New Fiction 2023 – September

“Baruch” ed. Richard Challoner (1752)

A short interlude before another juggernaut of a chapter.

Creature Teacher by R.L. Stine (1998)

They really hold out on the monsters here in Series 2000, so this is a welcome entry.

Invasion of the Body Squeezers – Part 1 by R.L. Stine (1998)

An unnecessarily long red herring.

Invasion of the Body Squeezers – Part 2 by R.L. Stine (1998)

That’s some way to prevent an extinction event.

I’m Your Evil Twin! by R.L. Stine (1998)

They always do the ol’ switcharoo.

Revenge R Us by R.L. Stine (1998)

The Uncut Gems of Goosebumps.

Fright Camp by R.L. Stine (1998)

Fool me several dozen times, shame on us all.

Headless Halloween by R.L. Stine (1998)

Here we GOOOOO. A+ Goosebumps.

Attack of the Graveyard Ghouls by R.L. Stine (1998)

A bit weirder but still more welcome than kids being dicks and no actual spooky happenings.

Brain Juice by R.L. Stine (1998)

Just bizarre. Leaning a little too far into the weird science angle I’ve no interest for in these books.

The Deadly Experiments of Dr. Eeek by R.L. Stine (1996)

Nope. These gamebooks aren’t good for reading one after another, and the ones that more or less stay in place are especially meh.

Night in Werewolf Woods by R.L. Stine (1996)

Another meh entry in spite of the werewolves running around.

Beware of the Purple Peanut Butter by R.L. Stine (1996)

More weird science and generally not scary stuff, less and less interesting.

“Hotline Miami” by KC Green (2023)

The speedrun.

“I was told by my doctor that this’ll completely compensate my human meat diet” by scribblingchimp (2023)

Gotta find an alternate.

“Carl’s Date” dir. Bob Peterson (2023)

Good to see the gang again.

The Equalizer 3 dir. Antoine Fuqua (2023)

Didn’t need to do all that.

Bottoms dir. Emma Seligman (2023)

The kids are alright.

Elemental dir. Peter Sohn (2023)

A personal story.

They Live dir. John Carpenter (1988)

That’s a long fight.

Jawan dir. Atlee (2023)

The Robin Hood we need.

Christine dir. John Carpenter (1983)

Somehow, a car is scary.

The LEGO Movie dir. Phil Lord & Christopher Miller (2014)

Too familiar, but perhaps because it kicked off something we’ve seen a lot of since then.

Outlaw Johnny Black dir. Michael Jai White (2023)

A fun and shooty romp.

Satanic Hispanics dir. Alejandro Brugués , Mike Mendez, Gigi Saul Guerrero, Eduardo Sánchez, Demián Rugna (2023)

The anthology offers much.

Prey dir. Dan Trachtenberg (2022)

Hell yes. If they made Predator movies that are just “a Predator fights someone at this point in history” I’d be all in.

Tales from the Crypt Presents: Demon Knight dir. Ernest Dickerson (1995)

Definitely a feature-length version of an episode, but they pull it off.

Tales from the Crypt Presents: Bordello of Blood dir. Gilbert Adler (1996)

Or do they? But this is still better than…

Tales from the Crypt Presents: Ritual dir. Avi Nesher (2002)

A very boring movie like this.

Vault of Horror dir. Freddie Francis (1973)

Ooh that second story is tops.

Tales from the Crypt dir. Freddie Francis (1972)

This first movie was just a tad too straight-faced. Where’s the camp?!

The Origin of Evil dir. Sébastien Marnier (2023)

A-n-x-i-e-t-y.

The Expendables 4 dir. Scott Waugh (2023)

I know they can’t all come back every time, but the concept seems to be slipping away from them.

The Creator dir. Gareth Edwards (2023)

Hm. Striving toward something I might’ve liked but somehow doesn’t land.

Tales from the Crypt – Season 7 (1996)

I’ve been annoyed with many people writing off season 7 as not worth watching. It’s fine! There’s even a few episodes really worth watching.

Tales from the Cryptkeeper – Season 1 (1993)

Basically Goosebumps, so John Kassir recording wraparounds is what makes it special.

Star Trek Discovery – Season 2 (2023)

I like it, but 10 episodes is not enough. Bouncing from fun to deadly serious episodes too often makes it feel disjointed.

Hoping this reaches self-publishing Tumblr somehow:

What’s a good self-publishing imprint for books? I wrote something that I don’t really need to sell, but I would like a tiny run of physical copies to give out to friends and family and such (and yes, the satisfaction of holding a printed copy of the thing).

The main files are all Google docs, which exports to all the main document filetypes.
I’ve already formatted it and made it available as an ebook, not that it helps with a print-ready version. But you know, there’s been some work there.
I can do the setup myself according to given specifications since I have experience with print layouts (though please tell me I don’t need to actually bring this into whatever book layout software is used these days by the pros).
Paperback is likely the route I’d take, keep it simple.
Oh and a glossy color cover for sure, but the interior is black and white.

I can certainly do a quick search and find many results, so I guess I’m hoping for any pointers toward companies that are high quality or not unethical in some way.

libraryleopard:

The other day one of my friends was like “Where on earth do you hear about all the books you read?” and I’m honestly trying to think about that because I don’t really pay attention to Booktube, Booktok, Book Twitter, or Bookstagram, only occasionally dip back into book blogging, and mostly use Goodreads as a place to track books I want to read or have read rather than searching for recommendations, so I’m trying to make a list of the places I hear about books from besides a few trusted social media mutuals.

Tor.com is one major place I hear about science fiction and fantasy books–they do deal announcements, cover reveals, lists of new releases, and reviews, as well as columns reviewing backlist work. I really like “The Book Queered Me,” for instance, which is people looking back on books that were important to their understand of identity.

The Book Smugglers isn’t really that active anymore, but they reviewed science fiction and fantasy media, as well as publishing essays and short fiction and I read them religiously for a long time.

Book Riot I read occasionally and they publish bookish news and essays. I forgot I was subscribed to their LGBTQ+ book newsletter for a while and went through the emails I’d been sent earlier this week and that particular newsletter is nice because it highlights a couple books and does a round-up of recent news about queer books.

Austraddle’s book section, especially the Rainbow Reading column, does reviews, interviews, and news related to queer books, mostly queer women. It’s helpful for non-SFF stuff because I’m usually very up-to-date on news in the science fiction and fantasy world but they cover poetry, nonfiction, romance, etc.

We Need Diverse Books is a great resources, of course, and I really like the interviews they do with authors of recent releases.

LGBTQ Reads is an invaluable resource for queer literature–new release highlights, author interviews, lists of books by representation or age/genre if you’re looking for something specific.

Electric Literature is where I hear about more adult lit fic/nonfiction stuff, they also have a column called Novel Gazing in which people write about books that have impacted them and I find that really interesting. They also publish poetry and short fiction but I haven’t read much of that.

The Lesbrary does reviews of books about lesbian and bisexual women, as well as round-ups of new releases. Good resource for keeping up with sapphic books.

Rich in Color reads and reviews diverse YA books and is a good place to keep up with books by authors of color.

Reading Goosebumps books in which the protagonists are always 12 years old got me thinking about that age. It’s marked by a single experience.

Sometime near the end of the sixth grade school year, we were all lounging about in class, including the teacher. It was late in the school day. The distinct orange glare of the afternoon sun bathed the classroom in that hazy light that makes it hard to concentrate on classwork anyway.

Most students were just hanging out and chatting, which does feel like the kind of rare opportunity any kid would take advantage of when most of class is structured and quiet. But for some reason, I decided it was a good time to sit and read a book. I can’t tell you what had me so engrossed but I was truly gone in this book, having developed this ability to shut out the world and focus on the story in front of me. I sat there reading and failed to notice that the classroom had suddenly gone quiet. They sat enraptured as a girl whose name I forget approached me, slowly it seems, waited for the right moment, then briefly sat on my lap before exploding into laughter along with everyone else in the class. She blushed and got up right away, but the laughter rolled on, including from my teacher’s desk. Besides a sense of shock in the moment, I don’t remember my own reaction. I can only assume I put the book away and whiled away the rest of the afternoon until class was over.

Not coincidentally, I remember losing interest in reading books around then and through all of middle school. I don’t know if this experience really made me stop reading, but I’m sure it was a brick in the wall built mostly by puberty.

literarymagpie:

literarymagpie:

Back in publishing school, I wrote a paper on Victorian yellow back books, cheaply-printed predecessors to the paperback that were available at railway stations (“One should always have something sensational to read on the train” after all.) Although many novels that would become classic came out in yellow back format, including some by Mark Twain and Robert Lewis Stevenson, many were basically what we’d call beach reading.

And, most importantly, they had the best titles EVER.

(These images come from the website of the Monash University Library)

I found my ancient yellow back post! How could I have forgotten The Man with a Thumb????

I just imagine R.L. Stine’s tired editor in 1997 reading the draft for The Haunted School after dealing with the madcap bores that Stine had been sending in for months, certain that Goosebumps was on its last legs, then sighing and whispering, “R.L., you son of a bitch…”

And a special shoutout to the kid who left the bookmark in their copy of Deep Trouble II so that I, too, may admire it from within its yellowed paper prison.

Ey I just read this one and I did give it high marks.

From Book Riot’s “Which Goosebumps cover are you?”

Truly no greater pleasure than finding a paperback copy of an old book with no stickers or scribbles on it, simply the yellowed pages in all their glory.

intj-confessions:

Source

DS9 stories: a running thread

January 2021: This cover is bad (like so many Star Trek books for some reason), but The Lives of Dax is a rad anthology. It’s fans-only for sure and the insight into each of Dax’s lives is a cool idea.

S.D. Perry knocked her two stories out of the park. (“Rad” and “cool” surely capture the essence of these authors’ work.)

February 2021: Left Hand of Destiny is an epic on the scale of Lord of the Rings featuring Martok, my favorite Klingon (sorry, Worf). For that reason alone it’s worth reading, but the authors do good work in further poking the bear that is Klingon politics.

April 2021: And A Stitch in Time is a Godfather-like exploration of the devout man’s fall from grace. It removes the vale that is central to Garak but it’s worth exploring after watching the TV show.

July 2021: Taking a side road through short fiction (my favorite trips) with Prophecy and Change. I like that these books open the tracks for more philosophical and metaphysical exploration of these characters.

January 2022: The Avatar duology from S.D. Perry is phenomenal! I love the focus on Kira as commander of the station and that Bajoran faith and religion continue to play a vital role.

As a post-war trauma narrative, it’s also fascinating to see them deal with their feelings in the aftermath.

March 2022: Millennium:

The Fall of Terok Nor – Classic setting aboard DS9, I’m with you.
The War of the Prophets – Holy shit, that’s dark.
Inferno – Fun time travel shenanigans. Wraps up too neatly after traumatic events but these characters do have to get back to season 6 of the show.

June 2022: This cover for a collection of short stories makes me deeply uncomfortable. Beyond that, I really have to look at the publication year of 2004 to try and understand why they thought this would be a good idea. It may be intriguing to see what various characters were doing during the Dominion War arc of Deep Space Nine, but this book’s jingoism is rough.

August 2022: The Nexus is a fascinating artifact of 90s Star Trek, written by actors of a TV show and performed as their characters from that show, but not official in any way. But I liked it, a kind of resolution to unresolved moments from the TV show.

August 2022: A neat little adventure, although it’s part of a series and many characters lack development that I’m sure is doled out over the course of several of these short novels. Focusing on a crew of mostly engineers gives this that lower decks vibe, a definite plus.