For anybody curious, here is what I—Eddie Generous, editor & et cetera of Unnerving—read this month (February 2025).
Midnight Sun by Ramsey Campbell
This one was slow and rather uneventful. It really wasn’t for me…usually I can get down with a Campbell horror, but I just don’t have much nice to say about Midnight Sun.
Hondo by Louis L’Amour
Another lightning-paced old west adventure. The sides are represented fairly evenly: the Indigenous can be brutal, but the whites earned this brutality and it’s clear, even way back when this was written, L’Amour wasn’t saying either side was all the way good or bad, all the way right or wrong, which is refreshing because I love pre-internet world stories that are devoid of heroes/saviors who could never have existed in that Superman way of so much historical fiction. Great characters, dialogue, setting. I’ll probably be reading this guy’s stuff the rest of my life.
The Hill Bachelors by William Trevor
Bumped into this guy’s work purely by accident. In Canada, American media smothers us, stamping out most of what we do and just about all that might come to us from elsewhere…like Ireland for example. I note that now because how the fuck have I not stumbled upon this prolific master of the short story before? It’s like if Alice Munro had written interesting things, now and then ratcheting up some suspense. It’s also a bit like Raymond Carver, the voice not so distinct and the happenings rarely as mundane or intimate, but there’s a comparable grasp of humanity captured. The settings, the characters, the dialogue, the pacing, the use of language, the surprises, about nine of ten stories nailed all of these points, which is about as good as it gets. I’m excited to dive into the rest of this dude’s catalog.
Medicine Walk by Richard Wagamese
This story is incredible, touching, human. I’d read a couple novellas by the author, which were good, but this was ten kilometers beyond. Twenty. Thirty. Fucking amazing. I seriously doubt I’ll read a book this good for the rest of the year. Everything about it works. No words I use to describe it will do it justice. Find this book, read it, tell your friends.
The Terminal Man by Michael Crichton
First off, did Michael Crichton ever miss? This was exactly what I’d hoped it would be when I cracked it open: suspenseful, engaging, and peopled with believable characters. By and by, this one feels a little redundant to a 2025 reader (released in 1972, the subject has been done to death since), so I guessed the second half of the plot long before I got there, but it was still great. A wonderful distraction.
The Miss Hobbema Pageant by WP Kinsella
I had no idea what this was when I grabbed it, knowing only that the cover was funny and the author wrote the story behind Field of Dreams. After the first story in the collection, I hopped on the internet to find out is the author was Indigenous…he was not. Eek, I thought at first, then decided I couldn’t be mad at a picture for the history it showed. The reading is light and easy, the characters and settings are fun and funny. This might even be a barrel of goodies if you jumped a couple mental hoops (maybe those weren’t Indigenous people, but happy aliens pretending to be? Or maybe they were from the distant future and had to attempt assimilation, their only idea of Indigenous people being other WP Kinsella stories?). I’d say skip this one, unless you want a glimpse of the past where whites wrote the stories of people of color and were celebrated—oh, wait, that’s still a thing, though not so much in Canada. Good writing, but problematic enough to be of little enjoyment.
As a bonus—or maybe not a bonus?—to the twenty or so people who read these posts concerning my reading habits, last night I was doing my typical yoga routine in just my jammies (usually I wear track pants and undies), and I always do some planking after downward dogging. Turns out, when I plank in just my jammies, it’s wrists, elbows, toes…and testicles touching the floor. Getting old is sweet.
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Bio: Eddie Generous is a Canadian who writes horror, adventure, and crime stories inspired by the people and places around him. He also runs the small press Unnerving Books, sells sports cards on the internet, and works at a liquor store. He bakes bread, grows vegetables, and rarely leaves the Sunshine Coast. He and his wife have three cats and a baby on the way.
OUT NOW! From Dark Ink in eBook, paperback, and audiobook:
After the sudden death of their parents, the Gerber siblings take over the family farm, quickly learning that fending for themselves is much harder than they'd assumed. This hardship leaves them open to letting a strange man they'd rescued from winter's clutches stay on for room and board, oblivious to the ferocious evil he's carrying as well as ravenous beasts it will draw to their home.
Following a string of grisly chaos across the country, a private detective finds herself directly on the heels of a pack of spree killers she'd been paid to locate. But things aren't as they seem; she never anticipated that she'd come face-to-face with a bloodthirsty pack of werewolves.