The Book Thread Book • Page 154

So what DID you read? Campy Slasher are always good

lol it’s funny hearing you talk about book Tok because my wife mentions it regularly but I never come across any of it surprisingly

 

LOL I started liking a lot of "horror" tik toks and over time started realizing who I liked to follow and just started getting recommendations from there. Now my entire algorithm is horror/splatterpunk/thriller books. It took a year or two to really develop a solid feed!

Recent reads which includes a few slashers:

Camp Slaughter - Sergio Gomez
Maeve Fly - CJ Leade
The Summer I Died - Ryan C Thomas
My Heart Is A Chainsaw - Stephen Graham Jones
Dead Eleven - Jimmy Juliano
The Saturday Night Ghost Club - Craig Davidson

 

Finished chapter 1 (first 140 pages) and do indeed think I love this. It is so weird, confusing, but at the same time I think I am going to love it.

What is most terrifying about it to me is that Juan is obviously struggling from a heart condition. What I just learned to begin chapter 2 is he has Tetralogy of Fallot - the legit same heart condition I have. Now that'll just terrify me as I continue reading

 

I will look into these, thanks for the recs.

 

Currently reading Toni Morrison’s Beloved for the first time and man…

 

I was not mature or good enough of a reader when I first read this in AP Lit. When I taught it for AP Lit, though...wow. Beautiful and haunting.

 

Starting Colson Whitehead's new book which is the second book of a crime heist trilogy.

 

Harlem Shuffle was my favorite book I read last year, so I'm really looking forward to starting that one soon.

 

I literally came in here to ask if anyone has read either The Only Good Indians or My Heart is a Chainsaw because I heard Stephen Graham Jones on a podcast called Kingcast (about Stephen King books as you may surmise… definitely worth checking out, each episode they have a celebrity guest or author who picks their favorite King book and they discuss it with the hosts) and he was talking about his love for The Outsider and hearing him talk made me want to check him out. How was it?

 

both are fantastic

 

Also, I sat down and read Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke by Eric LaRocca in one sitting and… boy was I disappointed. I like a good outside-the-box/cringe horror but I just thought it wound up coming off kinda lame. I didn’t buy it at all. I may be alone in that because I know several people who adored it.

 

I may start one of them next. I was intrigued by both plot descriptions.

 

Chainshaw is the first of a planned trilogy. The second book came out this year -- Don't Fear the Reaper

The Only Good Indians is truly something special, imo.

 

Jones is one of the most original voices in horror right now. He’s fantastic. And he’s great in interviews and podcasts and stuff. His knowledge of the genre is deep

 

yeah The Only Good Indians is absolutely fantastic. some of the best recent horror I've read. got Chainsaw sitting on my shelf waiting for me to get to it

 

started the John Adams biography. This guy could not be more different than his predecessor lol

 

Finished Whitehead's new book. Surprisingly, it very much felt like a second book of a trilogy. I thought he could rise above something that so many other authors struggle with when doing trilogies but this one got bogged down in parts. Enjoyable in spurts simply because of the way he writes but kind of ready for him to go back to standalones.

 

I haven’t read that one but I’ve read he was pretty weak and ineffective compared to some of his peers of the time but that could also be because people compared him with Washington so much.

Just picked it up today, going to start it tonight.

 

I am reading "In Their Voices" which is a book around transracial adoptions and it's so good I want to take my favorite quotes and frame them on my wall and make it required reading for anyone who goes into fostering/adopting, even if it's not a transracial placement it just has such good stuff about kids in foster care and how they react to their situation. It's a collection of interviews with various people and I just finished the chapter of Chester Jackson who works at an adoption agency, found out after and later in life that he himself was adopted, and then ended up adopting kids as well. What he had to say rang so true and poignant I was nerding out over everything

 

Reading a little-known book by Gary Paulsen called Clabbered Dirt, Sweet Grass which is his ode to the rural life. The book is divided into four sections based on the seasons. He describes the work that goes into each season and does a masterful job capturing the emotions surrounding the farmers and their families. I think it serves as an excellent re-introduction to Paulsen for those who read Hatchet a long time ago.

 

My thriftbooks order is stuck in the mail

*crying emoji*

 

Sorry I missed this! I’ve read both and found myself liking Chainsaw more but I don’t think that is the general consensus opinion. People really love the Only Good Indians so you should enjoy it!

I think it’s because Indians was my first Stephen Graham Jones novel and his writing sometimes needs time to adjust to. So I think when I read My Heart Is A Chainsaw I was already familiar with his writing style so it helped my reading experience.

 

Yeah, 100%, he has a very different writing style that takes a lot of getting use to. The problem is that Chainsaw is definitely his most commercially appealing, so it's probably a good place to start, but I also think you'd appreciate it more if you'd read more of Jones books. He has a lot of them, most very dark and very weird. Mongrels could also be a good starter, that was sort of what put him on the map before TOGI.

 

Finished Cinema Speculation and enjoyed it enough. I could read a whole series of QT criticism

 

I am reading Hurricane Season by Fernanda Melchor, whose plot is:

It is a challenging read, with sentences that go on for pages, but it is absolutely enthralling so far.