2025 Book Club, the rest of the damn year or something
4I finally read Tom O’Neill’s CHAOS: Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret History of the Sixties, which is essentially his memoir of unsuccessfully researching the Family and the Tate-La Bianca killings. It’s… okay. Inconclusive. Full of unsubstantiated rumors and ideas. Not as good as The Family by Ed Sanders. But of course, very little is as good as The Family if you’re in the mood for unsubstantiated rumors, especially if you have access to a pre-lawsuit edition.
After a long wait on Libby, I borrowed The Last Days of Jack Sparks by Jason Arnopp, which I really enjoyed. It is a comedic horror novel about an unpleasant journalist researching the occult. For reasons. And stuff happens
SPOILERS: you can tell from the title/basic description that it’s going to be something in the Late Night With the Devil/Lisa and the Devil/Barton Fink vein, so the fun is how everything plays out. What made me unreasonably happy was that a huge portion of the plot was directly inspired by/based on the book Conjuring Up Philip: An Adventure in Psychokinesis. I lost my copy in a long-ago flood, but it has a firm place in my heart.
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I went to look up the Jack Sparks book and our library doesn’t own it. Turns out I bought it on kindle in 2021 so I’ll queue it up.
I finally finished No One Gets Out Alive by Adam Neville. I didn’t like it and it slowed down my reading a lot. I really need to learn to quit.
So I lightened up my reading with It Came From Del Rio: the Bunnyhead Chronicles by Stephen Graham Jones. I like his stuff, I’m partway through a collection of his short stories. It got pretty dark for a while but I enjoyed it.
I’m also reading Paperbacks from Hell by Grady Hendrix when I have a few minutes here and there. Which led to picking up The House Next Door by Anne Rivers Siddon. It’s her only horror book and pretty creepy. It’s also well written.
4th quarter? what time machine are you all in?
@Cerridwyn
We all do our reading in the future. We’re clever that way.
@Cerridwyn @f00l Oh dear. Do you think someone could change it, just make it rest of the damn year or something?
SPOILER: Could be another The Last Days of Jack Sparks spoiler, I suppose.
@Cerridwyn @f00l @mossygreen I bet @Ignorant or @narfcake could help you with that. I think it’s pretty funny, though. Especially f00l’s explanation.
@Cerridwyn @f00l @mossygreen
@Ignorant to the rescue
@f00l @Ignorant @Kyeh @mossygreen @narfcake
Snicker
/showme dastardly mutley snickering
@Cerridwyn @f00l @Ignorant @mossygreen
Excellent!
@Cerridwyn @mossygreen
Good fix. Now iwe can go back to being stealth about our “reading in the future” skillz
@Cerridwyn @f00l @Ignorant @Kyeh @mossygreen Except for Dick’s teeth/gums. I think they have dentures falling out, which would track with their character’s age now.
@Cerridwyn @f00l @mossygreen
Hahaha. Love it. @Ignorant was very literal when it was changed. Or something.
@Cerridwyn @f00l @Ignorant @mossygreen @pakopako By “excellent ,” I meant the adjusted headline, which is perfect and much more fun than the usual.
@Cerridwyn @f00l @Ignorant @Kyeh @mossygreen @pakopako There’s Halloween stuff for sale everywhere so it’s October, right?
When I was up north for the 4th I forgot a book and author Jonathan Rand/christopher knight (he writes under two names for adults and children) has his store up there. I forgot the couple of books I bought from him last time so I grabbed Pandemia. I know it’s a teen novel and most people read it in junior high but it was still good. I read it in 2 & 1/2 days. It was about the bird flu mutating to people and wiping out majority of the population and what you would have to do to survive. It was a fun quick read. Perfect for a vacation where you still want to read and do other stuff.
@Star2236 I pick up young adult books once in a while, they’re especially good when I’m in a rut. There’s a book called The Girl from the Well by Rin Chupeco that’s rated ages 14-17 by Amazon. It scared the crap out of me, I wouldn’t have slept if I read it at 14.
@sammydog01 @Star2236 I read adult and children’s books indiscriminately as a child and do the same now. Also, I will stand behind Susan Cooper’s The Dark Is Rising series as worth reading by everyone everywhere at all times.
@sammydog01
Glad I’m not the only one. I felt kinda weird saying it. I was looking at the girl in the well and saw it was part of a series, did you read any other books first or just that one? Just wanted to make sure I could read just that and not be missing anything.
@Star2236 There are only two and that’s the first. The second was pretty good too. Ghost stories are my favorite.
I finished The House Next Door. I waited a day and reread the ending, waited another day and reread the prologue and ending. Great book, too bad she didn’t write more horror.