In this strange complex of time and space anything can happen

I appreciate that I've basically stopped posting here other than WIDAWTW posts, but this is one small thing I can manage to keep up. A list of the books I read for leisure in 2024 and pictures of most of them. (Some were read on Kindle or returned to their owners before I got round to taking a picture.)



1. Tanya Kirk, ed. (2022), Haunters at the Hearth - Christmas ghost stories in the British Library Tales of the Weird series.
2. Simon Raven (1960), Doctors Wear Scarlet - the basis of the film, Incense for the Damned.
3. Matthew Lewis (1796), The Monk - a real page-turner, brilliantly arch and knowing, read on Kindle.
4. Susan Hill (1983), The Woman in Black - the novel, having read the play c. 25 years ago.
5. Bram Stoker, Dacre Stoker and Samantha Lee Howe (2022), Dracula: 125th Anniversary Edition - skim-read, mainly to pick out the textual variants between the original type-script and the published novel, as I haven't had the opportunity to 'read' the type-script before.
6. Mary Shelley and Percy Bysshe Shelley (1817), History of a Six Weeks' Tour - read online along with the relevant parts of Mary Shelley and Claire Clairmont's journals, borrowed from the University library.
7. Florence Marryat (1897), Blood of the Vampire - vampirism as a racial curse.
8. Hamilton Deane and John L. Balderston (1927), Dracula: the vampire play in three acts - 1960 performance edition published by Samuel French
9. Elizabeth Hand (2007), The Bride of Frankenstein: Pandora's Bride - first-person account of the Bride's experiences after escaping from the fire at the end of the film.
10. Terry Pratchett (2007), Making Money - read mainly so that I could finally give it back to the person who lent it to me without taking into consideration the question of whether I actually wanted to read it.
11. Hamilton Deane, John L. Balderston and David J. Skal (1993), Dracula: The Ultimate, Illustrated Edition of the World-Famous Vampire Play - I skipped the 1927 edition of the play in this, as I'd already read it separately only a couple of months earlier.
12. Thomas Love Peacock (1818), Nightmare Abbey - I know it's meant to be satire, but the extended scenes of people trying to out-clever each other in drawing-rooms are just unbearable. The source of the phrase "ruinous and full of owls".
13. Adam Wood (2021), The Watchmaker's Revenge - about the husband of the woman whose jet mourning brooch I inherited from my uncle, who shot her and five other people (none fatally) and spend most of the rest of his life in jail for it.
14. Charlotte Dacre (1806), Zofloya or The Moor - written in the vein of The Monk but with a female central character who has no interest in even trying to behave morally from the start.
15. Jane Mainley-Piddock, ed. (2023), Casting the Runes: the letters of M.R James - this review was fair, but there are a few gems in there nonetheless.
16. Mike Ashley (2020), Queens of the Abyss - short macabre stories by female authors in the British Library Tales of the Weird series.
17. Simon Stern (2018), The Valancourt Book of Victorian Christmas Ghost Stories, Volume Three - borrowed from Joel and finished on the last day of the year.

It's another catch-up post in an attempt to clear the unwritten book review slates. Just brief notes on what I can now remember of each. Some were read on Kindle or borrowed from a friend, so aren't in the picture.


1. Lady Caroline Lamb (1816), Glenarvon (read on Kindle) - a three-volume novel which famously satirises Byron and many of his circle. I don't think you need to 'get' that to enjoy the story, but it has other flaws. In particular, it's a cautionary example of why the rule 'show, don't tell' exists, as it spends why must be at least the first ten chapters describing its main characters in great detail yet without them really interacting or doing anything, and by the end of that you've forgotten what they're all supposed to be like anyway and have largely had enough. Not helped by the amount of time the heroine then spends hanging around at the bottom of the garden agonising about running away with Lord Glenarvon, only to lose her nerve and abandon the idea.

2. Marin Sorescu (1978) A treia ţeapă / Vlad Dracula The Impaler, trans. Dennis Deletant (1987) - a play by a Romanian author about Vlad Dracula whose original Romanian title means 'The Third Stake'. It's very well researched, and indeed makes good use of the contradictions inherent in the sources, often leaving the reader / audience to decide which of two views expressed by different characters is 'true' and referring within the script to the pamphlets used to blacken Dracula's reputation. It's also quite modernist and surreal, ending for example with a fatally-wounded Vlad passing judgement on himself and going to impale himself. Would be amazing to see it performed.

3. M.R. James (1922), The Five Jars (read on Kindle) - a charming fantasy story for children, in which the narrator finds a box full of magical jars while out on a walk, and is able to see and hear more and more aspects of a sort of fairyland with each one he drinks. Memorable scenes include him being able to hear the thoughts of his cat, which are exactly the same as the sorts of thoughts we all imagine cats having today, and being shown moving images by one of the fairies / elves on a glass device very similar to a modern tablet.

4. Terry Pratchett (2004), Going Postal - a Discworld book I hadn't read before, whose plot is I'm sure well known to everyone. An enjoyable light read.

5. Forrest Reid (1947), Denis Bracknel (read on Kindle) - read after sovay spoke highly of it, and rightly so. The Denis of the title is a strange, withdrawn and probably queer teenage boy whose concerned family hire a tutor for him and who finds an ultimately solace in an ancient pagan altar in the woods. Reid does landscape, weather and seasons exceptionally well throughout.

6. Bram Stoker (1911), The Lair of The White Worm (read on Kindle) - decided to give another non-Dracula Stoker novel a try, after reading The Mystery of the Sea a couple of years earlier. This one's reputation precedes it, but I read it anyway because I knew it had some references to Roman paganism as part of the history of the snake-cult at the centre of the story. It started out OK, but it really does end up pretty incoherent and directionless. It also, just like The Mystery of the Sea, contains some absolute Grade A racism around a black character called Oolanga, who is and quite clearly made black to help code him as evil and bestial. This time it was even worse than in The Mystery of the Sea, because he featured more frequently in the narrative, and the two experiences between them have really made me wary of reading anything else by Bram Stoker other than Dracula again.

7. S.T. Gibson (2021), Dowry of Blood - a fantastic little novel which I came across via recommendations on Twitter, and has since become a major hit for its author. It's about a series of lovers drawn into the polyamorous harem of an ancient and dominant vampire who is certainly a Romanian noble and may or may not be Dracula, told from the perspective of the first one. She and her fellows (one female, one male) are swept away by the intensity of his passion at first, but of course over the centuries his domineering control over them reveals itself as abusive, and the three of them have to work together to find a way of freeing themselves from his power. Dark, sexy and compelling, basically everything you want from a vampire novel.

8. J.S. Barnes (2020), Dracula's Child - this, meanwhile, was the Dracula spin-off novel getting all the big attention while Dowry of Blood remained barely known, and it was pretty disappointing by contrast. It's basically about Jonathan and Mina's son Quincey, who turns out to have something evil in him thanks to Dracula's blood passed on via his mother, and is defeated at the end by the Power of Love. There's a lot more along the way, but I found it drawn-out and forgettable compared to Dowry of Blood. It tries to engage closely with its source material BY using an epistolary format, including many of the same characters and referring back to the events of Dracula. But it doesn't always get it right, for example saying that Van Helsing's wife and children had died, rather than the wife being confined to an asylum.

9. Robert Lloyd Parry (2020), Ghosts of the Chit Chat - a collection of short stories and other pieces by members of Cambridge's Chit Chat Club, of which the most famous was M.R. James. Lloyd Parry has done a brilliant job of just finding out who they all were and how the club functioned via archival work, let alone identifying writing of various kinds produced by them. Obviously in some cases the scrapings were thin, but I was mainly just impressed by how much he had found, and found out, and pleased to be able to understand this major crucible for James' creative writing better.

10. Sorcha Ní Fhlainn and Xavier Aldana Reyes, eds. (2020), Visions of the Vampire: Two Centuries of Immortal Tales (borrowed from S) - a collection of short vampire stories, many of which I had read before (and therefore skipped). Some great stuff, though. I particularly welcomed the opportunity to read 'The Room in the Tower' properly, enjoyed the absolutely classic Anne Riceyness of 'The Master of Rampling Gate', and loved 'Let the Old Dreams Die', a coda to the novel Let The Right One In which reveals through the story of a ticket collector and a detective involved in the events of the original story that Eli and Oskar are in Spain, and that he too is now a vampire.

This was my self-assigned homework ahead of going on this holiday to the Czech Republic with the Dracula Society in May / June. The holiday was themed around the legend of the Golem of Prague, but as I had only a passing acquaintance with golems of any kind before I booked my place, I decided to do something about that for the sake of enriching my holiday.

I started with the Wikipedia page on golems, from which I learnt that the idea of the golem is rooted in the Bible, and receives occasional mentions in both ancient and medieval Jewish literature, but really came into its own in the early modern period. What seems to have happened is that stories grew up in the 17th century about how a real historical Rabbi from the 16th century had made a golem in order to protect the Jewish community of the town of Chelm in Poland. But by the mid-19th century, those stories had shifted location to Prague and attached themselves instead to Rabbi Judah Loew, a different real historical person from the 16th century who was a major public figure and prolific scholar. So the Prague legends as we have them now actually consist of the 17th-century Chelm stories, retrojected by 19th-century authors into 16th-century Prague.

That understood, I was ready to hit the library. I wasn't about to take on German-language novels for my leisure reading, but as it happened that didn't really matter, because the only relevant material was held in the form of English translations anyway. I started out with two fairly traditional tellings of the Prague legends, one in print and one on film, and then moved forwards to more modernist authors playing around with and developing the mythos. As it happens, one of the modernist tellings (Meyrink's novel from 1914) was actually published before the more traditional one I read (Bloch's from 1917), but that is largely because Bloch sought to reassert the traditional form of the stories, as they already been circulating in the mid-19th century, in reponse to Meyrink's modernism. So it made sense to read Bloch first, even though he postdates Meyrink, in order to understand (if indirectly) the sort of material which Meyrink had been building on.

( 9. Chayim Bloch (1917), The Golem: Legends of the Ghetto of Prague )

( 5. The Golem: How He Came into the World (1920), dir. Paul Wegener )

( 10. Gustav Meyrink (1914), The Golem )

( 1. Terry Pratchett (1996), Feet of Clay )

As for the holiday itself, it was blissful, but I never did get round to writing it up here. For me in practice it was more about awesome Bohemian / Czech castles and beautiful turn-of-the-century architecture than it was about golems really, especially given that most of Prague's Jewish quarter was demolished over a century ago, so we couldn't see the world in which the stories were set. But I can share these two final pictures of the Altneu Synagogue (where some version of the stories claim that the golem's remains were laid to rest after it was deactivated) and of me holding hands with a fibreglass golem outside a shop:




I can also proudly report that I won a bat keyring by dint of coming first in the DracSoc holiday quiz, basically because I had done all the homework outlined here, and that is exactly what the quiz was about. Sometimes it pays to be a swot!

This is a day late because I have been at a (very enjoyable and stimulating) conference for the past two days. It actually took place only three blocks away from my house, which makes it probably the closest-to-home conference I will ever attend for the entirety of my academic career. But I still couldn't post to LJ yesterday evening anyway, as I snuck out of the conference to go to the cinema with the lovely ms_siobhan instead - which I'll post about separately, of course.

Anyway, my favourite Christmas book is easily Hogfather by Terry Pratchett. I must have read it first soon after it was published (in 1996, when I was 20), as I simply bought and read each new Discworld book as it came out in those days. In fact, I often asked for the latest one as a Christmas present from my little sister, so it seems very likely that she first gave this book to me that Christmas. Certainly, I have made a point of re-reading it around that time of year several times since I acquired it.

What I like most about it is Pratchett's explorations of the Hogfather as the result of a long process of cultural evolution - all safely-contained jollity in the present day, but with his roots in much earlier primeval festivals centred around brutal rituals of sacrifice. I already knew before I read the book that Christmas had not always been celebrated in the form I was familiar with, and had basic elements in common with mid-winter festivals from other times and cultures (not least from watching The Box of Delights as a child). But I think Hogfather gave me a much more powerful emotive understanding of Christmas as an evolving, multivalent festival, and a clearer sense of what options that opened up for me as someone who didn't believe in the teachings of Christianity, but still loved celebrating festivals and felt a sense of magic and significance around Christmas in particular. It remains a great way for me to tap into that feeling when I need to.

Click here if you would like view this entry in light text on a dark background.

Very enjoyable. I think overall I slightly preferred Wintersmith, mainly because its story-arc felt better crafted - some the scenes in the Queen's domain dragged a little for me. But I like Tiffany all the more now, and I warmed to the Nac Mac Feegles over the course of this book in a way I hadn't with Wintersmith.

I'm also now in a better position to appreciate the genesis of the unity of setting which I noticed in Wintersmith. People who've read Hatful of Sky can put me right if necessary, but it looks to me now as though all the Tiffany / Feegles books do the same thing. And this is great, because I've always felt that Terry Pratchett is extremely good at writing landscape - not just as some hills or rocks, but as a quasi-living entity which shapes the people who live on it. The whole of the Discworld benefits from this, but focussing on the Chalk in the Tiffany books really gives him the opportunity to bring it out to a new level - and I think it is actually the thing I like about them most of all.

The motif of the picture on the front of Jolly Sailor tobacco packet has left me with a puzzle, though. I'm sure I've read some other children's fiction book in which a rather isolated near-adolescent girl derives solace from a similar rugged tobacco-pouch sailor, coming to think of him as 'her Hero'. He may even have appeared as a real person in some form towards the end of the book. But I can't for the life of me remember what this book might have been. All I can say is that it probably wasn't by Diana Wynne Jones, because feel that I read whatever-it-was quite some time ago. That rules out all but the Chrestomanci books, and none of them have the right kind of isolated female character at their centre. I've browsed my shelves, but can't see any clues - and might not anyway, as quite a few of my older books are in storage with my parents. Can anyone else enlighten me on this?

Oh dear. I seem to have spent far too much time over the last few days doing nice things or falling asleep on sofas (also a Nice Thing) to write on live journal. Let's see now:

Christmas presents: an excellent haul, aided in no small measure by the gentle introduction of parents to Amazon wish-list. I got:

• DVDs - Life of Brian, a particularly gripping performance of Handel's Giulio Cesare.
• Books - Architectural Guide to Leeds, Terry Pratchett's Wintersmith, enormous Collins English Dictionary (now all language is mine! Ha-ha-ha!), Andrew Lintott's Imperium Romanum (handy for teaching), C. Steven Larue's Handel and His Singers and The Quest for the Wicker Man.
• Chocolate - enormous raspberry truffle, box of dark chocolates.
• Tokens - £10 book token from paternal aunt (today converted into Plutarch, The Age of Alexander) and £15 Waterstone's token from maternal uncle (today converted into Ancient Cities by Charles Gates).
• Other - notebook with pictures from the House of the Vettii on it, facsimile Roman oil-lamp which by an amazing coincidence happens to have the exact goddess I am going to the Dark Masquerade Ball as on it (name withheld for the present to preserve a suitable sense of Mystery), sandalwood incense sticks, ticket for ice-skating on the outdoor rink currently operating in Birmingham town centre, incredibly cute K-9 key-ring, Guinea-pig calendar, L'Oreal lipstick.

Christmas dinner: we did goose, which very nearly didn't fit into the oven, but eventually was squeezed in diagonally. It was really nice, and I think the first time I've ever had goose at all. But I prefer the taste of duck. Just a pity that one duck doesn't quite provide enough for four people.

Boxing day: went over to the Waltons', as we usually do. Chatted, caught up, and marvelled at the cuteness of little Holly. Came home and watched lots of TV. On which note:

Doctor Who: I gather a lot of people have been all snide and grumpy about this episode online. But I really enjoyed it, so I don't care what the cynics say. I was impressed that Catherine Tate managed to make her character so sympathetic (especially given that I usually can't stand her), and the Empress of Racnoss reminded me a lot of Echidna, the Mother of all Monsters from Hercules: the Legendary Journeys, both in appearance and characterisation. (The real character looked a lot more like the Empress than that action figure, but I can't seem to find a picture of her). Looking forward to the next series.

The Hogfather: I did enjoy this, especially each time I got the same thrill I remember getting from Rivendell in Lord of the Rings of 'recognising' a place I'd only seen before in my imagination. And seeing Pterry himself in the toyshop at the end was particularly groovy! But somehow it wasn't quite what I'd hoped. I think the problem is that Pterry doesn't actually write stories as such, but rather narrative explorations of abstract concepts. And so the storyline wobbled, flailed and dragged, failing to impart the significance written deep into the book, and yet I suspect also confusing those who hadn't read it. Oh well - I appreciated the fact that it was made at all, though.

Today: La Sistrella and I used our ice-rink tickets to swish and glide around in central Birmingham, enjoying watching people's rosy laughing faces, misty breath and children falling over as we did so. Then we went shopping to spend our tokens, and returned home to eat party left-overs and indulge in more nodding off on the sofa. A most satisfactory way to spend the day, except that my groin muscles are killing me now. Apparently I only ever use them when ice-skating.

And that would appear to bring me back up to date.