Hell Here

If I were to list off my top 5 film heroes right now it would be the usual suspects: Kubrick, PTA, Scorsese, Lynch, the Coens. Take the same question and apply it to a 8 year old me, my answers would be: Spielberg, Zemeckis, Cameron, Romero and Tim Burton. From 1985 to 1994, he had a string of movies that would exacerbate my love for movies. I felt like I entered into a unspoken contract with each director whose movies I would watch on repeat. For Spielberg it was E.T. Zemeckis was Back to the Future. Cameron was Terminator 1 and 2. Romero was Creepshow. Burton was Batman. I swore to watch every one of their movies. What could go wrong? Well, many things. But that's for another time.

At the same time I was way into comics. Not DC. EC. This didn't deter me from wanting to jump headfirst into the world of Gotham's dark knight. Prince's soundtrack, Batman themed covers, the Batman ride at Six Flags all figured into my life. The VHS being notable for Bugs Bunny hawking Warner Bros merchandise. I ate it all up. This was the same guy who brought Beetlejuice and Edward Scissorhands into my life. How could he go wrong? Well, many things. But that's for another time.

Before I could utter Beetlejuice a third time, the news of a Batman Returns was splashed across the Chicago Tribune. Whose movie ads made for makeshift posters to adorn my walls for years to come. It was the earliest memory I have of being excited for a movie. One that would pay off in full when I got to see it on VHS.

The Joker always appealed to me out of all the villains in Batman's universe and is an all timer for villains in general. I was hoping for Two Face so when the Penguin appeared in the promotional poster I felt mild trepidation. On the other hand, Edward Scissorhands became a big movie for me and seeing Burton extend the winter Christmas aesthetic into a Batman movie had me excited. So it was a logical fit for Penguin. His goons were more creative and far ranging menace wise than The Joker's sunglass wearing goons. Even if he didn't have the charisma of The Joker.

Michelle Pfeiffer as Catwoman would be the thing to put Returns over the top as my favorite Batman movie. At least up until The Dark Knight. She exudes a demented playfulness.

All three of the main players, a man- Bat, a deformed man left to the sewers by his parents and a woman betrayed by her boss all are fascinating in their own right. So Burton wisely doesn't waste any time building beyond it. What results are a litter of set pieces. The graveyard scene where Penguin finds out his real name, Batman losing control of the Batmobile, Max Shrek's 'present with a bow' scene, Selena's transformation into Catwoman. As interesting a character Batman is, it is the villains who wish to play an integral part in his degradation that steal the show. This isn't necessarily a bad thing. We won't see a director have this much fun with a villain until Nolan's Joker and Bane.

Burton's always been interested in the outcast. Here you get three of them.

31 Days of Horror: The Blair Witch Project

A good deal of my childhood revolved around routines. Every Friday was a routine. Go to grandma's, eat pizza, watch Sci-Fi Channel. When it actually played the good shit- Mystery Science Theater 3000, Twilight Zone, Outer Limits. It was 1999 and so many avenues were opening up to me. A documentary called Curse of the Blair Witch premiered on Sci-Fi.

The level of hype was different from any other mother up to that point. Terminator 2, Jurassic Park, Independence Day, and other "event movies" built their reputation through word of mouth, director status and special effects "like you've never seen before". Nobody knew who Daniel Myrick or Eduardo Sanchez was before this.

Take into account that this hadn't really been done before with this level of publicity. Cannibal Holocaust was still haunting the underground circuit. Its own history of the director Ruggero Deodato being nearly charged with having his actors murdered. Only then having to have the actors show up in court to prove that they were very much alive. When Blair Witch hit, at least 40% thought that the actors ended up disappearing in the woods. That what they were going to see in mainstream theaters was a snuff film. The prospect of seeing peoples last remaining moments play out on film has a weird pull to it. What made this Project enticing is the folklore the documentary built around it. I've never seen a documentary built around the backstory of a movie prior to its release before or since.

The folkore pays off in the opening 15 minutes of the film when they interview the townsfolk about the Blair Witch. It is their encounter with Mary and her description of the woman covered head to toe in hair.

I would finally see The Blair Witch Project on July 17, 1999. A day removed from its premiere. It was at the drive in. Remember those? The man in the booth gave my dad the station to turn to in his car for the audio. The last movie I remember seeing before it at the same drive in was The Matrix. A movie I fell asleep to. "You missed the end when Keanu Reeves stopped the bullets with his hands." My dad would say to me during a groggy state. I dared not fall asleep during Blair Witch. This was my cup of tea. This was my Matrix.

The screening remains one of the scariest I've had. In today's streaming/digital culture there is so much distraction. Seeing a movie like this requires total immersion. 

Watching it after almost 20 years still leaves me haunted. Alone with those three filmmakers in the Burkitsville woods. Hungry. Cold. And hunted. 

31 Days of Horror: Albert Fish

In Brooklyn on February 11, 1927, a boy named William Gaffney was playing hide-and-seek with his friend Billy Beaton and Beaton's 12 year old brother. Gaffney ended up disappearing and was nowhere to be found. When Beaton was questioned by the police as to what happened to Billy Gaffney, he said "the boogeyman took him".

Born on May 19, 1870, Albert Fish's immediate family would be treated for mental afflictions and his mother suffered hallucinations. His parents would send him to an orphanage where he would receive beatings while Scripture would be read out loud. Permanently melding pain, pleasure and religion together. Pleasure because the beatings would happen so regularly, he began to look forward to them.

1898 saw him marry and father six children. All of whom would lead average lives until  1917 after Fish's wife ran off with another man. He would have his kids participate in sadomasochistic games. One called "Bucks Up Hands Up" would have him guess how many fingers his kids would be holding up. If he was wrong, they would have to spank him with a paddle. His masochism and depravity extended far beyond these games. He was known for eating his own feces, defacating on the floor in motels after he left them (the thought of someone having to clean up after him caused arousal), drinking urine, whipping himself with a cat-o-nine tails, sticking pins in his parinium, stuffing paper into ass and lighting in on fire and much more.

Taken altogether it paints a picture of a truly nightmarish figure. One that preyed on children and ended up committing the most heinous of acts: devouring the 10-year old Grace Budd. His letter to the parents detailing the crime. He was found guilty on the charge of premeditated murder and executed on January 16, 1936.

Out of all the major serial killers: the Dahmers, the Geins, the Gacys, the Bundys, it is Albert Fish who shakes me to my core. He seems like a nightmare transplanted into reality.

For more information check out Harold Schechter's book Deranged.

There is also an informative episode of Last Podcast on the Left:

31 Days of Horror: Fire In the Sky abduction scene

The funny thing about alien abduction is that it always happens in pockets of rural farmland.

Aliens or any advanced species will not come to us with smiles or warm greetings. It will be less Close Encounters and more Independence Day. Jeff Goldblum and Will Smith may or may not save us. Before a blue laser blast decimated the White House, a more intimate and intense experience with the Third Kind happened.

Independence Day is loved for its visual effects (which still hold up today) and its spectacle. Mars Attacks! has enjoyable cameos, wild imagination and a solid score, even if it is lower tier Burton. FITS is a film whose best scene is on par with the likes of Jacob's Ladder.

It contains the sole abduction scene that remains convincing and terrifying in regards to aliens. Infuriatingly so. What makes it so effective is the way its done- cold yet curious about what this human specimen . I haven't seen this done, or at least achieved succesfully up until Annihilation which came out at the beginning of this year. The phenomena in that film came less as an evil entity from another planet and more as something that just is.

The set design from this FITS scence in particular is less futuristic based and more alien based. There's slimy walls, a horrifying set piece where the abductee feels around where he is and find his hands inside a man's body. The gray suits, the scattered books, shoes, glasses and other objects along the way. It's all foreplay to a scene that remains unmatched in alien abduction horror.

31 Days of Horror: Jack Ketchum's The Girl Next Door

"Our job as writers who tend to progress from the dark side is to explore and chronicle and as best we can, through fiction, speak the truth."

In a Writer's workshop, Jack Ketchum brings up a story in which he talks about what scares him. He then goes into a story involving his encounter with a boa constrictor. Now if you've read the author, you will not find any snakes. Or any traditional monsters for that matter. 

"If you can't empathize. If you can't put yourself in someone else's place with all the compassion and insight you can muster- to find their character through your own character- you have no business being a fiction writer." This is what makes Ketchum such an effective storyteller. Ketchum's fiction has a rawness on every page. Stylistically, he pulls no punches. He looks into his own black abyss and reports back. What are people capable of? A vicious answer came in the form of his 1989 novel. One I've read once and never plan on reading again.

 

The Girl Next Door is based on the Sylvia Likens case that took place in Indianapolis, Indiana, in which a 16 year old girl was abused, tortured and murdered over a period of three months by Gertrude Baniszewski, her children and other neighborhood children. Classic works of horror have often drawn from true crime. You can trace a line from Psycho, Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Silence of the Lambs to Ed Gein. The Girl Next Door however, captures sadism in a way entirely different from those works.

The story revolves around David, an 11 year old boy who takes a liking to Meg, a neighborhood girl. Meg's parents died in a car accident long ago and she is put in care of by her Aunt- Ruth Chandler, who is in the running for most repulsive villain in fiction. Ruth abuses Meg's little sister in order to emotionally blackmail Meg. Whenever she gets out of line, her little sister suffers for it. The psychological abuse turns into physical and then gets worse from there. 

Ketchum strips away any authority 'adults' may have in the situation by pitting us in the shoes of the narrator. When there are parents outside of Ruth, their default setting is to look the other way. It's the 50s. This stuff can't happen in our town. "Mind your own business and stay out of trouble" come as portent signs of despair. The now adult protagonist who tells his childhood story and of his shameful regret by not doing anything to stop the abuse. The horror of the situation made all the more palpable because of Ruth's influence on David's actions.

There's a natural curiosity in the mind of a child to take things further. How far could we go without suffering any consequences? Do you want to confront parts of yourself that are base and primal? You have to be willing to go to that place if you plan on reading this book. It's a ride through hell. At the end of it, hopefully you'll come away with some truth. 

If The Girl Next Door seems like not your cup of tea, then I will point you in the direction of where his fiction started: Off Season. A novel set in the woods with a clan of feral cannibals that will leave a permanent mark. Bleak, cynical and gruesome. If any of that strikes your fancy, look no further.





Here's the full Writer's Workshop lecture Jack Ketchum gave:

31 Days: Television Terror

This is the episode I show to people who have never heard of Tales From the Crypt. J. Peter Robinson's score. The sleazy performance of Morton Downey Jr. as Horton Rivers. The incessant hatred toward Rivers' slimeball personality from the producer. It has everything required in the EC formula- antagonist gets his come uppance in a mix of scares and ghoulish laughs. What makes this episode stand out for me is how the scares build.

Ada Ritter, a black widow who collected husbands the way collectors procure baseball cards, haunts the house. Episodes in the first four seasons perfected a comedy/horror balance with liberal doses of sex and violence. They culled the stories that would best translate from panel to screen. When I think of Haunt of Fear, the comic which this episode is taken from, Graham Ingels immediately jumps to mind. The creator of the Old Witch the way Johnny Craig was the master of the Vault Keeper and Jack Davis drew the Crypt Keeper. However, those three masters would not be responsible for the writing or drawing of this story. That job would go to Harvey Kurtzman. An editor before becoming a full time story writer/illustrator for EC Comics.

Television was the new sensation back in the 50's, so it made sense for it to revolve around a live TV broadcast. This was early in my years of horror movie/TV watching. What strikes me now more than the visuals is the idea of the house recording the hauntings and murders of Ada Ritter on a loop.

Things That Go Bump In the Night

What scares you? As a kid I'd have this fear of strangers looking through my window while I slept. There's the sudden revulsion of spiders. The loss of control.

I could go the political route and say the Koch Brothers, the horrific injustices of the Central Park Five, the West Memphis Three, Trayvon Martin, and countless other pathways into discussions that lead to arguments that lead to angry trolls. There's the ecological route and how, according to Elizabeth Kolbert, we will be the arbiters of our own extinction. There's evil on a national scale: the Pol Pots, the Idi Amins, the gulags of the Soviet Union, and concentration camps. Human nature has no bottom and is capable of horrors vastly beyond anything produced in an artistic medium.


But that's getting too serious. And as a man with scars once said: why so serious?

For the month of October, I'm shining a flashlight on the topic of horror. I've decided to cast the net wide and let it encompass film, television, music, painting, literature, and true crime.

In doing this, it's important to note that the subjects discussed are not just things that get under my skin, but the kind of horror I respond to the most. I'm rarely scared by anything film related nowadays. Hereditary has its moments. Yet It Comes At Night's whole mood was unsettling. Even the marketing of it made it out to be a standard horror film when it was something else. What I'm after here, at the end of the day, is ideas. If I were to make a horror flick, many of these ideas and visual aesthetics would inform it either conciously or subconciously.

So pull up a chair and put a log on the fire. While the fire is kindling, we can keep the beasts at bay.

For now, at least...

Ramen

COMFORT FOOD
What is comfort food? It is so many things to so many people. Many of which will draw back from a time in their childhood. What they were religously eating. For me, McDonald's nuggets and a burger washed down with a coke was ceremonial for me. I had to have it each week. It wasn't complicated food by any means. After McDonald's I started branching out toward faux culture food (Taco Bell) and Chinese take out. Whenever I was sick or didn't feel the need to go out, the solution of what to eat was given to me in a bag of Instant Ramen. Now a punchline. Then a go to. The beef flavor was my favorite.

Thousands of miles away from me in Japan, a thing such as Instant Ramen was a mere microcosm of the possibilties of what you can do with flavorful noodles. In the same way the French are known for their bread, the Japanese have mastered the art of Umami, or the characteristics of a savory broth one gets in a bowl of Ramen. It's all about the special concoction of ingredients added to the broth.

The word Ramen came from Lo Mein, a Chinese dish. As it was taken into the Japanese tradition, it was refined. There are now 80,000 Ramen shops in Japan. And no seasonal specials. The dish you order in January will be the same dish you order in August. A guaranteed thing.

But that's Japan. This is Chicago.

IN THE REALM OF THE SENSES
My first experience with a bowl of Ramen was in 2017. The restaurant was Kizuki Ramen and Izakaya and is located in the Wicker Park district of Chicago. A cultural hub where you'll find restaurants serving Indian, Mediterranean, Sndtracke and Japanese dishes. Beyond just brewing up food, it's cultivated a community of working artists since the 80s. Street corners bustle with the local panhandler and the local Human Rights activist. The deep blue part of a city that has voted Democrat since 1927.

The philosophy of Kizuki Izakaya is to serve the most authentic, traditional, and delicious Japanese Ramen without having to fly to Japan. The Furious Spoon, a Ramen shop across the street from Kizuki Izakaya, combines the joys of eating great food while blasting hip hop. A great atmosphere to eat in. Another, Ramen Wasabi is situated two blocks away. What those places don't have is the big sign in white lettering VOTED BEST RAMEN IN CHICAGO 2016. Out of the three Ramen shops to choose from, it was obvious what one I'd choose.

Every Ramen shop has (or least should have) an individuality to it that is more important than what music plays in the background, or what atmosphere it's trying to achieve. It's the broth. In Japan, there are two types of Ramen shops: readymade and artisan. Readymade being a place that has all of its ingredients and mixes premade. Artisan shops make their own noodles and push for their own flavored broth. Only the owner knows the secret of how it is made. It's that secret ingredient that your family passes down generation to generation. Grandma's secret spaghetti sauce.

I don't think I would have been aware of Ramen or at least the art of it had I not watched Juzo Itami's Tampopo first. It's a love letter to food and the sensory experience that it brings. I can go on and on about how well it captures the spirit of the amateur and the craftsman. But Tony Zhou does a much better job in his video essay.



Tampopo kicks off by mocking the fetishized method of consuming food. A few scenes later a woman teaches a group how to properly eat spaghetti. Only to be interrupted by a man slurping down his noodles. Nails on a chalkboard? Far from it. Slurping noodles is actually preferred if you want to fully experience the flavor of the noodles. There is no right way to eat Ramen. There is no right way to eat pizza either. But you wouldn't be caught eating it with a fork or knife, now would you?

There are no special epiphanies in the movie. Tampopo circumvents the trope of the artist having to choose between staying true or selling out. Instead, her slow but steady accumulation and mastery of the craft drives her forward. The vignettes strewn throughout the film showcase various types of people and their love, inquistiveness and sensual need for food. All while surrounding the main storyline of Tampopo in the same way the ingredients add flavor to a bowl of Ramen.

5 to 8 minutes is the time it should take you to down a bowl. It's not a conversational food. Order. Receive. Down it. This immediacy coupled with the layers of flavor make this my go to dish.

Goodbye 2017...Hello 2018

2017 was a ride. No, more of a descent into chaos. It also found me obviating between two familiar states of mind: the need to consume as much TV and film possible and the need to get lost in the printed page. The latter ended up winning out as you will notice.


2017
What I Watched, What I Listened To, and What I Read

* * * * * * * * * * 

MOVIES
Phantom Thread
Dunkirk
It Comes At Night
Good Time
The Shape of Water
The Blackcoat's Daughter
Get Out
Split
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
It

To see: Happy End, The Florida Project, Call Me By Your Name, A Ghost Story, The Square, Nocturama, Rat Film, Lucky, The Post

Films I Liked (A-/B+): The Killing of A Sacred Deer, Lady Bird, Raw, Logan, Wind River, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, Gerald's Game, Brawl In Cell Block 99

Decent (B/B-): The Big Sick, The Beguiled, Logan Lucky, Blade Runner 2049, Creep 2, Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi, I Tonya

Middle of the road (C+/C/C-): The Discovery, Trainspotting 2, Alien: Covenant, Baby Driver, mother!, Cult of Chucky

What are you? : Kuso


* * * * * * * * * *

TV
If I had to list one piece of media over everything else as far as artistic impact goes, it would go to Twin Peaks: The Return. Conflicting with this feeling is the impact The Leftovers' final season had on me. Only that was more cumulative. Peaks, while having a superb third season, wasn't really what I'd hoped for for it's two seasons. Sure it spawned a cultural waterfall of coffee, pie and backwards talking midgets. But in retrospect it wasn't the Lynch I responded to the most. The one who would make a film based around the series a year after it's finale. The third season has more in common with that and, for good measure, the stream of consciousness of Inland Empire with the vignetted structure of Mulholland Dr.

Leftovers felt...personal.

Back in 2007, Ebert did a list of his favorite movies. He too was conflicted with the top 2. He was his brain chose No Country For Old Men and his heart chose Juno. This is how I feel about The Return and Leftovers' final season. My brain chooses The Return.

2017 saw the debuts of Mindhunter, The Deuce and Legion. Each showcasing strong writing with The Deuce being from the minds of The Wire (David Simon and George Pelacanos) and Legion coming from the mind of Fargo (Noah Hawley). Mindhunter filled by insatiable appetite for true crime this year and shows David Fincher at the top of his game.

While not quite shows with traditional 'seasons', miniseries like Big Little Lies was a show that had some solid writing and fantastic performances. Not as memorable direction which would have made it jump higher. Wormwood, like Twin Peaks saw one of our greatest documentary filmmakers, Errol Morris, get a long leash from NetFlix and allowed to make a 6 part docu series.

1. Twin Peaks: The Return
2. The Leftovers S3
3. Mindhunter S1
4. Better Call Saul S3
5. The Deuce S1
6. Wormwood
7. Legion S1
8. Stranger Things S2
9. Mystery Science Theater 3000 S11
10. Big Little Lies

* * * * * * * * * *

MUSIC
Father John Misty- Pure Comedy
Sun Kil Moon- Common As Light and Love Are Red Valleys of Blood
Chelsea Wolfe- Hiss Spun
Ulver- The Assassination of Julius Caesar
Steve Wilson- To the Bone

Favorite Soundtrack: Twin Peaks: The Return
Favorite Score: Phantom Thread by Johnny Greenwood


* * * * * * * * * *

BOOKS 

FICTION

1. Life: A User's Manual by Georges Perec
2. It by Stephen King (re-read)
3. Underworld by Don DeLillo
4. Hard Rain Falling by Don Carpenter
5. Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin
6. Libra by Don DeLillo
7. My Struggle Vol. 2 by Karl Ove Knausgaard
8. Swan Song by Robert McCammon
9. The Complete Stories and Parables by Franz Kafka
10. The Stories of Breece D'J Pancake
11. Fat City by Leonard Gardener
12. All the Pretty Horses/The Crossing/Cities of the Plain by Cormac McCarthy
13. Lincoln In the Bardo by George Saunders
14. The Passion According to GH by Clarice Lispector
15. The Long Home by William Gay
16. Matterhorn by Karl Matterhorn
17. A Christmas Memory/One Christmas/The Thanksgiving Guest by Truman Capote
18. The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead
19. Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino
20. 11/22/63 by Stephen King

NON FICTION
1. Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari

2. Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI by David Grann
3. Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates
4. Our Revolution by Bernie Sanders

5. Iceman: Confessions of A Contract Killer by Philip Carlo

JANUARY
11/22/63 by Stephen King
"...stupidity is one of two things we see most clearly in retrospect. The other is missed chances."
Not only did King craft his strongest work in over a decade, it also happened to be his best love story. (A)
A Spy Among Friends: Kim Philby and the Great Betrayal by Ben McIntyre
"The fatal conceit of most spies is to believe they are loved, in a relationship between equals, and not merely manipulated." (A)

FEBRUARY
Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin
"Perhaps home is not a place but simply an irrevocable condition."
My first Baldwin. Upon finishing it, he rocketed up toward my all time favorite authors. (A+)
The Tunnel by Ernesto Sabato
The Latin American equivalent of Camus' The Stranger. (B+)
Lincoln In the Bardo by George Saunders
With the exception of Life: A User's Manual, the most original piece of fiction I read this year. A lot of expectation was heaped upon Saunders who, up to this point, only did short stories. Masterfully. This shows he is not just a great short story writer, he's a great writer. (A+)

MARCH
Notes On the Cinematographer by Robert Bresson
The deceptively simple book offers short bursts of wisdom of a filmmaker more concerned with the process than the destination.
Freedom by Jonathan Franzen
"You might by poor, but the one thing nobody can take away from you is the freedom to fuck up your life whatever way you want to."
So much great literature is born from the plights of middle to lower class. Can a good book be created out of the upper middle class struggle? Franzen says yes and plunges us into a family dynamic that is as dysfunctional as Married With Children's Bundys. (B+)
The Book of Laughter and Forgetting by Milan Kundera
"He was well aware that of the two or three thousand times he made love (how many times had he made love in his life?) only two or three were really essential and unforgettable. The rest were mere echoes, imitations, repetitions, or reminisces." (A)
Our Revolution by Bernie Sanders
Reading this book post election lit a fire under me. Bernie was the candidate whose ideals I aligned with the most and whose politics remained as unchanged and fervent as when he got involved in Civil Rights in the 60's. This book is proof. (A)

APRIL
Underworld by Don DeLillo
Probably the most challenging book I read in 2017. Roberto Bolano once talked of the "great, imperfect, torrential works that blaze a work into the unknown...the great masters struggle against that something, that something that terrifies us all, that something that cows us and spurs us on, amid blood and mortal wounds and stench."DeLillo is a writer who sees and hears America like no other. A Cold War narrative launches the dive into late 20th century America's anxieties and haunted past. It is great to watch this great master spar. (A+)
Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut
Subversive insanity of the Bookonist order. Nobody writes about the end of the world like Vonnegut. (A+)
Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino
How does one even describe what happens in this book? There's loose dialogue between the explorer Marco Polo and the emperor Kublai Khan. Yet the descriptions of the places Marco Polo has visited combine the real with the imagined in a way that can't be described in words but only felt. (A+)
Wonder Boys by Michael Chabon
I'm a big fan of the movie and Grady Tripp ranks as one of the great characters in my mind. (B+)

MAY
Shock Value: A Tasteful Book About Bad Taste by John Waters
John Waters explains the crudeness of his work with such articulation and understated wit that you fall in love with him all over again. Eminently readable book from an endlessly subversive man. (B+)
The Imago Sequence and Other Stories by Laird Barron
The current champion of weird fiction and cosmic horror. Combines hard boiled noir with textured dread. Recommended to fans of True Detective. (B+)
Favorite stories: Old Virginia, Shiva Open Your Eye, Procession of the Black Sloth, The Imago Sequence
The Complete Stories and Parables by Franz Kafka
The awful, the absurd, the grotesque, the endless mazes of bureaucracy. It's Kafkaesque. His stories induce a sense of claustrophobia and are as psychologically twisted as anything out there. (A+)
Favorite stories: The Metamorphasis, In the Penal Colony, The Hunger Artist, The Burrow

JUNE
Life: A User's Manual by Georges Perec
Changed the way I looked at book. Perec was part of the Oulipo movement. A group that helped redefine what is possible with the novel. Life: A User's Manual contains so many stories in its puzzle like structure. And every one of them is compelling. (A+)
The Quiet American by Graham Greene
"Innocence is a kind of insanity."
My first Greene and definitely not my last. It's a book that reminds us that the road to hell is paved with best intentions. (A-)
Fat City by Leonard Gardner
This book reeks of sweat, booze and boxing gloves. It's a Tom Waits song on full volume. (A+)
Outer Dark by Cormac McCarthy
Vivid and brutal. Desolate and unforgiving. Has just as much in common with the Old Testament than anything from Faulkner. (A-)
My Struggle Vol. 2 by Karl Ove Knausgaard
The second volume to an unprecedented intimate portrait of an artist. This time Karl lets us in on his love life and his publishing of his first couple books. (A+)
Libra by Don DeLillo
The JFK assassination is one of my biggest obsessions. As far as film goes, JFK satiated my hunger. Yet it only went so far until I yearned for more. John Douglass'  JFK and the Unspeakable turned out to be THE non fiction book to turn to for the subject and earlier this year, Stephen King's 11/22/63 took the event and combined it with a fictional narrative of time travel to a compulsively entertaining result. In Libra, DeLillo focuses on the man in the middle of it all: Lee Harvey Oswald. In doing so, he creates his most straight forward yet most thrilling piece of work. (A+)

JULY
Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates
The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead
What if the underground railroad was literally an underground railroad? Colson Whitehead takes this concept and sets us on a journey with Cora. (A+)
The Passion According to GH by Clarice Lispector
The closest anyone has gotten to reproducing the nightmares of Kafka without aping him entirely. I'm still deeply rattled to the core about the implications of this novel. (A+)
By Night In Chile by Roberto Bolano
Bolano has the ability to put the reader in a trance. The stream of consciousness structure for this novel just so happens to work perfectly for the story- a deathbed confession revolving around Opus Dei and Pinochet. (B)
The Stories of Breece D'J Pancake
Trilobites changed me. It's that kind of story that changes you on a molecular level. Breece only published one work before he took his own life. For a man that surrenders everything with each of these twelve stories, I remain peaceable and sated when I read them. (A+)

AUGUST
Uzumaki by Junji Ito
Scariest book I read this year. Cemented in me that horror that is born out of a concept
Hard Rain Falling by Don Carpenter
The generation to generation story spoke to me like no other book this year.

SEPTEMBER
Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari
The best non fiction book I read all year.
Iceman: Confessions of A Contract Killer by Philip Carlo
After a book about the dawn of man, it never fails to fascinate how when reflected through a person like Richard Kuklinski, we still have our base animalistic instincts intact. Luckily, none of this are even close to the kind of true monster Kuklinski was. (A-)

OCTOBER
It by Stephen King
The Ruins by Scott Smith
Good reading material for whenever you decide to take a trip to Mexico. Scott Smith only wrote two books and both of them were turned into movies. From what I hear, the movie adaptation of The Ruins is (as is the case with many adaptations) nowhere near as good as the book. (A-)
Bird Box by Josh Malerman
Speaking of movie adaptations, this is one I'd actually like to see. The ending wasn't as good as everything that led up to it. Though the palpable sense of dread is all encompassing. (B+)
Off Season by Jack Ketchum
Green Room meets Cannibal Holocaust set in the backwoods of Maine. This one is vicious, unrelenting and unforgiving. (A+)
Hell House by Richard Matheson

NOVEMBER
Nightmare Alley by William Lindsey Graham
A cotton candy coated nightmare noir of carnies, tarot, and darkness. For those who like their noir black as a moonless night. (A)
Matterhorn by Karl Marlantes
THE book on the Vietnam War. While I like Things They Carried more, that book is more about the power of story through truth vs. fiction. Everything you came to that book for but missed: the role of race in the war, the cameraderie, the bureaucracy, this one fills in the blanks. (A+)
Swan Song by Robert McCammon
Once again, Robert McCammon has reduced me to a blubbering mess. First Boy's Life, now this. I am going to miss these characters and the journey McCammon took me on. (A+)
All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy

DECEMBER
Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI by David Grann
Openly gasped at the greed, cheered for Tom White's conviction and let out several "oh my god!"'s throughout this story of greed, power and murder. What Grann has done here is take an event all but swept away by the sands of time and thoroughly excavated it with painstaking research and a narrative style that makes it as compelling as any fiction I've read this year. (A+)
The Crossing by Cormac McCarthy
Probably McCarthy at his most philosophical. Billy Parham ranks as my second favorite character in his work. Just ahead of Anton Chigurh and behind Judge Holden. (A+)
Angels by Denis Johnson
Johnson maps out the disenfranchisement of the soul in stark detail. Bleak, this one. (A-)
Red by Jack Ketchum
Ketchum gets introspective. He's best when he goes for the jugular so this one, while having a brisk pacing, lacks the bite of some of his other works. (B)
Cities On the Plain by Cormac McCarthy
I'm not one for book series. Which happen to dominate the sci fi and fantasy genres. But seeing two of my favorite characters cross paths enough to where a book is devoted to them is the best treat McCarthy can give and a stirring closing to his Border trilogy. (A)
Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging by Sebastian Junger
Junger juggles fascinating ideas about community and veterans returning home and the effects of solitude vs. how they felt as a unit in combat. (B-)
A Christmas Memory, One Christmas and The Thanksgiving Guest by Truman Capote
The first short story alone made me fall in love with Capote's description of memory. A classic that, like It's A Wonderful Life, will forever haunt me around this time of the year. (A+)
The Long Home by William Gay
I've found a new favorite author. His name is William Gay. The fact that this is his debut is nothing less than stunning. What a way to end the year. “While he slept the world spun on, changed, situations altered and grew more complex, left him more inadequate to deal with them.” (A+)