Books I Read in January 2022

“You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.” 

— Ray Bradbury

This year I’m trying to read a wider variety of genres. I think I’m doing okay so far. 

Collected Ghost Stories by M. R. James and A Warning to the Curious, Count Magnus, and Other Horrors: The Best Ghost Stories and Weird Fiction of M. R. James, Annotated and Illustrated by M. Grant Kellermeyer. 

M. R. James was a medievalist scholar and provost of King’s College, Cambridge and of Eaton College, best remembered for his ghost stories. I started both of these in December. I really enjoyed the collection annotated by M. Grant Kellermeyer. The annotations were packed full of information and really added to my enjoyment of the stories. 

The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury 

I re-discovered Ray Bradbury recently and he’s now one of my favorite authors. This is his classic about man colonizing Mars. It’s more drama than science fiction. Like everything else I’ve read by him, it’s moving and brilliantly written. 

Out on the Cutting Edge by Lawrence Block 

This is the seventh book about Matthew Scudder, an ex-cop solving crimes in New York City. In some ways it’s slow moving but it’s also filled with compelling characters and absorbing dialogue and prose. I finished it pretty quickly. I really like how Mathew Scudder has grown since the first book. One thing hasn’t changed though. He’s still a grave and compassionate man trying to do the right thing in a bleak and tragic world. 

Winnie the Pooh by A. A. Milne 

In 2020 I read Why You Should Read Children’s Books, Even Though You Are So Old and Wise by Katherine Rundell. It reminded me of some of the books that I loved as a child and inspired me to revisit some of those and read the ones I never got to. As much as I like SF, crime, noir, and horror, sometimes it’s nice just to read something that’s light and plays with words just for the fun of it. A. A. Milne did quite well. 

Lupin III: Greatest Heists by Monkey Punch 

The adventures of master thief Lupin III and his partners in crime, Jigen, Goemon, and Fujiko. This is a best of manga collection that was originally released after the author passed away in 2019. The stories involve slapstick humor, wild chases, crazy heists, and double crosses, and are more risqué than some people realize.  I love the art style and use of panels. Monkey Punch stated that he was influenced by Tom and Jerry cartoons, Mad Magazine, and the art of Mort Drucker, and it really shows. I have to say that I think Monkey Punch is the greatest name for a comic book artist ever.

100 Poems by Seamus Heaney 

I’ve been mixing up my reading with poetry. I read this after a collection by Robert Frost. This was okay but it didn't grab me like the quote from The Cure at Troy, which is the first thing that I read by him. I think part of it is being unfamiliar with a lot of the subjects that Heaney wrote poems about.

Life Ain’t Nothing But Sex Misspelled by Harlan Ellison 

This is a collection of some of Ellison’s early non-speculative fiction stories. As with most anthologies I liked some stories more than others. I found myself becoming impatient as I read some of them. He can be too wordy at times. On the other hand, among the stories that I liked were two that really stood out. "Neither Your Jenny Nor Mine" concerns abortion and "A Prayer for No One's Enemy" concerns Nazis in America. Although written in the ‘60s, it’s eerie how relevant they still are today.

Favorite Read of the Month: A Month in the County by J. L. Carr 

What a beautifully written book. The main character Tom Birkin is a WWI veteran who reflects on a month from his past in which he was tasked with uncovering a mural that was painted over in a church. There are so many things I love about this book. How the main character develops a bond with the unknown painter from 100s of years ago, his connection with another WWI veteran who is working on an excavation in the churchyard, the conflict between Birkin and the person overseeing the restoration, how Birkin slowly makes a connection with the people from the town, his growing connection with the young woman who comes in to watch him every day, and how it all comes together in the end. All done in 135 pages. The ending is sad and bittersweet but still uplifting. It reminds us that if we miss out on something special in our lives that we have to find a way to settle for its memory.

I learned about this book after I started listening to the Backlisted podcast, which is dedicated to “giving life to old books.” I was planning on branching out on the kinds of books I read, and this podcast is really helping with that. After listening to a few episodes, I have more books added to my to-read list. 

On to February! 

Ghost Stories for Christmas

 “His ghost stories transformed the genre like a galvanic shock. His universe — the one which made him famous as a first-rate writer of ghost stories — is not one of clear boundaries between good and evil, but one in which the two merge and blend, trespass and encroach. He was deeply concerned about human corruption — both more broadly in society and individually within the spirit — and this plays out chillingly in his best tales.” — M. Grant Kellermeyer, from his introduction to A Warning to the Curious, Count Magnus, and Other Horrors: The Best Ghost Stories and Weird Fiction of M. R. James 

For my last blog post of the year, I thought that I would write about Christmas and ghosts. I never realized how connected they are until recently. 

Most people who celebrate Christmas are probably familiar with the song “The Most Wonderful Time of the Year” as sung by Andy Williams. I listened to it growing up and I heard it recently in Hawkeye, the latest series from Marvel. I wonder how many people are familiar with one particular line though:

There’ll be parties for hosting

Marshmallows for toasting

And caroling out in the snow

There’ll be scary ghost stories

And tales of the glories of 

Christmases of long ago

Huh. I’ve lost count how many times I’ve listened to the song, but I don’t remember the line about scary ghost stories. Although telling ghost stories in December isn’t a thing in present day America, I learned that it was quite popular in Victorian England. While that tradition made it over to America it never really caught on. The writers of the lyrics seem to remember though.

Telling spooky stories at the end of year began as an oral tradition, stories told around a fire during long dark evenings. This tradition became even more popular in Victorian England with the invention of the printing press. I was familiar with A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, but I had no idea that he also wrote other ghost stories and that he included lots of ghost stories at the end of the year in the magazines that he edited.

Last month I learned about a reading challenge where participants were to read the ghost stories of M.R. James. He was a medievalist scholar, and he was provost of King’s College, Cambridge and of Eaton College. Many of the stories were written to be read out loud to his friends at the end of the year. 

The creator of the challenge made a list of twenty-six stories with the idea being to read one story a day from November 30th to December 25th. I decided to join in since I already had his first collection, Ghost Stories of an Antiquary, but hadn't read it yet. The Kindle version also includes his second collection More Ghost Stories of an Antiquary. That still didn’t cover all the stories on the list, so I also downloaded a complete collection, and I was all set.

I enjoyed the stories a lot and decided to learn more about the author. This led me down a rabbit hole. I eventually learned about the lyrics above as well as other connections between ghost stories and Christmas, like the annual A Ghost Story for Christmas specials from the BBC. 

A Ghost Story for Christmas is a series of television specials from the 1970s. Most of them were adaptations of M.R. James stories and directed by Lawrence Gordon Clark. The BBC has revived the series recently in specials directed by Mark Gatiss. The latest one was just released, an adaptation of “The Mezzotint” by M.R. James. I’ve watched most of them and enjoyed them. One thing that added to my enjoyment was spotting actors who have played Time Lords on Doctor Who. So far, I’ve spotted four. 

While that was fun, I’ve been thinking about why I’ve been drawn to horror fiction recently. It’s much more than just the thrill that these kinds of stories can provide. I think it’s because I’ve become more concerned about the things mentioned in the quote above.