2023 Reading List Monthly Update: December (Finale)

Books read in November of 2023:

"Femina: A New History of the Middle Ages, Through the Women Written Out of It" (Janina Ramirez) 12-2-23

"The Gate of Ivory" (Bernard Lazare) 12-12-23

"Medieval Music" (Richard H. Hoppin) 12-23-23

"Spookley and the Christmas Kittens" (Joe Troiano) 12-24-23

"Lady Gaga: A Little Golden Book Biography" (Michael Joosten/Illustrated by Laura Catrinela) 12-29-23

"Thousand Cranes" (Yasunari Kawabata) 12-30-23

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2023 Reading List Total:

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1. "The Medieval Underworld" (Andrew McCall) 1-11-23

2. "Impure Thoughts" (Golnoosh Nour) 1-12-23

3. "Byzantium: The Surprising Life of a Medieval Empire" (Judith Herrin) 1-15-23

4. "The Baron's Coffin and Other Disquieting Tales" (Ada Buisson) 1-17-23

5. "Amy Winehouse: Beyond Black" (Naomi Parry + Various) 1-21-23

6. "Convenience Store Woman" (Sayaka Murata) 1-25-23

7. "Do You Like Big Girls? Vol. 1" (Goro Aizome) 1-27-23

8. "Strange Weather in Tokyo" (Hiromi Kawakami) 1-31-23

9. "The Shards" (Bret Easton Ellis) 2-4-23

10. "Lie With Me" (Philippe Besson) 2-7-23

11. "The Lover" (Marguerite Duras) 2-9-23

12. "Tokyo Ueno Station" (Yu Miri) 2-12-23

13. "Boycrush" (James Nulick) 2-16-23

14. "This Side of Paradise" (F. Scott Fitzgerald) 2-17-23

15. "The Adventure Zone Vol. 5: The Eleventh Hour" (The McElroys/Carey Pietsch) 2-19-23

16. "Octopus Pie: The Other Side" (Meredith Gran) 2-22-23

17. "Octopus Pie Eternal" (Meredith Gran) 2-23-22

18. "The Book of Imaginary Beings" (Jorge Luis Borges) 2-25-23 

19. "Leonora Carrington: Surrealism, Alchemy and Art" (Susan L. Aberth) 3-4-23

20. "Pictures of Apocalypse" (Thomas Ligotti) 3-11-23

21. "Vermilion Sands" (J.G. Ballard) 3-17-23

22. "Berserk Deluxe Edition 13" (Kentaro Miura) 3-23-23

23. "Tombs" (Junji Ito) 3-30-23

24. "The Flowers of Buffoonery" (Osamu Dazai) 4-4-23

25. "A History of the Middle Ages" (Joseph Dahmus) 4-5-23

26. "Winter in Sokcho" (Elisa Shua Dusapin) 4-7-23

27. "The Guest Cat" (Takashi Hiraide) 4-13-23

28. "The Great Empires of the Ancient World" (Various/Edited by Thomas Harrison) 4-16-23

29. "The Turkish Lady and Other Writings" (Jean Lorrain) 4-17-23

30. "Raun" (Ruggero Vasari) 4-20-23

31. "I Will Not Come" (Arnaud Rykner) 4-22-23

32. "The Secrets of Cabalism" (Ana Jane Vardill) 4-26-23

33. "Tournaments: Jousts, Chivalry and Pageants in the Middle Ages" (Richard Barber & Juliet Barker) 4-29-23

34. "Neo-Decadence Evangelion" (Various/Edited by Justin Isis) 5-6-23

35. "The Illustrated Encyclopedia of the Kings & Queens of Britain" (Charles Phillips) 5-18-23

36. "The Black Death" (Philip Ziegler) 5-18-23

37. "Cats in Spring Rain: A Celebration of Feline Charm in Japanese Art and Haiku" (Various) 5-19-23

38. "Are You All Crazy?" (René Crevel) 5-26-23

39. "The Others Lived As Me" (Ange Dargent) 5-28-23

40. "Lord of the World" (Robert Hugh Benson) 5-30-23

41. "Your Dreams" (Thomas Moore) 5-30-23

42. "Antichrist in the Middle Ages: A Study of Medieval Apocalypticism, Art, and Literature" (Richard Kenneth Emmerson) 6-7-23

43. "Sabbat" (Hélène Picard) 6-17-23

44. "Fish Turn Colors Then Break in my Hands" (Colby Smith + Josh Bayer) 6-21-23

45. "The Best of Trim" (Aaron Lange) 6-21-23

46. "The Rise and Fall of Alexandria: Birthplace of the Modern Mind" (Justin Pollard & Howard Reid) 6-21-23

47. "Spells" (Brendan Connell) 6-25-23

48. "The Blood of the Gods" (Jean Lorrain) 6-28-23

49. "Venomous Feathers Split #1: Dive Careful Down/Stupendemys" (Fergus Nm + Churchdoor Lounger) 6-30-23

50. "Paradise Lost" (John Milton/Illustrated by William Blake) 7-3-23

51. "The Pachinko Parlor" (Elisa Shua Dusapin) 7-11-23

52. "De Profundis" (Oscar Wilde) 7-15-23

53. "Soichi" (Junji Ito) 7-19-23

54. "Hit Parade of Tears" (Izumi Suzuki) 7-22-23

55. "The Higher Genius: Magical Tales of New York City" (Kyler James) 7-23-23

56. "Beautiful Star" (Yukio Mishima) 8-3-23
57. "Doom Guy: Life in First Person" (John Romero) 8-13-23

58. "Medieval Bodies: Life, Death and Art in the Middle Ages" (Jack Hartnell) 8-23-23

59. "The World of the Crusades: An Illustrated History" (Christopher Tyerman) 8-24-23

60. "The Collected Poems of Dylan Thomas- Original Edition" (Dylan Thomas) 8-29-23

61. "Sea Monsters on Medieval and Renaissance Maps" (Chet Van Duzer) 8-30-23

62. "Wuthering Heights" (Emily Brontë) 9-17-23

63. "Zothique: The Final Cycle" (Clark Ashton Smith)  9-19-23

64. "A Shameful Life" (Osamu Dazai) 9-25-23 +

65. "Parade" (Hiromi Kawakami) 9-25-23

66. "Goth: A History" (Lol Tolhurst) 10-7-23

67. "Japanese Tales of Mystery and Imagination" (Edogawa Rampo) 10-9-23

68. "The Dark Secret of Weatherend" (John Bellairs) 10-12-23 *

69. "Concrete Siberia: Soviet Landscapes of the Far North" (Zupagrafika) 10-13-23

70. "Monica" (Daniel Clowes) 10-15-23

71. "Stone Age: Ancient Castles of Europe" (Frédéric Chaubin) 10-19-23

72. "The Mysteries" (Bill Watterson & John Kascht) 10-22-23

73. "Mimi's Tales of Terror" (Junji Ito) 10-24-23

74. "The Grand Medieval Bestiary: Animals in Illuminated Manuscripts" (Christian Heck & Rémy Cordonnier) 10-28-23

75. "Ain't It Fun: Peter Laughner & Proto-Punk in the Secret City" (Aaron Lange) 11-6-23

76. "The Reflection of Stars" (Tom Champagne) 11-10-23

77. "The Light Ages: The Surprising Story of Medieval Science" (Seb Falk) 11-11-23 

78. "Weird Medieval Guys" (Olivia M. Swarthout) 11-15-23

79. "Chivalry and Courtesy: Medieval Manners for a Modern World" (Danièle Cybulskie) 11-18-23

80. "Berserk Deluxe 14" (Kentaro Miura) 11-30-23

81. "Femina: A New History of the Middle Ages, Through the Women Written Out of It" (Janina Ramirez) 12-2-23

82. "The Gate of Ivory" (Bernard Lazare) 12-12-23

83. "Medieval Music" (Richard H. Hoppin) 12-23-23

84. "Spookley and the Christmas Kittens" (Joe Troiano) 12-24-23

85. "Lady Gaga: A Little Golden Book Biography" (Michael Joosten/Illustrated by Laura Catrinela) 12-29-23

86. "Thousand Cranes" (Yasunari Kawabata) 12-30-23

*= book I have read at least once in the past
+= book I have read before, but not this reprint/edition/translation

Currently Reading: 

Amber: Death Anniversary

Today marks the one year anniversary of the death of my beloved and much-missed cat Amber. I don’t plan on talking about this at great length every year, but as this is the first year anniversary, I feel like I should at least say a few things that have been on my mind for awhile now and would like to get off my chest, and I’ll try not to rehash too many details I covered last year. 

I suppose it’s human nature to second guess one’s choices, when looking back at things in retrospect. In hindsight, I will say now that I wish I hadn’t gone to work that day, that I had spent more of the last day by Amber’s side (of course, at the time, I had no way of knowing it would be the last day). It’s something that I know is silly to feel guilty about, as when she was alive no one spent more time with her than I did, but sometimes guilt transcends logic. And it wasn’t even as if I was gone all that long: I left at 4 PM, got to work around 5, got the call to come back home sometime after 6:30, made it back home by 7:10, was with her the last ten minutes before she died (really, it almost seemed as if she were holding off her own death while waiting for me to arrive). In the days afterwards, I would sometimes get panic attacks thinking about all the things that could have gone wrong that night... what if I had been stopped by a cop, or I had hit traffic, or my car had broken down? I know it’s silly to freak out about bad things that DIDN’T happen, but no one said the human mind is always rational. 

One thing about that night that I remember is that when I got home my mom asked me if I wanted to have Amber put in my lap (at the time, she was in my mom’s lap). I said no, partly because she looked so fragile that I was afraid to move her, and also because I wasn’t sure if I were comfortable with the idea of her dying in my own lap. Sometimes I wonder if I made the right choice, and I’ve gone back and forth over this quite a bit. Amber spent so much of her life in my lap, that perhaps it would have been fitting for her to die on it. But after awhile I came to look at it from a different angle. It was my mother who made the choice to adopt Amber all those years ago. She was ultimately the person who brought Amber into our lives. So was it not proper symmetry that Amber died on her lap, at the end? What matters to me at least was that I WAS there for it, and though in all honesty Amber may have been too out of it to even be aware of that fact, perhaps on some level my very presence there and the sound of my voice registered with her and gave her some solace: or that after her death, when perhaps her soul exited her body, she saw me there, and knew that I hadn’t abandoned her in her last moments.

But maybe it’s pointless to self-torture the mind with questions that can’t be answered (in the mortal realm, that is). As I wrote last year, “So at least I got to say I was by her side when she died, that I got to see her breathe her last breath, that I was the first to notice she had died, and that she died at home, surrounded by her loved ones, in a warm place. So yes, my prayers were answered: it was indeed a good death, or as good as such a sad thing can possibly be.” And I still feel that way.

I won’t lie: she could often be ill-tempered, quick to anger, needy, a witch, a diva, and at times totally lived up to one of her nicknames (that I forgot to mention in my list of nicknames last year): Crabapple. She was also a beautiful cat with a complicated personality and a lot of attitude and I loved her with all my heart... and as demanding she could be at times, whenever she would curl up onto my lap and gaze up at me with a look of adoration and contentment in her face, all her foibles were forgotten. Even though she remains a part of me, and even though every now and then I’ll see her fleetingly in my dreams, I still miss her terribly. When she died, a little piece of me died as well.

“Grief is the price we pay for love.”

—Queen Elizabeth II

Requiescat in pace Mark Samuels

Very saddened to hear that a fellow writer friend of mine, the British horror writer Mark Samuels (known to some of his friends as "Markitty") passed away peacefully in his sleep a few days ago at the age of 56, apparently from a heart attack. I first met him at the Thomas Ligotti Online forums back in 2014 (a few months after I read his THE MAN WHO COLLECTED MACHEN collection, which was also the first book of his I ever read), and we had some very interesting and thought-provoking conversations on there over the years, not just about horror literature (like me, he was a big fan of writers like Lovecraft, Machen, and Ligotti, along with French Decadent types like Huysmans) but also politics and theological matters; he was a devout Catholic and I'm a lapsed Catholic so obviously on some level we recognized kindred spirits in each other... that and the fact that neither of us was above stirring up shit.

In an era where the horror genre is flooded with utter mediocrities and unctuous careerist networkers, he stood out, both in his personality and his work, and I would certainly put him on the same level as a Ligotti or (to cite some of his fellow British horror writers) Ramsey Campbell and Reggie Oliver. What always impressed me about his stories was how he often did a lot with an economy of words: so many horror writers can get lost building up atmosphere, atmosphere, atmosphere, but his best work had an almost Borges-like succinctness to them and they didn't wear out their welcome, and I never could figure out how he made it look so easy. But as good as his horror novels and short story collections are (and I recommend them highly), I'd also like to mention here his non-horror religious novel A PILGRIM STRANGER, which I feel is sadly overlooked: the ending to it moved me like few other books have ever done.

I'm aware that he was something of a controversial figure on the horror scene, whether because of his sometimes cantankerous personality, his political views (which at times veered into the right-wing/reactionary territory), his tendency to hold a grudge, and his almost Bloy-like tendency to sometimes turn on the people who helped or supported him. Oddly enough, in all the years I knew him, the two of us never had a falling out or even an argument. I myself burned a lot of bridges on the scene defending him back in 2017 (when it was especially fashionable for people to attack him online), but I didn't care because ultimately I felt that, for all his flaws, deep down he had a kind of Old World integrity whereas many of his critics (in my opinion at least) had none.

I know these last few years had been pretty rough for him: he was homeless for a brief spell around 2017 (which partly explained my vehemence for his critics at that time: I don't like to see a man who is down on his luck getting kicked around and spat on, even if the people who were doing it were total nothingburgers), and had numerous health issues (including a bout with ulcers that saw him hospitalized). But despite these setbacks he still kept working at his craft and posting material regularly to his followers on Patreon (to say nothing of getting books published, through presses such as Zagava or the now sadly defunct Chomu Press). I tried to help him out as much as I could, either through subscribing to his aforementioned Patreon account, buying/reading/reviewing his books, and I also contributed a story to the MARKED TO DIE anthology edited by Justin Isis and published by Snuggly Books a few years ago. I think Mark appreciated all this, as he tried to help me out in small ways also: he was kind enough to post a review of one of my novels on Goodreads (one of my only friends to do so, actually), and I was one of the 7 people he signaled out for thanks at the start of his PROPHECIES AND DOOMS essay collection, which made me very happy. He also invited me to contribute a story to an anthology he was editing that was dedicated to Leonid Andreyev: though he liked my story and accepted it, sadly the project as a whole never gained traction and was abandoned... but I'm thankful that at the very least, he got me into Andreyev.

Sadly over the last few years I haven't been in touch with him as often as I should have been... I'm great at returning messages on social media but lousy reaching out to people via e-mail. The last time we interacted was back in June of this year, after I posted a review of Robert Hugh Benson's novel LORD OF THE WORLD on Goodreads: he commented that he had never read the book before (despite wanting to for awhile) and that my review had finally given him the motivation to check it out himself. Recently I was planning on e-mailing him to wish him a Merry Christmas, catch up on old times, and ask him if he ever got around to reading that Benson novel... but now that can't happen, sadly. Requiescat in pace Markitty, you will be missed, but your work will live on...

“The more we are afflicted in this world, the greater is our assurance in the next; the more sorrow in the present, the greater will be our joy in the future.” – St. Isidore of Seville