2010 Reading List

I kept track of the books I read in 2010. I hadn’t done this before,  I’m not sure why I started, but I suspect I will continue. It’s not everything I bought or intended to read by a long shot, but here it is. The traditional books are listed separately from the ebooks. I didn’t have a Kindle until mid-September, so that is reflected in the balance.

I’m wishing I’d worked on this post as I went and included a couple lines about each book. Perhaps next year. I wouldn’t recommend all of these, but many I would and several of them quite emphatically. It was a good year for reading.

2010 Books Read

Print Books
1. Song of Kali by Dan Simmons (Tor Books)
2. Benjamin’s Parasite by Jeff Strand (Delirium)
3. The Everlasting by Tim Lebbon (Necessary Evil Press)
4. Children Of Chaos by Greg F. Gifune (Delirium)
5. Primitive by J.G. Gonzales (Delirium)
6. Sesta & Other Strange Stories by Edward Lucas White (Midnight House)
A post on White’s excellent “The Tooth” here. Some other great pieces in this collection as well.
7. The Garden Of Hermetic Dreams Edited by Gary Lachman (Dedalus)
8. Mr. Gaunt and Other Uneasy Encounters by John Langan (Prime)
9. American Gods by Neil Gaiman (Harper Perennial)
10. Over The Darkening Fields by Scott Thomas (Dark Regions Press)
Posted on the Dark Regions Message Board after reading this one. “There are numerous stories in this collection that have stuck in my craw. Thomas understands people. Through the darkness and oddity, that understanding is perhaps his strongest attribute… Many of the stories are quite short, but his efficiency, clarity and imagination carve the words deep.”
11. The Darkly Splendid Realm by Richard Gavin (Dark Regions Press)
Here’s an old post on Gavin’s I wrote after reading his book Omens. The Darkly Splendid Realm was a treat.
12. Dark Harvest by Norman Partridge (Tor Books)
13. Can Such Things Be? Tales Of Horror & The Supernatural by Ambrose Bierce (Citadel Press)
14. Cold To The Touch by Simon Strantzas (Tartarus Press)
One of the highlights of the year for me. Strantzas is as evocative in his gloom and strangeness, as his authenticity. The character development is excellent, his voice unique and subtle. “A Seed On Barren Ground” is a story that I ruminate on regularly and would place very high on a list of my all time favorites.  The Tartarus Press production value only added to this wholly satisfying collection.
15. The Man On The Ceiling by Steve Rasnic Tem and Melanie Tem (Wizards Of The Coast Discoveries)
posted on this here
16. The Ginger Man by J.P. Donleavy (Grove Press)
A loaner from a co-worker prompted by my love of A Confederacy Of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole. I hated this and abandoned it after about 100 pages. I can’t remember the last time I did that.
17. Fragile Things by Neil Gaiman (Harper Perennial)
18. The Book Of Days By Steve Rasnic Tem (Subterranean)
posted on this here
19. My Work Is Not Yet Done by Thomas Ligotti (Virgin)
20. The White Hands & Other Weird Tales By Mark Samuels (Tartarus Press)
21. Alone With The Horrors By Ramsey Campbell (Tor Books)
22. Dark Awakenings By Matt Cardin (Mythos)
posted on this here
23. Occultation by Laird Barron (Nightshade)
24. In The Hand Of Dante by Nick Tosches (Black Bay Books)
25. The October Country by Ray Bradbury (Del Ray)
26. Songs Of A Dead Dreamer by Thomas Ligotti (Subterranean)
27. Beneath The Surface by Simon Strantzas (Dark Regions)
28. Charnel Wine by Richard Gavin (Dark Regions)
(reading now)

Kindle Books
29. Wicked Delights by John Lewellyn Probert (Atomic Fez)
I started a post on this I have yet to finish…
30. The World More Full Of Weeping by Robert J. Wiersema  (Chizine)
posted about this one here
31. Excavation by Steve Rasnic Tem (Crossroads/Macabre Ink)
posted on this here
32. A Host Of Shadows by Harry Shannon (Dark Regions)

OSS: Edward Lucas White “The Tooth”

Bill Lindblad over at Storytellers Unplugged post this article recently. The request, in a nutshell, was this: ” Take a minute or two to gather five or more titles…  stories, novels, collections, movies, what have you… by people who are no longer around… provide that list to some person or people who might be interested.”

In that last year I started keeping a list of short stories that made a real impression on me. Outstanding Short Stories (OSS). The list is not just people who are no longer with us, but Edward Lucas White fits the bill. He died in 1934. I plan to do posts like this one periodically and maybe turn people towards something they didn’t know about.

Edward Lucas White – “The Tooth”
It is not available online, but I did find this which is pretty great… Looks like “The Tooth” is in box 51

I read the story in his the collection Sesta and Other Strange Stories released by Midnight House. It appears to be out of print now. I bought it on a whim (and a sale at The Horror Mall) not knowing anything about the author or his work.

There is something about teeth that fascinates me. I don’t have any particular dental phobias, I just find them to be effective as imagery. As a friend of mine says, “It’s the only place where our skeleton shows.”

“The Tooth” is a tale of mysterious dentistry, curious trinkets, matrimonial bargains and a curse that leads to insanity and death. It was among the most unusual of White’s stories in the collection. There were other stories I really enjoyed, but “The Tooth” achieves a transcendent weird that has stayed with me since my first reading.

Dr. Lefferts, a renown dentist with an aversion to pulling teeth, has set a prohibitive price for tooth extractions. This puts him in the service of the wealthy who demand his fine skills and price is no object.

A wealthy heiress, for whom he has a long-standing infatuation, Miss Ingleton appears one day demanding his services. She insists she has a bad tooth that he can find nothing wrong with. Over a period of weeks he works on her mouth exclusively. Ultimately she demands the tooth be removed and he replaces it with a false tooth, never having found anything wrong with the original.

In the course of their working together she requests to see his personal collection of miniatures, curios and ivories for which he has some standing as a collector. She comes across as unimpressed and once her dentistry concerns are resolved he doesn’t see much of her. Enter Chow Ma, who carries in his mouth an artificial tooth that is giving him problems.

He demands it be pulled but the extraction must leave the tooth undamaged. Upon removing the tooth Dr. Lefferts discovers that it bears an intricate carving. Ma concedes that it is no ordinary tooth, it has been handed down through generations of his family with several of them having used it. Lefferts covets the piece for his collection.

This leads to a meeting in a ramshackle Armenian ghetto that reveals a rival bidder for the piece to be. . . the heiress, who has a collection of her own. It is not sold and sometime later Chow Ma returns to the good dentist with a proposal that he can have the artifact cheaply on the condition he marry anyone but Miss Ingleton.

Lefferts doesn’t believe he has a chance with the heiress, but is outraged that some mug would tell him to get married. Later the trio meet by coincidence at the shore, a disagreement occurs that leads to the offended Chow Ma to cast the tooth into the sea so that neither of them may ever possess it as a he utters a cryptic curse.

Suffice to say, that is not that last of the tooth. . .

I debated giving away the end since it’s out of print, but I’m not going to do that. The ending is, perhaps, predictable in some regards, but it’s done with a level of dread, paranoia and body horror that put’s “The Tooth” on my list of memorable, and outstanding short stories.

settling in and books aplenty

We are getting settled into the new place and making pretty good headway against the walls of cardboard boxes. I’m finding stuff I haven’t seen in years. There has been a lot of moving in the last 5 years and it’s good to finally be someplace that I don’t feel unpacking will be a waste of time. As I mentioned before this will be the first time I’ll have my full studio set up since I finished recording “The Aberrant Laboratory” in 2006. There will no doubt be some new music in the works before too long. Whether it’s Gruntsplatter or something else I don’t know yet.

It has been a beautiful thing setting up the new bookshelves and loading them up. I went on a bit of a bender and picked up several new titles to get me through the looming Oregon winter.

Omens by Richard Gavin
The Everlasting by Tim Lebbon
The Book Of Days by Steve Rasnic Tem
Poe’s Progengy Anthology edited by Gary Fry
Tales Of Terror by Guy De Maupassant
Stories from A Lost Anthology by Rhys Hughes
Sesta & Other Strange Stories by Edward Lucas White
Edgeworks I: Over The Edge, An Edge In My Voice by Harlan Ellison
The Complete Stories of JG Ballard by JG Ballard
Writers Workshop Of Horror edited by Michael Knost

Most of those were acquired from The Horror Mall, everything except the Ballard book I think… It will be a long, gray winter of weird tales around here.