2026 Reading Log, pt 1
It's been a few years since I kept up on a reading log, but I'm getting back into it. For one, I have the spoons for both reading books and writing up my thoughts about them. For another, people have been reading my older logs! Thank you @heckcareoxytwit for dredging up my posts from years past, getting me to reread them and go "I should do that again".
001. Dark Carnivals: Modern Horror and the Origins of American Empire by W. Scott Poole. I love Poole—his Wasteland was pivotal to how I think about the Uncanny Valley, and In the Mountains of Madness is the best Lovecraft biography. I was reading this book when Trump bombed Venezuela, and it suddenly became much more topical. The thesis is that horror is a way for Americans to process (either through confronting or denying, or a little bit of both) the evil of American overseas intervention and imperialism. The prose is super sharp and very bitter. Some highlights: “Despite mountains of evidence to the contrary, Americans since World War II imagined themselves as the victims on the world stage… The country’s culture remains beset with an unhealthy neurosis that allows it to ignore the overwhelming hegemony it exercises over most of the people on Earth. The only country ever to use an atomic device against a civilian population has a fortress mentality, an inexplicable seething rage against the world.” “Zombie republics might be a better descriptor for many of the countries where American corporate and military power exercised control. Stripped of economic resources and moving at the direction of United States-supported puppet dictators, they represented decayed versions of hopes for autonomy and independence, the rotting corpses of colonial states subject to American necromancy.”
002. The Secret Lives of Dinosaurs by Dean R. Lomax, illustrated by Bob Nicholls. I was a huge fan of Lomax and Nicholls’ previous book about fossilized behavior, Locked in Time, and so was very pleased to see a sequel released. This book covers about fifty instances of behavior recorded in the fossil record, from birth to death, and what it tells us about prehistoric life. One of the things I quite like about this book is that photos of the fossils are featured as heavily as the art, and it’s clear how the one inspired the other. Despite the word “dinosaur” in the title, most of the examples are not dinosaurs. From multituberculates in prairie dog-like colonies to a crinoid death march, this book covers a wide array of taxa. And yes, the two headed reptile on the cover is real—a baby Hyphalosaurus born with two heads.
003. Believe it or Snot by Nick Caruso and Dani Rabaiotti. This is part of a series of grossout biology books; previous installments being Does It Fart? and True or Poo? This book is about slime, mostly mucus based, and how it’s used by animals, plants, fungi and other organisms. Each entry is a couple paragraphs long and rates the organism on a scale of one to five splats for how slimy it is. The book is cute and breezy, and I did learn some things. But it’s very short. Paperback sized, 146 pages, and about twenty of them are a recap of the rankings and a glossary of terms. I didn’t consider this book a waste of time… but I am glad I only paid two bucks for it at a used book store.
004. Cryptids, Creatures and Critters by Rachel Quinney. This is a monster book intended as a corrective to modern sources lumping all sorts of monsters, including those of Indigenous mythology, as “cryptids”. It’s clearly trying to be a responsible resource for a socially conscious audience, right down to having content warnings in the headers for the entries. I do not think it succeeds at those, mostly for editorial reasons. Despite containing “death” as a content warning, mentions of monsters killing people are not consistently tagged as such. And the snallygaster has a content tag, for “historical racism and discussion of slavery” that isn’t actually in its entry! I suspect there was a paragraph about the similarly named and definitely racism-tinged snoligoster that was edited. The real attraction of the book is its illustrations, which are colorful and numerous. And occasionally horny. If you’re looking for a book where the psoglav is giving you bedroom eyes, this is the book for you.
005. The Ultimate Guide to Japanese Yokai by Zach Davisson. Zach Davisson writes a book about yokai, I pay attention. And even though I am well versed in the Night Parade, I learned so much from this book. It takes the typical format of the yokai encyclopedia, with entries on individual monsters, but talks about them from the perspective of how the monster evolved, both in terms of its story and appearance, over the centuries. Davisson is a yokai revisionist of the Shigeru Mizuki school, willing to accept any and all Japanese monsters as yokai; he’s proud that this is the first yokai book to have an entry on kaiju. The book is illustrated with a mix of classical prints and modern interpretations, often both appearing right next to the other. If you only read one yokai book (but why would you want to?), this is a good one.
