Friday Shuffle - Creeped Out Edition

I can't say I'm a big fan of horror movies. If they're the ghosty kind or have a lot of twists to the plot then I like them but slasher type movies only serve to bore me. I'm more annoyed by the gore than I am frightened of it. Maybe it has something to do with the blood and guts being more in your face than in your mind and that's why I like horror books so much more.

A well written book of any sort allows your mind to take up occupancy in the story. Instead of someone interpreting for you how things look or connect, as is done in movies, your get to put it all together yourself. The scenes, the characters, the locations - they sprout from the author's mind but you transplant them to your own head for them to take root. I think that's why I can remember scary books with much more clarity than I can a scary movie, even when it's the same story. Believe me, Stephen King's The Shining, has stuck with me much longer and much more deeply than the film ever did. It doesn't even matter that I've read the book maybe twice but have seen the film at least six times and I first read the book about thirty years ago.

Yesterday Heart-Shaped Box by Joe Hill was delivered to me. Friends had recommended it to me as being a very scary book and as I had been hankering to read something spooky, I ordered it. I began reading it immediately and so far I'm enjoying it thoroughly. The author, who happens to be Stephen King's son, has the knack for getting me sucked into these characters immediately and he tells a story and describes a scene very well. I'm not far enough into the book yet for anything super scary to have happened but it's coming. I know it's coming and all at once I can't wait for it and I'm dreading it.

I love reading creepy tales - horror books and ghost stories and true crime stuff - and yet I dread how they tend to creep into my sleep and invade my dreams. I will lay in bed in the dark and listen to every sound and wonder if there's something out there wanting to do me harm. In the daylight it all seems ridiculous but once I go to bed and the moonlight steals into my window it all changes. Not very long ago I'd read something a bit scary before bedtime. I'd fallen asleep just fine but before it had begun to get light outside I awoke and saw someone dressed all in white in my bedroom. I then realized that the someone in white was the electric fan as viewed in the moonlight without my glasses being on but not before I had screamed like a banshee and nearly gave my husband a stroke.

I know the truly creepy, the very scary, and the absolutely horrific are coming in this book and I can't wait and I know I'm going to be so sorry afterwards. I already credit The Shining for preventing me from walking through the labyrinth of my basement without breaking into a sweat. I'm afraid I'm going to be in for something worse with Heart-Shaped Box.

The very non-threatening Bixente the iPod will now shuffle for us.

1. Meeting Place - The Last Shadow Puppets
2. Run Run - Those Dancing Days
3. Leaving On A Jet Plane - Peter, Paul & Mary
4. In Berlin - Sugarplum Fairy
5. Where We Are - Asher Lane
6. You Wanted More - Tonic
7. Massachusetts - The Bee Gees
8. Evil Ways - Santana
9. Barbara Allen - Everly Brothers
10. Never Going Back Again - Fleetwood Mac

Have a great weekend. I'll leave a nightlight on.

John Wilkes Booth Murdered My Sleep

I finished these socks a couple days ago.



Technical details for those who dig technical details:
Pattern: Tidal Wave
Yarn: Regia 4-ply Color
Colorway: 5030

Finishing these socks would normally mean that within ten minutes of grafting the toe closed on the second sock I'd be casting on for my next pair. And I did. Some pretty pink socks done in a cotton/poly blend yarn that's going to be crazy soft when I'm finished. I knit the cuff and about half of the first pattern repeat before I made an error that required me to unknit a half round - which, of course, I promptly bollocksed up in a way that required me to rip the whole thing apart. I started it again, knit two rounds of the cuff and put it down. That was last Sunday and I haven't knit a lick of it since. I've been so frenetic with my knitting lately that I need to take a break from it so I picked up and began to read again a book I'd started and put down after three chapters. Now I'm all into the story and I can't leave the book alone long enough to go back to knitting.

I'm reading the book on the assassination of Abraham Lincoln I got about a month ago and it's fascinating. Well - maybe not to you but to an American history geek like me, it's fabulous. It's very well researched and it's dispelled some myths that I'd always read were true but suspected weren't true and lo and behold! they aren't true. Since there are very few books about Lincoln's assassination itself - most writings are book chapters or pamphlets or articles - details are explained in much greater detail than in anything else I've read on the subject. One is able to really see the players involved as actual fleshed-out humans instead of merely two-dimensional characters and I've found that the whole story before and after the actual act of assassination is more complex than I knew. This book is like watching a suspenseful movie with all sorts of nefarious players and I'm utterly sucked into it. I'm also a big fan of true crime books - they scare me in a way that regular horror books or movies don't - so this book not only feeds my history geekiness but feeds my true crime need-for-a-scary-thrill cravings.

I have, however, made a little mistake. My sleep has been messed up for days were I've been awakened too early and then I take a too-long nap later to to try to make up for it. That insures that I don't get sleepy until later than I want but then I'm again awakened too early which makes me need a nap and the cycle starts again. In an effort to try to get sleepy and because I'm finding it hard to put this book down - I'm reading it quite slowly, flipping to the back to check out the author's notes in the back when it's indicated - I've been reading it before bed. And as is normal for me when I read true crime books at night, it's been creeping me out. One may not think that a story as well-known as Lincoln's assassination would creep anyone out but it is. And the photo on the book of John Wilkes Booth and his soulless, beady eyes - well...eye, since half of his face is shaded out - is creeping me out even more. I read until I am so sleepy that I'm nearly dropping the book, put the book down, switch off the bedroom lamp and then lose my sleepiness because I'm feeling all freaky about John Wilkes Booth's ghost possibly being in my bedroom. Never mind that I don't much believe in ghosts, live in Germany and am pretty certain that John Wilkes Booth was never even in Germany, let alone left his ghostly spirit here. When it's 3am and you're tired, already sleep deprived and have been reading just the sort of book that pushes your freak-out buttons, anything seems possible.