The Year of Cemetery Dance 2018

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Dana Jean

Dirty Pirate Hooker, The Return
Moderator
Apr 11, 2006
53,634
236,697
The High Seas
67. World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War

By Max Brooks

About the Book:

"The end was near." — Voices from the Zombie War

The Zombie War came unthinkably close to eradicating humanity. Max Brooks, driven by the urgency of preserving the acid-etched first-hand experiences of the survivors from those apocalyptic years, traveled across the United States of America and throughout the world, from decimated cities that once teemed with upwards of thirty million souls to the most remote and inhospitable areas of the planet. He recorded the testimony of men, women, and sometimes children who came face-to-face with the living, or at least the undead, hell of that dreadful time. World War Z is the result. Never before have we had access to a document that so powerfully conveys the depth of fear and horror, and also the ineradicable spirit of resistance, that gripped human society through the plague years.

Ranging from the now infamous village of New Dachang in the United Federation of China, where the epidemiological trail began with the twelve-year-old Patient Zero, to the unnamed northern forests where untold numbers sought a terrible and temporary refuge in the cold, to the United States of Southern Africa, where the Redeker Plan provided hope for humanity at an unspeakable price, to the west-of-the-Rockies redoubt where the North American tide finally started to turn, this invaluable chronicle reflects the full scope and duration of the Zombie War.

Most of all, the book captures with haunting immediacy the human dimension of this epochal event. Facing the often raw and vivid nature of these personal accounts requires a degree of courage on the part of the reader, but the effort is invaluable because, as Mr. Brooks says in his introduction, "By excluding the human factor, aren't we risking the kind of personal detachment from history that may, heaven forbid, lead us one day to repeat it? And in the end, isn't the human factor the only true difference between us and the enemy we now refer to as 'the living dead'?"

brooksm01large_375x540.jpg


My Thoughts:

Caniglia once again delivers with an outstanding cover.

This is my second Max Brooks' book this year dealing with the undead and I have to say, he might just make me a Zombie fan.

Seriously professional and so realistic in its details -- his fiction blurs with the factual history he's dropped in here.

It was like reading a bunch of short stories around the central theme of Zombies. Every individual account captured the geographical region and attitudes during war times. I believed our interviewer was in every single place he said he was in talking to a warrior or survivor.

And like a previous book I read by another author, this one was so full of people, places, things, ideas, sciences, history etc... some I know were true, and others....real? fiction? amalgamation of all of the above? The time he must have spent to research and get things just right blows my little pea brain.

I swear, both of his books have me believing a Zombie horde is in my backyard -- probably munching on my Quail family as I write this!

So much I could have spent time just learning about by googaloogalin', but I only looked up one thing:

What does the word Caesar translate to in Russian?
 
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GNTLGNT

The idiot is IN
Jun 15, 2007
87,651
358,754
62
Cambridge, Ohio
67. World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War

By Max Brooks

About the Book:

"The end was near." — Voices from the Zombie War

The Zombie War came unthinkably close to eradicating humanity. Max Brooks, driven by the urgency of preserving the acid-etched first-hand experiences of the survivors from those apocalyptic years, traveled across the United States of America and throughout the world, from decimated cities that once teemed with upwards of thirty million souls to the most remote and inhospitable areas of the planet. He recorded the testimony of men, women, and sometimes children who came face-to-face with the living, or at least the undead, hell of that dreadful time. World War Z is the result. Never before have we had access to a document that so powerfully conveys the depth of fear and horror, and also the ineradicable spirit of resistance, that gripped human society through the plague years.

Ranging from the now infamous village of New Dachang in the United Federation of China, where the epidemiological trail began with the twelve-year-old Patient Zero, to the unnamed northern forests where untold numbers sought a terrible and temporary refuge in the cold, to the United States of Southern Africa, where the Redeker Plan provided hope for humanity at an unspeakable price, to the west-of-the-Rockies redoubt where the North American tide finally started to turn, this invaluable chronicle reflects the full scope and duration of the Zombie War.

Most of all, the book captures with haunting immediacy the human dimension of this epochal event. Facing the often raw and vivid nature of these personal accounts requires a degree of courage on the part of the reader, but the effort is invaluable because, as Mr. Brooks says in his introduction, "By excluding the human factor, aren't we risking the kind of personal detachment from history that may, heaven forbid, lead us one day to repeat it? And in the end, isn't the human factor the only true difference between us and the enemy we now refer to as 'the living dead'?"

brooksm01large_375x540.jpg


My Thoughts:

Caniglia once again delivers with an outstanding cover.

This is my second Max Brooks' book this year dealing with the undead and I have to say, he might just make me a Zombie fan.

Seriously professional and so realistic in its details -- his fiction blurs with the factual history he's dropped in here.

It was like reading a bunch of short stories around the central theme of Zombies. Every individual account captured the geographical region and attitudes during war times. I believed our interviewer was in every single place he said he was in talking to a warrior or survivor.

And like a previous book I read by another author, this one was so full of people, places, things, ideas, sciences, history etc... some I know were true, and others....real? fiction? amalgamation of all of the above? The time he must have spent to research and get things just right blows my little pea brain.

I swear, both of his books have me believing a Zombie horde is in my backyard -- probably munching on my Quail family as I write this!

So much I could have spent time just learning about by googaloogalin', but I only looked up one thing:

What does the word Caesar translate to in Russian?
кесарь
 

Dana Jean

Dirty Pirate Hooker, The Return
Moderator
Apr 11, 2006
53,634
236,697
The High Seas
68. ISIS

By Doubles Clegg

About the Book:

"Before she had ever heard the name of Harrow, the legendary house of horrors of the Hudson Valley, she had already been possessed by the spirits of the dead.

Her name is Isis Claviger, and when she was nineteen, a highwayman from Hell came for her soul and took her away into a dark realm of psyche and ecstasy.

An original novelette by Douglas Clegg, Isis is the first tale of Isis Claviger, the oracle of Harrow."

clegg07large_383x540.jpg


My Thoughts:

Glenn Chadbourne delivers a deliciously satisfying cover for this tale.

Very much an old school gothic "characterized by gloom and mystery and the grotesque" with tuggings of a dark fairy tale around the edges.

This story was a quick novelette that oozed grim longing, melancholy and loneliness. Talented writing that captured the horror of death -- or life? You be the judge.
 

Dana Jean

Dirty Pirate Hooker, The Return
Moderator
Apr 11, 2006
53,634
236,697
The High Seas
How you liking this one so far DJ? One of my favorite zombie books. It's so cool the way it's "documented" by so many different points of view. I thought it was a very unique book. The movie was good in its own right, but the book was way, way better imho.
Read above for my review. Haven't seen the movie. Max Brooks is very talented and I like the way he approaches his work in regards to all this Zombie stuff put out to the consumers.
 

ghost19

"Have I run too far to get home?"
Sep 25, 2011
8,926
56,578
51
Arkansas
How you liking this one so far DJ? One of my favorite zombie books. It's so cool the way it's "documented" by so many different points of view. I thought it was a very unique book. The movie was good in its own right, but the book was way, way better imho.

Oh, ok, the review I oblivously scrolled right past to post the question of how you liked the book that you'd already posted a review about.....check please!
 

Dana Jean

Dirty Pirate Hooker, The Return
Moderator
Apr 11, 2006
53,634
236,697
The High Seas
69. The Folks

By Ray Garton

About the Book:

Welcome to Pinecrest, an isolated mountain village halfway up rural Mt. Crag... a place of natural beauty and solitude... a place where village life has remained unchanged for decades... but also a place where dead bodies have a strange way of showing up every couple of years... ravaged, mutilated bodies.

The Folks is a good old-fashioned horror novel from the mastermind of Ray Garton. The book opens on Halloween morning, at a rain-soaked cemetery, and the action doesn't stop until the final page is turned. Scary, suspenseful and a whole lotta fun, The Folks is available only from Cemetery Dance Publications!

garton05large.jpg


My Thoughts:

The cover is a good one created by Gail Cross.

The story was another quick read and a creepy little thing. Reminding me of Tod Browning's Freaks, the ick factor was the skin-crawling descriptions of living conditions, laissez faire attitudes on some very taboo subjects, and the horror of how money is God.

Well done.
 
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Ka-Mai

Member
Jun 6, 2012
5
22
I'm a kinda Dark Tower enthusiast and makes me believe that everything that happened in the story,
about the different Henrys and different universes, to be true. In the Dark Tower there are people called twinners, that are a different version of the same person in another universe. That's probably the reason why there was never a mention of Leland Gaunt by Pangborn, because the events of Needful Things happened in another Castle Rock.
Also Dark Score Lake, which is an important place in Bag of Bones, I've theorized it is a representation of the Dark Tower in that universe. So, it can be possible that the thinny (the effect of which Henry calls schisma), a thining portion of the fabric of reality, appeared on the lake making it possible to certain people (i.e. the Henrys) to travel from one place to another.
 

kingricefan

All-being, keeper of Space, Time & Dimension.
Jul 11, 2006
30,011
127,446
Spokane, WA
69. The Folks

By Ray Garton

About the Book:

Welcome to Pinecrest, an isolated mountain village halfway up rural Mt. Crag... a place of natural beauty and solitude... a place where village life has remained unchanged for decades... but also a place where dead bodies have a strange way of showing up every couple of years... ravaged, mutilated bodies.

The Folks is a good old-fashioned horror novel from the mastermind of Ray Garton. The book opens on Halloween morning, at a rain-soaked cemetery, and the action doesn't stop until the final page is turned. Scary, suspenseful and a whole lotta fun, The Folks is available only from Cemetery Dance Publications!

garton05large.jpg


My Thoughts:

The cover is a good one created by Gail Cross.

The story was another quick read and a creepy little story. Reminding me of Tod Browning's Freaks, the ick factor was the skin-crawling descriptions of living conditions, laissez faire attitudes on some very taboo subjects, and the horror of how money is God.

Well done.
Deej, have you read any Ray Garton novels before this one? He is one of my favorite authors, always entertaining to me. His novel Live Girls is a classic!
 

Dana Jean

Dirty Pirate Hooker, The Return
Moderator
Apr 11, 2006
53,634
236,697
The High Seas
70. The Hogben Chronicles

By Henry Kuttner
edited by Pierce Watters and F. Paul Wilson

About the Book:

"Wait . . . did you just say “Who’s Henry Kuttner?” Good question. This gifted writer has been largely forgotten.

Maybe because he died young (at age 42). Maybe because he published under too many pseudonyms (seventeen). Or maybe because novels weren’t his thing. His strength was in the short form and those tend to be ephemeral. Then again, maybe he’s off the radar because he didn’t stick to one genre.

He wrote horror (“The Graveyard Rats”), sword and sorcery (the Elak of Atlantis series), science fiction (“The Twonky”), whimsical fantasy (“A Gnome There Was”), and unclassifiables such as the mutant hillbilly tales collected here.

We respect Henry Kuttner, especially these five stories—love them, in fact. That’s why we’ve gathered them between a single set of covers. So that you can love them too."

hogben-chronicles-cvr-frt-596x596.png


My Thoughts:

Cover and interior artwork by Cortney Skinner. All I can say is, they are perfect.

The story:

Uhhhh....welllllll.... wha???? huh? sputter.....fuuuuuddddgggge......

This was what was going through my head as I read the first story in this collection. WHAT. THE. F. AM. I. READING? And Neil Gaiman wrote a forward for this because he loved these stories so. And I love Neil Gaiman so.

Sooooooo, I bought the book because of him. And I'm thinking, what a shame. No one told me Neil Gaiman lost his friggin' mind.

But, then I went back to the Forward and read it again -- Neil was eight years old when he fell in love with these stories. And I thought, ahhhh, okay. Makes sense. Boys are silly.

And I re-read F. Paul Wilson's Afterword and he tells us he was a pre-teen when he discovered the Hogbens. And I thought, ahhhhh, okay. Makes sense. Teen boys are even sillier.

Apparenty, this work found its way to my bookcase through a kickstarter. They raised some righteous coin for this thing. And I'm thinking, boy oh boy, old women don't have a lick of sense and are the silliest! They'll buy anything! Swamps and bridges and books about a hillbilly family known as the Hogbens.

And all those thoughts were in my noggin while reading the first couple pages and kept on pounding through my noggin through the entire first story. Dammit! I was duped and now I'm committed to reading this blasted thing!

There are five Hogben stories. And as I made my way through each one something weird happened. I shape shifted. I changed.

I love this damn mutant alien hillybilly family. Each story, with the knowledge of the story previous, made this great reading fun.

The hillybilly dialect was well done and still readable and understandable. The continuing characters were like watching some weird CBS Sunday Night episode of The Waltons where John Boy's mole is the smartest member and leader of the family. Drama, hilarity and hijinks ensue.

It's a pretty little book though. It's signed and numbered. And worth a chunk of change. I was shocked at how much people are paying for it now. (Attention collectors: When I die, my children will sell this book before the flames lick my feet. Stay tuned.)

My hat is off to Neil and Pierce and F. Paul and Henry Hogben. Uh, I mean, Henry Kuttner. wink wink. Alien mofo.
 
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Ka-Mai

Member
Jun 6, 2012
5
22
I was reading some people's comments about this show and they were overall very negative. I really loved this series.
My wife and I liked it very much. She likes many of King's movies and series and have read a few short-stories. I added what I know about the Dark Tower and she loved it even more.
 

Dana Jean

Dirty Pirate Hooker, The Return
Moderator
Apr 11, 2006
53,634
236,697
The High Seas
71. He Is Legend: An Anthology Celebrating Richard Matheson

by Various Authors, edited by Christopher Conlon

About the Book:

"A spectacular anthology of original, never-before published stories by today's best writers — stories set in Richard Matheson's own fictional universes, and published with Mr. Matheson's complete cooperation."

HeIsLegendlarge.jpg


My Thoughts:

Harry O. Morris contributes the cover and interior artwork for this book. I always appreciate the art and love seeing the pieces represented.

I was particularly tickled to see two authors included in this tribute to Richard Matheson and they won't be the usual suspects:

Nancy A. Collins takes us back to Hell House. She does a nice job, and follows Matheson's script. I want to know why Benjamin Fischer is thought of as the only survivor of Hell House when he clearly wasn't? The characters in the book look at him as the only survivor, he himself states he is the only survivor, and any write-up about Matheson's story mentions Fischer as the only survivor. But, "Professor Fenley, an experienced psychic investigator, who's insane and crippled to this day" also survives. So I get the feeling that this is boiling down to something along lines of your definition of what "is", is. Maybe they mean Fischer is the only one who mentally survives. Nancy A. Collins is a great writer and I wish she were putting out more work besides her vampire novels.

My second nice surprise was the inclusion of Michael A. Arnzen. Long story short, years ago I had a moment in time with this author where he called me, "audacious." I took that as a good thing as he sent me out of the kindness of his heart his book, 100 Jolts: Shockingly Short Stories and the audio CD of some of those stories. They were funny and disturbing and the audio was really great fun. I loved the creativity. Loved it. Anyway, his tribute in this anthology was to Matheson's, Born of Man and Woman. It follows in the same vein as the original story and just as bleak and interesting as I expected it to be.

Joe Hill and Stephen King's story, Throttle, combines two men's style that is almost identical. While I don't go out of my way to try to figure out which author wrote which parts in any book I read where a partnership is happening, at times I would think, that's old-school Stephen's way of saying something or that was Joe's way of wording the situation. Word choices tugged at me to choose one or the other but it was a rare moment of doing that.

The book finishes up with a screenplay of Conjure Wife by Charles Beaumont and Richard Matheson that I enjoyed a lot. For some reason, I really like seeing how a screenplay is put together. The screenwriter's vision. Always interesting to me.

Lots of talented writers and I wonder, were each of these authors approached with a specific story that the editor wanted them to write about, or did the authors get to choose which story they wanted to honor?
 
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