For the winter holidays this past year I suggested to my baby sister that if she wanted to get me something in addition to the planner that you’ve all heard so much about recently, why not one of her very favorite books? The sort of comfort read that she might return to year after year, savor time and time again. She presented me with Rosamunde Pilcher’s Coming Home.
“Against the backdrop of an elegant Cornwall mansion before World War II and a vast continent-spanning canvas during the turbulent war years, this involving story tells of an extraordinary young woman’s coming of age, coming to grips with love and sadness, and in every sense of the term, coming home…”
I hadn’t yet started the book, but I learned that Rosamunde Pilcher passed away yesterday, so I thought I’d begin reading it this very afternoon in honor of both the author and the story that so captivated my sister. And in honor of the one who so thoughtfully gave me a tiny piece of her history to cherish, I thought I would dine on what I imagine one of her favorite snacks used to be at the time she discovered her love for this specific book: a generous helping of bright orange Cheezits. To sip, a serving of delicious diet chemicals, which I do not believe she ever developed a taste for.
And you? If you were to gift a loved one with your most beloved, returned-to-time-and-time-again story, what would it be? Do you recall where you were in your life’s path when that book became so vital to you? And of course, it’s always helpful to pair a special snack with your comfort reading–what would you recommend your loved one to pair with your book?
Early last week I was in the heady throes of the honeymoon stage with my new planner…I was riding the high of having written down a thing AND done it, AND I went on to do the next thing, as well. And the next!
It was, as I said, I very heady feeling, and dare I say…empowering. I found myself taking care of something I had put off for six months (it involved a phone call…and not just an easy, 5 minute phone call, but the kind where they’d probably put you on hold and transfer you to six different departments, to which you would have to explain your problem six times over, and then they’d try to talk you out of whatever you want, or they’d have to get a manager…and then more hold time…you get the idea. I did not want to make this phone call.)
Last week I:
-called the bank to initiate a thing
-ordered new eyeglasses
-scheduled an eye doctor appointment
-scheduled a dentist appointment (it has literally been 20+ years)
-scheduled an appointment with the dermatologist
-scheduled a appointment with a new therapist (gonna give it another try!)
-canceled three services (I had to make phone calls for all three!)
-wrote a handful of things
-went to see my nail tech and got my claws removed
-participated in a monthly call for creative women
-went to Post Office (twice)
-went to library (twice)
-cleaned out closet and all clothing drawers, all without having watched or read Marie Kondo
If I am being honest, all this is probably more than I get around to doing in a year! I am basically the PLANNINATOR, crushing all goals!
So, you may be wondering, what brought about this flurry of productivity, is it sustainable and can we really chalk it up to the the acquisition of a new planner?
To backtrack just a little, this new planner was a gift from my youngest sister (see previous planner post from her, to give you an idea as to her dedication to planners and planning.) I had her asked if she thought that she was up to the task of picking out a planner for me and perhaps some fun accessories, as a holiday gift. As I expected, she was super excited about the possibilities! I think nothing would make her happier than to have all her sisters in the same room together, gleefully ignoring each other as they plot and plan and scheme their days away in their respective planners.
With a few guidelines from me, that this new planner be:
1. undated, but with time slots, and
2. it’s gotta be black!, and
3. hard bound (as opposed to ringed)
…she said that with all of my restrictions, I didn’t leave her a lot to work with and she ended up going with a Passion Planner. Here’s what they have to say about themselves:
“Passion Planner is the one place for all your thoughts. It’s more than just a planner—it’s a tool that helps you break down your short and long-term goals and incorporate them into your daily life. It has been designed to encourage you to plan for the future, reflect on the past, but most importantly, act on the present. Think of it as a paper life coach — ready 24/7 to challenge you to focus on what is most important, accept your thoughts and ideas without judgment, and prompt you to reflect on your everyday life. We hope that it becomes a place where you can declutter your mind, allowing you to focus on the present moment.”
I also asked her to feel free to include lots of fun accessories…even though I don’t really know how they work or what I am supposed to do with them and I’m actually convinced I don’t even know what “fun” is, or how it works. But it seemed important to include stickers! And washi tape! I mean but also what are you supposed to do with washi tape? I don’t know!
And I know I’m hard to shop for, I want “sort of, you know, “goth”, but not like, Victorian goth, or cutesy goth, or Halloween-y goth, or like 1992-era Spencer’s Gifts, goth.”
I guess what I am saying that I don’t want anything too cheesy or too “on the nose.” So… that pretty much rules out everything on Etsy, because Etsy tends to be all of those things. So instead she went with something far easier to pin down–cats and Sailor Moon!
…and a darling pouch for all of my accoutrements!
If you’re curious as to where she picked up the stickers, the tape, and the pouch, these are the three shops that she shared with me:
The Passion Planner is much larger than the one I was previously using, seen here for comparison. But honestly, I like both sizes! I’m really digging the larger version right now, but that could be due to me being the kind of person who adapts pretty easily and I generally reach the conclusion that what I am doing now is better than what I was doing before. I like that I can really sprawl and ramble with my thoughts and ideas, but I do see how this larger one might be a little bit more challenging to travel with, but my planner stays at my desk all the time, so that’s not really a concern.
If you’re interested, I was previously using the undated planner from Ink + Volt, and I thought it was pretty great. I didn’t use it consistently, and it wasn’t exactly for planning and scheduling purposes (more like for ideas and brainstorming and lists) and because it’s undated, I think I have probably been using it for two years now. Highly recommended!
ALSO: because my sister is a marvel and she knows me pretty well, she DID find me some “goth but not really” stickers, and they are perfect. As an aside, I gotta find another word to sum up my “goth but not really” aesthetic. But the best I’ve been able to come up with, that doesn’t sound too long-winded, self-important, or cheesy, is “cats and darkness”. I don’t know that it’s an important distinction, I mean I know what I mean and I know it when I see it. And the more I belabor the point, the more it sounds like I’m putting down the stuff that doesn’t fall into my narrow criteria–which I don’t mean to do! If you like it, it’s very good! As the sample lady once told our other sister, when she was sampling some sheet cake or bagel bites or whatever at Costco on a Saturday afternoon. “If you like it, it’s very good!”
SO THEN. Week One of using my planner was a spectacular success! I wrote a lot of stuff down, and I crossed a lot of stuff off my list. Or I put a checkmark next to it. (Are you a crosser or a checker? What’s the difference, anyway?) This week I’m…well, let’s say I’m a tad less enthusiastic.I actually might have overdone it last week, and maybe made myself a little manic about it (I mean, I seriously did feel a little crazed) and I’m still recovering, heh heh. I mean to the point that, even after writing almost 1200 words about the thing and having taken a whole mess of photos of it today, I don’t think I have actually written a single thing in it..
Well, tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow! Which, I don’t think Macbeth was talking about his planner when he said :
“.To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow, Creeps in this petty pace from day to day, To the last syllable of recorded time;”
…but then again if Macbeth had all these stickers and washi tapes at his disposal, he might have been a PLANNINATOR too. Also if you look up #pashfam on instagram, you won’t see a lot of Shakespeare but you might find some layout ideas and different tips and tricks and suggestions for how other users put their Passion Planner to work. I am passing that tidbit on not having looked at it myself, because I’m stubborn and I am pretty sure I don’t need to see how other people do things, but wow, that sounds really bad when I see it in black and white like that. Maybe I’ll just take a peek.
If the mention of Valancourt Books sounds familiar to you, well no doubt that’s because you’ve an excellent memory and you’ve seen an interview with them on this blog before! (With many thanks to my ghostly blogging partner of yore…!)
As the mornings grow chilled, and the days shorter; when the nights are impossibly dark and very possibly haunted–we must acknowledge that the time has come to pack away our blithe, breezy summer beach reads in favor of material more in keeping with the pall of gloom that has been cast by the season’s brittle, dying days. I know that none of us are particularly unhappy about this.
We yearn for those books whose spines hint at an eerie atmosphere of mystery, and titles encompassing all the metonymy of melancholy and strangeness and horror! Pages upon pages encrypted with ancient prophecies, ominous portents, infernal curses! Ghosts, phantoms, and strange sinister spirits! Abandoned monasteries, isolated castles, unquiet graves! Dreams, illusions, obsessions, and murders! And if the book’s cover art features ridiculously over-the-top visions of fiendishly cavorting ghouls and disembodied eyeballs glowing with hellfire and horror…all the better.
The good news for us is that we can find all of these tales and more at within the cobwebbed, crumbling vaults of Valancourt Books. An independent small press located in Richmond, VA, Valancourt specializes in the rediscovery of rare, neglected, and out-of-print fiction, and I am over the (skull-faced, grinning maniacally, and dripping with blood) moon to share our interview with publisher, general editor, and co-founder James D. Jenkins of Valancourt Books. See below for a glimpse into what makes a title worthy of the Valancourt catalog, our enthusiasms regarding favorite authors and crazy book cover art, and to learn more about their current collaboration with the publishers of PAPERBACKS FROM HELL!
Unquiet Things: Valancourt’s beginnings focused on bringing forgotten, neglected, and overlooked 18th and 19th century gothic fiction back into the light, in a cost effective sort of way… which eventually led to unearthing the titles from the Victorian era — penny dreadfuls and the like, before moving onto excavating works of 20th century fiction. Most of these titles are works of horror or weird fiction, but other than classifications of genre, what is that special something a work must possess to capture your attention and cause you to exclaim, “ah, this is one for our catalog!” And is there any sort of common thread that you feel runs through the crusty titles that you exhume and bring to life again?
James: One common thread that runs through most of the books we republish is that they were once either very highly regarded by critics or else very popular with readers but nevertheless somehow mysteriously fell out of print at some point over the years. These days, we’re focusing mostly on horror/supernatural/weird fiction, although we also have a secondary focus on LGBT-interest literature, and we also reprint a small number of great books that don’t fit in either of those categories.
In terms of more recent authors, I think we share some beloved favorites! I adore both the strange, disquieting writings of Robert Aickman, as well as Michael McDowell’s unpretentious but thoroughly imaginative and sharply-crafted stories. What is it about these author’s works that resonates with you? And if one admires the works of Aickman/McDowell, what else from Valancourt’s catalogue might you suggest along those lines?
Aickman and McDowell are obviously very different sorts of writers, but one thing they have in common is that their reputations have been kept alive over the decades by a group of devoted fans, even when their books were long out of print or, in Aickman’s case, only available as expensive collector’s editions. I think you put it well: Aickman’s works are strange and disquieting, oddly unsettling even if sometimes their precise “meaning” seems to elude us. McDowell, on the other hand, said he never aspired to posthumous fame or to be considered a “literary” writer: his only aim was to entertain and frighten readers, and judging from the responses we’ve gotten to our reissues, it’s pretty clear he succeeded!
Those who enjoy Aickman’s more literary style might want to give our reissues of Forrest Reid’s subtle supernatural fiction a try, or possibly David Case’s books, which are not as subtle as Aickman’s but are written in a traditional, more literary style with vocabulary that will have you frequently reaching for a dictionary. And, obviously, you’ll want to read the Victorian-era horror fiction we’ve published by Richard Marsh, who was Aickman’s grandfather! Fans of McDowell’s fiction should find our reissues of Ken Greenhall, Bernard Taylor, Michael Talbot, and Alan Ryan — all of them (like McDowell) neglected masters of ’80s paperback horror fiction — to their liking.
You recently signed a deal with the publishers of PAPERBACKS FROM HELL, [reviewed in our September 2017 installment of Stacked!] to publish a PFH series of reissues of titles featured in the book, which I believe will be edited by Grady Hendrix and Will Errickson? You guys + those guys is the dreamiest dream team I could ever imagine! Can you share how this came about? How did you go about selecting the titles you’ll be reissuing? And I have to ask…what are you going to do about the cover art? Because some of those covers are bananas!
That’s definitely a project we are really excited about! Grady has written introductions to a couple of our books (HELL HOUND, THE AUCTIONEER), and we’re longtime followers of Will’s TOO MUCH HORROR FICTION blog, where we’ve discovered a few books that we went on to republish, so it was sort of natural that we’d team up. As far as how the series came about, I think we here at Valancourt, like everybody else who bought PAPERBACKS FROM HELL, were flipping through the book and thinking how great some of those out-of-print horror novels looked and what a shame it was some of them were unavailable!
When we teased the series on social media, the response was huge, and as far as the cover art goes it was unanimous: people want the original covers! So we’re going to do everything we can to use the original cover paintings. For the first book in the series, Elizabeth Engstrom’s WHEN DARKNESS LOVES US, the original cover painter, Jill Bauman, has kindly allowed us to reuse the art, and we’re hoping to be able to get permission to reuse others. There may be some cases where we can’t locate the original artist or otherwise can’t get the rights (and at least one of the titles we’re planning for the series didn’t have an interesting cover the first time around), so in those cases we’ll be coming up with something new that hopefully retains an ’80s feel.
What can you tell us about our giveaway title, Valancourt Book of Horror Stories Volume Three?
We’re giving away a copy of our new Valancourt Book of Horror Stories because the series has been one of the most popular things we’ve done over the past few years. The mix of rare and seldom-reprinted older stories with some new and unpublished material has gotten a great response from readers, and, above all, the books are a great introduction to Valancourt and what we publish. For readers who are just discovering us and wondering where to start with the 400+ books in our catalogue, our Valancourt Books of Horror Stories are the perfect place to start: Volume 3, for example, includes contributions by 16 different Valancourt authors, so you can sample a lot of different writers to see whose works you might like to read more of. One thing that’s great about our Horror Stories books is that many of the authors featured aren’t typically thought of as horror authors and aren’t often featured in horror anthologies, so you’ll find tales by literary and mainstream authors like Christopher Priest, Isabel Colegate, and Nevil Shute alongside contributions by well-known horror writers like Michael McDowell and Bernard Taylor.
Thanks very much to James and Valancourt Books, and please be certain to leave a comment below in order to be entered into the giveaway! A winner will be chosen in one week’s time. This giveaway is open to our U.S. readers
On the Haute Macabre blog today, Needful Things is back (it’s a regular-ish feature now, wheee!) and the staff writers dish on the stuff & things–both fancy and fundamental– that we’ve been enamored with this past summer. Have a peek! You may find your own next needful thing here.
Also this week we dust off our Aural Fixation feature to discuss some of our favorite podcasts. Admittedly, this is a bit of a ploy to get you guys to chime in with some of your own, so that we can expand our libraries 😉
And lastly, you can take a gander at August’s gathering of late summer reads! See what books the Haute Macabre writers loved, the books we loathed, and the books we’d swan about in a posh library looking gorgeous with, like Madonna here.
Flashing My Fancy Knickers At This Apathetic Stone Fountain And Other Mundane Tales Of Desperation And Revenge
Esteban Maroto
Just A Quick Detour Through This Graveyard In My Filmy Négligée And Other Tales Of Efficiency, Intrigue, and Intimatewear
Lou Marchetti
Indulging My Perverse Paramour’s Fucking Tweety Bird Fetish Bullshit And Other Twisted Tales Of Terror And Tomfoolery
George Ziel
Surely This Rusted, Unlocked, Antique Gate Will Foretall That Hideous Fiend And Other Naive Tales Of The Rich, Beautiful, And Privileged
Harry Barton
What The Fuck Are You Looking At, Tree? And Other Salty Tales Of Irksome Annoyance
Robert McGinnis
A Poot In The Night; Or, How I Escaped The Clutches Of My Roguish Captor With Naught But A Gut Full Of Tacos And Refried Beans
Harry Barton
I Think I Left The Asparagus Risotto Simmering Gently On The Stove, and Other Spine-Tingling Tales of Culinary Consternation
George Ziel
Just Casually Harvesting Some Grain While The Murderer Gains On My Head Start, And Other Thrilling Tales Of Terror
Lou Marchetti
Funeral Plot Options And Why It’s Never Too Soon For End-Of-Life Planning, A Tale Of One Woman’s Practicality And Preparedness In The Face Of Immeasurable Horrors And Murder Most Foul
At Haute Macabre this week, all the books we’ve been gorging ourselves on lately! I foresee your summer reading list getting a little out of hand. Here’s a quick link list of each of the books mentioned–plus two that didn’t make the list, but were worth a mention…
Additionally, I read the oft-recommended The Troop, by Nick Cutter. I finished it just before starting The Hunger, and it was an interesting juxtaposition, these two books about insatiable appetites and voracious hungers. The Troop largely takes place on an isolated island where a boy scout troop has taken their annual trip, during which they are stalked by, and exposed to a terrifying biologically-engineered nightmare. Described as “part Lord of the Flies, part 28 Days Later”, this was probably one of the grossest books I have ever read. But it was a lot of fun, too!
Just a few nights ago I finished The Family Plot by Cherie Priest; previously I’d only read Boneshaker and Maplecroft–the former a steampunk type affair and the latter a Lizzie Borden/eldritch horror sort of mash-up, and while both were wildly enjoyably, I felt I hadn’t yet read any proper “spooky” horror from her. The Family Plot a, haunted house tale with southern gothic trappings, volatile family dynamics, and lots of oddly precise details about how to salvage parts and hardware from a beautifully decrepit old home, fits the bit perfectly.
Bonus! I know my book lists consist, predictably, mostly horror and ghosts and spooky stuff. If historical fiction is more your cuppa, might I point you to my darling sister’s picks for the month of May, in her ongoing, monthly, “Brilliance of Books” selection?
I know I am a little late to the party on this one (how did I not know about this?) but Austin folks, you are in for a treat! Our friends at Recspec Gallery have curated a group show featuring new interpretations of the long-standing tradition of the bookplate. EX LIBRIS is a collection highlighting the work of 22 artists, and will be on display through June 9th, 2018.
“Do one thing every day that scares you” is a wonderful sentiment that is widely attributed to Eleanor Roosevelt, but I’m not sure she actually said that exact thing (although she did say words about doing things in spite of fearing those things.) At any rate, I’m not very good at doing the things that scare me—not on a daily basis or any other time, really—but yesterday I did do such a thing. At six o’clock in the evening I met with a few other readers at a coffee shop and we talked about books. I guess you could say it was a book club, but I couldn’t think of it that way, or else I might not have gone. But books and steamy, delicious coffee, and maybe sharing my enthusiasm about both things? This I thought I could do. And I did. And I am going back next month! “We improve ourselves by victories over ourselves. There must be contests, and we must win.” This is a thing that someone else said.
I Am, I Am, I Am was a memoir, specific slices of life told through the author’s numerous brushes with death, and it was a beautiful, breathtaking piece of writing. Coincidentally, I was already reading The Immortal Life Of Henrietta Lacks, which is what they read last month, so I had the opportunity to discuss that as well. It is probably not fair to make this comparison, because I am not sure that it is meant to be an enjoyable read– but when I compare the writing styles, the Henrietta Lacks book just feels flat, functional, a vehicle for a vast amount of research; it just didn’t have the extraordinary gut-punch of the language that I Am, I Am, I Am did–which is unfortunately, because Henrietta Lacks was a remarkable story and deserved the same kind of treatment.
All these knitted squares upon which these books are cozied up in? Well, I’m working on my baby sister’s divorce blanket again, knitting up scraps of sock yarn (and sock knitters know—there are *always* scraps) into a chaotic, multicolored monster of an afghan. I just checked my notes and it would seem that I started it over three years ago, in January of 2015. Yikes. Hopefully I will finish before her next divorce! Haha, just kidding. She’d have to remarry first for that! Not gonna happen on my watch. For those interested, the pattern is Shelley Kangs’ sock yarn blanket, and I don’t know if the instructions are still on her blog, or if her blog exists, but ravelry links to a web archive page, so you should be able to find it.
I don’t quite recall when we first installed this spacious landscape of shelves into my office, but what I can assure you is that they have been amassing quite a lot of junk ever since! (The above is an “after” photo, and as you’ll see, I still have a lot of junk.)
It occurred to me that there was a great deal of empty space just begging to be filled with all of the books that were lying around the house because the other bookshelves were already dangerously full. I figured hey, I’ll take this opportunity in finding a home for all the wayward books, to do a bit of organizing…and who knows…maybe that will clear up space for more books!
I posted a few photos on Instagram of this process and several folks requested that I share some lists of the titles I was reorganizing. I am happy to! See below for a shelf-by-shelf breakdown of what got moved where and why, my probably-logical-only-to-me reorganization system, and where to find each of the books if you want them for your own shelves.
A shelf of mostly haunted anthologies that have covers illustrated by Edward Gorey.
A shelf of poetry that didn’t fit on the other poetry shelf, zines, and weird booklets that defy categorization. And a funny little goblincat to watch over it all. Also, the best candle.
And the rest of the shelves…well…they’re a bit of a work in progress. There’s my mom altar, my shelf of incense, potions, and elixirs, and then an entire shelf dedicated to perfume samples! And as you can see from the photo at the very top of this post, there’s still a few shelves that need some work; they’re in odd or hard to reach spots with relation to my desk and where I sit, and so right now they are home to weird little action figures and toys that still need some sorting.
…so that’s it! And in case you are wondering: yes. Yes, I did clear some space to make room for even more books.
I am currently in the beginning pages of four books which –so far!– are equally wonderful. I’m not far enough into the stories to tell you much about them, but they are all magical, for good or ill, and I am enjoying them each immensely!
If you are the type to judge a book by it’s very excellent cover or if your tastes are similar to mine, which is to say you love ghosts and fairy tales and terror and enchantment and you treasure lyrical language and mysterious stories and beautiful illustrations…well, I don’t think you’d be steered wrong if you picked up any or all of these books to curl up with before the year ends.
A shelf for perfume and the dark arts.
The Death & Stuff shelf.
