The Bookhouse Boys discussion

Howdy, everybody,
Folks who know me (and my Bookhouse Boys comrades) know Halloween is the highest and holiest of holidays around here. So, it's no surprise that I love getting the band back together for Halloween episodes. This year, we'll be talking about "The Willows" by Algernon Blackwood. He's one of my favorite weird fiction writers. Hope you read it, too, and check out the podcast we'll have available before the big day!
PROJECT: GUTENBERG link: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/11438

That Steve Guttenberg may not have been much of an actor, but he's doing great work keeping public domain literature alive.

Jason wrote: "That Steve Guttenberg may not have been much of an actor, but he's doing great work making public domain literature alive."

Shut uuuuup....the Stone Cutters have ears everywhere!

And for you folks who are too busy to read a novella: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0N6e...

The Penguin Classics Halloween giveaway contest I mentioned on the show: http://app.snapapp.com/PenguinHalloween

We are back, Jack.

Oooooooh, creepy.

It's Halloween again, and that means one thing. Going to a lame haunted house. Okay, two things. You also need to run out a buy a big bag of lollipops for the trick-or-treaters, and not the Snickers you wanted because you waited until the last second again. Okay, three things: going to your neighbor's lame party you tried to get out of, but you and your wife gave two different reasons when they invited you and now you have to go and just try to sneak out at 9:49pm.

Let me cut to the chase: the one hundred and ninth thing that Halloween means is another episode of The Bookhouse Boys! This year we tackle "The Willows" and our primal fears of the unknown, of alienation and loneliness, and the knowledge, deep down, that we live on this planet only by the grace and forbearance of forces beyond our ken.

OUTRO: "Overture - Omens of Nosferatu" from James Bernard's 1998 soundtrack to Murnau's Nosferatu

http://bookhouseboyspodcast.podomatic...

Dave will be the first to tell you I am a total wuss when it comes to horror, but I handle books better than TV/movies somehow. Anyway, on the Selected Shorts podcast a few months ago, I heard a story that was the weirdest creepy short story I have ever heard. It feels silly saying it creeped me out, but it did. It was creepy and funny at the same time, and I want to hear someone else's take on it. I don't want to give away any more than that, but the story is called "Subsoil" and it's by Nicholson Baker.

It's kind of hard to find. The only free place I found it was a streaming audio of the Selected Shorts episode I heard it on (and even that was buried and hard to find) - it starts at around 29:27 here.

Other places you might access it: It was published in 1994 in the New Yorker, so if you're a subscriber (or can access it in your library), you can find it in the June 27, 1994 issue (or here). Some libraries that use OverDrive have access to the audio of it being read for Selected Shorts in an audio volume called Lots of Laughs (our library doesn't have it, but it IS on OverDrive). Or if you subscribe to Scribd, the audio volume is available for 1 audio credit on Scribd here. It was also published in a volume of short stories called American Gothic Tales edited by Joyce Carol Oates, so if you have that or your library has it, that's another option.

I dig Nicholson Baker, so I'll most definitely check it out, Jen. Thanks! I'll listen to it on the commute home today.

Dave, please follow up on Bird Box. The premise sounded so cool and so many of my GR friends gave the book a low rating. Thanks, mang.

I'm about halfway through and really enjoying it so far. I'm kind of afraid now that it'll have a crap ending. Hoping that won't be the case and it's just "surviving the apocalypse" fatigue or something.

You're probably safe. All the negative reviews say "Okay, but needed more zombies."

Also: why on Earth are you up at 4am?

Rough night. Now I'm up again at 7 for work. Oof.

I am totally going to subscribe to Selected Shorts. I remember listening to it on WNYC public radio when Isaiah Scheffer was still aflive. Now when I go by Symphony Space I'm totally reminded of it, but never remember to follow up on it. Thanks for putting it back on my radar!

I listened to "Subsoil" today and enjoyed it. Nice comedy horror with some clever turns of phrase that (mostly) avoided the corniness that usually comes with that sort of thing.

Alan, Selected Shorts is so great. I have never been wild about short stories as reading material, but listening to them is so great! I've been exposed to so many stories and authors I never would have been otherwise.

Husband, I think I came home after listening to that story and told you I was now thoroughly creeped out by potatoes. The B&B owners being the Taits, though...man.

Jen wrote: "The B&B owners being the Taits, though...man."

Uh-oh, Spaghetti-O!

:\

I ended up greatly enjoying Bird Box. It's not perfect, but I thought it was a pretty original concept that kept me engaged the whole time. I wonder if a lot of folks who didn't like it were turned off by the lack of answers about the threat. If so, I didn't have a problem with that, because I felt like the concept was clearly set up pretty early on to be beyond human resolution (or even comprehension). I also thought the author had a clear idea of what the threat was and never strayed from the rules he set up. Anyway, there are a few hinky bits, mostly revolving around the children (how I wish Malerman had made them 6 instead of 4), but I thought there were also some truly tense and terrifying scenes, much of the tension stemming from psychological horror. I'm going to keep an eye out for more from Malerman.

This sounds like something I would like.

Jason wrote: "This sounds like something I would like."

I don't know you at all. I thought this would bug you. Who are you?! Who am I?!?!

Matt wrote: "I don't know you at all. I thought this would bug you. Who are you?! Who am I?!?!"

I felt like Dave wrote this sentence just for me: "I also thought the author had a clear idea of what the threat was and never strayed from the rules he set up."

I liked the sound of the premise to begin with, and if Dave thought it paid off thematically and dramatically, so much the better.

You think everybody wrote every sentence just for you! ;)

Matt wrote: "You think everybody wrote every sentence just for you! ;)"

Like this one!