The Genre Bucket

After a surprisingly eager response over on the Instagram page @genrebucket I decided to cover something different today: comic books! But why, you may ask, aren't comic books just superheroes? Actually, comic books are a rich and varied art form with just as many genres as books, as well as sub genres including literary adaptation. The grandfather of this genre being according to AbeBooks, Albert Kanter who was a Russian born publisher. He started Classic Comics later Classics Illustrated as a way to engage children with classic literature and was hugely successful. Running under his leadership from 1941 until its sale in 1971 all issues were comic book adaptations of classic literature like The Invisible Man by H.G. Wells. He got into comics very early in the art forms existence and saw their appeal as a natural way to encourage reluctant readers. All the comics in his line were ad free except for promotion on the inside cover to order issues of the comics themselves which furthe...

It was bound to happen at some point. Me, a horror critic accidentally buying two books with the same title. What I can't view as an accident is how terrible both of these books are. Enter The Nightwalker by Diane Guest and Thomas Tessier respectively. One invokes the name of V.C. Andrews on the cover but actually is only as disturbing as spoiled mayonnaise. The other sports praise quotes from Peter Straub and Stephen King and after reading it I doubt they actually read this garbage. Both of these suck in unique ways so I'm going to cover The Nightwalker by Diane Guest first. I feel like I should also mention that this was published only in the UK and after reading it I understand why. HarperCollins 1994 Paperback Edition The event that sets in motion the idea a ghost walks its ancestral estate is literally a collection of fine china being destroyed. So spooky. Honestly, this entire novel can be summarized as a bucket of haunted ancestral estate cliches with a topping of m...

January. The time for resolutions and in the book reading/reviewing community time for a Book Ban. What is a Book Ban you may ask? Exactly what it sounds like a temporary or permanent ban on purchasing new books. People in this community have a tendency, myself included, to purchase books even when we have an already gigantic To Be Read pile. To curb this many of us choose to go on a sort of book buying fast to induce the reading and clearing out of our collective TBR's. So in that spirit I am committing to a Book Ban until my birthday Month in May. The only new books I will allow in my life are free digital ones I download on my Nook since they don't take up physical space and any books gifted to me/ won in contests (I recently won a free copy of Black Ambrosia from Valancourt Books). Saying this that is why I probably will not undertake reviewing V.C. Andrews' actual catalogue or review more Shirley Jackson until this Summer. But I do have plans to review many books over ...

Unlike the worst list my best of was really hard to narrow down. I only completed 35 books but as I discussed in my previous post in general, I enjoyed most of what I read. To compromise with myself there is an honorable mentions section this time featuring books that didn't quite make the cut. With that out of the way these are my Top 5 Best Reads of 2019! 5) The Saturday Night Ghost Club by Craig Davidson Written by the same author as future genre classic The Troop, this slim but emotionally rich meditation on memory and loss made me cry like a baby. On the surface about a man's memories of his summer adventures with a quirky uncle it unfolds into so much more successfully combining the myths of childhood with the real spectres of growing up and untimely death. This would rank higher but I was expecting this to be actually horror instead of a coming of age story but it still deserves to be on this list. 4) Monster by Christopher Pike This YA Horror was insane in t...

Hello Humans of the Internet! As you know it is now 2020 and like many readers I tracked the books I completed last year and decided to do a Top 5 Worst and Top 5 Best list. Why did I choose Top 5? I personally, think I didn't read enough to warrant a longer list. I only completed 35 reads in 2019 and in general my reading experience was fairly positive. A quick note though. I don't hold onto books I don't love 100% because of this I will not have the usual book edition info I provide since I don't have the books on me. All photos on this blog are taken by me of books I have purchased but I always ty to thoroughly document editions etc. so you can search for them yourself. On the Best list I will omit edition info simply for space. So without further ado here's my Top 5 Worst Reads of 2019! 5) Nightmare Hall #1 (The Silent Scream) by Diane Hoh This book is on here because it breaks my most important mandate: A book can't be boring. It's trying hard to ...

Happy New Year everyone! In the last days of December I had the pleasure of reading two different paperback originals so different in scope that I thought I should review both on here. Firstly, for newcomers to this blog or to vintage horror from the 80's Horror Boom when I say paperback original I refer to a work that was printed only in paperback format to reach the widest audience cheaply. This doesn't cheapen the stories these types of books tried to tell but goes to explain the type of over the top plot, eyecatching cover art etc. you see with the paperbacks within this period because they were in competition with thousands of other cheap paperbacks for reader attention. Also when I refer to the scope of a book specifically in genre fiction like horror, I'm referring to the scale of imagery the work creates in my mind. Do I feel like I'm immersed in a high budget movie or is the feeling I'm getting more akin to viewing a forgotten made for TV special? To pinpoi...