January Reads, '25

Sons of the Wolf by Barbara Michaels

Greygallows by Barbara Michaels

Witch by Barbara Michaels

Wings of the Falcon by Barbara Michaels

I’m still working through my personal library of Barbara Michaels; a nightly bedtime ritual. I started rereading her in October. Out of these few, Witch is my favorite.

Needful Things by Stephen King

The Outsider by Stephen King

I’ve been working on my public library’s collection of Stephen King since July. I got bogged down with It last month. It was a busy month. I didn’t have a lot of free time, and I’m more motivated these days to exercise and write. I’m also teaching an adult arthritis fibromyalgia class in the pool at work, so I’ve spent a lot of time making playlists, researching, and lesson planning for that. It is long and it took me more time than usual to wade through it. I loved it, just had other things happening. Needful Things is a typical long King book as well, but I’m getting through it at my usual pace. I have no intention of putting it down, but I don’t like it as well as some of his others.

Needful Things is hard because the evil at the heart of the book deliberately sets people against one another. Relationships are destroyed, the town becomes divided, everything and everyone dissolve into chaos, madness, and violence. I don’t mind the death; it’s the suffering I can’t bear. For me, this one is far closer to horror than It. It’s also too close for comfort to our current cultural situation.

The Outsider is part of a small series about a private investigation business (the first in the series is Mr. Mercedes) and it’s extraordinarily hard to put down. I may have to buy this one for my own collection. I’m almost finished with it and I can see how it’s going to end now, but the first page pulled me into a spooky murder mystery with unforgettable characters. I love a good murder mystery and that combined with King’s signature otherworldly monsters, demons, and boogeymen has me riveted.

Image by Çiğdem Onur from Pixabay

Cues by Vanessa Van Edwards

I happened to see this author interviewed on Diary of a CEO a YouTube production I enjoy. I was immediately hooked. She describes herself as a “recovering socially awkward person.” As a lifelong introvert, I can relate. If I’m working, telling a story, teaching a class, leading a group, etc., I’m just fine. But I’ll do anything to avoid a party or a social occasion. I have nothing to say, feel like an idiot, and don’t know what to do with my hands. I despise small talk. I’m very uncomfortable in large groups or crowds. I’m often painfully lonely, but I’d much rather feel that than the anxiety of facing social occasions.

One of my closest friends, whom I also work with, is taking a leadership class right now through our work organization and I thought of her, too, while watching this interview. Van Edwards studies social behavior with an emphasis on communication, both verbal and nonverbal. She is science-based and she’s fascinating and charismatic. She has a big website and has written a couple of books. I bought both books, copies for myself and my friend.

Cues talks about nonverbal messages, including vocal tone and pitch. Most of us are largely unconscious of the way we hold and move our bodies and use our voices. Van Edwards brings into awareness how we send and receive these unconscious messages about our competence and warmth. It’s fascinating material, easily digestible. I spend my work days watching the unconscious cues of the many people I interact with and noticing my own. Small changes are making a big difference in my level of social anxiety and ability to be more comfortably genuine.

One of the most helpful things I’m getting out of her work is how to dial down my warmth cues and bring up my competence cues. As a people pleaser, my warmth cues are way over the top and people have a tendency to glom onto me in unhealthy ways, leaving me feeling as though I’m fighting for my life because my boundaries are soft. Changing my nonverbal cues is making a big difference.

If Disney Ran Your Hospital by Fred Lee

This is another read connected to work. My friend was reading it for a leadership class she’s taking and I was intrigued, so picked it up. I bought my own copy and read it cover to cover. I’m not a fan of any big corporation right now, including Disney, but this is an interesting look at their undeniable success. Disney’s strategic model is certainly in line with my own values and integrity, at least as outlined in this book at the time it was written.

Ironically, though this is part of the curriculum for a leadership class given by our organization, our organization does not align with much of what the book has to say about what makes a hospital or any other organization great. Our mission statement, prominently displayed on the wall in every department, doesn’t align with the model presented, either. Lee points out in the book that’s one of the biggest problems with changing corporate culture: if management doesn’t act to reshape and encourage new patterns, nothing changes. Our small department is overseen by the manager of a larger department, and so on, up the chain of command. No matter how much we at the bottom would like to act to make positive changes that would help patients, patrons, and staff, we have absolutely no power to do so, and don’t feel safe pushing it with those in authority, who are adept at shutting down any perceived criticism or questioning from the troops.

You gotta love it.

Still, I’m hanging on to the book. It’s an interesting read, and maybe some day things will change and we could actually improve our program. Like so much else, it’s not that we don’t know how to do better. It’s that there’s no political will to do so.

Substack

Lost in Folklore

by Nicola Mostyn is surely created by a kindred spirit, though I delve more deeply into shadows and shards than I’ve so far found on Nicola’s site. I haven’t explored much, though. From what I have seen, she keeps her work lighhearted. Still, I find folklore and fairytales of all kinds fascinating and I always feel excited to find other devotees.

I recently came across

The End of the World Almanac

by Rick Wayne and was instantly intrigued. He writes long and short fiction as well as essays. I find him intelligent, thoughtful, relateable, and I like his fiction. I haven’t read everything on his relatively new site and I believe he just became a father, so he’s not posting much right now (everyone who’s ever brought home a new baby knows exactly what he’s doing instead). It doesn’t look like he has many readers (I can relate), and I wanted to bring him to your attention.

Jean Marie Bauhaus writes

Through a Glass, Darkly

. Unfortunately many others have newsletters with the same or similar names, a fact I discovered while creating the above link. She writes serialized fiction as well as short fiction and is a published author. I’ve read one of her serialized novellas and am following her current serialized story with pleasure. She leans towards the ghostly and unaccountable, my favorite kind of reading.

Another happy find has been Jennifer James’

Adventure To A Quiet Place

. Here’s the first post I read by her:

Sitting in silence

I could have written that myself. I subscribed immediately. Jennifer writes about quiet, an increasingly unpopular and scarce commodity these days. I suspect she’s a fellow introvert. Judging by what I’ve read of her work, we could be friends. She writes fiction and nonfiction and I enjoy her work. I’m looking forward to getting to know her better.

I think a lot about the horror genre these days. The more I think about it, the more confused I am. Do we each have a different definition of horror? Blood and gore, monsters in sewers, slasher stuff, and Pennywise the Clown don’t horrify me, but deliberately causing suffering does. That’s the kind of book I do have to put down. I vividly remember not being able to get through Herman Wouk’s Winds of War. He’s a wonderful writer and I love some of his other books, but that one upset me so much I couldn’t continue to read it.

Many of the Substack writers I follow and enjoy are classified as “horror.” I’m too much of a socially awkward person (see above!) to reach out and ask them questions about what that means to them – the writers --, but I’m curious.

In any case, I do love dark fantasy, depth psychology, ghosts and ghoulies and paranormal material.