Mike Thorn's Blog, page 6

April 2024: Best first reads & viewings

Best first reads

Existence and Existents, by Emmanuel Levinas (1947)
The Craft of Writing, by William Sloane (1979)
Another World, by Pat Barker (1998)
Uzumaki, by Junji Ito (2000)
The Red Tree, by Caitlín R. Kiernan (2009)

Best first viewings

The Quatermass Xperiment (Val Guest, 1955)
Danza Macabra (Antonio Margheriti & Sergio Corbucci, 1964)
Ju-On: The Curse 2 (Takashi Shimizu, 2000)
Reincarnation (Takashi Shimizu, 2005)
Immersion (Takashi Shimizu, 2023)

February & March 2024: Best first reads & viewings

FEBRUARY

Best first reads:

A Room with a View, by E. M. Forster (1908)
Their Eyes Were Watching God, by Zora Neale Hurston (1937)
Let Me Tell You, by Shirley Jackson [edited by Laurence Hyman & Sarah Hyman DeWitt] (2015)

Best first viewings:

Dodsworth (William Wyler, 1936)
Wagon Master (John Ford, 1950)
The Tall Target (Anthony Mann, 1951)
The Long Gray Line (John Ford, 1955)
The Big Country (William Wyler, 1958)
The Reluctant Debutante (Vincente Minnelli, 1958)
Moulin Rouge! (Baz Luhrmann, 2001)
Swimming Pool (François Ozon, 2003)
Australia (Baz Luhrmann, 2008)
Bluebeard (Catherine Breillat, 2009)
Sharp Objects (Jean-Marc Vallée, 2018)
The Zone of Interest (Jonathan Glazer, 2023)

MARCH

Best first reads:

Twice-Told Tales, by Nathaniel Hawthorne (1837)
The Witchcraft of Salem Village, by Shirley Jackson (1956)
Peyton Place, by Grace Metalious (1956)
The Fantastic: A Structural Approach to a Literary Genre, by Tzvetan Todorov (1970)
New England’s Gothic Literature: History and Folklore of the Supernatural from the Seventeenth Through the Twentieth Centuries, by Faye Ringel (1995)
Gothic Metaphysics: From Alchemy to the Anthropocene, by Jodey Castricano (2021)
The Gothic Literature and History of New England: Secrets of the Restless Dead, by Faye Ringel (2022)
The Guest, by Emma Cline (2023)
Agony’s Lodestone, by Laura Keating (2023)

Best first viewings:

The Spiral Staircase (Robert Siodmak, 1946)
Mogambo (John Ford, 1953)
The Last Hurrah (John Ford, 1958)
Burnt Offerings (Dan Curtis, 1976)
The 4th Man (Paul Verhoeven, 1983)
A Cure for Wellness (Gore Verbinski, 2016)
The Staircase (Jean-Xavier de Lestrade, 2018)
I Love You, Now Die: The Commonwealth v. Michelle Carter (Erin Lee Carr, 2019)
Immaculate (Michael Mohan, 2024)
Love Lies Bleeding (Rose Glass, 2024)

January 2024: Best first reads & viewings

Reads

The Space of Literature, by Maurice Blanchot (1955)
The Writing of the Disaster, by Maurice Blanchot (1980)
Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life, by Ruth Franklin (2016)
Daisy Miller, by Henry James (1879)
Something Like an Autobiography, by Akira Kurosawa (1981)
What Are You, by Lindsay Lerman (2022)
The Door, by Magda Szabó (1987)
Wonderbook: The Illustrated Guide to Creating Imaginative Fiction, by Jeff VanderMeer (2013)
Ghosts, by Edith Wharton (1937)
Strange Seed, by T. M. Wright (1978)

Viewings

Die Nibelungen: Kriemhild’s Revenge (Fritz Lang, 1924)
The Passionate Friends (David Lean, 1949)
Rancho Notorious (Fritz Lang, 1952)
Summertime (David Lean, 1955)
The Age of the Medici (Roberto Rossellini, 1972)
Messiah of Evil (Willard Huyck & Gloria Katz, 1974)
Watchmen [director’s cut] (Zack Snyder, 2009)
Hemingway (Ken Burns & Lynn Novick, 2021)

"Digital Noir Prophecies in The Canyons and The Counselor"

“The Canyons and The Counselor represent an America unmoored from its own self-aggrandizing mythologies — the capitalist dream as nightmare of anxiety and violence. The films are haunted by symbols rather than subjects, made nowhere clearer than in McCarthy’s naming The Counselor’s title protagonist (played by Michael Fassbender) after his profession — he is a nameless intermediary, a metaphor.”


Read my essay "Digital Noir Prophecies in The Canyons and The Counselor" at In Review Online.

Best first reads, 2023

I read 101 books in 2023. My 20 favorite first reads of the year (chronologically organized; one per author; pre-2023 releases only):

The House of the Seven Gables, by Nathaniel Hawthorne (1851)
Madame Bovary, by Gustave Flaubert (1856)
The Woman in White, by Wilkie Collins (1860)
Roderick Hudson, by Henry James (1875)
Tess of the D’Urbervilles, by Thomas Hardy (1891)
Ghost Stories of an Antiquary, by M. R. James (1904)
The House of Mirth, by Edith Wharton (1905)
The Listener and Other Stories, by Algernon Blackwood (1907)
The Subjugated Beast, by R. R. Ryan (1938)
Native Son, by Richard Wright (1940)
The Hounds of Tindalos, by Frank Belknap Long (1946)
Gravity and Grace, by Simone Weil (1947)
The Road Through the Wall, by Shirley Jackson (1948)
Giovanni’s Room, by James Baldwin (1956)
The Wapshot Chronicle, by John Cheever (1957)
The Collector, by John Fowles (1963)
Julia, by Peter Straub (1975)
The House Next Door, by Anne Rivers Siddons (1978)
The Ceremonies, by T. E. D. Klein (1984)
Soul/Mate, by Joyce Carol Oates [as Rosamond Smith] (1989)
Paradais, by Fernanda Melchor (2021)

Check out the rest of the list here.

The Edge of the Edge: A Numinous Conversation with Mike Thorn and Kathe Koja

“Over the past few years I’ve had the privilege of enjoying an ongoing dialogue with one of my major creative influences, award-winning writer Kathe Koja. Two years ago, she and I discussed genre and process during the virtual launch for my second short story collection, Peel Back and See. Last year, we discussed our work’s relationship with cinema for In Review Online . While brainstorming about topics for future conversations, we decided to pursue the concept of numinosity: its permutations in literature in film and the role it plays in our own creative projects. This article is the result of our email thread on the subject.”

Read the full article.

Mike Thorn reviews Eli Roth’s Thanksgiving for In Review Online

“What sets Eli Roth apart from other contemporary American horror directors is his unique braiding of current issues with high genre literacy. This holds true for his latest effort, Thanksgiving, an anti-consumerist holiday giallo that traffics openly in reflexivity.”

Read the full review.

Mike Thorn’s 3 favorite reads of the year

Shepherd asked 949 authors and super readers to select their three favorite reads of 2023. Read Mike Thorn’s thoughts on his choices here.

Mike Thorn's 100 favorite horror books (2023 edition)

A new annual tradition. Chronologically organized, with externally and/or posthumously edited collections/anthologies at the end.

Vathek, an Arabian Tale; or, the History of the Caliph Vatek, by William Beckford (1786)
The Mysteries of Udolpho, by Ann Radcliffe (1794)
The Monk: A Romance, by Matthew Gregory Lewis (1796)
Zofloya; or, the Moor, by Charlotte Dacre (1806)
Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus, by Mary Shelley (1818)
Melmoth the Wanderer, by Charles Robert Maturin (1820)
The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner, by James Hogg (1824)
The House of the Seven Gables, by Nathaniel Hawthorne (1851)
Carmilla, by J. Sheridan Le Fanu (1872)
Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson (1886)
The Great God Pan, by Arthur Machen (1890)
The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde (1890)
The Damned, by Joris-Karl Huysmans (1891)
The Beetle, by Richard Marsh (1897)
Dracula, by Bram Stoker (1897)
The Invisible Man, by H. G. Wells (1897)
The House on the Borderland, by William Hope Hodgson (1908)
The Metamorphosis, by Franz Kafka (1915)
The Breaking Point, by Daphne Du Maurier (1922)
Rebecca, by Daphne Du Maurier (1938)
The Subjugated Beast, by R. R. Ryan (1938)
Conjure Wife, by Fritz Leiber (1943)
The Hounds of Tindalos, by Frank Belknap Long (1946)
The Scarf, by Robert Bloch (1947 / 1966)
Hangsaman, by Shirley Jackson (1951)
The Unnamable, by Samuel Beckett (1953)
The Bird’s Nest, by Shirley Jackson (1954)
I Am Legend, by Richard Matheson (1954)
Cape Fear, by John D. MacDonald (1957)
The Sundial, by Shirley Jackson (1958)
The Haunting of Hill House, by Shirley Jackson (1959)
Shock!, by Richard Matheson (1961)
Something Wicked This Way Comes, by Ray Bradbury (1962)
The Collector, by John Fowles (1963)
The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea, by Yukio Mishima (1963)
New Stories from the Twilight Zone, by Rod Serling (1965)
I Have No Mouth & I Must Scream, by Harlan Ellison (1967)
Rosemary’s Baby, by Ira Levin (1967)
Last Summer, by Evan Hunter (1968)
The Obscene Bird of Night, by José Donoso (1970)
The Exorcist, by William Peter Blatty (1971)
The Room, by Hubert Selby Jr. (1971)
The Other, by Thomas Tryon (1971)
The Stepford Wives, by Ira Levin (1972)
Child of God, by Cormac McCarthy (1973)
Starling Street, by Dinah Palmtag (1973)
Carrie, by Stephen King (1974)
‘Salem’s Lot, by Stephen King (1975)
Julia, by Peter Straub (1975)
The Demon, by Hubert Selby Jr. (1976)
Interview with the Vampire, by Anne Rice (1976)
Long After Midnight, by Ray Bradbury (1976)
The Shining, by Stephen King (1977)
The House Next Door, by Anne Rivers Siddons (1978)
Blood Secrets, by Craig Jones (1978)
Ghost Story, by Peter Straub (1979)
Books of Blood: Volume One, by Clive Barker (1984)
The Ceremonies, by T. E. D. Klein (1984)
Hawksmoor, by Peter Ackroyd (1985)
The Damnation Game, by Clive Barker (1985)
The Juniper Tree, by Barbara Comyns (1985)
Songs of a Dead Dreamer, by Thomas Ligotti (1985)
Toplin, by Michael McDowell, (1985)
The Hungry Moon, by Ramsey Campbell (1986)
It, by Stephen King (1986)
Beloved, by Toni Morrison (1987)
The Nightrunners, by Joe R. Lansdale (1987)
Why Not You and I?, by Karl Edward Wagner (1987)
The Fifth Child, by Doris Lessing (1988)
The Girl Next Door, by Jack Ketchum (1989)
The Pines, by Robert Dunbar (1989)
Boundaries, by T. M. Wright (1990)
American Psycho, by Bret Easton Ellis (1991)
The Cipher, by Kathe Koja (1991)
Grimscribe: His Lives and Works, by Thomas Ligotti (1991)
Prodigal, by Melanie Tem (1991)
Something Stirs, by Charles L. Grant (1991)
Specters, by J. M. Dillard (1991)
Summer of Night, by Dan Simmons (1991)
Bad Brains, by Kathe Koja (1992)
Lost Futures, by Lisa Tuttle (1992)
Skin, by Kathe Koja (1993)
The Between, by Tananarive Due (1995)
Zombie, by Joyce Carol Oates (1995)
You Can’t Catch Me, by Joyce Carol Oates [as Rosamond Smith] (1995)
Exquisite Corpse, by Poppy Z. Brite (1996)
Traplines, by Eden Robinson (1996)
Lunar Park, by Bret Easton Ellis (2005)
A Dark Matter, by Peter Straub (2010)
Tender is the Flesh, by Agustina Bazterrica (2017)
Everything That’s Underneath, by Kristi DeMeester (2017)
And Her Smile Will Untether the Universe, by Gwendolyn Kiste (2017)
Strange is the Night, by S. P. Miskowski (2017)
The Seventh Mansion, by Maryse Meijer (2020)
Selected Writings of Edgar Allan Poe, by Edgar Allan Poe (1956) [edited by Edward H. Davidson]
Best Ghost Stories of Algernon Blackwood, by Algernon Blackwood (1973) [edited by E. F. Bleiler]
The Haunted Dolls’ House and Other Ghost Stories, by M. R. James (2006) [edited by S. T. Joshi]
Tales of H. P. Lovecraft, by H. P. Lovecraft (2007) [edited by Joyce Carol Oates]
Ghost Stories of Henry James, by Henry James (2008) [edited by Martin Schofield]
The Dark Eidolon and Other Fantasies, by Clark Ashton Smith (2014) [edited by S. T. Joshi]

New Mike Thorn story, “The Shape of Our Damnation”, coming soon on Tales to Terrify

Mike Thorn's story "The Shape of Our Damnation" will soon appear on Tales to Terrify.

The podcast has released two of Thorn's stories in the past. Listen to "@GorgoYama2013" and "Erosion".