Laird Barron writes horror with more literary flair than normal, like Henry James but with satanists. In more contemporary terms, his style reminds me of John Langan or John Horner Jacobs, people who take care with their prose but who aren't afraid to throw around shapeshifters or occultists to keep the peasants in line.

The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All is a collection of longish short stories set primarily in the American Pacific northwest. My favorite was "The Hand of Glory," which reads more like prohibition noir than horror, at least till the twist at the end. If you've ever enjoyed one of Stephen King's gangster stories, you'll like this--same boozy atmosphere where life may be cheap but the dames ain't.

Are these stories scary? My scare meter broke a good thirty years ago. The same way chronic smokers can't taste spice in their curry, I can't detect terror in my fiction.

But I found them enjoyable, especially as narrated by the hardboiled voice of Ray Porter, who also did a standup job with the Amityville Horror. More on that next week, I think...

A version of this post originally appeared on January 28, 2023.

George Saunders is in the very top echelon of my favorite writers. A literary fiction writer who leans hard into genre, he is arguably America's best contemporary short story writer, and his one novel, Lincoln in the Bardo, will stagger you. I'm getting into the yearly habit of reading him in January, to start the year out right. This year I read A Swim in a Pond in the Rain. It is not short stories nor a novel but... literary criticism! Of Russian literature!

I know this is going to be a hard sell, but stay with me here. The book is just astonishingly good. It's like being in the best graduate level English class, only you don't have to write papers or read Derrida. Saunders helps us dive into seven masterpieces, helping us as readers articulate why we respond to the writing, helping us as writers study the craft.

This book was such a joy. I kept making excuses to get to the audiobook--and please, if you're going to read this, consider going that route. Saunders narrates the discussion, while actors read the stories:

• "In the Cart," Chekhov, narrated by Phylicia Rashad
• "The Singers," Turgenev, narrated by Nick Offerman (my favorite)
• "The Darling," Chekov, narrated by Glenn Close
• "Master and Man," Tolstoy, narrated by Keith David
• “The Nose,” Gogol, narrated by Rainn Wilson
• "Gooseberries," Chekov, narrated by BD Wong
• “Alyosha the Pot,” Tolstoy, narrated by Renée Elise Goldsberry