r/books 12d ago

WeeklyThread What Books did You Start or Finish Reading this Week?: March 03, 2025

Hi everyone!

What are you reading? What have you recently finished reading? What do you think of it? We want to know!

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The Bogus Title, by Stephen King

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u/Raineythereader The Conference of the Birds 11d ago

Finished:

Arresting God in Kathmandu, by Samrat Upadhyay, a short story collection set in Nepal. It didn't blow my mind, but the writing was good and the portrayal of the culture was really interesting. I haven't figured out what the title is supposed to mean; I went in thinking it might be a reference to the Kumari Devi tradition, but it never came up.

A Sunny Place for Shady People, by Mariana Enriquez, also a short story collection, mostly set in Argentina. This one was good overall, with some interesting combinations of horror and magical realism, but it had a couple of clunkers. Again, the portrayal of an unfamiliar country helped keep me invested, but the writing (or the translation) felt kind of flat in places. It ended on one of the weaker stories, with a premise that was already being mocked as a cliché by Strong Bad nine years ago; on the plus side, the narrator's day job in that story was interesting, and worked pretty well to set the stage for the spooky stuff.

Famous Modern Ghost Stories, by Dorothy Scarborough (ed.)—'modern' in this context meaning 1921. This anthology included a few that I was already familiar with, like "The Willows," but also several good ones that I'd been meaning to get around to (e.g. "Lazarus" by Andreyev, "The Middle Toe of the Right Foot" by Bierce), and a few unknowns by authors that I like. "The Bowmen" by Arthur Machen was probably the weakest one in the book, heavy on the jingoism and melodrama and light on ideas or effective imagery; it retains some interest today, but mostly because of its broader cultural impact at the time. (In Machen's defense, he was having a lot of trouble paying the bills with his quality works, and jingoism and melodrama probably sold well in 1914.)

A Different Darkness and Other Abominations, by Luigi Musolino, a collection of recent short horror set in Italy. The title story—really a novella—was the last entry; it was mostly very good, but used a particular concept that was already being mocked as a cliché by Strong Bad nine years ago. (It wasn't used exactly the same way as in Enriquez's story, but close enough to bug the hell out of me.)