Recently read
The Buffalo Hunter Hunter, Stephen Graham Jones. This unusual vampire tale takes the form of a story within a story within a story. The embedded narratives span more than a century, but they are all one story, beautifully told. (I noticed one period vocabulary slip-up, but it’s something only a pedant like me would care about.) The characters are complex, and the dueling vampires might not be the most evil among them, not even when they feed on children. Jones creates his own vampire lore, similar to what we know from Stoker and Hollywood but also alien. The Blackfeet terms were challenging for me to keep track of, but that’s not a bad thing. Blackfeet history and culture are central to the story. A tense, eerie, tragic novel, not without wit and humor.
Recently viewed
Tomie (1998 movie, directed by Ataru Oikawa). I haven’t read the manga series this is adapted from, but if I didn’t know it was Junji Ito, I would have known it was Junji Ito. Being friends with Tomie is like being friends with Hannibal Lecter: you don’t know why you’ve been singled out, and you might not want to eat everything you’re served. But Lecter probably won’t manipulate you into killing him, and if you do kill him he’ll stay dead. This movie does an excellent job of maintaining tension and mystery throughout.