Of horror and genres
Sharing my love for horror films and the Basque Halloween tradition of Arimen Eguna, the value of diverse genres in reading, and personal writing projects!
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Halloween is coming up, the commercialised, American festival, but variations of the festival have been around for a long time. In the Basque Country, where I come from, it was a very widespread celebration as Arimen Eguna, the Day of Souls. A lot of the features of the day are similar to Halloween and to how the festival is celebrated in other European countries since the middle ages. Pumpkins carved out with candles inside, young people dressed up in old clothes and hats or as ghosts (the main purpose of the costume was to hide their faces, so as not to be recognised, or to become spirits). Then they would go from house to house to receive gifts : food, coins, or sweets. Adults would usually spend the evening eating roasted chestnuts and drinking cider while socialising in the public square.
This tradition faded away during Franco’s fascist regime, which always repressed pagan festivals, but some towns in the Basque region have started to recover the tradition. And, of course, it’s now fighting the invasion of the Americanised Halloween tradition.
Personally, for me, my biggest connection to Arimen Eguna, or Halloween, has been with horror. I love horror. I’ve always loved it, since I was a little kid fascinated with spooky stories. I suppose I always will.
Donostia (the city known as San Sebatian in Spanish and English) started the Horror and Fantasy Film Festival back in 1989. In Basque, we simply call it Beldurrezko Astea, the Week of Horror. I was 14 when the festival started. The first few years I went to some select screenings but from the age of 17 or so, I always bought the festival pass so I could watch every movie. Inevitably, after a week of multiple horror movies back to back, I found that I often mixed elements of different movies, but the best movies stood out, those left a mark. They were never meshed with elements of the others, they stuck in my mind quite vividly.
Horror for me, is something that I have to experience in film. It’s the combination of the visual elements, the performance of the actors, the atmosphere of the sound design, the music that brings it all together or acts as a sharp counterpoint, the experience of watching it in a dark room with other people... that feeling of dread, of suspense, the anticipation of a horror about to be unleashed and, perhaps most importantly, the exploration of the unknown and the darkest shades of humanity. In fact, I feel like horror is an intensely human genre about our humanity and our fears (both of the unknown and of ourselves).
Stephen King (whose books I devoured in my mid to late teens), put it quite nicely when he wrote: “we make up horrors to help us cope with the real ones” (Danse Macabre). As it happens, science agrees. As outlined in an article by Lisa Lombardi on Readers Digest, studies have shown that watching and reading horror can reduce anxiety, it gives us a sense of accomplishment when we overcome the fear and helps us stay safe in our real lives.
Despite my love of horror and having read some of the greats, I don’t read much horror. In fact, I find that while I love horror movies, I favour other genres when it comes to reading. When it comes to fantasy, science fiction, crime and drama, to say a few genres, I favour reading. Those genres I like to immerse myself in reading.
Talking about genres. A recent episode of the Book Riot podcast with Professor Laura McGrath explored genres and how the publishing and retail industries are built around genres, as if readers of a genre will only read that. Of course, research and data show a far more complex picture. Literary fiction readers and pretty heavy readers, for example, read very widely and across genres. In fact, most readers, read widely and across genres. The whole episode is a fascinating discussion, well worth a listen.
Which begs the question, why do we insist on genrefying our libraries? Genrefication has been a trend in library land and while I understand some of the impulse to do it (following the publishing industry and retail shops) I have always been critical of this.
As librarians, I’ve always felt that we should encourage patrons to read widely. Part of our job is to expose readers to different titles and authors. Not just the James Patterson, Barbara Steel and Nora Roberts, or whichever their favourite best-seller authors in our library. At the end of the day, if they’re not going to take a chance in a library where they can borrow the books for free, where will they?
Genrefying the library means that the borrower, let’s say for example my dad who favours crime mysteries and thrillers, will go directly to the crime section. They’ll browse those shelves and once they have enough books, they’ll borrow them and out they go. Instead, if all genres are shelved together (as they, thankfully, are in his local library) he comes home with other books that he wasn’t looking for because they ‘caught my attention’ or ‘they seemed interesting.’ Yes, he still favours crime books, but he often reads other genres, literary fiction, and books that just seem interesting to him. Recently, he read Madeline Miller’s Circe, for example, and he absolutely loved it. Why? Because he borrowing a book by some crime author whose surname started with M and he saw Madeline Miller’s book sitting next to it. He remembered that I mentioned it as one of my favourite books of the last few years, so he took a chance.
I remember constantly pestering the librarians in my hometown as a young reader to buy more comics and fantasy books. That’s all I was interested in. But those librarians knew what they were doing. As I requested titles, they suggested titles to me or put books in my hand to read “while you wait for the orders to arrive.” They opened up my world. It was through them that I discovered S.E. Hinton’s The Outsiders, Jack London’s novels, Dumas’ The Three Musketeers and Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea. It was through them that I discovered some of my enduring favourites: Kafka, Poe, Orwell and my favourite author of all time: Ursula K. Le Guin.
So, genres are great. I enjoy the comfort of a genre. But, like most readers, I love to venture out of the comfort zone and to read widely, to be surprised, to explore new perspectives, angles and ways of telling stories. That’s why I will always put on display a title that has been overlooked or has gone under the radar and when I’m giving recommendations I will always suggest one extra title that may not be entirely what they’re asking for but I feel they will appreciate. Just like the librarians in my hometown always did.
PERSONAL PROJECTS
The de-googling my life project continues to move forward slowly. I’m very comfortable with Proton Mail and I think that by the end of the year I will start paying their subscription to use their various services. I really can’t see using any of Google’s services in the future - apart from YouTube.
I have finished a zine. I have two others kicking around that I hope to finish soon(ish) and I have the first draft for parts 1 and 2 of my epic fantasy novel, done and dusted. That’s about 35,000 words that I’m pretty happy about. Now I need to start tackling Part 3, which will present some challenges, but I’m really excited to get into this part as my main character heads to the mountains and meets the First Born in my mythology, who are the dwarves.
KICKING AROUND THE NET
Australia’s first Treaty with First Peoples passed the lower house of Parliament, which is absolutely historical and excellent news. Unfortunately, Liberals and other extreme right parties are already trying to undermine it and there’s a lot of work to do to ensure it passes the Upper House and becomes law, but this is progress that we’re not seeing nationally so let’s at least celebrate this victory. Let’s hope the work continues without too many obstacles and we can see real, meaningful change in Victoria in regards to First Nations people that can spread to the rest of states.
Radio National’s Top 100 Books of the 21st Century list is out now. As always, this is a list of popularity based on titles that people have read. This is in no way the best books. It’s great to see Australian authors doing well in the list but, of course, there are glaring absences. Authors who may not have a widely recognised brand but whose books (or books) are excellent, Australian First Nations, or, of course, authors who write in languages other than English. So, why not check out Melanie Saward’s excellent list of Top 10 books by First Nations authors of the 21st Century? I know she didn’t put them in any particular order but Claire G. Coleman’s Terra Nullius is in a well deserved first position. What an excellent book and what an excellent choice to open the list. See my top 10 below (with the disclaimer that I’m sure the top 10 would be different if I was doing the list today).
My Top 100 Books of the 21st Century Tolkien started inventing languages but Le Guin started with maps (which, incidentally, it’s how my fantasy world started) and now there’s an awesome exhibition in London that I wish I could go and visit. But in it’s absence at least there’s this really interesting article about Ursula and her maps.
In the lead up to the Frankfurt Book Fair the president of the International Publishers Association spoke to Publishers Weekly about the importance of publishers to speak truth to power saying: “Being silenced is not a solution. If we see something unfair happening, even if it’s not about us, it’s important that we find the strength to speak up. Speaking up for others is speaking up for yourself.” In this context, the launch of the Freedom of Expression Defenders Award, a partnership with the UN Women’s Regional Office for Europe and Central Asia and continued advocacy on AI copyright issues are three excellent initiatives from the International Publishers Association.
A study involving 22 public service media organisations in 18 countries working in 14 languages, identified multiple systemic issues across four leading AI tools. The largest study of its kind. In summary: 45% of all AI answers had at least one significant issue, 31% of responses showed serious sourcing problems – missing, misleading, or incorrect attributions, 20% contained major accuracy issues, including hallucinated details and outdated information.
Wikipedia is one of the very few outstanding websites on the internet. A website that has not been enshittified and provides excellent information freely (donations are accepted though). Only a few months ago we were learning that Wikipedia was under attack by data scrapers stealing all of its data to train Generative AI and LLMs. This was a huge problem, putting Wikipedia under enormous strain. Now, traffic to Wikipedia is falling (real traffic not bots, but real people) because of the rollout of AI Assistant and AI summaries. An issue that news outlets are also facing. Which puts Wikipedia and news outlets at risk.
A great article on The Conversation reports on the results of a new study at the University of Canberra that sheds new light on misinformation during this year’s election. It’s a huge problem and truth in political advertising legislation is sorely needed. Thankfully 83% of respondents agree. But will anything happen?
And there was also a great study and report at LaTrobe University that concludes that: as people increasingly rely on social media for news, media organisations have a responsibility to debunk online fake news and conspiracy theories that lead to real world harms by providing credible, fact-checked information. A summary of key point as well as the whole report are here.
The horror of data leaks and hacks continues… Qantas, Discord, ChatGPT, etc. It seems like a weekly occurrence these days which, you would hope, should be a wake up call but it seems like most people and companies are in denial and keen to continue business as usual. Wired had a recent, disturbing report outlining how satellites are Leaking the world’s secrets(calls, texts, military and corporate data). In fact, with just $800 in basic equipment, researchers found a stunning variety of data—including thousands of T-Mobile users’ calls and texts and even US military communications—sent by satellites unencrypted.
PHOTO OF THE DAY
I took this photo a long time ago somewhere between San Remo and Wilson’s Promontory in the south east coast of Victoria. I could spend endless hours watching the ocean, listening to its rumble or roar, and breathing in the sea breeze.
That’s it from me for now. Hopefully you found something interesting. Feel free to share with whoever you like. This newsletter is free and will always be free. It’s shared with a Creative Commons BY ND licence which enables reusers to distribute, remix, adapt, and build upon the material in any medium or format for noncommercial purposes only, and only so long as attribution is given to the creator.
