Things I learned reading genre fiction 2024 Edition

Lesson 1

I really, really like urban fantasy.  I don't think there's anything more profound to say in regards to that.  

Lesson 2

I don't think I know what actually scares me in horror fiction.  I have picked up on tropes that do not scare me (a monster for monster's sake without giving that monster motivation does not make my arm hairs bristle at attention).  All the same, I'm happy that this year I managed to get a lot more horror into my fiction diet, something I have been trying since I read Haunting of Hill House in 2018.

What scares me in real life--based on recent experiences--is eating food off the bone and finding bird poop indoors.  Most of the horror I read this year didn't have any of that.  Too often horror feints at the psychological and then dashes in to get at the squishy viscera and doesn't effectively strike either for me.  Thanks mom, for the everpresent wisdom you passed down that gives me a bit of a protective layer against horror.  Indeed "it will all wash off" is a truth learned working with any animal body.

Books I read that could be tagged as belonging in the horror genre:

Summer Sons - drag racing, young men and machismo, best friends who are ghosts.  Lesson homophobia is scary?  Some arcane rituals that happen under a tree are also scary?

Meddling Kids - Scooby Doo, prolonged adolescence.  Look, I worry about how the author thinks the  world that he wrote works, so that's a kind of horror, right?  He seemed to hate his characters, which is a real Grady Hendrix vibe, no respect for the people you made up seems to indicate something internally busted about your capacity for empathy that should be worrisome to the rest of us.

Leech - was the monster a fungus in a jar or mankind all along?  All atmospheric foam, no substance that I remember, it all bubbled away as total ephemera.

The Revelator - This also melted, but left kind of a southern gothic aesthetic oil slick in my mind.  I had to go back and read the synopsis to remember any characters, plot, or even the cover.  And as soon as I switched away from that synopsis it kind of slipped out my ears again.

Haunt Sweet Home - short and rather too sweet to really be what I consider horror.  There was a fairly gentle haunting by a ghost, and a fairly realistic haunting by family in regards to legacy and what we think other people expect of us.  This wasn't at all scary, but I did listen to it next to a lake and lakes are legit spooky, see Geo Rutherford's Spooky Lakes.

Vampires of El Norte - Not really horror, just because there were some monsters.  The real monsters were the "Anglos", Americans invading Northern Mexico in the 1840s to turn it into Texas.  Kind of an interesting perspective on some Norteno history that I was not very familiar with, but war stories are almost always boring, and the romance was already dragging things into dull territory for me.  Get back to the supernatural attacks, please!  The main character Nena was compelling in her internal struggle between rebellion and conformity.  

Wake of Vultures - Another western with some horror trappings.  Lila Bowen talked openly in her author's note at the end of the book that historical accuracy was not her aim, she wanted to evoke the vibe of the old west but she wasn't too worried about recreating how things actually happened.  There are four novels in this series, and I could spend a little more time with the hot-headed, smart, but very unlucky protagonist.  Points for casual queerness and bisexuality.

Motherthing - this gave me some genuine chills, a much darker version of the shadows cast by family figures than I got from Haunt Sweet Home.  I like it when something that is not typically seen as horrific (motherhood) is tackled in horror, rather than the same old ghosties and ghoulies.  I did not really see the final act coming, but I appreciate the very real sacrifices made by some women to  become mothers.  

Bunny - I was not in the right frame of mind for this and the way the prose just kind of slid off into magic and flights of fantasy didn't horrify me so much as lull me.  It felt disjointed, but not in the unsettling way of say, an Island of Dr. Moreau type horror.  When writers write about writers and their relationship with writing it all feels a little bit like a teeny tiny snow globe.

Conspiracy of Ravens - The second in Lila Bowen's Shadow series, and the pacing was better, plus the protagonist had a more realized internal world (which makes sense, given that he knows himself much better than in the first book).  Less horror, more western.  The author did historical research to find out where the men in the railroad camps went to the toilet, and I admire that in a writer.  Answer: they went everywhere, lots of rough men with their pizzles out pissing in the makeshift streets.  Sounds pretty horrifying to me. 

Lesson 3

The most compelling sex scenes for me to read are written with humor, specificity, weird introspection and gender fuckery.  

One of the best places to listen to an audiobook sex scene set in a museum bathroom is Waiheke island on a beach that faces Auckland's harbor and the skyline of the central business district. 

Lesson 4

I do not like books that wish they were a movie.  I look down on books that wish they were a movie and we should not be friends because my scorn is probably very hurtful for their little book spines and pride.

Lesson 5

Some books do not get better.  

New Year's Resolution:  Get better at pushing the ejection button. DNF is a completely valid option.  

Books that I should work especially hard to get better at quitting: ahistorical fiction where the "history" is nothing but set dressing, the author wanted their MC in a waistcoat with pearl buttons or in a Regency gown to show off a heaving chest.  If the author's take of the historical setting is so shallow that they don't know what undergarments were worn under these gowns I won't enjoy myself.  Besides,  if you want to write fantasy than just go ahead and write fantasy, why pretend it's history?