Favourite Reads 2019

Favourite Reads of 2019

24th December 2019

As 2019 comes to close, it’s customary to look back over the year, and whilst my own literary output has not been large I have still managed to release a limited edition novelette (Thingy), a short story collection (Death Dreams In The Dark) and my debut poetry collection (I Promise I’ll Let You Down). The poetry collection was an ambition I’ve held since 2013, so I was pleased, and somewhat nervous, to finally release into the world.

Something else I was able to tick off my list of achievements was reaching the goal of reducing my ‘to be read pile’ to less than 5 books before Christmas. Over the last 5 years I have come across many new writers and been given many recommendations, that have subsequently led to my advanced reading pile to swell.

I was curious about many of the titles I had bought, but hadn’t had a chance to read, and so this year I decided to read as many of them as I could. This resulted in me finishing circa 70 books this year.

With the large number of titles consumed and enjoyed I thought it would be fun to look back over some of my favourites. In creating this list I excluded any book published by the Sinister Horror Company, as I had a hand in all of their releases and of course they would have made my favourites list (I wouldn’t have published them otherwise). I have also discounted any books I have been given to test-read for peers. These books are not in a complete state when I have read them, so it is unfair to judge them against completed works (and also I feel announcing the titles feels a bit like ‘letting the cat out of the bag’ and whilst I would love to share the news of these titles in development, it would feel like breaking a trust given to me).

I initially planned to come up with a top ten, but after consideration I was unable to whittle it down any further than sixteen titles (largely breaking down into eight short story collections and eight single stories). I present them to you in no particular order – at least I don’t think there’s an order. I’m sure if I tried to settle on an order today, I’d change my mind tomorrow.

My last comment here is a word of warning that I am not a skilled reviewer. As you can probably tell by my introduction, I have a tendency to meander, and the same drifting style may be present as I talk about the books in my list. This is most likely due to the fact that first and foremost I have been writing stories and not reviews for the last five years. So if I do wander down paths and side tracks I hope you’ll follow me on the journey, and if nothing else, smile as I show you just how difficult writing a succinct review can be.

With that in mind, let’s cut through the bramble and weeds of this narrative track and find our way back to the main path of this article as I present to you some of my highlights of the books I have read in 2019.

House of Leaves by Mark Z Danielewski

I was at horror convention two years ago, when fellow author Jonathan Butcher first made me aware of this book. The simple concept of someone finding out their house measured longer inside than out was intriguing. James Everington added further interest by discussing the same book with me six months later, and my interest was piqued further when I found it extremely difficult to track a copy down (I ordered it twice from book dealers and both times it failed to arrive in the post and I was refunded).

When at last I was given a copy for Christmas I was not disappointed. The book is a huge tome and just a casual flick through the pages showed off its narrative invention.

The story concerns a man who has discovered some papers in the house of a deceased person. He collects the papers together and reads them – they are describing some videos of a documentary maker that moved into a new house with his family only to find strange doorways opening up in walls of the new home, leading to impossible black spaces. The papers are collected together in the book, along with footnotes by the man collecting and reading them. This makes for a multi-layered story, with footnotes in footnotes and sometimes even different text strands running on the same page.

The pacing and rhythm of the story took me the first 70-80 pages to get into, but once I was there the book lit up like a rocket. I was engrossed in the story with no guessing where it might lead. The text setting did some truly wonderful things, making the writing even more dynamic, and the small flourishes such like putting a line through every reference of the minotaur, and making the font different for every mention of the word house just adds to the unsettling and mystifying atmosphere.

House of Leaves is an inventive, original updating of the gothic, and an experience I would recommend to anyone that likes to see the boundaries of a book pushed.

This House of Wounds by Georgina Bruce

Keaton Henson sang on his song You, ‘If you must speak, speak every word as though it were unique’. It’s a lyric I love to remind myself of frequently, and it’s a line that sits well in describing Georgina Bruce’s excellent short story collection, This House of Wounds.

No phrase or description in her prose can ever be labelled cliched or tired. Her metaphors and descriptive powers bring an hallucinatory vitality to her work, that coupled with her clever structuring and narrative layouts made me realise that this collection was something special. I felt the magic in the first story and the spell continued until the very final page.

I love books that strive to look at the world in different ways, books that use words, language and narrative as materials to be played with to create new experiences. Bruce doesn’t just attempt this, she nails it, time and time again.

This book is art. Art from someone that has mastered their craft.

Haunted by Chuck Palahniuk

Of course Palahniuk is most well known for Fight Club, but his talent for weaving together a mish mash of crazy ideas and social commentary has gifted him a respected career far beyond his break out success.

Haunted is a collection of short stories built around a linking narrative of a group attending an ill-fated writers retreat. The short stories presented throughout the collection are the stories written by the attendees. Palahniuk’s concept was to create a series of horror tales that kept as close as possible to the real world – to remove any ghosts and monsters. And he certainly succeeds.

The first short ‘Guts’ has now reached almost mythical status following reports of people passing out during live readings, and reading it I can see why. The collection continues with more stories from a sharp, imaginative brain.

The stories can make for uncomfortable reading at times, but the sheer brilliance of his ideas and the typical Palahniuk punk-prose ranks this as my second favourite of his, just behind Rant.

Books of Blood Volume One by Clive Barker

Barker was a big influence on my decision to write horror. When I was a young teenager I found it difficult to get my hands on horror films and so took to reading books. It was this reason that I ended up reading William Peter Blatty’s The Exorcist, Anthony Burgess’ A Clockwork Orange and Clive Barker’s Cabal (filmed as Nightbreed).

Cabal’s darkly twisted and sensual world left a mark on my imagination and I quickly followed it up with Hellbound of the Heart and Weaveworld. By the time I came to read Imajica I found the premise had gone too far into fantasy and my interest in seeking out further Barker books faded. Throughout the following years I had heard the legendary status of the Books of Blood and decided this year to sit down and read them. All six volumes.

I found the experience interesting, as his prose was yet to develop the lyrical flair that I adored in his later works, but it did break through at times. And his ideas were fantastic, setting up templates for next books.

Amongst them all Volume One is the absolute stand out for me as a complete collection. The others housed some great stories, but the first volume’s consistency was a like a punch to the face; a screaming declaration to the horror world of the arrival of a new talent, and I can only imagine the impact it must have had when it arrived on the scene in the 1980s.

Its closing story ‘In The Hills, The Cities’ is still cited by many as one of their favourite short stories of all time. With such a hyped up reputation I worried it would end up being a letdown. It wasn’t. In fact I still think about it from time to time after all these months have passed since reading it.

But this collection is so much more than a one trick pony. Midnight Meat Train goes places I did not see coming. Yattering and Jack showed a comedic side. Pig Blues was a multi-layered and atmospheric tale, the like of which I had never read before.

I’m not going to list them all, but believe me with this volume when I say the hype is real.

The Wine of Youth by John Fante

I love getting book recommendations from like-minded friends. After chatting about the poetry of Charles Bukowski, my good friend Daryl Duncan asked if I had ever read Ask The Dust by John Fante. He told me Fante was a big inspiration to Bukowski.

Intrigued I picked the book up and loved it – in fact I think it was probably my favourite read of 2018. Chatting again with Daryl, I told him how much I had enjoyed it, and after a few days he kindly sent a copy of The Wine of Youth in the post. (Thank you mate.)

The Wine of Youth is a short story collection detailing Fante’s youth as an Italian-American catholic growing up with his family in American during the early part of the 20th century.

It’s a concept that might seem mundane, but the thing that Fante does so well is take the mundane and inject it with wit and flair. I haven’t been able to work out the alchemy of Fante’s prose just yet, but there’s something about it that pulls me in, transports me to exactly where he is and keeps me enthralled throughout the story.

I wasn’t sure if I was going to like this when I first started it, but I know my friend has good taste, so I trusted him. I’m glad I did as I was rewarded with another example (along with Ask The Dust) of Fante’s skill.

The Quarantined City by James Everington

My favourite writer on the horror scene at the moment is Tracy Fahey, and I often compare Everington’s prose with Fahey’s. To me this is high praise indeed. Both seem to have studied from the altar of Shirley Jackson, and both have taken their time to dissect her dread-inducing prose, her outrageously effective ‘quiet’ horror, and then given their own unique spin on it. Everington’s own ‘Trying To Be So Quiet & Other Hauntings’ made me weep, and stands out to me as a bonafide classic, so when I heard I about his novel The Quarantined City, I was intrigued.

The Quarantined City didn't disappoint, and cemented Everington as a first class writer to me. The story is set around a man living in a city that has been inexplicably placed on lock down. The society has had to set up their own laws, currency and ways of living. Of course this also brings about a revolutionary group. Our hero is haunted by a ghost in his flat, which is more bothersome than a subject of outright, plaguing fear, and amongst all this our hero becomes obsessed with finding short stories penned by a mysterious writer.

The set up is wonderful, the short stories from the mysterious writer are absolutely first class, and very much fit into the Jackson-quiet horror style, and the novel becomes meta on more than one occasion (and I’m an absolute sucker for meta-fiction).

This book is clever with the story having arcs in arcs in arcs. The mysteries and atmosphere keep the pace at the perfect flow with satisfying pay offs. I read this in one sitting and was gutted when it ended, I could have lived in that world and in Everington’s writing for a lot longer.

High Moor III: Blood Moon by Graeme Reynolds

Of all the books I read this year, hands down I had the most fun reading this one.

The High Moor books had a good reputation and although they were on my list to read, I was putting them off until I’d finished my own werewolf book, Mad Dog. I didn’t want the influence of one to affect the other.

So with my own vision of lycanthropy now published, I was finally able to indulge Reynolds’ complete trilogy.

I have become aware over the years of two distinct strands of werewolf writing. One strand tends to focus on the curse of being a monster and the other uses the transformation as a kind of superpower. The werewolves can turn at will, have heightened senses, have the ability to heal rapidly and often live in packs with a focus on history, hierarchy and lore (much like vampires). Personally my tastes lean towards to the curse and not the superpower, although the first two books were well written and solid, action-packed entertainment, they focused more on the superpower than the curse strand. (Please note here, I am discussing a personal taste here – the writing, pacing and plotting were well executed.)

By the time we got to third book I guess my palette had adjusted because I absolutely loved this book. I accepted the half breeds. The ground rules and lore had been set and established and now it was time to see how this all played out, and my god Reyonlds really turned up the werewolf carnage in this one. The mayhem is perfectly written, I mean perfectly. It’s gory, its fast paced, it’s exciting, and the build up to get there adds tension and anticipation to the journey.

If you want action, monsters and lashings of blood then I recommend the High Moor series, culminating in this fantastic finale.

56 Seconds by Dani Brown

I love experimentation. I love art that pushes boundaries. Art that does something different. That dares to try out new ideas. 56 Seconds by Dani Brown does exactly this.

The story is set in a nightclub, and a tale of an unsuccessful attempt at starting a relationship is retold whilst the narrator lurks on the side lines of the dance floor.

At least I think that’s the gist of the tale.

You see, this book is an experience. An experience that you must feel and allow yourself to be guided by.

It is written in small stanzas, the rhythm of which emulates the pumping music of the nightclub. This is a neat trick and one that shows the skill Brown has with the meter of her sentence structure. The stanzas begin to tell the story, but not in a conventional manner. Like a tide going in and out, we are told of the location and what is happening, then we are washed back to a point in the past, then brough to the future, then back to the present. The stanzas loop, round and round, giving us more information time and again; filling details in. Over time the complete picture of the story is told, fed to us with dream-like logic.

It’s purposefully disorientating and makes you work to pick up the story. Thinking back over the book, I am not sure if I have remembered the complete plot details, but that’s half its beauty. It’s challenging, it’s fascinating and its breath-taking.

Some Will Not Sleep by Adam L G Nevill

Nevill has become quite a success story within UK horror, and it’s a success that has been earned – not built round hyperbole and advertising money, but from good honest talent and great writing.

I read both his short story collections this year, Some Will Not Sleep being my favourite of the two. Nevill has a way of mixing the grimy gutters of modern cities with the fantastic folklore of demons and angels and long forgotten monsters. Everything feels so real, so dirty and disheveled in Nevill’s prose.

This collection was my favourite of the two for a number of reasons: just before reading this I had finished an M R James collection, so when I came across his James pastiche I was primed to appreciate the skill and detail in which he’d approached it. This story was one of my favourites and is also a clear set up for his later novel The Ritual.

His story of an unwanted houseguest and their strange devotion to a goddess (or are they just an acid casualty) was equally enthralling and disgusting. And if you ever wanted to see Nevill go full pulp, then this collection has a cowboys and zombie splatter fest.

A lot to enjoy in a variety of styles here.

The Children at the Bottom of the Gardden by Jonathan Butcher

Butcher shifts style and idea with every release. His extreme horror What Good Girls Do couldn’t be any more different from the comedic Demon Thingy. And with The Children at the Bottom of the Gardden he’s done something different again, producing a novel with a plethora characters and storylines. These individual elements all weave together over the course of the book, and it’s fun to see these elements all converge.

The characters are all well written and the real-life crime parts to the story are a joy to read through. In fact, the more realistic elements were so well done, that it made the supernatural parts of the story seem redundant.

Wonderful pacing and intrigue had me burning through the pages at an incredible rate. This is something different and worth getting yourself lost in the multiple characters and their seedy lives.

F*cking Animals by Matt Shaw

This collection is made up from two novelletes (those being Bird and Cow). The two stories follow on from each other and the effect of the two make a complete and satisfying story.

Whilst Cow had its moments and the ending really worked, my main reason for including this on the list was the first story Bird.

Shaw has made a career in extreme horror – on shocking and going where other people don’t. With the subversive story of Bird we don’t get the blood and guts, but we do get is something equally as shocking without the need for torture or brutality.

The relationships and characters are well written, helping to pull you into the story, and I don’t want to ruin anything about it, but let’s just say that as I was reading it I was shaking my head thinking ‘he’s not going there is he?’ And yep he did.

Wonderful.

A Warning About Your Future Enslavement That You Will Dismiss as a Collection by Kit Power

This short story collection might well win the award for longest title of any book I have read. The linking narrative is a fun one. Someone from the future begins to extrapolate history from DNA, uncovering truths that they might not be ready for.

The stories and essays themselves are splatterpunk at its most succinct. Some of those stories are only a few pages long, but their impacts have scarred memories across my brain that are far too easy to recall. In turns sad, shocking and gleefully anarchic. Power also shows his skill in areas other than horror, writing imaginative and engaging essays on subjects as diverse as Band Aid and the Wildhearts as well as non-horror fiction; his depiction of a poker game was hypnotic in its intensity and word play.

In case you had any doubt before, this book proves that Kit Power is a bona fide punk. And an incredible writer.

Horror, sci fi, music journalism and much more, all expertly crafted with an unmatched talent for character and voice.

Suffer Little Children by Penny Jones

This is a small short story collection, but its slim size does not dampen its impact. Jones’ thematic collection centres around children (as made clear in the title) and is the perfect showcase for her writing. She focuses on that feeling of dread and unease, the claustrophobic and inescapable suffocation of loss, and the terror of not fitting in.

As a story teller myself, I like to add twists and turns into my stories – as such I’m always on the look out for where a story might be going, so it is rare that I get taken by surprise with a twist in the tale. There was one story in this collection that absolutely blind-sided me.

I’m not telling which one it is, but it’s in there.

And Jones is a sneaky writer…

Sicker B*stards by Matt Shaw

Shaw’s breakthrough hit was a book called Sick B*stards. After years of writing, he released this book one day and somehow all the stars aligned. The title rocketed up the book charts and turned Shaw into one of extreme horror’s leading authors.

A sequel was inevitable and came fairly quickly after the first. What I didn’t expect to read was a sequel that, in my opinion, outstripped the first. Its events come quickly after the action in the first book and the family are still as repugnant as ever, as Shaw goes for the jugular in proving how far this book can go. But immediately I felt the writing had tightened up. This helped with the book’s pacing and brought out more in the action scenes where I was enthralled and left on the edge of my seat as I nervously turned the next page.

The finale is the highlight of the book. And where extreme horror might be known for being graphic and detailed, it’s the deft touch and restraint in the way the finale is told that makes it even more horrifying.

Dog Blood by David Moody

Moody has been writing his own brand of post-apocalyptic fiction for so long that there is no doubt in his status as a grand master of his craft. I’d previously read and enjoyed both Hater and Autumn. Hater is considered a modern classic with an interesting idea that even impressed Guillermo del Toro, so I was intrigued to see where he would take the concept with its sequel, Dog Blood.

Dog Blood takes the main idea and does what all good sequels do – expanding on the concept and adding more details and dimensions to the lore. Moody doesn’t take long to settle us into the world again before he shows us new aspects to the changed Haters, setting up how the civil war between the races has been progressing. What Moody also understands so well is the emotional human element that makes for a satisfying story. This story is crammed full of such scenes and characters that are believable. Characters that you care for.

And as such, the action, desperation, the hurt and the hopelessness just hurts that much more.

If you haven’t read Hater yet, get it. Then get this.

All The Fabulous Beasts by Priya Sharma

I couldn’t think of a nicer person in the horror community – a person that you would love to do well. The fact that Sharma has won awards and heaps of praise from this book has nothing to do with her warm personality though – all those merits have been earned through sheer talent.

This wonderful short story collection tells stories of shapeshifters, bird women, Greek god figures and other strange entities, and in doing so it is in no hurry to get to the end. Each tale takes its time to build the world and colour the characters that populate it.

Sharma’s stories are meticulous but not laboured. Detailed but never boring.

Every plot thread, every story strand, seems to be expertly woven together to add a depth and richness that ultimately pays off in each story’s closing moments.

The beauty in her language is poetic, and there are a number of phrases and passages that moved me so much I can recite them from memory.

Sharma’s use of magical realism gives us worlds where anything can happen, but all meaning, all emotion is very much recognizable and identifiable, and for that reason, all the more devastating.

So there’s my top sixteen reads of the year. I read a lot more I enjoyed but had to narrow it down to create this list. I hope you’ve enjoyed reading it, and I hope it has inspired you to seek out some of these books for yourself.

I should have been clear from the start that only a few of these books came out in 2019, but there’s no way I could give a decent sample size of books only released this year. I’m sure I’ll discover more of those gems over the next year or so, hell maybe even over the next ten years. Inspiration takes us down many roads, and those pathways are rarely straight. So what books I will pick up to read and enjoy over the next coming years is anyone’s guess; certainly I have little idea.

And whilst I meander done the roads of my own design I’ll allow the real reviewers and book bloggers to help guide me.

They do a fantastic job of keeping me informed of releases both old and new and forgotten.

Justin Park

24th December 2019