That has a really cool premise. I’ll add to the Grady Hendrix love since I just finished this (it made for a nice “double feature” with Wylding Hall):

Finished Chapterhouse: Dune. It was a slog until the last 150 pages or so, that mostly made up for it, and a fine and weird ending to the original saga. About to start Blood of Dragons, 4th in Hobb's Dragon Keepers sub-series, and 13th of 16 in the Elderlings novels. Hobb and Herbert have provided me with years of reading material.

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Just arrived today.

Read Coroner's Pidgin, a murder mystery by Margery Allingham. Campion has been doing spy work against the Nazis for three years nonstop. He finally has two weeks leave and he wants to use it. Instead, he gets entangled in a murder in London. This book has none of the comic tone of the earlier books, and spends a lot of time describing how the war is affecting the English. I liked it.

Listened to Talking to Strangers by Malcolm Gladwell. It's a book about how people interact with those they don't know, where the pitfalls can be, and how things can sometimes go fatally wrong if we misunderstand each other. He focuses on police shootings, child sexual assault, rape, and criminal scammers like Bernie Madoff. Gladwell tends to make everything into tidy packages, but I think it's very worth the time. Strongly recommended.

We also listened to a couple of Spenser novels by Robert Parker and a couple of Nero Wolfe collections by Rex Stout. Those are always good on a road trip.

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When I saw this book in college -- prior to the movie -- I thought it would be really cool if it was about dinosaurs given the tendency for book titles or covers to have nothing to do with the story.

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Finished: George Orwell - Notes on Nationalism (1945).

For the purpose of the essay, "nationalism" is roughly the excessive love of a group larger than oneself. He touches on zionism, communism, toryism, trotskyism, and so forth. They have similar traits such as the belief that everything 'your side' does is acceptable behavior, or not even allowing the faults of your side to register in your mind. It's only about 50-60 pages, and although the examples are dated, the concepts are accurate today.

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My reading went on hiatus during the October Horror Challenge (where I watched episodes of Dark Shadows right before going to bed, when I'd normally read 30-60 pages of a book). Staying in the horror genre though, I'm catching up on more Grady Hendrix books:

I thought this was very good. On a level with the other novel of his I read (My Best Friend's Exorcism), if not a little better. Like that book, it's a recent period piece (90s) set in middle/upper class Charleston (which I'm a bit familiar with since my parents lived there during retirement for about 10 years). It also gives the appearance of being a goofy campy story but actually takes the characters and horror quite seriously. And I liked that a fresh spin was taken on the familiar "vampire" monster. Also finished:

Compared to the other two novels, this seemed a lot more "minor". It's clear to see that this was an earlier publication, and there's more refinement of style in the later books. It was fun to be sure, in a low-budget B-movie way. The idea of setting a horror/ghost story in a "big box" retail store is a good one, especially using to parody the real-life situation of that kind of job (which I fortunately never had to do).

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Bombed through The Cabin At The End Of The World in two work-days.

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It was a beautifully written book, and very concisely tells it story. The emotions were heartfelt, especially if you've ever been depressed about life choices and wondered how you might've done things differently. Although I found it extremely predictable, and could guess how it was going to turn out as soon as I knew the premise. Which was a variation on It's a Wonderful Life (with a little bit of Sliders and other alternate reality stories), about a suicidal woman who is magically able to sample other realities where she made different decisions in life.

Ghost Stories of an Antiquary by M.R. James. A highly influential Victorian book of ghost stories.

Last night I started The Shunned House by Lovecraft. It's obvious that Lovecraft was a fan of James.

Slogging through Ready Player Two
and have : The Living Dead- George A Romero on Deck