What I’ve Been Reading This Week<\/strong>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Two books that paired incredibly well together! I was pleasantly surprised. One is a short story collection that is honestly scarier than I thought short stories were allowed to be. Another is a debut collection of poems from a cherished friend, someone who is so incredibly smart about poetry that I am sometimes intimidated to talk to him (hey, watch for Tuesday’s The Line Break<\/em>). Needless to say, it was an incredible reading week, and let’s get to it. Hey, real quick, though? Neither book this week is for the faint of heart. CWs for just about everything you can think of.<\/p>\n\n\n\n North American Lake Monsters <\/em>by Nathan Ballingrud: <\/strong> After precisely one story, I thought, \u201cokay, it\u2019s latter-day Raymond Carver through a Lovecraftian lens,\u201d which is exactly what the blurb on the cover says. These are horrific stories that, if I had to whittle it down to an easy formula, involves this: someone discovers a monster, then discovers something monstrous about themselves. This collection has a skinwalker, a beached lake monster, a vampire, walking dead, and other scary monsters; it also has child abuse and abandonment, men learning that they are cowards in heartbreaking ways, and women who recruit for neo-Nazis. In fact, one story could be described as \u201cCar Crash While Hitchhiking\u201d meets American History X with a dash of The Substance and Ghislaine Maxwell type beat thrown in. No, you still don\u2019t have any clue what happens in that story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s not really a secret that, of the five potential types of book for me to read (novel, poetry collection, story collection, anthology, or non-fiction), short story collections rank near the bottom of what I want to be reading. Every once in a while, though, a story collection will absolutely shatter what I think can be done with the genre, and it makes me love the form again. 99 Stories of God<\/em> by Joy Williams, Jesus\u2019 Son<\/em> by Denis Johnson, Aimee Bender and Chloe N. Clark\u2019s work, George Saunders\u2019 first two and Friday Black<\/em> by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah\u2014these are books that absolutely shape how I write, books that I return to for inspiration. North American Lake Monsters is already near the top of that list, after one reading. Maybe I\u2019m relatively new to cosmic horror, but I genuinely didn\u2019t realize you could write stories like this.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n One quick story: a year or two ago, we were visiting Massachusetts. My mom\u2019s family is from Northampton\u2014not enough that I, like, spent Thanksgivings there or whatever, but enough that it\u2019s nice to go sometimes and listen to my mom\u2019s stories. Since I\u2019ve been there last, I\u2019ve learned about Kelly Link and the bookstore she runs with her husband, Gavin. I\u2019ve only ever read one Kelly Link book, which is an absolute travesty because I loved it and her whole vibe and I should read more. Anyway, I wanted to make a pilgrimage to Book Moon. Plus, my parents love bookstores. Book Moon was great! My kid got a pretty scientific book called The Big Book Of Butts<\/em>. I saw a copy of North American Lake Monsters<\/em> on display, and wanted it based on the title. But I looked around instead of grabbing it right away, and then I lost where it was. When I checked out, I asked the very nice worker if they happened to know where it was (sometimes bookstores have a list of where display books are, the one I worked at did). They did not know, but! Kelly, who had been very cool and very kind when I was like \u201cImabigfanofyourworkandawritertooandcamehereallthewayfromChicagototellyouthatyou\u2019recoolandspendlike$50atyourstore,\u201d chimes in from the back: \u201coh, I know where a copy is in the basement!\u201d Before I could protest, she disappeared, reappeared, and handed me the book. Maybe that\u2019s generic bookstore owner and small press publisher behavior. I had money to spend. Still, I was moved. Let it be known that Kelly Link is One Of The Good Ones.<\/p>\n\n\n\n a chronology of blood<\/em> by Teo Shannon: <\/strong>The first thing you might notice about Teo Shannon\u2019s stunning debut is its violent cover. It\u2019s a closeup of Caravaggio\u2019s The Sacrifice of Isaac, or maybe better described as a shirtless boy having his face mashed into the ground by someone wielding a knife. The image will come to life in these poems, rest assured. These poems deal with childhood sexual abuse, domestic violence, disowning family members, abusive relationships between gay men, and guess what? It doesn\u2019t end on a happy or hopeful note. It ends with some pretty earned anger on the author\u2019s part. Like in the Ballingrud, you don\u2019t come away feeling rosy about people.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n Formally, the writing is relatively straightforward. Yes, there is music image metaphor, but there is no mystery about what\u2019s happening or how the speaker feels. There\u2019s a certain liberation that comes with this level of clarity. Yes, I am going to immortalize these traumatic experiences in verse<\/em>, the writing says, but I will not grant these harms or the villains perpetrating them the privilege of being compared to the moon<\/em>. The beauty comes in the way Teo sees the world. The way a person who has endured so much can distill it into this 86-page collection. The way a person who can endure so much can be so smart, so full of insight, and yet hold on to righteous anger. This book might be difficult, but it rules.<\/p>\n\n\n\n LINKS!<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Something to listen to while you browse? You know, when Prince and David Bowie died, I had this overwhelming feeling that I didn’t appreciate them enough in their lifetime. Thinking about that feeling off and on for the last nine years, I’ve decided it’s kinda impossible to properly honor every important artist in their lifetime. That said, I felt like I appreciated D’Angelo enough. I had never gotten around to listening to all of Brown Sugar<\/em>, but that was genuinely because I could not stop listening to Black Messiah<\/em> and Voodoo<\/em>. D’Angelo was in my regular rotation, often paired with Dijon or Marvin Gaye or Noname or Erykah Badu or even Outkast (I went Voodoo<\/em>–>Aquemini<\/em> today and it was a great pairing). Soul is a funny genre, because I love it and listen to it a lot and still feel like I am not listening to enough different acts. Anyway, let’s listen to some D’Angelo. Let’s do “Alright” off of Brown Sugar<\/em>. What an absolutely towering talent. Hey, bonus link: check out Israel Daramola at Defector<\/em> with a great obit.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"North](\"https:\/\/www.lazyandentitled.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/IMG_6606-1024x768.jpg\")