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Nominations are open through 11:59 p.m. EST Sunday, June 16.

It's time to accept nominations for July's group Weird read. Please nominate the Classic Weird book you think would be the most fun for us to read, or that you most want to read as a group because you'd value collective opinion. Then please nominate a work written 1990 or later for our group's Modern Weird July read. The book can be any format--novel, anthology, short story collection, book of poetry, even a single short story as we did for Classic in April. It only has to be Weird and fiction.

On another note, I never close a topic. If you joined us this month but went back to read April's short story, feel free to post your thoughts on that selection, or any other topic you find was discussed at any time, right in that topic. Someone will surely engage.

Is Alice's Adventures Under Ground Weird?

After last month's choice for modern weird group read, which was somewhat low brow and more appealing to a masculine reader, I thought I'd try to go in the opposite direction for July: high brow and maybe more appealing to women. Nothing too feminine, mind you. I'm a guy, after all.

Anyway, I'm pretty excited about this find: Never Now Always by Desirina Boskovich. It's a novella and therefore short. The blurb describes it thus: Never Now Always is a weird sci-fi search for meaning, an apocalyptic murder mystery. It's a twisting mix of The Great Escape, Dark City, and Jacob's Ladder. Here is a link to Ms. Boskovich's very classy blog if you want to find out about her:

Can't wait to read about the other nominations though. We always have great books in our polls.

Scott wrote: "Is Alice's Adventures Under Ground Weird?"

I personally would consider that book pure fantasy, an early one at that, mainly because no other genre is mixed in.

I regret the use of "has to" in message one and wish I had written that otherwise. That's because I prefer not to be the arbiter of what's Weird fiction. I truly believe in democracy (so much so that I've left two groups that didn't operate that way) and that this is all our group. Unless asked, I don't even think I'd go there and discuss what's Weird fiction in relation to a nomination, and what's not, even if I do have a personal opinion on the subject. (I always do have one, of course.)

If the majority of members have an interest in reading that book, definitionally Weird fiction or not, and vote it in, I'm game. You can nominate a book of poetry (William Blake, for example--maybe a poor example since he really probably belongs to Weird fiction) or a calculus textbook, I'll put it in the poll and even read it if it gets the most votes and wins.

Is this book you bring up a different enough version of the children's classic we've all previously read to warrant its own reading? What do you think? I read the classic version aloud to my daughter one summer when she was nine or ten. Not sure that was the wisest choice--it seemed to give her odd dreams. She did have a lot of questions about it though, which I was right there to answer. I'm sure any version Carroll wrote is a great fantasy, and I'm a big believer in less often being more.

Dan wrote: "Is this book you bring up a different enough version of the children's classic we've all previously read to warrant its own reading? ..."

Alice's Adventures Underground is the original version, as presented to the real Alice.

Alice in Wonderland is a revised and expanded version that is more familiar. It was written after the author had been cut off from contact with Alice by her mother. It is darker and contains the Mad Hatter and the court scene at the end where the Queen probably represents Alice's mother.

I'm almost always willing to think about the Alice books, but wouldn't have brought it up here myself.

Yes, the one I have (and linked to) is a facsimile edition I picked up at London Museum ages ago. It is printed in Dodgson's own handwriting and illustrations. I thought this would be a good opportunity to finally read it! I did not know that there was added content in the other version; I thought the title had just mutated over time.

So do we have a nomination?

For Classic Weird I nominate The Strange Story Book, originally published in 1913.

Andrew Lang published a series of 25 books consisting mostly of various fairy tales from around the world. Then he died. Mrs. Lang the following year published the final volume of stories, the one I'm nominating. In its preface she wrote:

Do you love ghosts? So did he, and often and often he wanted to write you a book of the deadliest, creepiest ghost-stories he could find or invent, but he was afraid: afraid not of the children of course, but of their mothers, who were quite certain that if such a volume were known only to be in print, all kinds of dreadful things would happen to their sons and daughters. Perhaps they might have; nobody can prove that they wouldn't. At any rate, it was best to be on the safe side, so the book was never written.

The only story in it we have all probably read or at least know well is "Rip Van Winkle." When you stop and think about it, that story is Weird fiction, right? Got some fantasy, maybe a little horror, even some science fiction (time travel)....

If you're curious about Andrew Lang and that series of 25 fairy tale books, including the 12 coloured ones:

The twenty-fifth volume I'm nominating is free on Amazon for kindle here:

Dan wrote: "I'm pretty excited about this find: Never Now Always by Desirina Boskovich. It's a novella and therefore short. The blurb describes it thus: Never Now Always is a weird sci-fi search for meaning, an apocalyptic murder mystery."

Intriguing. I'd like to give this one a whirl.

Hi,
I'm keen to read something by Philip K Dick.
Maybe Confessions of a Crap Artist, or Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, though everyone has probably read that but me.

My mother tongue being French, I was looking at the list of authors Dan provided for inspiration and found Thomas Owen. I have several books of him I'd like to read but I think the only two books of his short stories translated in English are new compilation, i.e. they do not reflect the content of my original French compilations... But for those who do not know this author, look at his ratings and you might be tempted...

So I'd like to nominate this author but I am unsure about the book to nominate...

Otherwise, I nominate "Fictions" by Jorge Luis Borges

Richard wrote: "... Thomas Owen ..."

His work is not easy to obtain in English. I have read Les maisons suspectes, and personally wasn't impressed, but still Thomas Owen is one of the big names of the "Belgian Weird". It seems easier to find work by his friend Jean Ray, such as Whiskey Tales or other Belgian Weird Georges-Olivier Châteaureynaud.


Anyway, for myself, I will nominate The King in Yellow by Robert W. Chambers. It is available on project Gutenberg. Only four or five of the stories in that collection are Weird, so I'm only recommending that people read those.

I found a Thomas Owen book in English, one copy, for $910 plus $3.99 shipping. Borges nomination noted.

Dan wrote: "I found a Thomas Owen book in English, one copy, for $910 plus $3.99 shipping. Borges nomination noted."

Yeah, I found that one too. I found it very hard to do a search for Thomas Owen on this site. The search just brought up all sorts of irrelevant things, like "A tale of two cities". I had to use Wikipedia to look up the name of one of his books in order to actually find him on here. Stupid, Stupid, Stupid Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ search function!

When that happens, putting quotation marks around the search term usually helps.

Dan wrote: "When that happens, putting quotation marks around the search term usually helps."

You are right. It did help in this case.

I just noticed eBay does better on Thomas Owens books, including quantity of different ones available and price. Why doesn't GoodReads or Amazon list The Fortunes of Olaf Shorthand, for instance?

Oh, how strange. It does. And it's only $2.99 on Kindle:

Care to change your nomination, Richard? Looks fascinating. I might well vote for it myself!

Or maybe you'd prefer one of his other works to nominate, Richard:

Ed wrote: "Anyway, for myself, I will nominate The King in Yellow by Robert W. Chambers."

Great suggestion! I guess I still have a hard time figuring out what is "weird fiction"

For example, Borges works are considered "magical realism"...

On wikipedia, "weird fiction" doesn't have a French version. I think that cultures, countries and languages influence classification methods. I would probably translate "weird fiction" to "littérature fantastique" in French since it basically incorporates the same kind of authors as weird fiction.

Just a thought...

Dan wrote: "Oh, how strange. It does...."

That is a different Thomas Owen. An American living in Boston. I've wasted 30 minutes separating the author profiles for these two guys.

Also, not to be confused with "The Reports of That Late Reverend and Learned Judge, Thomas Owen Esquire One of the Justices of the Common Pleas: Wherein Are Many Choice Cases, Most of Them Throughly Argued by the Learned Serjeants (1656)"

Richard wrote: "Great suggestion! I guess I still have a hard time figuring out what is "weird fiction" ..."

Me, too. I don't worry about it and just call it all "SF", which can mean "Science Fiction", "Speculative Fiction", "Silly Fantasy" or anything related to those.

I like the French term .

Nominations for July Group read are now officially closed. For the five Classic Weird nominations I created a poll: /poll/list/9...

As for Modern Weird nominations we only had one. Mine. Therefore, Never Now Always by Desirina Boskovich is our uncontested July group read for Modern Weird.

Just bought it. I'm with you! Never Now Always by Desirina Boskovich, I mean . . .

I feel like they're giving away too much by comparing it to those films...

I also already wrote this over on the poll for Classic Weird itself

FYI, I discovered that if you are an Amazon Prime member, you can read Confessions of a Crap Artist for FREE!



(in the US)

I still voted for "Collected fictions" by Borges but this is not the book I intended to nominate. There is a compilation of short stories by Borges originally called "Fictions" ("Ficciones" in Spanish): /book/show/4...

The "Collected fictions" comprises the short stories of the book "Fictions" but of other books as well.

I'll be more precise next time... :-)

I can't run the poll with a foreign language version--the two links you provided me--the book wouldn't stand a chance of winning. However, I have substituted in the English language version, available on Kindle (which is a big plus), to the poll and informed our members via message. This should give your nomination a fully fair chance of winning. Thanks for the clarification!

The Strange Story Book is $4.27 according to my account. Can you send a link for the free one? Mine is

Oh, wait, you can get it here for free



I should have looked first. sorry

Also, if you click on polls, click on the "2 comments" hyperlink on that poll page, and then click on the book in the poll itself, it links to the free Kindle version at Amazon. But here's the same link directly:

Thanks!