Cults, Carnage, and Creatvity

I just spent the weekend in New York which always amps my creativity in a hundred different ways. While I was definitely visually arts focused on this foray, I was also lucky enough to get to spend a bunch of time with writer friends (especially David R. Slayton who has a new book coming out in a few weeks you should all read after you devour his back catalog to catch up - https://davidrslayton.com) which has me blasted out of my mini-fiction writing slump (the non-fiction is going fine, I may, in fact, have so many avenues of inquiry I’m having a little trouble deciding where to turn next) and a little bit of a reading one as well (too many DNFs in a row that left me frustrated and a little disillusioned).

Some great finds to report this week, though, so lets hit these new high notes instead of dwelling:

The Penguin Book of Cults by Joseph P. Laylock (Penguin Classics)

I love these Penguin Classics reference books as a reader, a writer, and someone with a lot of slightly-off beat niche interests. I take them out of the library a lot and frequently end up purchasing them because they’re absolutely perfect for those moments when you need to know a specific fact about something a little bit random or weird but don’t have the time to go on a deep dive, or need to grab a research tidbit for a book but can’t, or don’t want, to risk a rabbit hole. And for what are usually pretty slim volumes, they’re absolutely packed with solid, reliable information on their focal topic. That information, while, solid, reliable, and focal is also incredibly diverse: you’ll find serious discussion, random bits of trivia, and when appropriate, absolute, laugh-out-loud bizarro history between the covers of a volume and honestly, that’s how history should be presented. Humanity is weird; we should own it. It makes learning a lot more interesting.

The Penguin Book of Cults starts with the way back Bacchnal as described by the Roman historian Livy, making it very clear that the historian was casting the wine-drunk celebration as a reflection of his hatred for the Republic. From there, it touches on such other movements as The Orléans Heresy (no, Jesus did not suffer and die for your sins, don’t worry, we’ll help;)” The Electro-Alchemical Messiah Cyrus T. Reed, who met god while experimenting on himself in the 1890s, decided the world was hollow, and set up New Jerusalem on a small island off the coast of Florida; to the horrific Branch Davidian Siege in Waco, Texas (which I am old enough to remember very clearly).

This is also an important book to peruse in our current world-climate. From the outside, it’s difficult to see how people can be drawn in to cults, especially when their leaders are maniacal, fruit-tinted pieces of garbage. But life is hard and making decisions when things are difficult even more so. Someone else doing that for you is much, much easier. I am not making excuses for anyone who made that choice - and it is a choice. I have cut off friends and family who did. Because they did vote for this. All of it. And they’re going to have to admit that if they have any hope of getting out. But they can choose to do that. It will be a hard choice. And it’s going to be a long time before any one trusts them again, but it can be done. I don’t have a lot of faith in my people getting out but I guess you never know. I hope your people do. And maybe taking a look at this book will give you some hope.

The Penguin Book of Cults: https://bookshop.org/a/56337/9780143138693

MindWorks: An Uncanny Compendium by Neal Shusterman (Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing Division, 11/18)

Schusterma’s Scythe novels have come across my desk a few times over the years and I’ve always meant to get into them and then been distracted by something else; that is not me saying I didn’t enjoy them, it’s me saying that they came at times of year or on occasions I had a larger drop or book mail and they ended up in the pile an for whatever reason, I didn’t get to them. Now, I will because I thoroughly enjoyed this omnibus of Shusterman’s shorter works (some of which were written with his son or various other co-authors).

As you know, I’m always impressed with authors who can genre hop and while I absolutely agree with the subtitle, “An Uncanny Compendium” for this chonker (with really fantastic sprayed edges, I must add which, while I wouldn’t demand, I’m not sorry to have gotten, especially on a paperback) the varieties and vicissitudes of that descriptor contained within its pages are really, very impressive. We have flat out creepy, some real mind… farts, I guess I’ll say since (since this is for the younger set), cyberpunk, scatalogical creepypasta, angry thanksgiving dinner, climate funk, and even some hope punk. Anthologies like MindWorks usually get repetitive after awhile and I very rarely read every story in one, especially those that top out over five hundred pages, but I read every story in this one with the exception of the last two and that’s only because I don’t know the Scythe world at all. I really appreciate the way Shusterman’s writing flows naturally, especially when he’s writing about something strange or extraordinary; it has a way of capturing your brain and coupling the weird, pulling it into this world and leaving your wondering if it could, possibly, maybe, actually happen, a way of making you want to lift the corner of the curtain just to see what’s going on behind; not too far, of course, you might see too much and no one wants that. Right? Right?!

I would definitely put MindWorks on a holiday list for the readers in your life, no matter their age. If you are considering the youngest of middle graders, you may want to take a peep at it first, because scary things do happen to kids in several of the stories (it is uncanny/horror after all): siblings disappear, people are changed into different people and things, trusted adults don’t always deserve to be trusted, and there is some body horror. I would say it’s all of a level appropriate to an average tween but you know your kiddos best and average definitely doesn’t mean everyone. Some adults may not be comfortable and that is 100% okay.

MindWorks: An Uncanny Compendium: https://bookshop.org/a/56337/9781665990783

The Place Where They Buried Your Heart by Christiana Henry (Berkeley, 11/4)

Housekeeping first: I loved this one. I love, love, love haunted house books where the house is a character and Henry’s spin on this had me sleeping with the light on for all the right reasons. I would consider reading it again even though I know the twist because I was that enamored with it and scared by it but as with many of her books, there are a lot of content warnings and before you get too excited, I want to give you a chance to nope because not only are they there, they go hard: child death, sibling death, parent death, suicidal ideation, suicide, addiction, mental illness, domestic abuse, spousal murder, child murder, child endangerment, eating disorders, emotional abuse, parental abandonment of children, child injury, traumatic amputation. I am sure there are a few I forgot. I don’t recall any animal injury or death.

I’ve noticed that a lot of Henry’s books save the crash out for the last 25% of the book and sometimes that works for me and sometimes it doesn’t. I understand trying to build suspense until the very last moment but it can, sometimes, make the end feel rushed rather than suspenseful, as though she runs out of words rather than coming to the end of the story, closing with… not a whimper necessarily but an, “oh,” instead of an, “ahhhhhhhhhh!” and she’s such a great writer generally, and horror writer especially, I’m always really disappointed when that happens because I know she’s capable of the Big Bang.

The Place Where They Buried Your Heart is the perfect amalgamation of slow burn and explosive comedown, though, and I really loved it.

It was important that the characters in this book had as full a life as possible because you needed to care about them for the ending to have maximum impact. You needed to see the try to protect themselves and the people around them. You needed to hope, not just for them but with them as they advanced to the final challenge, the final big bad, and then, when they got there, to be a little surprised, a little confused, challenged in a different way than they expected to be because one of the most difficult things in life is when you’ve prepared yourself for war and what you find is a quiet conversation. What do you do it’s the vitriol and the adrenaline and the energy? How do you survive the shock and awe of what’s inside you when you expected it to be teeth and claws?

In horror, your final girl can either make it or not; if Jessie had gone to war or died, then we would have known exactly what to expect. The fact she had to face a completely different challenge than we expected? That left me wondering and it will leave you wondering too. And it left Henry with an absolutely gorgeous back quarter that I think might be my favorite of all the books she’s written and I’ve read.

The Place Where They Buried Your Heart: https://bookshop.org/a/56337/9780593953952

And there you have it. Lots to get to in the coming weeks and I’ll repost some reviews from earlier this fall as books I’m extra excited about drop. As always, I’ll do my “best of” list in time for your holiday needs.