a thing for ghost ships

I've got a thing for ghost ships.

Image ID G90F270_027F from the NYPL

There is something deliciously creepy about a floating reminder of the dangers of isolation in the wild world. The possibility of treasure, or just something to do after days or months of monotony, is a true lure on the open sea and I love pondering the possible malevolent intelligence behind such displays.

So here are two derelict boat stories, one very old and one new, both expertly read:
Tales To Terrify 177: Derelict by William Hope Hodgson
Pseudopod 440: Octavius Bound by Nathan Ehret

The podcasted fiction of Clarkesworld's issue 100 is a warm chunk of aural delight for these freezing days. I listened to the three below over the last few weeks and each has stayed with me. All are read by Kate Baker:

"It also ate that one picture of your old girlfriend from, what is it, ten years ago now? The one at the beach where it was pouring rain and she was freezing her ass off but then she got hit by that huge wave and even though she was soaked to the skin she started laughing and couldn’t stop, and that was pretty much the moment you fell in love with her. The begitte was right about that one, too."
The Apartment Dweller’s Bestiary by Kij Johnson 
This collection of flash stories fit seamlessly into my recent ruminations on what makes a home and the things we choose to share our spaces with. Alongside the descriptions of small, fantastical creatures, I was very into the glimpses into so many lives and so many homes.

"Bethany was baffling to me. Baffling. She was still taking cat pictures and I still really liked her cats, but I was beginning to think that nothing I did was going to make a long-term difference. If she would just let me run her life for a week—even for a day—I would get her set up with therapy, I’d use her money to actually pay her bills, I could even help her sort out her closet because given some of the pictures of herself she posted online, she had much better taste in cats than in clothing."
Cat Pictures Please by Naomi Kritzer 
Not generally a fan of AI stories or cats, I greatly enjoyed this humorous story about a self-aware, meddling intelligence that uses personal info to decide what is best for three sad-sack humans.

"Brother, I love him. It’s absolutely not because the world keeps hurting me."
A Universal Elegy by Tang Fei
I loved this epistolary story about identity and love. It relates the pain of trying to be understood and the intoxication of feeling so very subtly and effectively.

mixed bag baby

There are a ton of books in my parents' house. On the third floor, where I sleep barring night duty, there are a bunch of books that I left here sometime during college. Those books make me laugh. There are also a bunch of Mad Magazine paperbacks that my brother collected when he was a kid. I don't look at those because I enjoy humor. There are a bunch of horror and sci fi collections that I read through when I can't sleep or when the books I've brought with me are not doing it. Those books are comforting.

Neither of my parents can read today because of various degenerations. But the books remain; something more for me to deal with later.

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Here are two stories from awhile ago that I wanted to mention:
Going After Bobo by Susan Palwick
I loved this icy story of shitty brothers, cats and community. The world is well-developed by little details and that world is very frightening and very possible.

Rachel in Love by Pat Murphy
What people in chimp bodies do for love. Also, crazy parents and animal testing. A fantastic story that seems all too real.

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Here is a nightmare: I am being gaslit by people at a job. It is destroying me. I run to a friend and he sets the office straight. This "friend" my brain supplied is a guy I follow on twitter but have never met: Saeed Jones.

He is such an amazing writer and truth teller that his power has obviously permeated my psyche! Here is a recent meditation on Maya Angelou.

airwaves

NYPL, Image ID: 1651592

Over at Star Ship Sofa no. 239, I really liked The Time Travel Club by Charlie Jane Anders (at 21:30 minutes). Anders' stories are always suffused with humor and this one is no exception. Her protagonists are much more like people I know than most other scifantastic authors', with their sobriety probs and tattoos. It never feels forced and that is a writing miracle.

At Lightspeed magazine, listen to How to Get Back to the Forest by Sofia Samatar (click listen). It's about friendship, aging and what one gives up for safety.

I've been looking for some new genre fiction podcasts. I found The Squidpod on a list somewhere and decided to try it out. Many of the stories focus on AIs and the cusp-of-singularity life. Neither of my following recs are in those worlds, but both drew me in:
Zeta by Dave Cochran (click on the MP3 to hear)
Grats by Dave Cochran (click on the MP3 to hear)

 And you?

Recent good things

This Rumpus essay on poetry, presentation and (not just) pie by Kate Lebo is tops.  It made me think about Sylvia Plath, who I've sort of skipped over when looking for idols. Seeing her words interspersed with Lebo's made me want to seek Ariel.

Great interview with Karen Joy Fowler by Carmen Maria Machado: "But mostly I believe that we shouldn’t do things we are unable to look at."

The David Brothers interviews at Inkstuds. There are some audio quality issues with some of these, but, as you know, here at try harder, content is queen.

And, of course, this comic from Anne Emond pretty much sums up this whole season.

Winter pallor and complaint: Photo by Pete

The Shining Girls by Lauren Beukes

Oh, Penn Station bookstore, why are you so awful? I wandered around looking for something to buy in paperback and not a thing caught my eye until I saw Lauren Beukes' name popping out from the spine of The Shining Girls. I have been meaning to read her for awhile, so I bought it, hoping for a good escape from reality during a recent Philly trip.

I don't read jacket copy, so when I dove into the story about a time-traveling serial killer I was disappointed to find that it wasn't inspired by The Shining.  Where my supposition came from, who knows, but those two books do have one common theme--an evil house.

When I was a child, I loved to turn off the lights, close my myopic eyes and wander the house I grew up in.  I do the same now. Dreams are stuffed with the houses of relatives and childhood friends. I contain many houses and some of them are traps.

Is the house in The Shining Girls a trap for a certain kind of man or did the house itself come from his desires? Well, hm.

Though the pacing is excellent, The Shining Girls doesn't hold together in the end for a few reasons. The book has a Chicago setting, it really could have been set Major Anycity, U.S.A. and the Chicago-y things that do appear just seem like excuses to show the research that went into them appearing in the first place, as do some of the characters. Is it cool that there is a pre-legal abortion provider's POV included? Yes. But since we only get a little time with each of the victims--with the exception of out final girl, Kirby, who survived a childhood attack by Harper, the killer--the inclusion of that fact about her detracts from the otherwise excellent characterization. There are too many POVs, period. I really appreciate the work it must have taken to give each victim a individual voice and make the violence done to each less about the killer and more about what was taken from the world when each was killed. But we spend too much time with Harper for this to work and the result is distracting. A focus on Harper and the house, just the house, or our final girl, alone or in opposition to either, would have been considerably deeper and more meaningful to me and allowed Beukes's excellent attention to the telling detail to work a longer lasting magic. While I understand that this organization makes the time-travel element easier to follow, it also makes it less weird and, therefore, less interesting.

And now we've come to my major issue with The Shining Girls: The thing that pushes the book from straight horror into SF territory, the time travel element, doesn't feel integral to the plot. Why do these women have to be from different times for the murders to mean something to the killer or to the house? If it were simply a matter of providing a way to escape from the consequences of murdering another person, why aren't there more murders in the book? Harper's dull acceptance of time travel tells us a little about him, but nothing we couldn't learn in another way. When Kirby, who, let's remember, has had her entire life bounded by having been chosen by the house, finally encounters the house and its door to other times, she isn't tempted by the power at all.

Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed reading this book. I wanted to get to the end and stayed up until four in the morning to do so. But the more I thought about the book after that frenzied night, the plot followed through to its end, the less satisfied I became.

Some off-the-top-of-my-head additional reading:
The best: The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson

A recent evil house story on Pseudopod: The Unfinished Room by Joshua Rex, read by Bob Eccles. (explicit child murder in this one)

An examination of horror tropes with an emphasis on bad houses: Horror 101, heard on Tales to Terrify

spriations & siams

I loved this Inkstuds interview with Greg Means. Means talks about being a librarian and editor, and about how, in both of those roles, a motivating force is the the unbearable idea that there is amazing work in the world that no one is seeing. Trying to remedy the unfairness of life and art with enthusiasm and a big mouth is so familiar!  I loved to learn that this motivation was behind Papercutter--one of my favorite comics projects of all time.

Greg wrote me a note a few years ago that simply said that he liked my writing and I should keep doing it. It was short but incredibly encouraging when I was questioning why I was writing at all. Few people would spend the time to do such a thing and I still keep it on my desk along with a drawing by a kiddie friend and a picture of Polly Styrene.

Selling, souls, etc.

Soul-selling, in various permutations, has been saturating my reading and listening. Not as a result of any plan of mine, of course, but it's been all bargains and hunger and figuring out what is worth it. While the traditional idea of the soul is not compelling, the concept that an individual has something precious that can be lost or taken is complicated and true and nestled right next to my heart right now.

NYPL Image ID: 833476  Down among the mashers. (c1892) by Art Young

In the suburban wilds of Duplex, a minor character disappears as a child and comes back changed. There is another character that seems to be missing a soul, certainly missing something, and he is the most dangerous of all. I feel pulled along through Duplex--I am enjoying the ride and looking forward to finding out what comes of all the negotiations. This book is on sale right now from the publisher and you should buy it.

In the story “Daedalum, the Devil’s Wheel” written by E. Lily Yu, and read by Kate Baker at Clarkesworld Magazine, a demon torments a cartoonist during a fever dream. It is not just just the promise of money and success, there is something more intimate happening between the demon and the sleeping man. In exchange for his dreams and his body, he is also being released from something, but what? This is one of those stories where the reading makes it, so let Kate Baker take you away.


"Ha! That was also a joke! Why flinch? You used to appreciate the soft, surreal psychosis of cartoons. Mallets and violence! Bacchanals, decapitations, shotguns, dynamite! That’s my sense of humor.

I don’t give, darling. I take. Sometimes I negotiate. It’s always unfair."

^^^

I've talked before about comics subscriptions and how they help lazy people like me get new comics and discover new artists. The joy of packages in the mail is a part of it too. I tend to only subscribe to projects that pay their authors and artists, but will make exceptions, like Rumpus Letters in the Mail.

Today I subscribed to Ryan Sands' Youth in Decline because of Sam Alden's work and the roster of new translated comics. The chance to read translated comics is a huge part of why I subscribe to the Latvian anthology kuš! and stories from around the globe are also featured in The Cartoon Picyaune, to which I also subscribe.

Subscribing to your favorite art, be it comics or podcasts or whatever, gives the publishers a way to plan future projects and figure out how to pay contributors. Important stuff.

She should have been the first person I talked to when we decided to have a baby, the one I came to with all my questions and doubts, certainly the first one I told if and when my partner was actually pregnant (sorry, Mom).  Now everything I want to say to her wilts and dies on my tongue, and I sit there on the couch with her number half-dialed in my phone.

Lindsay King-Miller says it over at Mutha Magazine.

xxx

I was a dabbler. A Sunday-hater. 

"Flying on My Hatred of My Neighbor’s Dog" by Shaenon K. Garrity over at the Drabblecast takes us to the stars on wings of pure vitriol. A nice respite from the realities of constant anger, I suggest listening to the narrated version while you do some stretches.

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I've been into spooky, creeping, weird, recently. Just finished Hangsaman by Shirley Jackson and will dip into the anthology of old ghost stories as the days shuffle toward Halloween. Spooky times in Greenpoint at WORD bookstore with Laird Barron, Susan Bernofsky (translator of the NYRB release The Black Spider), Tobias Carroll of Vol. 1 Brooklyn, and others, seems like a good way to find some new stories to shiver to.

bittles

Once upon a time / two planets fell out of love: Yumi Sakugawa's The Rumpus comic is boss, as usual.

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E. Lily Yu's short story "Loss, With Chalk Diagrams," read by Eleiece Kraweic, over on Escape Pod was a good exploration of old friendship and grief. It also covers the final demise of the U.S. Post Office, highlighting what we can draw from that 6x per week delivery that we can't get anywhere else.

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Writing cards and letters today, tying up loose ends, signing papers and that sort of thing. Life's busywork, I guess. What are you doing?

MoCCA 2013

Due to everything else you read about on this blog,  I was really thinking of skipping MoCCA this year. I did skip Saturday--a very good idea considering how much life stuff I got done.

On Friday I hit up the hic + hoc party here in my neighborhood. I thrust B at Matt Moses and got the hard sell on Tumblr from Alabaster. I picked up the Unknown Origins & Untimely Ends: A Collection of Unsolved Mysteries anthology, edited by Emi Gennis, and then sat at the bar trying to tell B who people were in an unintelligible undertone.

Hot foot

On Sunday I put on my walking shoes, grabbed my camera and made my way to Murray Hill. The entry was still $15 for the day and still too expensive. The $5 for the show's brochure was laughable. I busted a chuckle when the poor MoCCA volunteer let me in on that great deal!

After I completely lost my shit over the OMG CURTAINS, like any sane person would, I noticed that the armory was not too crowded. I tend to list like a sinking ship when I am in crowds so this airiness allowed me to bump into many fewer people than normal. I didn't hear a ton of bitching about it being a "bad MoCCA" or anything; many books sold out before my eyes from big publishers and one-man-bands alike. Since cartoonists love to bitch, I am going to take this as a good sign.

As usual, I missed all panels. Sadly, good intentions rarely trump oversleeping and general reluctance to force a smile. One of these days! Was that even worth saying? Well, no, not really, but I already typed it and this needs to get out before next year's MoCCA.

The back of the space was set up as a mini-gallery of the Society's collection (formerly the Museum of Cartoon and Comic Art's holdings?). I loved the interaction between old newspaper work and new stuff. I was psyched as usual to see Eleanor Davis's work, originals from In Our Eden. Some other standouts for me were Nora Krug, Adam McCauley, Miriam Katin (who Robin interviewed at inkstuds recently) and Natalya Balnova, whose work reminded me of Wendy MacNaughton's illustration.

The schools were out in full force. There was a ton of amazing student work available from usual suspects SVA and CCS as well as some surprises, like Kutztown University.  I was especially intrigued by SAW's table. They ran out of the awesome-looking student anthology, but I did pick up a 3-part mini by visiting instructor Ron Rege because I was told it was about grief.

And now on to the only part that anyone cares about: The pictures! Help me fill in the blanks.

Intrepid concession workers

Happy crew: Pat Barrett, Aaron Cockle and L. Nichols

Every year I take a picture of Three-Armed Squid and every year I miss a member. Pictured here: Estrella Vega, Alden Viguilla and Alexandra Beguez

Guest of honor Jillian Tamaki

Happy crew member Darryl Ayo says Hi!

Whit Taylor likes plants and doesn't deserve this horrible photo

CCS-er Amelia Onorato sells selkie stories

Greg Means says he can find pictures of my face on the internet. He means it!

Nikki Desautelle. I wish I had picked up more here!

Award-winner Kenan Rubenstein and Neil Brideau battle comics ennui

Gabrielle Bell choosing not to hide while doing a sketch for me.

Mark Delboy sold me Pizza & Sex but I didn't tip

Sabrina Elliott, Jensine Eckwall and Dilek Baykara present a united front

Yao Xiao,  Judith Kim and Judy Wong(?) are consummate saleswomen

???

Ran out of money then ran into Katz Sisters and Andrea Tsurumi. Bad timing.

My haul

My tip top item: This letterpress print by Nikki Desautelle

So what was your pick from the show?

you send me comics

Any idea what book this image is from?

First of all, the blog over at the The Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum is an amazing resource for comics lovers, especially if your tastes skew vintage. My favorite feature is "Found in the Collection" because it indulges the fantasy that working in an archives is an exciting adventure of discovery--the same fantasy that led me to get my MLIS, but perhaps that is another story for another time.

I missed Found in the Collection: E. Simms Campbell Letters when it was first posted, so it is old in internet time. The E. Simms Campbell Letters are, of course, timeless, as all good letters are. The writer, Elmer Simms Campbell, was not only the creator of the Esquire magazine mascot, but a working, African American, NYC cartoonist from the 1930s to his death. The letters speak to the cartoonist lifestyle, one of all-nighters, deadlines, loneliness, but also some pretty epic partying, life in 1950s Switzerland and the habits of some prominent jazz musicians. Reading them in full would be pretty much the best thing. Researchers, take notice!

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Loved the interview with Ellen Forney over at inkstuds. They cover working in memoir, coming out as mentally ill, deadlines, drugs and doctors. I want to read Marbles, which I didn't want before I listened.

I simply like listening to Forney. Her verve for life is infectious and that is something I desperately need to catch. Her previous interview with Robin made me feel the same way.

^^^^^

From LWA

A postcard interview is one of the best things I've heard about in a long while. I am doing a postal-related interview for work and if deadlines were not an issue, this would be an amazing treatment. If only, if only.

Mannish

Today has featured two Isle of Man delights:

First Isle of Man stamps of 2013 revealed! To celebrate a Manx heritage museum opening!

"That Ol' Dagon Dark" by Robert MacAnthony (Pseudopod #307) and read by Pseudopod host Alastair Stuart. Never, ever try the special blend, no matter how good it smells.

From the NYPL Digital Gallery: ID 1640578

I spent one Christmas in the  mid-2000s stomping through the snowy streets of Manhattan with a young Manx man. He didn't know what Hanukka is. He also may have thought I was going to murder him. He wanted fish and chips for dinner but I think we ended up with falafel. I think he wanted a Christmas kiss. He promised to write but never did.

sandy sandy sandy

I worked from home most of last week on a very frustrating project. One of the ways that I deal with being glued to the computer for most of the day, and the subsequent loss of reading time, is to listen to podcasts. I've been catching up with my Inkstuds and loved the Pat Grant interview. It starts off with a roadtrip elopement and goes so many places from there. Grant has a kickass process blog that all lovers of self-published comics should check out.

zzzzzzzz

I don't know how else to illustrate the word irresistible than this dollar rack find:

 With illustrations by Tanith Lee herself!

zzzzzzzzz

I'm sure that you already know about the newly revived The Memory Palace, being the kind of discerning folk that hang out in tryharderland. But, if not, just know that little nonfiction stories about history are found there. (See also 99% Invisible.) 

zzzzzzzzz

This posey is made from some of the last of the flowers from the roof. Well, not the last, but probably the last untouched by Scary Sandy. With the storm a ragin' or whatever, let's write one another some letters and emails, ok? Ok.

get in my ears

Authors like Catherynne M. Valente, Elizabeth Bear, Tobias Bucknell, Lavie Tidhar, Genevieve Valentine and more populate Clarkesworld. I'm not sure how I missed the way there for so long, especially with all of the recasts by my favorite scifantastic podcasts. Anyway, I subscribed to the podcast a few days ago and haven't really stopped listening since. As you know, I love closing my eyes, just me and the story. Podcast director Kate Baker reads many of the stories and she brings a lot to each. Here are some to start out with:

If you've ever known a true believer: Semiramis by Genevieve Valentine

If you've hated on your body: Worm Within by Cat Rambo

If you've ever played a player: Clockwork Chickadee by Mary Robinette Kowal

Check out the magazine for more stories, cover art, essays and interviews. They pay their authors--another reason to support them.

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I've also been listening to 99% Invisible, hosted by Roman Mars. Ostensibly an architecture podcast, the short episodes almost always get into culture and personality, too. I loved to episode on Galloping Gertie, the killer bridge!

((((((((())))))))

Are you generally a genre lover? Do you like smart artists? If so you should also subscribe to the woefully under-updated Make Believers podcast, hosted by Alexa Rose and Ming Doyle. Even though they sometimes they talk about astrology and superhero comics, I am always excited for a new episode. Hat tip to friend of try harder Simon Häussle for recommending it to me!

"lazy shut-in"

If you, like me, love horror movies, then Final Girl Theory by A.C. Wise will unsettle you for several excellent reasons. It is a great, scary, story about obsession, entertainment and complicity. It is narrated by John Meagher over at Pseudopod, #287.
“The woman screams. The screen dissolves in a mass of spinning color, and the opening credits roll.
You know what the worst part is? The opening sequence has nothing to do with the rest of the film. It is what it is; it exists purely for its own sake.”

!000!

Let's talk about subscriptions. If you make minis regularly or have any other kind of regular publishing schedule, please make a subscription option available. It helps lazy shut-ins like me get your comics when they come out AND you make more money upfront--all the better to plan your lavish vacations and yacht purchases with. Kus does it, Retrofit does it and Oily Comics has been talking about it. Who else?

!000!

!000!

Dear comic book store guy,

When I come into your store, head straight for the mini comic section, pick out a few things and come to the register money in hand, do not tell me that you'd rather pay highX amount of dollars for the item that you have displayed on your counter, no matter how cool it is, than the regularX dollars for the comics I have chosen. I am standing at the register. I could still walk away. (I should have walked away).

You are not only drastically lowering my opinion of you, but you are insulting me, the work I am interested in, a genre that I love and your own store's selection. This does not make you seem cool or informed--it makes you seem like a preteen braggart all alone on the playground.

Best,
Carrie

Looking for a safe space to have a vagina

I listen to a lot of podcasts. I love to let my eyes leave the screen for a while and let my brain grapple with information in another way. It’s generally a very enjoyable way to spend time.

As I recently prepared my place for guests, I clicked on the science fiction cast StarShipSofa #240 to make the cleaning go faster. Everything was going great, as usual, until J.J. Campanella’s Science News. His intro to the first story began, as you may remember like this: “The first story of the night may make the male part of the audience a bit uncomfortable because it has to do with, well, female plumbing, so to speak. So if you have kids listening or are just uncomfortable about the topic you may want to skip ahead about five or six minutes to get beyond this particular story. So what is this anti-macho, squirm-inducing story?”

The answer to that is: a very technical story about the human microbiome, specifically that of the vagina.*

This embarrassing intro not only undercut the cool science of the story but it also made me feel incredibly angry and sad. Here’s why:  First it suggests that male audience members are so immature as to find a rather dry (though interesting) story about vaginas somehow unlistenable. StarshipSofa often includes stories where men and women fuck each other, most often, vaginally—including the story before this one. So imagining a vagina is cool if we’re talking sex, but if we are talking science, it’s gross? Way to reinforce negative stereotypes of science fiction fans, Dr. Campanella, while undercutting your own science reporting at the same time! At its most innocuous, this kind of intro panders to the immature and close-minded, more insidiously, it provides support to the idea that it is totally reasonable to think that women’s bodies are gross, that it's okay, if you are a man, to be ignorant of the non-sexual aspects of the vag.

And, worse than gross, apparently “the topic” is unsuitable for children. Considering half of those hypothetical kids have vaginas themselves, this idea is absurd at best. It is definitely a pretty terrifying statement about how many people conceive of reproductive organs, especially those of women, as shameful, embarrassing, and most importantly, a dirty secret. If you, as a parent, are not comfortable with your kids knowing about their own bodies, or them hearing the correct terms used for their parts, then you are failing in your job. Frankly, any parent listening to a podcast aimed at adults, full of violence and other adult situations, with their children better be prepared to answer much more challenging questions than “What’s a vagina?”

Even though the terms “anti-macho, squirm-inducing” are thrown out a with a little cheek, it is still incredibly disappointing to hear SSS’s science correspondent use those words to describe a story about a part of half of the population’s bodies. Why do I have to hear this shit on a podcast dedicated to the world of the fantastic, fiction or fact, where anything is supposedly possible?

* Here's the article: P. Gajer, R. M. Brotman, G. Bai, J. Sakamoto, U. M. Schütte, X. Zhong, S. S. Koenig, L. Fu, Z. (. Ma, X. Zhou, Z. Abdo, L. J. Forney, J. Ravel, Temporal Dynamics of the Human Vaginal Microbiota. Sci. Transl. Med. 4, 132ra52 (2012).

fighting words

Speak Spanish? There's a new narrative non-fiction radio show called Radio Ambulante in the works. Keep up with them at their blog.

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I was coming home from the Coop with a walker. As we rumbled down a Park Slope street, I was talking about having to hit up the post office and library later in the day. He made a sound and, unprompted, commented on how "obsolete" both of those institutions are. Hey guy,  I'm sorry no one wants to write you a letter and that books are too heavy and long, but I am sure you have many other exciting qualities that I can't see from my time machine. Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaanyway, all of this is to say check out this cool episode of 99% Invisible about how stamp images get chosen.

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Today I am going to try Other People with Brad Listi. The tag line is "In-depth, inappropriate interviews with authors" and I want to hear those exact things in conversations with Cheryl Strayed, Ben Marcus, Tayari Jones, Vanessa Veselka and Roxane Gay.

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Brothers, lovers & British women

Abandonware by An Owomoyela on PodCastle is an excellent SF story about grief, siblings and powerful love. Owomoyela captures so much about the experience of a "shrinking family," the strange, painful tension between the roles of child, adult and sibling and the strange rituals required for "moving on." I don't believe in moving on exactly, more like moving through, but this story was a nicely wrought piece of sibling fiction.

Here's an interesting interview with Owomoyela at Fantasy Magazine.

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The other blogger in my house finally posted something! If you like music and blurry pictures, you will love this mega post.

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Because I lost two awesome books in a row, my subway reading dwindled to reading those eerie "Does NYC need church?" ads and NY Post headlines. This was not sustainable, so after a very long class I went to the library on campus and checked over their paltry fiction section for something to distract on the ride home. At first nothing seemed to grab me from the college-bookshelf collection, but then I saw Leonora Carrington's The Hearing Trumpet. It was a nice edition and looked intriguing. I'm loving it so far with its wise and anarchic old ladies and precise, pulsing language. I can't wait to dive back in. That's one of her amazing paintings on the cover. After I finish the book I want to find out more about her art.

3 for you and me

Yesterday B went shopping for his family for Christmas. I was along to advise, but in a bookstore it is difficult to simply observe and comment. We were in Williamsburg so we went to Spoonbill & Sugartown and Book Thug Nation. While S&S carries the nonfiction and eye candy that would fill my shelves if book money grew in shower mildew, BTN is a used bookstore after my own heart.

But, I sure do miss Clovis. It was somehow less serious than BTN and had more comics and zines than Unnameable. I would always forget about it, but then there it would be, holding down that corner spot on Bedford quietly being the one place I really liked to go in the neighborhood. Until the day it wasn't, of course.

***

I did buy myself a book last night from the book thugs--Jules Verne's Paris in the Twentieth Century. I heard about it on Amy H. Sturgis's superb column A Look Back at Genre History on Starship Sofa 164.

I love these segments for Sturgis's taste in history lessons and her hypnotic voice. She injects new life into tired genres (vampires for instance) by focusing on examples that I might actually be into. She certainly sold me on the unfortunately-named Varney the Vampire or the Feast of Blood, a penny dreadful available on all the best out-of-copyright sites on the web. Turns out I had an excerpt of it in an old Penguin anthology at my parents house.

Oh, old-timey horror, you're the best for hiding in the bathroom with!

***

I just ate several carrots, rinsed and skinned and cool to the tongue. The crunch was a sweet bit of escape from my nasty cold. I doubt I'll be doing any reading today but at least the food will be good.