Happy Hallowe’en! Here are some shiny things that caught my eye recently:
♦ Why not celebrate Hallowe’en with some old-fashioned horror-film viewing? If you need suggestions, my friend Andy sent me a link to Slant Magazine‘s list of The 25 Best Horror Films of the Aughts, and my friend Cameron has made a list of his 10 favorite horror films. Need some more reading suggestions? Check out Something Spooky This Way Comes over at The Second Pass—a list of creepy tales selected by writers and critics.
♦ I wish I had worn this costume!
Magritte's Son of Man
Via.
♦ If you’re sitting around wishing someone would read Hallowe’en-themed poems to you, check out the 2011 Halloween Poetry Reading over at the Science Fiction Poetry Association.
♦ Speaking of being read to, my friend Will Ludwigsen’s story, “We Were Wonder Scouts,” first published in Asimov’s Science Fiction, was recently released as a podcast over at Podcastle. Go give it a listen!
♦ Jo Walton continues her reflections on Ursula K. Le Guin’s Earthsea series with Tehanu: The Last Book of Earthsea (which, of course it isn’t). I agree with a lot of Walton’s unrest about Tehanu; while it’s beautifully written, as is any Le Guin book, the novel struggles with itself, or at least I struggled with my frustration with it. I so wanted Tenar to do more.
♦ The World Fantasy Awards were given out this weekend, and I was happy to see that Elizabeth Hand, one of my favorite writers, won Best Novella for “The Maiden Flight of McCauley’s Bellerophon” in Stories: All-New Tales. I was also excited to see that My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me: Forty New Fairy Tales, edited by Kate Bernheimer, won Best Anthology.
♦ I love Steven Price’s imagining of Hellboy as Eustace Tilley of The New Yorker. Via.
♦ Below are two of my favorite pieces from the Stranger Factory’s annual Hallowe’en art show, “Bewitching.” From the website: “Artists were invited to find inspiration in the history of Halloween, including costuming and merchandise from a past long gone to the symbolism and icons of this fantastic hallowed holiday—black cats to witches, to the walking dead and pumpkin kings…”
My Drifting Heart - Nevermore Edition by J*RYU
Damned Corn by Andrew Bell
Via.
♦ Cameron turned me on to this lovely adaptation of Michael Jackson’s “Thriller.”
