Books I read in April 2024

Total: 32 "books"

— Herbert West, Re-Animator by H.P. Lovecraft (censored audiobook read by Jeffrey Combs)
— Adversary by Blue Delliquanti;
— Re-Animator by Jeff Rovin;
— Faces: Paul Davis Portraits by Paul Davis;
— Kubla Khan: A Pop-Up Version of Coleridge's Classic by Nick Bantock;
— The Pillow Book by Sei Shonagon;
— The Whole Beast: Nose to Tail Eating by Fergus Henderson;
— The Dead by James Joyce;
— Mineola, Mineola by Paula Martinac;
— Herbert West: Reanimator (uncensored text edition) by H.P. Lovecraft;
— Diary of a Madman by Lu Xun;
— Re-Animator: Death is Just the Beginning by Steven Philip Jones;
— Pickman's Model by H.P. Lovecraft;
— Re-Animator: Dawn of the Reanimator by Bill Spangler;
— Cold Air by H.P. Lovecraft;
— Army of Darkness vs. Re-Animator by James Kuhoric;
— The Thing on the Doorstep by H.P. Lovecraft;
— The Book of the City of Ladies by Christine de Pizan;
— The Shunned House by H.P. Lovecraft;
— Chartwell Manor by Glenn Head;
— Hamlet by William Shakespeare;
— The Prince by Niccolo Macchiavelli;
— James Baldwin: The Last Interview by James Baldwin;
— Hello Cruel World: 101 Alternatives to Suicide for Teens by Kate Bornstein;
— No Straight Lines: Four Decades of Queer Comics by Justin Hall;
— The Old Gun by Mo Yan;
— Barn Burning by William Faulkner;
— A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf;
— The Legacy by Virginia Woolf;
— The Heart of Thomas by Moto Hagio;
— Love in a Fallen City by Eileen Chang;
— Lesbian Lists by Dell Richards.

And I'm currently on page 253 of "A Little Life" by Hanya Yanagihara and Chapter 8 of "A Court of Thorns and Roses" by ... well, I don't know the author's name off-hand T__T Sorry.

Wow! I thought I didn't do a lot of reading this month; if you'd asked me off the top of my head, I would have only remembered the Re-Animator comics because they were so bad! And "Heart of Thomas" because it was so recent, and so good XD A lot of these are novellas and short stories, all of which were excellent. And I get to make the rules, so I'm counting them as books XD

This month I read Kate Bornstein for the first time, sank deep into a Re-Animator obsession, realized I actually really like Lovecraft's writing (I used to HATE it), finally finished "No Straight Lines," an anthology I read the first 50% of years ago, read a cookbook front-to-finish, and got my socks blown off by "Chartwell Manor" and "Heart of Thomas," one very American comic book about molestation/rape at a boys' boarding school and one very Japanese manga about the same thing.

Film Diary April 2024

Movies:

— Bride of Reanimator (1990), April 01
— Frightmare (1981), April 02
— Beyond Reanimator (2003), April 03
— Poor Things (2023), April 07
— Lurking Fear (1994), April 13
— The Lair of the White Worm (1988), April 15
— Coonskin (1975), April 16
— Abigail (2024), April 20
— Terror Train (1980), April 23
— Young Törless (1966), April 24
— House of 1000 Corpses (2003), April 29
— Lady in White (1988), April 30.

Also rewatched From Beyond and Re-Animator a few times, and started rewatches of Child's Play and Ghostbusters that I didn't bother finishing because I've seen them both so many times.

Notes on the movies:

Bride of Reanimator: A campy, hilarious sequel to the original with just as much queer/trans coding. Definitely a worthy successor imo, although it doesn't take itself as seriously.

Frightmare: Jeffrey Combs plays a twink in a drama club. When a murderous horror-movie star (think Christopher Lee or Vincent Price) dies, the drama club steals his body and does a photo shoot in their frat house. But the movie star comes back from the dead and kills them off one by one. Honestly a really great horror-comedy and slasher. I ended up rewatching just the latter half in late April so I could appreciate the death scenes better.

Beyond Reanimator: God I can't imagine how disappointing this must have been to fans when it came out. Luckily Reanimator was nowhere near my radar at the time, so I was spared. Looking back on it now, this movie is 20 years old and it's accumulated its own special kind of camp. It's bad, but it's fun.

Poor Things: Absolutely loved it, especially the ending.

Lurking Fear: This movie is a trashfire. But the lesbian vibes are exquisite.

The Lair of the White Worm: A hermaphroditic snake-entity stalks a small rural town, killing its residents in the sexiest possible ways. Peter Capaldi and Hugh Grant star in this, but the real sensation is the lady who plays the White Worm.

Coonskin: No notes! Amazing movie. I did a full write-up earlier this month.

Abigail: A pleasant surprise. Campy, humorous, fast-paced, with likable characters -- it's a very loose remake of Dracula's Daughter without the lesbian vibes (a bit of a drawback), but it features Matthew Goode as Dracula (a plus).

Terror Train: Sometimes tedious, but mostly fun, this slasher is essentially Prom Night, but it takes place on a train. Jamie Lee Curtis plays a brilliant med student who is troubled by an incident in her freshman year, when she partook in a sexually traumatizing hazing ritual that sent a young man to the asylum. Now that young man is out, and he's among the masked partiers on the train, but who is he? My favorite elements of this: the surprise genderbender twist and David Copperfield as the magician.

Young Törless: While it's an excellent film, I can't help but feel like other films have done the same themes much better.

House of 1000 Corpses: American horror loves to make rednecks the villains. For a capitalist society there's something primal and terrifying about inbred, deformed, deranged hillbillies trapping you in their desolate rural town and chopping you to bits. But in this movie, the trope is played with -- the victims are condescending yuppies looking to write a book about the quaint country folk and their funny ways, and the hillbillies get their revenge. As a hillbilly born and raised I found it very satisfying and fun.

Lady in White: a too-long, over-indulgent mystery/horror film that I couldn't give more than two stars to. I really wanted to like it, but from the opening scene I knew it wasn't meant to be XD This movie couldn't decide if it wanted to be Radio Flyer or To Kill a Mockingbird, and it veered between saccharine Norman Rockwell scenes to extreme racism and lynching to child murder back to Norman Rockwell. The Letterboxd reviews are concerningly high.