One Difference With Reading Novels In “Pre-Internet” Times (And Why It Was Better)

Although I’m still burnt-out on reading novels, I suddenly remembered one interesting difference between reading novels in the modern day and reading them in the “pre-internet” times. Whilst I was born in the late 1980s – when the internet technically existed – I didn’t really use the internet during my childhood and I didn’t use it that much during my teenage years during the early-mid 2000s either. It certainly wasn’t the “everyday” thing it is for me these days.

There were only one or two desktop computers in the house that actually had the internet and, for parts of the early 2000s, it was slow dial-up internet too. Not to mention that, on holidays and journeys – when I tended to read more novels – there wasn’t really portable internet in the way that there is today. As such, whilst I don’t really have direct experience of the pre-internet times, I’ve experienced something close enough to it that I was able to spot this one thing.

I am, of course, talking about unfamiliar words. If you were reading older second-hand novels and/or if you were reading slightly older US novels in Britain, you would stumble across these occasionally. They were words that obviously made enough sense to both the writer and the original readers not to need an explanation. Whether these were old descriptive words, old brand names (used as a stand-in for the item itself), old things that aren’t common these days, words that only made sense in a US context etc… You’d stumble across unfamiliar words.

These days, the meaning is literally just a quick internet search away. You just type the word into Wikipedia or into a search engine, and it tells you what it means. It might also show you pictures too. Ok, in the olden days, you could have looked in a dictionary or an encyclopaedia but it might not have the word and – if you are travelling – you probably haven’t bought a bulky physical dictionary or a multi-volume encyclopaedia with you. Why would you?

So, if you found an unfamiliar word in the “pre-internet” times, you had three options. You could try to work out the meaning from the context it was used in. You could just ignore the word and move on. Or you could actually use your imagination. Often, you’d end up doing a mixture of these things. And, believe it or not, it was actually better.

For example, whilst reading a Sherlock Holmes book in about 2005, I was able to work out from the context that a “tantalus” was something where spirits were stored. I think that a character gets a glass of brandy from one or something like that. But, until writing this article, I had no clue what one actually looked like. So, I had to use my imagination. If I remember rightly, I imagined a weird stand – like a pair of old scales – with posh glass decanters dangling from it in a tantalising way. Alas, the actual reality is considerably more boring-looking.

Ok, that was a weird example, but it proves a point. I actually like my imaginary idea of what a “tantalus” looks like more than the actual reality of it. It seemed a lot weirder and more eccentric, a better fit for the quirky Victorian setting of a Sherlock Holmes story. My imagination came up with something more interesting-looking that actually fit into the context of the story a bit better. It was a subtle thing, but it enhanced the story a little for me. Plus I learnt a funny-sounding word too.

Because the three options that I mentioned earlier quickly become second-nature if you read a lot of novels without immediate access to the internet, unfamiliar words didn’t break your immersion in the story as much as you might think. Yes, you might have to spend half a second working out what they meant, deciding whether to ignore them or letting your imagination conjure up an image but you could then quickly move on without putting the book down.

Curiosity is a powerful thing and, if you have a search engine within arm’s reach, then you’re probably going to look away from the book and look at the screen instead. It’s a small thing, but novels “flow” better when you don’t do this.

More than all of that, there was just something about stumbling across an unfamiliar word and having no direct answers. It genuinely made you feel like you were looking at a different world or a different culture. It added a sense of scale to the story. A genuine sense that you were somewhere different and unfamiliar. It’s a really difficult feeling to describe if you haven’t actually experienced it, but it certainly added something to novels back then. And, in this age of personalised algorithms, ChatGPT, the “attention economy” etc.. there’s something weirdly refreshing about the idea of reading something that wasn’t written for you.

On a side-note, this also made older sci-fi and fantasy novels easier to read too. Because readers of the time had some experience with handling unfamiliar words without instant access to the internet, writers could be a bit more creative without worrying too much about confusing the audience.

Whilst some sci-fi/fantasy novels included a glossary at the back, some classic sci-fi novels – such as some UK editions of Anthony Burgess’ 1962 novel “A Clockwork Orange” and William Gibson’s 1984 novel “Neuromancer” – actually used deliberately confusing and unexplained futuristic jargon as a literary technique. These books take effort to read, but its easier if you’ve read books in “pre-internet” contexts before and are used to grappling with unfamiliar words.

It’s a small thing, but not being able to instantly look up unfamiliar words makes a huge difference to the feeling of reading a novel. The story “flows” better, you have to think/imagine more and you’ll also get this fascinating immersive feeling of being somewhere genuinely unfamiliar too.

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Anyway, I hope that this was interesting 🙂

Second-Hand Novels During The Early-Mid 2000s – A Ramble

Well, although I still seem to be burnt-out on reading fiction, I had a sudden moment of nostalgia for the second-hand novels that I read during my teenage years during the early-mid 2000s. But what was so wonderful about them?

Firstly, there was just how open and accessible they were. Whilst charity shops and second-hand bookshops still exist these days, there were fewer other options about two decades ago. And these were places where you could buy three old books for the price of one new one. These were common, affordable books at a low enough price that you could easily “take a chance” on an author you hadn’t heard of before.

Plus, they were all in the same format too – paperback books. You didn’t need to “subscribe” to anything or have the correct gadget to enjoy them. If you could read, then you could read anything. Yes, the range of authors back then was probably limited by the whims and biases of the publishing industry – it certainly wasn’t perfect in that sense – but, for readers at least, it was still a hell of a lot fairer and more open than modern “streaming”, “E-books” or “AAA” videogames are. A haven of openness in an increasingly closed-off and commercialised culture.

Not only that, being a teenager at the time, one other cool thing about second-hand novels (and novels in general) was that they don’t have any of the patronising official censorship that films in the UK have. There are no mandatory age ratings or any of that nonsense. You aren’t interrogated for ID when you bought a book – and, to my teenage self, this felt like freedom and civilisation! Not to mention that this was also a time in history when novels were almost expected to be a bit edgier than films were, so there was also a certain rebellious thrill to reading novels back then. A sense that you were in a simultaneously safe and dangerous place, free from the meddling of the censor.

Secondly, there was the time delay. Back in the early-mid 2000s, the 1980s were as recent as the early-mid 2000s are today. As such, a lot of the old books in charity shops and second-hand shops were from that decade. And people certainly knew how to make cover art back then! After all, this was a pre-internet time when most people’s first encounter with a novel was seeing it in full-size on a shop shelf (rather than as a small internet thumbnail). And, since CGI and digital photography weren’t really much of a thing back then, the cover art was often a dramatic realistic painting that was filled with atmosphere and intriguing visual storytelling.

Here are some examples of elaborate, painted 1980s paperback novel cover art. Yes, these are all sci-fi, fantasy and horror novels but it’s very telling that – out of these six books – one has an actual film poster on the cover, and the other five just look like they could be film posters. Yes, whilst cover art has improved in recent years, old-school cover art was “artistic as standard” a lot of the time.

Reading older novels when I was a teenager probably also improved both my reading and writing skills too. One of the things I noticed when I went through my binge-reading phase in the late 2010s/early 2020s was that I could often tell old and modern novels apart almost instantly, purely by their writing style. Even the “trashiest” or “pulpiest” 1980s novel would often use a much larger vocabulary and longer sentences than a lot of – but not all – modern novels. Again, reading lots of these older books when I was a teenager – and just seeing them as “normal” – has probably made me both a better reader and a better writer.

Thirdly, it was a time before social media seriously took off, and before smartphones were common. Yes, this made reading novels a lonelier experience, but it also created a more open-minded approach to culture too. Sometimes, you’d see a cool-looking second-hand book in a shop and just decide to take a chance on it. You couldn’t look up reviews or scrutinise the political opinions of the author or anything like that. If a novel looked like it was interesting, then you probably bought it, read it and made up your own mind about it.

Again, it was a lonelier experience, but the lack of instant access to information about a book or its author had all sorts of benefits. Not only did it make you learn more about your own sensibilities, it opened you up to books that you might not have even thought about reading, it made you judge the book on its own merits. You were reading a novel because you actually enjoyed it, rather than to show it off on social media.

Following on from this, whilst online shopping certainly existed during the early-mid 2000s, old charity shops and second-hand bookshops were the exact opposite of the sort of precise “Search for a particular author” or “Our algorithm recommends...” way that you might choose a book these days. You’d walk into a shop with the intention of maybe buying a book or two, and literally no clue what you were going to buy. Again, you’d often find yourself serendipitously stumbling across all sorts of interesting stuff you might not have found if you were able to search more precisely. Again, old second-hand books open people’s minds.

Finally, there was the “loneliness” I mentioned earlier. Back then, it didn’t really feel as lonely as it does when I look back… and a lot of that was to do with the context of the time. Because social media wasn’t as common or popular, because most mobile phones back then could literally only make calls and send texts (and play “Snake”), because more people read books but rarely talked about them etc… There was more of a sense that you were on your own. Yet, there was also something liberating about this.

Because you couldn’t really “show off” as much, you were guided more by your own interests and sensibilities. You bought and read books that you actually thought that YOU would enjoy. When you read, you read for the fun of it rather than to review it on the internet or to be “on trend” or to meet “personal goals” or whatever else. It didn’t matter how trendy or unfashionable an author was, only whether you liked what they wrote. You could explore all sorts of obscure sub-genres (whether 1980s splatterpunk horror fiction, 19th century detective fiction, 1960s sci-fi and beat literature etc...) without worrying about how it would look to others, because no-one else really cared that much about what you were reading.

It all looks very “lonely” in retrospect, when seen from a time where even an “I’ll never own a smartphone!” person like myself has a website, but it was actually just kind of… normal… at the time.

It was a quieter, more introspective approach to culture. You got to go through an amazing journey of wonders and imagination, but without taking lots of selfies along the way. You read second-hand books for the fun and experience of it, rather than any other reason. Again, in this regard at least, it seems like it was a more civilised culture back then.

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Anyway, I hope that this was interesting 🙂

The Delights Of Physical Books- A Ramble

Well, I thought that I’d ramble about books today. Although I still seem to be burnt-out on reading fiction, this doesn’t seem to apply to non-fiction 🙂 And, whilst reading a non-fiction book yesterday, I suddenly remembered why I vastly prefer physical books to their electronic equivalents.

The contents of the book in question – a paperback omnibus of eight books by the mystic Neville Goddard (1905-72) – also, seemingly legally, openly exists online for free. I’m not a lawyer or a legal expert but it possibly seems to be either because of the past permission of the author (regarding copyrights) and/or because of the more sensible and reasonable way that US copyright law used to work (eg: copyright notices, renewal requirements etc…).

The physical edition does have some very short copyright notices, but seemingly just for the publisher of the edition and the company that digitised the books, rather than for Goddard himself. Anyway, if nothing else, everyone treats the books as if they have no copyright and they have been openly posted online by multiple websites without incident.

And, for the purposes of research and comparison, I’ve looked at both. Yes, both contain exactly the same information – if anything, the editions on the internet actually seem to have fewer typographical errors or weird font-size changes between some individual books than the physical omnibus I looked at does.

Yet, reading the physical edition just feels better in so many ways! There’s just something about seeing text that you’ve read on the internet in an actual physical object, with weight to it, that you can hold in your hands. And, talking about this, the edition I bought was a bit larger than a normal paperback book. So, you sort of end up “cuddling” or cradling the book whilst reading it, which feels weirdly reassuring too.

Most of all, there isn’t really the distraction that you get with websites either. You can focus a bit more on what is being written. Yes, dedicated e-reader devices probably have some element of this too, but there’s just something about reading something that doesn’t have any buttons or things like that. It’s a slower pace, a deeper feeling of relaxation.

It’s sort of like the difference between a bitter, heavily-caffeinated shot of espresso and a relaxing cup of green tea.

Also, the physical edition is formatted like a traditional book too. Most copies of the texts that I’ve seen online format them for the internet by using block paragraphs. Just like the ones I’m using in this article.

Block paragraphs are a lot better for reading on a screen, since they allow you to read faster, make skim-reading easier and help you to keep your place a bit more easily. All of these things are good qualities in the distraction-filled context of the internet. On the other hand, a text formatted in traditional paragraphs requires more of your attention – but it also just flows a lot better without all of the “breaks”.

Not only that, although a physical book requires your full attention, it doesn’t “demand” it. There are no algorithms or anything like that. If you’re paying attention to a physical book then it is probably because whatever is in it is actually interesting enough to hold your attention. And this just feels inherently satisfying. Like, yes, you have to put more effort into reading it but it actually feels worthwhile.

There’s also just the history too. If you grew up reading physical books, then reading one again is like a connection to your past. Not only that, especially for older texts, it also means that you were doing pretty much exactly what people in the past were doing too. The physical omnibus I bought was first published in 2015 but, when the eight books within it were originally published in the 1930s-1960s, people back then would have been reading them on a physical page just like I was.

More than all of this, reading a physical book is more of an experience. It isn’t like a website where you can briefly glance at it or skim-read it. No, you actually have to set time aside to do nothing but read it. You can feel the weight of it in your hands. There’s nothing else but the text itself. It’s almost a bit like some kind of ritual or tradition, one performed by generations before you. The pace of it is slower too and, with your attention focused on the book (rather than, say, the clock in the corner of a screen), time also seems to matter less as well.

Ironically, for something so closely related to words, the actual experience is difficult to fully express with them. To take a quote from Neville Goddard completely out of  its original context: “No, you cannot know this intellectually, you cannot debate it, you cannot substantiate it. You can only feel it.” He might have been talking about reverence and divinity here, but it also applies to reading physical books too. It just sort of feels different to reading something on a screen. Again, it is an experience.

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Anyway, I hope that this was interesting 🙂

How NOT To Read Novels

Well, it has certainly been a while, but I thought that I’d talk about reading novels again. This was something I ended up thinking about after finding the 2011 novel “Bioshock: Rapture” by John Shirley, reading fifty-eight pages of it one evening and then not getting round to reading any more the following evening. I was racked with angst about this… but then I realised something important.

One of the main reasons why I only read half of a novel in 2021 (“Titus Groan” by Mervyn Peake, if anyone is curious) and why, in the year before starting this John Shirley book, I had only read about three short stories and a few opening chapters was because of how I approached reading novels in 2018-19. I got it wrong back then.

In very late 2017/early 2018, after about three or four years of hardly reading anything, I rediscovered novels. Initially, this was just thriller novels but it quickly expanded into the usual range of genres that I enjoy. I suddenly remembered how fun it was. It was amazing! I even made some art about it at the time, as a way of expressing the feeling of sheer JOY I experienced:

“Fan Art – Memories Of Books” By C. A. Brown

But, since I was sinking a lot of time into reading, I decided to “put it to good use”. Big mistake. Due to scheduling delays, the reviews appeared here a bit later but long-time readers will probably remember how I churned out a book review every 2-4 days in 2019 and parts of 2020.

I got pretty serious about the whole thing. I’d set myself goals for how much I’d read every day, aiming to get through a novel in 2-4 days. Yes, this was cool for a while, but it was also exhausting. I’d plan what I was going to read a couple of books ahead, even going so far as to set myself rules in order to cover a wider variety of authors and genres in my reviews. This introduced me to a lot of cool novels and authors I wouldn’t have read otherwise, but it was all very formal and stressful.

I’d take extensive notes whilst reading, in order to help my reviews be more accurate and to keep perfect track of the story that I was reading. I even devised a whole system where I’d use a paper square as a bookmark and write short notes on it, with page numbers, in tiny handwriting. Then I’d write out some more detailed notes at the end of every day. It was all very efficient and “well-optimised”. But not only did it make reading less of a relaxing activity than it should be, I pretty much forgot a lot of stuff about many books once the review was done and I had to move onto the next one.

I used to pep myself up by reading online articles about the benefits and virtues of being a reader, about how novels are an amazing medium. Articles about how “hardly anyone reads these days”, in order to make myself feel like I was “better” or “special”. Needless to say, this turned me into an absolutely insufferable snob for about a year or two. The sort of snooty person who would sometimes sneer at films, games and other cool things like that, purely because they weren’t paperback books.

I could probably go on for a while but, by autumn 2019, I was utterly exhausted. The idea of just kicking back and watching a movie or just spending an evening playing a videogame seemed like paradise. And that is exactly what I did. I spent a while writing film reviews on here, and I re-played “Ion Fury” (2019) before discovering “Saints Row: The Third” (2011) a while later 🙂 There were about two or three times in the following months when I tried to “get back into reading again”… but I’d get through about 2-14 novels and then just ditch them again. I was done!

I was free from this draining, exhausting, obsessive chore! Not reading novels felt a lot better than reading them. In fact, I even spent the best part of a year (2021/22) playing and writing about horror videogames, until that too became a bit exhausting. And all of this brings me on to the sudden epiphany that inspired this article.

For me, my absolute “heyday” of reading novels was when I was a teenager during the 2000s. Back then, I read for fun. I read because, unlike films, books don’t have age ratings (and are edgier than most films). I read because paperbacks were the best portable entertainment at the time. I read because old second-hand horror novels were cheap, plentiful and had really cool cover art. I read because I actually ENJOYED it!

It wasn’t some kind of “improving” activity! It wasn’t some precisely-optimised exercise regimen for the mind! It wasn’t something where I had schedules and notes! I didn’t care if I “missed a day” or whether I was reading the “correct” authors or whatever. It was another fun thing to do, like playing videogames or watching films.

And remembering this old mindset from my teenage years instantly got rid of any angst I felt about the book I am reading now. It was something I started reading because I enjoyed the game that it is based on. The whole POINT of reading it is to have fun, and who cares if I miss a day or if – as later happened – I don’t get round to reading any more of it? Who cares if I do or don’t end up reviewing it? If I’m having fun with it, or with games/films/Youtube etc.. instead, then who gives a damn? The fun is the point!

Again, reading novels isn’t meant to be a chore. If you treat it as such, then it’ll eventually put you off reading for years!

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Anyway, I hope that this was interesting 🙂

Discovering Something Cool When It Is “Too Late” To Enjoy It

Well, I thought that I’d talk about discovering something cool when it is “too late” to really enjoy it. This was something I ended up thinking about when, during a sleep-deprived moment, I found myself having a sudden feeling of nostalgia about the horror fiction I read when I was younger.

I initially re-read a few parts of a US edition of Poppy Z. Brite’s 1993 gothic horror short story collection “Wormwood”, which I first found in a large bookshop in Southampton in late summer 2008. Yes, I still don’t know why they had this edition, rather than the UK edition (which has the much more ‘heavy metal’ title of “Swamp Foetus”). And, despite seeing a copy of Brite’s 1991 masterpiece “Lost Souls” lurking on the top shelf of the horror section of another large bookshop in Fareham five or six years earlier and being mildly intrigued by it, I didn’t read it back then because I was more interested in classic 1980s splatterpunk horror fiction by authors like Shaun Hutson and James Herbert at the time.

So, “Wormwood” was the very first book by Brite that I actually read. I was eager to re-live some memories by re-reading a few parts of it. And it is still an incredibly well-written story collection, with a stunningly lush and vivid writing style which is only matched by a small number of other authors (such as Ray Bradbury and Alice Hoffman). The gothic atmosphere was also just as excellent as I remembered it being, but I found that the two stories I re-read were a lot more… edgy and depressing… than I remembered them being when I was younger.

Dan Simmons’ introduction to the collection also reminded me of why I loved reading paperback fiction during the 2000s too – a witty mixture of praise and cynicism, punctuated with moments of unrepentantly irreverent humour too. Not to mention that a descriptive passage where he somehow managed to mention Brutalist architecture, rain and “Blade Runner” (1982) within the space of a single page filled me with raptures of wonder and awe, despite the fact that he was trying to criticise an old concrete university building.

Filled with astonishment and nostalgia for the days when paperback fiction was a bit more… punk… than it is these days, I found myself randomly browsing a large online bookshop. It was then that I stumbled across the works of a modern horror author called Rick Wood. At first, I was genuinely awe-struck.

Some of his books had the kind of detailed painted cover art – filled with ultra-melodramatic visual storytelling – which I thought had died out after the horror fiction boom of the 1980s. Whilst I only discovered ’80s horror fiction during the early-mid 2000s, these were books that unambiguously looked like horror novels. And I’d just found modern examples of this sort of cover art… which were somehow also ten times more lurid and gruesome than anything printed during the 1980s too.

Surprised by this rupture in the space-time continuum, I read a few preview chapters. If I had discovered these books during my teenage years in the early-mid 2000s, I’d have instantly bought as many as I could have afforded. This was a modern author writing exactly the sort of ultra-edgy splatterpunk fiction I used to read all of the time back then. Even his informal and direct writing style, and the style of his characters, reminded me a lot of Shaun Hutson’s horror fiction too 🙂

Yet, after reading about five or six preview chapters, I found myself uncertain whether to get any of these books. Whilst my teenage self would have thrilled at the sheer edginess and ultra-gruesome melodrama of these stories, my thirtysomething self was literally flinching from some parts of them and feeling genuinely nervous about what would happen next. I don’t know if it’s because I’m still recovering from playing “Outlast: Whistleblower” (2014) a couple of months ago or whether it is just part of my weird  love-hate relationship with the horror genre these days, but it felt like I’d discovered something really cool… almost two decades too late to truly enjoy it.

Discovering cool things when it is “too late” to truly enjoy them is a genuinely bizarre experience. If I had to sum it up in a single word, it would be “bittersweet”. But it is more than that, since you can usually still vividly feel the enthusiasm and fascination from an earlier version of yourself, whilst also being even more aware of the person you are these days at the same time. It’s a really weird contrast. It’s like stepping back in time and meeting a past version of yourself.

The weird thing during these experiences is that the “cool thing” itself hasn’t changed at all. “Wormwood” was exactly the same book I read in 2008. Whilst I hadn’t even heard of Rick Wood until the night before I wrote this article, his splatterpunk horror fiction was very similar to the sort of thing I regularly read when I was a teenager.

No, with these sorts of things, literally the only thing that has changed is you. But this isn’t an entirely bad thing. Whilst going through everyday life, it can be easy to imagine that you stay the same as you have always been. The changes are so gradual and fractional that you probably can’t even notice them most of the time. Yet, if you find something that you would have loved years ago, this can suddenly show you just how much you have changed. And it might shock you.

It’s a bit like making art. If you’ve been doing art practice for a few years and have an uninspired day, you might decide to look back at some of your older stuff in order to re-live the “good old days”. Yet, and this has happened to me at least once, you’ll sometimes find that an “excellent” painting or drawing from a few years ago only looks as good as a “mediocre” piece of art that you make these days. You’ve become a better artist, but it has happened so gradually that you don’t even notice until you take a look back at the distant past.

Modern “self-help” media talks about “deep inner change” in the kind of creepily enthusiastic way you’d expect if someone was trying to convert you to their religion. Yet, this is something that we all experience completely organically. No need to artificially force it. It happens anyway! It’s just that it can be so subtle and gradual that you might not even notice that you are an almost completely different person until you accidentally happen to stumble into your past self.

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Anyway, I hope that this was interesting 🙂

Price Does Not Equal Quality – A Ramble

Well, I thought that I’d talk about a common misconception today, namely that “expensive equals good”. Price often has little to nothing to do with quality. This was something I ended up thinking about after I started reading a brilliantly cynical gothic fantasy novel from 1946 called “Titus Groan” by Mervyn Peake. Although I unfortunately got distracted from it about halfway through, it was still one of those books that elicited a “WOW! Was this written just for me?” kind of reaction when I started reading it.

I mention it because of the circumstances surrounding how I found it. Whilst researching an unfinished article that never made it onto here, I ended up learning about a horror novel called “The Lurker At The Threshold” (1945) by August Derleth & H. P. Lovecraft. The atmospheric online sample chapter I read from it absolutely fascinated me and also reminded me of all of the older books I read during the early-mid 2000s and also rediscovered during a binge-reading phase a couple of years ago. I found that – even being a little bit out of practice – the ultra-formal writing style still just “clicked” perfectly with me and brought back lots of nostalgic memories.

Then I looked at the price. If I was into e-books, then I’d probably have finished reading it days ago. But, with full-length novels, I’m very much a physical media traditionalist… and it was out of print in both paperback and hardback. The second-hand prices for it were at least twice what I’d usually pay for a second-hand novel. So, reluctantly, I decided not to get it.

But I still found myself eager to read a densely-written, elaborate and atmospheric gothic novel. Then, I suddenly remembered hearing some vague references to a weird early 2000s TV show called “Gormenghast”. I hadn’t watched it, but I knew it was based on a book.

So, I decided to look up the book series it was based on and ended up reading another sample chapter. It astonished me 🙂 The interesting thing was that, although I’d originally planned to get a second-hand copy of just the first book in the trilogy – “Titus Groan” – I suddenly realised that it was actually cheaper to buy a second-hand omnibus of the entire trilogy. Seriously, the old 1999 Vintage paperback edition – a heavy tome of almost a thousand pages – only cost about three or four quid.

And one of the interesting things I’ve noticed is that many of the very best things I’ve ever found usually aren’t expensive. Yes, good things can be expensive, but price often has very little to do with quality.

For example, although some of them have apparently since gone up in price, a fair number of the classic 1990s/early-mid 2000s survival horror videogames I talked about during the first season of my “Horror Videogames Series” of articles (the second season should hopefully begin on the 12th January 🙂 ) were ones I bought second-hand during the 2000s. And, back then, these amazing games were actually surprisingly cheap second-hand. Whilst I can’t remember the exact prices, I definitely paid less than a tenner for each one.

To give a more modern example, I ended up taking a chance on a game called “Saints Row: The Third” (2011) after spotting it during an online sale in 2019. I think I only paid about three or four quid for it, yet it was one of the very best games I played that year. In contrast, in a rare moment of extravagance in the same year, I pre-ordered an indie game called “Ion Fury” (2019) at full price… and it was also an amazing game. Again, price often has little or nothing to do with quality.

And this is true for so many other things too. One of my favourite comic series – “The Sandman” by Neil Gaiman – was something I discovered after finding a couple of cheap second-hand volumes in a second-hand DVD/videogames shop, of all places, in the late 2000s.

My favourite film, “Blade Runner” (1982), was something I first discovered as a second-hand “2 for £5” VHS tape in an old second-hand shop in about 2002-2003. At the time, I was barely in my mid-teens and, being an immature teenager, I expected it to be a thrilling sci-fi action movie like “Total Recall” (1990)… so I found this intelligent slow-paced masterpiece of visual and narrative art to be “boring”. The VHS tape ended up gathering dust on a shelf after watching it once.

Although I didn’t truly appreciate this film until 2005, when I found a cheap second-hand VHS of the 1992 “director’s cut” version in a charity shop in Cosham, I still absolutely love the original 1982 version of this film because it was the very first version I watched. And I was able to watch it because it was cheap. As a birthday present a few years later, I got a more expensive DVD boxset containing about five versions of the film. All of these are good – they are the same film after all – despite being priced very differently. Again, price often has very little to do with quality.

Computers are another good example. The machine I’m writing this on is a second-hand small form-factor ex-office PC from 2013 that I got in autumn 2018 for less than two hundred quid. Yes, its built-in graphics hardware isn’t exactly the best – and it would probably struggle with or outright refuse to play some of the more advanced modern games – but it’ll play old games and some modern ones at low settings. But, for virtually everything other than gaming – word processing, digital art, internet browsing etc.. it works just as well as a high-powered PC would. Having been designed for offices, it also has the advantage of being built to be reliable (and also had five years of testing before I bought it too…). Again, price has little to nothing to do with quality.

Back when I used mobile phones, the first phone I got was an old Nokia 1100 sometime in 2004. It had a Game Boy-like monochrome screen and no internet connectivity. Even at the time, it was a cheap low-end phone. The type that would be considered a disposable “burner phone” these days. Yet, it was a rugged and reliable thing that would go for an entire week or more between charges. Even though it accidentally got bricked during the late 2000s, I loved that phone. And, in some ways, it was probably better than what I’ve heard about modern smartphones. It didn’t have “software updates”, it had a replaceable battery etc… It just worked out of the box…

Another example is the art that I post here every day. Although I often use a mixture of digital and traditional elements, the main program I use for digital art is version 2.10 of a free open-source program called the “GNU Image Manipulation Program” (GIMP). Yes, it probably has slightly fewer features than the expensive subscription-based digital art programs that are mentioned regularly on the internet, but it still does all of the important stuff and it costs literally nothing. Again, price has little to nothing to do with quality.

Price is usually more about things like rarity, status/prestige, modernity or – occasionally – manufacturing costs than about quality or functionality. Masterpiece-level things can be ridiculously cheap or they can be expensive. Useful things can be really cheap or they can be really expensive. Again, price often has little or nothing to do with quality.

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Anyway, I hope that this was interesting 🙂

Three Reasons Why Ghost Stories Are Seen As “More Respectable” Than Other Horror Novels

Well, I thought that I’d talk about an interesting anomaly within the horror genre today. Although horror fiction has sometimes been overlooked by professional and/or mainstream critics until relatively recently, there is one type of horror fiction that has consistently had a bit more prestige and mainstream “respectability” than every other type. I am, of course, talking about ghost stories.

I ended up thinking about this topic after I started reading Susan Hill’s 1983 horror novel “The Woman In Black”. Not only is the second-hand 1990s UK reprint of this novel that I’m reading published by none other than Vintage, but the previous owner had also highlighted parts of it in a way that suggests that it was actually a set text for an academic course.

In fact, the only reason that I even thought to read this novel was because of an admiring article about a “notorious” 1980s television adaptation of it on the website of a mainstream liberal newspaper. The reprinted novel itself also contains favourable review quotes from four major UK newspapers (both broadsheet and tabloid) on the front and back covers too.

Needless to say, all of this mainstream adulation, press coverage and academic respectability is unfortunately not typical for most types of 1980s horror fiction! So, I thought that I’d look at some of the many reasons why ghost stories are seen as more “respectable” than other types of horror fiction.

1) Writing style: Although most horror fiction – especially older horror fiction – is more well-written than it is usually given credit for, one reason why ghost stories tend to be popular with professional critics is because they almost always use a more formal and complex writing style.

There are two main reasons for this – the first is that ghost stories are a genre of horror that relies a lot more heavily on atmosphere and characterisation in order to unsettle the reader, and the second is that ghost stories will often have a historical theme (eg: old houses, old objects etc..). All of this tends to favour a slightly more formal, antiquated and/or “timeless” writing style than you would typically find in the horror genre.

As such, the gap between ghost stories and “prestigious” literary fiction is often a lot smaller than it is with other types of horror fiction. Yes, there are certainly exceptions to this rule – such as Joe Hill’s genuinely terrifying 2007 novel “Heart-Shaped Box” (which, if I remember rightly, uses a more modern writing style) – but ghost stories are usually associated with a more “traditional” writing style.

This “traditional” writing style also means that ghost stories have a longer, more consistent and easily-followed history than many other genres of horror fiction (except maybe the vampire genre) do. Needless to say, this heavy emphasis on tradition helps to make them more popular amongst professional critics and academics too.

2) Thematic complexity: Although the horror genre as a whole contains more thematic complexity than it is sometimes given credit for, one reason why ghost stories get a lot of extra prestige is because they tend to focus slightly more on their underlying themes than other types of horror fiction usually do.

For example, Charles Dickens’ beloved 1843 novella “A Christmas Carol” is as much – or more- of a stylised morality tale about generosity and friendliness as it is a tale of a miserable old man being haunted by three ghosts. Shirley Jackson’s chilling 1959 novel “The Haunting Of Hill House” is a novel about psychology, loneliness, the value of stories and the crushing drabness of ordinary life.

James Herbert’s overlooked 1988 horror masterpiece “Haunted” is a novel about traumatic memories, guilt and childhood. Sarah Lotz’s 2015 novel “Day Four” is as much a brilliantly cynical piece of social satire as it is a chilling horror story.

Even non-horror novels – like Alice Hoffman’s magical realist novels – will sometimes use ghosts in order to explore a variety of themes too. In Hoffman’s case, these themes are usually unhealed trauma, undying love and/or tragic sorrow – and these ghosts are often either an important part of the main story or a significant background detail.

In addition to this, ghost stories also inevitably explore the theme of death too. Whilst death is a common theme in pretty much every horror story, the fact that ghosts are often actual characters with well-explored backstories means that this type of horror fiction can study the theme of death in a slightly more complex and nuanced way than many other types of horror fiction can.

The fact that thematic complexity is a “built in” part of ghost stories – rather than an optional extra – means that it appeals more to professional critics and academics, because there is a lot more stuff for them to study and write about.

3) Bloodless horror: Another reason why ghost stories are popular amongst “respectable” critics, academics and mainstream audiences is because – unlike most genres of horror – they often tend to be a bit more bloodless and/or non-violent. Yes, modern horror novels as a whole are a little bit more sanitised than horror novels were during their splatterpunk heyday in the 1980s, but ghost stories are often one of the least gory types of horror fiction out there.

Not only does this mean that they appeal more to people who don’t typically read horror fiction, but the lack of gore, gruesome monsters or extreme violence also means that these novels have to be a bit more creative in how they scare the reader. This isn’t to say that gory horror fiction is a “crude” or “unsophisticated” type of horror fiction (seriously, the gory descriptions in 1980s novels by authors like Shaun Hutson and Clive Barker are beautifully-crafted works of art) but, if you’ve read quite a bit of it, then it is difficult to really be shocked by it.

On the other hand, ghost stories have to rely on less predictable and less obvious methods to frighten the reader. Whether it is a chilling atmosphere, subtle unsettling details, mysterious noises, a tragic backstory etc… ghost stories are not only a genre that is more palatable to novice horror readers but they are also a genre that can still surprise and scare more experienced horror fans too.

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Anyway, I hope that this was interesting 🙂

Three Things To Expect If You Start Reading Novels

Well, although I seem to write one of these articles almost every time I get back into reading novels again (however briefly), I thought that I’d talk about some of the things to expect if you start reading novels. Even though this article is aimed slightly more at people who are relatively new to the medium, hopefully it will also be interesting to experienced readers too.

So, what can you expect if you start reading novels?

1) Modern genre novels: I’ve mentioned this a few times before but, if you’re new to novels or easing yourself back into reading novels, start with more modern 21st century ones! And, for heaven’s sake, stick to genre fiction too!

Yes, “literary” novels may get a lot more publicity and prestige – but, especially when you’re starting out, you need to read books that are actually fun to read. Whether it is horror, sci-fi, crime, thriller, romance, fantasy etc… choose your favourite genres and look for modern novels in them. Read for the enjoyment of it, rather than for the sake of showing off.

Even though modern novels in many genres can often be longer than older ones, they are also designed to compete with the distractions of the modern gadget-filled world in a way that older books are not. What this means is that they are usually written in a slightly more faster-paced, informal and/or more “readable” way that is easier to jump into and just relaxing to read.

Still, although older 20th century genre novels may require a bit more effort to read and are often a bit slower-paced, they can often be worth reading (after you’ve had some practice with modern books) because their more formal and complex writing allows them to be a bit more atmospheric than modern novels can be.

Likewise, the slower pacing allows for things like slightly deeper characterisation and a very slightly higher level of emotional complexity too. It’s like the literal opposite of system requirements for computer games – older novels are the ones with higher “system requirements” and better “graphics”.

Plus, unlike films, novels actually help you to progress through the medium too. If you read some faster-paced modern novels, then this will give you the skills that you’ll need in order to grapple with slower older novels. Likewise, when you are shopping for books, both “high-brow” and “low-brow” books will often be in close proximity to each other in a way that you don’t really find with – say- blockbuster films and art films.

So, if you start with easier modern books, you’ll probably end up reading the occasional challenging older book after a while anyway. It’s a really cool type of progression that you don’t really find in other mediums.

2) Novels are edgier: One of the interesting things about novels is that they are almost always at least slightly “edgier” or more intense than equivalent films, TV shows or videogames would be. There are a lot of reasons for this and it is certainly one of the strengths of the medium, but it may be a bit surprising if you aren’t used to it.

Not only are novels thankfully free from the kind of formal and systematic official censorship that films often have to deal with, but they are also a more immersive medium too – meaning that there aren’t things like cheesy special effects or famous actors to distract you from what is happening. Plus, of course, novels can also directly show things like characters’ thoughts, sensations and emotions in a way that other mediums cannot – which instantly adds a lot more intensity to stories told in novel form.

Plus, unlike films, novels are usually created by just one author – and will often reflect one person’s sensibilities, worldview and imagination rather than what a film studio or censorship board thinks is “suitable” for a mass audience.

Novels are not a medium for the easily-shocked. This edginess is one of the strengths of the medium, and it can also add an interesting frisson of “safe danger” or rebellion that you won’t find as often in other mediums.

However, one side-effect of this is that novels often don’t really have quite the same empowering or “feel good” atmosphere that you’ll often find in things like Hollywood films or many videogames. I mean, there has been at least one time when I’ve had to take a break from the medium as a whole because it was “too miserable”. Still, even though the medium is interesting enough that you will probably end up returning to it after a while, it is worth being aware of this if you’re new to reading.

3) A personal journey: Reading is a lonelier form of entertainment than games or films are. There are so many novels, they have to be enjoyed alone, they aren’t as “popular” as they used to be and it is a medium with a very long history. If you read two hundred novels, then there’s still a very good chance that the next reader you meet may not have even heard of any of them. And talking to non-readers about books that you’ve read can often feel awkward in the same way that describing your dreams can be.

Plus, although a novel may occasionally become popular for a while (like “Fifty Shades” was in the 2010s and “The Da Vinci Code” was in the 2000s) or there might be press coverage of a couple of literary awards, these are a tiny fraction of the literal millions of novels out there. Likewise, even though there are a few “famous” authors out there – and many of them are good at writing – you’ll probably end up finding a much longer list of favourite authors that most people haven’t even heard of before.

If you read novels based on your personal interests and tastes – which is the only real way to keep reading – then it will be a rather lonely journey at times. But, this is also one of the good things about reading books. Unlike following whichever games or films are “popular” at a given time, being a reader is much more of a personal journey that – when you learn your own tastes and sensibilities and can choose books accordingly – will be almost “custom built” just for you.

Plus, because novels are a more intimate and personal medium – that is enjoyed alone and requires you to use your unique imagination in order to interpret a written record of someone else’s imagination – your memories of them will be a lot different and more vivid than your memories of things like films, games etc… will be. Seriously, one of the main things that got me back into reading yet again was just the sheer amount of vivid, unique and complex memories I had of reading books. I wanted more of these types of memories.

So, yes, the life of a reader is a lonelier one – but it is also a more personal, fulfilling and just generally interesting journey than you will find anywhere else.

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Anyway, I hope that this was interesting 🙂

One Reason Why Novels Are Interesting – A Ramble

Although this is an article about novels, I’m going to have to start by talking about music for a while. As usual, there’s a reason for this that will hopefully become relevant later.

Anyway, back in April, I ended up watching some of the BBC’s coverage of the “One World: Together At Home” livestreamed concert. One of the really interesting things about it was that, although it mostly focused on classic and modern popular music, the performances by modern pop musicians that I saw had a lot more personality, distinctiveness and emotion than I’d expected. Seriously, it reminded me of when I used to listen to the radio every night during the mid-late 1990s/early 2000s.

One of the main reasons for this is probably because, with the circumstances surrounding the concert, everything was a little bit more low-budget. There were pop musicians who performed without lots of auto-tune and post-production. The videos weren’t slickly-produced “music videos”, but just home recordings of musicians playing and singing. All of this gave the songs on the show a much more varied, timeless and personality-filled atmosphere that was reminiscent of how much more creative mainstream popular music seemed to be when I was younger.

But, why have I mentioned this and what does it have to do with novels?

Well, everything that I’ve described is relevant to literally all novels. Although writers may have editors or even co-writers, there isn’t really a literary equivalent to things like auto-tune or CGI or any of the other artificial things that often drain a bit of the personality and humanity from modern music and films. Novels published today use basically the same “technology” as novels written fifty years or a hundred years ago. They are literally just words on paper.

Literally all novels are – in a sense – low-budget things, and this is why they are such a fascinating medium. Just like some of the modern pop musicians on the show who literally just had a microphone and/or an instrument, authors have to rely entirely on their skill and personality in order to create something interesting that stirs the audience’s emotions and fires their imaginations. Again, there is no equivalent of auto-tune or CGI here. Nothing that can cover over any interesting imperfections or turn a unique creative expression into a bland “one size fits all” market-tested and committee-approved product.

There is nothing but words. The only thing that matters is how well the author uses them.

Plus, like how many of the muscians on the show had to perform alone, authors will usually write alone. Yes, editors may help later in the process – but the initial writing is just done by one author. When you read a novel, you are reading something by just one person. You are seeing the world in the way that one person sees it. You are experiencing a story that includes the quirks, fascinations, emotions, worldview, sense of humour etc… of just one person. As you read, you are also hearing the voice of just one person. This gives novels a much more interesting level of uniqueness than you might expect.

Even the most mainstream and popular novels will still include the author’s unique personality and imagination. If you don’t believe me, then read a couple of Dan Brown novels and then read some thriller novels by another popular author. The Dan Brown novels will probably be noticeably “quirkier” and have more of a focus on things like cryptic puzzles than on action sequences. This is because, even though they might be “mainstream” and “popular”, these novels are still the product of one person’s unique imagination.

So, to go back to the musical metaphor again – although novels are pre-made things, they are less like a studio album and much more like a recording of a “low-budget” live performance. And, surprisingly, novels are one of the few mediums where this is the norm 🙂 Where everything from the most low-budget small press experimental novel to the most heavily-promoted bestsellers all use the same “low-budget” tools and rely on the skills, creativity and personality of just one person.

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Anyway, I hope that this was interesting 🙂

Three Differences Between Dark Fantasy And Urban Fantasy Fiction

Well, a while after I finished reviewing “The Shadow Of The Soul” by Sarah Pinborough, I decided to take a look online and see what other people thought about it.

To my surprise, I noticed at least one or two reviews which categorised the novel as “urban fantasy” – and, to be fair, it does include fantasy elements and is set in a city. However, I considered it to be more of a dark fantasy novel since it differed in atmosphere and style from the more “traditional” urban fantasy novels (by authors like Lilith Saintcrow, Jocelynn Drake and Laurell K. Hamilton) that I’ve read in the past.

So, I thought that I’d list a few of the things that – to me at least – make dark fantasy and urban fantasy slightly different genres. Don’t get me wrong, they are both very enjoyable genres and there is often at least some overlap between both of them – but they do differ from each other in various ways.

1) Number of fantasy elements: One of the main ways that you can tell urban fantasy and dark fantasy fiction apart from each other is by the number of different fantasy elements they include. In dark fantasy novels – like Clive Barker’s “Cabal” and Tanith Lee’s “Kill The Dead” – the number of fantasy elements is usually relatively low. These novels may include things like ghosts or monsters, but they will often be the only “unrealistic” elements of the story.

This tighter focus on a lower number of fantasy elements lends dark fantasy fiction a slightly grittier and more mysterious atmosphere, where the contrast between the ordinary and extraordinary becomes a much greater part of the story. Likewise, because there are fewer fantasy elements, dark fantasy stories can often explore them in a greater level of technical and/or thematic depth too.

On the other hand, urban fantasy stories typically contain a much wider variety of fantastical elements. There will be magic, vampires, werewolves, angels, demons, ghosts, goblins, elves etc… all within the same novel. This creates the fascinating feeling of a large and complex fantastical “world” – usually hidden within an ordinary city. Even though there is still some contrast between the “ordinary” world and this hidden world, the story’s emphasis and perspective is much more firmly on the latter.

This also has quite a large effect on the atmosphere of a typical urban fantasy novel – since, like in a good cyberpunk sci-fi novel, the reader will often find themselves dropped into an intriguingly different “world” that is complex, crowded and filled with all sorts of intriguing details. The main goal of this is usually to induce pleasant feelings of wonder and fascination rather than a feeling of dread, despair or cosmic horror.

2) Settings: This one may sound obvious, but it is worth thinking about. Although dark fantasy novels can certainly be set in large cities (see Sarah Pinborough’s “A Matter Of Blood” for a good example), this isn’t really an integral part of the genre. For the most part, dark fantasy novels often tend to take place in more gothic, old and/or desolate settings.

Whether it is the bleak medieval-style world of Tanith Lee’s “Kill The Dead”, the ancient Roman settings of Rebecca Levene’s “Anno Mortis” or the hidden graveyard caverns in Clive Barker’s “Cabal”, one easy way to tell if a novel is dark fantasy is simply to look at the settings. Even though dark fantasy novels may occasionally also be set in cities, it isn’t really that common.

On the other hand, urban fantasy novels are almost always set in large cities. This is because it is a genre about cities. It is a genre about how the bustling anonymity of large cities can often hide all sorts of interesting events, places etc… It is a genre about how large cities are a place where characters of many different backgrounds can meet and live in harmony. It is a genre that also takes a little bit of inspiration from the classic hardboiled crime fiction of 1930s-50s America, which is a very city-based genre.

So, whilst dark fantasy novels may occasionally be set in large cities, urban fantasy novels will almost always be set in cities. Cities are an absolutely integral part of what makes urban fantasy the genre it is.

3) Mood: This one is very difficult to describe and it is something that you’ll probably only really get a feel for when you’ve read a few books in both genres, but you can usually tell the genres apart by the type of mood that they evoke.

In general, dark fantasy novels will often go for a more gothic atmosphere and/or more of a bleak and cynical atmosphere. They can also sometimes have a bit of a “heavy metal album cover” or “grimdark fantasy” type atmosphere too, but the focus will often be more on things like horror, death, moral ambiguity, melancholy moods etc… Even though they may include profound emotional moments and/or moments of emotional catharsis, they are not generally meant to be “feel good” novels.

Of course, urban fantasy novels may also often include a dark, gothic and/or “edgy” atmosphere too – see Lilith Saintcrow’s “Night Shift” and Jocelynn Drake’s “Nightwalker” for good examples. However, on the whole, urban fantasy novels will often aim for a slightly more thrilling and “feel good” atmosphere. The main characters will usually be physically stronger and – even when they are more on the morally-ambiguous side of things – they will often be written in a reasonably “heroic” way that makes the reader cheer for them.

So, one of the ways that you can tell whether the novel you are reading is urban fantasy or dark fantasy is simply to take a moment to see how you feel when you are reading it.

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Anyway, I hope that this was useful 🙂