This year I spent more time building up my specific collections on Kindle and Nook, but continue to maintain a physical book collection for certain niches, especially Valancourt Books editions in particular. I also tend to collect and read a lot of translated Japanese literature and prefer physical copies for my collection. My favorite reads this year shaped up as follows:
#6 The Bog by Michael Talbot
An author who died too young and only published a few novels in the 80's and early 90's, Michael Talbot's strange story of an archaeologist exploring an English bog in which numerous bodies are found, including one which appears to have Roman connections, rapidly turned into an even stranger tale of dark magic and ancient evil in ways I did not anticipate. I really enjoyed this book, re-released by Valancourt (my favorite publisher of old classics) and wish Talbot had lived long enough to write a lot more.
#5 The Space Vampires by Colin Wilson
Colin Wilson was a real eccentric, known for his mystical philosophy and occult writings, he spent a period of time writing Lovecraftian pastiche to demonstrate he could do it better than the HPL himself. Space Vampires is one of the results, and this book inspired the film Lifeforce (I say inspired because the entire film is basically the first two chapters of the book plus some serious liberties after that point). Both this book and the movie it spawned have had a nontrivial impact on my view of the mythos, and I actually finished a recent campaign in Call of Cthulhu in which the eponymous space vampires played a significant role. This book is notable for having an unusually "happy" ending, atypical of your average mythos tale, and suggestive of the fact that Colin Wilson can indeed write great pastiche Lovecraft but maybe not in the proper traditional form of a dour and gloomy ending as one might expect.
#4 Cult X by Fuminori Nakamura
If you read enough Japanese fiction you will notice a trend, especially in the 90's, of deep and introspective stories about the nature of religion, philosophy, obsession and cults in Japan, all driven (I suspect) by the 1995 sarin gas bombings that were initiated by a cult called Aum Shinrikyo. Cult X is an excellent example of this need to explore the nature of cults and how they form and grow, doing so through the eyes of a man pursuing the history of a woman who briefly entered and left his life, and the rabbit hole of belief and obsession with cults that she disappeared down in to. It's a long read but quite engaging, and Nakamura is a great writer who gets some very good translations into English.
#3 The Invention of Murder by Judith Flanders
This was a great read, which I snagged by accident at a book store in Florida and also grabbed on Nook (because convenience is the mother of completion). A deep dive, well researched, into the fascinating rise of murder as a media subject and cultural phenomenon of morbid curiosity during the 19th century in England, it also touches on so many other subjects in relation, providing a solid framework for better understanding how recent a phenomenon the concept of police, detectives and forensics are in our modern era, and the nascent fields which sprang out of the Victorian obsession with highly publicized murders over a century. If you're at all into Cthulhu by Gaslight or Vaesen I suggest this book to you, as it will provide a level of insight into that century that I did not previously have before reading it.
#2 Reassuring Tales by T.E.D. Klein
I read most of T.E.D. Klein back in the 80's and early 90's, and he remained one of my favorite Lovecraft-inspired horror authors as a result. Ceremonies is one of the best novels I have ever written. Until recently finding any of his works in print or on the back shelf of an old bookstore was all but impossible, and then abruptly his work made it to ebook format. As a result I have at last had a chance to read him again, and discover his short fiction in the form of this collection. His narrative approach is fantastic, intuitive, and engaging. His subject matter is always interesting, and it is well worth the time and investment of any horror author to read all of what T.E.D. Klein wrote. Look him up on wikipedia, he's a fascinating person who has not gotten nearly enough attention and I am so glad his books are available again.
#1 Best Read of the Year: In the Miso Soup by Ryu Murakami
This horror/crime/mystery mashup is pure pulp, a dive into the seedy 90's underbelly of Tokyo from the view of a tour guide named Kenji who ends up saddled with an American tourist named Frank who wants to explore the seedy sex industry of Tokyo. Kenji does this for a living, but as he takes Frank around the town he begins to suspect something is really wrong with the guy...and then bodies start appearing.
Ryu Murakami (who has no relation to the incredible Haruki Murakami so far as I know) is a great crime and horror author, and is also behind the book (and film) Audition, which I have not been brave enough to try reading yet, but this was an incredibly thrilling read and I heartily recommend it to anyone into either crime fiction, horror fiction, or Japanese literature.
Okay, that's it for 2022! For 2023 I plan to do a lot more reading, even more so than I managed to get in for 2022, as I have stacks of books and dozens of ebooks I have yet to get to.
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