Two Envelopes And A Phone > Recent Status Updates

A BookTuber called PulpMortem is reading this, and I seem to have got sucked into reading it too, in time for some live chat video he’s planning soon. I actually like the cover - not too keen on the title, but I think that’s why PulpMortem has been drawn to this book…so silly-sounding. PM might read The Man Who Awoke, by Manning, but we’re not officially swapping suggestions. I’m reading this, regardless.

The description of the Crota reminds me of the Beast, from Stallman's Beast Trilogy - especially the cover images on those novels. I'm also getting 'Demon Bear' vibes, like from the early New Mutants comics. But I'm still not sure what the Crota actually is. The book is entertaining so far, but not subtle in any way; creature on the loose, killing people - steeped in particular lore, beliefs, legends.

Off and running. Some characters tried to run, but it didn’t work out for them. Nice to do at least one hardcore monster book for spooky season. Meanwhile, the SF novel Bumsider arrived, so I’m set for some weird “a few of us are reading it” fun, just after Crota, and A Place of Execution.

It's reputation precedes it, so I am expecting big things.

It’s marvellous, great fun. This was a perfect choice before gradually reading darker, maybe drearier Crime reads, because it’s funny, but like a comedy for spooky season.

Back to 150 Exquisite Horror Books for a recommendation...but I've always been curious about this one.

Even though it was a complete accident that it happened, it has been fun reading three Conan stories in a row that take place one after the other, even though they are each by a different author and were written in different decades. It’s been the Conan and Valeria show, for me - with ‘Red Nails’ as the center-piece. I have watched three different writers handle the Conan-Valeria dynamic, and create their exploits.

I am very much looking forward to this. The Iron Clew was terrific. I thought The Hollow Chest - perhaps the best-known book in the series - was fine, but a little bit less than I was expecting. Still good, though. My Crime & Mystery picks will be getting darker and nastier over the next several weeks. This one should be kind of funny, and even a bit madcap. Core whodunit should be solid.

This is an okay anthology, so far - not that impressive. Not all the stories are whodunits, and some of the whodunits are not really solvable by the reader. I suppose I have to let that fact go, because nobody said these were all “Fair Play” examples. Anyway, the next story is ‘Man Bites Dog’ by Ellery Queen. One of my fave movies is called Man Bites Dog, and it’s a Crime movie, but I’m gonna assume No Relation!

I’ve only just started it. I’m still astonished at the coincidence: I decided to read a few Conan books this month for something called “Cimmerian September”. I didn’t have anything, so I ordered the easiest thing to get: Conan: Blood of the Serpent, which is a recent prequel to Howard’s famous Conan tale, ‘Red Nails’; that book ends with ‘Red Nails’. I ordered this, not knowing it is a sequel to ‘Red Nails’.

I’ve decided to go to this, instead of Fatal Descent. Cimmerian Sept. continues! I didn’t know, when I bought Conan: Blood of the Serpent, that it also gave me the short story ‘Red Nails’. I didn’t know, when I ordered this Conan novel, that it is a sequel to ‘Red Nails’. The Frank Drebin luck of things working out. “To be fair, I backed over the last two with my car. Luckily, they turned out to be drug dealers…”

I thought I might be doing nothing but Horror comics or graphic novels continuously for several weeks - when I go to comics - but I need a break from that sort of thing after Alan Moore’s Providence. I don’t need to get any more creeped out for the next little while - and there’s plenty of time before Halloween night to do something like Providence to myself again. Superheroes, nostalgia - this should calm me down.

I think I might like this. I’ve gotten emotional over the opening chapter, as Claudia has welcomed David back from the war, imparted some bad news, and gotten an answer after finally asking when he would have to ship out again. Anyway, after this it’s mainly going to be Horror and Mystery fare. Still gonna be a woman author every second novel I read, but I’m light on Horror by ladies - so, Mysteries by ladies.

This now, weirdly, seems the culmination of all my experiences, in the past or future, with: Get Out, The Ceremonies, books on Woodrow Wilson and Calvin Coolidge, stuff (and nonsense?) by Lovecraft, Poe, Dunsany, anything New England-y (that's a lot!), curious repressed nerds in jeopardy, Race With The Devil, anything in the British Library Tales of the Weird Series, my creepiest dreams (reality?), Wells and Renard.

That’s enough for tonight; best not to rush this. That said, I’ve kind of rushed through a lot of this in one day - but in three sittings, allowing time for things to percolate, before they get next level weird, level after that, etc. I love the art, both lines and colours. The story is deliberately tricky, and not totally logical - like nightmares. Probably for fans of Klein’s The Ceremonies, and Ramsey Campbell.

Something else, this is.

Elevator mayhem...certain quick scenes in films come to mind: Dressed to Kill, Vigilante, any Action movie wherein one hero can always handle an army in an elevator. The movie Speed decides an elevator opening can set the tone for everything...and I actually like the film Devil. Books like Elevator Pitch are rare (and I thought it was merely okay), while Marshall's Skullduggery has a great elevator subplot. Now this!

I'm always a bit put off when I notice that a graphic novel I'm about to read actually has a lot of text pages to deal with; I think my brain is used to the pace of panelled art with some words, only to have to "slow down" and work at a slower pace when several pages of only text suddenly occur. It's oddly jarring - for me, anyway. But I have buckled down, and now I'm all-in - herky-jerky brain-shifts included.

This book contains three short stories, and one novella. Right now, I'm partly through the novella, 'The Inhumans' by Hemendrakumar Roy. This is interesting reading for me in and of itself - but it fits in well with what I am reading in Before the Golden Age, and even the Conan stuff. So far, 'The Inhumans' is taking place in Africa, as a sort of jungle adventure, but the Intro suggests a bizarre shift...

And now for something where I’m completely indifferent. Plus, it’s different - a departure for me. I think it’s guilt; I read no Romance for GarbAugust, and I’m gonna get to one just after the Bengali SF. When I saved this, on a whim, out of the cellar of a Crime & Mystery bookstore, I didn’t actually notice the lady got no shirt on, under her gardening overalls. Too late to back out now.

‘Submicroscopic’ by Capt. S. P. Meek was not a total success with me; I know I’m gonna bump into racism when I read 1880-1940 (and beyond) SF or Mysteries, but the particular brand of offence here is especially tiring at this point. Other than that, the story was okay - I tend to like “shrink-ee” stories - but Maurice Renard did something along these lines much earlier, in A Man Among The Microbes.