Book I Read, November 2nd 2025

Happy belated Halloween! I read a lot of horror this week and made some pan de los muertos which I should have taken a picture of but didn't, alas.

It Shall Be of Jasper and Coral and Love-across-a-Hundred-Lives by Werewere Liking – Post-modern African fiction, poems and fragments of stories interrupted by digressions on art and colonialism told by a complex variety of perspectives. Complex and multi-layered. My test for this kind of book is two-fold – 1, does it give enough on a first reading to warrant a second? And 2, if I was reading a page of this blind, without being aware it was critically acclaimed, would I think it was nonsense? And the answer here is yes, and no. Liking is very smart, her language is beautiful and her perspective uncommonly optimistic.

You Like it Darker by Stephen King – I do, though, Stephen, I like it darker than this collection of mostly upbeat, sweet-natured shorts. I think it's possible that King is just too decent of a human being to write horror any longer.

The Dark Country by Dennis Etchison – A surprising number of these short horror stories are about organ donation.

The Kind Folk by Ramsey Campbell – Fey horror.

The Crowd by Gustave le Bon – 19th century proto-psychoanalysis of the behavior of mass man throughout the ages. This is a period of intellectual history where you could get away with a lot of sweeping general statements, which makes for an engaging if somewhat simplistic read.

The Wishing Pool and Other Stories by Tananarive Due – A lot of these horror shorts are a little too much 'the real monster is racism!' but some of the meaner ones are strong.

Depression: Causes and Treatments by Aaron Beck and Brad Alford – An attempt to codify depression as a medical condition by the father of cognitive-behavioral psychology. Beck's attempt to define despair as a condition related to underlying inaccurate intellectual schema is far more persuasive (if perhaps less interesting and fun to write about) than any of the existential psychoanalysis that I've been reading lately.

The Grip of It by Jac Jemc – A couple moves into a haunted house, go collectively crazy. The plot isn't unfamiliar but the execution is excellent, evocatively horrific and well-written, an insightful and not altogether unkind portrait of a relationship on the rocks.

The Art of Loving by Erich Fromm – A thoughtful discussion of art as a continuous act, with frequent references to eastern mysticism and Meister Eckhart. A pleasant way to spend 150 pages, although the ubiquitous prejudice against homosexuality in the pre-modern era weakens some of the thinking, as the idea of a healthy romantic love outside of a male-female dynamic is denied out of turn, limiting the scope.

Book of Days by Gene Wolfe – Always love Wolfe's short stories. I've probably read Forlesen like 10 times over the years and it still stands out.