Oh, how these summer days and nights are passing by all too quickly here in the Finger Lakes. The college students are not only swarming the campuses, but totally disregarding any lessons taught to them on how to safely cross a street. It’s still been plenty hot and humid with many a thunderstorm tossed in for good measure, but fall is approaching all too fast. This past weekend saw the annual carnival, parade, and fireworks come to my little town. Yes, those old-fashioned things still exist around these parts.
We’ve got a TON of things to do around the house before the first snows start to fly. In between some roof and foundation repairs, plugging a hole to keep out the damn starlings come next spring, and with any luck at all, getting our deck sealed, I’m hoping to find more time to read. LOL. Yeah, right!
The list is short this month as I’ve been buried in a very deep hole of editing my own stuff, but I did manage to squeeze in a couple of really good books!
First up, The Shadow Fabric by Mark Cassell. I’ve been stalking Mark on Twitter for a very long time and was finally able to gather up enough pennies to order his first book in the Shadow Fabric mythos awhile back. I’ll be posting a more detailed review at all the usual places (including here) in the very near future. In a nutshell, loved it! It’s been a while since I’ve been so eager to get back to reading as I was with this book. It starts out with a bang, well, more like an um, I guess you’d call it a squish and slurp? Whatever the sound of someone getting stabbed with a magical dagger and then sucked into the darkness is. I’m really looking forward to getting my eyeballs on more of Mark’s work and learning more about the incredible world he’s created surrounding the Shadow Fabric.
I’m still making my way through my first Dean Koontz (audio)book. Yes, I know, I know. I’ve been told many, many times over the years that I’d like Dean Koontz stuff by those that know me well, but for whatever reason, I never picked up anything by him before. Wow. There will be more Koontz to come on this list, I’m sure. I’ve started out with 77 Shadow Street. It seems August is Shadow Month! Just realized that. The Pendelton Hotel stands at 77 Shadow Street and undergoes some sort of paranormal time-warp every thirty-eight years. Part horror, part paranormal, part sci-fi, part Apocalyptic-disaster, filled with giant larva-like creatures, ghosts, murderers, alien assaults and body snatching, I am fully invested in this story. The narration of this book is absolutely amazing, too! Whoever this guy is, I hope he got paid well. Every character, and there are a lot of them; men, women, children, and those creatures\beings\entities that haunt the place, each has a very different and distinct voice.
And, that’s it! Just the two. There are three books sitting here on the corner of my desk waiting their turn to be read. Oddly – two of them are science fiction – a genre I usually avoid like the plague.
2017 Bookshelf-To-Date
January
Montauk Monster by Hunter Shea
February
Maledicus by Charles F. French
March
Doctor Sleep by Stephen King
Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Radcliffe,
The Beast of Boggy Creek by Lyle Blackburn
April
Zen in the Art of Writing by Ray Bradbury
Sinister Entity by Hunter Shea
May
Ann Radcliffe: The Great Enchantress by Robert Miles
Dreaming At The Top Of My Lungs by Israel Finn
Loch Ness Revenge by Hunter Shea
June
Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury (audiobook)
We Have Always Lived In The Castle by Shirley Jackson (audiobook)
Beyond Boggy Creek by Lyle Blackburn
July
(Almost) Average Anthology by Jason J. Nugent
Moment of Darkness by Jason J. Nugent
The Whistlers by Amity Argo (audiobook)
The Willows by Algernon Blackwood (audiobook)
Luellen & Lucy by Dee DeTarsio
August
The Shadow Fabric by Mark Cassell
77 Shadow Street by Dean Koontz (audiobook)