recent reading :
— Raymond Sokolov. Wayward Reporter. The life of A. J. Liebling. Harper & Row, [1980].
— R. B. Russell. T. Lobsang Rampa and Other Characters of Questionable Faith. Tartarus Press, [2025].
— E. F. Benson. Visible and Invisible. Hutchinson, [1923]. Collection of a dozen uncanny stories. The publisher’s catalogue (dated Autumn 2023) at the back lists this under new fiction : “Between our own and the other world lies a borderland of shadows, which eyes that can pierce the material plane may sometimes see.” Benson’s father (died 1896) was the late Victorian Archbishop of Canterbury ; his siblings were all very talented and eccentric. “Mrs. Amworth” is a nasty village vampire tale, deftly told.
In a centenary essay at Wormwoodiana, Mark Valentine notes Benson’s “sardonic glee in the macabre.” http://wormwoodiana.blogspot.com/2023/10/borderland-shadows-centenary-of-visible.html
— John Kessel. The Presidential Papers plus Imagining the Human Future : Up, Down, or Sideways plus The Last American and much more. PM Press, 2019. Outspoken Authors 31.
Includes “The Franchise” and Terry Bisson’s interview, and other satirical pieces. I saw John briefly at Readercon and he inscribed this “Critical of every president . . .”
— Paul Park. A City Made of Words plus Climate Change plus A Resistance to Theory and much more. PM Press, 2019. Outspoken Authors 23.
“A Conversation with the Author” and “A Resistance to Theory” are profoundly disquieting stories.
— A Soliloquy for Pan. Edited by Mark Beech. 372, [2] pp. Egaeus Press, 2025. Second edition (originally published 2015), with additional illustrations, adding one story, “The Game of the Great God Pan” by Benjamin Tweddell.
— Mark Samuels. Black Altars [2003]. Illustrations by Joseph Dawson. Zagava, 2025. Pictorial cloth. Elegant large format edition (12 x 7-1/2 inches) of this collection of six stories, a delight to hold in the hand and read.
— M. P. Dare. Unholy Relics. Edward Arnold, [1947] .
Collection of ghost stories in the tradition, though the plots are a bit coarser than anything from the pen of M.R. James ; and an exemplary work of literary misogyny couched in chivalrous postures. In that respect, Benson (see above) ain’t bad, neither.