Are any of you familiar with Ramsey Campbell? Apparently he "is perhaps the world's most-honored author of horror fiction" and "has won more awards than any other living author of horror or dark fantasy." (The Wikipedia article features even higher praise; in speaking of him, author S. T. Joshi apparently wrote, "future generations will regard him as the leading horror writer of our generation, every bit the equal of Lovecraft or Blackwood." Wow.) I'm reading his 2012 novel The Kind Folk for a horror book club I joined late last year.

It's... bad. Like, really bad. The writing isn't just amateurish or unpolished; it's not even simplistic in the way many children's books are written -- it's more like the writing a child (say, a fifth grader) would produce after a couple of revisions. So far (and admittedly I'm only four chapters in) the story is incredibly weak, too. Campbell is in the habit of writing very short chapters (generally 3-5 pages), which I assume is intended to keep the reader engaged -- it's easy to keep saying, "Oh, I'll just read the next chapter," when the chapters are so brief -- but each chapter could literally be summarized in a single sentence without losing anything essential or valuable because the writing is wholly lacking in sophistication and depth. It's so empty that I can barely focus on it; somewhere in the middle of the second page I had to flip to various other parts of the book to see if the writing ever improves. It doesn't. (more...)

Having finished reading John Ajvide Lindqvist's novel Let the Right One In (and the short story sequel, "Let the Old Dreams Die"), last night I watched the Swedish and American film versions back to back. And... it was an interesting experience. I first saw the American film nearly a year after I saw the Swedish one, so it wasn't entirely fresh in my mind -- but from what I recalled the American movie seemed like a superfluous remake of the original, made only for people who for whatever reason can't abide subtitles or dubs. And while it does seem that the American movie is more an adaptation of the Swedish film than of the original novel, my previous opinion of the film isn't *quite* right. (more...)

So this week I started reading Asura Girl by Otaro Maijo, which I think I acquired during one of a friend's book purges. I don't recall what initially moved me to take the title home, but one of the things that persuaded me to read it now was my curiosity concerning prose translated from Japanese. Shusaku Endo's Silence ranks among the most satisfying and thought-provoking books I've ever read, but I haven't read any Japanese novels besides that.

About halfway into Asura Girl -- and having looked up some additional information about the book online -- I'm finding myself wondering about other details, like the fact that the book is written in first person and the protagonist is a 17-year-old girl, yet the author was a 30-year-old man when the book was released. The book also won the Mishima Yukio Prize for that year, which seems surprising because it's not all that good (at least so far, and admitting that whatever elegance the original prose possessed was perhaps lost in translation) and Yukio Mishima is kind of a big deal in Japanese literature. But the depiction of Japanese teenage culture is intriguing because of how alien it seems (to me; it might not seem that strange to others), and what story there is is interesting enough (though so far the novel has largely consisted of the teen female protagonist's musings, hence my curiosity regarding the reality of the author's age and sex), so I'm sufficiently motivated to keep reading.

Okay, I bought them yesterday -- since it's after 3AM now -- but still. I don't often buy CDs (it's free to download music, and I don't mean illegally; Amazon's got lots of free tracks and there's Freegal for library members, among the many free songs artists and DJs offer up on their websites), but the library had a $1 per CD or 5/$4 sale going on and, after browsing the selection, I decided I was probably going to get three of them. So why not get two more for just another buck, right?? That's how they get ya.

CDs purchased:

1. Peter Gabriel - Shaking the Tree
2. The Cure - Wish
3. Annie Lennox - Songs of Mass Destruction
4. 10,000 Maniacs - Blind Man's Zoo
5. This Mortal Coil - Blood

I also bought two books: The Haunted and the Haunters, a collection of ghost stories selected by Kathleen Lines, and Spider-Man: Midnight Justice... the latter of which was apparently not enjoyed at all by the author of the linked review. Oh well, it was a quarter and features VENOM. And might make for a fun SC review someday.

And I bought a DVD! Matango: Attack of the Mushroom People. I'd never heard of it before... but holy shit it looks awesome! And it's rocking a 6.4 on IMDb, which surprises the heck out of me for a film like this.

Aaaand that'll do it for this post! Now, because it's totally what I should be doing instead of sleeping, I'm going to head to the basement and photograph action figures. See ya next time. ;p

I just read a book!
The title: Vampire Haiku.
It was amusing.

I'd never really thought about the existence of novellas in haiku, but that's pretty much what Ryan Mecum's Vampire Haiku is! It's not really a continuous story -- the book is presented as the haiku journal of one vampire, and mostly they simply consist of observations and that aren't necessarily connected -- but there is a certain consistency and there are references to past events. Most of the entries are also dated, though a lot of time passes between written dates -- sometimes decades. The book is only 137 pages yet purports to span nearly 400 years (it begins in 1620 and concludes in 2009). (more...)