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nd paradise full of charming hilarious cannibals and row my girlfriend around a lake in a canoe i also read three books by james welch the death of jim loney winter in the blood and fools crow all excellent two by somerset maugham the magician and the moon and sixpence the moon and sixpence on the recommendation of stephen king more about him later two by tobias wolff in the garden of the north american martyrs and back in the world good but neither as good as the night in question two by sara gran the book of the most precious substance and saturn s return to new york and liked them both though claire dewitt and the city of the dead and the audiobook only marigold are still my favorites two by steven millhauser disruptions and dangerous laughter two by octavia butler the parable of the sower and dawn three by barbara comyns our spoons came from woolworth s the vet s daughter and who was changed and who was dead still processing but i liked the first two of these a lot and three more of iain banks culture novels matter the hydrogen sonata and consider phlebas consider phlebas was the best one of my favorite things i did this year was sign up for a class on philip k dick over at morbid anatomy taught by my friend pkd scholar david gill who wrote the introduction to pkd s third wife anne dick s indispensable bio the search for philip k dick i ve known david for years ever since 2005 or so when i used to run the philip k dick fanpage over on myspace the good ol days and it was nice to see him in action in a classroom zoom room the class was fantastic 16 weeks two 3 hour lectures per week we went through pkd s whole life and discussed all his literary phases and books every other class we had a visiting scholar or someone from pkd s life friends girlfriends roommates mentees etc come to speak i learned more about pkd and pkd related weirdness than i would ve thought possible and finally got around to reading a few of the very few books of his i still hadn t read including the crack in space pretty good dr futurity blecch and the cosmic puppets great images but a bit lifeless plus his first book the non science fictional gather yourselves together which was incredibly strange long and rambly and full of awful people behaving in incomprehensible ways but somehow in a good way and the above mentioned puttering about in a small land which i really loved as off putting as all the characters are and as little as i understand what the whole thing s about it s idiosyncratic and alive and feels like the one book that maybe gets closest to making me understand who pkd was internally on a day to day basis and also it has a great cover on top of a great title i also reread ubik a scanner darkly and the three stigmata of palmer eldritch three of my all time favorites of his and hey what do you know they hold up my favorite thing about the class was finally coming to understand how the two strands of pkd s writing life science fiction and literary fiction finally came together around 1960 when in hopes of finally making enough money to maintain his new wife in the style she was accustomed he gave up his failing straight world literary fiction aspirations started jamming the unhappy couples of his literary novels into his previously lone man sf books upped his benzedrine intake about 1000 and got really into episcopalianism all my favorite books of his come from that period too bad the stress of it all brought everything crashing down still he came through it okay well eventually more or less for a while anyway some other books i enjoyed this year murakami s the city and its uncertain walls the ugliest house in the world by peter ho davies a different darkness by luigi musolino especially the first story lactic acid which reminded me of the short film the black tower which i saw a few months before and really loved william vollman s europe central though it would ve been better as a short story the known world by edward p jones the bluest eye by toni morrison houellebecq s annihilation though i don t remember a single thing about it the knockout artist by harry crews harry crews is the best bukowski s hollywood i also walked over to see bukowski s old apartment in hollywood it looked about as depressing as you d imagine unaccustomed earth by jhumpa lahiri hell heaven was probably the best short story i read in 2024 but this collection as a whole mostly just made me really sick of hearing about rich people i couldn t even finish it steve anwyll s welfare a novel troublingly vivid and unforgettable roger zelazny s first collection the doors of his face the lamps of his mouth one of the worst titles of all time but the stories are solid he s sort of a hipper more poetic ray bradbury bartleby co by enrique vila matas experimental film by gemma files one of the best cursed movie books i ve read penelope fitzgerald s the bookshop david ulin s thirteen question method always nice to read a book by someone who loves film noir as much as i do steven dunn s potted meat david gates jernigan they don t really make books like this anymore which hey is maybe for the best susanna moore s in the cut matthew bartlett s gateways to abomination the doomsday book by connie willis nicola griffith s ammonite really loved the psychedelic scope of this chaucer a european life by marion turner which was infinitely more interesting than peter ackroyd s chaucer brief lives which i also read jan fosse s a shining actually i didn t like this very much but i did keep thinking about it afterward richard mirabella s brother and sister enter the forest fleur jaggy s sweet days of discipline jordan castro s the novelist randall kenan s let the dead bury their dead kaveh ackbar s martyr christina rivera garza s the taiga syndrome barbara kingsolver s demon copperhead yuko tsushima s territory of light scott wolven s controlled burn sayaka murata s convenience store woman and all fours by miranda july which i fully expected to hate and did until somewhere along the way i found myself admiring how totally mainstream and commercial minded it was beneath the grating superficial wackiness a neat trick i also read sjowall wahloo s cop killer and the terrorists thereby finally finishing their 10 book martin beck series after many years of reading might begin again from the start some classics i finally got around to in 2024 uncle tom s cabin good book though it made me feel bad for uncle tom who s a pretty decent guy in the book the hunchback of notre dame which weirdly lacks the famous story defining climax i remember from all the movies where he swings in on the rope and saves her instead she just dies wtf the phantom of the opera i love the physical world of this story more than maybe any other an island in the middle of a secret subterranean lake buried beneath a haunted opera house incredible stuff but the story itself is a real snooze the history of tom jones a foundling almost terrifyingly energetic also i love the cover of the penguin classics edition claude brown s manchild in the promised land one of those don t do heroin books but a good one i shall continue to not do heroin hardy s tess of the d urbervilles great ending involving stonehenge the treasure of the sierra madre loved this a real world so messed up it reads like science fiction ishmael reed s mumbo jumbo started out as one of the best books i ever read and then kinda spiraled out of control but still had me cheering and texting everyone excitedly for a while and dickens hard times short bleak humorless easily the worst dickens i ve ever read i also read charlotte bronte s villette in which the narrator withholds a lot of information from the reader not sure exactly why but it was interesting anne s agnes grey and the tenant of wildfell hall now i get why people don t talk much about anne and reread wuthering heights that book is intense the very definition of bad vibes it was my intention to read or reread all the bronte books but i failed i admit it the brontes defeated me some other rereads the burnt orange heresy by charles willeford the older i get the more i love willeford the house next door by anne rivers siddons this was my 4th or 5th time through and i still find it riveting unsettling and often shocking the dispossessed by ursula le guin still don t enjoy being lectured for 300 pages and will never understand why everyone always talks about this instead of the lathe of heaven which is one of the best science fiction books of all time the collected works vol 1 by scott mcclanahan i wish scott mcclanahan published a book every week i d never read anything else and the shining by stephen king tbh i liked this one more when i was 15 but i still love the idea of a telepathic kid trapped between his incredibly unhappy parents who never talk about what s actually on their minds speaking of stephen king i also read 35 other books by him this year i ve been reading stephen king my whole life and am perpetually almost caught up but then i turn around and he s written a whole raft of new ones so this year i decided to actually really catch up some of my favorites from those 35 i d never read before blaze the colorado kid which is a real anomaly amongst his work almost an experimental novel quite refreshing though it definitely leaves you hanging at the end the mr mercedes trilogy billy summers and maybe most of all holly which is super fun and creepy i could feel myself grinning like a madman the whole way through didn t care much for the tomes under the dome 11 22 63 lisey s story bag of bones tommyknockers dreamcatcher etc though they all had their moments and sequences yes even dreamcatcher and it was cool to read them all so close together as to get to see and appreciate king s moves and the way his brain works i was impressed to find that he has written excellent books in every decade of his career i expected to see a sharp falling off recently but that wasn t borne out if anything i like his more recent books esp holly and the bill hodges trilogy more than those from the late 90s and 00s weirdly i didn t much care for the short story collections although night shift is by far my favorite king book well it s neck and neck between that and the long walk not that the stories were bad they always just felt a little like glancing blows which is not true of the stories in night shift i hasten to add the last rung on the ladder for instance gets me every time that said the one about the stationary bicycle really captured my imagination so much so in fact that i went out and bought a stationary bicycle didn t make the connection at the time but i see it now so far i haven t stationarily biked into any other realms of existence but here s hoping the only king books i didn t cross off the list were the dark tower novels which i m leaving for another time i tried but i just can t make it through the second one the worst book i read this year was well maybe i won t go there i will say that i have no idea how that book orbital won the booker prize but then again i never understand how any of the books that win the booker prize win the booker prize or any of the other big prizes for that matter the book world is a strange and mysterious place sometimes i think everyone s just messing with me but anyway happy 2025 everybody go read glorious exploits oh last thing horror movies it wasn t a very good year for horror movies imo but i did enjoy i saw the tv glow oddity red rooms strange darling longlegs and you ll never find me i also enjoyed parts of cuckoo especially the biking scene what is it with me and biking scenes and exhuma and alien romulus was fun if completely pointless and forgettable full disclosure i still haven t seen nosferatu or the devil s bath or terrifier 3 for that matter and finally here s my favorite photo i took in 2024 in november i was finally lured back to the world of live music for the first time since 2019 i went to see my friend s band myveronica at the echo they have a song inspired by my story the duck and they played it sometimes life is pretty cool january 6 2025 january 6 2025 ben loory tagged book review books fiction horror reading science fiction short stories leave a comment album release great news everybody music for falling and flying the album is out it contains four works of contemporary classical chamber music by composer nathan hudson each based on or inspired by one of my stories the pieces are the duck based on the story of the same name from my collection stories for nighttime and some for the day music for falling and flying inspired by the well from the same collection god based on god first published in bomb magazine and brace yourselves an impact for clarinet and piano inspired by my story the squid who fell in love with the sun from tales of falling and flying there are a lot of thanks to be made here to the musicians linda cykert flute andy hudson clarinet isaac pyatt percussion annie jeng piano andrea edith moore healy soprano brian carter baritone jason mckinney bass baritone nathan southwick violin karl ronnevik cello and jonathan poquette conductor to producer justin waller sound mixer bill stevens at ovation sound llc in winston salem nc and mastering engineer dave mcnair to artist designer natalie freeland lodato to philip blackburn and neuma records for putting the album out and maybe most of all to everybody out there who donated to and supported the album s fundraising campaign on kickstarter there was a moment where i didn t think we were gonna make it but you all turned it around at the last moment and here we are i hope you like the album nathan hudson is the genius here the composer of the music and the force behind the record and he and the musicians deserve the kudos but i just want to say it was a real treat to be involved and to see my stories transformed as if by magic into such wonderful music so where do you get this thing i m glad you asked you can buy listen to the album here on bandcamp over at youtube or via the neuma records site itself enjoy and please do let us know what you think october 24 2024 october 24 2024 ben loory 1 comment dandelions on selected shorts my story dandelions is on the selected shorts podcast right now as read by actor wyatt cenac it s episode 50 best laid plans which also includes cane and roses by edwidge danticat as read by anika noni rose and the laurel and hardy love affair by ray bradbury as read by tate donovan find it here or wherever you listen to your podcasts dandelions first appeared in the anthology small odysseys selected shorts presents 35 new stories edited by hannah tinti which you can find here or at your local bookstore august 23 2024 august 23 2024 ben loory 2 comments posts navigation previous widgets search for recent posts the vatican on the selected shorts podcast big weekend for a duck what i did in 2025 the vatican in new york reading at taix on sept 26 recent 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