“If you’re not a beautiful monster, then you’re a villager.” – Stephen Graham Jones, ‘Mongrels’
Not sure what’s come over me, but the urge has struck me to write some book lists. This blog has a weekly book recommendation, but sometimes it’s nice to have things grouped together in categories. I used to write book lists for Mental Floss (here’s one on contemporary monsters, here’s one about winter books), and would love to do these for money again. You know, if any of you readers happen to be freelance-commissioning editors.
Anyway, I’m sure you don’t have enough to read, so here are some book recs:
The Vampire Lestat by Anne Rice
Anne Rice’s vampires are having a bit of a resurgence. The new Interview With A Vampire series on AMC has re-animated the series, with some images of rock star Lestat surfacing ahead of season three. I haven’t read this book since high school, but I remember 1) rock star vampire being super cool, even if is genre does seem to be Spinal Tap metal and 2) shifting to Lestat’s perspective blowing open new possibilities for the series, sorta like how season two of The Wire re-orients your expectations.
Vampires Of El Norte by Isabel Cañas
how about a more recent vampire story? I don’t want to give any exactly how vampires are used here, because it’s scarier if you don’t know. Suffice to say, the story is set as the U.S. is invading Mexico (remember how we don’t have any right to the southwest?), and the vampires aren’t from the south.
Who Will Cradle Your Head by Jared Beloff
Are these horror poems? Are these nature poems? There’s a lot of swamp creature in here, and it rules.
Our Wives Under The Sea by Julia Armfield
What is such a lyrical, aching novel about a lesbian marriage slowly dissolving doing on a monster list? There aren’t really monsters in this novel, and you’d hardly classify it as horror. Still, the conceit is this: after spending six months sunken in the bottom of the ocean, a woman comes back changed. Is that change irrevocable? We don’t know. What’s more terrifying than that?
R E D by Chase Berggrun
I recommend this book all the time, I know, but it really is that good. I will probably read it this October. There’s something comforting about it, to me. Something about the transformation and learning not to view yourself as monstrous—that really hits me. Yes, the speaker of these poems is trans and I am not, but it still hits me deep.
Extended Stay by Juan Martinez
The monster is a hotel. As in, I saw Juan at a reading and he called it “the hotel that eats people.” The hotel, of course, with its Las Vegas setting, is Actually Capitalism. I’m being flippant for the sake of blog comedy—this novel is really incredible, and an important mediation on how this country treats its underclass, particularly its non-white underclass. A meditation, that is, with gooey monsters.
Mongrels by Stephen Graham Jones
Working class Indigenous werewolves. That’s all I need to say and that’s all I’m gonna say.
The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones
If you want to read a novel from the perspective of a shapeshifting monster, but not, like, one of those Wicked things, where the real monster is how we treat each other or whatever, like, you want a real scary monster to basically be your narrator, but it’s not, like, hard first person? You want this book. A friend (who reads as much or probably more than I do) told me that it was so scary she kept having to put it down.
The Daughter Of Doctor Moreau by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
Who’s the real monsters, maaaaan? In this book, it’s pretty unsubtly science.
The Devourers by Indra Das
Gorgeous, haunting, cross-continental, epic, aching, loving, shredding the gender binary—this book is true art from sentence to sentence. Werewolves, again, the opposite of Mongrels on the stylistic coin, but no less about people on the margins and how they survive horror.
Will You Sign My Tentacle? by Brandon O’Brien
Gooey, cosmic horror poems. With rappers, too. These poems are full of self-doubt and sadness, and whatever is wrong with me, I had a blast with it.
That’s it—get reading. Reading will make you feel better.
Sorry you got an email,
Chris