Like your reading material a bit…weird? Look no further than these magnificent finds
Hello pickle and sausage sandwiches!
I read the oldest weird fiction that I could get my little paws on; Gilgamesh, The Cannibal Hymn of Egypt, Flatland by Edwin Abbot, The Yellow King by Robert W Chambers and Hell Screen by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa.
Enjoy!
Good evening!
I read a bunch of all new weird fiction and bizarro books and pondered what it meant to write weird fiction in the increasingly strange times we live. Next week I’ll be discussing the oldest weird fiction.
Books mentioned:
Year’s Best Weird Fiction Vol. 4 (various)
More Bizarro Than Bizarro (various)
Who Cares, Nothing Matters (Julia Platz-Halter)
Lovecraftian Micro Fiction/Challenge From Beyond (various)
Welcome To Night Vale: It Devours (Joseph Fink/Jeffrey Cranor)
Hello! I have returned! Well, I’ve been back since the very end of November but shhh.
I did lots of things including Bizarrocon (bizarro fiction convention in case you didn’t know), the Peculiarium, the Lovecraft Bar, Voodoo and Pips donuts, Powell’s Books (the biggest used and new book shop IN THE WORLD) and the creepy clown room at the Funhouse Lounge.
I also met some really great creative people, listened to fantastic stories and was overwhelmed by the response to my own reading, from the book I can officially announce is out next year: Fortune Box, with Eraserhead Press. I took part in a panel and learned from the others, and it’s all below! Enjoy.
Bizarrocon 2017:
Portland:
Fortune Box reading:
The Weird In A Post Weird World, Author Panel:
Hello all! Merry day once more!
All year I’ve been on and off reading a big pile of gothic nonfiction books. A couple you might recognise but the majority will be new.
The video is prerecorded and my hair actually looks like this now: 
Such is the magic of the digital era.
Books mentioned:
Caitlin Doughty: Smoke Gets In Your Eyes
Colin Dickey: Ghostland
Charlotte Gordon: Romantic Outlaws (Mary Shelley and Mary Wollstonecraft)
I read this book in a single day, which should tell you something. No, the book wasn’t two pages long.
I chanced upon a YouTube channel called Ask A Mortician and found her not only informative on all things death related, but also funny and charming. Caitlin Doughty seemed like someone I’d want to hang around with.
This in turn led me to her book Smoke Gets In Your Eyes (And Other Lessons From The Crematory). I expected and enjoyed the anecdotes of working with corpses and the awkwardness of experiencing another culture’s grieving rituals for the first time (the segment on the Chinese family is fascinating).
The horror from outsiders, too, wasn’t a surprise, such as a hospital security guard’s distaste at her picking up ex-babies, that “it didn’t matter how many times I smiled at her, expressed my new-on-the-job status with bumbling Hugh Grant– esque apologies. This woman had decided that I was dirty and deviant. Handmaiden to the underworld.”
I also anticipated moments that made me laugh out loud, such as when “the family had placed a Häagen-Dazs coffee-and-almond ice-cream bar between her hands like a Viking warrior’s weapon. Those are my favourite. So I yelled, involuntarily, “Those are my favourite!””
What I didn’t expect were the many literary quotes and philosophical thoughts. Not that I didn’t think mortuary workers were capable of them, but I didn’t expect to be thinking about them so much afterwards. Caitlin believes the West’s relationship with death has gone astray, that “death might appear to destroy the meaning in our lives, but in fact it is the very source of our creativity. As Kafka said , “The meaning of life is that it ends.” Death is the engine that keeps us running, giving us the motivation to achieve, learn, love, and create.”
She feels that hiding death away and pretending it doesn’t happen is creating greater fear of the inevitable end. She advocates for a more natural, eco-friendly approach, and for not allowing funeral homes to dictate to the family how the final proceedings should go. I’ll let her explain it in this Ted Talk:
She also believes (more in America, not so much here) that embalming is often sold to people as the only way and is expensive and often unnecessary:
At first I thought, well, is it really so important to be more involved with a body before a funeral? How much can that really change things? Then I thought hard on her point that we also hide old age, stashing the elderly and infirm in sometimes substandard homes, while other cultures move ageing relatives in with them to deal with the consequences of the years together. I wonder if maybe she’s right. What do all of you think?
Caitlin also began The Order of the Good Death, where “funeral industry professionals, academics, and artists explor(e) ways to prepare a death phobic culture for their inevitable mortality.” I’d like to go to one of their talks one day. I’ve also pre-ordered her book From Here To Eternity, in which she travelled far and wide gathering information on the death practices of various civilisations.
As an added bonus, here are a few fun videos from her Ask A Mortician series:
Crematory Scandal That Changed The Death Industry
Victorian STANDING Corpse Photography?
The Punished Suicide
The Self Mummified Monks
Medieval Zombies?!
La Pascualita: Mannequin or Corpse Bride?
Lead Based Make Up Tutorial For Spring
Merry afternoon to you, or whatever time you exist in. I continued my experiment with mouth noises by talking about weird and interesting books I’ve read.
Everything mentioned:
Laura Lee Bahr, Angel Meat
Matt Payne, Robot God/Hybrid Brain
Andrew J Lambie, Carnival Of The Flesh
Junji Ito, Snow White
Good morning my little cups of fiery chai, I’ve been reading some very interesting books lately.
I’m drawn to the myths of ghosts, black magic, the Devil and other spooky things, but what I really love is clearing the fog of legend and finding what’s really underneath. To me the truth behind a haunting is infinitely more interesting than the initial stories, though I respect believers of the paranormal and would never make fun of them. Each to their own.
All three of these books take incidents or places that have been imbued with supernatural meaning and show us the ‘truth.’
1. Witchfinders by Malcolm Gaskill
The story of Matthew Hopkins, the self-titled ‘Witchfinder General,’ is quite close to my
heart as I live in Essex and his numerous victims were held in a castle not far from me. Witchfinders painstakingly recounts the journey he took through Essex and Suffolk, whipping the people into a frenzy of blame and fear, and on through the trials and executions themselves.
The concept of witch-hunting in the magical sense seems alien to us now but Malcolm Gaskill does a great job of explaining the world of magic people lived in and how the uncertainty of the Civil War affected them. The thorough research helped me to better understand what might have been going through the minds of each player, even Matthew Hopkins himself.
This is a fascinating tour through the most mythologised houses, hotels, hospitals and
even cities of America. Drawn to the ghosts, he strips back the stories and locates the factual accounts. If it sounds like he’s made them boring, trust me, he hasn’t.
One example is the famous Winchester Mystery House, long believed to have been created by a widow half mad with loss and guilt over the deaths of her husband and the victims of the gun he created, building endlessly to confuse any spirits seeking revenge. But, fantastically, the tale everyone including myself assumed to be fact isn’t, and this is only one of the little surprises in its pages.
This quote sums it up very well: “More than just simple urban legends and campfire tales, ghost stories reveal the contours of our anxieties, the nature of our collective fears and desires, the things we can’t talk about in any other way. The past we’re most afraid to speak aloud of in the bright light of day is the same past that tends to linger in the ghost stories we whisper in the dark.”
3. The Devils Of Loudun by Aldous Huxley
You might recognise the story of Grandier, the French priest whom women loved, 
men hated and burned as a witch after nuns became hysterical, from the Ken Russell film The Devils (1971). You may also recognise it’s author as the infamous psychonaut and writer of The Doors of Perception.
Where the two previous books are distantly fascinated and relatively dispassionate, Aldous Huxley’s philosophy and personality runs strongly throughout. Normally I wouldn’t like this, but he’s so well read and intelligent that it doesn’t matter.
Hello my little sugar cubes dangled over a glass of absinthe. My friend Steve and I have once again created our own writer and artist’s retreat as we have strict deadlines to get things finished, but I have still managed to read some peculiar books.
Cartoons In The Suicide Forest by Leza Cantoral
This is a bizarre and beautifully poetic book about some dark things. Leza takes inspiration from same sex Russian marriage, Jean Cocteau’s beauty and the beast, Mexican folklore and underground sex slave cults among other things and gives them an erotically feminine fairy tale twist. I enjoyed the ‘real world’ stories as much as the surreal, a good example being a relationship failing amidst heroine dependence. Pretty!
Cartoons In The Suicide Forest book trailer
This fun book is a kind of YA twist on the bizarro genre. When youngsters reach a certain age they are forcibly turned into marionette puppets with strings that reach far into the sky. No one knows what’s up there, or why they have to do it, but one young girl decides to rebel just as something strange starts happening to the puppets .
I liked the way the teens actually do things teens do like smoke and skip school. In fact this could be an allegory for ‘responsible’ rebellion and why it’s necessary to look beyond your situation and not always do as you’re told.
Puppet Skin book trailer
Like Jagged Teeth by Betty Rocksteady
The story starts with immediate tension and continues throughout. A girl is walking home from a night out followed by boys when, just in time, she’s picked up by her grandfather – who’s been dead for several years. When she arrives back at his place joy turns to fear as she realises something isn’t right.
As the character lurches from room to room the story becomes progressively darker and the effect is disorientating, but it deals with shame and guilt and love and is more than mere gross out stuff.
Betty on the This Is Horror podcast Original post
The head of a large corporation in a futuristic world is in hospital and his son is missing, along with millions of dollars. Add to that an estranged son with questionable motives and a daughter who has to go on the run and you’ve got an enjoyable read that reminded me of classic action science fiction films. The gadgets aren’t always immediately described which can seem confusing at first, but I’d much rather that than reams of explanation.
K. Ceres Wright reading a section (NSFW)
Good day, hope you enjoy these if you decide to purchase, toodle pip!
Merry morning my little chimpanzees in the planning stages of taking over the world. I’ve been reading lots of weird things and here they are:
Death Confetti: Pickers, Punks and Transit Ghosts in Portland, Oregan, by Jennifer Robin 
This is, no exaggeration, one of the most beautiful books I’ve ever read. I follow the author on facebook as well and, seriously, her status updates are miniature masterpieces.
Jennifer charts her non-linear journey from reclusive childhood to Portland artist with description as biting as William Burroughs and prose as rich as Anais Nin, but also completely unique. Sometimes she just remembers a character from her past, sometimes a full anecdote, sometimes she’s just looking at people on the bus, but all are beautiful. How can you not be fascinated by an intro like this:
“My directives, as established at seventeen—to experience real emotion, real contact with other people, all of the things you only learn by sucking cock, smoking rock, climbing cliffs, sleeping in catacombs, getting pregnant, and making a lot of mistakes—were fully enforced at this time. Within a year of my arrival I was playing in an electronic noise band. On and off-stage, we made—or perhaps “were”—performance art.”
The Disaster Artist by Greg Sestero 
I have genuinely never laughed so loudly and consistently at a book. If you’re unfamiliar with Tommy Wiseau’s complete mess of a film The Room, first of all where have you been, and second please watch it right now. Our fascination with it is hard to explain to people who don’t love terrible films. Example conversation with a friend:
Friend: Are you coming to Ian’s later?
Me: Yep. I’m bringing The Room
Friend: What? Not again. I’ve got Lolita at home, I’ll bring that
Me: Noooo, I can watch a good film anytime. YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND MEEE!!!
And so on. Greg is the guy who played Mark (Oh, hi Mark) and he recounts the complete debacle from beginning to end including the first time he met Tommy and the events that led to his making the film. What elevates this above merely poking fun at an eccentric is the genuine level of affection – though sometimes tested – and desire to understand Tommy. He’s not a monster, he has real feelings and a desperate need to be an actor, and perhaps another reason we enjoy The Room is his sheer determination to make that happen. As Greg says, “The Room is a drama that is also a comedy that is also an existential cry for help that is finally a testament to human endurance.”
There is a film coming out, called The Masterpiece, based on this book. I, for one, will be watching it.
Everything Wrong With The Room In 8 Minutes Or Less:
Dandy in the Underworld by Sebastian Horsley 
“Please allow me to introduce myself. I am a peacock without a cause, I am a piece of transcendent trash – a futile blast of colour in a futile colourless world.”
If Sebastian had been born in the 1800s he would be one of those sons paid by their wealthy family to stay away. He crashes through life like a mixture of Byron and Withnail, rarely likeable but always interesting, an artist who’s biggest art piece was himself.
On a whim he goes diving with sharks, has a fling with gangster Jimmy Boyle, bets on the stock exchange and becomes horribly addicted to heroin and crack. When he has money he doesn’t respect it, when he doesn’t he’s desperate. He makes no excuses for shoplifting and generally being a louche, entitled rich boy and if he did I probably wouldn’t have enjoyed reading him as much. He died aged 47 of a suspected overdose.
(Be warned, I suspect he says things because he likes to be ‘shocking’):
A Curious Guide To London by Simon Leyland 
Yes, yes, there’s the Houses of Parliament and Trafalgar Square blah blah. Where are the corpses? A common cry, and one this book would like to answer.
Beneath the respectable layer of London’s past is a hidden world of information, such as the peculiar shrub in Chelsea Physic Garden that gave John Wyndham the idea for Day of the Triffids, St. Sepulchre’s watch house in Holborn (built to keep an eye out for grave diggers), the Haymarket cat opera (exactly how it sounds) or the leftover ‘snob screens’ in The Lamb pub which protected delicate wealthy eyes from the sight of the common man.
It’s separated into districts so you can have a flick through next time you go to London and see what’s about. If you’d like to see a bit more of weird London via a guide have a look at this spooky tour we embarked upon for Halloween.
Midnight Movie Madness by Ian Watson 
A cavalcade of truly terrible films, this collection takes you from Maniac ‘director’ Dwain Esper‘s exploitation efforts, through fifties B movies to nonsensical modern day fare. Some of the descriptions made me chuckle out loud, particularly in the WTF section.
If monster movies are your thing, or perhaps overseas oddities, each film has been separated into categories ( I like categories, don’t I? I never realised that before), making it easier to dip in according to mood. Enjoy!
Hello my little dustpan brushes sprinkled with attractive gems. Recently I read Surrealist Women: An International Anthology. The kindle version is slightly cheaper than the hard
copies but still costs a whopping thirty pounds. I do think it’s worth saving up for, however, as it is an almost exhaustive encyclopedia of all females involved in the art movement from the twenties to sixties counter-culture to now, including examples of their work.
The essays at the beginning of each new era, separated into chapters, refutes the idea that women were not as involved as men. While they were not seen as full members during the twenties they were just as passionate, and only a decade later their participation exploded. It only seems to be outside critics and scholars who have omitted them since.
Madeleine Swann 