Folktales of monsters and gods and weirdness from Tono in Japan, originally collected in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, presented here in a graphic novel adaptation. The art is wonderful and the stories are delightful, even (maybe especially) when they seem unfinished. I enjoy the way the creator inserts himself into the framing narrative.
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Writer and software engineer in the US Midwest. I enjoy poetry, horror, some f/sf, some mystery, some literary fiction (but not the kind where the main character is a professor and nothing happens).
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caracabe started reading Mourning jewelry by Stephanie M. Wytovich
caracabe finished reading Neruda and Vallejo by Robert Bly
caracabe started reading No Trouble at All by Eric Raglin
caracabe reviewed Tono Monogatari by Shigeru Mizuki
Shigeru Mizuki—Japan’s grand master of yokai comics—adapts one of the most important works of supernatural …
Review of Tono Monogatari
Folktales of monsters and gods and weirdness from Tono in Japan, originally collected in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, presented here in a graphic novel adaptation. The art is wonderful and the stories are delightful, even (maybe especially) when they seem unfinished. I enjoy the way the creator inserts himself into the framing narrative.
caracabe finished reading Tono Monogatari by Shigeru Mizuki
Tono Monogatari by Shigeru Mizuki
Shigeru Mizuki—Japan’s grand master of yokai comics—adapts one of the most important works of supernatural literature into comic book form. …
Sadie Hartmann: Feral & Hysterical: Mother Horror's Ultimate Reading Guide to Dark and Disturbing Fiction by Women (Paperback, 2025, Page Street Publishing)
Feral & Hysterical: Mother Horror's Ultimate Reading Guide to Dark and Disturbing Fiction by Women by Sadie Hartmann
Move over Stephen King, Dean Koontz, and Lovecraft―it’s time to let the Scream Queens howl. In Sadie Hartmann’s follow-up book …
caracabe finished reading Imagination by Ruha Benjamin
caracabe started reading Tono Monogatari by Shigeru Mizuki
Tono Monogatari by Shigeru Mizuki
Shigeru Mizuki—Japan’s grand master of yokai comics—adapts one of the most important works of supernatural literature into comic book form. …
caracabe reviewed Stone Door by Leonora Carrington
Ancient Mesopotamia, the Zodiac, and the land of the dead feature in this wildly surrealistic …
Review of The Stone Door
In this surrealist novel, full of images from alchemy and astrology and occult lore, two people try to find each other, but sometimes they can’t even find themselves. The stone door of the title is both a barrier and an opening. Very different in tone from Carrington’s novel The Hearing Trumpet, and not a light read. Stories within dreams within manuscripts within stories, with characters slipping across boundaries and transforming into others. Carrington challenges conventional notions of narrative, language, gender, and the self. This is a book I could read many times and get something new from it each time. It has a werewolf, which is always a plus.
In this surrealist novel, full of images from alchemy and astrology and occult lore, two people try to find each other, but sometimes they can’t even find themselves. The stone door of the title is both a barrier and an opening. Very different in tone from Carrington’s novel The Hearing Trumpet, and not a light read. Stories within dreams within manuscripts within stories, with characters slipping across boundaries and transforming into others. Carrington challenges conventional notions of narrative, language, gender, and the self. This is a book I could read many times and get something new from it each time. It has a werewolf, which is always a plus.
caracabe finished reading Stone Door by Leonora Carrington
Stone Door by Leonora Carrington
Ancient Mesopotamia, the Zodiac, and the land of the dead feature in this wildly surrealistic adventure story—Leonora Carrington’s revolutionary second …
caracabe started reading Imagination by Ruha Benjamin
caracabe stopped reading Varieties of Fascism by E. Weber
Weber spends a lot of time trying to tie fascism and socialism together. He disapproves of fascism; he disapproves of socialism; therefore, they are at least in sympathy with one another, if not the same thing viewed from different angles. (Maybe later parts of the book modify this stance, but I’m old and have limited time to read.)
caracabe started reading Stone Door by Leonora Carrington
Stone Door by Leonora Carrington
Ancient Mesopotamia, the Zodiac, and the land of the dead feature in this wildly surrealistic adventure story—Leonora Carrington’s revolutionary second …
caracabe reviewed Moonflow by Bitter Karella
Review of Moonflow
A psychedelic/cult/folk/spatterpunk horror novel, full of mushrooms and gore and horniness. Every character is some degree of broken, and every character is at least a little, now and then, sympathetic. (Every human character, that is.) Trying to get back home to a needy cat is a worthy goal for the protagonist. Too bad tricky earth deities and a murderous cult and hallucinations and a mansplaining park ranger get in the way. I enjoyed the chapter epigraphs from a fictional mushroom guide and the diary of a bygone incompetent entrepreneur. A trippy ride.