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Musings: The Gift of James Herbert and the Rats Trilogy

Today would have been the 43rd birthday for the Dylan Kowalewski, the founder of Monster Librarian.

Dylan grew up in a little bitty town in upstate New York. It didn’t have a lot going for it, but it did have one thing beloved of book lovers everywhere, and very rare indeed these days: a used bookstore. The store, Granny’s Attic, was in walking distance of his house, and whenever he had the means, he would head there. It was in Granny’s Attic that Dylan first fell in love with horror– and especially killer animal horror. I have a considerable collection of it in my possession now, most of which looks like it was well-loved even before he owned it. I’ve written about Guy N. Smith and his Crabs books before, and he just loved those (and pretty much everything else Guy N. Smith ever wrote) but he also discovered, at an early age, The Rats by James Herbert.

As Dylan planned out the beginnings of Monster Librarian, he realized that he would need to start with some reviews already up, and since nobody knew about us or was sending us books to review at that time, he started with his own collection, including reviews of a few books by James Herbert, including The Rats. So at this time, as a birthday gift, I’m sharing with you some of the earliest reviews from Monster Librarian, written by the man himself about books he truly loved.

Reader’s advisory note: If you ever read reviews of Herbert’s killer animal books, you will see that the readers he has are huge fans, and, for many of them, one of his books is the one that got them hooked on reading. If you’re trying to engage a bored reader, you might want to keep it in mind.


The Rats by James Herbert

New English Library, 1974

ISBN:0450053296

Available: New and Used
 

Giant killer rats invade London, and it is up to a small group of government folk to find a way to stop them. Herbert’s style of writing is easy to read, and the story is by far superior to the many killer rat movies made over the years.  Once it starts, the plot moves very quickly and is engrossing.  It is followed by Lair  and Domain.

Editor’s note: The Rats was republished in 2014 with a forward by Neil Gaiman. The 2014 edition is is not the edition reviewed in 2005 by Monster Librarian– he reviewed the original, 1974 paperback edition– but I’m sure Dylan would approve. How can you not like Neil Gaiman?


Lair  by James Herbert

Pan Macmillan, 1999

ISBN: 0330376195

Available: New and Used
 

Second in the killer rats trilogy by James Herbert, Lair continues the story of mutant killer rats invading England. The book doesn’t break any new ground, but if you enjoyed The Rats then you will probably enjoy Lair.  Sometimes, when reading a sequel, it isn’t that you are necessarily looking for something new, but rather you liked the first book and just want more of the same. This isn’t a bad thing at all, just be aware of what you are getting.

Contains: Rat violence.

Editor’s note: The currently available edition of Lair is not the version reviewed here, which was published in 1999, but is a reprint edition published in 2012.


Domain by James Herbert

Pan Macmillan, 2000

ISBN: 0330376233

Available: New and Used
 
Talk about having a bad day– the survivors of nuclear war in England have to face not only a lawless world with roving gangs of thugs, but also a pack of killer giant black rats. This is a plain, old-fashioned, fun read. Herbert does a fine job of keeping his story moving along. It is a fine addition to his other giant rat books, The Rats and Lair. There is a movie tie-in, Rats.

Contains: violence

Editor’s note: The currently available edition of Domain is not the edition reviewed here, but is a reprint edition published in 2012.

Enjoy!


Posted on September 5, 2016 by , Reply

Booklist: Mother’s Day Reads

The new NBC miniseries for Rosemary’s Baby is premiering this weekend, just in time for Mother’s Day. Yes, it’s true, Mother’s Day is fast approaching! Motherhood can be tough and scary in so many ways, and mothers and mother-in-laws can be tough and scary, too, and that manifests itself in so many ways that I can’t even begin to list them. What I can do is give you a list of books in which mothers and their influences have played a significant part. Maybe you can relate (I hope not, but you never know) and maybe these will put things into perspective as everyone gears up for Mother’s Day.

 

 

   Rosemary’s Baby  by Ira Levin.

This classic work by Ira Levin tells the story of Rosemary Woodhouse. Rosemary and her husband, Guy, move into a very nice apartment that is suspiciously inexpensive,  in a building with an extremely disturbing history of witchcraft, cannibalism, and murder. Apparently the nosy elderly neighbors are covertly continuing that tradition, and have convinced Guy to take part as well. When Rosemary becomes pregnant, the residents of the building attempt to isolate her and take control of her pregnancy.

In spite of all the rosy depictions of pregnancy, it is a difficult experience emotionally and physically. and can be terrifying even when you have a fantastic support system, and sometimes it involves real tragedy. Rosemary’s Baby makes that frighteningly vivid. Roman Polanski’s movie is considered to be a faithful adaptation, and a classic work of horror as well.
Carrie  by Stephen King

The cruelty of the girls at school to Carrie is what I find most memorable about the book, but this story could not have existed in the same way without her mentally ill mother, Margaret White, whose violent, controlling, and isolating behavior is the source of many of Carrie’s problems. Even at the end of the story she calls out for her mother. While not Stephen King’s best writing, Carrie has clearly hit a mark with its tone and message. It was made into a movie of the same name, starring Sissy Spacek, in 1976, and again in 2013, with Julianne Moore stealing the show in the role of Margaret White.

Note:  Carrie also inspired a sequel (The Rage: Carrie 2), was made into a musical (1988), and was  made into a made-for-television movie for NBC (2002).
 Psycho: A Novel

Who doesn’t know of Norman Bates and the Bates Motel? In spite of  her unpleasantness and controlling behavior, Norman Bates loves his mother. Spoiler: she’s been dead for 20 years. Almost everyone knows the movie Psycho, directed by Alfred Hitchcock; it is worth taking a short while (it is a short book) to check out the book. Bloch’s novel may have been influenced by the story of Ed Gein, a serial killer arrested near where he lived at the time.

      Beowulf  by Anonymous

I have reviewed the Michael Morpurgo version of Beowulf here, and if you are wondering why a children’s book is appearing on a list of very adult books,  rest assured that this adult thought it was amazing. The second book I’ve linked to is a graphic novel version by Gareth Hinds, which I discovered while surfing Amazon, and has some really great reviews. Beowulf is required reading for many middle or high school students (I think I read it in eighth grade) and it is not easy going. Morpurgo’s version is really engaging, though, and I am guessing that disengaged readers might get into it with this graphic novel version.

So why is this book on my list? If you have read Beowulf before, you know that a third of the story is devoted to the battle between Beowulf and Grendel’s mother.  Sure, Grendel was a ravening monster who ripped people apart before devouring them, but a mother’s thirst for violent and deadly revenge, in this case, truly knows no bounds.

 

 


The Dollanganger Saga: Flowers in the Attic by V.C. Andrews

The collection of messed-up mothers in V.C. Andrews’ Dollanganger Saga includes Olivia Foxworth, Corinne Dollanganger, and Cathy Dollanganger, all twisted up in various degrees of love, hate, and general twisted behavior. One thing you definitely see in these books is the tremendous influence a mother can have on her children, and how that can reverberate through multiple generations. The first book, Flowers in the Attic, has been made both into a movie of the same name and into a television miniseries that aired earlier this year, but the last one, Garden of Shadows, which is technically a prequel, packs a powerful punch as well.

 

Room by Emma Donoghue

Not a horror novel per se, Room is still pretty horrific.  The story is narrated by five year old Jack, who has never been outside the small room he inhabits with his mother. At night, Jack’s mother shuts him away to keep him from the notice of  their only visitor, Old Nick.  What’s actually occurring will be evident pretty quickly to the reader. Jack’s Ma shows her resourcefulness in keeping Jack entertained and occupied without revealing that something really wrong is going on, and protects him to the best of her ability. Their situation is awful, but her love for him is evident, and without the dysfunctional malevolence of some of the other mother-child relationships I’ve mentioned here.
Lakewood Memorial (Zombie Trilogy, Book 1) by Robert Best

A few years ago I did a project around Mother’s Day called Moms vs. Zombies. Just about the time that it was over, this book by Robert Best came my way. Zombies really aren’t my thing, but I was curious to find out how a mom did actually deal with zombies, and although it has more foul language than I like, and was also more gory than I like (zombies REALLY aren’t my thing) I read it cover to cover in short order. The characters are just great. In the hospital, you have Angie, a mom who works at the local hospital; one of her coworkers; a cranky old man and his relatives;  and Park, who appears to know how to use a gun, and is at the hospital to bring his recently bitten friend to the ER. On the other side of a bridge, Angie’s kids and their babysitter are under siege at her home. Both Angie and her kids are determined to reach each other, and boy, are they survivors. If I have to survive a zombie apocalypse, I just might be able to manage it with Angie and her kids on my side. I am afraid that I did not review it at the time, as I can’t really give zombie novels a fair shake, but some of Best’s characters have really stuck with me, particularly Angie, her kids, and the cranky guy in the wheelchair.

 

If you plan to watch the miniseries, enjoy Rosemary’s Baby, and if not, I hope you’ll take a moment to think of your mother, no matter how you feel about her. I hope you have a great Mother’s Day!

 

 

 

 

 

Posted on May 1, 2014 by , Reply

The Original Monster Librarian

In Memoriam: Dylan Kowalewski, The Original Monster Librarian

September 5, 1973-April 17, 2014

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

 

Monster Librarian was the idea and passion of Dylan Kowalewski. Dylan, in a typical burst of optimism and energy, with an intense love of horror fiction, started the site at the end of 2005. Where he got the energy and conviction to start it off less than three months after our first child was born, while working full time and attending library school, I do not have the slightest idea. Library school was an eye-opening experience for him, as over and over again he ran into librarians or soon-to-be-librarians who told him they didn’t like horror fiction, didn’t want to read it, and didn’t know what to hand readers who asked for “something like Stephen King.” He was tired of going to bookstores and finding only the same three or four authors in the “horror” section. Anne Rice and Stephen King were just the tip of the iceberg, but you would never know that from looking there.

Dylan himself grew up down the street from a used bookstore called “Granny’s Attic”. Remember used bookstores? I do. The one I frequented at that age was run by a guy with a beard and a very sneaky cat, with shelves of yellow-spined DAW paperbacks. Dylan’s, apparently, was stocked with killer animal (and killer plant) books from the 1970s and 1980s. As we cleared out the bookshelves in his basement study so new carpet could be installed, he let go of a lot of books, but Guy N. Smith’s Crabs books, James Herbert’s The Rats, and many other well-worn paperbacks stayed.

While I’m not actually working in a library anymore, I do have the degree, and I’ve been a children’s librarian in a public library, a school librarian in an elementary school. I’ve also had plenty of anecdotal experiences in which I’ve run into people who were non-readers who became readers when they discovered Stephen King, or Alvin Schwartz’s Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, or R.L. Stine. I’ve seen all of these attacked by censors and belittled as trash reading or merely a stop on the way to “real” literature.  And I firmly believe that the world becomes a better place when people learn to read and to love reading. Dylan believed that too, and felt that a lot of kids, teens, and adults, were turned off to reading because the people who have the most influence– parents, teachers, and librarians– didn’t see the value of reading horror for pleasure. He always maintained that reading for entertainment is enough reason to read– there doesn’t have to be deeper meaning, and sometimes a tree really is just a tree.

And so he started Monster Librarian, writing short, objective reviews of just a few sentences, almost completely by himself, and publishing them every week, to create a resource for all those people (especially librarians) who told him “I don’t like reading horror, but I need to know about it”. For a long time that’s the only name by which people knew him. At a conference he attended, someone finally took him around and introduced him– “This is Dylan, the Monster Librarian”.  And he’s the only person who, I think, can ever own that title. At one point he worked full time, had a second job in a library, and put in probably the equivalent to a part-time job in time and effort for the site, as well as being a devoted and loving father and husband.

Most of the people who knew Dylan through Monster Librarian knew him mainly online, but both he and I have been lucky to have both authors and reviewers call us friends. This site became what it is because, in spite of his being an intensely private person, his personality and love of the genre and the horror community always shone through. Bret Jordan, Bob Freeman, David Agranoff, Rhonda Rettig (formerly Wilson), Erik Smith, Kelly Fann, Michele Lee, Colleen Wanglund, Darlene Wanglund, Dave Simms, Patricia O. Mathews, Diana Lord, Sheila Shedd, Hannah Kate, Lucy Lockley, Aaron Fletcher, Julie Adams, and so many more contributed to making this site what it is– a place where parents write to thank us for finding the right book for their reluctant reader, authors contact us to tell us that finding their book reviewed here convinced them to keep writing, small presses and self-publishers get their names out into the mainstream, Midwestern moms confess their love for horror, and librarians discover the gems of the horror genre.

The work of all these people has made the site a success.

But Dylan is the one who made it happen.

And to quote Amy Dalton,  his coworker from the Southport Library, “the only thing monstrous about the Monster Librarian was the size of his heart.”

 

If you have any memories or stories about your friendship or interactions with Dylan that you would like to share, feel free to email me at kirsten.kowalewski@monsterlibrarian.com.

 

 

Posted on April 26, 2014 by , 1 comment
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