PARABLE OF THE SOWER & TALENTS By OCTAVIA E. BUTLER

2023 READS (BOOKLIST)

What an incredible year is has been with my adventures in literature. I went from not reading a complete book in years to reading 30+ whole books in less than a year. Pictured above are THE BOATMAN'S DAUGHTER by ANDY DAVIDSON (★ ★ ★ ★ ★) and MY GOVERNMENT MEANS TO KILL ME by RASHEED NEWSON (★ ★ ★ ★ ★), two amazing books I read this year, but didn't get a chance to review. In descending order, here are all the books I read in 2023:

TRUE EVIL TRILOGY by R. L. STINE (1992) ★ ★ ★

JAZZ by TONI MORRISON (1992) ★ ★ ★ ★

SONG OF SOLOMON by TONI MORRISON (1977) ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

SIDLE CREEK by JOLENE McILWAIN (2023) ★ ★ ★ ★

MUCKROSS ABBEY AND OTHER STORIES by SABINA MURRAY (2023) ★ ★ ★

TEXAS HEAT: AND OTHER STORIES by WILLIAM HARRISON (2023) ★ ★ ★

BOYS IN THE VALLEY by PHILIP FRACASSI (2023) ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

PIRANESI by SUSANNA CLARKE (2023) ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

BARACOON: THE STORY OF THE LAST BLACK CARGO by ZORA NEALE HURSTON (2018) ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

NINETEEN CLAWS AND A BLACKBIRD by AGUSTINA BAZTERRICA (2020) ★ ★

THE VIOLIN CONSPIRACY by BRANDON SLOCUMB (2022) ★ ★ ★ ★

MONSTRILIO by GERARDO SAMANO CORDOVA (2023) ★ ★ ★

THE SHARDS by BRET EASTON ELLIS (2023) ★ ★ ★ ★

HUMAN SACRIFICES by MARIA FERNANDA AMPUERO (2021) ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

DEVIL HOUSE by JOHN DARNIELLE (2022) ★ ★ ★ ★

FLUX by JINWOO CHONG (2023) ★ ★ ★

THE TROOP by NICK CUTTER (2014) ★ ★ ★

MY DARKEST PRAYER by S. A. COSBY (2019) ★ ★ ★ ★

WE HAVE ALWAYS LIVED IN THE CASTLE by SHIRLEY JACKSON (1962) ★ ★ ★ ★

BELOVED by TONI MORRISON (1987) ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE by SHIRLEY JACKSON (1959) ★ ★ ★

THE VANISHING HALF by BRIT BENNETT (2020) ★ ★ ★ ★

DRIVE YOUR PLOW OVER THE BONES OF THE DEAD by OLGA TOKARZUK (2009) ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

THE BURNING GIRLS by C. J. TUDOR (2021) ★ ★ ★

HIDDEN PICTURES by JASON REKULAK (2022) ★ ★ ★

THE BOOKS OF JACOB by OLGA TOKARZUK (2022) ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

THE BOATMAN'S DAUGHTER by ANDY DAVIDSON (2020) ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

SACRIFICIO by ERNESTO MESTRE-REED (2022) ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

SUPERSTITIOUS by R. L. STINE (1995) ★ ★ ★

THE WRONG GIRL by R. L. STINE (2018) ★ ★ ★

MY GOVERNMENT MEANS TO KILL ME by RASHEED NEWSON (2022) ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

BEST BARBARIAN: POEMS by ROGER REEVES (2022) ★ ★ ★

THE THORN PULLER by ITO HIROMI (2007) ★ ★ ★ ★

NOW DO YOU KNOW WHERE YOU ARE by DANA LEVIN (2022) ★ ★ ★

THE HOLLOW KIND by ANDY DAVIDSON (2022) ★ ★ ★ ★

A HOUSE WITH GOOD BONES by T. KINGFISHER (2022) ★ ★

A DELUSION OF SATAN: THE FULL STORY OF THE SALEM WITCH TRIALS by FRANCES HILL (1995) ★ ★ ★ ★

can you tell that it’s spooky season reading list:

A FAMILY OF KILLERS by BRYCE MOORE SURVIVE THE NIGHT by RILEY SAGER EYNHALLOW by TIM McGREGOR (not pictured) THESE SILENT WOODS by KIMI CUNNINGHAM GRANT YOU LIKE IT DARKER by STEPHEN KING

comfy culty cozy library haul for fall:

THROUGH THE NIGHT LIKE A SNAKE (LATIN AMERICAN HORROR STORIES) by VARIOUS AUTHORS

A FEW RULES FOR PREDICTING THE FUTURE (ESSAY) by OCTAVIA E. BUTLER

PARABLE OF THE TALENTS by OCTAVIA E. BUTLER

THE GATHERING DARK (FOLK HORROR ANTHOLOGY) edited by TORI BOVALINO

THE SALT GROWS HEAVY by CASSANDRA KHAW

BLACK OBSERVATORY (POEMS) by CHRISTOPHER BREAN MURRAY

PARABLE OF THE SOWER (GRAPHIC NOVEL) by OCTAVIA E. BUTLER*

*read Parable of the Sower earlier this year, ★ ★ ★ ★ ★!! The story is even more poignant, now that her predictions have come true. Rereading this in graphic novel form before I move on to the sequel, Parable of the Talents!

THE EMPUSIUM by OLGA TOKARCZUK (REVIEW)

quickly: a sickly young engineering student hopes to find healing in a scenic mountain valley village where mysteries abound (gentleman’s houses / noises in the attic / spying eyes / fear of being seen / sex dolls and shrooms / wine at dinner time / men who think women are a different species / obscuring the vision, to see more clearly / long walks around the park / those looked upon by venus and jupiter / the soul as the weakest point / the inferior superiority of men).

The story opens like a Wes Anderson film, set in 1913 Poland, in a valley between two mountain ranges with air that is mythologized to cure the infamous tuberculosis. Before our dear Mieczysław can be cured, the malaise of life at the Gentleman’s House (where men smoke cigars with their weakened lungs, and talk at quite some length about the “lesser” minds of women) becomes a mire of shadows and secrets waiting to be unraveled. As expected, this idyllic 1900s mountain town is more than it appears to be. At night, after many men have imbibed in the psychoactive “schwärmerei”, the landscape seems to stare back at the onlookers. Every fall, men die violent and mysterious deaths, as if the surrounding forest is eating them and spitting them back out. As the summer season ends, Mieczy’s anxious concerns of being ‘seen’ intensifies.

★ ★ ★ ★ Mysteriously seductive.

Slowly, just as calmly as summer gives way to the decaying color bomb of autumn, this slow burn of a “health resort horror story” ends in a flush of fire. What begins as a medical retreat for our anxious and gentle-spirited protagonist evolves into an awakening of sorts upon the discovery of a cure for an ailment Mieczy had long been prepared to disregard as a permanent inconvenience. Mieczy will discover something that no amount of men’s postulations could destroy, and it is fantastic to watch. The astrology tidbits are delicious, and always a delightful discovery to happen upon when reading Olga’s work (as in The Books of Jacob, and Drive Your Plow…). The world of this story is both scenic and seductive… like a carnivorous plant that slowly digests you as you are hypnotized by its beauty. 

You walk with Mieczy up the steep incline of a forested mountain, always wondering where the path is taking you, until suddenly you reach the peak and overlook the edge at the marvelous view down below. A soft, then hard, autumnal horror story with an ending that would make J. K. Rowling’s eyes bulge as she combusts and then evaporates. 

“...each person, each human organism, possessed a point of least resistance, a weakest point, this was the famous Achilles' heel, and it was like the law of the pearl: just as in a mollusk the grain of sand that chafes it is neutralized by mother-of-pearl, ultimately forming a jewel that we find valuable, so all the developmental lines of our psyche will arrange themselves around this weakest spot. Each anomaly stimulates a particular mental activity, a particular development, and collects it around itself. We are shaped not by what is strong within us but by the anomaly, by whatever is weak and not accepted.”

Olga Tokarczuk, The Empusium

DEVIL HOUSE by JOHN DARNIELLE (REVIEW)

quickly: a true crimes writer moves into the building where the murders in his latest book took place (a writer questioning the ethics of his process / the past catching up with the present / lasting works of art / stories about stories / small towns outside of big cities / housing, drug, and mental health crises / mothers who love their sons / SATANIC PANIC! / swords, knights, and castle doctrines / the monsters are the people, but are the people monsters?)

This is not horror and hardly a thriller. There are no ghosts, demons, or spirits. There are indeed bumps in the night, but they come from the living. It’s a fresh take on mystery writing, but not really mystery either. It’s an exposition. We follow the main character, Greg, as he completes his latest true crime novel. The voices change throughout the story, so sometimes Greg is speaking to us, other times to someone else. The fun part of this story is the writing and the behind-the-scenes peek into the world of true crime. The not-so-fun part is the ending. 

John Darnielle’s writing spirals and descends. He takes his time moving around the subject, encircling it with details, getting closer and deeper at the end of every paragraph. Then, as you are rounding the last bend, the entire picture becomes clear from the inside out. It was like unraveling a beautifully woven ball of yarn, expecting a rare jewel at its center, but finding the end of a string instead. (Maybe, this is the entire meta point of this story… life is just a series of strings ending. Nothing special.)

★ ★ ★ ★

more thoughts: SPOILERS

Some personal context… I came across this one because I was scouring the goodreads tag for “horror” and looking for interesting things that came out in the past year or two. The cover got me, as they tend to do. I rarely check the reviews before I read the story, but I always check after, just to see what there is I might have missed. I think I liked it more than most. As interesting as this book was to read, it didn’t deliver the THRILL I thought it would. It read like a poet writing a Wikipedia page… an intricate balance between truth and perception and the philosophy of cause and effect.

I recently read TROOP, and one of my gripes was the dialogue for the young teens that the story centered on. It felt so outdated and inauthentic. The dialogue, actions, and inner monologues for the teens at the center of DEVIL HOUSE were immaculate. Perfectly nuanced, and varied. The sophisticated unraveling of emotions and motivations is moving. He totally encapsulates the angst of aging. Now that I think about it, I actually would’ve loved to have seen John Darnielle do a version of TROOP.

The story is divided into 6 parts, and they each have different voices.

1: Chandler

We open with our good friend Greg Chandler, whose family lineage of kingship becomes a recurring thematic element in this story. He introduces us, right off the rip, to who he is, what he does, and his latest project. His agent has hipped him to the story of a couple of people murdered in an old porno shop in Milpitas, CA, outside of San Jose. 

He walks us through his process… one of immersion, invasion almost, that requires him to be in the places where these crimes took place. He, again with a nudge from his agent, devises a plan to purchase ‘DEVIL HOUSE’, which has been renovated, turned from a shop into a home, and is currently for sale. As he goes through the process of buying the house and moving in, he takes time to expound on the details of the case. He gives us an introduction to necessary persons and places, and at the end of Part 1, he tells us that what he discovered differs from the story that is told. He also tells us that he does not want to write the story he was sent there to write.

2: White Witch

Here, the story changes abruptly. Now, our narrator is no longer talking to us. Now, attention is directed to ‘The White Witch’, and we have become the ‘White Witch’ being addressed. (An interesting use of narration perspective, though I understand how some could find it jarring and confusing.) Eventually, we will come to know her life… a high school teacher who murdered two students while they were invading her home. Part 2 is a grand spiral around the details of her life leading up to the invasion and murder. In the open, she was just a school teacher. In the end, standing on the beach with bags of body parts, she has turned into the satanic WITCH living in the hills. Both in some real reality, but also in the minds of those always needing a villain to blame the evils of the world on.

3: Devil House

Our narrator returns to addressing us, and the White Witch’s story is paused. Now the focus returns to Milpitas, to Devil House before it was known as such. We get a grand historical overview of the influences that conspired to make the porno shop possible. This includes the history of the land and the landlord. However, the bulk of this part of the story is about the last occupants of Devil House, before our narrator Greg. 

We go back to it when it was MONSTER ADULT X, a porno shop on the side of the highway where 17-year-old Derrick works, unbeknownst to his parents who only want to best for him. MONSTER ADULT X (I’ll refer to it as MAX from here on out), is in its last days as the owner Anthony Hawley can’t keep up the rent payments.

Hawley closes the place down, but because Derrick still has his key, it is open to him. He hangs out there drawing and sketching. Then his friend Seth starts joining him. Then their homeless friend Alex, who’s been missing for some time joins them and lives there. Just at the tail end of things, Alex’s friend Angela pops in for some of the fun. 

This is their paradise, away from the impending world of adulthood and all its anxieties and broken promises. Things are fine until the landlord starts showing the place, in preparation to sell.

4: Song of Gorbonian 

A short and unexpected chapter, written in Olde English. Obviously, this is an imaginative prelude for some of the story’s later motifs and actions. Yet, it could just as well be a short story written during a reprieve Greg was taking from writing Devil House… or a rambling from one of MAX’s occupants during its last days… who’s to say? The Song of Gorbonian is a tale of a young king’s promise to avenge his father’s death and restore the gods of the old world.  

5: Devil House

In this part of the story, Greg updates us on the stories of MAX’s occupants. He catches up with modern-day Angela, Derrick, and Seth, all living different adult lives far away from Milpitas, having escaped any punishment, (but receiving tons of blame for the murders). The only one we don’t get an update on is Alex, who has managed to disappear. 

6: White Witch

Now we are back to the story of the White Witch, but not like before. Instead of standing in her place while Greg speaks to her, we are instead placed in the shoes of Jana, Jesse’s mother, one of the kids killed by Mrs. Crane, The White Witch. We are standing in Jana’s shoes as Greg reads (or summarizes rather) a letter Jana wrote. In reading this letter back to her, we come to understand the forces that shaped the life of the home invaders we met in Part 2.

In between the breaths of this letter, Greg is restoring Devil House to its former glory… breaking glass and pulling up carpets. 

7: Chandler

The perspectives change again. Now we are standing in the shoes of Greg’s childhood friend, as we reconnect with Greg after several years and he expounds on the new project he is working on, writing about a murder in Milpitas where he (we?) grew up. At the close of Part 7, we learn that this has all been a fabrication. Derrick, Seth, Angela, Alex… not one of them was real. At least, not in the form that Greg portrayed them to be in his book. The real culprits were likely men living on the streets, squatting for the night, running into the landlord, and reactions ensuing. 

Greg reveals his grand philosophy on what the public expects from true crime, and how the true story of Devil House would not satisfy the psyches of the consumers. Then the book fades out in a hazy memory of childhood, where the days were spent playing games.

Before I could complain too much about the ending, I had to remind myself that Greg told us exactly to expect: “What I learned contradicts the account I first read, which I understand to have sprung from the need for a certain sort of telling, a hunger for known quantities.” In other words, the salacious story of teens murdering to defend their clubhouse is something cooked up by the collective psyche, not by reality.

More than a fictional true crime book, this entire work seemed to be a rumination of the big machine of true crime itself and how we respond to these violent acts as a society. What do we want from these stories? Who do these acts of violence affect? At one end of a story, a person may look like a demon, but if we trace back all the influences and occurrences, we may find this person may have been someone else at some point… and if it is true that they were someone else, how much responsibility do we place on all the option-less choices people are forced to make, and on the uncontrollable forces that shape the boundaries of our lives?

THE TROOP by NICK CUTTER (REVIEW)

quickly: a troop of young teenage boy scouts are left to their own dangerous devices after their scoutmaster is killed by a mysterious virus (boys who are just like their fathers / strange men in the night / a young devil in disguise / insatiable appetites / bad weather out at sea / guts, guts, guts, and guts / the lifecycle of worms / the stank of peer pressure and performative masculinity / the government and all of its branches).

I was expecting some unsung masterpiece of horror but came upon a campfire story instead. Not a bad campfire story! Blood, gore, sabotage, and the fleshiness of parasitic creatures… but this won’t keep me up a night. Fun though, like something caught between a Goosebumps book and a Fear Street book. I wish the writing for the kids had been better. Their vernacular seemed outdated, like kids who grew up in the 80s. (I paused reading at Chapter 10 to check the date of publication.) Also, some of their topics of discussion seemed outrageous (how often did you discuss or think about what your parenting style would be for your children, AT FOURTEEN?) Up the age of the kids from middle school to high school or college, and so much more of the story would seem fitting.

★ ★ ★

YOU LIKE IT DARKER by STEPHEN KING (REVIEW)

quickly: a perfect collection of stephen king short stories (men with unearthly talents / madness and murder / stolen lifetimes / psychic dreams and punished deeds / balancing bad luck and good / grandpa’s still got it / an unseen invasion / angels on airplanes / dogs are friends, gators are not / strollers full of rattlesnakes / gentleman scientists / a man with all the answers).

Well yes, Stephen, I *do* like it dark. What a delightful page-turning collection of short horror stories with a wide range of subgenres… detective suspense thrillers… sci-fi alien invasions… and even a couple of heartfelt dramas.

My favorites were Willie the Weirdo (a grandfather and grandson share a suspiciously strange connection), Danny Coughlin’s Bad Dream (a nightmare gives an old man hell in real life), On Slide Inn Road (a family encounters a couple of hoodlums on an abandoned backroad), The Turbulence Expert (a man uses his perception to change fate), Rattlesnakes (a man on vacation grieving the death of his wife becomes entangled with a haunted woman), and The Answer Man (three encounters with a man who knows everything changes one man’s experience of life and time).

I’ll have to admit this is my first King read (and a perfect introduction) though I’ve seen all the movies, shows, and miniseries based on his work. On paper, like on-screen, the stories felt distinctly American™. Like the feeling of eating a double-meat cheeseburger and fries, then washing it down with a ridiculously gigantic can of Coke. Fast, but filling, and oh-what-fun my taste buds had (though my arteries may clog if I overdo it…).

★★★★★ So fun.

"One thing seldom asked of those on whom disaster had laid its hand is what their future plans were before the flood. "

John Darnielle, The Devil House

THE BURNING GIRLS by C. J. TUDOR (REVIEW)

quickly: a woman of the cloth relocates to small-town England and uncovers a long-kept community secret. (single mom with a repressed past and a rebellious teen daughter / creepy blair witch stick dolls / ghostly apparitions / family secrets turning into community secrets / rich men controlling local government / a random spree killer).

quaint, quiet English towns are some of the most dangerous places on Earth. this is what The Burning Girls confirms in a story that feels like the UK version of a Fear Street novel. the chapters are short and quick, often ending with a cliffhanger. ‘good vs. evil’ and ‘nature vs. nurture’ are major motifs in this story, sometimes stereotypically so, sometimes uninspired. i wish there was more thrill and horror… with the lore behind what a ‘burning girl’ represents, there was the potential to go so much further. while i love the author’s tone and style, the substance lacked.

★ ★ ★

more thoughts: SPOILERS!

Some personal context… I picked this book out based on a search I did for ’theological horror’. I was trying to decide whether or not I was going to read the non-fiction book “Heathen: Religion and Race in American History”. As I’m already reading a non-fiction book on Indigenous American history, ”Indigenous Continent: The Epic Contest for North America”, and I just completed the lengthy “The Books of Jacob”, I was hesitant to read another lengthy non-fiction book.

My thought process was… I can soothe my horror itch and my religious history itch by reading a book that combined both. If the book was intriguing enough, then I’d move on to Heathen by Kathyrn. I found several books that fell into the theological horror genre, and ‘Burning Girl’s’ was a newer one, so I picked it. Sadly, it did not inspire me to reach for non-fiction theological history. While not bad, it didn’t capture what was interesting about the religious lore of Sussex England that the title and cover art so openly refer to.

The title is what truly caught my eye: THE BURNING GIRLS. That, paired with the promise of uncovering church mysteries, pulled me in.

The story opens with Reverend Jack, short for Jacqueline, who is being informed that she is being relocated to a distant Sussex community after an unfortunate occurrence at her church in Nottingham. Essentially, she wasn’t able to save an abused child from their parents and was partially blamed when the parents murdered the child. 

She moves to Chapel Croft with her 15-year-old daughter, a small village where everyone knows everyone, and her arrival is big news. Immediately, both mother and daughter have separate encounters with appearances of ‘burning girls’, ghostly apparitions who appear to be on fire, and missing bodily limbs. Reverend Jack is coincidentally informed that the creepy stick dolls everywhere are to commemorate the girls and families burned during religious wars back in Olde England. She’s also informed that seeing a ghost of a burning girl is a warning of impending danger.

As the story goes on, Revered Jack’s back story is unfurled. She comes from an abusive home with a psychotic spree-killing brother who is responsible for the death of her husband (who was also a pastor). Just before her move, she was informed that her brother was released from prison. While she thinks she is evading him by moving to Chapel Croft, unbeknownst to her, he is ruthlessly and methodically making his way to her and leaving a trail of bodies in his wake.

All the characters are dealing with some form of ‘good vs. evil’ struggle, most evident in Reverend Jack’s brother, who seems to have a voice within that he compels him to do evil deeds. There are also several references to the great question of whether or not people can be born bad, and what it means to be bad vs. being a good person doing a bad thing. To be honest, the word count could’ve been better spent exploring the wild history of the burning girls. 

Anyways, fast forward past two girls who went missing long ago being discovered in a well, the dead body of a missing priest being found buried under the church, a devious teenage boy found living with the dead body of his mother, and that same boy plotting the killing of Revered Jack’s daughter simply to please his equally devious killer girlfriend. Oh yeah, I forgot, did I mention that randomly, in the background of the main events, Reverend Jack’s brother has been traveling the countryside on foot and killing anyone who crosses his path?

The story ends in the loud gory cacophony of noise and violence that most B-level thrillers tend to end in. The psycho-killer teens confront Revered Jack and her daughter in the church for the big climax, which results in Jack killing the teens, and the church being set on fire in the process. At the last moment, just before Reverend Jack is engulfed by the flames, her psycho-killer brother rescues her. The people he killed to get to her kind of fade into the background as if his character’s sole purpose was to represent the bad person who does a good thing (in contrast to Reverend Jack being the good person who does a bad thing).

The miasma of “Good and Evil” that this story exists in is muddier than it is inspiring. Too many angels and devils in this garden if you ask me. And again, the gem, the burning girls, barely get any page time! Three stars. Not horrible, but not anything I am compelled to recommend. That said, I’d still love to try THE CHALK MAN, by this author, and give her another chance.