Someone recently told me that the reason I have so much anxiety is because I read so many dark, horror books and I explained that studies prove that reading horror can actually be good for your resilience and empathy and give you a safe outlet to process emotions. And I added that I’ve had overactive anxiety since I was child. And then I remembered that I started reading Stephen King in Elementary School so maybe that last part isn’t as valid, but still…I love a good horror movie or book and October is a great month for it.
This month in NEW BOOKS YOU SHOULD READ I’m recommending these little jewels:
The Hong Kong Widow by Kristen Loesch : In 1950s Hong Kong, a young refugee of the Chinese Communist revolution struggling to put her past in Shanghai behind her. When she receives a shocking invitation— a competition in one of the city’s most notorious haunted houses, pitting six spirit mediums against one another in a series of six séances over six nights, until a winner emerges. I liked it so much I picked it for the Nightmares from Nowhere Book Club (which you should totally join if you are a horror freak like me.)
Happy People Don’t Live Here by Amber Sparks : In this darkly funny gothic tale, a reclusive mother and her saturnine daughter move into a haunted building brimming with eccentrics—and secrets. A cozy supernatural for those who love eerie without being terrifying. If you’re a member of the Fantastic Strangelings Book Club (join us!) you’ll be getting this book in the mail.
Replaceable Youby Mary Roach : You’d think a non-fiction read about human anatomy might be dry but this is one of my favorite books of the year. If you like funny but dark and fascinating stories, this one is for you.
Pick a Color by Souvankham Thammavongsa : A day-in-the-life novel about loneliness, love, labor, and class, an intimate and sharply written book following a nail salon owner as she toils away for the privileged clients who don’t even know her true name.
The Creeping Hand Murder by Maureen Johnson and Jay Cooper : Seven people receive mysterious letters. Someone knows their terrible secrets. They are summoned to a posh townhouse where one is stabbed right in front of the others, but somehow no one saw a thing. Can you help Scotland Yard solve the mystery?
Intemperance by Sonora Jha : a middle-aged woman starts a firestorm when she holds a contest, based on an ancient Indian ritual, in which men must compete to win her affections in this satirical feminist folktale.
Hailey and their sweetheart came home with a little spooky season surprise for me.
A small metal friend at the door.
“Knock knock, motherfucker.”
She has a little solar panel on her neck, so at night her eyes glow from inside her little chickeny ghost shroud. I haven’t come up with a good name for her yet but I’m leaning toward “Myrtle Poultry-geist” and on Halloween night I may sit out on my porch with her and hand out deviled eggs. Victor was like, “You can’t give kids deviled eggs” and I was like, “Obviously I’ll offer them a sandwich bag first so they can carry it if they don’t want to eat it immediately. I’m not going to just hand wet eggs to small children. That would be crazy.” And of course, I’ll also offer candy but I wonder if I can get candy eggs and hide them in Myrtle Poultry-geists butt and then pull them out like magic. And then I can ask the kids if they know a good eggs-orcist. Omg, this Halloween is writing itself.
PS. People always ask if I still have Beyonce the Giant Metal Chicken…and yes, of course I do. You don’t just throw away family. She’s now 14 years older and I can see her from my desk as I type. Also, lots of people have reached out to ask if Seth Rogan was giving me a shout-out recently when he said “Knock knock, motherfucker!” in the The Studio, and I really doubt it but wouldn’t that be incredible?
Look, this is going to be rambling af so totally okay to skip this whole post because it’s me talking about something that gave me so much joy and I want to write it down for myself so I always remember it. It will not be well-written and if you are not a fan of Shelley Duvall you will be confused as shit. But in case you’re just here to check on Hailey, they are still in pain but much better and seem to be recovering well. YAY!
Still here? Okay. I’ve written before about how much I adore Shelley Duvall. I’ve seen almost everything she’s ever been in and her Faerie Tale Theatre show was one of my favorite things ever, especially because I’ve collected old children’s books (especially dark fairy tales) since I was a kid and never quit. (Click the link to watch Jeff Goldblum as a sassy wolf. Fun for all ages.)
You have to just imagine the galoshes.
Twelve years ago we lived in the Hill Country not far from Shelley and I never told her how much she meant to me because she was in a delicate state sometimes and I didn’t want to scare her with my adoration, but once we ran into her and she stopped Hailey (who’d dressed themselves in a fluffy hat and poofy dress and green galoshes that looked like frogs) and asked Hailey if they were a princess, because they certainly seemed to be one. And Hailey beamed and I may have cried a little afterward. It’s one of my favorite memories.
A local auction house is auctioning her things next month but this weekend they had an estate sale AT HER HOUSE and so of course I showed up at dawn and waited in the heat with so many other people who were so kind and shared their own Shelley stories. I told Victor that there were only two things I really wanted…a fairy tale book and a small flower crown that I’d seen in the preview pictures hanging with hundreds of her hats because it reminded me of one she’d worn in one of my favorite Faerie Tale Theatre episodes.
When I got inside I was overwhelmed because it’s a small house and it was PACKED (although everyone was very kind and helpful) and it was not air conditioned so I just ducked into the space just a few feet into the front door because that was as far as I could go without getting panicked…and that just so happened to be where hundreds of her fairy tale books were lined up. *magic* Victor had disappeared in the crowd so I picked up an armful of books I wanted and smiled at how many obscure books I skipped over because they were already in my weird collection. (WEIRD MINDS THINK ALIKE.) They weren’t in great shape (many had survived the California earthquake that convinced her to move back to Texas) but I don’t care about condition because I read them and don’t sell them. They were mostly $40 each and when Victor finally showed back up I handed him a big stack and he was like, “Really?” and I was like, “I know. I am showing great restraint here only because I know other people will want books too” and he was like, “No, I mean..do you really need all these books?” and I was like “Is that a trick question?” And he pointed out that I hadn’t even gotten to other rooms and I said, “Yes, but I can’t do it. This is enough. I’m happy.” And he was like, “What about the crown you wanted?” and I said, “Forget the crown. I need a xanax and a quiet corner” and then he turned to show me the flower crown in his arm that he’d picked up while I was in book heaven.
And when I got home I found a screenshot of Shelley Duvall in her crown and…
I went through the books one by one and most were inscribed with her name and the date she bought them and where she bought them (Abilene, London, NYC, Kyoto).
One that I’d never seen before was called Master Snickup’s Cloak and it was a very out-of-print dark fairy tale about syphilis, the dark ages, the plague, prostitutes and flagellation and the art was spectacular but what struck me most was this image of a giant with ship on his head in the sea, which I’d seen before in a Shelley Duvall movie ” Time Bandits”. Now, Shelley bought this book in 1979, but Time Bandits came out in 1981 so I assumed that this illustrator (Brian Froud) must’ve worked on the movie but when I looked him up it said that he hadn’t but that the director, Terry Gilliam, admitted to borrowing from “a book” by Froud. Was this the book? (Froud would later go on to work on The Dark Crystal and Labyrinth.)
I spent the whole night reading her books and pouring over the illustrations and trying to identify what she was doing in her life on each date. Some books were bought during her time shooting The Shining but most were bought in the 80s when she was doing Faerie Tale Theatre. I also picked up an unpublished script for Aesop’s Fables that was marked with her production company’s logo. In an interview she’d said that wanted to start shooting the fables but hadn’t gotten to it. I suppose this was one of the pieces that never got made?
It was a little heartbreaking to see pieces like that, honestly, because it feels like her personal papers and one-of-a-kind scripts and photos should be in an archive or with a biographer or documentarian rather than scattered to the wind. Perhaps they were all copied before they were sold? I don’t know. Ephemera is so fleeting.
Yesterday I wanted to go back for the last hour of the sale because I really wanted to walk through her house and thought maybe the traffic would be better. (She lived down a one-lane, mile long country road and we were trapped for an hour trying to leave because you couldn’t leave if someone else was entering.) Victor agreed to take me and we figured if the traffic was still bad we’d just park and walk the mile but it was almost empty when we got there.
The house and barns were fairly empty of things, which was fine because I just wanted to walk through and say goodbye but then someone pointed out that there were bookcases in the garage that still had children’s books no one had wanted. They were mostly from the 60s through the 90s, and there were stacks of books that I’d read over and over from the library. Steven Kellogg, Mercer Mayer, Rosemary Wells, Marc Brown, Beverly Cleary. It was like a small, dusty time-capsule of my childhood. None of them were inscribed with her name and they weren’t in great shape but I was one of the last people remaining so they gave me a very good deal and so I pulled together a stack that I’d like to one day read to my grandkids if I have them. I got a few for my sister, for my mom, for friends who couldn’t make it but who were inspired by Shelley and her work with books.
The last one I picked up was a teddy bear book written by Kathleen Hague and illustrated by Michael Hague, which had a little water damage but my mom and sister and I love Michael Hague so I couldn’t leave it behind. When I got home I cleaned each book page by page and when I opened up the Hague book I found that it was signed by Kathleen and Michael and that Michael had drawn a teddy bear inside. 0_0 This seems like a silly thing to most people but when I told my mom and sister and sister they were like, “OMG” with so many exclamation marks so just believe me that this was an absolutely giddy hyperfixaction thrill.
It struck me how many of the antique fairy tale books that I bought were written by women (although often under their initials or pseudonyms) at a time when women weren’t often recognized or remembered as anything other than mothers and wives. I also saw how often the names of the books owners inscribed in the books were usually women…each a temporary guardian of stories that others may see as frivolous, but which carried secrets, inspiration and often offer a temporary sort of freedom and escape that was not always available to women.
One of the books I bought was a 1903 copy of The Ward of King Canute, by O.A. Liljencrantz. I bought the book this weekend from Shelley’s house. Shelley bought it second-hand in April of 1982. Before that it was owned by a woman named Rita Cantine, who died in Texas in 1976. Before that it was owned by Eliza Vanderveer Prince, who was a Brooklyn native (and died there in 1932) and who probably bought it new in 1903 from the F. Loeser and Co. Brooklyn Bookstore, who stamped the inside of the book. The author (Ottili Lilincrantz) was still alive at the time it was printed, but died at age 34 in 1916. She was best known for writing the book the silent film The Viking (1928) was based on. She was inspired by her drama teacher, Anna Morgan (1851-1936) who was the first person to put on a production of Caesar and Cleopatra with an all female cast. I know this all can seem like pointless details but if you’ve ever done genealogy you know who rare it is to be able to find women listed as anything more daughters, wives and mothers. Getting even a tiny glimpse into the minds and lives and tastes of women from as far back as the 1800’s using just a single book is sort of incredible. As each one wrote their name inside the book it made a spider web into the past, a note saying “I was here. I was real.”
I wrote my name in the book today. One day I assume there will be an estate sale for me and someone will pick this same book and write their name in it, which is sort of a lovely thought. In the end we are all just stories. But what amazing stories they can be.
A still from The Viking. Did you know some silent films were in technicolor? ME EITHER.
Ps. As a small little rabbit hole in a whole post that is rabbit holes: One of my favorite things about children’s books is how often illustrators will hide tiny jokes in their pictures. I often go through the books with a magnifying glass and that’s how I found this infinitesimal image (truly smaller than a fingernail clipping) hidden on a newspaper in Graham Oakley’s The Church Cat Abroad (1973), that I picked up from Shelley’s house :
It cracked me up and made me look up the author and that took me to this 14-year-old blog post about how he couldn’t get published anymore after the 90s ended when there was a push-back on the detailed drawings with little jokes for parents and kids. His publisher said it was it was a bad idea to tuck in jokes and satire that kids wouldn’t get and he said that these books are for grown-ups to and would spur kids on to look up what they didn’t get or search to learn more. And now, 51 years after he published The Church Cat Abroad, I’m here doing just that.
Hello and welcome to the most boring blog post title I’ve ever written. Sorry, but I thought I’d reach out and try to crowdsource (after getting permission from my kiddo, Hailey.) You may remember that they were in the hospital for quite a while this summer with meningitis. The drs never figured out what caused it but their new neurologist believes it could be caused from Sjögren’s Disease, which can sometimes cause recurrent aseptic meningitis and that seems possible because it looks like Hailey has meningitis again. *Big sigh*
Thankfully they recognized it right away and were able to start super strong pain meds and hopefully it will be a mild case that can resolve quickly at home rather than at the hospital, but I’m reaching out on the off chance that someone here has had similar recurrent bouts of meningitis and if so, is there anything you did that helped to keep them at bay or resolve them quicker? Hailey is pretty tough but their college classes are all advanced chemistry and calculus and other stem courses that don’t lend themselves to missing a lot of classes, so finding a way to stop this from happening over and over would be a lifesaver.
Related: How do I hire a witch to remove a curse? Because this year has been a lot. Although yesterday I found out I don’t have ear cancer, so maybe things are looking up?
If you have read this far I would like to thank you with this picture of Dorothy Barker, who got a haircut and is feeling very self-conscious about it.
So about 6 months ago I started having this itching inside one ear that kept getting worse and nothing fixed it so I went to my doctor and he was like, “Huh. There’s a lump there. You need to see a dermatologist and maybe get a biopsy” and so I made an appointment and they were like, “We can see you in two months” and I panicked a little and they were like, “Okay, you can come in in two weeks and be seen by our PA” but then when I went in the PA was like, “Huh. Let me go get the doctor after all” and then he was like, “Well, it could be nothing but it also could be cancer and I’d rather have you see a specialist to look at it before I do anything” and so I made an appointment and they were like, “We can get you in NEXT YEAR” and then I may have cried a little because WHY ARE WE SO LOW ON DOCTORS? And I explained that I already have cancer and that I don’t want to wait until next year to find out if I have more cancer and she looked at my notes and was like, “I can fit you in with a resident doctor in a month” and yesterday I met with the resident and he was like, “Huh. That looks weird. Let me get the doctor” and then he came in and looked at it and was like, “Oh, that’s just eczema. You’re totally fine. You just need some meds.”
Anyway, all of that to say that I hadn’t realized how much this was weighing on me until I started crying in relief at the doctors office and I just want to say “sorry” that I haven’t been myself lately and that I’ve been a little absent from everything but I guess it was affecting me more than I thought.
SO, YAY FOR NOT HAVING ANOTHER KIND OF CANCER! That’s a weird thing to celebrate but I’m doing it anyway.
I have this giant painting I bought second-hand years ago.
Dorothy Barker for scale
It’s a print on canvas called “Before Nightfall” and when I first saw it I was like, “I love how ambiguous this painting is” and the guy selling it was like, “Yeah, why is she catching a bird in a wedding dress?” and I was like, “Oh, to me it looks more like she’s going to free the bird from the guilded cage but has been caught in the act by probably the same person who has caged her and she’s wondering if she should fly away too” and he was like, “Huh. Maybe?” And then I said, “Or maybe she’s going to eat the bird because she’s hunched over it like a predator and she looks a little like I do when it’s 3am I’ve been caught in front of the fridge with a burrito I’m not supposed to eat” and he said…”I’m not sure-” and I said “Like maybe she’s a vampire and she’s really hungry and she’s already murdered everyone and wants dessert? Or maybe she’s some kind of ethical monster and she doesn’t want to eat the people she’s with at the party but she’s desperate so she sneaks into the bedroom to eat their parakeet but then she’s spotted by the mean girlfriend of the guy she likes and she’s like “Aw fuck” and is trying to decide if she should make up an excuse or just eat the girlfriend?” And the guy was like, “I don’t…um…what?” And then I offered him half of the price he was asking and he took it, and Victor wasn’t sure if it was because I’d baffled they guy or if he was now afraid that he was selling some sort of a haunted bird-devouring vampire painting.
Aaaaanyway (out of ADD meds, sorry) we moved a few months ago to a smaller house and I finally found a spot for this painting but then I noticed that there was what looks to be blood splattered and smeared all over this painting.
wtf.
And I started wondering if maybe a murder had occurred when our old house was for sale and Victor told me I needed to stop watching so much Dateline and that it was probably just diet code so I just took pictures in case a detective needed it later and then I started scrubbing the painting but the blood (?) was not coming off and I was like, “OH THIS PAINTING IS DEFINITELY HAUNTED.”
But then I did a reverse look-up of the painting to see what it was supposed to look like without all of the blood and turns out the blood is part of the original painting. Or maybe it’s not blood and it’s burnt umber paint added to give it atmosphere? Or maybe it really is supposed to be a vampire attack and I was picking up on all of the subtle clues? Or maybe the artist was murdered as she was finishing the piece and never had a chance to clean it? Or, more likely, she spilled her diet coke on it and was like, “FUCK IT I GIVE UP. JUST LEAVE IT”?
Anyway, I don’t have an ending for this but I thought I’d ask your opinion about what you think this painting is about and also say that if you haven’t finished as much as you wanted to today, at least you didn’t spend an hour trying to scrub an art piece that is supposed to look like that after you took pictures of it in case it was evidence of a murder that never happened.
The Mack Files: Digesting life in bite-sized pieces through the lens of clichés, quotes & “truisms”. Often irreverent, always honest.
Barking at the Moon: If your dog is your furry child, you will laugh out loud at Tracy Beckerman’s book about her family & a one-dog wrecking ball named Riley.
Wonder and Joy for the Wired and Tired: Feeling wired, tired, and stretched too thin? You’re not alone. Re-ignite your sense of childlike wonder, joy, and well-being with this enlightening and entertaining book by Dr. Pam Stephens Lehenbauer, well-being thought leader and author of the blog, Mother Nature’s Apprentice.
Stuff and Thangs from Xanaru: A mostly funny stuff about my quest for happiness through stories, art, friendship, Great Danes, one naked weirdo alien cat and indiscriminate swearing.
How the Hell Did I Not Know That?: Humorist Lucie Frost shares daily Instagram reels with learnings of the day—words, music, whatever–with plenty of laughs and all the curse words.
Beautiful Writers book: Writers! This coming-of-career memoir (w/ the BEST advice from celeb authors, real shit you haven’t heard) is life. A page-turning beach read doubling as how-to. #Magic
No Pithy Phrase: Between cancer, creatures, and the horde, there’s always something weird going on over here. The witchy writing freak flags are flying.
