I think it’s time for a break, don’t you? It’s a lot to read such serious subjects – non-fiction or otherwise. The world is fucking exhausting – so much so that time doesn’t make sense anymore. I was recently reading an article about a ruling on the Luigi Mangione case and expressed that it’s been almost two years since that incident – to which my partner reminded me that it was only 10 months ago. What? But when you look at EVERYTHING that has happened since then… is this real life?
So, in the spirit of Audre Lorde, who said:
Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.
We are on a break… for a few weeks at least.
It couldn’t come at a better time, because there is nothing I love more than spooky season – which is always in season. When I’m not reading political non-fiction (or political fiction) I’m usually ready spooky or spooky adjacent books… or smut (but we’ll save that for another time).
So for the next few weeks, I thought I’d do a few lists of some of my favorite non-political books over the last year or so.
Gearing up for those lists, today I’m going to talk about two of my all-time favorite horror books.
The Shining
I won’t say the authors name – you already know who wrote it and he’s problematic as fuck. BUT… this was my intro into all things horror and it holds this nostalgic place in my cold dead heart.
I saw the movie first when I was maybe twelve or thirteen. It was traumatizing! I was at a friends house because there was no way a movie like this was being viewed at my house. I had this belief, though I don’t remember it being taught, that horror movies/books etc would bring Satan into the home. Crazy to consider this now, but fear was a sign of the absence of good.
As a kid, I was afraid of very real monsters. Anyone who lives or has ever lived perpetually walking on eggshells to preserve a narcissist and their fragile ego understands what I mean. But as I grew up (and went to therapy) I learned that fear should be a temporary signal that your body uses to tell you something isn’t right. I began using horror books and movies to navigate and understand fear as an emotion I could recognize and understand. Movies are an hour and a half, you know you’ll have this reaction (if it’s good) and then it’s done. After time, I began to enjoy the sensation of fear and suspense.
A few years later (maybe after the Friends episode), I read the book. The book is so drastically different from the movie at times it felt like a separate story in the same world. You do have to get past the racists terms used in the book. It’s entirely unnecessary in a book written in the late seventies. This isn’t Huck Finn era shit – come on! But I think this writer likes to write ‘edgy’ stuff for the sake of being edgy or ‘shock-value’. You don’t have to – it’s not needed.
I read it again a few years ago before my visit to the Stanley Hotel in Colorado, which is the hotel that inspired the book and the location of the TV series in the nineties (which is worth the pass). I went on a Shining specific tour focusing on the author’s visit to the hotel and some of the real ghost stories that were included in the book and the movie. Note: the stories were probably real – the ghosts were probably not.
They host a seance at night, but we weren’t staying overnight. It was a little out of our way for what we had planned, but my partner indulged me. That’s why he’s my person. I may have paid him in fudge and they had a Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory in town. It was a win-win.
I watch the movie nearly every year along with my movie boyfriend, Michael Myers. This year is no different. I might watch it tonight!
Penpal (Dathan Auerbach)
Penpal started out as a handful of ‘Creepypasta’ stories on and subreddit forum r/nosleep. I found them nearly fourteen or so years ago, which at that point, I believe, they had all been published to the forum. Most of the creepypasta stories I read were seeped in the supernatural and while enjoyable, they weren’t, nor were they supposed to be, believable. Auerbach’s stories had an eerie realism to them that even if they weren’t true or even partially true, they felt very real.
When I found out that he turned them into a full length novel, I bought it immediately. I was delighted at the extra detail in the book that you don’t find in the original posts – like reading it all for the first time.
The story about the stories themselves just adds to the whole vibe of the book. It’s a story that lives rent-free in my head. Even as I’m writing this, I’m holding back so much because I really want people to read this book.
You can still read the original posts – which I highly suggest:
When I talk about horror books, these are at the top of my list. Over the next few weeks, I’ll talk more about the ones I’ve read more recently along with my favorite sub-genres.
I hope you’ll join me…Muahaa aah aah!
Stay RAD and ‘REDRUM!’
Byeeee!
Real RAD Reads 
Leave a comment