BEST OF 2020: BOOKS

Overall, 2020 was a good year for me to get through a lot of books that had just been sitting on my shelf but the most notable thing I can say about last year is that I read a lot of art books and a lot of film books that made up half of the thirty books I did get through.

 

I can honestly say that I only read one book that was actually published last year which is Don Delillo’s The Silence: A Novel.  It is the first book of his that I have read although his Cosmopolis is still sitting on my shelf waiting to be read.  Delillo has a very unique style of writing like Hunter S. Thompson or if you’re not into reading style then this is definitely not for you, but it is a quick read.

 

STEPHEN KING & CLIVE BARKER:

Two authors that I had not read in years I finally decided to get back to during the downtime I had during the pandemic.  Regarding King, I decided to start off small with his short novellas Elevation and Gwendy’s Button Box (with co-author Richard Chizmar).  I loved both and they reminded me why I enjoyed reading King so much which is his great use of character.  For Barker I read his First Tales, The Adventures of Mr. Maximillan Bacchus and His Traveling Circus and the art book Clive Barker Illustrator.  It has been a while since I have read both authors, but it was great to get back to them as I picked up a couple of their other novels to read for 2021!

 

ART BOOKS:

I took some time during 2020 to get back to my art studies.  In addition to Clive Barker Illustrator which delved deep into his art and influences I read Pandemonium: Further Explorations into the Worlds of Clive Barker.  The later book delved deep into both Barker’s art, theater, and film work.   I got through two books by David Mack – Dream Logic and Reflections: Art Book Vol. 1.  I have always loved his work and sense of style and technique and have been following his career for years.  These two books allowed me great insight into his art and process.   The next actual artist whose book I looked at was Dave McKean’s Dust Covers: The Collected Sandman Covers 1989-1997.  I have been a fan of his for as long as the original Sandman series was published (that is when I was first exposed to his amazing style and art).  This book allowed me to read his insights and hindsight on how many of his most iconic pieces were created for the series.  The last artist that I will mention is celebrated graphic novel artist Will Eisner and his book Graphic Storytelling & Visual Narrative. So, anyone who has been keeping up with me will know that I was only exposed to Eisner two years ago and I have been on a quest to read everything he is written.  Now I am moving on to his non-fiction and art books of which this is the first.  I am sure I will have plenty more to speak of in 2021 once I read more of his books.

For 2020 I only read two art history books – The Origins of Christian Art (by Michael Gough) and Baroque And Rococo Art (by Germaine Bazin).  I need to read more of these for 2021 as I would like to get through about 5-8 of these style books a year to keep my brain learning about art history.

 

FILM BOOKS:

I love reading about the making of films which makes up a huge number of the books I read each year and 2020 was no different.  I read three books in the Devil’s Advocates library which include In the Mouth of Madness (by Michael Blyth), Ju-On: The Grudge (by Marisa Hayes), and The Thing (by Jez Conolly).  Each of these books do an excellent job of breaking down all the elements of these films.  They are also short yet very comprehensive so that fans of the films and filmmakers can get a grand insight into the film and its legacy.  This series does focus more on horror and cult cinema.  The next series of books I read are two from the World Directors series.  From that series I read the books on Atom Egoyan (by Jonathan Romney) and Jane Campion (by Dana Polan).  Atom Egoyan is a great read and I love the way that Romney organized and presented the material.  I was not as taken with Polan’s Jane Campion book, but I did the added insight on Campion’s career and influences.

Regarding non-series books, I did (finally) get around to reading On Location…On Martha’s Vinyard: The Making of the Movie Jaws by Edith Blake which is one of the most famous behind the scenes books ever written.  It is indeed an amazing and candid look at the making of the film and a book I recommend to anyone wanting to know what a real film set is like.  With Tom Savini’s book Night of the Living Dead ’90: The Version You’ve Never Seen readers get a look at Savini’s film the way it was originally intended through storyboards and annotations that put the film a whole different light.

The final book in this section that I would like to discuss is The Name of the Book is Dogma95 by Richard Kelly.  I have an interest in this film movement and this book is made up of interviews of everyone who was involved with it in addition to giving a history and a context for the movement.

 

NOVELS:

My interests in 2020 was all over the map!  In addition to all the novels I have already mentioned I read several that were based on films and television shows or vice versa like Jack Sharkey’s The Addams Family (an anthology of different stories that could easily be episodes of the show), The Nightmares on Elm Street Parts 4&5 (by Joseph Locke), A Monster Calls (by Patrick Ness, Siobhan Dowd, and Jim Kay), The Thing (Novelization by Alan Dean Foster based on the Screenplay by Bill Lancaster), Solaris (by Stanislaw Lem), and Annihilation (by Jeff Vandermeer).  Now I enjoyed all these books, but Solaris and Annihilation were amazing!  I am now going to start reading more from both authors because I love their sense of storytelling and style.  The Thing has a lot of scenes that went missing from actual film which made reading the novelization that much better whereas The Nightmares on Elm Street were pretty much spot on except Part 5 changed a lot regarding the way in which people were killed.

The novels that fell outside of those is Hollow City: The Second Novel of Miss Peregrine’s Peculiar Children (by Ransom Riggs), The Tibetan Book of the Dead (which had no author), and my second Ryu Murakami novel Sixty-Nine.  Murakami is an excellent writer that more people should get to know his work.  I have finally started to return to Riggs series and my hope is to catch up by the end of 2021!

 

***

With having read thirty books in 2020 I kind of hit my goal since the plan was to read between 25 and 35.  It was 50 percent both non-fiction verses fiction which is also good.  Normally, I end up reading more non-fiction than fiction which is why my shelf of unread books never seems to go down, but I am hoping that 2021 will be a change in the right direction. 

For 2021 I am hoping to finish the Southern Reach and Miss Peregrine’s Peculiar Children series in addition to catching up with my Steve Alten Meg series (which I did not read any last year).  I am hoping to get maybe five King novels read and a whole lot more art and film books, so it will be interesting to see how 2021 stacks up to 2020.

 

Now I want everyone to go away and pick of a book and turn off Nextflix for once.

 

Top 10 Favorite Horror Novels

Anyone that knows me knows that I love horror and I love reading horror novels as well.  A lot of my favorite novelist work in the horror genre so it was easy putting together a list of some of my favorite novelist but picking just my favorite novels was a little trickier so if nothing more, I hope you enjoy this list and it makes you go out and seek some of these novels out to read yourself.  Enjoy this, what was one of my favorite “Top 10” list to put together and don’t forget to post your comments and put together your own list:

      1.       Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux

      2.       Misery by Stephen King

      3.       The Hellbound Heart by Clive Barker

      4.       The Exorcist by William Peter Blatty

      5.       The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson

      6.       World War Z by Max Brooks

      7.       The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka

      8.       The Meg by Steve Alten

      9.       Ringu by Koji Suzuki

     10.   The Books of Blood (all volumes) by Clive Barker

Top 10 Favorite Fantasy Novels

I hate to say this but I’m not really a fan of fantasy novels. I’ve read a handful of your typical fantasy novels but I steer closer to the dark fantasy of Clive Barker than most of your typical authors so for the following “Top 10” list you will see a healthy percentage of Clive Barker titles.  I hope you enjoy this list and don’t forget to leave your comments and post your own list (so I know what I need to read):

      1.       Stardust/Coraline by Neil Gaiman

      2.       Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury

      3.       The Thief of Always by Clive Barker

      4.       Sacrament by Clive Barker

      5.       Weaveworld by Clive Barker

      6.       Animal Farm by George Orwell

      7.       Watership Down by Richard Adams

      8.       The Green Mile by Stephen King

      9.       Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

     10.   Miss Peregrine’s Home For Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs

Top 10 Favorite Books

It is hard to create a list of favorite novels especially considering that I have more favorite authors than novels so some of my favorites will inevitably get left off which is why with this list of favorite novels I will explain why I love some of these novels and the writer that wroth it.  Enjoy!  I would love for you to list your own “Top 10” and post them and don’t forget to comment of this list.  The list is in no particular order and don’t for get to check out some of my other Lists:

      1.       The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson

      2.       The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux

      3.       Sacrament/Weaveworld by Clive Barker – I can’t really choose between these two as they are both some of the best written modern fantasy I’ve ever read!

      4.       Congo/Sphere/Airframe by Michael Crichton – He is my favorite author of all time so it’s hard for me to decide which of these three are my favorites but Airframe does get elevated a bit higher as it is the one I’d love to direct as a film

      5.       The Exorcist/Legion by William Peter Blatty – The Exorcist is the better novel but Legion was the first novel of his I ever read which prompted me to go out and look for his other novels.

      6.       Ringu/Loop/Dark Water by Koji Suzuki – All three are equally magnificent (as are pretty much everything he writes) but Loop does edge out the other just a little as it has such an amazing premise with some heady themes and ideas like a Crichton novel

      7.       The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka

      8.       Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri – I absolutely love her writing and think she can do no wrong and even though I think all of her work are masterpieces this is one of the few anthologies I think every story is a masterpiece

      9.       The Stepford Wives/Rosemary’s Baby by Ira Levin – A tie with these two as it’s hard to decide which is the better novel.

      10.   Misery by Stephen King – This may not be his best novel but it is the novel from which if I had never read it, I would have never read anything else he did.  This is the first book of his that I ever read in high school and I’ve been a fan ever since.  Even after all the other novels of his I’ve read I can still remember my first experience reading this one when most of the other novels I’ve forgotten the experience.

RANTS & RAVINGS ABOUT HORROR – “HOW MONSTER FILMS DEFINED MY LIFE”

RANTS & RAVINGS ABOUT HORROR – “HOW MONSTER FILMS DEFINED MY LIFE”

Early this year during the 2017 Something Wicked Film Festival (www.somethingwickedfilmfestival.com), Festival Panel Moderator Jim Adams created a panel discussion that would forever define the future of panel discussions for the event (especially since I’m the Festival Director and I just hired him to be the Official Festival Panel Moderator.  One of Mr. Adams’ first duties were to come up with some original ideas for new panel discussions and thus “How Monster Films Defined My Life” was born. 

Now I know part of the reason why Mr. Adams decided on this topic for a panel discussion is because he has the podcast “Monster Attacks!” where he has spoken at length about his love for monster films.  For many people, monster films from the Universal horrors of Dracula and The Wolfman to Hammer Studios’ Frankenstein and The Mummy were defining characters of fear from childhood.  For more modern audiences there is Leatherface and that dream demon Freddy not to mention the likes of Ghostface Killer and The Jigsaw Killer.  No matter which decade, audiences have their own nightmare monster that haunts them or fascinates them to no end.

I was one of the film-makers on this panel discussion and one of the films that defined my childhood was the Joe Dante film Gremlins (1984).  I saw this in the theater in ’84 at the early age of 8 and it left an undeniable impression on me.  The monsters were both cute and cuddly and dangerous and fun at the same time.  It was like watching a bunch of unruly children at play able to do whatever they wanted.  It also had an amazing soundtrack by Jerry Goldsmith (who became my all-time favorite music composer).  The film was dark and horrifying as well as funny and entertaining.  It had the perfect mixture of comedy and horror and part of that is due to the very dark photography of the film and the fluid cinematography.  It truly became one of my all-time favorite films for which my love for other monsters would grow.

 

I didn’t grow up with the black & white Universal monsters nor had I seen many of the bloody Hammer Studio films until I became a big horror fan in my teenage and college years.  The next monster I gravitated to was that of the Good-Guy doll Chucky.  When I saw Child’s Play (1988) I had never seen anything like it before.  A serial killer uses Voodoo to possess a doll and to continue his killing spree.  Even though this film played straight into horror (unlike the more comedic sequels) it still was quite fun and entertaining.  By ’88 when this film was released and I was eleven years old I had already become a horror fan but nothing had defined my true love of the genre just yet until this film.  I got the poster for the film from the nearby Video Store (how I miss these establishments) and I placed it lovingly on my bedroom wall (where it was later joined by posters of the second and third films).  It was the first poster I ever put on my wall but it would not be the last.

I followed the continuing exploits of Chucky to cinema with Child’s Play 2 (1990) and Child’s Play 3 (1991) which I had to beg my Father to take me to since I was too young for the R-Rated horror.  At this point I did come to realize how much I loved horror films but more importantly – monster films.

At this point you could say I went looking for monsters as I learned to love all monsters big or small.

It wasn’t until Clive Barker’s Nightbreed (1990) that I wished I was one of the amazing monsters that populated our magnificent world.  Barker crafted a story where the monsters were the good guys while man was the bad guy.  This film defined the idea of what a monster could truly become.  The monsters in Barker’s film were deformed and misunderstood as well as dangerous and fascinating.

It was after this that I became a true and everlasting monster fan.  From the films featuring Godzilla and his rogue’s gallery to the Cenobites of the world of Hellraiser I loved monsters both other-worldly and those more human.  My favorites were monsters not easily described or defined like those in Christine (1983), The Thing (1982), Puppet Master (1994), Critters (1986), and especially Killer Clowns From Outer Space (1988), to name but a small few.

I most certainly enjoyed the exploits of Michael Myers and Leatherface (and family) and even those Freddy films but it was with these non-human monsters that I enjoyed more and would later define my love and appreciation of horror.  For me, monsters aren’t defined as either good nor evil but in most films, they are simply just trying to survive and do what comes naturally.  This is the defining trait of King Kong and Godzilla as well as many other timeless monster films.

Serial killers and mass murders are interesting but monsters are something from the imagination where anything that can be dreamed can become a reality.  Therefore, they’ve had such a profound effect on me as not only a film maker but a storyteller and a film lover.  If nothing else, I implore others to seek out monster movies not just for pure entertainment and enjoyment but to understand oneself and the world in which we live (and the one created for the monsters to live in).  It’s never too late to enjoy a good monster film.

To view the entire “How Monster Movies Defined My Life” panel discussion go here - https://vimeo.com/238990857

Film Review: LAST SHIFT (2014)

I really enjoyed director Anthony DiBlasi’s adaptation of Clive Barker’s Dread (2009) so I was intrigued for the film Last Shift (2014).  Written by DiBlasi and Scott Poiley the film follows the first day of rookie police officer Jessica Loren (Juliana Harkavy) during the last night of a police precinct set to shut its doors permanently.  By herself at the station, she gets a mysterious phone call from a girl claiming to need help but with no support staff she doesn’t know how she can help.  She also starts to see things and a homeless man seems to be able to get in and out of the station despite all the doors being locked.  Soon she begins to realize that everything is not what it seems to be. 

Harkavy is an extremely capable actress who holds her own throughout the film very well.  DiBlasi’s direction is also key to keeping audiences on edge throughout since the film is almost exclusively on Harkavy’s shoulders.  I’m the first to admit I’m not a fan of the “jump scare” and this film is filled with them.  It actually is a crutch for the film as by the halfway mark it seems like that is the only way the film knows how to unnerve the audience and it becomes repetitive really fast.  

The film wants to shock and awe but it lacks any real suspense.  Harkavy does a good job keeping the film moving forward but the biggest trick is not boring the audience as they slowly learn the truth about the police station as her character does.  The film isn’t the best of its kind but it does have great make-up FX and a brilliant score that is creepy and fits well with the film.

2015 YEAR IN REVIEW: “GRAPHIC NOVELS”

Despite not reading a lot of novels and books in 2015, I read over 150 graphic novels from the mainstream companies of Marvel and DC to the more independent Image, Dark Horse and Boom! Studios.  What may surprise many of you is that I didn’t read a single superhero comic in all of 2015.  I don’t really like superhero comics and haven’t really read one in almost twenty years (no lie) and even though most of what I was reading in the ‘00s was manga I read very little of that this year as well.  Most of tastes in reading material was more serious or avant garde or surreal. 

First I’ll break down just what I was reading in 2015 by company and then get into the real interest of what you probably want to know which is just what I was reading.  Dark Horse was the clear winner this year with a whopping 47 graphic novels read, almost twice as many as any other company.  A lot of this you can thank Mike Mignola for as I read all of his work from Hellboy, B.P.R.D., Abe Sapien , Lobster Johnson, Baltimore, and Sir Edward Grey: Witchfinder, which all had several new graphic novels published last year.  Another huge contributor is the Aliens franchise which had the 4-part “Fire & Stone” saga with Aliens/Predator/Alien V. Predator/Prometheus all with parts.  Going to some order titles that I missed I read the entire 3-volume saga of “Mail” as well as several volumes of Astro Boy (Volumes 12-14) and two massive Omnibus collections of Ghost (Vol. 4-5), which is the closest to a superhero comic that I’ll get.  Another huge oldie-but-goodie is Sergio Aragones’ Groo of which I read seven volumes; I was really interested in reading something I hadn’t read since I was a kid and none of these volumes I had ever read before including the most recent release of “Groo Vs. Conan.”  I caught up with Bryan Talbot’s Sherlock Holmes homage Grandville (with 3 volumes I hadn’t read before) as well as a surprise to me, three volumes of the video game adaptation Halo (which took over the property from Marvel). I’ve never played the game nor seen the animated film so this was a complete gamble on my part that I actually really enjoyed.  Dark Horse also finished up one of my all-time favorite series “The Massive” (2-volumes read), which I highly recommend to everyone.  There are some other stand alone titles that I read but as you can see, I really enjoy the vast variety that this company has to offer.

 

IDW is up next with twenty-six graphic novels that I read.  The big winner here is Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles since I read twelve volumes from this series.  I’m a huge fan of the turtles and IDW has done an amazing job with reprinting the old comics as well as the new ones; 80% of these included reprints of the classics while the rest was made up of the new series and spin-offs.  The other major contributor was Godzilla with the “Cataclysm” and “Rulers of the Earth” series (4-volumes in all).  I tried out a couple new titles with Sam Kieth & Chris Ryall’s “The Hollows” and the first volume of “Edward Scissorhands”  but most of what I also read had me catching up with various volumes of “The Crow” and “Deadworld.”  IDW also happens to have brought back new iterations of “Winterworld” and “The X-Files” Season 10.”

Image has the luck of having most of the ongoing series that I read (with 18 volumes overall).  Here is where I read the latest from “Black Science” (2-volumes), “Hack/Slash” (“Son of Samhain” story), “Intersect” (1-volume), “Low” (2-volumes), “The Manhattan Projects” (2-volumes), “Outcasts” (2-volumes), “Pretty Deadly” (1-volume), “Revival” (1-volume), “Trees” (1-volume), “Chew” (1-volume, “Wytches” (1-volume), and everyone’s favorite “The Walking Dead” (2-volumes).  The only Image volume I picked up not associated with an ongoing series was the third volume of Joseph Michal Linsner’s “Dawn” (the story “Three Tiers”), which I original had in single issue form but now have it on my shelf with the others (plus it gave me a chance to reread the story all at once).

Boom! Studios doesn’t have many series that I continuously read but they do produce a lot of great one-offs (10 volumes read).   Of the series that I do read “John Carpenter’s Big Trouble in Little China” (1-volume), “Clive Barker’s Hellraiser: The Death Watch” (1-volume), “Clive Barker’s Nightbreed” (1-volume), “The Woods” (1-volume), and “Planet of the Apes: Cataclysm” (3-volumes).  The special one-offs I read (that are note worthy) are “Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials – Official Graphic Novel Prelude”, “The Calling: Cthulhu Chronicles”, and “Tag: Deluxe Edition.”  As you can see, the only books I read from this company are properties licensed from films.  I’m not even sure if they publish that many original properties.

Down further on the list we come to Viz Media (8 volumes read).   They had a big year (for me any ways) with the release of the five-volume “Resident Evil: The Marhawa Desire”.  I love the Resident Evil franchise and even though I thought this was only a mediocre series it kept me entertained throughout the year.  The other monumental releases for the company (in my opinion) were Inio Asano’s “Solanin” and the Battle Royale prequel “Battle Royale: Angels’ Border.”  I also read the first volume in Kazuo Umezu’s “Cat Eyed Boy.”

Now we get down to Marvel, which I only read eight volumes for the whole year three of which belong to “George A. Romero’s Empire of the Dead.”  I read more zombies with “Marvel Zombies Christmas Carol” and had a great time Down Under with “Dexter Down Under” based on the novels and television series.  I also read the last volume of “Halo: The Fall of Reach – Invasion” (before that series moved to Dark Horse) and the first volume in the “Kick-Ass” saga (so I will at least have to finish that series in 2016) but the one volume I truly loved was reading Mark Millar & Terry Dodson’s “Trouble,” which I recommend to everyone.

With DC/Vertigo I decided to catch up with everything I had missed (6 volumes read) starting off with the original “Sandman” (1-volume) and “American Vampire” (2-volumes).  “American Vampire” was suggested to me and I overlooked at first because I really don’t care for vampire stories (hence why I wasn’t a big fan of Romero’s “Empire of the Dead”), but I must say that this is an excellent series that I will continue to read all the way through.  I also read both the “Prelude to the Blockbuster Film” and the “Inspired Artists” graphic novels for Mad Max: Fury Road but the true stand-out was the adaptation of Stieg Larsson’s “The Girl Who Played With Fire: A Graphic Novel.”  This was truly an amazing read and overall book and I can’t wait to read the final book in the trilogy.

There are twenty-six more graphic novels that I read from a variety of companies but I’ll just highlight the major ones worth reading.  At the top of the list “March: Book Two” (Top Shelf Publishing), which is one of my favorite graphic novels of the year.  This series should be at the top of everyone’s reading list.  Another great read is “Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children: The Graphic Novel” (Yen Press), Osamu Tezuka’s “Barbara” (Platnum Manga), “Jim Henson’s The Dark Crystal: Creation Myths Vol. III” (Archaia), “The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath” (Self Made Hero), Grant Calof’s “H20: Graphic Novel” (Liquid Comics), Max Brooks & Caanan White’s “The Harlem Hellfighters” (Broadway Books), “Killing Geronimo: The Hunt for Osama Bin Laden” (Gallery Books), Inio Asano’s “Nuigahara Holograph” (Fantagraphics Books), “Trick ‘R Treat: Days of the Dead” (Legendary), Jeff Lemire’s “The Underwater Welder” (Top Shelf Publishing) and Anne Rice’s “The Wolf Gift: The Graphic Novel” (Yen Press).

As you can see, I was very busy reading a lot of graphic novels in 2015 and I didn’t even mention all the ones I didn’t really care for.  The reason why the list is so massive this year compared to previous years is the fact that I’m able to read so many more on my Nook.  I would say that a good 60-70% of these books are on my Nook which I find makes it faster for me to read and more often (I’ve managed to read all of Mike Mignola’s series on my Nook).  As for my favorites, I will just list them below.  These are all titles I highly recommend to everyone:

 

*”Fire & Stone” Saga – Alien/Predator/AVP/Prometheus

*”Barbara” by Osamu Tezuka

*”The Dark Crystal: Creation Myths”

*”The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath”

*”The Harlem Hellfighters”

*”March” (Book One and Two)

*”The Massive”

*”Chew”

*”The Hollows” by Sam Kieth & Chris Ryall

*”Killing Geronimo: The Hunt for Osama Bin Laden”

*”Low”

*”Nuigahara Holograph” and “Solanin” by Inio Asano

*”Trees”

*”Wytches”

*”The Underwater Welder” by Jeff Lemire

*”Trouble” by Mark Millar & Terry Dodson