point.
Book 49: The Case Against Satan - Ray Russell
Like Rosemary's Baby, this is another example of a really readable tale of Satan who, in this case, seemingly inhabits the mind, body and soul of a sixteen year old girl. Written almost a decade before Blatty's,
The Exorcist, the book shares the same themes and even similar characters. It's a good 30 years since I read Blatty's book so I don't remember it all too well but I can remember it excelling in setting a dark, atmospheric mood. Russell's novel reads a little lighter but excels in a succinctness and a readiness to hold the Catholic faith to task, potentially offering a psychiatric solution as a more viable alternative over demonic possession, testing the priest's own faith in the process. A really good read, would recommend and it's made me add Penguin's Ray Russell compendium of short horror fiction to my to-buy list.
Book 50: Hallowe'en Party - Agatha Christie
While most of my peers were reading
Choose Your Own Adventure books, circa 10-year-old me had a couple of years long dalliance with The Queen of Crime. It's coming up to four decades ago so I really can't remember which one's I've read in the past but, with this one recently adapted for the new Branagh film, I figured I'd add it to my October list. I will say I didn't realise Christie wrote well into the 1970s. Published in '69, this threw me when early on there's talk of kids smoking hemp and taking L.S.D. I always picture her settings in the Art Deco splendour of the roaring '20s where a stiff martini was the worst you'd get. Here, the setting is a garden variety Hallowe'en party in a rural English village where a young girl proclaims that she witnessed a murder in the past but didn't realise until later what she'd seen. Laughed off as nonsense and one of her typical childish lies by those present, she's later found drowned in the apple-bobbing bucket. Poirot is approached by a party guest to investigate who killed the poor girl and, if she had indeed been a witness to a past murder: when and who? The Belgian sleuth trundles along making connections to all manner of past incidents and people until he pin-points the culprit. It's not original, it's very formulaic but, I did enjoy it a great deal and, perhaps that's for nostalgic reasons but I'm happy to take that every now and again. Having seen the trailer for the new movie though, it seems a stretch to see that as much of an adaptation as, aside from being located in Venice, it also looks rather supernatural and this book doesn't even hint at spooky stuff!
