#1: Crossfire by Miyuki Miyabe
#2: Shadow Family by Miyuki Miyabe
#3: All She Was Worth by Miyuki Miyabe
#4: Piercing by Ryu Murakami
#5: After Dark by Haruki Murakami
#6: Jennifer Government by Max Barry
#7: Strangers by Taichi Yamada
#8: The Devil’s Whisper by Miyuki Miyabe
#9: Vibrator by Mari Akasaka
#10: Dark Wars: The Tale of Meiji Dracula by Hideyuki Kikuchi
#11: Missing: Spirited Away by Gakuto Coda
#12: Calling You by Otsuichi
#13: Sayonara, Gangsters by Genichiro Takahashi
#14: In Praise of Shadows by Junichiro Tanizaki
#15: Welcome to the NHK by Tatsuhiko Takimoto
#16: Missing: Letter of Misfortune by Gakuto Coda
#17: The Hunter by Asa Nonami
#18: I Haven’t Dreamed of Flying For a While by Taichi Yamada
#19: The Zen of Fish by Trevor Corson
#20: Boogiepop and Others by Kouhei Kadono
#21: 100 Things You’re Not Supposed to Know by Russ Kick
#22: Real World by Natsuo Kirino
#23: Twilight by Stephanie Meyer
#24: New Moon by Stephanie Meyer
#25: Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami
#26: Ring by Koji Suzuki
#27: Syrup by Max Barry
#28: Hear the Wind Sing by Haruki Hurakami
#29: Apathy and Other Small Victories by Paul Neilan
#30: Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman by Haruki Murakami
#31: Ballad of a Shinigami, vol. 1 by Keisuke Hasegawa
#32: Company by Max Barry
#33: A Wild Sheep Chase by Haruki Murakami
#34: Dance Dance Dance by Haruki Murakami
#35: Boogiepop at Dawn by Kouhei Kadono
#36: Boogiepop Returns: vs. Imaginator, vol 1. by Kouhei Kadono
#37: Boogiepop Returns: vs. Imaginator, vol 2. by Kouhei Kadono
#38: Ballad of a Shinigami, vol. 2 by Keisuke Hasegawa
#39: Eclipse by Stephanie Meyer
#40: Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World by Haruki Murakami
#41: South of the Border, West of the Sun by Haruki Murakami
#42: exit here. by Jason Myers
#43: Dangerous Angels: the Weetzie Bat Books by Francesca Lia Block
#44: Psyche in a Dress by Francesca Lia Block
#45: Secret Vampire by L.J. Smith
#46: The Rose and the Beast: Fairy Tales Retold by Francesca Lia Block
#47: Daughters of Darkness by L.J. Smith
#48: New Tastes in Green Tea by Mutsuko Tokunaga
#49: Echo by Francesca Lia Block
#50: Necklace of Kisses by Francesca Lia Block
#51: Sunglasses After Dark by Nancy A. Collins
#52: The Halloween Tree by Ray Bradbury
#53: The Writer’s Little Helper by James V. Smith
#54: No Plot? No Problem by Chris Baty
#55: The Hunter by L.J. Smith
Sunday, November 30, 2008
#56 of 2008 - Drawing Blood by Poppy Z. Brite
I first read Drawing Blood when I was much younger. The copyright is October 1994, so I would have just turned sixteen when it was released. I bought it shortly thereafter, during the days when I would walk into town and raid the bookstores (the new one and both of the used shops) for horror books on a near-daily basis.
Drawing Blood is the story of one very creepy haunted house that was the setting for a multiple murder-suicide and the now-grown survivor who revisits it to find out why he is still alive. On the way through his journey he meets and grows close to many people, including a young hacker on the run from the Secret Service who had a dysfunctional childhood of his own. Full of blood, drugs and explicit (gay) sex, this isn’t the kind of book I’d imagine would attract a teenaged girl. But it did. In fact, the sex didn’t phase me much, despite having not grown up in a home that was overly open about “alternate lifestyles” or sexuality in general. We kind of glossed over that stuff at the old Brown homestead.
I had such amazingly fond memories of this book that I had to reread it at some point. I raided my attic looking for my cache of prized paperbacks, but it was nowhere to be found. All those obscure 90s vampire books, all the Dell Abyss novels, my hardback of Lost Souls with the dust jacket intact that I’d bought from the library for fifty cents in the ninth grade, all gone. I resigned myself to the fact that some of these books, especially the ones that I did not remember the exact titles for, were gone forever, or at least until I stumbled across them in a dusty used bookstore, and those establishments are about as common as fountain pens in a drawer full of Bics these days.
Brite’s books, though, are still in bookstores, and for $8 I bought my second copy of Drawing Blood. There were a lot of pop culture references I didn’t pick up on way back when, and now the “hacker speak” sounds somewhat dated, though it’s not horrible or even irritating enough to slow down the plot. It just plants Drawing Blood firmly in the early-to-mid-90s as surely as Zach the hacker’s 2800 baud modem does. And that’s all right, really.
This book makes me want to befriend the nearest Jamaican (if there are any nearby) and smoke some “smart ganja” all damn day. Just the descriptions of the smell of pot and pot smoke make my mouth water, and I’m not all that much of a fan of it in real life.
This is one of THE novels that made me want to write long fiction, along with Kirino’s Out and Miyabe’s Crossfire. The characters are painfully exquisite, the drama familiar enough to feel a connection to while alien enough to remain interesting. This is one of those books that, when I look at my own short little 200-page rough draft, I feel woefully inadequate. I can only pray that revision and polishing render my own characters this lifelike and wonderful.
5/5
Drawing Blood is the story of one very creepy haunted house that was the setting for a multiple murder-suicide and the now-grown survivor who revisits it to find out why he is still alive. On the way through his journey he meets and grows close to many people, including a young hacker on the run from the Secret Service who had a dysfunctional childhood of his own. Full of blood, drugs and explicit (gay) sex, this isn’t the kind of book I’d imagine would attract a teenaged girl. But it did. In fact, the sex didn’t phase me much, despite having not grown up in a home that was overly open about “alternate lifestyles” or sexuality in general. We kind of glossed over that stuff at the old Brown homestead.
I had such amazingly fond memories of this book that I had to reread it at some point. I raided my attic looking for my cache of prized paperbacks, but it was nowhere to be found. All those obscure 90s vampire books, all the Dell Abyss novels, my hardback of Lost Souls with the dust jacket intact that I’d bought from the library for fifty cents in the ninth grade, all gone. I resigned myself to the fact that some of these books, especially the ones that I did not remember the exact titles for, were gone forever, or at least until I stumbled across them in a dusty used bookstore, and those establishments are about as common as fountain pens in a drawer full of Bics these days.
Brite’s books, though, are still in bookstores, and for $8 I bought my second copy of Drawing Blood. There were a lot of pop culture references I didn’t pick up on way back when, and now the “hacker speak” sounds somewhat dated, though it’s not horrible or even irritating enough to slow down the plot. It just plants Drawing Blood firmly in the early-to-mid-90s as surely as Zach the hacker’s 2800 baud modem does. And that’s all right, really.
This book makes me want to befriend the nearest Jamaican (if there are any nearby) and smoke some “smart ganja” all damn day. Just the descriptions of the smell of pot and pot smoke make my mouth water, and I’m not all that much of a fan of it in real life.
This is one of THE novels that made me want to write long fiction, along with Kirino’s Out and Miyabe’s Crossfire. The characters are painfully exquisite, the drama familiar enough to feel a connection to while alien enough to remain interesting. This is one of those books that, when I look at my own short little 200-page rough draft, I feel woefully inadequate. I can only pray that revision and polishing render my own characters this lifelike and wonderful.
5/5
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