Creative Visions of the Weird: Five Great International Horror Collections
It’s been a long time since I’ve enjoyed such a good reading run in horror — five great collections read consecutively. I was reminded of my early reading of horror, into my teens, when I discovered so many new authors of dark matter (even hourly when reading my Dad’s Derleth horror collections). Way back then, my enjoyment of the field was writing my own future. I can see that now. And I enjoyed that feeling of discovery and excitement again with these five books — a sense of encountering original, innately weird creative visions for the first time.
I think the last time I felt that recharged by what I was reading in new horror, came in that incredible run of books from Langan, Gavin, Files, Barron, Ballingrud, Tremblay, Bartlett, and many others, around a decade ago — like a new wave of North American weird had come over the seawall. And just when I thought I knew what to expect from horror, Granta and Valancourt translated these collections into English.