Presenting Some Suggestions for Jolabokaflod

 

Jolabokaflod, the Christmas Book Flood, is here. It may also be the perfect holiday celebration. Typically celebrated on Christmas Eve, it involves giving and getting chocolate, wearing your snuggliest pajamas, and it involves exchanging books and reading them all night! But what scary offerings should people read while the wind (or something worse) howls outside? Whether you are looking for some scary offerings or celebrating your own Jolabokaflod with a horror fan, here are some good choices that are easy to digest while also full of frights.

 Jolabokaflod is a night of reading, but it can also be reading to get done in a night, and short story anthologies are perfect for this. Much like a tin of Danish cookies, these collections are teeming with variety. Two really good anthologies that are sure to not only get you into the Christmas spirit but summon a few Christmas spirits are Hark the Herald Angels Scream and A Midnight Clear. Hark the Herald Angels Scream features stories from well-known horror authors like Christopher Golden, Josh Malerman, and elder horror statesman Joe Lansdale and covers holiday horrors ranging from Christmas carols to demonic toys, homegrown American horrors to horrors abroad. A Midnight Clear features some newer authors but also has some more traditional horrors like visits to Santa’s workshop to a visit from the demons of Christmas Past, Present, and Future. These cold stories will make you want to sit closer to the fire . . . and maybe lock the door.

 Looking for something longer to sink your teeth into but something that could be read in one cold, dark night? Novellas are the way to go, and there are plenty of good novellas out there. Looking forward to indulging in something delicious? Sara Tantlinger’s novella To Be Devoured features a woman flirting with strange appetites in a desolate part of the country. Country Christmases can be peaceful, but it also means that help can’t reach you in time. Looking to spend time with family or friends? Brian Keene’s With Teeth features a group of friends out hiking in the woods. Friendship is a pretty powerful bond, but anyone who knows vampires, like these men will, knows that blood is thicker. Worried about your presents arriving on time? Consider reading about a similar service to Amazon, except its packages are victims for a budding serial killer in Stephen Graham Jones’s The Least of My Scars. Whatever your interest this holiday, celebrate Jolabokaflod with some good chocolate and some great scares. Stay warm and stay scary, my friends.

Graphic Content: Graveneye by Sloane Leong and Anna Bowles

 In the haunted house subgenre, it takes a special kind of book to stand out from all the other haunted house tales, both past and present. Graveneye by writer Sloane Leong and artist Anna Bowles definitely stands out as an original tale thanks to several unique aspects of its story and its medium. The fact that it’s a graphic novel is not the most unusual element of this tale of hunger and obsession, nor is it the fact that there is minimal dialogue in this piece. No, what makes this book stand out from all the other haunted house tales is the narrator, which is the house. Not a ghost in the house, but the house itself.

The story itself is actually conventional. Ilsa lives alone in her large mansion deep in the woods. Marie, the new housekeeper, knows there is something fascinating about the house and about its lone inhabitant. Brave, confident Ilsa is free to do as she wishes. Whenever she wants to hunt on her property, indulging in her bloody fantasies, she is able. Marie sees Ilsa’s freedom, as well as her confidence, and wishes she could live life as boldly as Ilsa. But Marie is too timid to escape the burden she is trapped under, and she does not realize the terrible secrets that Ilsa and the house keep hidden.

The house as a narrator speaks directly to the audience, not as something that was once human who has somehow become a house, but as a house that has somehow become sentient, a silent witness to the depravities of its residents. The house narrates not only as a dispassionate observer but also as an observer who only knows humanity from the strange actions it has seen as a house. Along with Leong’s strange narration of this Gothic tale, plus her eschewing of traditional dialogue, there is Bower’s artwork that sticks mostly to a black and white pallet, except when the scene calls for a visceral red. Haunted house stories sometimes sabotage their own scares by suddenly becoming loud to the point of being obnoxious. Leong’s show of restraint establishes tension that Bower’s minimalist art style only magnifies with its depiction of cold and colorless rooms nevertheless teeming with shadows and secrets. The house, the reader discovers, is the right person to tell this story. It has studied the past of where it was built, who has lived in it, and it’s as implacable as any structure designed to stand for hundreds of years.

Stream to Scream: Horror Noire and Ghost Summer

 

Horror often puts a supernatural mask on our own very real fears, exploring our own very real phobias through a narrative that we convince ourselves is trapped in its pages and can’t escape them once the book is closed. And we can also close the newspaper, turn off social media, but that news, and the consequences of what’s happening, is still out there. Many times, horror often creates a more palpable way to consider and even discuss these real world terrors by putting them in the guise of a killer clown of vengeful spirit. A master of this is Tananarive Due, who has not only written scholarly works on the genre, but is also an accomplished author of horror fiction. Her skills in relevant and revealing storytelling are revealed in the anthology movie Horror Noire and in Due's short story collection Ghost Summer.

Following up on the Horror Noire documentary that looks at the many black voices in horror, this anthology that shares the same name features six supernatural stories that explore contemporary societal issues and monsters that may or may not be supernatural (the first entry “The Lake” is a prime example of this). The stories run the gamut from Southern Gothic tales like “Bride Before You” and more comedic horror fare in “Sundown.” As with many anthology stories, the quality of the tales can be uneven, with “Brand of Evil” and “Daddy” being some of the lesser quality ones, but all the stories do evoke a moral  in a way that doesn’t sound pedantic, which is a true accomplishment in storytelling.

Ghost Summer is an obvious collection to link with this movie anthology because Due’s story “The Lake” can be found at the beginning of the book. While “The Lake” tricks the reader into sympathizing with the monster who is also the protagonist, stories like “Summer” explore how our own emotional burdens can create monstrous thoughts. There are also stories that look at the pervading effects of America’s history of racism. The story “Ghost Summer” excavates the consequences of a town’s brutally racist past with a breezy coming-of-age tale about a boy determined to discover ghosts on his grandparents’ property. “Free Jim’s Mine,” on the other hand, is a historical tale that explores how freedom can come with a very terrible price. “Trial Day” explores what black people in the racist South to be if not accepted then at least tolerated. Due’s fiction and Horror Noire both explore darker parts of our history that might make some people uncomfortable, but the fact that these feelings and attitudes are still rippling across current events means they are still worth tackling.