Seventeenth Annual FMS Scarelicious October Movie Series: #1 Scream (2022)

I gotta be honest with y'all - I am struggling to embrace the scary season like I never have before.  I think it's just that [gestures wildly] everything is so scary in this country right now.  Usually I like to escape to horror movies to take a break from [gestures wildly] everything, but this year is just so exhausting and horrible that I'm finding it difficult to rally.  All that to say: this may be the fewest horror movies I watch in October in recent history.  And the reviews may be threadbare.  Sorry.  Trying to do better.  Making no promises.

It has been a minute since I've seen a Scream.  The last one was IV - a/k/a Scre4m - which came out in 2011 (and which I watched in 2018).  And then, eleven years later, we get the next one, a "requel," in the parlance of the movie, as meta as ever, with brand new characters closely connected to legacy characters.  This time we follow a pair of estranged sisters who are forced back into each other's lives when new Ghostfaces reemerge in Woodsboro, twenty-five years after the first Ghostface killings.  And they need back-up, so we get to see Dewey (David Arquette), Sydney (Neve Campbell) and Gail (Courteney Cox - who should really stop fucking with her face) because who knows better how to stop a Ghostface than those badasses?

After a pretty brutal opener that is a direct callback to Drew Barrymore in the first film, this fifth installment is the typical mix of light tone and rigorous kills that is the hallmark of the series.  It's okay, a little nostalgic to see old faces again, plus a return to Stu's house.  I loved middle-aged Sydney and Gail; I also loved how everyone is brunette.

August reads

 Let's see what we got into in August, shall we?

• Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt.  I have been trying to get this book at the library for YEARS, despite it more than three decades old.  A captivating true crime story, set in the charming (and at that point, undiscovered, which the popularity of the book put an end to) city of Savannah, Georgia, in the 1980s.  The cast of characters is fantastic.  Great, great fun.
• A Local Habitation by Seanan McGuire.  The second book in the October Daye urban fantasy series.  I like these well enough but they're pretty lightweight, despite the stories' high body count.  If nothing else, the faerie world building is interesting.
• When the Wolf Comes Home by Nat Cassidy.  Jess, a struggling actress in L.A., finds a small boy, a runaway, outside her apartment.  Not long after that, a bunch of her neighbors are dead and the two of them are on the run, trying to get away from a terrifying wolf-bear-thing.  But this is not your typical werewolf novel.  There are no silver bullets.
• The Great Alone by Kristin Hannah.  This novel, set in the wilds of Alaska in the 1970s, follows a family hoping to get away from the culture/politics of the lower 48 states and finding themselves woefully unprepared for what an Alaskan winter actually means.  Back to the landers, indigenous folks and doomsday preppers abound.  This book did not make me want to immediately book a trip to Alaska, if I'm honest.
• Midnight Timetable by Bora Chung.  A novel comprised of interconnected short ghost stories, based at a research center that houses cursed objects..  This isn't my favorite format - I prefer linear plot and lots of it, with heavy world-building, but I got sucked in nonetheless.
• Desperation by Stephen King.  A reread as I was in between library visits.  Set in a small mining town in Nevada, this is a bloody and brutal King story, tinged with the supernatural.  Sort of a duology with The Regulators but you don't have to read both, and I vastly prefer Desperation.
• Spread Me by Sarah Gailey.  I find Sarah Gailey hit or miss.  Didn't love this one, a The Thing-esque science fiction/horror novel set in a remote research station.  The team brings in a strange specimen that they find buried in the desert.  They shouldn't have.
• The Brides by Charlotte Cross.  Now this one I liked a lot.  You know how in Dracula, the Count has his brides, vampiric "sisters" who seduce men and eat them?  This novel, weaving together multiple storylines, introduces you to those women, shows you how they got there and, what they left behind.  Good fun.

July reads

 I did a decent job of picking books this month: three of them I loved.  Let's get into it.

• Onxy Storm by Rebecca Yarros.  The third book in the dragon romance/fantasy Empyrean series.  I loved the first one so much but my ardor has diminished somewhat with the subsequent volumes.  This one ends on a hell of a cliffhanger/twist though!
• You Like It Darker by Stephen King.  2024 collection of twelve short stories.  As with King's more recent output, some of these work better than others.  But I am a Stephen King stan and will read pretty much anything/everything he writes.
• The Angel of the Crows by Katherine Addison.  Sort of Sherlock Holmes fanfic set in an alterate 19th century London where angels, vampires, werewolves, hellhounds and other beings live side by side with plebian humans.  I really liked this one.
• Emily Wilde's Map of the Otherlands by Heather Fawcett.  Both Emily Wilde books have taken me a fair while to get into - and when I'm just a couple chapters in, I have to encourage myself to keep going - but I always enjoy them by the end.  This time, Emily and her beau, Wendell, a faerie prince in disguise, attempt to regain Wendell his kingdom.
• The Secret Hours by Mick Herron.  A standalone book in the Slough House universe, this gives some much appreciated backstory to a number of characters from the series.  I don't want to spoil anything but this was great fun.
• Psychopomp and Circumstance by Eden Royce.  A Southern Gothic historical horror/fantasy  novella (more spooky than scary) set outside of an alternate Charleston.  When Phee's aunt dies, she volunteers to make the funeral arrangements - in part to get away from her oppressive mother and the New Charleston suitors clamoring after her.
• The Night Birds by Christopher Golden.  Witch horror at sea!  Or, in a derelict ship run aground just offshore of Galveston, Texas.  Meh.
• Glass Sword by Victoria Aveyard.  Book #2 in the Red Queen series.  Having joined the rebellion, our heroine Mare Barrows is having a rough time of it.  Sure, she's reunited with her brother and is getting better at wielding her lightning.  But having to be a leader weighs heavy on her and she begins to distance herself from those around her.  Definitely darker than the first book - looking forward to reading the third.
• The Women of Wild Hill by Kristen Miller.  Modern day witches fighting against the patriarchy to try to save the earth?  YES PLEASE.  Good fun, well written and timely.

June reads

 How am I doing, getting the prior month's reading list shared on a timely basis?  Well, I did manage to get June 2026's books up before the end of July.  So bonus points for me.

• The Autumn Springs Retirement Home Massacre by Philip Fracassi.  A slasher/thriller set in a retirement home, where some of the residents find themselves unconvinced of the naturalness of a spate of their friends' deaths.  Led by 70+ year old heroine Rose DuBois, they decide to investigate when the authorities don't seem to be getting anywhere.  Both humorous and mean-spirited, this was a decent read.
• Iron Flame by Rebecca Yarros.  Number two in the dragon fantasy series.  Still fun, still spicy.
• Vivatera by Candace J. Thomas.  When I have to fly, I usually pick up a couple of books at a thrift store so I can abandon them at the airport when I'm done.  I got this one.  It was awful.  Self-published, maybe, but also sort of seems like AI wrote it?  Terrible but I finished it just to spite myself.
• Inside of a Dog by Alexandra Horowitz.  Accessible science book about the cognitive processes of dogs, giving us some insight into how our best friends think, feel about and experience the world.  I am trying to give my own dog more space to sniff on our walks after it, and give him way more hugs and kisses (because I know that he likes it).
• The Correspondent by Virginia Evans.  An epistolary novel following the correspondence of Sybil Van Antwerp, retired lawyer, divorced mother of two adult children and prolific letter writer, even in the days of email.  There is small-scale drama - family dynamics, adult romantic relationships, the past coming back to haunt - and while it took a while to get into for me, I did enjoy it quite a lot by the end.
• The Wild Girls by Phoebe Morgan.  Four schoolgirl chums reunite at a luxury safari resort, ostensibly for one's birthday.  But they end up stranded, isolated and getting picked off one by one.  Intriguing concept, meh book.
• Red Queen by Victoria Aveyard.  Ooh! Young adult dystopian fantasy novel that I stumbled on completely by accident (see above re thrift store book)?  Yes please!  Red bloods are the regular people, serfs and servants, poor and beaten down.  Silver bloods are the rich, powerful, imbued with godlike powers.  So what happens when Mare Barrow, Red-blooded thief, is found to have powers like a Silver?  Add in a couple of handsome young princes, court intrigue and treachery and rebellion and you've got a party.  Lots of fun.  Looking forward to the next one.

May reads

 I read a bunch in May because Mr. Mouse and I had a week's vacation where we did stuff (hiking, trail running, road bike riding) in the mornings, then hunkered down to read through the early afternoons until it was time for beers.  Solid strategy.

• Audition for the Fox by Martin Cahill.  A debut fantasy novel with heavy folkloric overtones.  An acolyte, desperate to obtain the patronage of a god, gets sent back in time by the trickster Fox to try to save her own ancestors and, by doing so, save herself.
• I See You've Called in Dead by John Kenney.  Bud is an obituary writer and, one day, feeling sorry for himself, gets hammered and writes his own obituary.  But then he inadvertently submits it for publication.  The newspaper wants to fire him but the HR department has now classified him as dead, and you can't fire a dead person - until the glitch in the system is worked out.  Bud uses this time to figure out WTF he wants and he does this by going to the wakes and funerals of strangers.  I liked this one.
• Clown Town by Mick Herron.  The most recent installment in the Slough House / Slow Horses British spy series.  Decent, although it's been so long since I read the last one that I didn't really remember what was going on in the longer story arc.
• Mindhunter: Inside the FBI's Elite Serial Crime Unit by John Douglas and Mark Olshaker.  Mr. Mouse and I recently watched the Mindhunter series on Netflix and while we liked the first season, were less enamored of the second.  I was interested enough to pick up the (non-fiction) book the television series was based on.  As it turns out, I ended up liking the book better than the show.
• Hungerstone by Kat Dunn.  Ooh I liked this one!  It's a vampire novel, a feminist retelling of Carmilla (previously read here), which is itself the novel that inspired Dracula.  
• On Looking: Eleven Walks with Expert Eyes by Alexandra Horowitz.  Wherein the author takes eleven walks, most in New York City, with eleven different experts, to see what she is missing with her inattention.  The experts include: her toddler, her dog, an artist, a geologist, a blind woman and a font designer.  I enjoyed some chapters more than others but mostly came away with wanting to read Horowitz's book, Inside of a Dog: What Dogs See, Smell and Know
• I, Medusa by Ayana Gray.  I liked this one too - another one in my unofficial series of modern retellings of Greek mythology.  This is a version of Medusa's origin story, and how a smart, young woman gets forced into being one of the most iconic monsters in mythology.
• The Maid by Nita Prose.  A murder mystery set in a hotel, with a slightly neuro-divergent chambermaid heroine.
• Death of the Author by Nnedi Okonafor.  A science fiction novel within a novel, with an irascible, Black handicapped protagonist, Zelu.  When she gets fired from her university job, in the wake of getting her novel rejected, she starts writing something completely different: a science fiction novel about robots in the aftermath of a global apocalypse that killed off all the humans. 
• Beasts of Carnaval by Rosalia Rodrigo.  A fantastical, fictionalized exploration of the effects of colonization on native peoples.  Sofia, a mestiza freedwoman, travels to Isla Bestia - where rich colonizers flock for the food, wine and various entertainments - in search of her twin brother, who disappeared there five years earlier.
• Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros.  Ooh.  Love this one.  Dragon fantasy that is kind of like Dragonriders of Pern crossed with Hunger Games but also pretty spicy.  Readers are apparently kind of pouty that the author hasn't finished #4 in the series yet.
• My Family and Other Animals by Gerald Durrell.  This one is a re-read and, honestly, I have no idea how many times I've read it.  My copy was stolen from my fourth grade homeroom and completely fanned the flames of my youthful obsession with Greece.  Ostensibly written to be about naturalist Durrell's encounters with the fauna of Corfu when his family lived there from 1935-1939, it is as much about the crazy characters who are his family and friends as it is about critters.  I love this book.  One of my all-time favorites. 

April reads

Late to post and not that many books read in April.  It happens.

• The Comfort of Ghosts by Jacqueline Winspear.  Finally finished the Maisie Dobbs series and I must say that, for me, it went out on sour note - I thought the final book in the series was the weakest by far.  I haven't enjoyed the sections of the most recent volumes that have Maisie focused more on her family (I don't care a fig about her daughter Anna).  Family took up a big chunk of this last book, plus an inordinate amount of time was spent with the characters reminiscing about events of the prior seventeen books.  I already read them - I don't need you to rehash them.  I guess it was time for the series to end.  I did, however, love many of the previous installments and do recommend the series.
• Blood of the Old Kings by Sung-Il Kim.  Wherein three strangers unite to save their home.  Epic fantasy with journeys, dragons, the corpses of dead sorcerors and two of the three protagonists are women.
• Atlas of Unknowable Things by McCormick Templeman.  My notes say that I really liked this one but, honestly, I can't remember it at all.  Set in a gothic college campus high in the Rocky Mountains, a historian arrives to study its manuscripts whilst secretly searching for an artifact.
• Nowhere Burning by Catriona Ward - I liked this one too, and funnily enough, it is also set high in the Rocky Mountains.  This time, abused siblings Riley and Oliver run away from home, searching for Nowhere, a hidden sanctuary for children like them, built on the ruins of a former movie star's ranch.  Or is it a cult?  Or worse?  This one is pretty dark and pretty good.
• Rosemary & Rue by Seanan McGuire.  I was looking for a different Seanan McGuire book and picked this one up instead, the first of the October Daye urban fantasy series.  October "Toby" Daye is half human, half faerie, and all caught up in the fae world, despite her best efforts.  A knight for Faerie, she's a bit of a P.I. and has to solve the murder of a fae countess before a curse ends her own life.  Didn't love it but enjoyed it enough to see what the next book has to offer.

March reads

I ended up going back to my folks' house for a few days mid-March for some family time.  Because it was mid-March in Maine, the weather was such (snowing, raining, cold and gloomy) that we spent a lot of time indoors, watching the college basketbasket tournament and reading.  

• The Consequences of Fear by Jacqueline Winspear.  #16 in the Maisie Dobbs series - which, if I'm honest, diminishes in quality as the series goes on, as though the author is maybe just a little tired of the whole thing - finds our intrepid sleuth in September 1941.  Europe is reeling under Nazi occupation and Maisie finds herself investigating a murder that has implications for Britain's war effort.
• Magic for Liars by Sarah Gailey.  When a faculty member dies under suspicious circumstances at an elite magical boarding school, non-magical Ivy Gamble, private investigator, is hired to figure out what happened.  Things are complicated by the fact that Ivy's magical and estranged sister is an educator at the school.
• A Sunlit Weapon by Jacqueline Winspear.  Maisie Dobbs #17 (which I liked better than 16) is in October 1942, following women pilots and American servicemen and a possible threat to Eleanor Roosevelt, who is visiting England. 
• Women of the Post by Joshunda Sanders.  Based on true events, this is the story of the all-Black battalion of American women soldiers, sent to England to sort out the millions of pieces of mail languishing in warehouses and get them to the servicemen who badly need the morale boost.  I had no idea about this piece of WWII history - there's a movie? - so I enjoyed learning about it.  I didn't think this book was terribly well written, however.
• Listen to Me by Tess Gerritsen.  A murder mystery from the Rizzoli and Isles series (#13, but I don't think it's crucial to read them in order - these are popcorn books), wherein Jane Rizzoli (detective) and Maura Isles (medical examiner) investigate the murder of a well-liked nurse, all while Jane's nosy mom Angela starts getting suspicious of new neighbors down the street.
• Code Name Helene by Ariel Lawhon.  I LOVED this one.  Another WWII novel (there's been a lot lately, I know), this is a historical novel based on the TRUE story of Nancy Wake, an Australian socialite who became a spy and a French resistance leader against Nazi Germany.  She began as a journalist, segued to helping Allied servicemen escape from occupied France over the mountains to Spain.  Then, after the Nazis learned about her, she escaped to England herself - but then went back to France to help arm and organize the Maquis rebels as they fought against their German occupiers.  Amazing woman.
• The Black Ascot by Charles Todd.  This is the 21st murder mystery in the Ian Rutledge series by mother-son duo/pseudonym Charles Todd.  Rutledge is battling his own shell shock from WWI while trying to solve a decade-old murder.
• Class Clown: The Memoirs of a Profession Wiseass by Dave Barry.  This is a memoir, not a straight humor book or funny novel like so many of Barry's books.  As such, there are some poignant moments, especially when dealing with his parents.  But it's still pretty friggin' funny!
• A Cruel Deception by Charles Todd.  This one is from their Bess Crawford series (#11), with heroine/nurse Bess Crawford assigned by a superior to find wayward soldier who has abandoned his duties and salving his mental WWI war wounds with opiates.  I liked this one okay but Bess Crawford is no Maisie Dobbs.
• Chosen Ones by Veronica Roth.  Ooh I liked this one too!  This is an adult fantasy novel by Divergent author Roth, following a group of late 20/early 30-somethings who are plagued by serious PTSD following their defeat of a world-destroying dark entity.  Trouble is, it doesn't look like he has stayed defeated.
• Clytemnestra by Constanza Casati.  As previously noted, there seems to be a trend recently with authors novelizing Greek mythology.  There are mixed results but I quite liked Clytemnestra, bringing to the forefront Helen of Troy's sister/wife of Agamemnon/queen of Mycenae who ruled in her husband's absence and paid him back for the murder/sacrifice of their daughter.

Next month: I finally finish the Maisie Dobbs series!

February reads

Only six books in February.  This is because (I think) we had guests over the Presidents' Day holiday weekend and whereas normally I would have hunkered down and plowed through a bunch of books, I had to be sociable instead.

• The Incandescent by Emily Tesh.  A grown-up, queer-friendly magic school ("dark academia") novel wherein the heroine, Dr. Walden, must protect the 600 school kids from demonic incursions.  Great world-building, interesting characters.
• The American Agent by Jacqueline Winspear.  #15 in the Maisie Dobbs series.  Maisie is back on the case when an American correspondent is found murdered in her London flat.  As these later books go on, I find myself less engaged when we have to explore Maisie's home life with newly-adopted daughter.  This installment was (thankfully) not so heavy on the child bit.
• Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir.  Another science-adventure-in-space from the author of The Martian.  I didn't like this one quite so well, which is weird for someone who DOES like science fiction and fantasy and aliens and all that.  Movie coming out soon starring Ryan Gosling, apparently.
• Dark Sisters by Kristi DeMeester.  Wow - I don't remember this one at all.  Hold on ... [looks it up] oh yeah.  Three centuries of witches and persecution and a curse.  Didn't love it - seemed scattered.
• The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah.  I've read Kristin Hannah books before about women in war - this one is about two French sisters in WWII, one actively in the Resistance against the occupying Nazis, one resisting the best she can.  
• Hemlock and Silver by T Kingfisher.  This one I liked: Anja - a plus-sized, competent spinster (35 years old lol) - wants nothing more than to putter around her laboratory, manufacturing antidotes to common poisons.  She reluctantly gets drawn into royal intrigue when the king hires her to find out what's wrong with his ailing daughter.  Again, good world-building, interesting characters, humor but also tension and violence.  I am a T Kingfisher fan.

January reads

 Ooo I'm on top of it this month!

• The End of the World as We Know It (anthology).  This is a collection of short stories by horror writers, all based in the universe of Stephen King's The Stand.  The Stand is one of my favorite SK novels and it was interesting to see other fans' takes on it.
• Journey to Munich by Jacqueline Winspear.  In this Maisie Dobbs mystery, set in 1938, Maisie is enlisted by the British Secret Service to infiltrate Nazi Germany to affect a Dachau prisoner's release.  The man is a British engineer, very valuable in the war effort.  Maisie poses as his daughter and, while she waits for the Germans follow through on their promise to release him, tracks down a missing woman from her past and also finds herself again in the wake of her husband's death.
• In This Grave Hour by Jacqueline Winspear.  Finally returning to England in 1939, as Britain enters WWII, Maisie Dobbs throws herself back into work, investigating the murders of Belgian refugees from the Great War.  
• To Die But Once by Jacqueline Winspear.  This is book #14 in the series - which ends at eighteen and then what will I do? - and Maisie and her team are back at it, investigating the murder of a young apprentice who was involved with a wartime government contract.  Organized crime looms large but Maisie is more than up for it.
• Bittershore by V.V. James.  Ah ... apparently this is a sequel to Sanctuary, which I haven't read.  Didn't really matter, in this fantasy/thriller focused on mother and daughter witches, Sarah and Harper Fenn, regrouping after being run out of town after a literal witch hunt.  Meh.  I guess there's an AMC show based on these books?
• The Island of Last Things by Emma Sloley.  Set on (in?) Alcatraz in the middle of a planet-altering apocalypse, this novel follows two zookeepers in the last zoo on Earth.  Dark but surprisingly hopeful.
• In Cold Blood by Truman Capote.  One of my BFFs from college said that he did a book report in ninth grade on this one, but this is the first time I've read it.  Being true crime (indeed, basically inventing the genre), it's not my usual read but boy, was it fascinating.  Meticulously researched via indefatigable interviews, this book switches POVs between the decent, hardworking Clutter family and the two men who brutally murdered them.

And so now I'm going to have to try another classic true crime: I've got Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil on my list now.

December reads

I must have been busy doing holiday stuff in December because I only read three books.  That's the fewest in a month all year; the next fewest was five in September.

• The Poppy War by RF Kuang.  The first in a trilogy of "grimdark" military fantasy, this novel follows Rin, a gifted orphan who enters an elite military academy.  She discovers that she has supernatural powers and this catapults her into the war that grips her country.  Didn't love it.
• A Dangerous Place by Jacqueline Winspear.  Another Maisie Dobbs, this one jumps forwards a few years to find a struggling Maisie trying to lose herself, first in India and then, on her way home to England, in Gibraltar.  Thinking to just solve the murder of a local photographer, she finds herself drawn back towards the machinations of the British secret service as WWII looms ever nearer.
• How to Seal Your Own Fate by Kristin Perrin.  The second novel in the Castle Knoll murder mystery series, Annie spends the inheritance she received in the first book by investigating a pair of murders.  These are enjoyable but lightweight mysteries, not quite to the level of Maisie Dobbs or Inspector Gamache.

So I ended up reading 106 books this past year.  I didn't have a goal, just wanted to track how many books I would read in 2025.  I have a goal for 2026 though: more.