Tag: I Read Odd Books

Janitor of Planet Anilingus by Andrew Wayne Adams

This post originally appeared on I Read Odd Books

Book:  Janitor of Planet Anilingus

Author:  Andrew Wayne Adams

Type of Book:  Fiction, novella, bizarro

Why Do I Consider This Book Odd:  With a title like that, how can it not be?

Availability:  Published by Eraserhead in 2013, you can get a copy here:

Comments: We begin day three of my New Bizarro Authors Week with Andrew Wayne Adam’s Janitor of Planet Anilingus and, in all honesty, I started this book with no small amount of trepidation.  As it is, about 35% of the search strings that bring people to my site involve necrophilia and horse dildos.  I wondered what legacy this book would leave behind in the searches I view daily in my site statistics.  Moreover, the title itself is enough to give one a bit of pause, I think.  Planet Anilingus was likely to be a place wherein a tired woman would find little solace as she read late into the night, her husband snoring lightly, the suburban street silent as the normal people slept on, unaware that there was a place in the literary landscape dedicated to anus-licking.

Luckily for me, Janitor of Planet Anilingus is not the utterly ass-centric debauch I thought it would be.  It has its moments of sexual lunacy but this is mostly a quest novel wherein a man loses everything as he tries to save the woman he thinks he loves.  It has some atrociously gross moments, don’t get me wrong, but one of bizarro’s secrets is that the stories are the same as those you will find on the best-seller list.  The stories differ only because they are peppered with unusual sex, weird species, grotesque details and strange and over-the-top humor.

The hero of this novella, Jack, as the title implies, is the janitor of Planet Anilingus.  Planet Anilingus is a sort of destination spot, a DisneyWorld of sorts, for people deeply involved in butt-licking.  Jack is completing a 40-day period, a time of Lent, wherein the planet is closed to visitors, spending his time tidying up and doing a deep clean before the revelers return.  He is the only person on the planet, until a hairless, humanoid woman with helicopter blades that shoot up from her back lands on the planet.  Someone is trying to kill this hairless woman, Nimue, and Jack does his best to protect her.  In the course of his interactions with Nimue, he stops going to work and his boss, Bishop Eichmann, replaces him with his nephew Tommy.  Tommy and Jack enter into a rivalry for Nimue’s attention and both end up, god help me, pregnant after her sexual ministrations.  What the pregnancy does to the men is easily the grossest part of the book but I enjoyed it because poopy stuff makes me laugh.  Nimue ultimately is not what she seems and even knowing of her sexual perfidy with Tommy, Jack still wants to save her from the rocket launching lunatic chasing her.  Jack is not a man given to much in the way of emotion, probably because all the ass licking he witnesses has numbed him, and it’s an interesting choice on Adams’ part to insist that Jack be so removed emotionally because in the midst of all the chaos, any one else would have freaked out.

Before I begin telling you why this is a very good, funny, gross quest novella, I need to say that hallelujah, kiss the ground, this book is cleanly edited.  I mean, there are a few errors, but this is the cleanest Eraserhead Press book I’ve read in at least two years.  I swear on all that is worth discussing, half the battle with me is editing.  I hate to seem like my standards have been lowered so much by the small presses that just reading clean copy makes me want to give a rave review but it’s getting to that point.  However, I am going to show why this book is a good read on top of being edited well enough that nothing distracts the reader from the text.  (Well, the content can distract a certain kind of reader, but it won’t be because the comma usage is maddeningly bad.)

Jack enjoys his time alone on the planet, except that being the only person around makes him the sole target of the cupids, a mutant insect.

One more week and Lent was over, and then the cupids would not bother him.  His only trouble then would be the hundreds of thousands of people licking each other’s assholes day and night.  They blanketed the planet, an orgy visible from space.  Nonstop until next Lent.

At first there is nothing exceptional about this passage until one finishes the book.  Jack is not a man who exaggerates and the third-person narration in this story follows suit with flat and earnest descriptions.  After finishing this book, I realized the orgy likely was visible from space, and as a result, I felt extreme despair alongside Jack.  A week of that sort of thing?  Might wear thin after a few days.  Months and months of so much butt-licking it is likely affecting the cosmos?  Poor Jack.

And it just gets worse.  Poor Jack, indeed.

His normal uniform consisted of nothing but a pair of lace underwear and a bow tie.  It was crucial that no irregularity should sully the planet’s atmosphere of total debauchery and a stinky janitor intruding upon the middle of an orgy would certainly do so.  The job even required him to practice erotic body language as he went about his work, movements choreographed to make dusting and mopping look sexy.  And if some random reveler stole a lick of his ass, he had to pretend to like it, then extricate himself as expediently as possible.

What would OSHA make of that? I can’t help but think that a lot of the bizarros held very difficult menial jobs, or perhaps still do.  If the above description involved dealing with feet and far less sex, the mental impact would not be too different from selling shoes.  Kissing asses, handling feet – it’s all so demoralizing.

In addition to being inappropriately groped at work while mopping in a sexy manner, the rest of Jack’s job sucks as well.

“These men and women haven’t licked an asshole in six weeks,” the Bishop continued.  “All they are dreaming of now is a return to Anilingus.  They’re drooling for paradise, and we must deliver.  I’m talking true Eden, Jack – as in, not one goddamn dust bunny on the planet, and every cobblestone, every leaf, shined to look like a scale from the reptilian skin of God.  Can you handle that?”

Jack said, “I’m on top of things.”

“If you fuck up, I’ll have you peeling potatoes on Vore.”

A demotion to peeling potatoes on Vore.  Jesus, the implications… This passage made me laugh so hard that Mr. Oddbooks wanted to know what I was laughing about.  I was shocked when he knew what “vore” meant.  I don’t really know him at all, do I?  

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Her Fingers by Tamara Romero

This post originally appeared on I Read Odd Books

Book:  Her Fingers

Author:  Tamara Romero

Type of Book:  Fiction, fantasy, novella

Why Do I Consider This Book Odd:  It’s published as bizarro and I will consider it odd on that basis.

Availability:  Published by Eraserhead in 2012, you can get a copy here:

Comments: Though this book is part of the New Bizarro Author Series, I consider it more fantasy than bizarro. Compared to the other books in this series, the story in this book is far more restrained, with content that would not be out of place on a fantasy/sci-fi shelf in a bricks and mortar bookstore.

I have to engage in full disclosure right out of the gate:  I am not a big fan of the fantasy genre.  I cannot explain why but there you are. This being fantasy means a lot of the details in this book were muddled to me, though I tried to read as carefully as possible, which was difficult because too much is crammed into this book.  I think Romero’s tale, given the lushness of her prose, needs to be a full-length book because the story-building in this novella is rushed.

The story is about witches who have become persecuted and deals with the specific experiences of a witch called Misadora.  Misadora has several other names in this book, and given that several other characters have several other names, I lost the thread of who was who several times, which makes it difficult to write a good plot synopsis.  At any rate, a man called Volatile finds Misadora floating in a river after she is attacked.  He takes her in and shelters her, though he has a lot of trepidation about Misadora that I cannot share because it would be a spoiler. He lives, I believe, amongst what are called the Treemothers, women whom, when called  by the witches, ran into the forests and merged with trees.  These Treemothers exude a sort of sap/jewel called Amalis and only women can touch it.  Misadora was caught wearing an Amalis ring and had all the fingers on that hand cut off.  Friends who also have several names help her out with a bionic hand.  Misadora has to stand up against the ever increasing persecution of the witches and the soldiers who try to kill the Treemothers, but at the end is faced with a horrifying truth that changes everything she thought she knew.

If this description seems very vague, that’s because I often could not get a grip on what this book was about.  That is why it would have been better had this novella been written into a longer novel.  To have multiple characters with multiple names, all the world-building with the towns, the history of the witches and the families, the Treemothers, Misadora and Volatile, and to cram it all into a book under 60 pages, is too much for the reader.   That’s no insult to Romero because even though I have to review the book in front of me, it’s no small compliment to say that a book needs to be longer so that the author has to room to fully show off her chops.  As it stands, this book is a small wave of names and places that will wash over the reader without being understood unless the reader is willing to take notes to keep track of who is who, which names are towns and what exactly being a sleepwalker may indicate.  Finally, when you factor in that this book is told from different character perspectives, characters whose names switch in the book, it’s all a bit too much.

But I have to think this book would have been a better read for me had it been edited properly.  Romero originally wrote this book in Spanish and translated it into English.  I am mono-lingual but I recall vividly the awkward sentences I came up with when I translated Cicero’s De Amicitia into English.  Even though every person in my college Latin class was a native English speaker, we delivered sentences that belied fluency in any language.  It wasn’t until class when we read our lines and smoothed them over with the help of the professor that Cicero’s text had any beauty.  I cannot say this tendency to focus on the translation rather than the prose during the yeoman work of translation is what happened with Romero, because some of this book contains beautiful sentences.  However, large chunks of the text lead me to believe that is exactly what happened.

Regardless of whether or not the beauty of the original story got lost in translation, it is the responsibility of the editor to make sure awkward sentences and strange turns of phrase are polished before they are printed.  Though I am not a fan of fantasy, even I can see that this is an interesting novella and that with some work it could have been so much better.  I’ve talked with a couple of people from Eraserhead and its imprints, and they explained that as a small press they just don’t have the budget for copy editors.  I understand that to a point.  I really do.  And I sort of hate harping on this point.  But even as I despise piling on a small press I still get annoyed because words matter.  If they didn’t matter there would be no sense in publishing anything at all and since Romero’s book is definitely worth publishing, it is worth editing.  I cannot put a number on the times that people have said to me that after one bizarro book they stopped reading because they just couldn’t take the misspelled words, bad grammar, and poor punctuation.  I take books seriously and I take the small presses as seriously as I do big publishers.  The day I stop bemoaning poor editing is the day I stop reading these books entirely.

I initially wrote out several examples of what is wrong with this book but ultimately decided not to publish them because the last thing I want to do is to seem cruel to a fledgling writer, especially one who does not deserve it.  Writing a novella and then translating it into another language means that Romero has already done some heavy lifting.  Moreover there are parts of this book that absolutely sing.  The editing issues in this are not her fault.  I will never tire of saying this – authors are the last people who should edit their works because repeated exposure to the text means they no longer can see the errors.  It is especially hard when you are translating your own work from another language because I suspect at the end of it all Romero knew this book like the back of her hand.  No one can see their own mistakes with that level of familiarity.

But even as I try to be restrained, I have to say the editing issues in this book are serious and affect the way readers enjoy the book.  It’s uncomfortable when a town’s name is spelled differently in back-to-back sentences.  There are some sentences with syntax so garbled I am  unsure what Romero is trying to convey.  Garbled syntax is a common problem with translations – that’s why translators need good editors.  This novella is so riddled with comma and punctuation errors that I stopped making note of them around half-way through the book.  Conversational punctuation is also pretty messy, with commas often placed outside of the quotation marks.  There are several word substitutions, like “were” for “where,”  “than” for “that.” Weird sentences like “I had almost never been to that area before,” stop registering about page 37, or at least that was when I stopped making notes of the problems.

This sucks.  This sucks righteously because this book has such beautiful moments, places wherein you realize that this book, for all its rushed narrative, confusing names and poor editing, is actually a cut above much of the bizarro prose out there.  In a way, it reminded me of Grace Krilanovich’s The Orange Eats Creeps, another jumbled novel wherein the reader was occasionally blinded by moments of literary brilliance.  With all my complaints about the amount of story crammed into under 60 pages and the poor editing, Romero’s talent salvages gold from the wreckage and the beauty of her prose is why I found this book worth reading.

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Gutmouth by Gabino Iglesias

This post originally appeared on I Read Odd Books

Book:  Gutmouth

Author: Gabino Iglesias

Type of Book:  Fiction, novella, bizarro, body horror

Why Do I Consider This Book Odd:  Well, because a man’s life is ruined by the sentient mouth that appears in his stomach.

Availability:  Published by Eraserhead Press in 2012, you can get a copy here:

Comments:  I decided to kick off my New Bizarro Author Series week with Gabino Iglesias because he is a fellow Austinista.  Shallow, but hopefully my discussion will redeem me.  Gutmouth is the story of Gut Dedmon and the sentient and often hungry mouth in his torso, a mutation that began as a pimple on his stomach and turned into a mouth that Dedmon has to feed.  The mouth, named Philippe, interferes with Dedmon’s life in pretty interesting and foul ways, demanding food and engaging in oral sex with his girlfriend without Dedmon’s permission.  Dedmon’s reaction to this latter act of betrayal lands him in jail, and the story is told in flashbacks as Dedmon experiences prison life, often with his own shit in his hand.

In this novel, Iglesias creates a perverse dystopia that can best be described as 1984 with extreme body modifications and mutations.  Extreme pain is pleasure, pleasure is demented and everyone is amoral and marginally insane.  There is a Church of Albert Fish, Carlton Mellick V is writing brutal fiction, people can genetically cross themselves with salamanders and a body modification expert deconstructs his ex-girlfriend into a motorcycle. This is a fun, perverse and at times really gross dystopic book, and it even has something for the paranoid types who like to visit here from time to time.  The dystopia is a capitalist hell hole and Dedmon plays his part as a “hunter” for MegaCorp.

The job, as the name implies, involved hunting down people who refused to comply with MegaCorp rules and regulations and bringing them to the local Consumer Rehabilitation and Punishment Center.  I would usually get a call or text with a crime, a name and an address and then I would track down dissidents – folks that refused to buy their allotted quantities of products each month, stubborn citizens who wanted to grow their own food, horny individuals that raped someone else’s pleasurebots, things like that.  From the inside of the cell, that life looked like paradise.

Dedmon loathes the stoma-mouth that penetrates his abdomen and you can’t really blame him.   Philippe forces Dedmon to interact with him and if ignored Philippe chews up whatever is in his way, including Dedmon’s clothing. Philippe also puts a lot of financial and emotional pressure on Dedmon.

Philippe was misogynistic and racist, which made me feel guilty about having him.  Plus, his extravagant tastes clashed with my financial reality. A hunter couldn’t afford a steady diet of bipolar midget brains, Angora cats and chocolate-stuffed olives.

Philippe is demanding, respects no boundaries, and speaks, inexplicably since Dedmon is American, in a British accent.  This is a pretty good distillation of their relationship, a scene from when Dedmon is in jail.

“Shut up, you fucking aberration.  You’re the reason we’re here in the first place,” I said.

Philippe smiled a crooked grin in response.

“I’m hungry, mate.  You think we can get some curry in here,” asked the toothy hole.

“I’m going to let you starve, you snaggletoothed prick,” I said.

“For a bloke who couldn’t satisfy his lady, you sure sound like a macho man ready to take on all comers.  You muppet,” responded the mouth in his British accent.

“You know what?  The best thing about dying is taking you with me,” I told him, pulling my shirt down.

I found the interactions between Dedmon and Philippe to be the best parts of this novella.  It’s impossible to miss the implication that Dedmon is a man truly at war with himself, with Dedmon as the ego, Philippe as the id and a superego nowhere to be found.  Plus I just like quarrels that verge into the ridiculous.

Continue Reading “Gutmouth by Gabino Iglesias”

New Bizarro Author Series Week begins Monday!

This post originally appeared on I Read Odd Books

My latest themed week begins Monday. May 6-10, I will be posting discussions and reviews of the latest New Bizarro Author Series books. I don’t know the order in which I will discuss them, but these are the books I will feature next week:

Janitor of Planet Anilingus by Andrew Wayne Adams

Gutmouth by Gabino Iglesias

House Hunter by S.T. Cartledge

Avoiding Mortimer by J.W. Wargo

Her Fingers by Tamara Romero

As usual with all my themed weeks, I am hosting a giveaway. Because in the past people have told me they were reluctant to leave comments because they already own the books I am discuss, I am changing it up a bit. The lucky winner of this giveaway will have the option of receiving a copy of each book I discuss or an Amazon gift card in the equivalent amount the books would cost. So now you can all participate without running the risk of ending up with duplicate books.

The rules are as follows:
–The first comment you leave on each discussion will be an entry into the contest. If you comment once for each discussion, that is a total of five entries into the drawing for the giveaway.  You can only enter five times.
–Multiple comments you may leave for one discussion will only result in one entry. No more than one entry per day per comment.
–The contest ends at 6:00 PM CST on Friday, May 10.
–I will use a random number generator to select the winner and will contact the winner Friday evening and will announce the winner here.

Disclosures: Though my Amazon Affiliate account “earns” me some of the money I use to spend on these giveaways, this contest is not sponsored by any author, publisher, or related company and none of the writers I plan to discuss offered me any consideration to be involved in this contest. I received four of these five books from the authors to discuss. I pay for these books to give away because I like giving away books and it seems a good time to do it.

If you know anyone who would be interested in my week of New Bizarro Author Series discussions, spread the word and I’ll see all of you bright and early Monday morning!

 

ETA:  Do not be alarmed that G. Arthur Brown’s Kitten is not on this list.  I don’t post on weekends so there were only five slots.  I will be discussing Brown’s book in another upcoming Bizarro week with a giveaway.  So no one think he been excluded for any reason other than that I refuse to blog on the weekend.  

Biblio-Curiosa Issue 3 by Chris Mikul

This post originally appeared on I Read Odd Books

‘Zine: Biblio-Curiosa Issue 3

Author: Chris Mikul

Type of Book: ‘Zine about strange books and the authors who write them.

Availability: You have to get copies straight from Chris. If I recall correctly, he charges $8 USD for the ‘zine and shipping. You need to contact him at chris.mikul88@gmail.com to place an order.

Comments: I did not intend for this to be a Chris Mikul mini-week here, but I needed something I could write about quickly and Mikul’s ‘zine fit the bill. I am writing like a maniac to get ready for my upcoming New Bizarro Author Series giveaway that starts next week and the Jim Goad ANSWER Me! week that follows soon after, so this issue of Biblio-Curiosa lent itself well to a quick discussion (well, quick for me).

Chris Mikul is a fellow traveller in the world of strange books, but he does it so much better than I do. When I grow up I hope to be able to dissect books as concisely as he does. He has a style that marries utter glee for and absorption in the weird books he finds with an investigative and succinct style that my innate verbosity makes impossible for me to imitate. The third issue of Biblio-Curiosa is a delight for anyone who lives for that moment when they find a strange or unusual book at a used book store or an estate sale. Mikul gathers as much information about the book, its author and any other details that will make the book or its author come to life. He finds amazing gems that my untrained eye would have skipped right over.

The first article in this edition discusses a book called The Ferocious Fern by C.B. Pulman. On a trip to a hotel on the Greek island of Rhodes, Mikul and his wife found a hotel library that featured some astonishing books, including a first edition of Animal Farm. Some of the extraordinary books had ex libris information from their previous owner, Archie Wilkinson, whose story is interesting in its own right so I won’t spoil it. One of Archie’s books that particularly interested Mikul was The Ferocious Fern, a collection of short stories with horror and fantasy twists. You need to read the article to get a feel for the book itself, but given what Mikul’s research reveals, this may very well be the only extant copy of this book.

This next article is a price of admission article and I will write just enough of it that hopefully you will feel the same way and will want to read it yourself. “Swastika Night by Murray Constantine” is Mikul at his book-loving, researching best. Swastika Night is an alternative history novel wherein the Nazis have taken over the world, women are less than second class citizens and keep themselves covered in a manner that modern Westerners associate with fundamentalist Islam. They are breeding stock and little else. Not too unexpectedly, this relegation of women to such a demeaned status has a perverse effect on the men. Mikul’s far fuller examination of the book has caused me to put this book on my wish list so I remember to buy it and hopefully discuss it on this site. There are two very interesting elements to this alternative history of Nazi occupation. First, it was written in 1937 and is both an alternative history for the modern reader and a fear of what the future was to hold for the writer and reader during the time it was written. Second, Murray Constantine was really a lesbian writer named Katherine Burdekin, who wrote more dystopian books. It seems very likely that Burdekin’s works, especially Swastika Night, written more than a decade before 1984, were an influence on George Orwell. This is a deeply fascinating look at a female writer whose legacy was almost lost to us.

The next article, “My Friend Froggy,” was written by Jeff Goodman and will be of deep interest to those who originally found out about F. Gwynplaine MacIntyre through the second issue of Biblio-Curiosa. Jeff Goodman once worked at an “adult fiction” mill, typing out very specific porn books, often in one sitting, for very little money. It was at this job that he met Froggy, as he called MacIntyre, and when he read Mikul’s examination of MacIntyre’s life, his strange stories about himself, and his suicide, he wrote to Mikul and revealed his experiences with Froggy. MacIntyre, even after reading a good friend’s examination of him, still remains a cypher to me, as I don’t understand why he created such a fabulist tale of himself when the real story was equally as interesting. I’ll stop discussing this now so as not to ruin it for those who want the details of Froggy’s life through the eyes of someone who knew him, but even as I know little about MacIntyre’s motivations, he was clearly an endearing, interesting, talented, deeply intelligent and deeply depressed man and I want to read his science fiction book The Woman Between the Worlds all the more.

Oh man, the next article is another “price of admission” article. “Tod Robbins, Master of the Macabre” is an amazing look at the life and works of Tod Robbins, who if he is known much by modern readers, is known for writing the book upon which Tod Browning based his movie Freaks. Strangely secretive about his many marriages, imprisoned in an internment camp in France during WWII, Robbins’ life was as interesting and strange as his fiction. Born wealthy, Robbins lived an enviable life during the day, but…

…when he took up his pen at night, his thoughts turned to crime, horror, madness and murder. To crimson thoughts, as he called them.

And indeed he turned to many crimson thoughts, writing novels and short story collections that seem quaintly horrific in a James Whale sort of way and strangely prescient to modern tastes in the deeply disturbing nature of some of his content. I hope it does not seem like a cop-out to say that there are two “price of admission” articles in this small ‘zine but there really are. This article is also worth reading just to be able to see some of the covers and illustrations that Robbins’ novels sported. An illustration for “Close Their Eyes Tenderly” initially seems very whimsical but the longer I looked at it, the more menacing it became.

The last article is “The Cardinal’s Mistress by Benito Mussolini.” I had no idea Mussolini had written books, but evidently in 1909 a socialist newspaper owner suggested that Mussolini write a book that would be defamatory to the Catholic Church. The novel ended up becoming a potboiler and though salacious was actually somewhat sympathetic to the Cardinal who took a poorly regarded mistress who ruined his name. This somewhat sympathetic portrayal is quite interesting when one learns how much the book would mirror his later life, as if he either predicted his own fate or reenacted it from his own book. Mussolini later thought the book he wrote was trash, but it sounds roiling enough that if I can get my hands on a copy, I may give it a read.

It’s probably clear by now that I am a big fan of Mikul’s but my fannish love of his works is born from a bit of envy. The books he digs up, the analysis he puts forth and the investigation skills he possesses are understandably enviable. For a 48 page ‘zine, this reads more like a book and the people and books it will show you are nothing you can find anywhere else because even the most extensive Wiki on interesting, bizarre and lost books will lack Mikul’s clear love of the topics. Highly recommended, e-mail him now and get your copy and if you don’t have issues 1 and 2, order those as well.

The Cult Files by Chris Mikul

This post originally appeared on I Read Odd Books

Book: The Cult Files: True Stories from the Extreme Edges of Religious Belief

Author: Chris Mikul

Type of Book: Non-fiction, cults, religion, true crime

Why Do I Consider This Book Odd: This is very subjective, but as an atheist I find all religious beliefs a bit odd. Extreme cults are therefore all the more odd.

Availability: I read the Metro Books edition, but this book has been released by Amazon for Kindle, and that edition is a better bet:

Comments: This book was in my to-be-discussed pile back in 2011 (yeah, I am still catching up) when Chris Mikul sent me copies of his excellent ‘zine, Biblio Curiosa. We began a friendly correspondence and he gave me some interesting information about this book. Evidently his publisher was concerned that some of the content in the book could lead to a lawsuit and demanded the book be radically edited. Mikul sent me the excised chapters but I am limiting myself to the content in the actual book because it seems unfair to discuss material that my readers won’t be able to read for themselves.

But even though he had to cut out some pretty interesting discussions, The Cult Files remains a very absorbing book. Though I am reasonably well-read on the subject of cults, I found information new to me in this cult anthology. There are some of the usual suspects, like the Branch Davidians and Jonestown, but every other chapter had something completely new to me.  That Mikul discussed one of my “favorite” cults, the Ant Hill Kids, led by the repellent and vile Roch Thériault, just sealed the deal for me. Thériault didn’t get much play in the USA and is one of the most fascinating cult leaders, far more interesting than Charles Manson and, in my opinion, at least as toxic as David Koresh. So that was definitely a point in Mikul’s favor.

To prevent this from becoming an extremely long discussion, I’ll just discuss the chapters in this book I found the most interesting or that were new to me when I read the book.

Before I begin, I need to state that not all of the cults discussed in this book fit my criteria of what makes a cult, but it must also be said that I use a pretty strict measure that requires a single charismatic leader, alienation from family and friends, no financial control for followers, increasingly strict punishments for continually changing “sin” metrics, different rules for those in favor with the leader, an inability for followers to question anything, an inability to leave with impunity and more. Mikul doesn’t define his metric with such exacting specificity, though he does give an idea of what a cult may be and how what defines a toxic cult can vary from person to person and from sect to sect. However, his metric comes pretty close to that espoused by Robert Lifton, who stated three different categories to consider when discussing cults: a charismatic leader who positions himself or herself to become the focus of worship, employing brainwashing or thought control methods, and exploitation of the rank and file cult members by the upper echelons of the cult. Even if the cults Mikul discusses in this book may not meet my stringent standards, they meet Lifton’s, who is far more of an expert.

The book begins by discussing the Thuggee in India, a group of traveling confidence killers who preyed on other travelers. They became associated with the garrote, their most common method of killing. I knew a bit about the Thuggee just from osmosis because of my varied reading habits, but I had not known they were dedicated to the Hindu goddess, Kali, the goddess of death and destruction (among other things). The Thuggee were more or less suppressed and destroyed by the British Raj. Before reading this I had considered the Thuggee to be murderous equivalents of the Irish Travelers, con men and women who just upped the ante in scams via murder. I suspect part of it is because I always think of cults in terms of charismatic leaders, and the Thuggee were not organized in this manner, or at least they weren’t when they were in their heyday. But there are typical cult elements that one commonly sees in cults that allow the Thuggee to qualify as a cult, like an us-versus-them mentality, justifying all behaviors, even that which is illegal, as ordained by elevated or outsider status. I think it was an interesting choice to include the Thuggee in this book.

Continue Reading “The Cult Files by Chris Mikul”

This Is Not an Odd Books Discussion: Movies and metaphysical despair

This post originally appeared on I Read Odd Books

I tend to experience pretty passively any sort of media that requires a television screen. I have the TV on in the background as I go about my day, generally as a form of white noise. It’s not too often that I pay close attention to movies or television shows, but recently I watched two movies that were so awful, so absorbing and deeply terrible, that I could not look away even as I felt like these movies were proof that God is dead and that He probably never loved us much anyway.

The first film was The Snowtown Murders, a depiction of a serial murder case in Australia. I warn you now that if you are not familiar with the case, this film may seem like a mess because many characters come and go without a lot of explanation. This film also has one of the most egregious examples of animal abuse this side of Cannibal Holocaust.  Please bear these things in mind if what I write here makes you want to see this film.  John Bunting, a charismatic psychopath with a fixation on largely imaginary cases of pedophilia, influenced a merry band of marginally intelligent and largely hopeless losers into killing those Bunting felt needed to die. I say his obsession with pedophiles verged into imaginary crimes because Bunting, like most homophobes, also felt that homosexuals were sexual predators. With his rag-tag group of socially marginalized losers, he killed 11 people in about seven years time.

The film depiction of the Snowtown murders (so-called because that was the town where the bodies were found – the murders occurred elsewhere) is a bleak look at a particular section of society in Australia. Small, dingy homes, cluttered with useless crap, not enough space, people sleeping on couches because there are not enough bedrooms. Even the best impulses of parents in such a world end up coming out strange and cramped, and as they try to protect their children from the monsters outside, they fail to protect them from the monsters within.

Even though it drained me of all emotional vitality, this is a film worth watching. It’s raw and unflinching, showing the worst things that can happen in such a matter-of-fact manner that it’s sole purpose has to be to cause the viewer to go numb. The actor who plays James spends the film so completely stunned by the repeated blows that life gives him that very little registers. One of the first interactions he has with John Bunting occurs when Bunting is decapitating and skinning several kangaroos in a front yard. They were real kangaroos and that scene was just foul and upsetting. The actor who played James looked like a shark-eyed Heath Ledger, absorbing an unexpected scene of carnage with a flat yet strangely frightened demeanor.

That sets the viewer up for the scene that could, more or less be one of the worst scenes ever in a film. The rape scene from Irreversible was affecting because it was so long and so deeply horrible. Violent. A total violation. The rape scene in The Snowtown Murders was the complete opposite in its execution and as a result was infinitely worse in the toll it took on my psyche. James had evidently been sexually abused by his older half-brother, Troy, throughout their childhood together. The scene we are given in The Snowtown Murders  is maybe a tenth as long as the scene in Irreversible, but it felt longer to me, as the older brother asserted his toxic will against his younger brother, who lay there on the floor, motionless and quiet, waiting for it to end. It was just a part of the landscape of his life. He just had to submit and then he could begin his day in his bleak, cluttered, hopeless life.

John Bunting, learning of this assault, captures Troy, locks him a bathroom and begins a long, horrible assault against him. As much as Troy needs punishment for what he has done, no one deserves what happens to him. Utterly in thrall to John, James is unable to make things stop until he finally ends his brother’s torment himself. It is the first time he really shows any emotion and it’s clear to the viewer that James’ life is probably far better when he is numb because any awakening of feeling is going to involve violence, cruelty and ill-use. This was a powerful movie and I don’t ever want to see it again, but think others may find it just as appalling and upsetting and transfixing as I did. Sometimes the terrible shows us something, lets us into lives foreign to ours and forces us to understand how it is a person can transform from a small, helpless child into a flat, vicious killer.

The other film I watched was just horrible. No real reason to watch it other than to rubberneck at the sorry lives of others. No revelation. No understanding. All you get is a voyeuristic thrill that comes from watching other people self-destruct but it still may not be enough to get you through Black Metal Veins.

Continue Reading “This Is Not an Odd Books Discussion: Movies and metaphysical despair”

And I’m back!

This post originally appeared on I Read Odd Books

I am so sorry about the long break I had to take. As I mentioned in the entries I had to take down, some heavy stuff happened. What happened did not harm me, my home or loved ones, or even this site, but unfortunately a long silence on my part was needed to make the heavy stuff stop. It appears to have stopped, thank heavens. Basic human decency prevents me from discussing openly what happened, but if this cryptic paragraph piques your interest and you need to know what happened, just drop me an e-mail. All I ask is that it not be discussed openly here or anywhere else.

Now that I am back, I come with some changes to this site and some interesting news.

First, I have some upcoming themed weeks to announce:

May 6-10, I will have a New Bizarre Author Series week. I plan to discuss five of the most recent batch of NBAS books and will be giving away copies of the books (or their monetary equivalent for those who may already have the books) to one lucky person. I’ll post the rules for the contest the Friday before it starts. For disclosure purposes, while four of the authors I will discuss sent me the books to read, I am purchasing the copies/Amazon card I plan to give away and have received no funding or free copies to give away from the publisher or authors. I hate that I had to type that out, but there you go.

May 20-24, I am having ANSWER Me! week. I’m still writing it so I am unsure how the days will divide out, but I will spend the week discussing all four editions of ANSWER Me!, spending more time on the infamous “Rape” ‘zine. I also plan to have some sort of Goad-related giveaway, but am unsure what I will offer because the ANSWER Me! omnibus is out-of-print and I have yet to find like-new copies for a reasonable price. I am hoping Jim himself issues these as PDFs for sale, but that likely will not happen before I post this discussion, so I suspect I will offer new copies of some of his works still in print. Same disclosures apply for this giveaway except that Goad only sent me the “Rape” edition to read.

Later in June, or possibly July, I intend to have a compendium week. I have several “weird” encyclopedias and have my eye on a couple more and think it would be fun to have a week of nothing but interesting lists and compendiums on weird topics, like the strange fate of famous corpses or famous eccentrics.

So that will be fun and in-between I hope to have just regular discussions.

Now for the changes. I will no longer be accepting review copies. At all. From anyone. What I prefer instead, from here on out, is that anyone with a new book out that you think would be a good idea for this site just drop me an e-mail and make me aware of the book. That way I can purchase it myself, which will remove a lot of the READ IT NOW urgency I feel when someone sends me a book, and it will help me maintain a bit more site integrity. I say integrity because when people send me books, I find it hard to give negative reviews even when the book may sorely deserve it. I know many may say I should just review and let the chips fall where they may but I am not able to do that. The only authors who contact me with book suggestions that I will read with any urgency will be the New Bizarro Author Series, and even then I still want to purchase the books myself.

Not only will this help me in terms of site integrity, but I am again overwhelmed with review copies. When I have so many review copies to read – most of which are fiction – it makes it hard for me to engage in the book explorations that were the genesis for this site. I used to find the most incredible books at independent and used book stores and the desire to share them was overwhelming. But lately my ardor to discuss books has waned because of the sense of obligation I feel to those who have sent me books. I think it shows, too, in the sort of writing I do. I want to get back to that place of visceral delight that weird books bring me.

If I have already accepted your book to review, no worries. I will still do it, though I cannot guarantee it will happen in a timely manner. And if you have an e-mail to me that pre-dated this entry, again, no worries. I will also accept and read those books. But from this date forward, no more review copies. Just drop me an e-mail about what you’ve got going on. If I like the sound of the book, chances are I will buy it and get to it far faster than I would in my current set-up. And no one feel bad or think you burdened me – you didn’t. All these review copies are still a gift to me and I marvel that people trusted me with their works to this degree. I’m just too weird myself for this to continue to work. I still recall a reviewer who told me I would probably never receive a review copy or if I did, count on getting very few books. The author response to this site has been amazing to me and I appreciate it and still definitely want to hear from you when you publish a book you think will be great for this site.

Finally, I have launched my conspiracy theory site, Houdini’s Revenge. Check out my first entry if such things interest you. It’s still rough but we’ll be tweaking it slowly as we go on.

I’ll still discuss conspiracy theory and paranormal books here, but I decided Houdini’s Revenge would be a better place for people to comment on my discussions of supernatural books and conspiracy books. In almost every entry I wrote here that deals with any form of conspiracy theory, people with a lot of knowledge about those theories had a very hard time confining their comments to the book. Most conspiracy theory is expansive and extends far beyond the words in a single book and after a while I felt like a jerk for asking people to stay on topic with the book and book alone. Over on Houdini’s Revenge, people can talk about any aspect of the theories they think are important.

I have plans to do a lot of writing in the near future. I hope those who have managed to stick around during my unexpected (and wholly unenjoyable) hiatus find something between the two sites that appeals to you. Much love to you all!

What’s around the corner

This post originally appeared on I Read Odd Books

Bear with me. Mr. Oddbooks and I have been trading the same illness back and forth and now my version is a sinus infection. Some people can work when they are sick but I am not one of them. I’ve been reading lots of insane crap online as I wallow in my illness (insane crap online? the hell you say) and will definitely be sharing some of that in the future. Hopefully I will be back with some discussions at the end of the week.

However…

I have some good stuff planned for the near future so short periods of silence may also be attributed to getting things together on my end.

April 8-12 I am hosting another Bizarro Week, along with book giveaways. More on that next week, but stay tuned.

April 22-26 will be ANSWER Me! week. I also am going to give away some Jim Goad books, though not any of the ANSWER Me! books, unfortunately, as they are out of print and I can’t find any decent, affordable copies online (when I rule the world, all the book drop-shippers on Amazon will be beaten naked through the streets, but that’s a rant for another day). This discussion has taken far longer than I anticipated and I appreciate everyone bearing with me as I hash this out. I wanted to make sure that when the inevitable arguments of what specific sacred feminists did say or did not say begin, I will have all my ducks in a row, text-wise.

At any rate, as I wait for the pressure in my skull to abate, I’ve got some good things planned. BRB when I have antibiotics and some ginger ale.

ETA: Clearly everything has been pushed back but IROB will be up and racing out of the gate very soon. Stay tuned.

As I Was Cutting by L.V. Rautenbaumgrabner

This post originally appeared on I Read Odd Books

Book: As I Was Cutting & Other Nastinesses

Author: L.V. Rautenbaumgrabner

Type of Book: Fiction, noir, horror, extreme horror, borderline bizarro, humor, short story collection

Why Do I Consider This Book Odd: This collection is all over the map, covering so many genres of short fiction that it almost defies discussion.

Availability: Published in 2010 by New Pulp Press, you can get a copy here:

Comments: I haven’t had much luck with extreme horror over the last five years or so. There’s the occasional gem but for the most part the genre is a toilet into which many otherwise fine writers crap their id. Which would be fine if the crap was at least well-written crap. Crap can be fun if it doesn’t insult your intelligence. So believe me, I picked up this book fully expecting to have my intelligence insulted as the same old, same old substandard verbiage was cloaked behind horrible details that would hopefully hide how substandard it truly was.

This book is a gem, a gem that is all over the map. It’s noir. It’s horror. It’s extreme fiction. It’s literary fiction. It’s a really good book. And it’s edited very nicely, though there are problems wherein wrong words are used. It’s a weird place for me to be, to say that a book wherein the occasional word is misspelled is finely edited, but it’s all a matter of comparison. In comparison to most small press books, this book is immaculate.

Rautembaumgrabner, to be called LVR for the rest of this discussion, divides his book into two sections: Murderers and Lunatics. Within those two divisions, the reader is treated to stories that, while united by LVR’s style and sly humor, spread across a lot of genres. LVR’s stories really are quite something because in some cases you think you are reading a basic noir or a character sketch of a murderous loser and suddenly you realize you are in the middle of some very gruesome horror. Some of the characters are peppered with instincts and interests that make no sense, bordering into bizarro, but the human pathos and disgust they generate are all too understandable.

See? It can happen! It is possible to write excellent extreme horror without treating your readers like you think they are a bunch of assholes who don’t care about plot, characterization, spelling and grammar! It can be done. After reading this book I suspect I will be all the harder on authors who flog mediocre extreme horror because it will be harder to make excuses for the poor writing that seems to dominate the genre when this unlikely-named author has pulled it off.

Every story in this collection is good, which in itself is amazing. But some are better than others, so I will limit myself to the stories that I found the most gripping, interesting, or disgusting.

Continue Reading “As I Was Cutting by L.V. Rautenbaumgrabner”