Writers Reading is a new feature for 2010 where we get authors to let us have a poke around their bookshelves entirely to satisfy our own curiosity. This weeks guest is Michael Calvillo, author of the awesomely creepy short story book Bloog & Gristle, which is being launched this year at World Horror in Brighton late March. Book Fairs and Book Cases
It all started with Zork: The Malifestro Quest. I never thought much about reading or books or libraries or bookcases. And though my parents were great about making sure I went to school and took an interest in education, they weren’t big readers so I didn’t really know anybody who sat down to read novels for fun. I could read, I could write, I did well enough in school, and that was good enough for me. I was nine years old and I preferred my Intellivision (while pining for an NES) to most everything else. I liked the A-Team and Knight Rider. I was into Star Wars and ET and loved building impossible routes for my Stompers to navigate. Books were things we read in school because we had to. Sometimes they were interesting (anything by Shel Silverstein), sometimes, not so much (anything else). But then, one afternoon, I was given a flyer for my elementary school book fair. I took it home to my mama and the next day she gave me three bucks and told me to pick something out.
Browsing those m
akeshift racks, I was looking for books specifically about drawing. A kid in my class had one that showed him how to turn circles and geometric looking bubbles into elves and trolls and since my sense of proportion was all jacked up, I figured a book like that was the key to unlocking my inner artist (nope). They had some pretty nice ones with monsters and super heroes and animals, but while waffling between titles, I stumbled upon the coolest book I had ever seen. The cover featured two adventurer types looking on in horror as an orange-red-smoke-demon-thing rose up from the center of a pentagram. I didn’t know books told stories about demons? For some reason or another my little, narrow brain just assumed that they stuck to boring crap like love and life lessons. That Zork cover looked so damn freaky, I couldn’t resist. Screw the art books with their safe, smiling wolf men and lovable vampires, I was going to take home a real book and practice drawing its badass cover.
After a few weeks of tracing and then attempting my own freehand renditions (all horrible), I got around to cracking the sucker open and giving it a shot. A few days later I thought, HOLY SHIT! (or probably, HOLY CRAP! I didn’t cuss much…yet) Reading is freaking awesome! Something like epiphany washed over me and from that moment on I started looking at books differently. I mean, I could read. I was good at reading (and always got called on to read aloud in class when my teacher was too tired to read to us) and I loved demons and dragons and heroes and it blew my nine-year-old mind to think that so many books were devoted to telling their stories and I never even knew it. I was missing out! Needless to say, my mama was pleased.
The next book fair rolled around and I begged for more money. My mama happily gave me ten bucks (I love you mama!) and I bought Lloyd Alexander’s The High King and The Black Cauldron (I read his Chronicles of Prydain series out of order, but didn’t seem to mind), and a goofy book called The Sick of Being Sick Book (by R.L. Stine, I think). I whipped through each of them in no time and then I began the religious process of checking things out of the local library and poking around bookstores for hours upon hours (which continues to this day). I spent those formative years really hooked on Bantam’s Choose Your Own Adventure, the original series and a myriad of clones – Time Machine (Bantam as well), Car Wars (based on the Steve Jackson game) , and TSR’s AD&D line. I was so in love with these fantasy adventures that I even wrote my own, a Mad Max rip off called Savage World. My sixth grade teacher, Mr. Dale, helped me type it up and submit it to some writing program for kids (the name eludes me) and I still have the slim, blue hardcover buried in a closet somewhere around here (my first publication ever!).
By the time I got to junior high school, reading was an everyday thing for me and I began to branch out beyond choosing my own endings. The most influential book on me EVER was Stephen King’s (writing as Richard Bachman) The Bachman Books. The novella in that collection that changed EVERYTHING was entitled, Rage, a pre-Columbine piece about a disturbed young man who takes a high school classroom hostage. Night Shift came next. And then Skeleton Crew. And then Carrie. And then every Stephen King book I could get my hands on. Horror had officially entered the building.
I became obsessed with horror films and searched used bookstores for any horror title that looked good. This obsession followed me though high school, where I crammed my growing paperback collection into a toy trunk in my closet, and then into college, where I lugged one, cheap, two foot wide by four foot tall bookshelf (with a faded Vuarnet sticker stuck to the left side) from apartment to apartment. My used bookstore habit was getting out of control. My modest stack of paperbacks now filled the bookshelf and teetered precariously in three, chin-high stacks leaning against the wall alongside the paltry piece of furniture.
When I got married, my wife (with an extensive book collection of her own) classed things up a bit and bought a few bookshelves from Target. They looked a whole lot nicer, but we still had way too many books for our tiny apartment and we were forced to box a bunch of them.
The moment my wife and I went from starving college students to gainfully employ
ed homeowners, we invested a hunk of money into a killer bookcase. The gargantuan beauty occupies an entire wall and it’s the first thing you see when you walk into our house. It stands about eight feet tall and spans about ten feet of wall space. It came in three separate pieces, a center unit with sliding doors and two end pieces. I wanted to invest in two more end units and add another six feet of book space, but the additional bookshelves are freaking expensive and we are still waiting until we are in the proper, reckless mood to say screw it and pull the trigger. Until then, the gorgeous behemoth works well. We have tons of books and though the beast is bursting, it is doing a fine job…for now.
I’m not a collector, just a reader, so our books vary in quality from torn, bargain basement King novels to expensive, author signed limited editions that I usually pick up at conventions in support of my fellow horror authors. Each and every volume, whether I shelled out the big bucks, paid twenty-five cents for it, or found it on the side of the road (which actually happened when I ran out of gas – it wasn’t a very good book, some teen detective thing, but it was nice to have something to read while walking) is a great source of pride. I don’t know what it is, but standing before that bookshelf, browsing my collection, pulling books free, looking them over, and then sliding them back into place, just makes me feel…right. It makes me feel nine-years-old all over again, brimming with wonder at the promise of an orange-red-smoke-demon-thing rising up from the center of a pentagram to devour my imagination and eat my heart.
Anyway, here are five books that I absolutely adore:
THE SCRIBNER ANTHOLOGY OF CONTEMPORARY SHORT FICTION – FIFTY NORTH AMERICAN STORIES SINCE 1979 (Edited by Lex Williford and Michael Martone) – In my college’s Cre
ative Writing Program (I attended San Francisco State) I was assigned lots and lots of books that I would have never picked out on my own. I generally stuck to King or Barker or anybody writing like King or Barker and steered clear of work labeled Literature, but what I failed to understand is that most of these books are just as dark as those labeled as horror and many of them are much better written. College taught me a lot about literature and my horror tastes grew up a little. Case in point - this is anthology is the best ever. Ever. It’s even better than Night Shift (which is one of the most perfect horror collections ever written). The stories contained within are harrowing, joyful, funny, and evil (sometimes all at the same time). They exemplify mastery. Margret Atwood’s Death by Landscape, Donald Barthelme’s The School, Rick Bass’ Wild Horses, Raymond Carver’s Errand, Michael Cunningham’s White Angel, Toney Earley’s The Prophet of Jupiter and Amy Hempel’s In the Cemetery where Al Jolson is Buried, are among the standouts, but really, EVERY story in this collection is incredible. Go buy it NOW!
SEX, DRUGS & COCO PUFFS (along with FARGO ROCK CITY, KILLING YOURSEL
F TO LIVE, IV, DOWNTOWN OWL and EATING THE DINOSAUR, all by Chuck Klosterman) – Okay, okay, I know, this technically ramps my list of five favorites up to ten, but I like all of Klosterman’s work and thus far I’ve liked all of his books. Nobody understands media culture better than Mr. K and nobody breaks it down with as much humor or genius. I wish I was this smart!
A GAME OF THRONES (along with A CLASH OF KINGS, A STORM OF SWORDS, and A FEAST FOR CROWS, all
by George RR Martin) – Yep. The list grows and grows, but to be fair, these are all one story, so they should only count as one slot. This gritty, ambitious epic is the best High Fantasy series out there, and for all of those who shudder when they think of proper lords and ladies arranging polite battles, this is the fantasy book for you – it’s more Tarantino than Tolkien. I am pissed, at least for a few minutes each and every day, while awaiting book five, A Dance with Dragons, which was supposed be out years ago. These books are really that good – and my anger is testament to their pull. They make you mad and the anticipation roiling about in my guts is insane. More please! Hurry up, George!
THE GARDEN OF LAST DAYS (by Andre Dubus III) – I picked this one up at BE
A a couple of years ago and had no idea what to expect. It was free and the cover art was nice and the author wrote The House of Sand and Fog, a book I never read, but then, I dug the movie, so I decided to give this one a chance. I’m glad I did. This sucker is super tense and beautifully written. It’s about one of the 9/11 terrorists, a stripper at the strip club he frequents, and several other characters in varying states of trouble or depression, whose lives get messy in the days leading up to the attack. Once you get started, the book is hard to put down. A brilliant dissection of Americana.
PRESSURE (by Jeff Strand) – Since I am a horror guy, I have to include at least one horror novel, which is a tou
gh, tough task. You see, I know many of the horror authors I read and it’s really hard for me to critically choose one over the other. There is so much great stuff out there in the small press and mass market alike. Should I include John R. Little’s Miranda? That little novella is one of the most beautiful things I have ever read. But alas, it sold out its print run and it’s not readily available (though EXPENSIVE copies can be found on the internet somewhere). Or how about Greg Lamberson’s Personal Demons? But then, I’d have to consider another of his books, Johnny Gruesome, and I couldn’t choose between them. What about the forthcoming, unpublished manuscripts I loved, like Benjamin Kane Ethridge’s Black & Orange or Brad C. Hodson’s Darling? There not even out yet, so I guess I can hold off on them for now. Damn! There is too much good stuff and it’s impossible for me to narrow it to just one entry, but if I must steer you to one title you might have missed (and have to read), I guess I’ll to go with Jeff Strand’s Pressure. The book is everything a good novel should be – it’s fast, funny, scary, and compulsively readable. If you haven’t read this psycho-thriller about the worst best friend in the world, get out there and pick up the Leisure paperback. You can thank me later.
Like the Sibylline Oracles of ancient Greece, the soothsayers of Rome or Mystic Meg from the National Lottery (although hopefully better than her) a small group of european bloggers and begun to look into the mists of time.
alcohol began when he missed a dream move to Liverpool after suffering a serious injury. He tells the sad story of how alcohol cost him his first marriage and his struggle to find work after retirement form the game in 2003. He makes interesting contrasts between, some of his colleagues who went to the top of the game and players who remained at his level. 
