Shivers of Delight

For many wonderful years, I lived in Athens, Georgia. This past weekend a close friend from Athens came to visit me and while I was driving her to the airport this morning I was thinking about the Summer Solstice and that reminded me of the Georgia Guidestone s in Elberton,Georgia. (source: Wikipedia) First, a bit about Elberton, GA. This small rural community is located about 45 miles outside of Athens. It is known as the "Granite Capitol of the World" because of the granite mines there. I have a feeling there are other places in the US that would question Elberton's claim to fame, but that's for them to fight over. My friends and I were known to venture to Elberton for two things. First, there were large areas where pieces of granite were thrown in a trash pile because they broke while they were being carved, they were left over pieces, or best of all there was a misspelling. If you had a garden and wanted to make a unique patio or edge a bed you went to the...

Somehow, I had missed the work of Gahan Wilson . I was familiar with the macabre drawings of Edward Gorey and Charles Addams, but for some reason, while I had seen some of Wilson's cartoons, I didn't know anything about the man behind them. Maybe part of the reason I wasn't as familiar with Wilson is that although his cartoons are in The New Yorker , he is better known for his cartoons in Playboy .  Fortunately, a documentary was released in 2014 called Gahan Wilson: Born Dead, Still Weird  by Stephen-Charles Jaffe. It took me a few years to discover it, but I rectified that last night. (I rented it from Amazon)  The film features Wilson in his studio talking about his life as a child, which greatly influenced his work, and his process of creating a cartoon. This is interspersed with some great commentary by people like Hugh Heffner, Stephen Colbert, Neil Gaiman, Guillermo del Toro, Stan Lee and others who talk about their love for Wilson and, ...

I've been meaning for some time to read the book " Being Dead is No Excuse: The Official Southern Ladies Guide to Hosting the Perfect Funeral ." I finally got my chance when I spied the book in a store in New Orleans last week and grabbed it. I read it cover to cover before bed in three nights. This book is funny! "Being Dead is No Excuse" discusses funeral culture in the Mississippi Delta and highlights the advice with humorous stories from the town of Greenville, MS. We learn about the difference between Episcopalians and Methodists (basically it comes down to alcohol and Campbell's Cream of Mushroom soup); proper flowers for a funeral (never carnations -with or without glitter); writing the perfect obituary (you shouldn't lie outright, but smoothing over some ugly details is fine); and so much more. One of my favorite stories (there are several) is how a certain lady of Greenville refused to fly on the same plane as the local newspaper editor wh...

I'm a bit late on this one and you may have already heard about it, but just in case, did you know that Stephen King's "The Shining" has been turned into an opera? Awesome! While I'm not a regular listener of opera I do enjoy it from time-to-time. Why? The drama, of course. Did you ever think about how the term soap-opera came about? I heard about "The Shining" being made into an opera on NPR last evening. Hear that story right here . The Minnesota Opera commissioned the work and the music is composed by Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Paul Moravic. The libretto is by Mark Campbell. I'm very sad to announce that tickets have already been sold out. I'm hopeful that the opera will go on tour and there will be performances around Halloween. How perfect would that be? Of course, my husband, hearing some of the music last evening looked physically in pain, but opera isn't for everyone. Maybe he was just frightened. Here are some photos from...

I just finished reading The Loved One: An Anglo-American Tragedy by Evelyn Waugh and I think it might be a new favorite. The book was originally published in 1948 and was the result of a trip to Hollywood by English writer Waugh and his wife to discuss the possibility of Waugh's novel "Brideshead Revisited" being turned into a movie. Waugh admits he had no intention of letting the novel become a movie, but thought they could get a nice trip out of the deal to discuss it. While in Hollywood, Waugh discovered the Forest Lawn Memorial Park  in Hollywood Hills. Forest Lawn is a cemetery founded in 1906 and I think is best described by this paraphrased quote from Jessica Mitford found on Wikipedia (the original source is missing) "Forest Lawn's kitsch was just a sophisticated strategy for lubricating the checkbooks of the grieved." To say that Waugh was not impressed with Hollywood, Americans or even the English people who lived in Hollywood would be an un...

Yesterday evening I had the opportunity to see The Witch by writer/director Robert Eggers. Before I tell you what I thought of the movie, I would like to provide you with some information. We don't have a television at our house so I saw none of the trailers or previews and heard none on the "news" about it. I don't go to the movies very often. The last film I saw in the theater was Alice in Wonderland  with Mr. Depp- that was nearly 6 years ago. A co-worker saw The Witch  and told me she hated it. I know reviews have been very mixed. I had a large alcoholic beverage right before going into see the movie. Ok, I won't waste any more of your time. I loved The Witch . I did! I still do! Maybe I had lower expectations than other people? Maybe the alcohol helped? Maybe it's just a really good film. Do not in any way think that this is a horror film (or even a mystery as IMDb would have you believe.) It is certainly not. I know this because I am rea...

You may recall that I have a bit of a fascination with the Lizzie Borden story. Did she or didn't she? Some days I'm firmly in the stance that she killed her father and step-mother and other days I'm not so sure. In the past week I had a chance to watch the latest Lizzie Borden movie (there are lots of them) Lizzie Borden Took an Axe (2014) which stars Christina Ricci. I have to say that I really enjoyed this movie. Made for tv, the movie clocks in at an hour and twenty-seven minutes and seemed shorter than that to me. From what I know of the murders, the script seemed to stick fairly closely to the actual facts even if they had to gloss over some things to move the plot along. What made it fun to watch was Ricci. I don't think I'll ever again picture Lizzie without seeing Ricci. Her demeanor is chilling. No one can play wide-eyed innocence like she can, while at the same time making you feel you should never turn your back on her. The other nice hook was the ...

What could better than cuddling with my cats on a cold morning watching Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter (2012) on what would have been Abraham Lincoln's 207th birthday? Well, now that I've finished watching the film, I have a few suggestions, but hindsight won't get me anywhere. Don't get me wrong, I have several reasons why you should watch this movie. Ready? It looks awesome. From the costumes, to the sets, to the action scenes on amphetamines, it's stunning. Vampires. These are your sun-up, rock-star variety vampires, but fortunately they don't sparkle. They often wear these hip-looking sunglasses that make them look very steam-punk. In fact the entire movie has a steam-punk feel. The bow (and it's more of a slight nod of the head) to history can be amusing. Lincoln's weapon of choice is a silver-headed axe.  You get to erase the image of Mary Todd Lincoln as an overweight, vapid, shopaholic and reimagine her as an attractive, sensitive, st...

Sometime during the night of February 8th and February 9th of 1855, residents of Devon, England woke up to find hoof-like prints in the snow traveling over 40 miles. The odd thing was the prints weren't from a horse or any known animal. They appeared to be from a standing, two-legged being. The other unusual thing was that the prints went right over any object in it's way. The prints were seen on rooftops and over the tops of haystacks. Well, you can imagine the uneasiness that would create. The footprints were immediately attributed to the Devil. Several theories have been put forth to explain them, but kangaroos and hot-air balloons seem even more far-fetched than the devil to me. I'll leave you to read more about it at this wikipedia link. It's an interesting phenomenon though, you must admit. That's probably why it became the central idea of a 2014 movie called Dark Was the Night . As luck would have it, the movie is streaming on Netflix. Dark Was the Ni...

I don't know why John Connolly isn't as famous as Neil Gaiman. Well, I probably do know why, but that's for a different kind of blog. I truly love Connolly's writing and his latest book of supernatural short stories does not disappoint. I have previously written about Connolly's series for young adults concerning Samuel Johnson and his dog, Boswell, and their adventures with Hell. If you didn't see it, you can find it right here . Connolly's latest is Night Music: Nocturnes Volume 2 . It contains eleven short stories and two novellas- thirteen total. As I finished each story, I quietly closed the book and stared off into space for a few minutes. Connolly's stories are chilling and deep. You want to think about them awhile and wonder. They really will haunt you. This book follows a short story collection by Connolly published ten years ago. I haven't read that one, but I'll be looking it up. Some of the stories feature a dark look at re...

People occasionally ask me if I get depressed after Halloween is over. The answer is no, not really. Yes, I'm exhausted because so many things are crammed into a month, but for me Halloween lasts all year long. Artists keep creating spooky pieces, the dead are celebrated in many ways around the world all year long, and authors keep writing scary stories. Which brings me to Stephen King's latest book of short stories that is being released this week. The Bazaar of Bad Dreams  is available in hard-cover and as an audio book. In a recent interview with King in the New York Times , the collection is described as containing horror stories as well as stories about life being horrible. That's my synopsis, not King's. My favorite part in the interview is when King says: "But I want all the people who don't like to be scared. I want to welcome them in a gentle way, and then scare them. I want to get them in there, where they can't get out." King hasn...

Here we go. Today is the start of the Thirteen Days of Halloween! Unlike the Twelve Days of Christmas that actually takes place after Christmas, The Thirteen Days of Halloween lead us to the auspicious day. I try to do some fun Halloween thing every day from now till Halloween. That means I have to put aside the planning and the party preparations and actually experience the moment. Are you with me? Today, I'll be listening to at least one episode, if not more, of my new favorite podcast Lore . Lore's first episode was in March of this year and a new one arrives every two weeks. Since I've just started listening, I have enough to last me till Halloween if I listen to just one episode every night.  Not sure I'll be able to stop myself at one, though. In the words of Lore 's host, Aaron Mahnke, "Lore is a be-weekly podcast about true life scary stories. The people, places and things of our darkest nightmares all have real facts at their core. Each epis...

This is where I have to explain how I really don't know anything about video games or whatever they're calling them these days. I think the fact that I just wrote "video" probably dates me. However, if I was a gamer (?) I would want to play Year Walk . This is how the designers describe it: "Grim tales, horrifying creatures and cryptic enigmas await in the dark woods of 19th century Sweden." They even have this spooky video to further hook me. So, apparently now I need a Wii even though we don't own a television. Maybe the Great Pumpkin will provide? In the meantime, which brings me back to books for All Hallow's Read, the Year Walk designers have created a free, downloadable ebook that accompanies the game called Bedtime Stories for Awful Children . The five newly-created Swedish short stories (written in a folktale style) have been translated to English, French, Spanish, German and Italian because the designers say children are bad...

So, a few weeks ago I was listening to NPR (favorite) and Science Friday was on. I kind of like listening to Science Friday because the host's voice is a bit Kermit-the-frogish. Although I don't consider myself to be a "science person", the show often has interesting pieces for non-science people like me. Like this particular friday; a few weeks ago. The subject was a discussion of a new book by Kathryn Harkup called A is for Arsenic: The Poisons of Agatha Christie . You can hear the story from Science Friday right here . Harkup is a former research chemist and decided to explain the science behind each of the poisons that Agatha Christie uses to knock off her characters. Fun! Each chapter of A is for Arsenic looks at a different book. Goodreads says "Fact- and fun-packed, A is for Arsenic looks at why certain chemicals kill, how they interact with the body, and the feasibility of obtaining, administering, and detecting these poisons, both when Chris...

One of my favorite books to read every Halloween is The Homecoming by Ray Bradbury. For me, it's like reading the Night Before Christmas on Christmas Eve. I know, everyone always talks about The Halloween Tree by Bradbury as being "the" Halloween book, but that one never really captured me. It goes on a little too long, I think. (Please do not egg my house if you feel like I've just thrown a dagger. I'll re-read it, ok?) The Homecoming is a short book about a young boy waiting for all his ghoulish relatives to arrive for Halloween. He loves them all dearly, but hasn't become a vampire yet and is a bit sad. The story was originally written in 1946 and published in Mademoiselle , of all places, but re-released in 2006 with illustrations by Dave McKean. "He took up the candle. Oh, to have teeth like steel, like nails! Or the power to send one's mind, free like Cecy, asleep on her Egyptian sands! But, no, he even feared the dark! He slept in a...

Halloween is just three weeks away! I'm simultaneously experiencing excitement and loss that it's going too quickly. Well, to slow things down a bit, I'm suggesting that we all participate in  All Hallow's Read started by author Neil Gaiman back in 2010. Here's what Gaiman said in a blog post : "I propose that, on Hallowe'en or during Hallowe'en week, we give each other scary books. Give children scary books that they'll like and can handle. Give adults scary books they'll enjoy." It's that simple. I've started doing this and it's fun choosing books for people.  So this week, I'm going to focus the blog on some scary books I've liked and ones I want to read.  Maybe you'll get inspired to read one yourself or buy it for someone else. I'm starting off the week with In the Shadow of Blackbirds by Cat Winters. I found this book by accident when I went on to Overdrive to download an ebook from my library. I...

I did it! I finally made it to Ghoultide Gathering in Chelsea, MI. In case you don't know, Ghoultide Gathering is a once-a-year market featuring some of the best Halloween artists from around the country. In short, GG (I can't keep spelling that out) exceeded my expectations. It was a spooky girl's dream. My husband thought I was a bit crazy flying to Michigan for one night, but I met other crazy people from Louisiana, California and Canada who did the same thing. Great minds think alike. Perhaps I did feel a little crazy when I was sitting in the dark and cold in a parking lot at 6 AM waiting for the ticket booth to open, but that quickly dissipated. On to the photos. Note: I was like a kid at Christmas so, my photos are bit haphazard. I was giddy (and cold.) A wonderful scarecrow greeted visitors at the entrance. Tickets went on sale at 7 AM for the Early Buy, which I recommend if you're a serious collector. Some of the booths of well-known artists sold very qu...