Hey everyone, just got back from vacation so I’m just regaining my equilibrium. No time for super-involved posts today so I decided to do another WWW Wednesday.
What are you currently reading?
As usual, I am reading 3 books at once ….Okay, more like 4, but let’s keep this brief.
No summary because it’s pretty self-explanatory.
I’ve been over Doctor Who since Capaldi’s era but….I am feeling nostalgic. I’ve been watching clips online and weeping because I remember how good this show used to be. The concepts were interesting, the characters were heartbreakingly sincere, The Doctor wasn’t played by a hunk of wood….
The cannon was never perfect, but there was so much TLC that went into the writing that it was easy to forgive its foibles.
Then this shit happened—
Okay, a lot more happened before that but it was this moment that made me vow to never watch anything Who related (past the 2010s) ever again.
I am also reading—
“The dead are restless here…”
Remy is a tour guide for Carrow House, a notoriously haunted building. When she’s asked to host seven guests for a week-long stay to research Carrow’s phenomena, she hopes to finally experience some of the sightings that made the house famous.At first, it’s everything they hoped for. Then a storm moves in, cutting off their contact with the outside world, and things quickly become twisted. Doors open on their own. Seances go disastrously wrong. Red liquid seeps from behind the wallpaper. Their spirit medium wanders through the house during the night, seemingly in a trance.
Then one of the guests dies under strange circumstances, and Remy is forced to consider the possibility that the ghost of the house’s original owner, a twisted serial killer, still walks the halls.
But by then it’s too late to escape
Yet another spooker by Darcy Coates. I’m hoping that by endorsing as many of her books as possible, I will be assisting her in her literary ascension in a market over-saturated by Stephen King novels.
I’m only a few pages in so I can’t say with any degree of certainty if it’s one of her better ones, but I’m enjoying it so far. As usual, her pacing is pretty snappy so I’m sticking with it.
At her death in 1817, Jane Austen left the world six of the most beloved novels written in English—but her shortsighted family destroyed the bulk of her letters; and if she kept any diaries, they did not survive her. Now acclaimed biographer Claire Tomalin, author of A Life of My Own, has filled the gaps in the record, creating a remarkably fresh and convincing portrait of the woman and the writer.
While most Austen biographers have accepted the assertion of Jane’s brother Henry that “My dear Sister’s life was not a life of events,” Tomalin shows that, on the contrary, Austen’s brief life was fraught with upheaval. Tomalin provides detailed and absorbing accounts of Austen’s ill-fated love for a young Irishman, her frequent travels and extended visits to London, her close friendship with a worldly cousin whose French husband met his death on the guillotine, her brothers’ naval service in the Napoleonic wars and in the colonies, and thus shatters the myth of Jane Austen as a sheltered and homebound spinster whose knowledge of the world was limited to the view from a Hampshire village.
I know little about Jane Austen’s life so I am hoping to fix that by reading this book. I normally don’t gravitate towards nonfiction unless it’s about serial killers (I’m not like other girls *flips hair pretentiously*), but I like this author’s narrative voice so I think it’s gonna be a winner.
What did you finish reading?
Sam is excited to spend a week at her uncle’s remote lake cabin. It’s a chance for her to focus on her art without distractions: no neighbours, no phone, and a small radio as her only contact with the outside world.
But there’s something deeply unnatural lingering in the lake.
The radio’s news reports talk about disappearances on a nearby hiking trail. The car won’t start. And Sam starts to believe she’s being stalked when she catches glimpses of a tall, strange man standing at the end of her dock, staring intently into the swirling waters below…
While this book was an entertaining companion during a long and arduous road trip, I don’t think this is one of Coates’ better novels. I can’t put my finger on what was missing from it, but there was something off about it. You would think the isolation and beautiful country aesthetic would prove to be the perfect fodder for a good horror, I felt that the lack of dialogue in this book bogged down the pacing.
The scenes where the MC is interacting with other characters is good, but when she’s alone it doesn’t feel nearly as interesting even with all the creepy goings-on.
Like I said, I still enjoyed it and don’t regret reading it. I just don’t think it is as good as her other works.
What will you read next?
All of Russia knows this murder mystery. Nobody knows the truth.Nine wholesome University students mountaineering in the Urals go missing, and are later uncovered from the snows of a bleak forest’s edge in the Siberian Taiga, in a series of grisly discoveries. Why were the climbers wearing no boots? Why were stout branches of the forest pines singed to a height of thirty feet? What were the mysterious markings in the bark of nearby trees? What was so-called “overwhelming force” that was capable of breaking eight ribs in a single blow without bruises? Why the KGB infiltrated all the search parties and attended the funerals? Why the clothes were tested for radiation? The authoritative book – by international author and investigative journalist: Svetlana Oss (Osadchuk) who has been the leading commentator of this profound mystery since Moscow Times first sponsored her 2007-2008 investigation. The savage events of 1st February 1959, which took nine lives and left a trail of smashed and semi-naked bodies across the slopes of Mount Ortoten, have confounded every credible explanation. Wild and convincing theories abound. All of them are flawed by the facts. Was it sex? Was it hypothermia? Was it robbers? In the first reportage to be published in the English language, The Moscow Times’ meticulous coverage presented the existing versions that have proliferated over fifty years, carefully sifting each idea, from mad guesses by superstitious nuts, to reasoned findings of the official investigation.Now Svetlana Oss formulates the true answer. ‘Don’t go there’ explains for the first time how this odyssey by nine seasoned climbers, nine experienced members of the Ekaterinburg University Climbing Society came to end in disaster. New information, new analysis, new brains – the answer will astound you.
I am a glutton for unsolved mysteries and even more so for stories that involve potential governmental cover-ups.
All these years later, the bizarre deaths that took place at the Dyatlov Pass is still speculated about. Was it murder? Was it an accident? Was it—
Regardless I am stoked to find out more.
Thanks for reading!
The Crooked Pen 