Zombie

Zombie 
by Joyce Carol Oates

“Zombie” is just one of Joyce Carol Oates numerous enthralling novels. In 1995, it received the prestigious Bram Stoker Award for a horror novel.

Ever wonder what is the impetus for a serial killer? What makes the fiend tick? Oates takes the reader into the mind of a cold, calculated serial killer where a conscience does not exist but just a carnal desire to subjugate. Will Q_ P_ ever get his zombie?

Oates portrays a terrifying mind of a serial killer through creating a unique writing style, which aids to establish a multidimensional character. Quentin P. narrates in the first person voice recollecting his past savage crimes. He sometimes refers to himself in third person, evoking an eerie image of a man with a public persona. The language is colloquial and distinctive for the innumerable ampersands in place of the traditional “and”.  Readers should be warned there are graphic descriptions that will have you cringing.

It succeeds to petrify and haunt the mind, for its uncanny consonance with infamous sociopaths. There is a conspicuous similarity between the main character, Quentin P. and Jeffery Dahmer. They are both homosexuals from a well-to-do family, on probation, registered sex offender, and have a substance abuse problem. Most importantly they share the desire to create their own zombie through morbid techniques.

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Memories of My Melancholy Whores

Memories of My Melancholy Whores
by Gabriel García Márquez

Gabriel García Márquez is well known for his novel “One Hundred Years of Solitude” and “Love in the Time of Cholera” which was adapted to motion picture in 2007. His most recent novella, “Memories of My Melancholy Whores” received mix reviews. It is believe to be his last written work stated by Carmen Balcells, his literary agent.

Captivating from the first sentence, “The year I turned ninety, I wanted to give myself the gift of a night of wild love with an adolescent virgin.” Many thoughts may ruminate though a person’s mind. Is this a story about a perverted old man or worse a pedophiliac? To the contrary, it is a story about a man with a troubled conscious for the ninety years of life he has lived. By the age of fifty, he has had sex with over five hundred women, all whom he has paid.

The unnamed narrator recollects his past dual life, which is the journey of a man whose life should be ending but has just commenced living at the mature age of ninety. The catalyst, a female prepubescent child laborer supporting her family by sewing buttons on garments and subsequently selling her virginity.

The short story (115 pages) is enjoyable for its contemplation aspects, projection of ideation, rationalizing decisions, and role of sex and love. “Memories of My Melancholy Whores” is perfect for a book club discussion group.

Lastly, what does “The tiger does not eat far away” mean? I have a few theories, but will refrain discoursing my opinion, for it would give too much information about the plot, spoiling it for others. Read more...

White Is For Witching

White Is For Witching
by Helen Oyeyemi

Dissimilar to other haunted house novels, it does not commence with a paranormal investigation, rather a disappearance of Miranda Silver (Miri). The story recounts the path of Miri’s life leading to her disappearance, which intertwines with an ancestral home that does not want to relinquish its grasp on the Silver women, clinching even to their demise and anyone who is not welcomed. There are creaks and whispers, a flicker of light then darkness; it will open to consume. Does it sate the desires and the needs?

Oyeyemi, composes a poetic story laced with similes and allegories, narrated from four perspectives, Miri, her lover Ore, her twin brother Eliot, and the omniscient house. Each character contributes to a lucid story, maintaining an individualistic perspective, creating distinctive and empathic characters especially Miri, who suffers from an unusual disorder, pica. The house casts a forbidding umbra with its omniscient capability. Back dropped in frigid Dover, England, fused with Caribbean folk tales of voodoo and a soucouyant, a creature portrayed as a decrepit woman by day, and by night, abandons its skin to roam the dark sky as a fireball in search of exuberant youths to drain their life essences, blood, initiates an eerie supernatural realm concurrent to the mundane qualities of the political back dropping of foreign affairs.

I would highly recommend “White Is For Witching”, for its darkly elegant prose and its gothic horror qualities of varied love, desire, and labyrinthine house. Lastly, read it for the grapple of life, Miri’s life.

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Elsewhere by William Peter Blatty

Elsewhere

by William Peter Blatty

Blatty lionized for his blood-curling novel “The Exorcist” and its eventual motion picture, has a novella “Elsewhere” recently republished by Cemetery Dance Publication. It was initially published in Al Sarrantonio’s anthology “999”. A few days ago, I received my limited edition copy of “Elsewhere”, which is signed. Significant, for it is my only signed book by the wordsmith.

After reading a sundry of haunted house novels, there is obviously an underlining trite theme; a group of individuals investigate the authenticity of a house egregious reputation. Some novels surpass this cliché like Richard Matheson’s “Hell House”. Blatty’s “Elsewhere” is a haunted house novella, which commence with an investigation but transcends to an original haunted house story. Blatty similar to Shirley Jackson’s “The Haunting of Hill House” utilizes psychological horror to supplement the plot. What is really happening? There are foreshadows throughout the story.

Short Synopsis:

Joan Freeboard, a realtor is implored to sell an upstate New York mansion that is proclaimed to be haunted by the original owners who had an unkindly death. In order to make a sale, Freeboard devises a plan to prove that the house is not haunted through having an investigation with a renowned psychic Anna Trawley, literary writer Terrance Dare, and parapsychologist Gabriel Case. However, strange behavior and a case of déjà vu lead to the inconceivable.

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16 Free Books For Download

I have noticed many readers are looking for free ebooks. Majority of the free ebooks are public domain, which means those books are wonderful classic literature. However, as the eminent Mark Twain said, “A classic is a book which people praise and don’t read.”

Harlequin is having a 60 anniversary. To celebrate, 16 books are available for download, and it is free. Genres available are suspense and paranormal, passion, home and family, romance, and historical. However, I think all can be pigeonholed to the genre of romance. I do not read romance, but I will try one of the suspense and paranormal novels. In addition, majority of the book covers are the typical amorous representation of the ideal male specimen, in particular “Once A Cowboy” by Linda Warren is enticing.

The books are available in four formats: .pdf, ePub, eReader, and MS Reader. Download the ebooks at Harlequin Celebrates.

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Robert Frost

I remember writing an analytical paper in high school (a very long time ago) about the eminent bard Robert Frost. My paper analyzed one of his most acclaimed poems, The Road Not Taken. Many would assert it is an unequivocal poem, but even Robert Frost remarked that it was a tricky poem, which I read repeatedly and always seem to discover a new angle to interpret. My devotion to the great American poet has not changed; I still admire and read Robert Frost's poems.

Friday, I was fortunate to come across while window-shopping, a signed copy of "You Come Too", displayed in a frame. A surge of excitement disseminated, it became the paramount of my day. I was no longer window-shopping; a bargain was struck, and I came home with a frame display of Robert Frost and a signed copy of his book mounted within the frame. (photograph of the upper left corner)

I am currently enthralled with Frost’s poem, Flower-Gathering.

Flower-Gathering

I left you in the morning,

And in the morning glow,

You walked a way beside me

To make me sad to go.

Do you know me in the gloaming,

Gaunt and dusty gray with roaming?

Are you dumb because you know me not,

Or dumb because you know?

All for me And not a question

For the faded flowers gay 

That could take me from beside you

For the ages of a day?

They are yours, and be the measure

Of their worth for you to treasure,

The measure of the little while

That I've been long away. 

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Another Book About Books: 501 Must-Read Books

Yet again another book that compiles noteworthy books of different genres into a handy reference guide for avid readers that want to find an engrossing read without doing a lot of research.  Do not have many bookish friends to recommend a book, do not have time to join a book club, do not have patience to go through a plethora of reviews, well books about books in particular 501 Must-Read Books maybe the perfect solution to the book finding blues. 
Two reasons to buy this book. One, it is a good source to discover worthy books to read. Two, it is in the bargain section.

The substance, 501 Must-Read Books is categorized by the following genres: Children's Fiction, Classical Fiction, History, Memoirs, Modern Fiction, Science Fiction, Thrillers, and Travel. Each enumerated book is accompanied with background of the book, brief synopsis, detail information about the author, and list of other published material by the author.

Must-Read Science Fiction Section

The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Noel Adams
Hothouse by Brian Aldiss
Brainwave by Poul Anderson
I, Robot by Isaac Asimov
The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
The Crystal World by J.G. Ballard
The Demolished Man by Alfred Bester
Who Goes There by John W. Campbell
The Invention of Morel by Adolfo Bioy Casares
Planet of the Apes by Pierre Boulle
The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury
The Sheep Look Up by John Brunner
A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
Erewhon by Samuel Butler
Cosmicomics by Italo Calvino
2001: A Space Odyssey by Arthur C. Clarke
A Strange Manuscript Found in Cooper Cylinder by James De Mille
The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch by Philip K. Dick
To Your Scattered Bodies Go  by Philip Jose Farmer
Neuromancer by William Gibson
Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein
Dune by Frank Herbert
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
Two Planets by Kurd Lasswitz
Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin
Solaris by Stanislaw Lem
Shikasta by Doris Lessing
Stepford Wives by Ira Levin
Out of the Silent Planet by C.S. Lewis
I Am Legend by Richard Matheson
Dwellers in the Mirage by Abraham Merritt
A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter Miller
Ringworld by Larry Niven
Time Traders by Andre Norton
Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell
The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket by Edgar Allan Poe
The Inverted World by Christopher Priest
The Green Child by Herbert Read
The Laxian Key by Robert Sheckley
City bye Clifford D. Simak
Donovan's Brain by Curt Siodmak
Lest Darkness Fall by L. Sprague De Camp
Last and First Men by Olaf Stapledon
More than Human by Theodore Sturgeon
Slan by A.E. Van Vogt
A Journey to the Centre of the Earth by Jules Verne
Slaughterhouse-Five or The Children's Crusade by Kurt Vonnegut 
The Island of Dr. Moreau by H.G. Wells
Islandia by Austin Tappan Wright
The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham
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