Favorite Books of 2024

There were a lot of great reads this year, so many that I thought I list the books I really enjoyed. No particular ranking. A lot of them were horror books.

Not a novel, but this short story is really good. I've read almost everything by Hill and cannot wait for his next novel. Definitely give this one a read.

 

 

Chizmar's Chasing The Boogeyman was one of my favorite reads last year. His new book is very good. He writes great characters. Don't know why, but when I read his books, I think of the films of Richard Linklatter.

This was an incomplete book by Crichton which Patterson finished. A fast paced thriller. I also learned a lot about volcanoes, particularly lava tubes!

I really enjoyed Tremblay's new book. It was not what I expected. I'm not sure if I would even call it horror in the traditional sense, but I like the tone and feel of it. The Disappearance at Devil's Rock and Head Full of Ghost are also worth checking out.

I've read all of King's books, and I love his short stories. There are some great ones in this collection.

 

I read Fever House and The Devil By Name back to back. Devil By Name has a different feel from Fever House's noir vibe, but it's really good. Both are page tuners. Definitely worth checking out.

 

I think this is one of those books you either like it or you don't. I thought it was really cool and a lot of fun. I guess you could put this one in the fantasy territory. I think Koontz called it a spooky screwball comedy.

I've been reading of lot of Koontz lately and I love they way he creates his villains. And this book has some big baddies.

Very intense and dark read. The story reminded me of John Carpenter's The Fog. I'm looking forward to reading more by Malfi.

A great coming of age story. Carson nailed the 1990s. I felt like I was in a time machine. There were some very scary moments. And then there were times where I was laughing out loud. Probably one of the best books I read this year. Also check out The Chills by Carson.

 

Another one of my favorite reads of 2024. Very scary, and very engaging. A fast read. I enjoyed the themes explored in the book, particularly the loss of innocence. The format took  some time to get used to. But it's really effective in telling the story.
 

 

If you love horror and sci-fi movies, this is a must read. Nashawaty explores movies of the summer of 1982: Tron, The Thing, E.T., Star Trek: Wrath of Khan, Road Warrior, Blade Runner, Poltergeist and Conan The Barbarian. I love the way he structures the book. It reminded me of Peter Biskind's From Easy Rider to Raging Bull.

 

I got to see Alex Van Halen speak at LA Talks this past fall. Still can't believe Eddie Van Halen is no longer with us. Great read about Van Halen up to the 1984 record. Also check out Eruption - a book of interviews with Eddie Van Halen.

 

Ian Nathan has written a bunch of books for this series. A number of them I have read, such as Guillermo del Toro and Wes Anderson. His newest book on Spielberg is very good. There are some movies he only devotes a few pages too. Some of the stuff I already knew about Spielberg, but I really enjoyed the pictures and layout of the book. And great price!

 

Favorite Books on Cinema - Part 4

Cinema in the Digital Age was another book I discovered when writing my dissertation. 

 

 

Rombes's central claims is that we are haunted by the "specter of perfection" (2). His point is that imperfection is the human signature, and that there has been a tendency in current cinema to insert mistakes. His argument is similar to Manovich's take on photorealism. For Manovich, computer images are too good and need imperfections to meet our ideas of realism. 

As I mentioned in my previous post, Manovich's work on photorealism was significant in my book Capturing Digital Media. Nicholas Rombes's claim on flaws, mistakes and imperfections in cinema also greatly informed my research. I was specifically interested in how his idea performs in today's special effects. Rombes states, "Reality is today's special effects" (5). I thought of the long takes in Children of Men and Spielberg's War of the Worlds. Both films utilize digital effects to create a documentary like effect in their use of the long take.

 

Lastly, I love how Rombes's structures his book. His method is A-Z.  For example, the first chapter is "The Adorno Paradox," then it goes to "Against Method," and so on. Very cool book.

 

Favorite Books on Cinema - Part 3

I came across The Language of New Media in a film theory course I took when I was working toward my Ph.D. It is not a book exclusively on cinema, but there are a lot of great sections on the intersection of film and new media.

 

 

When I teach digital media, the first thing I ask students is what makes new media new? Manovich takes up this question in the beginning of his book. For Manovich, how new media became new is binary code (0s and 1s), "all existing media into numerical data accessible through computers (20). His answer may seem simple, but it has a major role in his overall argument, particularly for the history of cinema.

One of his claims is that cinema, now more than ever, is a painterly medium due to the digital tools at filmmaker’s disposal. He sees live action filmmaking as raw material that will later be digitally manipulated. Just to give you an idea of what he means, check out this VFX video for The Wolf of Wall Street--

 

But Manovich notes that cinema was a painterly medium from the start, which can be traced to the silent short films of Georges Méliès, such as A Trip to the Moon.

 

Another topic he takes up is photorealism: “The ability to simulate any object in such a way that its computer image is indistinguishable from a photograph” (184). He argues that computer graphics are too real and need imperfections.

For Manovich, the computer is NOT trying to mimic our "bodily experience of reality" but "reality as seen by the camera lens." It is not a "faked reality" the computer generates but "a film-based image" (200).

This was a significant point for me which I explored in my book Capturing Digital Media. I went further with this notion to explore it psychical effects, looking at purposely and unconsciously inserted imperfections into the moving image.

There are lots of interesting sections in The Language of New Media, such as his reading of interactivity and database narratives. I highly recommend it for those interested in both digital media studies and film theory.

 

Favorite Books on Cinema - Part 2

Looking Awry is one I always go to when I'm working with Lacanian concepts. 

 

Looking Awry was significant for me when I wrote Cinema of Confinement. I recommend it if you want to learn more about the intersection of psychoanalytic theory and cinema.

There are lots of great examples from movies and books to help understand these complex concepts. Žižek is not suggesting that using examples from popular culture avoids the complexity of theory. Rather, it is a way of exploring theoretical concepts, but looking at them from a different perspective--thus looking awry.

One example that stuck with me is Patricia Highsmith's "The Black House," a story about a group of men who get together at a bar and reminisce about an old house in the town that is associated with nostalgia and memories. A young engineer, who just moved into town, hears about the myth of the old house and decides to visit it. Finding nothing mysterious about it, he tells the men that it is just an old, filthy ruined house. The men freak out and attack the young engineer and windup killing him.

 

As Žižek explains, the young intruder reduced their fantasy space to an everyday, common reality. "He annulled the difference between reality and fantasy space, depriving the men of the place in which they were able to articulate their desires” (9). 

The old house is an empty screen for the men to project their nostalgic desires and memories upon, which was then reduced to nothing by the engineer. Here, Žižek draws our attention to the fantasy screen, the protective screen from the Lacanian Real, the "thing" that haunts and disrupts the symbolic order. A point Žižek makes over and over is that if you remove the fantasy screen, you don't get "reality." Instead, you get a nightmarish form of reality. The fantasy screen provides a sense of reality, keeping the Real at a distance. In the case of the engineer, he unplugs the men's fantasy screen.

In Cinema of Confinement, I discuss the ending of Rope (1948), how the penthouse becomes a strange and distorted space after Rupert (James Stewart) discovers the corpse Brandon (John Dall) and Phillip (Farley Granger) had hidden throughout the dinner party. 

The big window acts as a sort of fantasy screen for Brandon and Phillip, which keeps danger at a distance. But when their secret is exposed, Rupert opens the window and fires a gun, calling attention to the authorities. The space then becomes flooded with lights from a nearby neon sign, the sounds of the city amplify. The characters movements are suddenly protracted and creaturely. The orderliness of space becomes distorted as an the fantasy screen collapses.

 

There are lots of great examples in Looking Awry from cinema and worth checking out. Also see Enjoy Your Symptom and Žižek's book on Krzysztof Kieslowski. Of course, there is his collection of essays on Alfred Hitchcock. I also recommend Matthew Flisfeder's excellent book on Žižek's work on film. 

 

 

Favorite Books on Cinema - Part 1

I'm current writing a new article and was returning to some of the books that had the most impact on me. Not a top ten list - just some books I often find myself citing and thought I would share.

The one I always keep returning to is Laura Mulvey's Death 24x a Second: Stillness and the Moving Image (2006).

 

 

I discovered this book when researching my MA thesis on Abbas Kiarostami. Then I was assigned to read it for a film theory course I took when I was working toward my Ph.D. 

Mulvey is mostly know for her article on the male gaze in Narrative Cinema and Visual Pleasure. There are some great chapters in that book. But 24x is the one that I constantly return to. 

I love the chapter on Roland Barthes and Andre Bazin, where she compares their writings on photography and film, respectively. The last two chapters on the possessive and pensive spectator are also really good and provide some very interesting insights into new technologies and cinema. 

I think one of the key points of her book is that cinema has a ghostly secret - the still frame. Digital media has changed our relationship to cinema because we now have the technologies to halt the flow of images which "opens a space for consciousness" (186).

 

 

Images for Ebooks - Amazon KDP Publishing

My first book, THE POSTCARD, has a bunch of images, and I had a hard time figuring out how to incorporate them into my kindle book when I published it on KDP in 2011. So I thought I would share the steps.

 

FIRST: You must save your Word document as a Web page (.htm)

 

When you create a Web file, it automatically creates a folder (fld). See below:

 

SECOND: Insert your images into the Web file you just created. DO NOT COPY and PASTE the images in your manuscript. You MUST insert them. The images are automatically stored in the folder file (fld). I inserted my book cover at the end of my book, Zworsky's Children, as an example.

 

THIRD: Once you are done inserting the images and are reading to upload your manuscript to KDP, COMPRESS the file. 

This is the tricky part. You must select BOTH the folder associated with the html file and the html file itself. You are compressing two files into one.

Right click on your mouse and a new window will pop up. Select COMPRESS.

 

After you compress the two files, a ZIP file will be created. You can rename the zip file if you want.

 

Now you are ready to upload your manuscript. Upload the zip file as your manuscript on KDP. When the file is process, you will see the images in your manuscript preview.

Random note: you can switch back and forth from different views of the file such as Print Layout, Web, etc.

I hope that helps. Good luck with your book.