Looking for a New Book?

While I continue my quest to add more books to my personal library that I’ll ever be able to read in my lifetime, I thought I would give a little shout out to a few titles that are currently sitting in my Want List on Amazon. I don’t have any of these yet (key word…yet) so all I know about them is what I’ve read on the Amazon description. But they do sound pretty interesting, and I know that I intend to pick them up at some point. While I’m in the middle of reading 3 different books right now, and have a few piled up that I still need to find room in the bookshelves for, it might be a bit.

Who am I kidding, I’ll probably order them next payday!

I’ll list this these alphabetically so it doesn’t look like I’m playing any favoritism!

Ad NauseamAd Nauseam By Michael Gingold
Any horror fan worth their weight in magazines knows Gingold from his decades working for Fangoria magazine, but has been keeping himself quite busy since those days. His book The Frightfest Guide to Monster Movies is just awesome and is simply a must. But his new book is something that older fans will love paging through, as well as giving younger fans a look into the past. In his youth, Gingold would cut out the ads for horror films, the bigger named ones as well as the smaller titles that snuck out. This book is a walk through the 1980’s in a year-by-year guide to Gingold’s archive, featuring more than 450 ads. Remember folks, years before the internet, this is how we found out movies that were playing so these ads had the tough job of capturing the attention of the person paging through the newspaper and make them want to rush out to see this movie. And more times than not, at least for us horror fans, it worked.

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Fango…Up from the Ashes

fango banner

There is no horror fan older that “grew up” in the genre in the ’80s and wasn’t thankful for Fangoria magazine. Since they were one of the few around that really covered all aspects of the genre and did it so well, we fans learned a lot. Granted, the last few years of their existence was pretty shaky and downright depressing. I had my subscription for close to 30 years, maybe longer, before I finally stopped since they just stopped delivering, not just the quality, but the issues themselves.

fangoria9But now, all that has changed and a new owner and Editor-in-Chief gives horror fans and Fango fans hope for a new start and a new regime. I, for one, wish them all the best and hope they can return it to its former glory. Because it is important to have a place for fans to be able to read about their favorite movies and the people behind them. Bringing back Michael Gingold to produce his own column is a great idea too. I hope them all the best.

Though…one little concern. Since it is now owned by Cinestate, which produces their own movies, I can only hope that there is not a conflict of interests. What I mean is, like some of these big horror news sites that are owned by a studio, you don’t think they can be totally honest about what they are reviewing or promoting, do you? So when a magazine is owned by a studio, does that mean we’re going to get a little less journalistic integrity, meaning they won’t cover certain movies, or at least not give their movies bad reviews but plenty of coverage instead?

I think a news site, magazine, or whatever, should have the freedom to be able to cover any subject of the genre and not be afraid that it’s going to upset their boss because they just gave a bad review of one of their movies. And if you tell me that they have that freedom, then I’d like to see a negative feature they posted about a product their owners invested in. Sure, I may sound a little cynical, but I’m sorry…just can’t help it. Journalistic integrity seems like a lost virtue these days, much like the truth in general. Plus, with the way the world is now anyway, it’s hard for me to put trust in anything or anyone.

But seriously…Good Luck to Fangoria and their staff. I look forward to what you can do.

Need Some Holiday Horror?

Yuletide Terror

When thinking about the upcoming holiday, most people don’t think about horror films. In fact, it is supposed to be a joyous time, with gifts, food, family, commercialism…oops…skip that last one. But as I said, “most” people don’t think about horror films….but we do! So one way for us to stay with the “holiday spirit”, we can now read some essays on the Christmas by some of the genre’s talented writers!

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New Book Titles for Your Want List

As if it wasn’t proven to me more than at the recent HorrorHound Weekend that print is definitely not dead, here are a few more titles that I’ve come across that are either out or coming out soon. I know I’ll be adding them to my library at some point in the near future.

Frightfest Guide to Monster Movies

The first one is comes from FAB Press, so right there we know the quality of it is going to be worthy of the cost. But then you throw in the fact that it was written by Michael Gingold, then that is just icing on the cake.

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