Little Sister Death; Velva Jean Learns to Drive; Essential Horror Movies

The reviews for this book said it was like "If the Shining had been written by William Faulkner".
Sold.
I liked it, I could definitely see how Gay was influenced by Faulkner (he passed away a few years ago, sadly). In "Little Sister Death", David Binder is a struggling novelist who needs to come up with a second book after the mild success of his first. He moves his pregnant wife, Corrie, and their young daughter to a haunted farm in order to investigate the claims of a ghost and see if he can get a book out of it. The farm is definitely creepy, and Corrie doesn't like it, but David thinks it's wonderful. The manuscript was discovered in Gay's papers after his death, and I can't help but feel like it wasn't quite done somehow, like he was planning on adding to it. I enjoyed it, and I want to read more of his work, I just wish there had been *a little* more to this one.

"Velva Jean Learns to Drive" by Jennifer Niven is the first of the Velva Jean series. It was nice to get some of her backstory. It starts off with her as a ten year old girl, being saved, and then her mother dies and her father runs off form home, leaving Velva Jean and her older brothers in the care of their oldest sister, Sweet Fern. Velva Jean and her brother Johnny Clay run a bit wild but they're good kids deep down. The years pass and Velva Jean dreams of singing at the Grand Ole Opry, and saves money. When she's sixteen she marries a preacher named Harley Bright. They survive some rough times together, but Velva Jean eventually starts to feel like Harley is trying to put out her light by forbidding her from learning to drive or singing. At almost nineteen, Velva Jean packs up her things and hits the road, headed for Nashville. It was nicely written, I enjoyed it, although it was a bit long.

I don't watch a lot of movies (in case you couldn't tell, I spend the majority of my free time reading) but when I do watch movies I've always liked horror movies, I just think they're fun. "Essential Horror Movies" by Michael Mallory was a nice collection of some of the best horror movies of all time, along with some interesting information about how they were made and how some of the grizzlier special effects were accomplished. It was interesting.