Tag: Gemma Files

The Concept of Book Clubs

I have always loved the concept of book clubs because reading the same book? With other people? So that you have people you can gab at about the book? Wonderful. But I haven’t really had that in decades.

Much of it is me. I am a picky reader in that I don’t mind reading other people’s book suggestions but I want to read them on my own time as the mood strikes–which is not really conducive to a book club. Also, it is very aggravating to force yourself to read a book when you aren’t in the mood for that particular story and then get to book club to find out you are the only one who actually read it. This is a form of exquisite torture. Especially if you disliked the book and want to vent about it.

As a quick note, I did NOT dislike When Things Get Dark.

The point being, is that I bought When Things Get Dark and quasi-strong armed a friend of mine into getting it too and oh, it has been a delight to discuss the stories as he goes.

I bought this book because one of the stories in it: “Sooner or Later, Your Wife Will Drive Home” by Genevieve Valentine was covered by Ruthanna Emrys & Anne M Pillsworth in their delightful tor.com column Reading the Weird.

It seemed like such an interesting story, so when the collection it was in went on sale, I bought it. Some misfires, some excellent stories, some just not-for-me pieces, but again, the fun of it has not only been in reading the short stories, but in discussing them.

Writing is often like working in a void. Lots of crickets. It’s not the kind of art form that you can just wave at somebody and they can take in at a glance. It requires attention and time, and we’re all short on that. So writing isn’t particularly social at the core. (This is why we love our writing groups and conventions and our coffee shop “offices”–to remind us we are not in this alone.) But reading is also not particularly social. TV, movies, music–you can watch or listen to the same thing at the same time. You can even group watch movies over the internet!

So… social elements and reading? Gotta be book clubs. Or, you know, just bugging a friend until they read the same book you are at roughly the same moment in time.

And to encourage others? This really is a solid collection. The standouts for me are:

Elizabeth Hand’s “For Sale by Owner” — I was thrilled to hear she got permission to write a book set in Shirley Jackson’s Hill House.

Laird Barron’s “Tiptoe” which is just delightfully creepy.

Gemma Files’ “Pear of Anguish” because no one does feral, fucked up people like Files.

The Genevieve Valentine story, which was everything I expected and wanted it to be.

I also really enjoyed Stephen Graham Jones’ “Refinery Road” though didn’t think it very Shirley Jackson inspired.

And I keep going back to Carmen Maria Machado’s “A Hundred Miles and a Mile” and getting new things from it, even though I don’t think I’ve quite gotten IT yet. This one strikes me as potentially the most Shirley Jackson inspired.

All in all, a solid collection, which is pretty much what you would expect from a collection edited by Ellen Datlow.

If a Baker’s Dozen is 13, is a Writer’s Top Ten really 11? It is this year.

My favorite books read in 2016. Not in any particular order.

radiance

Radiance by Catherynne Valente

Reading Valente is always more experience than story. This is a silver-screen look at a past that never was—if the early Hollywood years encompassed an SF landscape of planetary travel. There’s an enormous amount of stuff going on here spread over multiple layers of story-telling and it takes some work to pick out which threads actually lead to a cohesive solution to the central mystery (though arguably not the central point of the book): what became of Severin, a Hollywood darling? How did she vanish and where did she vanish to? And will it change anything?

Valente’s writing style rewards rereading, not least because she sets up mysteries, then writes a lot of scenes that basically suggest that the answers are unimportant even as she gives you a handful of options, none of which feel super conclusive. This book, especially, flirts with made-up stories, in the thread of a movie being written about Severin that wanders through different genres and tweaks events to suit each need. In other hands, this might be a godawful mess, but here, it ends up being a book that lingers with you. And whether or not each segment of the book ends up part of a cohesive whole, they’re beautifully written vignettes on their own. I was a little dubious about this book when I first finished it, but it’s grown on me.

experimental

Experimental Film by Gemma Files

People talk about art being an “unflinching” look at the world around us, and holy god, this book refuses to flinch. The main character—a film analyst and writer, mother to an autistic child, daughter to a difficult mother—embarks on a brutal self-dissection of herself while hunting down a piece of film that may or may not have something horrific lurking in it. It’s part a mystery about what happened to a long-lost film-maker; it’s part dissection of the film scene in Canada; and its part homage to horror movies as a whole. The main character is rarely likable, but she is fascinating. The ending’s not quite as strong as the rest of the book—a sad irony of so many fantasy books; the better you ground it in reality, the less powerful the magic can feel—but it’s still way up on my list of books for 2016. Plus, Gemma Files’ writing on a micro level—line by line—is often glorious. Where Valente makes elaborations and fancy little flirts with words, Files’ writing tends toward deceptively sparse but it builds inexorably.

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