Weekly wrap up 18th July: A HORROR heavy week

[00:00:00]Hello, I'm Ollie and this is Crimin Olly, where I talk about crime, pulp, horror, that kind of thing. Today, a week of very different kinds of horror novel. Here's my weekly wrap-up.

[00:00:17][music] So, I've got four books to talk to you about today that I finished this week.

[00:00:26]two that are currently ongoing and all six of them could in some ways be described as horror books but they are very very different from each other apart from two actually two are quite similar but the rest are all very different so I think it's going to be an interesting weekly wrap-up it only occurred to me when I was preparing for this video that all of the books I've read this week were basically horror anyway let me get on and talk about them so the first thing I finished then uh was Marian by Leah Rowan uh which I was buddy readading with Christopher one of my patrons. Um, so this is a new book came out or it's literally just come out here in the UK in the last week or so.

[00:01:03]It's been out in the States for a bit longer than that. I think I will do a review of this one on the channel. So, this is a book um that where the premise is that Marian, the woman who gets killed by Normal Bates in the shower in Psycho, um, escapes. So, she doesn't die in the shower. In instead, she turns the tables and kills Norman. So, it's a really interesting concept for a book, but I didn't feel like the book really did it justice. It It kind of did, but it ends up feeling a lot like a lot of other uh kind of modern thrillers rather than being something that was authentically psycho, if that makes sense. Now, that said, Leah Rowan does do some really interesting things with the role of the mother in particular.

[00:01:49]Um, both in terms of Norman's mother, but also Marian's mother. And there's another character, a detective character. Her mother gets discussed as well. And there's definitely some really fun twists on the psycho uh legend if you like. Um but yeah, it didn't quite work for me. It was it was kind of a threestar read whereas at times I I felt like it might be a four-star read. Um the other thing that it does which I found interesting but slightly disappointing was it updates things to the modern day. I was kind of hoping that it would be set in the 60s like the like the book and movie. Um, so yeah, partly successful. Um, I've definitely got thoughts about it. So, tune in probably on Thursday this week and I'll give you more thoughts. But if you like the concept of it, it's probably worth giving it a try. It's also worth me pointing out uh at this point that um I forgot to talk about in my July TBR video, the fantastic Gallow July event that's run by Alex the Bookcubus every July. Um, so there are four uh themed prompts for that. So, Gallows, if you don't know, are um well, the term originated as a kind of like mystery novel published in Italy with yellow covers, but over time it's come to mean really more um Italian slasher movies in particular, like horror movies that drew on a lot of the themes of those old crime novels. Um so, you know, the work of Dario Orento, for example, is you know, one of the best examples of the of the Jello movie genre. So, Alex runs this fantastic event uh every year with these four prompts and I haven't written them down uh but I think they are basically I can remember what you're supposed to read for them even if I can't remember the name. So, you're supposed to read a book with kind of a violent word in the title. You're supposed to read a book with yellow on the cover. So, Marian definitely works for that for me. Um and uh it also works for the you know for the Jello theme if you like. I think Psycho, the movie was certainly an influence on um on some of the jello filmmakers. Um you're also supposed to read a book with an animal on the cover or in the title. Um and a book with a color in the title. So I haven't got a book with a color in the title. Uh but I've definitely got a book with an animal on the cover. Um and that book is Carnival by Lee Clark. I've actually got two because one of the other books I read has animals on the cover as well. So, Carnivore uh was a book that was discussed in the library of forgotten books series that I'm doing. Um uh and it was hugely fun. So, this is an 80s horror novel and it really feels like an 80s horror novel.

[00:04:25]Um it's set in Antarctica. Uh and basically this unscrupulous scientists who work for this corporation go to Antarctica Antarctica. Their their intention is to build a nuclear waste dump there. Um, and in doing so, they discover a dinosaur egg frozen in like an iceberg. Um, they defrost the egg, they explode it, expose it to loads of radiation, and it hatches. And it's a Tyrannosaurus Rex. And because it's been exposed to lots of radiation, it grows really quickly, and then it it eats most of the scientists basically. But this book was just so much fun. It doesn't take itself seriously. It's got a really cheesy concept and it's aware that it's got a really cheesy concept and it throws everything you could possibly want into that kind of story. So, lots of dinosaur attacks. Um, bits with like various of the scientists bonding with the dinosaur when it when it's younger.

[00:05:20]Um, you've got a dog or two dog characters actually who are both quite fun. There's an avalanche. There's all sorts of different stuff. It was just really really enjoyable. Uh, right.

[00:05:30]Moving on then to the other book with an animal on the cover. Uh and that is Fleshbait uh by who's it by Derry Hullman and Larry Price. So this is a late 70s animal attacks uh novel from the New English Library. It's it's definitely a British book. It's set in Cornwall. Um and it's about this um weird I can't even remember why the fish start doing it, but basically fish start attacking people for no real reason. Um, so you get a stream of different, you know, kind of animal attack type scenes in the book. Uh, and you get a scientist and the military trying to figure out what's going on and to to stop the to stop the fish attacks. Um, which they kind of succeeded doing. Um, unlike Carnival, which has a load of which was just really entertaining, like well written, fast-paced, really fun. This is just dafted. It was it was fun because it was so dafted. Um, but it is just ludicrous. Including um there's a se sorry, not a seal, a dolphin character called Bobby. I forget why he's called Bobby, but he's called Bobby who there's a scene where there's uh like a little deaf girl who is on the beach and the fish are attacking, but she can't hear that, you know, she can't hear everyone screaming. She's blissfully playing away, but Bobby the dolphin manages to save her. That that's the kind of level this this book goes for. So, yeah, it was very, very silly indeed, but as you can probably tell, I did quite enjoy it.

[00:06:58]Um, right, moving on then to uh oh, a book that I missed actually. So, I actually finished this one before Fleshbait, and it's also got an animal on the cover, so I've got a I've got a hat-tick. Uh, so this is Wilding Hall by Elizabeth Hand. This lovely hardback edition was sent to me by Erie, one of my viewers. Uh, and this was the criminally book club pick for this month. So, I knew nothing about this book going into it, but it was really, really good. And it was one of those books, completely unlike Carnivore and Fleshbait, where I found that after I'd finished reading it, I appreciated it more than whilst I was reading it. It's kind of a haunted house story. It's kind of a folk horror story. It's set in the 1970s, I want to say, either the late '60s or the '7s. I know it's 1970s. And it's about this band, all of whom are quite young. in their kind of late teens, early 20s who go to this stately home, Wilding Hall to stay and like chill out and record their new album.

[00:07:58]And whilst they are there, weird stuff starts happening. I'm not going to say too much more than that because I think it would spoil the book, but it's just dripping with atmosphere this book. It's very, very interestingly done. And it's one of those books a bit like The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson where you feel like you don't really know exactly what's going on. You don't know how much of it is in the minds of the characters and how much is really happening. Um but it manages to be through a number of really subtle scenes and and twists and things like that really quite chilling in the end in a way that I wasn't expecting at all.

[00:08:35]It's a very gentle book a lot of the time, but you're left with this feeling of like uneasiness at the end of it. I certainly was anyway. So, I thought it was a very very interesting book indeed.

[00:08:48]Um, and definitely worth checking out if you if you like that kind of thing. It's very slim as well, so it's a nice quick read. Uh, right. So, that's everything I finished this week then. Uh, I've got uh two things ongoing at the moment. So, one is the um the like one of the book club picks from my local indie bookshop uh chapter 34 this month is The Catch by Ursa Daily Ward. Um so, I am listening to the audio book of this rather than reading it. I think I like it, but I'm not sure yet. I think I'm about 25% of the way through. It's a bit literary for my tastes, I would probably say. It's about these two young black women in Bond Britain who are twins. Um, one of them is a successful writer. One of them is like not nearly as successful and is, you know, kind of really struggling a bit both financially and uh and like mentally. Uh, it's fair to say that the one who's a successful writer is also struggling mentally and they're kind of haunted by the fact that their mother abandoned them. Um, and then a woman who uh who appears to be their mother, who the uh who the successful writer sister takes to be her mother, um appears, she sees her in a shop and follows her. So, you've got this mystery, you know, what happened to their mother who appears to have disappeared. Has she come back? But there's also overlaps with the book that the uh the the the writer character has written. So, it's definitely got some interesting things going on, but I'm not sure yet if I enjoy it. I could see a really good horror novel with these with this same kind of plotline, but as I say, it feels it feels a little bit literary for me um at the moment. We shall see though. We shall see. I am I'm definitely enjoying it. It's definitely keeping me gripped. The other thing I'm reading then, which is absolutely phenomenal, and I can't I can't believe it's taken me this long to get to it, and it fulfills another one of the um another one of the uh prompts for Oh, no, it doesn't actually. I was going to say it had an animal in the title, but I've already fulfilled that one. So, anyway, it is Speaks the Nightbird by Robert McCammon. Um this is just fantastic. So, I've liked Robert McCammon's work as a horror author. Um, I've read a number of his things over the years. This was I think he published this after a hiatus from writing where he didn't publish anything for about a decade and then he came back with this. It's a historical mystery.

[00:11:12]It's kind of got tinges of horror to it.

[00:11:15]There's definitely a lot of kind of unexplained stuff in it. Um, but it's absolutely fantastic and there's a whole series of books featuring this character who's called Matthew Corbett. So, it's set in the late 1600s in America. Um, Matthew Corbett is a uh like a cler for a magistrate. So, he travels around the country with this much older guy who's a magistrate trying cases in small towns and things like that. And they've gone to this small town which is the town itself is really struggling. And part of the reason it's struggling is people think it's cursed because of this woman who they believe to be a witch. and the magistrate and and Matthew, his assistant, have come here to try uh come to the town to try that this woman who who the uh towns people are accusing of being a witch. Clearly she isn't a witch. Um and uh Matthew, you know, definitely has doubts. He's very skeptical about things and very curious.

[00:12:10]It's like his curiosity is his kind of main defining characteristic, but it's just really gripping, very well written.

[00:12:18]Matthew is an enormously interesting and uh I don't want to say relatable exactly, but you really root for him.

[00:12:25]You really want him to to succeed and to overcome the obstacles he's up against and to uh to help this woman. It's very very good indeed, and I'm definitely looking forward to reading more in the series. Uh right, so that's the bookish stuff out of the way. I've actually been on holiday for the last couple of weeks.

[00:12:42]I've been off work and I've had a few short trips away to various places within the UK. So, whilst I've managed to keep on top of all my videos in the two weeks that have just gone, I'm a bit behind where I need to be in planning for the week ahead. So, anyway, in the week that's just gone, you had my review of Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell, which is a very difficult book uh to review, but I I'm quite pleased with the review I did of it. Um, so you've had that, you had a book haul video, uh, you had my, uh, like an update on my experience of having given up, uh, using my Kindle and the Kindle ecosystem. Um, and then in the week ahead, you're probably going to get a review of Marian. You're probably going to get a library of forgotten books uh, episode tomorrow because you're due one of those. Um, and you are possibly going to get a video which somebody emailed me um asking about the other day, a video about how I manage my reading in terms of knowing what I want to read next, like recording what I have read, that kind of thing. And I've actually quite significantly changed the way I do that recently. Um, so I think I'll probably do a video about that possibly this week, possibly later. And then you're also going to get a couple of device videos. So, one will be a review of this. So, this is the Hueon Note E. Um, which is a device which is it's an an Android device with a like a color Android screen, but it's a screen that's designed to also be really really good for reading. So, you get all the benefits of an LCD screen, but also some of the benefits of an of an e in screen.

[00:14:19]So, you'll get my review of that and then you're also again going to get an unboxing and first impressions video for my new uh smartphone, which is a very very peculiar device, but I do quite like it. It's the Big Hyre Duel. So, it's a black and white e- in smartphone, but on the back it's got a color LCD screen, uh, which at the moment has got a cute little rabbit on it. So, yeah, look out for my uh unboxing and first impressions video uh for that. Right, I'll leave things there. Hope you have all had a fantastic reading week. Oh, I meant to do a shout out as well. So, whilst I was away, I visited a really nice small town in Surrey called Hazelare, and there's a fantastic independent bookshop there called the Hazelare bookshop, uh, which sells new books and secondhand books as well. They had a wonderful secondhand section, all very reasonably priced. And I picked up a few things from there, which I'll show in a future book haul. Um, so if you're in the the Surrey area and you haven't visited the Hazelmere bookshop, I highly highly recommend it. Uh, right. Anyway, I'll leave things there and say as always, thank you very much for watching. I hope you're safe and well out there. I hope you're reading good stuff and I'll speak to you again very soon. Cheerio