Bookish (and not so Bookish) Thoughts {6}

Bookish (and not so Bookish) Thoughts is a random posting of what's on my mind bookish and otherwise. Sometimes 10 things, sometimes less, always hosted by Bookishly Boisterous.

Bookish Thoughts

1. What do you guys think of the Goodreads Choice Awards? I really love the concept behind it, but it seems terribly flawed. I'm on the extreme of feeling like I can't vote unless I've read all of the nominees. I don't expect anyone else to follow that logic or there would be no votes. What I do expect, though, is for people to only vote for books they have read. If you haven't read anything in the category, don't vote.
   
   The last three years the Best Horror category has been won by Dean Koontz, Ann Rice, and Stephen King respectively. Now I'm not saying that they won based on name recognition (ok, I probably am), but let's look at this year's votes. Saint Odd received 17,644 votes, but at the time of the voting it had only been rated on Goodreads by less than 8,000 people. (That number has since gone up a bit.)
   
   
   
   
   
   I'm thankful there's a horror category at all, but amazing books exist outside of Koontz, Rice, and King. I'm afraid an open popularity vote, however, will always tend to yield the same results.
   
   
2. Entertainment Weekly posted an excerpt and the cover for Joe Hill's The Fireman yesterday. I'm so damn excited for that book. It comes out in May.
   
   
3.  I'm loving all of the Dark Tower casting rumors. I could totally get behind Idris Elba squaring off against Matthew McConaughey. I really need to get back to my own quest for the Dark Tower. I left off in the middle of Wolves of the Calla. Despite my love of Stephen King, this series has been a struggle for me.
   
   
4. Are you guys watching Jessica Jones? The only chance I have to watch it is on my lunch break at work so I've only made it through a few episodes. I'm digging it so far.
   
   
   

Not So Bookish Thoughts

5. It's beginning to look at lot like Christmas! I'm a last minute crafter so my December is usually filled with a lot of projects I had hoped to do during the year. Last year I finished up my handmade gifts on Christmas Eve! My main focus right now is knitting a Harry Potter scarf for my 6 year old. He is a self-proclaimed Gryffindor.
   
   
   
   
6. Last Saturday I got together with my sisters-in-law to create some Christmas wreaths. I spent about $10 on the stick wreath and the poinsettia bouquet. The garland and pine cones I got super cheap last year during a Christmas clearance. I bought them to go above my cabinets, but I had some left over. I'm so happy with how it turned out.
   
   
   
   
   
7. My sisters-in-law have also been into these Christmas pallet crafts they've seen on pinterest so naturally I've been roped into working on one of those. I'm taking the simple route with a lighted Christmas tree. I still need to locate a star for the top and a little bit of ornaments, I think. I was trying to capture the wreath on my door, too, in the picture below, but damn shadow.
   
   
   
   
   
8. The camera on my phone is going out. The poor quality you see there (all of those lines!) isn't because I was taking the picture at night. I'm pretty bummed about it since I'm so bad about taking pictures. I was much better about it once I got a decent phone. I have a feeling I'm about to go back to being pictureless.
   
   
9. This weekend my youngest turns 3! Pinocchio will be a real boy.
   
   
10. It's been forever since I've been able to do a bookish thoughts post. I'm looking forward to having more blogging time next year. We've already cut out some of our extracurricular activities, but I've been working quite a bit of overtime to cover some of my holiday time off. It will be worth the trade once my holidays start!

Let me hear your thoughts this week!

Book Review | The Bazaar of Bad Dreams by Stephen King

The Bazaar of Bad Dreams is the latest horror collection from Stephen King.

A master storyteller at his best—the O. Henry Prize winner Stephen King delivers a generous collection of stories, several of them brand-new, featuring revelatory autobiographical comments on when, why, and how he came to write (or rewrite) each story.

Since his first collection, Nightshift, published thirty-five years ago, Stephen King has dazzled readers with his genius as a writer of short fiction. In this new collection he assembles, for the first time, recent stories that have never been published in a book. He introduces each with a passage about its origins or his motivations for writing it.

There are thrilling connections between stories; themes of morality, the afterlife, guilt, what we would do differently if we could see into the future or correct the mistakes of the past. “Afterlife” is about a man who died of colon cancer and keeps reliving the same life, repeating his mistakes over and over again. Several stories feature characters at the end of life, revisiting their crimes and misdemeanors. Other stories address what happens when someone discovers that he has supernatural powers—the columnist who kills people by writing their obituaries in “Obits;” the old judge in “The Dune” who, as a boy, canoed to a deserted island and saw names written in the sand, the names of people who then died in freak accidents. In “Morality,” King looks at how a marriage and two lives fall apart after the wife and husband enter into what seems, at first, a devil’s pact they can win.

Magnificent, eerie, utterly compelling, these stories comprise one of King’s finest gifts to his constant reader—“I made them especially for you,” says King. “Feel free to examine them, but please be careful. The best of them have teeth.”

The Bazaar of Bad Dreams is a mix of previously published stories and new stories. Most of the stories were new to me, though. While The Bazaar of Bad Dreams didn't turn out to be a favorite of mine, it's still a really solid collection.

The little introductions to each story are such a perfect gift to Constant Reader. I loved them.

Stephen King and I are basically having the same thought right now:

Something else I want you to know: how glad I am, Constant Reader, that we’re both still here. Cool, isn’t it?

Yes. I hope my life is filled with many more Stephen King collections.

7/10: Recommended Read

December 7 | Currently Reading

Last week I posted reviews of Sour Candy by Kealan Patrick Burke {review} and Slade House by David Mitchell {review}.

I also finished reading Snowblind by Michael McBride. Then I read the first Harrow County comic book. I've been pining after that series, and i09 posted the full first comic on their website. If you are into horrific things, you will want to check that out. I also had the pleasure of reading The Bizarre of Bad Dreams by Stephen King.

Now I'm currently in the middle of reading Hawksmoor by Peter Ackroyd and The Rats by James Herbert.

What about you? What are you reading this week? Be sure to let me know in the comments or leave me a link!

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This post is being shared as part of Book Date's It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

Book Review | Slade House by David Mitchell

Slade House is a horror novel by David Mitchell.

Keep your eyes peeled for a small black iron door.

Down the road from a working-class British pub, along the brick wall of a narrow alley, if the conditions are exactly right, you’ll find the entrance to Slade House. A stranger will greet you by name and invite you inside. At first, you won’t want to leave. Later, you’ll find that you can’t. Every nine years, the house’s residents—an odd brother and sister—extend a unique invitation to someone who’s different or lonely: a precocious teenager, a recently divorced policeman, a shy college student. But what really goes on inside Slade House? For those who find out, it’s already too late. . . .

Spanning five decades, from the last days of the 1970s to the present, leaping genres, and barreling toward an astonishing conclusion, this intricately woven novel will pull you into a reality-warping new vision of the haunted house story—as only David Mitchell could imagine it.

I'm a very skeptical reader. I will never be the kind of reader John Green wants me to be.

Going into Slade House, this line in the book description had me very apprehensive: "this intricately woven novel will pull you into a reality-warping new vision of the haunted house story—as only David Mitchell could imagine it." There is nothing greater than a haunted house story. What kind of new vision was I getting myself into?

I remained very unsure of the book through the first half of it, but then everything really fell into place for me.

The classic writing style was a perfect match for the scope of the story. Starting out in 1979 and ending up in present time, Slade House spans several decades. I normally don't care for big shifts in time, but it is brilliantly handled here.

In the end, I'm happy to say Slade House absolutely delivered on its promise of a "new vision of the haunted house story".

8/10: Great Read

Jennifer

Mini Review | Sour Candy by Kealan Patrick Burke

I'm going to take a quick minute to highlight Kealan Patrick Burke's Sour Candy.

At first glance, Phil Pendelton and his son Adam are just an ordinary father and son, no different from any other. They take walks in the park together, visit county fairs, museums, and zoos, and eat together overlooking the lake. Some might say the father is a little too accommodating given the lack of discipline when the child loses his temper in public. Some might say he spoils his son by allowing him to eat candy whenever he wants and set his own bedtimes. Some might say that such leniency is starting to take its toll on the father, given how his health has declined.

What no one knows is that Phil is a prisoner, and that up until a few weeks ago and a chance encounter at a grocery store, he had never seen the child before in his life.

A new novella from the Bram Stoker Award-winning author of THE TURTLE BOY and KIN.

Sour Candy is a great little horror novella, and I can't recommend it enough if you are a fan of horror stories.

It reminded me of Bentley Little's The Mailman which is one of my favorites.

9/10: Highly Recommended

Review copy provided by author